Cadillac Man

If you've read my blog, you know how I came by this book. I live in Astoria, New York, and I'd been walking past a very friendly man for almost six months every day on my to the subway. I couldn't tell if he was homeless, though I did sort of think he was. When I finally stopped to speak with him, it was because I saw him writing. A few days later, he called me over and handed me his book.

Man, what a book. Cadillac warned me that it was written in "street", but I've read Pygmalion and Henry IV Part I. After an "ain't" in the first sentence, which I can't help but feel is there purely for shock factor, it's just like listening to him: great, deadpan sense of humor, natural language. It feels like having a conversation...well, with maybe more swears than he's used in my presence. For some reason people think that because I don't swear I'll be actively bothered if they do, which is not always the case. But I digress.

It starts rough, with a truly awful first Christmas on the streets of New York, and then both broadens to taken in the colorful individuals in Cadillac's life and narrows to focus on his past. I had a little difficulty following his timeline, but since he talks about how time means little when you don't follow the calendar, I wasn't terribly fussed--it was the sum total of the experience that mattered, not the order in which things happened.

Cadillac asked which parts interested me most. I said Irish and Penny (the latter seems to be everyone's favorite part), but I was also really interested in Chocolate Milk, Amber, and the other South Bronx prostitutes. Everyone Cadillac interacts with is met on their own terms, with the respect or contempt that they earn in his eyes. There's a very distinct moral code that he follows--this is a truly good man making his way in a very difficult world.

I told Cadillac it was sometimes hard for me to remember that the sometimes-violent version of him in the book is the same man who always greets me with a smile in the morning, though I know intellectually it's the truth.

I'm so, so thankful I had a chance to read this book. I've been volunteering at a soup kitchen for over a year now, and reading this book gave me a better appreciation of some of what our guests might be going through. Obviously Cadillac's experience is not representative of everyone's, or even most homeless people's, but that's kind of the point. There may be similar themes, but everyone has a different story of how they ended up where they are.

There's less concrete and literary criticism in here because I can't quite approach such a personal work in that way. Oh, sure, if this was in a literary writing workshop I could pick at the stitching and offer suggestions, but that's not why I'm reading this. I read this to learn more about a new friend than I ever have in one go.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who lives or wants to live in New York City. I'm guilty of looking away from the homeless on the street--I think almost all of us are--and I can't promise that I'm going to stop, but I'll definitely be thinking a lot every time I do it. There are so many stories, and we can't ever presume to know the "real" one that each person might have. I'm just grateful that Cadillac got to tell some parts of his.


Quote Roundup

Thar be swears ahead...

33) “You’re from Brooklyn, right?”
--“Yeah, how did you know?”
--“I recognize the accent.” The fucking accent, I mean.
I love Cadillac’s sense of humor, on text and in life! This line was especially great, though out of context it really doesn’t make much sense.

44) I bet if I walked in with no money saying I was hungry, they would have given me something. Unlike the yuppie restaurant that will chase you away, then afterwards any leftover food is dumped in the garbage. One day right in front of me and some of my people, an employee at one of those places deliberately dumped bleach over all the food in the dumpster, pouring slowly and watching our reaction. I wanted to bash that fucking smirk off his face, but that would have created problems for everyone so I did the next best thing. I started hanging out in view of the place. Picking my nose or scratching my balls in plain view of the customers, and others did the same.
Perfect revenge. What kind of sick freak does that to people? I’m actually reminded of something I saw in Stratford outside a 500-year-old house: it was a wooden cupboard the size of a microwave, with wooden slats spaced far enough apart that you could see inside. When I asked what it was, the curator said that the wealthy would put their leftovers out there each night for the poor. Is it so hard to do that little in this day and age?

60-61) In two years everything flipped over completely. I went from being the breadwinner to being at home with Jessie, and I resented it. I resented it. I wasn’t fulfilling my obligation as a husband and a father. The stay-at-home dad is just a recent thing: it was nonexistent back then.
This is why we need feminism, folks. While I can’t fault anyone for resenting unemployment, breadwinning shouldn’t societally be the obligation of the man in the house.

67) I could’ve called a friend, but I was just embarrassed. I took the attitude that whatever happens, happens. I guess I wanted to punish myself. For being a failure. For not trying hard enough to keep my family together. I didn’t care.
This from one of the nicest people I know…and in some very important ways, a very successful person, too.

94) Acting like sisters, [the prostitutes] talk about the johns and the tricks, their clothes, their dream of someday getting out of the profession. In reality most won’t, they just disappear. The lucky ones move on to another location, the unlucky you read about in the newspaper. The world’s oldest profession is also one of the world’s deadliest. The leading causes of death are pimps/boyfriends, johns, and in some instances other working girls. And suicide, the final act of desperation, which allows a girl to get out of this profession quickly.
I actually really liked this section. I was a little nervous to be reading about prostitutes from a man’s perspective, but Cadillac’s as even handed, kind, and no-nonsense with them as he is with everyone. Made it a bit easier to deal with hearing about the danger inherent in the line of work.

117) Unless she’s a big earner, losing a girl is no more than a minor annoyance. Sad but true, there are plenty more where she came from. They are everywhere--runaways, girls trying to make it as models, dancers, or actresses. The pimps wine them, dine them, then rape and beat them until they agree to work out of fear of dying. By then all hope for anything else is lost. Some get hooked on drugs and grow even more dependent.

140) So I thought, I’m going to be getting off the streets--[my brother’s] going to take me in, so maybe things will work out for me, maybe I’ve got a chance here. I stayed overnight, and the next day I was out canning and my sister came over to me and she says, you know something? You’ve got lice. Dan’s two daughters, they got lice. I said, I don’t have lice. But the street people, they’re stereotyped, so all right, I got lice. I had to go to her place, and she got this stuff from the drugstore, some crap to put in your hair. Whatever it was, it stunk like hell. Later on that day my brother came over and apologized, saying the kids got lice from some kids in school. So he told me I could go back to his place. I didn’t want to go back. I knew that if it wasn’t lice, it would be something else.

142) It hit me hard the first couple of months I was out there. Nobody was talking to me, I mean nobody. When you’re homeless, who would talk to you? People don’t even want to see you. So sometimes you may not realize it, you’d be talking out loud to nobody. You’re just getting it out of your system.
I used to hear a phrase to the effect that speaking to yourself was a sign of genius. Bit of a double standard there.

143-144) I felt so free, nobody riding my back, saying do this, do this, do that. I did whatever I wanted to do and I didn’t have to answer to anybody. I was free. I was free. You have so much freedom, so much time. Out in the streets I could basically come and go as I pleased. Like, today I’m going to be in Queens and tomorrow I’m going to be in Brooklyn, next day I’ll be in Staten Island. … When I was out there, I didn’t answer to anybody but myself. Not that I’m trying to glamorize homelessness, because it does have its bad points, but to me the beauty is there were no pressures.
As I think Cadillac says somewhere else in the book, you adapt. People always adapt. That said, I’m sure there are plenty of homeless people who would not agree. There are certainly restrictions, voluntary and societally imposed. And, of course, the lit student part of my brain demands to point out that the repetition of “I was free” could have just as much to do with convincing the narrator as the reader...though I’m obviously throwing “death of the author” out the window for this book.

152) After what happened with Harold, I said, I’m through. It seemed like everyone I ever got close to I lost. Same thing with the jobs, and after the garage closed, I said, that’s it, I don’t want to have another job again, never. I was terrified that it would happen again. After so many disappointments, how much can you take before you break? That’s it, I said, enough is enough. I can’t deal with this shit anymore.

206) It’s not rainwater falling from my eyes, it’s tears for a young woman with an awesome smile walking proudly wearing a garbage bag. Does that make any sense to you?
Yes, yes it does.

215) Sooner or later one of us will die, and I don’t want Penny to be alone out here.
Those who know me know I'm a cold-hearted crocodile, but Cadillac's selflessness really touched me. It's hard to get close to people, but letting them go is so much harder.

234) At some point we went past a large storefront window that caught my image passing and I had to step back to look again. Blue shirt, red tie, black pants, and green sneakers. Perfect. This is not me, an image of the life I once had and don’t wish to go back to. I lost everything, and to try again with the chance of failure, I won’t risk my sanity. The past is dead and my future is in God’s hands. Whatever he has in store for me, I accept willingly with open arms.

244-245) With Central Park back in the seventies and eighties, forget about it, your life wasn’t worth a nickel if you went through there after dark. Now it’s like Little House on the Prairie over there. But still a lot of people won’t go in there at night, so that’s a plus for the street people because they know they won’t be hassled by one of the outsiders going jogging.
I was actually just talking about the relative safety of Central Park these days.

248) People beat on the homeless because they can get away with it. We got mental problems, right, s they say. People are malicious. That’s their mental problem. To let their frustrations out they’re going to pick on somebody like me.
It’s amazing how many sickos there are among the “normal” people in this world.

270) Politicians claim they will make the shelters safer by adding more security. What good would that do with the lights off? Security is no good to us, staying in their warm, cozy office while someone is being robbed, beaten, or worse in front of the place. Why do you think some of us go into hiding and take our chances with Jack Frost?
There were a few truly horrifying things in this book, and this was one of them. I never knew just how bad the shelters could be—I’ll never why people don’t go to them again.… (plus d'informations)

I was disappointed in this book. I expected a gritty tale, showing us the truth of what life is like for the homeless. I was hoping for an enlightened look at how average people find themselves on the street, and how difficult it is to find help once there. That is shown here to a small degree, but I found the story almost comically slanted throughout. Cadillac Man portrays himself as the superhero of the streets. When people give him money, he passes it on to the church or other people in need. He refuses to take food or handouts from store owners. Indeed, he watches out for and takes care of all the lost souls, while turning his back on his own daughter.

This leads me to the second reason I found this book impossible to like. Cadillac Man tells us quite honestly that he likes being on the streets. He loves the freedom. He loves not having to answer to a boss or a wife. He does what he wants, when he wants. His reasons for walking out on his family are shallow at best. He would have us believe he is altruistic, helping all his street friends and expecting nothing in return. Yet he leaves his young daughter without a father and without any financial help.

Sadly, I think this book reinforces some people's beliefs that the homeless are on the streets because they want to be. While that is true for some, and certainly it is for Cadillac Man, it is not true for most. This book is a hindrance to all the people who have lost their jobs and their homes, who have no family and nowhere to go, who can't get a job or state aid because they have no address. To me, Cadillac Man is simply a guy who ran from responsibility and is now being glamorized by his own self-indulged words.… (plus d'informations)

(originally posted at http://laze.net/fait/archive/2011/10/27/seen-heard-and-read-vol-1/ )

I recently finished this book I received through LibraryThing‘s Early Reviewers program. It’s pretty much what you’d expect from a tale of homelessness as told by one that lived through it: stories of violence, spiraling depression, and a healthy dose of quirky characters. Land of Lost Souls gives us a glance into the everyday lives of the people we pass on the street, often without a second thought.

Though the book’s chronology jumps all over the place, making it hard to get your bearings on your place within Cadillac Man’s life, the structure turns out not to be all that important. What is important are the individual stories, like the touching story of Penny, a 19-year-old runaway who Cadillac Man develops both a fatherly and sexual relationship with before helping to reconnect her with her family. That sounds creepy, but it’s more that it’s just how things go in that environment.

Recommended.

(Cadillac Man reads a selection from his book in this CSPAN video from a couple of years ago.)… (plus d'informations)