At what age did I stop playing with dolls?
Was it age 3, when my older brother grabbed
the Barbie out of my hands and threw her down
the basement steps? He broke her legs, and I
cried my way to another store and more expensive dolls.

Was it age 4, when my best friend Crystal,
who lived next door, painted my fingernails pink
and we marched around the living room
in her mother's high heels? When her father came home
from work and called me a Tom Girl,
I ran home crying--but didn't mess up my nails.

Or was I four and a half, when my parents made
a pact to rid me of all dolls and girlie toys?
They locked me in my bedroom with only Tonka trucks
and play-guns, but I took a nap instead.
At one point, they were even cruel enough
to give away my Ken and GI Joe dolls.

By age 5, I was pure boy and kept only
green army men in my closet.
But two years later, my baby sister arrived.
She liked to play with my hot-wheel cars and model boats,
and I couldn't wait to get my maternal hands
      on those comfortable dolls.

Panhandled

M.J. Arcangelini

1.
In street lamp twilight, in headlight flash -
at the mouth of the driveway of a discount
gourmet market, he stands. The hand-lettered,
cardboard sign held before him. A shield?
A mask? Such tired metaphors pile up -
it is a misplaced cartoon dialog balloon
and it boils down to:
      hungry
      can’t find work

He looks to be in his mid-30's, bearded and
not at all bad looking - in fact I have always
preferred the scruffier types - and for
a moment I consider finding out how
hungry he may really be. What might he
be willing to do, or allow to be done to
him, to fill his belly? As I drive away,
his actual image already fading into the
sexual fantasy I’m concocting for us,
a question rises like a half-forgotten debt
dampening lust: When did I grow so cold?
What has brought me to this place
where another man’s hunger incites
exploitation, rather than compassion?

So many years living with the gift of a
warm dry home, of an expanding belly, of
"disposable" income—as though I really had
control over such things. Knowing all the while
that I am two missed paychecks away from
spending each day with my own cardboard
sign at the bottom of a freeway exit ramp,
and my nights under some nearby bridge:
a shuffling, pleading, decaying drive-in movie
screen for the projected fantasies of passersby.


2. (1970)
Frank was good. Bold and unashamed. A natural at working that crowd and we, Jackie (his girlfriend), Jo (my girlfriend) and I, were the audience he played to. But this was not intended to be performance, it was a lesson and now, he indicated none too subtly, we were to go forth and do likewise. And we did. Spreading out among the mid-afternoon jostling of the downtown crowd in front of the Terminal Tower. Public Square. Cleveland. Buses and taxis and cars. Everybody in transit of some kind, everybody moving - contact was fast and had to be established with as little fuss as possible. Frank’s story about needing to bail his mother out of jail had been reduced to a few short phrases communicating the pathos of his fiction, while acknowledging its inherent ridiculousness - in a later time such phrasing would be dubbed "sound bites" and become a primary source of distributing alleged information to the population. Frank was ahead of his time, and easily collecting twice as much as the other three of us put together. Jo was the least accomplished and would soon leave our little circle. Jackie just kept cracking up at what she was doing , laughing, screwing up mark after mark and collecting little cash - but she had the best connections for acid. And me, I got better at it as the summer went on.

I wonder what those folks were thinking when they handed over their change? Did they believe we were destitute? Did they secretly think we would use the money for booze and drugs? Did any of them believe Frank’s mother needed to be bailed out of jail? Did they see their own children? Or the children they had been? Did they see us at all?

We were fresh out of a suburban high school. The money would go for gas, booze, LSD, speed and pot.

Later I would get good enough at panhandling to survive on it for short spells in cities like Boston and San Francisco. Eventually expanding into dumpster diving - that being in the days before dumpsters were all padlocked to keep the garbage safe from trash like me.

3. Thinking vaguely about the
parking meter I may need to
feed tomorrow, I draw a hand
out of my pocket, fist clenched
around 3 or 4 quarters, some
nickels and dimes, and pass
them to the man who has just
hit me up for spare change
on a sunny downtown street.

We had already passed each other.
I could have kept on walking.
It’s not as though I’d actually
looked at him, or made eye contact.
Instead I stopped, imprecisely
weighed the change against
this morning’s load of guilt,
and backed up to drop the
warm coins into his waiting
hand. Wondering if the debt
of my own panhandling days
might ever be paid in full -
and if so, what then?