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The Nouveau Shelter for the Rich
By Michael Fowler
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Every year or so I and about 12 other extremely wealthy citizens check into
Jacques Nouveau’s Shelter for the Rich for a couple of weeks just to get away
from all the damn money for a while.
At the Nouveau Shelter we put aside our trappings and burdens of fabulous
wealth, unbridled power and political sway, and for two weeks we live the lives
of the poor and homeless. We share their struggles and deficits, get back to the
core of humanity, see what really life is about without all that green stuff
blocking the view. And what a view it is, too, really.
The Nouveau Shelter is modeled after the Tender Scapegoat county shelter for the
homeless, only of course it really isn’t. Tender Scapegoat has aged, donated
hospital beds the size of coffins with stained plastic covered mattresses,
donated food, no privacy, and raccoons and squirrels running around in it due to
its proximity to an inner-city park. And
you have to be poor to get in. The Nouveau Shelter has private rooms, AC, new
beds, is located on a scenic lake well outside the city limits, and is pest
free. And you have to be rich to get in. Each of us pays Jacques $5000 for his
two-week stint, a bargain in terms of understanding the human condition and
getting down to life’s gritty basics.
In the true spirit of a shelter, The Nouveau Shelter is small and Spartan in its
accommodations, however. There’s TV, but no video games. There’s a chef
skilled in preparing simple but healthy meals. Radio, but no CD players, unless
you bring your own. Laptops are not allowed, but cell phones are. Jacques does
up-to-date research on
the real homeless population, and informs us that today’s homeless individual
has a backpack and a cell phone. So we are allowed those. But once we park our
Rollses and Mercedeses and BMWs out front, we’re not allowed to use them. The
real homeless, Jacques explains, drive clunkers or ride the bus. How, for two
weeks, I envy them.
As at Tender Scapegoat, the actual shelter, we at Nouveau Shelter are assigned
chores to do. I myself, though I have servants at home for this sort of thing,
am obliged to sweep out the dining area at the end of each meal, and also to
empty my own personal wastebasket in my room as if I am a room service employee.
When I do so, I get a feeling of being bonded with all men everywhere without
being shown a lot of false respect due to my unimaginable wealth. Grand!
Another thing Jacques has us do to shake off our burdensome riches and privilege
is panhandle for a day. Twelve of us pile into the Mercedes van like so many
wealthy wetbacks about to sneak across the Mexican border, and Jacaques takes us
into the heart of the heart of the inner city, where there are actual miscreants
and people without college degrees walking about. He assigns each of us a street
corner, and instructs us in asking our fellow citizens for ‘change.’ I
dressed down and didn’t shave or shower for the occasion, and as a result
managed to cadge 50 cents from a man whose bank I own. He didn’t recognize me
until I laughed and handed it back to him. Was he surprised! We are encouraged
to return any money we receive, since it’s obtained under false pretenses, and
most of us, I assume, do. Though not all, I am sad to say.
After an hour or two of panhandling, Jacques takes us to a real soup kitchen for
lunch. We are supposed to be treated like any other group of the penniless and
hungry as we wander in from the streets, but of course there’s no mistaking us
as we arrive in our spotless new van and file in, immaculate in the finest
casual wear, expensive hairstyles, imported wristwatches, and carrying our Wall
Street Journals. Then too there’s a special table set up for us with the
manager of the kitchen at its head, and over a meal of donated bread and cold
cuts just like what the starving and dispossessed around us are eating, we
discuss the needs of the place. The manager is in fact soliciting donations, and
that is the real price of our meal with him, though most of us are willing to
make a contribution to the kitchen’s upkeep. I make out a check for $100, tax
deductible, of course.
Right down the street from the kitchen is an actual flophouse, and those who
wish to may sign up to spend the afternoon and night on one of the urine-soaked
pieces of rug on the floor, or in one of the rusty metal folding chairs in front
of the blaring black-and-white TV. Jacques will pick us up the next morning in
the van, or we can call him by cell phone at night if we get too worried. But
the person in charge here doesn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about our
presence, and perhaps for that reason none of us takes up this offer or makes a
donation, though Mr. Benton of our party, who’s really in the swing of things,
asks if the flophouse has a souvenir shop. After a disenfranchised chap with
Tourette’s Syndrome starts hitting on us in an energetic fashion, we leave in
a hurry and Jacques apologizes to us for the shabby treatment we received. He
will let the board of directors of the house know about it in no uncertain
terms.
Next Jacques takes us to the free clinic. Here those of us who, in the next
couple of weeks, would receive knife and gunshot wounds in disputed drug deals
or in shootouts with the police, or incur drug overdoses or roll our cars in
high speed DUI mishaps, would be brought for treatment, if we were truly
down-and-out. But in fact we wouldn’t be brought here, even if those things
happened to us, but we would prefer to die first, since we are rich. We have
carte blanche at the finest medical facilities in town and private physicians to
look after us, so who needs this dump? But it’s good to know that, were I to
be knifed senseless in the Atomic Bar just down the street, or succumb to bad
crack in the parking lot down the way, I can still have a second shot at life
and the American Dream thanks to this wonderful clinic.
As an added diversion at the clinic, where the staff is also soliciting
donations, I get to play the part of ‘Daddy Rapper,’ a down-and-out ghetto
musician cum pimp who has just been pumped full of lead by one of his jealous,
hopped-up whores. I let go and give a sterling performance as I’m placed on a
stretcher by a medical attendant who mimes giving me treatment while explaining
step-by-step what he does to resuscitate me. I say things like, ‘Baby, I
ain’t feelin’ too hot,’ and ‘Dat mo-fo ho is goin’ to pay.’
Afterward the attendant tells me that I was very realistic. I give generously,
as who would not?
Then it’s back into the van and home to the shelter. We talk over our
experiences of the day and offer a reward of no job duties for the next 24 hours
for the one who had the most harrowing scrape with penury and powerlessness.
Homer, our African-American friend, was told by a policeman on the street to
‘Move along, there,’ and wins hands
down.
At dinner back at the dining room Jacques and we plan our next day. It will
include a visit to a plasma bank to donate blood as if for cash, also a visit to
a temporary job service where we can make a few bucks loading trucks and
cleaning warehouses and
the like, or just watch others do it for the vicarious thrill. We will also
spend a few hours
under a bridge, if the weather’s fine, to get a feel for homelessness in the
wild. Jacques’s also lined up a guest speaker, a former hobo who lost his leg
train-hopping, who will describe his life on the rails after dinner. Man, I bet
he’s lived and how!
After chow it’s cleanup for those who have chores, which is most, followed by
an AA meeting attended by actual alcoholics in the community. I’m not going to
pretend none of us have that problem, but of course we go to private clinics in
the French Alps for our real treatment, and certainly don’t advertise the
fact. At the meeting we hand around a pack of cigarettes provided by the
coordinator, just as if we didn’t have enough cash to buy our own smokes. I
tap one out of the pack even though I don’t smoke, just for the experience.
Finally it’s to our rooms for the one hour a day of self-indulgence we’re
permitted. I usually have a mixed drink from my private martini wagon and call
the wife to let her know I’m OK, poor and downtrodden but OK. Then it’s
lights out at 10:00, no exceptions, since in a real shelter there would be those
of us getting up early to catch a
bus to work, and they need their rest. Well I know how that goes, except for the
bus part. I think hard about why I’m here, just as Jacques says the residents
of a real shelter must do as part of their rehab. I realize that all too soon my
two weeks will be up, and I’ll be back in a position of supreme wealth and
limitless power. Before that happens, I’m going to grab all the poverty and
degradation I can and relax.
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Mike Fowler is a great guy. Please buy the new
projects from Boom! For Real and Sweet
Fancy Moses. See websites for details.
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