When the Honeymoon Is Over

I was wandering along Palisades Park in Santa Monica when a homeless guy staggered up and said, “Gimme money.”

I figured he was homeless because he was shabby and smelled faintly of pork grease and urine.

“No way,” I said, pushing by him. People who smell that way expect to be dealt with firmly. It is a condition of their aroma.

“Why not?” he demanded, glaring.

I stopped.

I do not generally engage in conversations with people who accost me on the street and say “gimme,” meaning give me. But this particular bum, I mean homeless person, had such a desperate expression I felt I owed him an explanation.

“Look,” I said, “I’d like to help you out, Homeless Person, but the fact is, you aren’t popular anymore.”

“Whadda ya mean?” he said, cocking his head.

“It just isn’t trendy to give to you people,” I said. “I’m really sorry but that’s the way it is. You were big for awhile but now you’re fading. Think of yourself as a kind of teen-age mutant ninja turtle. Here today, gone tomorrow.”

I started to pat his arm, but realized it was probably thick with scum, so I pulled back and smiled instead.

A smile for a bum is like a Hollywood Air Kiss. Physical contact is not required with those you might find socially pathetic but personally repugnant.

“Thanks for nuttin’,” he shouted as I left.

“Do something about your enunciation,” I called back.

I certainly hadn’t intended to be cruel, and my parting comment on his butchered patois was uncalled for, but I am getting tired of bums, I mean homeless people. And so, apparently, are a lot of others.

Take Santa Monica. Here was a city that once deified those who slept in doorways and urinated in their trousers, thereby accounting for at least part of the acrid smell that seems to accompany them.

They were the Sacred Homeless, and grown liberals were known to fall to their knees in tears at the very mention of their wretched plight.

Soup lines went up, homeless shelters opened, a special pork grease perfume was marketed and celebrity sing-alongs were held along the beach to raise funds.

God, it was wonderful.

But then, the Sacred Homeless, like pampered television stars, began to take themselves seriously. They began to think they actually were special.

It started when Martin Sheen invited them to Malibu on the occasion of his appointment as honorary mayor. That inflated them beyond realistic proportions. Who else had a personal invitation from a Famous Actor to drop by if you’re in town?

The homeless became pushy, then aggressive, then dangerous. Like the last days of Haight-Ashbury, love is draining from the cause like water from a dirty bathtub.

And here we are.

What’s happening now is that programs for the homeless are being cut back, soup lines are vanishing and no one is writing songs about them anymore.

In fact, a group of people in Santa Monica have begun an initiative campaign aimed at City Atty. Bob Myers, who they feel is soft on the homeless.

They want his position to be elective instead of appointive, the easier to boot him into the streets if necessary.

But their real goal is not to rid Santa Monica of Bob Myers, but of that portion of the homeless population that has become less sacred and more threatening as times goes by.

I spoke with some of those responsible for what they call the Citizens Protection Act. A mixture of political conservatives and liberals, most were friends of Frances Finnen, 89, who was stabbed by a homeless person demanding money.

That galvanized them. The homeless weren’t fun anymore. The initiative was born. Homeless advocates see it as a backlash and worry that the honeymoon is over.

Leslie Dutton, an organizer of the drive and a participant of every cause that comes down the media pike, says hundreds have volunteered to assist in their campaign against the street people.

“We don’t want to sweep the city of them,” Pam Hanson adds, “but it’s gone too far. We can’t even take our kids to the parks anymore.”

“I hear the Sheriff’s Department in Malibu gathers up the homeless and sends them here,” Dutton adds. “From Torrance and Hawthorne too.”

“They’re even talking about forming a union,” Rena Hubbard says.

“A homeless union?” I ask.

“That’s what I hear,” she says.

You get the idea. Christmas is over. The homeless era is past.

As I left Dutton’s office, I met the same street person who had asked me for money earlier.

“Give me a dollar or I’ll cut your heart out,” he said with the clarity of a bell.

Wow. I gi’m a fiver. Effort deserves reward.