the law of unintended consequences

With a face like rawhide, his silver whiskers looked like cactus spines spread out across his jaw. That, plus his cowboy boots and hat would have led me to take him for a Wyoming law man--except for his crocheted fingerless gloves and girlish dance moves.

I first saw him on the corner of a busy San Jose intersection, across from a Shell station, a Target, a Chili's, and a nail salon. The sixty-four year-old suburban wrangler pranced and frolicked to the pulsating beats being piped from his duct-taped Walkman. And in his hands was a huge green arrow-shaped sign announcing the availability of detached, two-bedroom homes. For all he was worth he swung that sign, spinning it, tossing it, and twirling it above and behind his head for every motorist to see. His feet stomped and slid as his hips swiveled and twisted to the inaudible rhythm of music and capitalism.

Earlier this evening as I approached him, he had just given himself a ten-minute break. I watched as he rolled his own cigarette and took a long swallow of pink vitamin water. He eyed me wearily from behind dark sun glasses, and when I introduced myself, he remained silent. I made an offhand compliment regarding his knit glove, which he had removed to work his tobacco, and I could tell I was losing him. He shifted his weight and began to turn away so I followed quickly with, "This seems like a pretty creative way to make money;" and to my great pleasure, he engaged me.

"If you want creative, you should go to Burning Man."

Okay, I thought. It's a start.

We ended up talking for about twenty minutes. He told me he worked five, five-hour shifts a week, being paid $10 per hour. I asked him how, at his age, he had so much energy, and he pointed to a plastic bag he had strung up in a nearby tree. It was filled with empty vitamin water bottles and an enchilada tin.

"How many of those do you usually drink per shift," I asked.

"Six," he replied gravely.

"Six!" I couldn't help exclaiming.

"The way I see it, I'm getting paid to work out," he said, taking a deep drag off his filterless cigarette. "You see here," he said, pointing to the labels: "Energy and focus. This is the perfect combination to help the music flow through me and keep me groovin' (I saw CD's by Pink Floyd and Celine Dion in his bag--not artists to which I would typically think of grooving). And it's perfectly legal." There's my law man, I thought.

"So this is your secret?" I said with admiration, eying the empties.

"Yeah. It has guarana."

"Guarana? What's that?"

"It gives you energy. It's all over the internet," he informed me.

"Where do you use the internet?" I asked.

"At the downtown library."

"I see," I replied, holding my breath for my next question: "And where are you staying right now?"

"I'd rather not say," he said cautiously. As a matter of record, the companies that provide these dancing sign-wavers their employment frequently recruit at homeless shelters. It's part-time, no-benefit work.

"Ok," I said, regretting my next question before I asked it: "Would you mind if I took your photo?"

His leather face sank in a taut frown and he exhaled in disappointment. "I'd really rather not," he began. "It may seem a simple thing--taking a man's picture--but I'm not looking for publicity (this from a man who for a living dances on a bustling intersection waving a huge sign). It's the law of unintended consequences, you see?"

And I pondered those words as he picked up the enormous sign and precariously mounted his ten-speed to go return the gaudy advertisement. Here was a sixty-four year-old man making a spectacle of himself in all sorts of weather, homeless, without health insurance, alone, spending 20% of his pittance on the energy it takes him just to get through his shift: are these the consequences we intended when constructing our society?