willing and abel

For many, the Statue of Liberty is our nation's noblest symbol. The idea it personifies is arguably our culture’s highest aspiration, the paragon of our national panoply of civic virtues. But for Abel, the jutting diadem and emerald robes are marks of humiliation.

Abel has post-traumatic stress disorder, but he has never seen combat—at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, his PTSD is derived from trauma far more domestic: he was regularly sexually abused at home from his toddler years through preschool and kindergarten until finally being removed from the situation by the state. From as far back as he dares remember, foster placements and group homes are all he has known—slippery, shifting places where one does not get too comfortable.

Complicating his shallowly buried trauma, emerging erratically in fits of rage or tears or both, Abel also suffers from bi-polar disorder. It is not entirely unexpected, then, that Abel has difficulties dealing with the waves of anger that wash suddenly over him. Negotiating this relentless struggle with his emotions has taken him in and out of gangs, transitional placements, prison, homelessness … and he is only 23.

The room he was until recently renting from a downtown homeowner was more than he could afford. At $650 per month, he lasted only six weeks. On his last night, the 28^th of February, he confided in the landlord. The truth is that from there he was headed to wander the streets until dawn. In a moment of sympathy, the landlord asked if there was anything she could do. Abel replied that he would be grateful if he could rent the couch. He would pay her $200 per month for the opportunity.

But this was not the plush and cozy sofa before the fireplace, the central area of the family’s home life. It was a couch in the backyard, under the covered patio. There is no heat, no electricity, no restroom—just a discarded piece of second-hand furniture situated on an enclosed slab of concrete.

And so, sleeping at night in the yard through the rainy month of March and into April, Abel worked a position with a tax preparation firm. Dressed in a woman’s gown in the most highly visible spot the management could nose out, drawing attention to himself with the waving of a sign painted in bold red lettering at a busy intersection, Abel worked 8 three-hour shifts per month, getting paid $8.75 per hour.

Not surprisingly, the mere act of putting on his costume filled Abel with dread and irritability. Walking out to the patch of turf in front of the McDonald’s where he held his sign, he wouldn’t even be in position before the honking would start, the caterwauls, and the long, amused stares of the hundreds, the thousands who passed him by each hour. The job didn’t even quite pay enough for his couch.

Abel has recently enrolled in an anger management program. “There are other people who have this problem,” he told me the other night, realizing for the first time that he is not alone. “I’m doing good, right?” Behind his tattoos, his prison record, his history of violence, he is in many ways the most innocent of children. We stood beneath a sky full of stars, and for a moment the city was quite and still. “You’re proud of me, right?”

Abel has been betrayed so severely so many times by so many of the adults in his life—what he wants more than anything in the world is to be loved, to feel some semblance of dignity and worth.

After April 15^th, the tax preparers had no more use for Abel, so they let him go. And a few days ago, Abel was told by the owner of his couch that he had to move along, that he couldn’t stay there anymore, that there was need to have three “full rent paying tenants”, and that this was impossible so long as he was staying on the couch. The landlord communicated all this through a text. She gave him until Friday to pack his duffle bag and disappear.