People Like Us/Who Will Listen to Dennis?

I think about class and how I had a few examples of upper class friends in Williamstown Massachusetts, a few working class friend s in Vermont. By the way, both towns did have a middle class that I was apart of, but out side of my middle class privileged society, I saw more upper class in Massachusetts and working class in northern Vermont.

            None of those two living areas come close to the class oppression I witness in New York City. My dad got a job as a minister here in Harlem back in 2006 and ever since then I would primarily live with him in the city and occasionally go back to visit my Mom, with my Dad, in Vermont.

            The walk from the church, the Columbia side of Harlem, to the

Lennox avenue

side of Harlem is like a walk between two worlds: upper class life and working class life. Last night I met a man named Dennis. He just opened up into random conversation with me, I had never met him. He was talking about how he contracted HIV, how he just got out of prison, that he was starving. He mentioned how bothered he was to ask me for help. That I wasn’t the first he asked.

            One guy said he’d pay Dennis $200 to have sex with him. Dennis recoiled at that thought and told me he was trying to clean up his life. Another guy he talked to, five minutes before I came along, said he’d go to his apartment and get him some food. However, time was going by and it didn’t look like Dennis was going to get food from this person.

            He and I started talking about his family to lighten the mood up. Nevertheless, throughout the conversation I’m wondering if this guy is conning me, if this is a gift where my class is being questioned. Will he kill me? Is he on the verge of killing himself? Looking into his eyes, I see he’s on the verge of tears. He seemed more beaten, battered, and mutilated than he was hostile.

            I ended up helping him out with ten dollars; I figured that’s enough to get him a meal. Then he hugged me…he hugged me. It was like I was taking this man’s burdens in my arms. I didn’t know what to do or say. I wished him good luck and went back to my Dad’s apartment. This happened yesterday, so as I write this I’m still trying to wrestle with what happened: how these two worlds can coexist in this one city.

            My Dad asked me why I walked home at night. He could just drive me back to the apartment. It’d be safer. I know if I took that path, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate how safe and warm the communities in Massachusetts and Vermont are because I wouldn’t be able to compare them to the brutal and unfair lives people, like Dennis, live in New York City.

Why do I think class is so invisible in this culture? I’ll answer that one with another question. Who would listen to Dennis? The argumentative Staten Island couple (I’m trying to put in People Like Us as best I can)? The suburbanites with friends in low places? I could barely listen to the guy myself. So I come to the conclusion that I don’t care if you’re upper class, upper middle class, middle class, or working class, the oppression I saw last night is very difficult to embrace, but if that oppression isn’t embraced a class conversation becomes difficult to have.