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He’s not lazy— that’s not what James is saying. He used to have a real job, a car, a place to call his own. But he there is something going on in his head that he doesn’t want to talk too much about.

“If you’re a telepath like I am then you don’t want nobody messing with you,” he said.

The other side of street life

By Corey Hutchins

For the middle-aged homeless black man with the curly white beard, being on the street “ain’t no different than working a job except you’re on the street.” That’s what Columbia street resident James said when City Paper recently caught up with him as he enjoyed the midday weather on Gervais Street and watched the cars pass by. “I still got to live,” he said as her surveyed his large blue backpack equipped with a roll of plastic sheeting. “I still need shoes and clothes; I still need plenty of hygiene stuff. I got all these things to worry about and still gotta eat.”

James said he is “close to a hundred” years old. He’s really only in his 50s but you can’t help but admire the optimism. While he’s only been out on the street close two years now, being homeless for him is not about the dark days and cold nights capable of breaking a person down or leading to an itinerant life of desperate drug use, prostitution, alcoholism or abject self-abasement. For him, living out on his own doesn’t have to be about the side of street life illuminated by commercial DVDs like Crackheads Gone Wild or many of the interviews in this very column.

He’s on the street right now because he needs to be.

As there’s much more to Hollywood than the stars and glitter, Columbia street life is not similarly defined by cracked-out hobos needling up in parks, guzzling mouthwash, shitting in the road or sharing a cardboard mattress under the train bridge. Each one of them has their own story as to why they’re out there but it’s not often you hear of a man choosing a life like this simply because it’s easier.

He’s not lazy— that’s not what James is saying. He used to have a real job, a car, a place to call his own. But he there is something going on in his head that he doesn’t want to talk too much about.

“If you’re a telepath like I am then you don’t want nobody messing with you,” he said. “If you’re trying to avoid other people you can’t be in a place where they can help you… like shelters.”

Because of James’ gift he says he can’t be around other people because of the things he hears; the sounds are sometimes too much for him to take. On the street though he can deal with it and work through the catacombs of his own mind and try to work through it. So far he says God has been able to look out for him. He’s been able to find food without a problem and what he owns he carries on his back so he can set up a makeshift shelter under the stars on a nice night such a this. The way he looks at it, the whole city is his home.

While out on the street James admits he is only now beginning to understand the workings of his mind, something he considers a very personal thing. As a little kid people used to hurt him because of it but he doesn’t want to get into the details.

“I got a better chance of dealing with my telepathy [alone]. I’m coming through everything that I didn’t know about— thank God— you know things like hypnosis and stuff like that.”

Ever since he was young James said people had always told him there was something about him. He understands he’s different and he’s trying to figure it out on his own terms. As for things like the psychic hotline and commercial use of his condition, James doesn’t want a part of it.

“Some people take advantage of that, see,” he says. “You don’t think too much about them other people no more. But they’re still psychics, right? But you don’t read too much or talk about that. I wonder what happened to them people?”

James also understands the dangerous complexity involved with believing and admitting that he is telepathic and knows some people wouldn’t understand it.

For Thanksgiving this year he said he went to the Carolina Coliseum but it was murder on his mind to be around the people who were there as he stood in line to fill up his plate.

“Some of the sounds I heard in there,” he said, his brow furrowed and his face recalling the feeling of agony, “Oh God.”

Life is going to get better for him, he knows that— it’s not a matter of “if” it’s “when.” For now he’s going to just keep on keeping on and it hasn’t been too bad for him yet. Earlier James had been talking to a female Columbia police officer who he said he’d called over to chat.

“That’s a nice cop,” he said. “All cops are nice if you treat them like people.” “They shouldn’t give me no problem,” he said. “I don’t do nothing. I don’t do nothing to nobody. They don’t hassle me.”

James said that people need to understand that there are “street people” and “people on the street” and that there is a difference. He said if City Paper wanted to talk about “the other side” of living on the street then they could move on down the road. For him this is just where his life has taken him and eventually he’ll be all right. This he knows.