First night I met Thomas, it was raining. Soft rain. Cold, but not the kinda rain that makes you feel too depressed.

He came. Talked about how life was hard. About how he almost lost a leg, he fought leucimia, his wife left him. Stuff like that. Then he asked for money. Of course. He needed money to find a place to sleep. And money to get a copy of his birth certificate.

I said I didn't had any.

He stayed for 5 or 10 minutes under the Douane Reade entrance with me, then he started to walk toward the subway, where kids set fire to hobos sometime he said.

I watched him walked to the next block, then said "fuck it" and ran to catch him (which wasn't too hard) and give him 5$.

Then he came every day or so and stayed until we gave him food or money.

I think we must have gave him around 100$ the whole month.

But fuck it. Back then, we were rich.

New York
December 2007

Fingers + 21mm = things in the corners of pictures.