$20 for a Hug?

Is $20 good value for a street-legal hug?

It’s hard to keep track of the street value of differing commodities these days, in large part because the neighbourhood has changed. 

There was a time when you could buy almost anything on almost any street corner, from drugs to sex to pieces from your neighbour’s bike. Even once our missing Christmas ornaments!

Women on almost every street corner giving away free smiles, charging for everything else. 

Here’s a wild story. Once our bird feeder was being used as a drop-off for drugs. I discovered the stash and forwarded it to the RCMP. There were a lot of angry “bird watchers” the next day. 

One morning I walked out the front door to find 8 crisp $20 bills on the sidewalk. Another transaction gone sideways.

Oh the good old days, the wild west. Coming home to police officers in SWAT uniforms ducked behind trees with their automatic rifles trained at the house across the street.

Now gentrification has made everything monochrome.

What I do miss are the panhandlers. I think of them as the last remnants of the Mendicant tradition, a religious order which practiced begging as an act of devotion, throwing oneself on the mercy of God and others. Jesus sanctioned tending to the needs of the homeless and hungry with his directive, “In as much as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me.”

What panhandlers did with my contribution I have no idea and couldn’t care. What I do value is that for one brief moment, they popped my little self-absorbed bubble and forced me to notice and care about someone other and less fortunate than myself. 

In “the golden age of Panhandlers” I could get a “God bless” for a toonie. Great value. It would have cost me $10 to get a “God bless” from a priest and I would have to suffer through an hour-long service to boot.

Besides, there just seems to be something a little more authentic, earthy certainly, about a “God bless” from the toothless grin behind the grubby, calloused, nicotine-stained, outstretched hand.

Not so much anymore. Which is why I have come to appreciate my friend Tabatha. She shows up occasionally on the street corner outside my favourite shopping centre. Her carefully written sign “Please help. I am homeless. I appreciate whatever you can give.” is leaning against the lamppost. 

I am untypically generous with my contribution, partly because I get so little opportunity to practice this sort of generosity anymore, but also because every time we meet, we have a freindly chat. She compliments me on my flambouyant stlying. I get to learn a little more of her fascinating – part tragic, part heroic – story. 

We make good eye contact, and have a cordial conversation. She thanks me sincerely and appropriately. All the while my social worker’s eye is checking for telltale signs of abuse or drug use or a psychotic meltdown but I don’t detect any of this. Tabatha just seems to be down on her luck and is doing what she needs to do to stay on her feet. 

So one day when I hadn’t seen her for a few weeks, I gave her $20. Tears welled in her eyes, “Really? $20? Are you sure? You have no idea.”

She’s right. I have no idea. Truthfully, if the $20 had blown out of my hand I would have thought twice about chasing it down the street. All I can assume is that it meant more to her than the extra tub of ice cream I had in my grocery bag meant to me. (Just to be clear, I like my ice cream.)

This felt real. A raw moment. I was feeding off the connection. “Can I have a hug,” I asked, calculating that was a fair exchange for my $20.

“Sure,” she said, “since you asked. You have no idea how often men just walk up and grab a hug without even asking. They think it is their right. You asked, so sure.”

$20 for a hug. Good value? On a dance night, I would get 100 hugs for that $20. 

But the real gift was that she held my face up to how scarce and precious basic civility is. More often people take what they want or need without any consideration of how they are getting it or from whom they are taking it. On street corners as in boardrooms and in presidential palaces.

In my Tango dance world, there are rules and rituals about how to ask for a dance and then how to negotiate un abrazo, an embrace, a hug. The embrace is often identified as the essence of the dance.

In other words, this is not a little thing. The privilege of being in close contact with someone else for even a few songs is something not to be taken for granted but prized and treasured.

I continue my walk home, groceries in hand, reflecting on having paid handsomely for a brief, basically a dollar-a-second, hug. 

But the lesson will last a lifetime, one I will revisit every dance, every week: 

A hug is not a right. It is a privilege to be treasured.

Be courteous. Respectful.

Ask.