Every so often, I see an image in real life that plagues me. Today was one of those instances.

I was on my way to work very early this morning. I stepped off my bus and started walking west midtown when I saw a young white girl in her twenties. She had just a bit of a belly, indicating she was about 5 months pregnant. Standing behind her, with his hands securely fastened in the front middle pocket of her hooded sweatshirt was an older black man, probably in his late 30's. His hands, hidden in her pocket, seemed to be placed on her belly and were navigating her direction-wise.

He was navigating her, because they were both doped out of their minds on junk.

I looked at her, so pretty with dirty blonde hair that had dreaded from so many weeks of living on the streets. Her sweatshirt was from Old Navy on top of a hippie-dress with cotton pants underneath.

He turned her to me like a puppet and he whispered in her ear. Whatever he said to her prompted her to stretch out her hand to me and ask for a dollar. I looked at her face and then directly into her eyes and for a second, just a split second, I think she recognized me. And after that, she almost looked frightened enough to cry, a reaction near impossible based on the dose she must have just taken. And then she was gone, lost in her drug induced haze.

I transferred my gaze to him and stared at him with such hatred and vitrol that if I were the Firestarter he would have been dust on the sidewalk. I hated him enough in that second to kill him. I hated him because I know what he's been doing to her: fueling her drug depency and making her dependent on him because she's angelic enough to evoke pity money out of the wealthy midtown professionals but too doped up to keep track of it. Instead he holds it for her and supplies her with enough dope to keep her addicted but needing more to get through the day - and more dope means she has to work for it in any way he deems fit. He will feed her habit as long as she continues to make money for him and one day she will die, not by choice, but because she used 1 time too many. He will go on, finding another pretty face with an ugly habit and perpetuate the pattern.

I hate that man.

I faced him for a moment as I faced another man just like him years ago and I remembered in blindingly vivid detail what I did to that other man in fit of righteous rage. I composed myself, reminding myself that what I was lucky enough to have gotten away from once may not favor me again. I forced myself to walk away.

But I just couldn't leave that girl. I knew that girl. Not her, but what she was. I knew that somewhere along the timeline that I shared with her, she may have made 1 different choice than I made. One day, when I woke up and gathered every ounce of strength and said I never want to feel this way again, she woke up and said I'm not strong enough to face walking away and she continued.

I stood across the street from them and lit a cigarette. As I smoked it, I watched him turn her like a weathervane: East, South, West, North. She looked confused and put out her hand to strangers each time he whispered in her ear. As they turned toward me again, he spotted me across the street, standing behind an iron stairway and he stared at me. I stared back. My eyes screamed "I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING, MURDERER." He finally turned her again.

I tried desparately to think of what I could do for this girl. I thought of her parents, probably somewhere in Connecticut, who pass sleepless nights wondering if she's dead or alive. I wondered how long she's been gone. I wondered how she is going to deliver this junky baby in some filthy crackhouse and if it might kill her, trying to deliver in an H haze, forgetting to push because she's numb from the dope.

Life, is a set of unique circumstances for each of us. For some reason, I saw the future and I choose to walk away, while that girl who could have easily been a friend of mine in middle-class America didn't see the future; she only saw the spike in her arm.

I left her there. Panhandling at 7:45AM with that leech attached to her back, but I saw her in my mind's eye all day. She haunts me now.

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