Jacket - email version to Anwara

i gave a homeless man a jacket the other day.

i was out with that disgusting bloke i met at Fire (Ainsley's b'day, end of August. we did gay things of course), and a few of his friends (not Ainsley, i'm talking about this horrible guy i met at Fire): 2 gays and a fag-hag. a jacket had been left on a chair in this pub in Leicester Square we were sat at. it was a hoodie lined with fake-fur. it was there for over an hour and no one claimed it. i thought okay, it's now mine. i've lost plenty of stuff in London. London is giving back to me. awesome. i'm always cold. this would be perfect for me.

this long-time homeless guy wandered up to us. straggly beard, g'd knows how old he actually was. he was selling a local magazine and we all said sorry, we're on plastic. i said hey, you should take this jacket. someone left it here and it's been ages. he took the jacket and still asked for money. would it bankrupt you to give me some cash? he asked me. i said no, but i'm unemployed at the moment, i can't spare any change. and i just gave you that jacket. he said "it wasn't yours to give. why can't you give me some money?" i said if you don't want it, you should barter it, swap it for something else (thinking of all my street kids who would use the jacket as currency in a heart-beat). he said "are you making fun of the homeless?"

i can't remember what i said back but it made the fag-hag and the gays laugh. at which the now jacketed but still, homeless man accused us all of mocking the homeless which i guess we sort of were by then b/c the situation had just become very comical.

i was THIS close to saying okay, well give me back the jacket then.. (b/c it would have been very funny. though a bit cruel).

but anyway..... it reminds me of one of Joey's sayings (from Trinidad and his Bajan grandmother) "no good deed goes unpunished.."

prior to that, i would have thought it impossible that the act of giving a homeless man a jacket could have created anything other than a bit of world peace. but apparently it annoyed the f*ck outta him.