At approximately 7:43 a.m., when perfect cars with perfectly tinted windows spewing their perfect, cancerous smoke rumbled past on the busy streets between chain coffee shops and designer pumps clicking on cold pavement, the coins would clink in my ruddy can at the highest pitch. This was the time at which wrists wrapped in non-cracked watches and nails painted with calculatingly  precise white lines would help flip dimes or nickels or pennies from mountain rain - aloe vera - citrus burst scented hands. They would flood the bottom as their eyes flooded with pity, their shoes chuckling harshly as they walked away, my holey-socked feet mottled with embarrassment. And this would continue, as long as I kept my teeth bared, instead of behind my thin lips, and my eyes fresh with sea water, as if I had just seen a kicked puppy in this lifeless part of the neighborhood. Chain link fences would warble woefully with the wind, caging me into my “office”, if you could call it that. Just a ratty Coleman sleeping bag, stolen from the scraps of the others in the streets, a small bottle of water, and a couple of pieces of bread a woman had given me. Her hair had been perfectly curled, pale fingers entwined with the auburn strands. Her coat had been freshly laundered, but her bread was moldy and stale. One day, in the middle of the summer, humidity wrapping my skin in horrid sensation and soaking me to the bone, I thought just how much I was like that puppy. I lived off of bread crusts and orange peels, droplets of water from discarded water bottles and sugar-loaded frappuccinos left on the sidewalk in the morning rush. Those with perfect manicures and bad-mannered stilettos might as well have stuck a post-it note, maybe bright blue with spots of sun fading, on my can saying “low budget beast”. Because that is what I was. I was a zoo animal, flaunting my aggression to have a photo snapped of me or a little treat, maybe a few coins. Thirty-seven cents could put light in my eyes like some who saw the subject of their addiction for the first time in hours. I could attack, sure. And that’s what they expected. They could donate two seconds of their lives and be thrilled by the spectacle that was me in my holey-socks and stained American Eagle sweatshirt. I thought I was human, perfect like them, but maybe I truly was an animal.