CLARISSA: “A WOMAN WHO FELL ON HARD TIMES”
“It’s inappropriate for a grown man to ask a woman for money,” Clarissa says, leaning across the expansive wooden table that separates us. It is a Tuesday morning and we are sitting in the lobby of the famed 1886 Café in the Driskill Hotel, located on Sixth Street in downtown Austin, sipping coffee and waiting for our breakfasts to arrive. On her walk to the restaurant, a man had asked Clarissa to spare a dollar, and she is annoyed.
Jokingly, I ask: “Is it okay for a woman to ask another woman for money?” Clarissa debates her answer aloud, before arriving at her main point. If you want to help the homeless, she tells me, you are better off giving to organizations like the Salvation Army than a panhandler. People who ask for money on the street don’t use it for what they say they will, she continues.
Clarissa could be any middle-aged white socialite commenting flippantly on an unknown “other.” With her perfectly coiffed brown hair, edged with gray, baby blue cashmere cardigan, matched accessories,faux-snakeskin purse, and long black coat, she certainly looks the part. But instead Clarissa is speaking from experience. It is hard to imagine, from this warm cocoon of dark wood, leather, marble, and soft light, that Clarissa will spend the night bundled up in a clean but used sleeping bag in a wing-backed chair in a storage unit that she rents in south Austin. And this is exactly what Clarissa wanted, I suspect, when she suggests we have our first meeting here — at one of the most luxurious settings (and her favorite spot) in town.
Clarissa makes it easy to forget that she’s homeless, even though many of our conversations center on exactly how she arrived at and experiences this predicament. From her self presentation (which she is aided in maintaining by a non-profit where she is both client and volunteer, as well as her innovative spirit — the purse, for example, came from attending a free giveaway at Saks Fifth Avenue) to her leisure activities, Clarissa both purposefully and unintentionally usurps any stereotypes about what a “homeless person” is like — even those produced in well-meaning academic literature.
Clarissa’s view of herself as a “regular person” who has found herself in unfortunate, and often demeaning circumstances, rubs off on me during the many breakfasts and lunches we share, and we are as likely to talk about the latest headline in the Austin American-Statesman, a new movie release, a recent debate in the state legislature, a community protest, or Clarissa’s salsa recipe, as the mechanics of living in precarity.