Q. Do you know who I am?

A. Not exactly, to be honest with you.

Q. Then why on earth have you summoned me?

A. I’m in existential conflict.  Whoever you are, I have found in the past that you have of helping me through such angst.

Q. Helped you?   By asking you questions?  Incessantly?  Obnoxiously, as it were?

A. Yes.  Despite your incessant obnoxiousness, the many questions you ask have a way of causing me to question my own inclinations.  I therefore examine those inclinations more carefully.

Q. What inclinations?  What are you talking about?

A. I’m inclined to think that a decision I have recently made is going to work against me.  I suspect it will overload me, and thus interfere with my mission.

Q. And what is your mission?

A. Well – “mission” may not be the exact right word.   But I tend to think I’m on this planet in order to make a social statement involving some serious questions and suggestions to my fellow Americans.

Q. Isn’t that somewhat grandiose?

A. Perhaps.  This is where I am conflicted.

Q. What is the essence of the conflict?

A. It is as follows. On the one hand, I want to live a quiet, reclusive life, so that I can write poems, songs, stories, plays, blogs, articles, and perhaps even a novel – or even a thesis – because I strongly feel that I have something  important to say about homelessness, classism, and social stigma.

Q. And on the other hand?

A. On the other hand, I have a strong desire to help out particular homeless people in need; specifically, by letting them stay here in my house, where I have a spare room.

Q. What’s wrong with that?

A. Isn’t it obvious? I need my space in order to write, in order to create.   What if they get in the way?

Q. Why would they get in the way if you have a spare room?

A. Well, it’s not the biggest house on earth, and – and – there are other variables that have me a bit nervous — it could have to do with the nature of the specific individual whom I have recently invited to stay in the room — it could have to with a lot of things — and — and —

Q. Will you please stop beating around the bush?

A. All right.   You painted me into a corner.

A. I invited a Trump supporter to live here.

Q. A Trump supporter!?  To live with you, of all people?

A. I felt for him because he was homeless.   Mercifully, he declined.

Q. And then?

A. I invited a Satan worshipper to live here.

Q. A Satan worshipper!?  To live with you, of all people?

A. I felt for him because he was homeless.  He too declined — although admittedly, he wouldn’t have been nearly as bad as the Trump supporter. 

Q. And then?

A. Somebody else a wee bit closer to home was also facing homelessness.  For the first time in her life, at the age of 59.   Never having been homeless in her life, mind you.  And coming from a farm out in the country, to the cold cruel realities of impending Homelessness in the Big City.   I invited her to live here, and she did not decline.

Q. Who is this person?

A. My ex-wife.

The Questioner is silent.

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