For two years, people walked around him, whether he was sleeping late on his cot at the end of a sidewalk or walking to the public toilet, a ratty jacket wrapped around his waist and a lemon held in front of his mouth, like a microphone. One day two guys threw their arms around his shoulders and steered him to their picnic area, where they too held up lemons and crooned and swayed on either side of the homeless man. Onlookers gathered. Two tattooed young women grabbed splotched mangoes from below a tree and joined in at the edges, turning the trio into an a capella quintet. They sure could sing! More listeners stopped, murmured and applauded. A cellphone video of the improvisation went online and credited Phil Bottomsly, the street sleeper, as the creative mind pulsing the performance. In the video he did seem like the leader, and though he returned afterwards to his routine, he now smiled as he walked along holding his lemon, bowing to one side and then the other, acknowledging fans.
The author of fiction in Yankee, Writers Forum, Flash Fiction, Bright Flash Literary Review and New Stories from New England, Marcia Yudkin advocates for introverts through her newsletter, Introvert UpThink (https://www.introvertupthink.com/). Her essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ms., Next Avenue and NPR. She lives in Goshen, Massachusetts (population 960).
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