One disconcerting experience!

I spent last winter working at a homeless shelter that opens from November-April each season. In the four months since the shelter closed, I've run into several people who had slept there. Thankfully, the lion's share of them now have places to live. But not all, as I was fiercely reminded a little while ago.

At 11:00 Sunday night, I was taking one of my frequent exercise walks in downtown Willimantic, CT. As I strolled past the public library, I noticed a woman sitting on the bench out front. I recognized her as a former shelter guest and stopped to say hello. Big mistake, as it turned out.

This particular woman had been quite a handful as she was both certifiably insane and quite unsanitary. (She refused to shower because she said she was afraid of getting raped.) So, imagine how I felt when she grabbed my hand and said, "I don't have a place to sleep tonight. If you let me stay at your place, you can have sex with me and I won't charge you money."

Now, I've been alone for quite some time, but I wasn't about to take that woman up on her offer. Rather, I lied that I now had a live-in girlfriend and that I really couldn't do anything to help her. I then high-tailed it out of there, feeling both repulsed and guilty. I would have felt far worse, though, had I taken that woman home with me and used her as a substitute for my right hand.

Perhaps you're thinking I could have let her crash at my place without having sex with her. Technically, you'd be right. However, I have three roommates to consider. I'm not sure they'd have looked too kindly on my having let an insane, homeless, unsanitary woman sleep on our couch. Besides, she then would have known where I lived and might have started habitually turning up on my doorstep. I have enough on my mind these days without adding that to my problems!

Still, I feel guilty as hell about having left that poor woman to sleep on a bench in front of the public library. But what could I do?

It's been four months since I worked at that shelter, but the experience haunts me still.