After weeks of seeing the same panhandlers near the freeway ramps I frequent, I decided I could no longer just avoid their signs, their gazes. So I put together care packages each of which contain socks, a protein bar and a package of Vitamin C-packed gummies. I haven’t seen a panhandler since. In their places are signs that read:
Keep the Change. Don’t Support Panhandling.
It’s a Milwaukee initiative to discourage panhandling and encourage people to instead donate to 18 charities which help homeless people. Here’s the initiative’s website:
https://city.milwaukee.gov/CommonCouncil/Initiatives/Keep-the-Change.htm#.XNmgUaR7k2w
But, in a Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service article, Guest House of Milwaukee Executive Director Cindy Krahenbuhl said the initiative’s message can sometimes be misconstrued.
“The message isn’t ‘don’t help people,’ but simply handing them money is not the means to do that.” Krahenbul recommends offering a sandwich or water rather than money.
https://milwaukeenns.org/2016/07/29/city-takes-stance-against-panhandling-with-keep-the-change-initiative/
So I feel OK that the packages still wait in my car, getting increasingly crumpled by the wear and tear of back seat rearrangements. But I’d feel better if they found their intended home.
 

Police are not allowed to snuff their red, white and blue strobes while in the presence of a suspect. Even if four squads are parked on your lawn. At 1 a.m. And the suspect is cuffed.
 
A jittery American flag light show, telegraph of shame.
 

One male boss greeted all his female staffers in the same way, a mumbling gruff “Ya’ ready?” The other women assured me after my first unsettling encounter, “He’s harmless.”
 
A fellow male condo owner rides the elevators all day and night and hits on females – visitors, workers, other condo owners. After one disturbing encounter with him, I was told by men and women alike, “He’s harmless.” One man added, “Probably.”
 
When I went through a weird period of being regularly accosted by flashers -- in the library, in my neighborhood, in Rome -- I was told, “They’re harmless.”
 
“Today's flasher is tomorrow's flasher,” Katherine Mair, a forensic psychologist, told a reporter in 1995. "These guys find flashing itself rewarding. They fantasize about what their victim is imagining.” https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/why-flashers-are-no-laughing-matter-even-when-the-victims-a-man-1621499.html. 28 May 1995
But in 2018, forensic psychologist Stephen Hart, argued, "It is a big mistake to dismiss flashing as a nuisance. Some flashers—whether or not they suffer from exhibitionism—also engage in other bad behavior, up to and including sexual assault. Some may start by flashing and then escalate to coercive acts such as rape."​ https://www.verywellfit.com/how-to-react-to-exhibitionists-and-indecent-exposure-3435773
So let’s get this straight. No person who exhibits inappropriate sexual behavior is harmless.   
 

I tear the gold cellophane tail from the outer package, flip open the carton, untuck the first Marlboro Light and, while I fiddle with a match, my lips embrace the burnished filter. And then I inhale. The first bits of tobacco tick, tick, tick as the flame consumes them, until an ember crowns.
 
And as I watch and listen at the party, the cigarette perched between my index and middle fingers, I lift my chin to meet the cigarette and inhale. And exhale. Lift. Inhale. Exhale.
 
For me, smoking was about posing like a dancer slipping from tendu to plie to releve. I think I was more addicted to the choreography than the nicotine.
 
Which is why I don’t understand vaping. A smoker hugs the e-cigarette in his fist, obscuring it as if embarrassed by his e-pen’s knobby ugliness or by his intimacy with what looks like a computer flash drive. Where’s the artfulness, the glamour?
 
Maybe grace is in the shopping for and loading of e-juice. Maybe it’s in the flavors. Maybe it’s just the straightforward lure of nicotine.