Surviving on the street with a cardboard sign and a lie

I met Matt while reporting Wednesday's column on the rising number of young people lost in heroin addiction and living on the streets of Philadelphia.

He sat on a crate on Market Street with a sign saying he was a veteran, and any help would be a blessing. I sat down beside him to talk.

I had met a dozen or so homeless, addicted young people as I reported the column. When I'm reporting, I find the best people to talk to are the watchers. The ones who seem to set themselves apart - who contemplate life while they experience it. People who may be lost in the tide, but taking it all in even as they drown.

That, I thought, was Matt. He was polite. He was composed. He said he'd had his last shot of heroin about three hours earlier in Kensington and was now panhandling for his next hit.

He told me a story. He said he had served in the Army and was wounded in Afghanistan. That he had nightmares about it. That that was the origin of his addiction. That the addiction had led him to throw away the good suburban life his parents had handed him.

That he had betrayed those who tried to help him the most. That he'd stolen family jewelry. That he had served time in jail for it. That he had jeopardized his father's business.

Sleeping in the doorways and on the sidewalks of Philadelphia for weeks, he spoke of a past that seemed to glow brighter the further away from it he got.

Matt let our photographer take pictures of him as he prepared for another night on the street. Like most others I'd interviewed on the street, Matt wouldn't give me his last name. I should have pressed him for it. I didn't.

He told me a story, and I wrote it down. The next day, after the column had been published, I learned that an important part of that story was a lie.

Matt had never served in the Army.

I learned this from Matt's father, who saw his son's picture in the paper and called the Inquirer.

I found Matt back on the same corner that night, holding the same sign. He said people had recognized him from the paper and stopped to give him food and money. I had received emails from a rehab clinic offering free help, and from vets wanting to help a fellow soldier.

At first, Matt denied having lied about his service. Then he admitted he had just put "veteran" on his sign asking for help. That he had told outreach workers and a veteran who stopped after seeing his sign and finally, me, that he had served - because he was too embarrassed to admit he was lying.

In our earlier conversations, Matt had told me he couldn't believe he was on the streets. It didn't seem right and it didn't seem real. That it wasn't happening to him. That if he stayed high, he could believe that it wasn't happening to him.

We tell ourselves stories to get through life. Sometimes we can almost convince ourselves they're true.

Maybe telling a newspaper reporter he had been wounded serving his country was another way of getting through it all. Maybe it was a way of leveling the playing field with the people who walked past him on the sidewalk. Maybe it was just a ploy for pocket change and a quicker hit.

He asked me if I thought people would still want to help him if they knew he had lied. I told him I didn't know. I told him I hoped he'd get off the streets - and get help.

I told him this was on me, too.

And I hope you, readers, know that I understand that fully.

"I apologize," he called out as I walked away.

My story wasn't just about Matt's military service. That was a backdrop to what I found most important about Matt, and the others I wrote about in Wednesday's column: that they were young and addicted and homeless, and that there are so many others like them.

Young people who, in the midst of a skyrocketing opiate addiction crisis tearing away at suburban communities and small towns across the country, have traveled so far from the lives and people they were. Far enough that they might claim to be someone else. Someone different, someone more noble.

I've spent 10 years interviewing people, many of them on the margins of society, doing their best to rationalize what they have made of their lives - and make sense of a world engulfing them.

I'm still glad I interviewed Matt.

I still think his story - even the lies - lays bare the desperation on the streets of Center City.

I went to Matt's corner Thursday to tell him I was writing about him again. He wasn't there.

A girl Matt had met on the streets had taken his spot. She had not seen him since morning.

"All he said was he was making his money to do what he had to do," she said.

mnewall@phillynews.com

215-854-2759