Righteous Dopefiend

To explore relationships between men in the population Bourgois and Schonberg are engaging, this chapter opens with a focus on Petey and Hank. Though they express explicitly anti-gay attitudes—as does nearly everyone in the community—Petey and Hank have a deeply intimate partnership that, while not necessarily sexual, would cause them to be read in most mainstream contexts as a gay couple. Such arrangements between “running partners” are common in the community. Their relationship forms during the research period after Petey’s previous running partner dies of an overdose. Hank took Petey under his wing, and he speaks about him in terms that the researchers describe as “almost chivalrous.”

US institutions affect romantic relations among the men primarily through the legal system. Law enforcement negatively affects all of the interlocutors through violent disruption, which escalates their already vulnerable situation to more desperate levels and carries grave consequences to their health. The anthropologists posit that because their interlocutors are considered lumpen, a term they use for people on the very fringes of society, shifts in societal pressures and public health messaging take longer to reach them.  As policies criminalize homelessness, Petey and Hank’s situation becomes precarious.