A man named Christopher, spending some time on Park Street in Lewiston, shared an interesting life story with a reporter who still cannot tell if he is homeless. Mark LaFlamme/Sun Journal

The man’s name is Christopher and when I met him for the first time, he was bundled up in three blankets and sitting on a sidewalk on Park Street in Lewiston.

It was 25 degrees and a chill wind was blowing, but the man did not look cold. He was, he told me, quite comfortable. 

“It’s not bad out here,” Christopher said. “I’ve got my blankets and they keep me plenty warm.” 

The night before, when temperatures dropped all the way to zero, Christopher bundled up and slept in a downtown doorway, using a fleece blanket, two comforters and a scarf to hide away from the brutal cold. 

“You’ve just got to curl up in a ball and try to stay warm so you can sleep,” he said. 

I asked if he’d eaten and Christopher said, no, in fact. He’d not eaten at all today and here it was closing in on 3:30 p.m.

I made arrangements to bring him some McDonald’s grub later and kept on talking — for nearly an hour, I talked to Christopher on that cold sidewalk and yet I still cannot answer the most fundamental question about him. 

Is the man homeless? 

I asked him about this early on in the conversation. “How long have you been homeless?” I asked, because that’s the most basic question there is when it comes to an interview of this kind. 

Christopher looked at me like I was loopy. He’s not homeless, he said. Not at all. 

“I’m just waiting on friends and family,” he said. “I’ve got my mom and my sister. I’ve got a couple girlfriends and things like that.” 

Let me be clear. I don’t need Christopher to be homeless to be sitting here writing about him. I didn’t go out looking for a homeless person to interview, I went prowling downtown Lewiston in search of anyone at all who looked like they might have an interesting story. 

And Christopher IS interesting. He’s 45 years old and said that beyond this cold sidewalk in front of what used to be Victor News, he has a lot going on. 

“I just built a new house in Auburn,” he said, “But I haven’t got it on the real estate listings yet. I’ve got a lot of properties and things that I don’t know anything about, too. All that has been in my mom’s care as long as I’ve lived.” 

He has funds, he said. But without an identification to present, things get a little bit tricky. 

“Some of us have money,” Christopher said. “We just don’t know how to access it.” 

For a time, Christopher told me, he worked at one of the local hospitals. He’s also had a gig giving guided tours at an animal rescue down in Gray. 

At one point not long ago, he had a bunch of four-wheelers and street bikes and used to take part in some of the street shows. One time he was filmed by a camera crew, Christopher said, although his face was behind a helmet. 

He has a daughter who is being cared for by her mother down in Mexico, Christopher told me, and he’s got a girlfriend, a nurse, over in Greene. 

The way Christopher sees it, he’s not homeless; he’s just laying low while waiting to see what he wants to do next. 

But of course, if you bundle up with three blankets and sit in the middle of a downtown sidewalk, assumptions will be made. 

“Everybody is concerned about everybody down here,” he said. “People show up and ask if you’re all right and all that. It’s kind of nice, I guess.” 

Christopher said he’s had people come by to take his picture, saying they were doing some project on the homeless. 

“But I’m not even homeless,” he said. “I just decided to sit down here for a while and see what things are like.” 

Sitting on a sidewalk in frigid March weather might seem an unlovely idea to most of us, but for Christopher, it was just a way to get his head straight and think things through. 

Talking to the man was a delight, cold as it was. He was easy going and engaging and we shared a few jokes about girlfriends and the like. It was such an easy conversation, we might have been sitting on bar stools in a warm saloon.

But here’s that question again: Is the man homeless? 

Christopher says no. He’s just between one thing and another, he insists. He doesn’t stay in shelters or eat at the soup kitchens, he said, because he’d rather walk up to 7 Eleven or Dunkin’ and get food on his own. 

And I want to believe this. I want to believe that Christopher is truly happy living the way he is and that in time, he’ll move into that house he built in Auburn, or maybe he’ll get serious about one of those girlfriends. 

If Christopher is happy then I’m happy, too. 

Alas, when I ran things by a few people intimately familiar with the homeless community, I was told that it’s possible not everything Christopher told me is true. 

Maybe he has property somewhere nearby; nobody knows for sure about that. But he also has untreated mental illness, I was told, and is given to flights of fantasy and delusional thinking. 

Does Christopher really have a daughter down in Mexico and a devoted girlfriend in Greene? Is there truly a family nearby to look after him and to get him indoors if need be? 

I hope with all my might that that part is true, if nothing else. In the meantime, when Christopher insists for the third or fourth or fifth time that he’s not homeless, who am I to argue with him? 

I just shook his hand, thanked him for his time and climbed into my warm truck. 

Is Christopher officially homeless? I’ll leave that determination to the men and women in suits who are responsible for charting such things.

When I brought him food a few hours later, I never even uttered that one word that makes Christopher so uncomfortable.

Homeless or not, the fellow was hungry and in the moment, that’s really the only thing that mattered.