G. B. Trudeau - 40. A Doonesbury Retrospective 2000 to 2010

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B y 1987, New Yorks legendary Roseland Ballroom was a dingy, forlorn place. Its glory days as the citys premier swing band showcase long behind it, all that remained of its glamorous legacy was the afternoon taxi dancing. Eight bucks got you in the door, and once there, a spin around the floor with a dance hostess set you back a dollar.

One warm spring day, I paid a visit to Roseland, thinking it might provide the perfect setting for Alice, my ruined debutante, to reconnect with happier times. My idea was to have her migrate up to the city every spring, and with a borrowed chiffon gown, join the ballrooms band of hired hoofers. Accustomed to the melancholy of lost souls, Alice would be in her element, free to summon the gaiety of her younger selfthe one who stopped hearts with her dips and swirls at schoolgirl cotillions. (It helped that Id met such a person at a local shelteran elderly bag lady who talked ceaselessly and, it turned out, truthfully, about her days in the Ziegfeld Follies.)

The place seemed ideal, and set in motion a simple tale of convergence: Alice is seated behind the taxi table when out of the afternoon sunlight wanders troubled financier Phil Slackmeyer. A refugee from a different story line, Phil encounters Alice at the nadir of his fortunes. Like Alice, Phil is there to recall a more innocent time, when as a City College student, he used to watch Ann Miller flash her gams in the hottest club in town.

Phil hands over his ticket, and as the unlikely couple floats around the empty ballroom, the cares of both are momentarily lifted. The scene might have seemed irredeemably sentimental had I not arranged for Phil to be arrested for insider trading the next morning. This was to be his last tango before the trip upriver. But Alice never learns this; her time with Phil is just a pleasant, metered interlude among many. Soon enough, shes back on the streets of Washington, sharing a steam grate with Elmont, her beloved head case of a husband. And life rolls on.

The temptation with homeless characters is to make them content with their circumstanceshappy hobos whove somehow reconciled themselves to lifes harshness. And some of the indigent Ive met do in fact project a kind of irrepressible dignity. My friend Roger knew a homeless man who had set up a living room on the sidewalk outside his apartment building. One day, Roger sat down in one of the tattered armchairs and engaged the squatter in small talk. After a few moments of polite chitchat, the man looked at his watch and said, Roger, Im sorry to cut this short, but Im expecting company.

Delusion can seem charming at such moments, but from there, its straight to heartbreak. Its a challenge to keep the stories of the homeless bearable, and sometimes I dont even try. The Washington Post once ran a photograph of a homeless couple buried in a snowdrift in front of the White House. A decade earlier, Id drawn Alice buried in snow in that precise spot, but this time, I just clipped the photo and pasted it into the strip.

Here, folks, I was saying, this is real, this is happening. Try smiling at this.