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One of my last nights in London I go down to the Bullring with a Simon coworker and a photographer to do streetwork and get some pictures. Street mythology and deprivation reaches its zenith in the Bullring, the last cardboard city in London. A former underground car park, there are about 40 people living in bashes or on mattresses, ranging in age from 16 to over 65. It's been called the place where God stops, where the outcasts of the outcasts live, and it has a history of stabbings, murders, charity vans overturned.

There's a group sitting around a fire, their faces covered in black soot, drunk, high. We give out cigarettes, make small talk. A young skinhead girl whose face is disfigured from a recent fight is lying on a mattress with her boyfriend. I don't know him so it's the usual challenge, "Why don't you give me that coat you're wearing." He knows I'll demur, hesitate, explain, ultimately refuse - - confirm my hypocrisy, validate his contempt. But I think I know the score at this point; I'm going to slap him in the face with all my charity.

"I can't, but what about this sweatshirt?"
"Does it have a hood."
"Yeah."
"All right."

I start to peel off layers of clothing, playing to the crowd around the fire, giving him the shirt off my back. The sweatshirt is almost immediately tossed to the side, forgotten.

Eventually, I bring up the idea of photographs. They say they want money. I pull out all the change I have and hand it over, turning my pockets inside out. Then I sit down and Mick, who was stabbed in the back with a screwdriver two weeks ago and taken away in an ambulance, starts mocking me, adopting a fake foreign accent, asking for a cigarette, grabbing at my own cigarette, grabbing for my ass, telling me to smell his hand, abusing me more and more. I let him do what he wants, repeating "You got it, you got it," waiting for it to end, waiting until he's reduced me to nothing, until he offers, "I’m only joking with you, you gotta’ laugh otherwise you'll die down here." He throws the money I gave him up in the air and the others, laughing, drunk, throw themselves on it, rolling around on the ground.

But it's not over. Mick is talking about the stabbing, showing me the wound, reenacting the fight. He tells me the man stabbed him from behind, tells me that he's a boxer and starts shadowboxing with me. He's getting more and more worked up, throwing punches, staggering, pretending to stab me, telling me what he would've, could've done to the man. Then, whether his imagination got carried away, or he snapped for a moment, or it was the drugs and alcohol, the excuse to hurt someone other than himself, the price I had to pay to get his photo-he slams his fist squarely into my face. I have no idea how to react, so I try to ignore it, pretending nothing happened as he continues talking, my head throbbing.

After a few moments he takes my head in both his hands, says he's sorry if he hurt me and starts screaming: "Go your own way, never listen to anyone, never let these wankers get to you, fight them .... I don't give a fuck if I was shot dead right now, I don't care if I die .... I've seen a lot, I've been down here 14 years, listen to me." I tell him that I will, that I appreciate his advice, and he reaches his arms around me in an awkward hug and kisses my neck.