Together, the two men created "Li'l Addict," a comic strip that tells Hayes' life story as rawly as he has lived it.
Hayes writes the narrative, creating fictional versions of the unsavory characters that dominated his alcohol- and drug-dependent years. Bell draws the strip, which appears in One Step Away, a monthly tabloid written by homeless people at the nonprofit social-services agency Resources for Human Development. The 12,000-circulation tabloid newspaper is sold on the streets of Philadelphia.
Because Hayes has had the guts to examine his life in the harsh light of reality, leaving himself exposed and vulnerable, writing "Li'l Addict" has helped heal him.
With his mentor Bell's support, Hayes has grabbed onto a lifeline and pulled himself ashore.
The two men couldn't have come from more different backgrounds.
Bell, 66, is a white South African who suffered years of psychological and physical abuse as a young gay man in his native country. Conscripted into the military, which enforced apartheid and persecuted gays, he escaped to Amsterdam. He lived as a refugee there, turning his home into a safe haven and art school for fellow refugees.
When he eventually came to Philadelphia, Bell created the ArcheDream for Humankind theater company, where blacklight-illuminated dancers wearing wildly colorful African masks and bodysuits that Bell designed act out otherworldly myths on themes as varied as rape and rebirth, hatred and healing.
His work with the dispossessed led Bell to start the art program at the city's Ridge Avenue shelter, where he met Hayes, 44, an African-American who grew up in Germantown and was deeply affected by his parents' divorce when he was 10.
At Germantown High School, Hayes was into gambling and gang fights. He went into the Army and was stationed in South Korea, but by the time he got out in 1989, he was eager to start selling cocaine.
