Didn't know until just now, "Everlast" isn't the name of the band, it's this guy's stage name. So here's Everlast taking a hit off Joe Rogan's joint, and then singing one of the best songs to come out of the 1990's, "What it's like."
"We've all seen the man at the liquor store beggin' for some change, the hair on his face is dirty, dreadlocked, and full of mange. He asks a man, for what he can spare, with shame in his eyes. 'Get a job you fuckin' slob,' is all he replies."
-Everlast, "What's it's Like."
I know what it's like. I slept on concrete, under an awning of an abandoned building last night. I had a hand-me-down winter coat for a pillow, and a $9 felt furniture moving blanket from U-Haul as a cover. I got woke up late at night, maybe 2 am, by people talking nearby. It sounded like people talking about me, and about actions to intentionally fuck up my life more. Nobody gave a damn about that abandoned property, until I started sleeping beside it. That kind of thing happens, in most every city, most every night.
This is the world we live in in 2019. It's not enough to be homeless for some people, there are people out there, quite a few of them, who go to great lengths to harass and further destroy the already difficult lives of people, like me, who are already struggling really hard, to simply survive. I may have misunderstood the conversation happening next door. Or maybe not. But there's nothing nearby that's open at 2:30 am.
I was walking to that sleeping place the night before last, in the dark, alone, thinking of the things I wanted to get done the next day. Those thoughts were interrupted, by a thought "normal" people don't have to be concerned with. That thought was, "I have these things I want to get done tomorrow... IF I actually live through tonight." That's the perpetual "IF" of being homeless. I go to sleep, alone, in a place I'm not "legally" allowed to sleep at, every single night, a place that would scare the living shit out of most people. That's my normal. I know that there are all kinds of things and situations that could take my life before the next morning comes. I go to sleep every night knowing I could very easily be killed before morning. I've done that for over 3,500 nights in the last 20 years. I've struggled with homelessness for so long because of conversations like the one I partially overheard last night. I've made not-so great-decisions, I've lived low budget. But that doesn't account for the whole reason I've struggled with putting a roof over my head for so long. There are people out there who work hard to make homeless people's hard lives harder, for reasons I have a really hard time comprehending.
Am I just amplifying my personal fears and paranoia? No. Not really, because knowing you could die before morning is part of the survival mentality that keeps me, and hundreds of thousands of other homeless people, alive through the nights alone. I don't have the luxury of assuming I will wake up in the morning when I go to sleep at night. I've made my peace with that fact. I sleep reasonably well, in spite of the circumstances. But to put it in perspective, here are a few of the things that I've dealt with during the nights of homelessness I've survived.
Once while sleeping under the stars, in an old slave graveyard in North Carolina, the biggest opossum I've ever seen wandered up near me. It was as big as a good-sized raccoon, and wasn't afraid of me at all. I leaned up on one shoulder, and hit the ground hard, to intimidate it. That didn't work. I yelled, stomped my foot, and it barely looked up. It wandered within 4 or 5 feet of my feet, sniffing around, looking for food, and finally wandered off.
Another time, spending another night in that same graveyard, I woke to hear the weirdest animal sound I've ever heard. I grew up watching Wild Kingdom and lots of other wildlife TV shows, I've heard a lot of animal noises. It sounded like a cross between a mid-sized dog, and a weird bird call, kind of like a crow's caw. I had no freakin' idea what was making the sound, but it was wandering around the woods 100 feet away. All I could think of were the compy's, the little dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park movie that ate the fat guy. Not a positive thought in those circumstances. In the very first light of day, I saw the animal trot by, it was a fox, making a weird little bark I'd never heard before.
I woke one night to the sound of a car door opening in early 2008. I was sleeping, sitting up, in a large bus stop here in Orange County. I saw a figure of a man, walking through the shadows, from one section of the bus stop or another. He had a gun in his hand in front of him. As he got closer, I realized it was a cop, a young cop, and the gun was actually his taser. He walked up to my area, where I sat with my sleeping bag wrapped around me. He turned towards me, 8 feet away, taser pointed at my chest, "How long have you been here?" he screamed. I didn't know what time it was, but I told him I came in on a bus about 10 pm. His hand with the taser trembled as it pointed at my sleeping bag wrapped chest. I thought the voltage would probably blow my heart up if he shot, I was over 365 pounds at the time, the most out of shape I've ever been. After maybe 20 or 30 seconds, he decided I wasn't a threat, walked off, and continued his search.
One night working as a taxi driver, somewhere around 2006 or 2007, I was sleeping in my taxi, in a shopping center parking lot. I worked yet another 17-18 hour day, and was barely able to keep my eyes open as I dropped off my last passenger in Anaheim. I slept in my cab six nights a week, and got a cheap motel room the 7th. I slept 4 or 5 hours in my cab in a parking lot, a different one every night, and then headed to the Huntington Beach Hyatt, and tried to get 2 to 3 more hours of sleep in the taxi line in front of the hotel each morning. I headed down Brookhurst boulevard, towards the ocean, literally doing head nods, and making a couple of sketchy swerves. It wasn't safe to sleep in that area, so I pushed my luck to get back to a parking lot in Huntington Beach that I slept in some nights. Tired as hell, I made it, parked my taxi in the middle of the parking lot, a distance away from some other cars with people sleeping in them. That particular parking lot was kind of an informal campground for homeless people with cars and vans then. I leaned my seat back , pulled my hoodie over my chest as a blanket, and I was out.
I jumped awake to the sound of something really hard bashing against my driver's side window. It was a police officer's billy club. Someone had me seen me swerving, apparently, and called the cops. I hadn't been asleep 20 minutes when the club on the window scared the crap out of me. The officer questioned me, and gave me the "follow the penlight with my eyes" sobriety test. It was all I could do to even keep my eyes open. He finally decided I was just really tired, and not drunk. He told me he was coming back in 15 or 20 minutes, and I better still be there asleep. He left, and I was probably back to sleep before his car left the parking lot. If he came back, he didn't wake me, and I slept there until early morning.
I was at the big bus stop another time, in the spring of 2008. I was sitting on the end of the bus stop, a section not used by buses at the time. About 30 feet in front of me, a small hill sloped down from left to right. Just as I was about to doze off, to sleep another night, sitting up in the bus bench seats, I saw a cat wander down the hill in front of me. A BIG cat. Another homeless guy there said he'd seen mountain lions wandering around the bus stop at night, at times. But he had red hair and once claimed to be a Lakota Sioux chief, he lied more than he told the truth. So I figured it was just another of his tall tales. I jumped up and followed the big cat, about the size of a Labrador retriever, down the hill along a small ditch next to a road. I finally saw the cat stop in a little hole in the bushes. It was dark out, but there was light from nearby buildings, and I could see it pretty well. I was 25 or 30 feet form it. The tan cat probably weighed 35 to 40 pounds. It was a young mountain lion, alright. It was shivering, more afraid of me than I was of it. Then I suddenly realized that if there was a young mountain lion, there was very likely a momma lion somewhere around. Then I got scared. I clapped my hands real loud, and the mountain lion took of running across the street, and around the corner of a building. I saw it again, about two weeks later, while walking the other way up that same stretch of road. It was wandering around the same area where I slept in a chair, covered only by a sleeping bag, every night.
These are just a few of the weird things I've seen, or had to deal with at night, in the years I've spent homeless. There are many other animals, people, and weird situations I've had to deal with, just like every other homeless person wandering out country and world.
There are a lot of things I want to do in my life from here on out... IF I live through the nights leading up to those days. We'll see what happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment