The Girl's Guide to Homelessness (10 page)

I feel very strongly that the impetus behind such financial “curiosity” is purely for the purposes of judgment, and thus the motives behind such queries are impure ones. If it's none of your business when a person is housed, then it's
still
none of your business when she's not. Unless a homeless person volunteers financial information of her own accord, I won't ask her about it. Again, with the occasional exception of adventurous or experimental types taking a conscious leap off the grid, almost nobody chooses to be homeless. Whenever I meet a homeless person, I assume that if she were financially or mentally capable of affording and maintaining a home, then she would be in one, regardless of any “luxury” items I see in her possession. It's that clear-cut for me.

Sustainability is the key to any lifestyle. Sure, I could sell my phone and my laptop for the price of a few hamburgers. But, then, the hamburgers would soon be gone, and so would my phone and laptop. I would have absolutely no phone, so an employer could contact me. And without a laptop, I would only be able to search and apply for work
online during the hours that the public library was open. I wasn't always homeless, of course, and neither were most of the homeless people out there, whether they're the more visible ones you see in the doorway of a 7-Eleven begging for spare change or they're able to blend in a bit better, as I do. To me, it's the most basic thing in the world to use your resources wisely when you become homeless. In today's society, a phone and internet access are no longer “luxury” items. They're practically necessities. These are tools that by themselves aren't worth enough to get you a deposit on an apartment (and even if they were, they certainly wouldn't continue to pay rent for you ad infinitum), but they
do
hold out the potential in the long term for getting you a job. Why on earth should anyone be dumb enough to give up such an important resource for a couple of meals? As for true “luxury” items, I challenge the notion that homeless individuals “do not deserve” to own anything that may bring a small amount of happiness and pleasure into their lives, which are generally otherwise uncertain and bleak.

The other thing that irked so many people about the Michelle Obama/soup kitchen/cell phone fiasco was that the
Los Angeles Times
writer simply
assumed
that the man in the photograph was homeless. He could have been anyone. He could have been homeless, sure. He could also have been another soup kitchen volunteer. He could have been a random citizen wandering past, who said, “Oh, crap! That's Michelle Obama! I'm gonna get a picture of her!” But too many people saw the photo of a black man in sweats and a ski cap, snapping a picture with a BlackBerry, and the assumption was made. That's the way dangerous stereotypes work. And the next thing you know, an article comes out in the
Los Angeles Times,
demanding to know
how, if a homeless man is too poor to buy himself food, he can afford to own a cell phone. Many commentators on the article even insinuated that such a nice phone
must
have been stolen. Because, after all, homeless people are all criminals, right?

The article made me want to scream. If indeed the man
was
homeless, then what exactly was he supposed to do—sell off any and all useful possessions upon losing his home, so that he could fit into an ignorant journalist's definition of poverty? Would readers feel more comfortable believing he was a “real” homeless person if he was sans phone and dirtier, hungrier, perhaps mumbling to himself or pushing a shopping cart full of random odds and ends down the street? Did any of these readers consider that there are several state and federal programs that hand out cell phones with free plans to homeless people, so that they are able to look for work and call 911 in case of an emergency, since living on the streets is dangerous?

Nope. Very few people who have never been homeless consider the importance of hoarding available resources, or the thought and planning that goes into using them to maximum effect. Resources are the absolute most important thing when you're homeless. You learn to make the most of
everything
you have. I was lucky; I had retained more assets than many—a vehicle, a trailer, a laptop, a phone, a little bit of money, a decent résumé. Many homeless people have one or more of these things. Many have none. The only resource that
all
of us have is ourselves.

My body and my mind were and are my most important assets. As long as I was alive and healthy and physically/mentally capable of coming up with a plan and executing it, I knew I'd be OK. I didn't need to utilize resources that could and should be allocated to homeless people in
more dire circumstances than me—perhaps people struggling with mental illness, drug addiction or some other challenges. State and federal programs can be limited, as it is, in who they're able to provide for. I'd rather people without the advantages that I had get first crack at those. The only benefit I accepted or even applied for was unemployment, during the periods when I was looking for work. After all, I had spent over a decade paying into the system, so that was only right and fair.

 

I occasionally saw the other homeless people in the lot during the daytime, as I would leave to take Fezzik out for a walk or head to Starbucks. I tried to enter and exit the trailer mainly early in the morning, before Walmart customers began to show up, or late in the evening, after 10:00 p.m., when the store closed. We didn't interact that much, but we were all well aware of one another, and would occasionally exchange little nods of mutual acknowledgment. One day, I ran into a group of them conversing in the parking lot, and chatted with them for a few minutes. One of them was Pete, who owned the trailer next to mine. He'd been here the longest; homeless for a year and on the lot for a few months, and was the self-proclaimed “mayor of the Walmart parking lot.” He used to be a limo driver, owned seven neatly pressed tuxedos and was regarded with deference and respect by the others. There was also a former doctor, who spoke four languages, living out of another trailer, who was considering taking a job in India teaching English as a second language—free accommodations and a decent salary. Then there was another man living with his wife out of their car—they had owned two homes before the recession had forced them into the parking lot. At any given time, the
lot had between eight and twelve permanent residents, in addition to those passing through who would only stay for a night or two before moving on, or those who would rotate between three or four different parking lots—either for a change of scenery or because they were afraid of wearing out their welcome.

I was as under the radar as they come: My dog was quiet and I found a small chain gym in Anaheim, called Planet Fitness, that charged only $10 a month for a membership. I became known there as the girl who would show up every three to four days, around 7:00 a.m., take a shower and leave. Planet Fitness was eight miles away from the Walmart, which was an incredible waste of fuel just to bathe, so I had to make each shower count.

 

There are times when a general air of innocence and naïveté can serve you well. One of them, I discovered, is when dealing with the police—try to remain calm and sound appreciative, even if you're not.

I blended in well enough that I only occasionally came to the attention of police officers. This usually occurred when Starbucks would close, and I would continue to loaf in the Starbucks parking lot in my car, catching the wireless signal for another hour or two until my laptop battery died and I had to wrap the extension cord around it and head back to the trailer for the night.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I would roll the window down, placing my hands on the windowsill and putting on the most innocent, bland face I could muster, peering up through my lashes with wide, doelike eyes. A baby couldn't have had a more angelic face.

“Good evening, officer! Can I help you?”

I have to admit, I was pretty good. I was never ticketed, and was clearly charming enough, because they would generally give me goofy grins and speak to me in patronizing
What're-you-doing-out-here-alone-at-midnight-little-lady?
tones.

I avoided the word
homeless
. I was aware of the sort of response the word triggered in law enforcement, though of course it was pretty obvious what must have been going on—I had a back seat piled high with emergency changes of clothing, after all.

“I'm sorry, officer, my
[boyfriend/mother/father/roommate]
and I had a little tiff, and I didn't have anywhere to go tonight. I'm going to be calling my sister in the morning and going to stay with her. She's out of town until tomorrow, though, so I just picked a parking lot. I apologize if I shouldn't be here; I didn't realize!
[shocked expression]
I'll be on my way, if it's not all right for me to stay here…”

I would trail off, and the cop would invariably smile at the poor, confused little girl, her eyes verging on tears (I completely lack the ability to cry on cue, but I
can
throw a little waver into my voice that would make any man swear that my dry eyes are red and brimming with tears), and hastily assure me that he understood—we'd just keep it between us, and I could go ahead and park here for the night. I would shake his hand gratefully and firmly (none of that dead-fish grip here!), and thank him profusely for his kindness.

This patter, of course, likely wouldn't have worked if I'd been a man (or, I'm sad to say, an ineloquent woman). If I'd been a man, I'd probably have been asked to move on, or worse. Orange County, in particular, is overwhelmingly conservative, white suburbia—keen on appearances and hasty to drive out all appearances of homelessness. That's
what LA is for, they figure. To be homeless in Orange County, you have to not be seen.

I did get the impression from the police I encountered, that they were trying in their way to take the recession into account, to go easier on the rapidly rising number of homeless people. I don't believe that most of them would be intentionally cruel to a homeless person. More that it was just an unfortunate, inevitable side effect of asking them to move on. Did it sadden me that perhaps a man, or someone sleeping on a park bench, or someone who was mentally ill would be treated worse than me in a police encounter? Absolutely. It's horrific, when you think about it. The more “visible” homeless individuals out there needed compassion far more than I did. They were the ones who really needed the cops to be flexible on the rules, to leave them in peace to sleep or at least to point them in the direction of a shelter or a program that could help them.

Still, that didn't stop me from taking advantage of the natural, built-in benefits of femininity. My gender is viewed as a hindrance in many other life situations—may always be. It was about damn time it came in handy for something, and I intended to make full use of it.

 

Job hunting was another pain in the ass. Nobody was hiring, or even bothering to call back. So many people were out of work that every job posting must have prompted hundreds or even thousands of résumés in response—an inbox-shattering wall of cover letters, a jumble of the qualified, the unqualified, the overqualified and the utterly hopeless. Everyone was desperate and willing to apply for
any
open position, however slim the chances were. I'd be lucky if a hiring manager ever even opened my email, much
less read my résumé. The interviews that I
did
get were uncommonly dismal.

“What do you think about this recession we're going through?” asked a large, puffy interviewer behind the desk at a stainless-steel bathroom accessory factory. He stared at me in my business suit, freshly showered and primped at the gym, looking just like any other job applicant. He looked at me with saggy eyes behind round, dinner-plate, owl glasses.

I told him the truth—that it made me sad to see everyone having such a tough time, struggling, losing their homes, wondering where their next meal would come from. I said that I hoped the economy would right itself quickly and that things would be back on the up-and-up soon.

“No!” he slammed his hands on his desk dramatically and leaned over, into my personal space. “This economy is
excellent
for us, and do you know why?”

I wasn't sure how he wanted me to respond. I was having a hard time thinking of anything positive to say about the recession. I kept my mouth shut and raised my eyebrows, smiling slightly at him as though he'd asked a rhetorical question.

“It's because,” he crowed, “now we, as a company, have our pick of the litter. We can hire people like you for dirt cheap. You've got great experience and credentials!” He waved my résumé in the air. “If everyone's out of work and desperate for a job, we can choose who we want. The best of the best. I couldn't do that a year ago. Somebody like you would never have come in to interview at a place like this.”

I couldn't quite believe this conversation. It stunned me that anybody would be so tactless and rude as to say such
a thing in a job interview, much less rub a potential hire's face in it, even if his company
were
profiting from the recession. Not only did it show a lack of professionalism, but it reflected utter crudeness of the lowest sort. He made me sick. I resisted the urge to grab a flabby cheek in each hand and bang his head on his mahogany desk.

Then he offered me the job, at a wage lower than entry-level. Lower than even unemployment. Bare minimum wage. I politely declined, when what I really wanted to tell him was to get stuffed. I'm a damn hard worker, but I'm nobody's slave.

B
etween job searching, I was updating the blog with random musings I was still positive nobody would ever read. Brandon, who called to check up on me every now and again, suggested that I start a Twitter account. I had vaguely heard of this Twitter crap, and thought it was ridiculous. Microblogging? One hundred forty characters? Why? What was the point? I simply didn't get it.

“No, really, Bri. It's, like, the wave of the future for self-promotion and advertising. You can make all sorts of connections on Twitter!” Brandon had a Twitter account himself, with about nine followers. I thought he was completely full of it. Still, I did it, to make him happy. “The Girl's Guide to Homelessness” wouldn't fit within the username limit, so I became “tGGtH.” Feeling like an idiot, I punched a single tweet out into the internet ether:

It was March 2, 2009. My twenty-fourth birthday was four days away. I had no way of knowing how much that
single tweet would rock my entire world to its foundation. I had no way of knowing the chain series of events it would set in motion, changing my life—and me—forever.

All I knew was that within an hour, I had my first follower, @w0lfh0und, from across the Atlantic. His name was Matt Barnes, and he was formerly a homeless activist from England. After spending several months homeless, he had recently been placed in a government-subsidized flat in Scotland, and ran a website called HomelessTales.com, a forum where homeless and formerly homeless writers could publish articles about their experiences, as well as engage in commenting and constructive debate. More than that, it was a place to come together, propose solutions, create friendships and form a support network.

Matt monitored keywords on Twitter. Any time the word
homeless
or
homelessness
was tweeted, his Google Reader picked up on it. He was sifting through that day, at the exact same moment I grumpily sent out my first tweet, and amid the myriad daily offerings of “If a turtle has no shell, is it homeless?” and “Oh my god, I just saw a homeless guy with a cell phone! How is that possible?!” he saw my tweet. After reading the few blog entries I had already posted, he began following me, and I gratefully returned the favor, feeling slightly less dumb now that I had my first Twitter pal.

“I read your work, and I really enjoyed it. I'd like to have you do a guest post or two on my site, if you're willing, one of these days,” he wrote.

It was something to do, in between looking for work, and if he thought it could do anybody any good, I was happy to oblige. His site looked pretty great, too. I respected the concept of the work he was doing. The single
photo of him on his profile page was a bit shadowy, but I saw that he was kind of cute, in a sad-eyed, resigned sort of way.

 

Matt and I exchanged email addresses so that we could correspond without the inconvenience of a 140-character limit. Although I eventually told him my real name, once we'd emailed enough to the point where I trusted him, he set up an anonymous bio for me at HomelessTales.com. He would soon publish my first piece for the site—an essay about bad choices versus just plain rotten luck when you're homeless. It was mainly about how nobody is impervious to homelessness, how you don't know a person's backstory by looking at her or why she became homeless and the importance of withholding judgment as to which homeless people are “deserving” of help and which aren't, including those who use drugs or may have made poor life choices previously.

 

The piece was far from Shakespeare. It was plenty flawed, and perhaps more than a little naïve in parts. But I felt there was much truth in it. And I did seem to make something of a splash among the more established authors on the site, who debated my ideas more fiercely than I'd expected. Some agreed with certain points I'd made; to others I was an inexperienced girl born with a silver spoon in my mouth, merely playing at homelessness. I hadn't yet paid my dues. I knew
nothing
about the seamier side of things.

I think what they hadn't expected was that I would agree with them. “You're right. I
am
new at it. I have
no
idea
what
I'm doing. I'm figuring it out as I go along, and I
do
have a lot of assets and advantages that many homeless
people don't have. But, then, isn't that the point? We all have different pasts, but for whatever reason, we're all homeless. There are as many perspectives on homelessness as there are people who are homeless. Mine is just another viewpoint on it, reflecting a particular set of circumstances. I'm here to make friends, learn from you and your stories, and contribute however I can.”

I meant it, too. I think my earnestness disarmed them. I figured out pretty quickly that I could hold my own there, and even befriended the ones who had been the most suspicious of me at the start.

Matt, I noticed, was normally very reserved and restrained when commenting on discussions and debates. He clearly considered himself a moderator first, and strove to remain as neutral and above the fray as possible. He always considered his words carefully and refrained from betraying emotion on his site. It wasn't lost on me, then, that he was rather quick to jump to my defense when I was criticized. Occasionally I would consider for about a second and a half that he might be interested in me. But then I would laugh it off. It was a stupid premise. Clearly, he was just being kind and protective of the youngest writer on the site, the baby who couldn't defend herself. It was sweet.

 

I'm still not quite sure how it started. Soon we were exchanging three to four emails a day, and suddenly, I was yearning for the next morsel of correspondence. If I only received three in a day from him, rather than four, I was disappointed. We connected over shared loves of architecture, literature, film…and also over our mutual traumas. I opened up bit by bit about my past, and so did he. He marveled at it.

“American girls aren't supposed to be like you. You're all supposed to be airheads over there. You're not supposed to be interested in any of this stuff.” I would laugh, and tease him about his misconceptions.

He was thirty-six years old and divorced. He and his wife, Victoria, had been together for five years, and married for less than two, when he came home early from work one day, on the second anniversary of his proposing to her in Prague, and she announced that she wanted a divorce. It wasn't him, it was her. He hadn't done anything wrong, but she just felt as if she had married too young and had missed out on too many life experiences, so she'd like to get off the ride now, please. It was, he said, completely out of the blue and had set off the chain of events that made him homeless. She had moved out immediately, but sentimentally refused to consent to sell their house. He couldn't afford to continue paying the mortgage on a single salary, and the bank soon started foreclosure proceedings.

He had fought to save the marriage, he said, but she refused to be moved. He didn't handle the separation well at all. He would have breakdowns or sometimes even tantrums at work. His company soon put him on an extended leave of absence until he could pull himself together. He was diagnosed by a doctor with abnormally low serotonin levels, he explained to me, which not only wreaked havoc on his sleep schedule, but caused him to behave irrationally (basically, my trusty Google explained to me, it causes bipolar disorder symptoms), explaining the uncontrollable outbursts at work. The doctor put him on medication that gradually worked to even out the serotonin levels, but it would take a month before he was stabilized.

Out of his mind with grief and illness, Matt gave away almost all of his possessions to charity the week before
the bank was set to evict him from his home. He packed a suitcase with an old laptop and a few other belongings, and walked out the door. For several months, he slept in the woods on some nights, in hostels on others.

A girl named Lori, whom he had met in the months between the breakup of his marriage and his becoming homeless, and who had a major crush on him, contacted him out of the blue to see how he was doing, and he explained some of the particulars of his situation. She was moving back to Peterhead, Scotland with her stepfather and offered for him to stay with them. He had nowhere to go, and he accepted. He stayed there for three weeks or so, and even halfheartedly began a romance with her, which she had hoped for all along. Still, he explained, he just wasn't happy with her. He couldn't bring himself to love her. She was incredibly dull and he couldn't hold any kind of a serious conversation with her. It was like being in a relationship with a ten-year-old, he said. The house was also in a condemnable state, and he didn't like her stepfather. After the three weeks were up, he told Lori he was sorry, but he just couldn't see a future with her, and he felt that he needed to move on. He moved into temporary hostel accommodations before the local council offered him permanent housing in the small rural village of Huntly, fifty miles away. He accepted, and had been there for a month or two when we met.

 

March 6, my twenty-fourth birthday, I spent the day with Brandon at Disneyland—it was local and they had a “get in free on your birthday” program, which I intended to take full advantage of. Standing in line at the entry, I checked my email on my phone. Matt had emailed me a Happy Birthday wish, and a jpeg of a morning glory—my
favorite flower. He signed it “Matt xx.” I spent the rest of the day on Splash Mountain and Space Mountain and the Matterhorn and Indiana Jones, trying to figure out what he meant by those two
x
s. It was the first time I'd allowed myself to seriously consider that, despite the secret schoolgirl crush I harbored on him, perhaps he might be interested in me as more than a contributor on his site. I was petrified. I was also too much of a wimp to ask him straight out. So I did what any wimp would do—continued our email correspondence as before, without referencing those two enigmatic electronic kisses.

 

Many people have questioned my responsibility and/or sanity for keeping an animal while homeless, especially a giant dog like Fezzik. There were several reasons, though, that I wanted to at least try to keep Fezzik. First of all, I had a source of income. I was on extended unemployment for at least eight months, or until I found work, so I was, thus far, fully able to pay for my dog's food, treats, toys and even vet bills, should the need arise. Second, I had shelter. Living out of a thirty-foot trailer is a luxury that many homeless people do not have. I did not keep Fezzik cramped up in a car, or on the side of the road on a leash. He had a crate as his den and a nice wide trailer to stretch his legs in. Third, the Brea Walmart is within walking distance of a tri-city park, a large, green expanse with a lake, where Fez and I would go walking every day. There were eight acres of trees and grass for him to sniff, ducks for him to look at and nice fishermen and children to pat his head.

“What a big, beautiful boy!” they exclaimed, and I beamed with pride.

I always knew, though, that were my situation ever to
deteriorate and become more dire, I would contact the rescue from which I adopted Fezzik and make arrangements to return him. I love my dog. He is a source of companionship and comfort, and he is
definitely
a means of protection for a woman in a vulnerable state (people give me a wide berth on the sidewalk—you don't want to mess with a dog that looks like Fez). But when it came down to it, I realized that I should and would send him back in a heartbeat if I couldn't provide for his needs. So far, he had not had to endure a single day without food, water, exercise and love. I hoped that would always be the case.

The topic of homeless people and their pets is such a hot-button one that Matt asked me to write a column at HomelessTales.com about it. It was another controversial column and inspired a lot of discussion, which was what Matt had intended. For all my confidence, however, I knew that summer was rapidly approaching, and that in the deadly California heat, there would be no way I could continue leaving Fezzik alone in the trailer, especially all day while I worked. He would broil to death. I had a short reprieve, but I needed to get a job and get out of that parking lot fast, or else find somewhere else for my dog.

 

Around this time, I came home one night to a notice taped to the window of my trailer threatening to “evict” me:

It turned out that a newer moron on the lot did some really stupid things, such as running his noisy generator around 1:00 a.m., littering all around his trailer and un-hooking his trailer from his vehicle and leaving it in the
parking lot while driving around in his truck, thereby technically “abandoning” a vehicle. Not only did he do all this, but he did it while Walmart corporate executives were visiting the store, and they took notice.

Five or six RVs fled that night in search of greener pastures, with no idea where to go. A few other trailer dwellers and I stuck around, and two of us (myself and Pete, the “mayor” of the Walmart parking lot, who had lived there for four months and counting) went into Walmart in the morning to speak to the manager. I showered and put on a business suit before going in. Pete wore one of his limousine driver tuxedos, which I thought was a tad over the top, but he definitely didn't “look” stereotypically homeless, that's for sure.

The manager was the same woman I had spoken to over the phone in the first place, and she was nice enough. “Oh, wow. You don't
look
homeless.”