The title of this section I took from a jest overheard when I stayed in the men’s shelter run by the Salvation Army. Basically it was that all of us who had backpacks weren’t really homeless we were just on vacation and had gone camping - forever. Because I tend to be hopeful and have had some small measure of success I have been tempted to rename it MAKING LEMONADE after the old line “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade” of course this presumes you have access to water, sugar and a jug. On those days when it all seems so overwhelming the alternate subtitle could be SLIDING DOWN THE RAZOR BLADE OF LIFE.
    I prefer to concentrate on the positive but the negative can be a great encouragement to avoid it. If it doesn’t overwhelm you first, that is! And there is so much more to being homeless than most people know. To me the greatest emotional obstacle was the extreme isolation I experienced. I was disowned; I was the man without a country. I know it sounds judgmental to tell about how few treated me as a fellow human being, but please understand this is more than an emotional issue. Homeless persons are cut off from the rest of their society. We don’t have the economic wherewithal to do or go as we wish, we can’t keep up with the latest trivia society finds so important. Beyond the sociological or political issues involved for me it is all so very personal! The minutes I was able to put aside or forget that I was homeless were few and far between. While I can plainly see some homeless people can be intimidating, hell some of us are down right scary the truth is anyone homeless is more vulnerable and at risk than the rest of their community. I was robbed on a couple of occasions and jumped on for no reason other than that they could get away with it.
    All groups have their saints and sinners; interestingly often it is the same individual. In solitude one can learn to flourish and grow but isolation withers the soul. And part of solving it all isn’t just in “you”, “we (we homeless/me) have to learn how to reach out to all of “you”. This site is part of an attempt to do just that.
    I’m not going to go deeply into the events behind my bout of homelessness. Much too much of it is someone else’s story and I won’t violate that. The short of it has deal with friend betraying friend to “protect” a boyfriend. In the end someone had to pay a price I guess and I was as good as anyone. Doesn’t matter that the boy’s family got his backside out of town nor that they hit the wrong target, this is just the way things go sometimes. In the end everybody lost, an odd justice to be sure but maybe better than none. There were to many on all sides looking for revenge for it to come out well.
    I wouldn’t read between the lines too much there. Reading between the lines has always struck me as being a lot like staying in the middle of the road - You get run down by traffic going in both directions and people make U-turns on you.
    So there I was Mayday morning in 1999 out on the street with $100 in my shirt pocket and wondering where to turn. I felt I had nowhere to go but up, or off a cliff!
    Absolutely nowhere and absolutely everywhere…
    The day before I had parked my car on the side of the driveway. I was told I could leave it there. In part I was tempted to just get in and drive away; after all I had maybe five gallons of gas so I could go a hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred before it ran out of gas. With a hundred bucks I could get pretty far before I had to abandon it or find someone to buy it. Actually it needed a bit of bodywork and more so I couldn’t get much. Then again, where would I go?
    In the end that day I decided with no destination in particular then here was as good as anyplace, or as bad. I wasn’t sure it mattered, still not very sure to be truthful. I don’t remember that day clearly any more. I wandered a bit. Hell, I wandered for hours. Thing about having no place to go is it can take a heck of a lot of time to get there!
    I’d had two weeks to prepare for this, if one can. What it now meant was that I didn’t have to limit my looking for work to between taking kids to school and picking them up and getting supper ready. In one way I was free, in another I would miss all that. But I was very much out of a place where I didn’t want to be anymore. I would miss them, which might seem a contradiction but emotions are often contradictory.
    Somewhere along the line I came up against a wall built to stop road noise from bothering the people in a housing tract. I slept there that night. I have a vague memory of being in the library and wandering shopping malls but I’m not clear on that anymore.
    I do remember waking before dawn and getting a cup of coffee at a Seven-Eleven store. I took it to a park and drank it, watching the sunrise on my new life and crying.
    I was going to spend a lot of that May crying, almost without control. I was shook, untethered and unsure. Grief filled that May in my heart. To a great degree I was useless that month, I was either lost or crying. I have been told I suffer from post-traumatic shock syndrome. I rejected that because I thought one had to experience war first hand or a sever experience. I had no idea what a mess I was inside.
    I was sleeping rough those first nights and not that well. I was having a nightmare I describe in another section of this site. I wasn’t getting much sleep, which contributed to my confusion and feelings of despair.  I found many people who said they were my friends and angered by my family having disowned me were coming to avoid me - the old not answering the door pretending not to be home gag.
    All were people who had told me that because of the help I had given them that all I had to do was ask and they would be there for me. I made the mistake of believing them; I’d asked if they knew of any job openings or if they could use anyone. Well I was finding out I was losing false friends faster than anything. Now I find some comfort in it, but then it was just more rough going! They also were ones who knew all the circumstances involved. But now I was “homeless” which put me in a category of untouchables.
    People can be so nice…
    Now I know a lot of people go through similar experiences when they become homeless. Back then I was a basket case. When I wasn’t trying to be small in some hidey-hole or just quiet in a corner I was crying alone in the night. I did get out to look for work but it was increasingly frustrating. Most weren’t hiring or just getting new names on their list in case they ever did hire.
    I was using my car to store some things. I’d put a couple of changes of clothing and clean socks and underwear in a box I kept in he back along with my blanket and a pillow. Each morning real early I would come and get a change and put my pillow and blanket there for safe keeping. Mainly I was sleeping under an overpass. This was unsafe for many reasons but mainly though we were out of sight (I found several people there already!) the final problem came when the police kicked a woman around a bit and everyone moved on. No one was interested in being maybe shot or something by “accident”. Paranoia runs deep here but with good reason.
    In the end I started sleeping on the back seat of my car. I started doing this the day I was coming back from a day of job interviews in Riverside. I was walking to the bus stop when a police car pulled over and the officer ordered me against the wall. I figured something must have happened in the area and they were stopping men alone and on foot. I was wrong. I was searched and then chocked, he’d found the forty dollars I had on me and took it. I was being robbed by one of our local cops. Thankfully, I had the rest of the money hidden in the car. If I’d been smart I would have had much less on me! I also found that reporting this to the town police only got me thrown out of the station. They didn’t want to hear anything!
    Next time I have trouble I’ll call a hippie. At least I’ll get some sympathy. “Wow, man, what a bummer!” yeah. I can hear it now. Would have been an improvement! Not all cops are heroes unfortunately.
    Somewhere along the line I tried to get food stamps and see what training programs I could get into. What an absolute farce that was! Everyone kept telling me how the state would get me an apartment and put me in a program and do all these wonderful things. These same people also complain about how  people on welfare go to Cancun on vacation and have houses and new cars and all that folderol. The truth is somewhat less spectacular. I spent a couple of hours filling out this massive booklet they gave me. When I gave it to them it was returned I had missed filling out a few things. Within the first two pages I had stated and marked that I was a single male, spoke English only and had no minor children. So foolish me assumed I didn’t have to fill out the section where I was requesting a translator for Spanish, Korean or a couple of other languages. Then again considering this was in English and if I only read/spoke Korean how the hell would I know what it said on the page?  But having to fill out the section saying I didn’t want a physician to help me breast-feed my infant child? Hello, I said MALE with no minor children!!!! I love how bureaucracies can attend to the letter of the law while raping the spirit of it! Now there was a line about waiting a month for “review” that said in emergencies they can temporarily advance you some food stamps. I was turned down on everything within five minutes of handing in my paperwork. Appears there are no programs and men don’t get welfare or anything unless on disability. And they couldn’t give me any emergency food stamps, as the little money I had was way over the limit of what was allowed. They would review my application and give a final decision. I figured I’d already heard the final decision. Personally, I now find myself sympathetic towards anyone on welfare cause if I was turned down then they must be in no end of woe! Also I have come to think of welfare “cheats” as people simply doing what they must to survive. In the end I went back and through this about five times because I was told you have to keep going back, that they always turn everyone down a few times. You have to be persistent or they think you don’t need help. (Thing is I get the same lousy advice about jobs - you gotta keep annoying them to get hired! It hasn’t worked yet for me.) I’ll skip ahead over a month or more to tell you the outcome. I finally got a letter explaining I’d been turned down and why. Seems my birth certificate and California driver’s license and Social Security Card weren’t enough proof of identity (!) and also I couldn’t prove I was a resident in the county (?). Hello, I said I was HOMELESS you stupid gits! No, all right, you caught me! I’m from Washington State and I only come down here for the cheese and the welfare check!
    Idiots! Where the hell are those crazed Philippine terrorists with machetes when you can really need one! I love being told “we don’t think you live at the address we are mailing to. ”. Is it just I or is the system stupid???
    Anyway the caseworker gave me several Xeroxed pages supposedly of local aid groups for the homeless. I say “supposedly” because the information was wildly inaccurate and out of date. One shelter listed had burned to the ground two, maybe three years back. The neighbor wasn’t sure. We shared a beer looking at the hole that had been a basement.
    I was asking around town about food pantries such. I don’t know why I was surprised to find I was lied to but that is for later in this site. I’ve come to expect it from people with some small amount of authority.
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