Learning to be again

Moving out of the shelter for the first time in three months was a bit of a daunting proposition. In a way, it was something like being released from prison: I had re-learn how to socialize with people who weren’t homeless. Despite not wanting to acclimate to the homeless life, I’d realized early on that there were a series of unspoken rules that I’d have to learn if I expected to make it out the other side unscathed. And now, preparing to move out, I knew I’d have to unlearn all the things the shelter had taught me.

Among other things, I’d have to learn how to tell stories again. I’ve always considered myself to be part of the grand Southern tradition of story-telling, and it hamstrung me a little to tell stories to my new work friends. I still hadn’t “come out” (as homeless) to most of them, so any funny story I told had to be censored to prevent revealing too much. Additionally, any question about my residential circumstances was met with creative truthiness.

Coworker:  So how many roommates do you have?

Me: Oh, there’s a bunch of us (technically true).

I got my first lesson in re-socializing the night of a coworker’s 21st birthday. Ally was a gentle, sensitive spirit, with frequently-changing hair color and an infectious laugh. Despite being a bit flighty, she was one of my favorite work buddies, and I was looking forward to having the chance to celebrate her birthday with her. This was a month after I’d moved out of the shelter, and I’d settled into something of a routine in regards to work/home. But socializing was still new to me.  Going out was something I was still apprehensive about doing again. I trusted myself with the alcohol and late hours, but I’d become accustomed to being alone, and was worried I’d forgotten how to interact with others.

The night of Ally’s birthday we met up at Upper Level, a bar-slash-arcade popular with the hipster set. I wasn’t exactly a hipster, but video games and beer seemed like a great way to spend an evening, and Upper Level had already become one of my favorite places to hang out. For an hour we played video games, and her boyfriend and I took turns buying the birthday girl shots. As the laughs and fun progressed, I could feel my anxiety dissipating. It wasn’t until we went outside to smoke that things took a turn. We were outside having a grand time when a homeless guy wandered past. As he passed our group, he and I made eye contact and we recognized each other. Our acquaintanceship had been cordial enough, so I spoke to him. As he passed closer, he extended his hand in a fist bump, a common greeting in the shelter. Seeing us interact, the group waited until he’d passed, then the jokes began to fly.

“He really likes you, Trey. I wonder if he’s saving room for you in his cardboard box behind the Quickee Mart…”

“Nah, he was only flirting with Trey because Trey’s the only other Black guy on the sidewalk. More likely to get money from him than us…”

“Aww yeah. Homeless romance. The good news is you don’t have to worry about him blowing up your phone because he doesn’t have one. The bad news is if you invite him over, he’ll never want to leave…”

Finally Ally asked me how I knew him. Between the alcohol, and my burning anger, the truth came tumbling out.

“When I lived at the homeless shelter, he was always nice to me.” Instantly the group got quiet. A couple of them seemed to be waiting for a punchline, but when I took a drag on my cigarette and remained silent, they realized their mistake. Someone murmured, “Sorry dude. Didn’t know.” But no one had the courage to really speak up. I can’t say I’d have done any differently were I in their shoes.

Needless to say, that rather killed the mood of the group. One by one, they drifted off until it was just Ally and me. We leaned against the building across the street from the underground club we’d stumbled out of. The night air felt cool on my forehead as we smoked cigarettes and tried to avoid talking about the obvious topic of both our thoughts. Finally she turned to me and spoke, “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I didn’t want anyone to think of me as ‘The Homeless Guy.’”

“You know I wouldn’t have thought of you that way…” she replied.

“I know, but it was still hard to admit that I’d let my life get that far out of control.”

It was the first time I’d admitted to anyone (including myself) that was the truth behind my reticence to share my ordeal. As my life had spiraled further and further out of control, it became increasingly harder for me to reach out to anyone. Finally, I felt so alone that it seemed pointless to even try connecting with others.

My friendship with Ally meant the world to me. She was just the kind of gentle spirit I needed in my life. She was so young that she was experiencing for the first time things that I was learning to do again: manage time, balancing work and social life, etc. In a way, it was like we were learning how to “adult” together.

Inching my way out of the shelter

Meeting Mr. Brooks was the turning point on my journey out of homelessness. Shortly after being assigned a case manager with Volunteers of America, I was moved from the dorm I’d been staying in. I’d been in B dorm most of the time in the shelter, but after a brief meeting with my Veterans’ Group leader, John, I was moved to E dorm. E dorm was the homeless shelter equivalent of the “good neighborhood.” Whereas B dorm was a large bay-style dorm with no real privacy, E dorm’s major selling point was the modicum of privacy provided by the high cement partitions separating the bunks into pairs. In addition to the privacy, E dorm boasted outlets between each pair of bunks, meaning I only had to share the outlet next to my bed with one other man. Each pair of bunks was further separated by a pair of wooden dressers. With one dresser facing each bed, there was the pretense of having one’s own “room.” It wasn’t much, but after having spent two months sharing space with a few dozen other men, it felt like fucking Shangri-La.

I’d settled into a routine, living in the shelter and working at News of the World Café.  I’d become accustomed to living within the restrictions and requirements of residence in the South Wilmington Street Shelter. I planned my evenings so that I was back at the shelter in time to get in before curfew. As I started my approach to the shelter, I’d start rearranging my belongings, making sure to clear my pockets of change and loose debris that would slow down the inspection of my bag and person when I reentered. Moving into E dorm changed a lot more than I might have expected. The first thing I discovered was that they turned out the lights in E dorm. In the other dorms, there was always a light going. There was a light close to the entrance, and the lights in the bathroom were always burning brightly. A lot of guys had to cover their eyes with tee shirts or other homemade sleep masks. That wasn’t an issue in E dorm. Every night promptly at 9, they turned out the lights. All of the lights. On more than a few occasions, I wasn’t ready for lights-out and literally couldn’t see my surroundings well enough to get undressed for bed. One of my first E dorm purchases was a clip on light designed to be attached to the bill of a baseball cap.

The second thing I noticed was the increased freedom the residents of E dorm enjoyed. Since the dorm was reserved for those closest to moving out of the shelter, the staff gave them wide latitude. I’m sure it was because they figured anyone with their stuff together enough to live in E dorm probably wasn’t going to be too much of a problem. And for the most part, they were right.

The new sense of freedom motivated me even more. Being in the “good” part of the shelter was a tantalizing sample of what real life would be like once I’d moved out. At times, I would even forget that the shelter was what I was referring to when I’d slip and say something about “going home” after work. I never wanted to think of the shelter as home, and made it a point to avoid referring to it as such. I didn’t want to become one of the men for whom that was enough. I never wanted to look at it as my home because I never intended to spend that much time there. The steady paycheck from News of the World Café, as well as the help from VoA  assured me that I truly wouldn’t be spending a lot of time there.

After being approved for assistance by my VoA case manager, I started looking for a place to stay. Before even becoming homeless, I’d been considering finding a rooming house. I liked the idea of renting, and I wanted to live in a house with other people without necessarily having to be best friends with them. I can be a loner at times, and I know that I function best when I have the ability to withdraw and be alone for a while when needed. Also, rental prices in the downtown area when I wanted to live were astronomical, and a rooming house would be the only way I’d ever be able to afford to live as close to downtown as I wanted.

For a week, I looked at room after room in rental property after rental property. I was starting to feel like Goldilocks: this one was too big, that one too small; this one too expensive, that one too far from work. I was starting to fear that I’d never find anything that worked when I ran across an ad on an online classifieds page. They were asking for $375 a month for what was (very accurately) described as a small room in a subdivided house managed by a real estate agency. When I showed up to take a look at it, there was another prospective resident there to see a vacant room.

She was interested in one of the larger (read, “more expensive”) units, but we all toured the entire house together. The room I was interested in was so small that the three of us, the real estate agent, the other prospect, and I—couldn’t all fit into the room at the same time. There was a twin mattress on the floor and a three-legged chair propped precariously against the wall. The other prospect and I took turns looking around the dismal room with the dim lighting and poorly painted walls. I looked down at the stained and filthy orange carpeting, and I knew. This was going to be my home.

Angels On My Side

Knowing that I had people on my side played a big role in my ability to maintain any semblance of sanity. But because I didn’t feel comfortable “coming out” as homeless to a lot of people, the few that I shared my truth with became very important to me.

The first person from work that I told was my immediate manager, Sam. The café also did catering, so oftentimes I’d find myself working late at private events. The first New Years Eve Ball that I worked for them, I was scheduled until 4am. Thinking one hour would be enough wiggle room, I requested a late curfew at the shelter, telling them I’d be back by 5am. As the night wore on, it became obvious that there was no way we’d be getting out by our scheduled time. I panicked because had I missed curfew, there was the very real chance that I’d be kicked out of The Program and wouldn’t have a guaranteed place to sleep. As 4am approached, I went to Sam to tell him my problem. I tried to be offhand about it, not wanting to dwell on the subject of my own homelessness. He was shocked, but characteristically supportive. He couldn’t promise me that I’d be out in time to make curfew, but he assured me that if I couldn’t get into the shelter, I could come stay with him and his wife. I was touched that he would make that kind of offer, but I was still determined to make it back to the shelter in time. Fortunately I did, but the biggest thing that came out of that revelation was the feeling that someone knew what I was going through. I’d been worried that word would quickly spread and people would treat me differently, but Sam never broke my confidence. After that, it became easier to tell people from work about my circumstances. I wasn’t as afraid anymore of their judgment. I began to realize that, even though my homelessness was a result of my own poor decisions, it wasn’t the mark of shame I’d been fearing. The coworkers that I told, rather than viewing it as a sign of my own weakness, saw it as something difficult that I’d overcome, and they seemed to think more highly of me than ever.

“Coming out” to my work friends made it easier to reach out for help from other people. One such person turned out to be already connected to me. At the shelter, there are different groups for different types of homeless men. I was in the Veterans’ Group, which emphasized programs and benefits available to those who have served our country. During the weekly job-search meeting (it didn’t matter that I already had a job, I still had to comply with the requirements of The Program, and attending job meetings is one of them), John passed around a printed email listing jobs available to veterans. In the address line, I spotted a name that looked really familiar immediately. “Jason Wayne Brooks” had been cc’d on the email, and something about his name struck a chord with me. It took some thinking, but I finally remembered where I’d seen the name before: one of my best friends from high school, a girl named Marella, was married to a guy by the same name. Turns out it was the same Jason Wayne Brooks, and he indeed worked for a non-profit organization dedicated to helping vets who were either homeless or in danger of becoming homeless. They offered many different services, from job placement to work clothes. That last part particularly interested me, as I was due to start my new job at The News of the World Cafe, and didn’t have clothes that complied with their uniform requirements. Knowing I was scheduled to work my first day the following morning, Jason squeezed in an appointment with me where he presented me with the clothes I’d need to start working. I’d emailed him my size and the kind of clothes I’d need, and he’d gone out early that morning and gotten me what I needed. Looking at the Wal-Mart bag on the floor beside his desk, I almost teared up thinking of how blessed I was to know someone in the right place at the right time.

I wound up working with his organization, Volunteers of America, more extensively as I prepared to move out of the shelter. After qualifying for their rental assistance programs they helped pay my rent every month for the first five months I lived on my own. The amount they contributed changed each month, with them paying less each month, and me paying more. It was designed to give vets an opportunity to save money, while still having a roof over their head. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to properly express how grateful I am to Jason and the staff at VoA. Their advocacy on my behalf not only afforded me dignity and opportunity, but it gave me the strength to persevere when things got difficult. Because of my association with them, I had the confidence that my time in the shelter would be ending sooner rather than later.

Photography

Since getting a new camera, I've become hooked on photography. Here are some of the shots I've gotten...

White Flag nights, or The Difference Between the Homeless and Bums

From November through March, inclement weather is marked with the phrase “White Flag.” White Flag is declared on any night (during winter months) when the temperature drops below 32 degrees. When temps are that low, anyone seeking shelter will be allowed in, no matter what. If all the bunks are taken, the tv room is re-purposed as a sleeping area and the mats are brought in. Sometimes as many as 65 mats will cover almost every spare inch of floor, leaving only enough room to walk between the mats without stepping on a sleeping resident.

I always thought the concept of White Flag was a little arbitrary. If 32 degrees is cold enough to kill a man in his sleep, is 33 really any warmer? Doesn’t 34 feel just as cold as 32? But at the same time, I understood the need to set some limits. In a place like the South Wilmington Street Center, maintaining rules was the only way to prevent absolute chaos.

Aside from disrupting the tv schedule, White Flag nights served as great people-watching and inspiration for social commentary for me. I would walk past the open doors to the tv room, look inside at the sea of humanity and just think, “There but for the grace of God…” White Flag nights also illustrated something that people who’ve never been homeless may not realize: there are classifications to homelessness. There are the newly/temporarily homeless. They’re the ones newscasters are talking about when they utter scary statistics like “X percentage of all Americans are one missed paycheck away from homelessness!” I counted myself among that number. When the temporarily homeless talk about moving out of the shelter, they use the word “when,” not “if.”

Another classification of homelessness is the bum. Bums are the ones people are thinking of when they deride panhandlers. They’re the ones who “sleep rough” under overpasses and in campsites in the woods. The general consensus is that bums have basically given up on doing any better for themselves. They are “about that life” and can’t imagine anything better. In the shelter, the worst thing you could be called was a bum. It was a way of referring to another as subhuman, savage, dirty. Most of the guys who came into the shelter on White Flag nights were described as bums by the rest of us. They were the guys who’d been barred (sometimes permanently) from the shelter for previous bad behavior, or for an inability to comply with the rules of The Program. Luckily for them, White Flag nights trumped being banned from the shelter.

The other notable characteristic of White Flag nights was the smell. That many unwashed guys in one poorly ventilated room can produce a stench of ungodly proportions. Other than the sight of that much humanity crammed into one room, it was the smell that took my breath away more than once. Some nights, the tv room smelled like a combination of feet, beer-sweat, and “sadness.” It’s the smell of the bums that will always stick with me. I learned the hard way to hold my breath when walking behind certain people. Once when Kindred and I were sitting in the tv room eating dinner, a bum walked past us and sat down about a foot away from us, on Kindred’s side of the table. Suddenly, Kindred swore and stood up abruptly. Continuing to curse, he stormed over to the trash can and dumped his (almost full) tray in the trashcan. When I asked him what was wrong, he glared at the newcomer and said he’d lost his appetite. Before I could ask what he meant, the smell hit me. If I’d had to wager a guess, I’d have said that the time since the bum’s last shower could be measured in weeks, not days.

The smell notwithstanding, White Flag nights always served as a stark reminder that it could always be worse. I got a glimpse of how the homeless sometimes live, and I knew for a fact that it wasn’t for me.

Holiday Guilt

Around Thanksgiving, I began to notice an interesting phenomenon. I used to half-jokingly refer to it as “Holiday Guilt.” Among the excesses and commercialism of the holidays, some volunteer groups feel compelled to give more generously of their time and resources. Large groups of volunteers flooded the shelter, fixing elaborate meals. And rather than making us line up to get our own food, the holiday volunteers had us remain seated and brought our meals to us. Since I normally sat close to the kitchen door, and I hate waiting for food, that arrangement suited me just fine.

The week before Christmas, the volunteers starting showing up with gift bags for us. There were some variations, but for the most part they all contained the same things. Warm hats, gloves, toiletries, and socks were all included. Lots and lots of socks. We joked about being “sock rich,” having the luxury of changing socks once—hell, even twice a day. There were so many matching pairs of socks floating around the homeless community that it was like some sort of secret club. I’d see someone on the bus wearing cheap but warm grey socks and think, “I bet those came in a gift bag with a card attached that read ‘Jesus loves you!’…”

I always had a soft spot for the kids that came with the volunteers. Occasionally, one or two clearly showed that they wanted to be anywhere but there, but that was the exception rather than the rule. More common were the well-spoken, polite ones that reminded me of a younger version of myself. In an on-going attempt to teach me compassion, Joan and The Captain used to take me to volunteer at a nursing home in our town. I was, for the most part, a pretty compliant kid so I went along with the program. My parents, the rest of our church group, and I would spend a few hours on Saturdays with the nursing home residents. We’d pass out care packages of homemade cookies and sugar free candies, sing hymns, and doing arts and crafts. I used to look at the residents and wonder what it must be like to be that dependent on the generosity of strangers for companionship or basic human needs. I had no way of knowing that time and hard living would one day answer that question for me.

One of my favorite groups visited us Thanksgiving evening and spent a few hours with us. It was a group of Hispanic Seventh Day Adventists and they were one of the first groups I encountered that did anything more than feed us and leave. The food they did serve was amazing: roast turkey prepared pulled-pork style, spicy Spanish rice, and servings of some of the best caramel flan I’d ever tasted. Other churches and restaurants were having special meals for the homeless, so some guys just weren’t hungry. Others, being unfamiliar with Hispanic cooking, passed on the trays. I made out like a bandit that night. Two guys handed their trays over to me, and I was only too glad to devour multiple servings of delicious food. I also copped four servings of caramel flan from guys put off by the look. In a way, it turned out to be a more traditional Thanksgiving than I’d expected. I was thinking I’d be depressed since I wasn’t with my family, but it turns out several helpings of tryptophan will do wonders for one’s sense of contentment, regardless of the surroundings.

After serving us, some of the volunteers lined up against the wall of the tv room and sang for us. They strummed a guitar and sang contemporary Christian songs while I ate like a king. Their singing didn’t seem like an attempt at recruiting, just an honest expression of the love of God they wanted to share with us. After singing some, they broke off into smaller groups, having earnest conversations and getting to know some of the residents of the shelter. Again, it never felt like they were looking for us to drink the proverbial Kool-Aid, they just wanted us to know that God loved us, and in a way, they did too. They looked us in the eyes, smiling genuinely, and making casual conversation about everything from sports to guys’ plans to get out of the shelter.

The Siete Dia Adventists, as I began to call them, visited a few more times while I was staying at the shelter. Each visit, they were the same genuine, kind people they’d been on Thanksgiving night. I don’t know how many souls they saved in all those visits, but I do know they were regular reminders that not everyone looked down on the homeless.

Allen likes to drink

By the time Kindred made his return from Holly Hill, I had become friends with Allen. Allen was a creative-minded chef with a quick wit and sarcasm that mirrored my own. And in that grand tradition of food service professionals, Allen loved to drink. A few nights before Christmas, he and I met after work for drinks, and Allen dropped $150 on food and drinks. By himself. Which presented a problem since we were in "The Program" (Progressive Housing Program), and were barred from drinking. By the time he finished his second "last" gin & tonic, he was swaying like an antenna in high wind.

We chain-smoked cigarettes the whole walk back, hoping to mask the smell of liquor and bad decisions. Having bluffed my way through roadblocks and cop stops before, I knew how to carry myself as we checked in at the front desk of the shelter. Allen, on the other hand, was a mess: sweating heavily, he was having a hard time regulating his footsteps. He vacillated between mumbled apologies and fits of giggles, when he managed to tear himself from the task of watching his feet as he walked. Apparently he didn't trust them to follow the given commands, with good reason.

Every person entering the shelter is subject to being searched. That meant that getting Allen back inside the shelter for the night would take some luck. One whiff of the fumes he was breathing would lead to a closer examination, which would have been disastrous. But fortune was on our side: the deputy who was working the door gave us a perfunctory swipe with the metal-detecting wand, and the front desk staff barely tore themselves from their conversation to get our bunk numbers.

I left Allen in the hall, stumbling back toward his dorm. Residents weren't allowed in dorms to which they weren't assigned, so I was prevented from actually tucking Allen into bed to make sure he was down for the night. Twenty minutes later as I heated up some canned goods I'd stashed in my book bag, Kindred approached me with wide eyes, asking, "Hey man, what the hell is that white boy on? He is gone." Dread tickled at the base of my neck as Kindred filled me in on the twenty minutes that had just passed.

Instead of making his way to bed, Allen had staggered outside to the smoke area, where he managed to impress everyone with his lack of coherent speech. Not one to let that stop him from attempting to speak, he finally nodded off in mid word. The quiet was so sudden that someone was scared he'd died and went to get help. He'd been awakened by the looming presence of the front desk staff with an assist from the deputy on duty. In what can only be described as The Miracle Before Christmas, they believed his assurances that he was just tired and would go to bed once he'd smoked his (unlit) cigarette.

My friendship with Allen presented something of a challenge to me. On one hand, the last thing I needed in my life at that point was an excuse to drink. Allen was as predisposed as I was to engage in Inappropriately-Early Drinking. I can't, in all fairness, call Allen a bad influence though. He never dragged me into any trouble. It was more like we were holding hands and skipping drunkenly down the road to ruin, side by side.

In Allen's favor was a simple fact: he was undeniably cool. We got each other's random pop culture references; we understood each other's devotion to a sometimes harsh industry; we both enjoyed toasting that industry with the free drinks we boasted we could talk out of the bartenders of the bars in downtown Raleigh. Whereas Kindred was like a younger version of me, Allen felt more like a peer. His mistakes mirrored mine, and his bad decisions had ended with results similar to my own.

The night before New Years Eve, Allen fell apart. I was walking home from work when I spotted a figure walking towards me through the cold drizzle. From as close as a block, I could tell that the hunched, stumbling person was Allen, and he was drunk. The fact that he was already drunk at 5:30 in the evening, plus the fact that he was walking away from the shelter in that condition, didn't bode well. Though he looked right at me, his eyes were glazed and bloodshot, and didn't recognize me. I spoke his name, startling him into recognition. Relieved to see a friendly face, he hugged me and launched into a rambling story about how he'd "lost it...just lost it."

I knew he'd gotten some new responsibility at the restaurant where he was cooking. In fact, that very morning he'd been given the keys to open the place and take a large food delivery. At first I thought he meant he'd lost the key, but that would hardly have explained his appearance: wet, disheveled, with spots of blood on his shirt and face. Turns out that the food shipment was much more complicated than he'd anticipated, and he panicked. He was smart enough not to raid the bar, which was monitored by a security camera. But when he stumbled onto a few bottles of white wine in the cooler, his fate was sealed. He was found later, passed out in one of the booths, his half-empty to-go cup of wine still at the table in front of him. He was, of course, fired.

He managed to talk his way into enough alcohol to keep him pickled until it was time to return to the shelter, where he promptly got into a fight with another resident. He got briefly tossed around before being tossed out of the shelter. By the time he encountered me, he'd stashed his things under the bridge where some homeless choose to make their homes. He was planning on sleeping under said bridge, but I wasn't having it. By Providence, before I got off work, my boss had given me my tipshares for the week, so I had enough for a single in the cheap motel across the street from the shelter. Allen nearly convinced me not to, but as it began to rain harder, I redoubled my arguments and convinced him to accept my gesture. I tried to soothe his wounded ego with humor, "Hey man if you're worried about paying me back, you can just take your top off and dance for a few minutes, and we'll be square." His laugh was deep and genuine, and it was the first one I'd heard since running into him that evening.

I hugged him in the parking lot, making him promise to get in touch with me and let me know his plans. I crossed the street, wondering what would become of Allen. When I next heard from him, he was still homeless, only this time it was in Hawaii. After getting fired from the restaurant, he'd collected his final paycheck and bought a ticket to the land where palm trees sway, intent on an adventure. He knew neither a soul in Hawaii nor where he was going to stay, but the same could have been said of his arrival in North Carolina.

He spent a week catching waves and chasing a constant buzz, then returned to the mainland, broke. Deciding he needed a major course correction, he went into a year-long rehab program and that was the last I heard of him.

I only knew Allen a short time, but we'd become close friends in that time. It was the kind of intense friendship borne of shared suffering and struggle, and it had changed me. Allen had served as a live-action Afterschool Special: "I'm Besties With an Alcoholic!" As I watched his life fall apart one drink at a time, I'd begun cutting back on my own drinking. Long after Allen left for Hawaii, I'd find myself remembering his decline as I turned down a drink with lunch.