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.

A return to the land of the employed

For the first three weeks I was at the shelter, I didn’t have a job. The feeling that I would never again be gainfully employed consumed my thoughts. Every day it ate away at my natural optimism like a cancer. And then, in one week, it was like the dam broke and everything started to change at once. I had three interviews scheduled at the end of the week: two on a Thursday, and another on Saturday. The interview Saturday was at News of the World Café, a restaurant located inside the NC Museum of Natural Sciences downtown. After responding to a Craigslist ad with my cover letter and resume, I got a call back from one of the managers, Sam, asking to schedule an interview on Saturday at four.

The day of the interview, I dressed carefully in khaki pants, a pale pink long-sleeved button down shirt, and navy blue sweater vest. I looked like “prep” personified, but I hoped to also look highly employable. I found out later that Sam had scheduled the interview so late because Saturdays are the busiest in the museum, and therefore in the café. By the time I got there, the craziness had died down, but I could still sense the dissipating energy all restaurants have immediately following a rush of business.

Sam was an enthusiastic white man with bright blue eyes, brownish-red hair, and a friendly smile. He was a few years younger than me, and slight in frame.  I would soon find out, however, that what he lacked in physical stature, he more than made up for in sheer enthusiasm. He greeted me like an old friend with a knuckle-crushing handshake and the interview began.  We sat at one of the silver tables in the café and went over my work history, my strengths, and my personal goals. He seemed genuinely interested in hearing about my background, and we chatted easily for twenty minutes. Finally, he gathered the pages of my resume together with my application and promised to pass along my name to the general manager for a follow-up interview.

Walking out of the café into the fading sunlight of the evening, I couldn’t help but think I’d rather nailed the interview. I was left with a positive impression of the staff working there, and thought that Sam had been left with a similar impression of me. The only thing left to do was wait and hope that the general manager, Lily, would call me back soon for the follow-up interview.

Two days later, while walking back to the shelter with Kindred, I noticed a voicemail notification on my cell phone. I hadn’t heard the phone actually ring, but that wasn’t uncommon. It was a low-tech “Obama Phone” and I wasn’t yet used to its synthesizer-style ringtone or gentle vibration. I was used to my old smartphone that was loud enough to wake the dead and vibrated like it was trying to chew its way out of my back pocket.

Listening to the message, I came to a complete stop in the middle of the sidewalk. I stopped so suddenly, that Kindred didn’t notice right away and took three or four steps without me before glancing back quizzically.

“Hey buddy! This is Sam Howard from News of the World Café. I spoke to my manager, Lily about you and she’s excited about sitting down with you. I was hoping you could come by sometime tomorrow afternoon, just give me a call back when you get this so we can set something up. My cell number is 919….”

When I got through to Sam, we agreed that I’d come by the next afternoon for a sit-down with Lily. Oddly, I wasn’t as nervous for this interview as I’d been for the first one. I figured if all she had to go on was what Sam had told her, he must have told her some pretty nice things about me. Plenty of people in Raleigh had relevant experience, but she was making time to talk to me. Realizing that boosted my self-esteem, and by the next day I felt ready.

This time I wore khakis and a blue and white gingham long-sleeved button down. Once again I looked like I’d crawled out of a J. Crew catalogue, but after having seen the denim-clad, heavily tattooed barista working at the café, I felt like my fashion sense was the least of my concerns.  My interview with Lily, a perky 30-something with sunny blonde hair, was remarkably like my interview with Sam. We chatted like friends, and I tried to let my personality shine without rambling on. After only ten minutes she nodded silently to herself, as if meeting me had confirmed something she’d suspected from her conversations with Sam. She concluded the interview by saying, “Well, I have three more interviews to go, but I’d call you a strong candidate for the position. I like how you express yourself, and I like the idea of you interacting with guests on our behalf. You should be hearing from us by the end of the week.”

After feeling so down about myself for so long, I was scared to be optimistic but I couldn’t help myself. As I strutted past the giant globe outside the museum, I sang to myself, “They liiike me…they liiike me….they really really liiiiike me!” Two days later, I got the call from another manager, Jeff, inviting me to join the staff of News of the World Café as an attendant/cashier.

To say that I was happy about the job offer would be a massive understatement. It was like a weight had been lifted not only from my shoulders, but from my spirit as well. Not only did I have the opportunity to make money again, I had taken the first step toward getting out of the shelter. No longer was my departure an “if”; it was a “when.” I was on my way, and my heart was glad about it indeed.