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.

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.

Kindred takes a vacation from homelessness

After I got the job at the cafe I had less time to spend with Kindred. We'd still go to the library to collaborate on our graphic novel, but work took first priority for me. Even though Kindred wasn't employed, he treated getting a job like a job. He'd catch the bus or walk to temp agencies, or he'd go to the library to fill out online applications. When we weren't working or looking for work, we'd watch TV together or just sit around talking about our lives. In a way Kindred was my best friend. I didn't want to share my circumstances with even my closest friends, and I didn't feel comfortable coming out to most of the guys in the shelter, so nobody really knew all sides of my life. Except for Kindred. He was one of the few people who knew my sexuality and my residential challenges and accepted me anyway.

About a week after I got the job, I had my first late shift. I was assigned to work the bar at a reception at the museum and didn't get back to the shelter until 11 that night. I made it into the cafeteria to eat before lights-out (I used my food stamps to buy some food at the store on my way back), so there were still some people watching TV with me. One of them was a young guy named Jimmy who was obsessed with Japanese animé and spent all his free time watching movies and playing video games on his laptop. Turning to me he asked, "Hey man, where's your boy Kindred? He wasn't in the mandatory meeting tonight and I haven't seen him." I was so tired that I didn't think much of it. I assumed Kindred had already gone to bed, and said as much to Jimmy.

After I finished eating, I was heading back to my dorm when I heard two staff members talking about a light-skinned guy who left after some heated words with one of them. Immediately my stomach began to sink and I checked Kindred's bunk as I walked past it in the darkened room. It was still made up from that morning, and clearly hadn't been slept in. I stuck my head in the bathroom to see if maybe he was in there--no Kindred. Hoping against hope, I went out to the smoking area outside to see if he'd bummed a cigarette off someone--no Kindred. As I slowly walked back to my bunk I started considering where else he might be. His relationship with his family seemed strained at best--he hadn't reached out to any of them Thanksgiving day and seemed opposed to even trying to do so. He intentionally kept his circle of friends small, and none of them seemed to be in a position to help him. I could only hope he had found a place to stay and wasn't "sleeping rough" under the stars.

From a purely selfish point of view I hated to see him gone because of the loneliness that now loomed large. I knew I'd miss our effortless friendship and the feeling that I wasn't alone in my struggles. As I laid down in my bunk, I said a quiet prayer for him. I prayed that wherever he was, he was safe and warm and confortable; I prayed that he knew how much his friendship meant to me; I prayed that, whatever path he was on, it would lead him to the happiness and peace he deserved.

A few days later the mystery was solved when I got an instant message from a woman on Facebook. Without any preamble, she told me Kindred was in Holly Hill, a local mental hospital. She told me he wanted my number so he could call me directly. When I got him on the phone he explained that his recent efforts to secure disability (on the basis of mental illness) had backfired and he'd been involuntarily committed. Turns out he was a more convincing actor than he'd anticipated and was "diagnosed" as bipolar. His reaction to this diagnosis was the basis for his involuntary committal. He spent two weeks going to counseling sessions and trying to convince them that he was okay to cut loose before they finally agreed. Kindred never again mentioned the possibility of getting disability on the grounds of mental illness. I guess he figured he'd lived enough of the real thing and didn't want to play that game anymore.

Joan and The Captain

My pride made it hard for me to reach out for help. In no aspect of my life was this as pronounced as in my dealings with my parents. As far as I knew, Joan and The Captain (as I affectionately called them when they were out of earshot) were completely unaware of my residential challenges. When I spoke with Joan on the phone, I made it a point to emphasize the positive points: I've got a job! My boss says I'm great! Things are really coming together!, I trilled. I tried my best to distract her from the train wreck my life had become.

My parents were high school sweethearts, raised in a time when marriage was forever. They've been through a laundry list of problems: The Captain's frequent and long deployments when he was in the Army; financial struggles as they tried to make it on my mom's career as an English teacher and my dad's military career; all the miscarriages.

Both before and after my birth, they experienced several miscarriages. I recall once coming home from an outing with The Captain, only to have Joan meet us at the door with the statement, "The doctor said it's like I was never even pregnant." It didn't occur to me until much later how devastating that moment, like the others, must have been.

When I did grasp the full extent of their losses, I felt a tremendous amount of guilt. Of all the pregnancies, I'm the one who came to term? I imagined them cursing their luck. It didn't help that my life seemed to consist of a series of false starts and screwups. I went to college and dropped out my sophomore year. I joined the military, only to get kicked out to for being gay after two years. They stuck with me through repeated incarcerations, employment terminations, even a couple of boyfriends. Never once did they express what I'm sure was their profound disappointment in me.

Even knowing how much they loved and supported me, I still couldn't bring myself to tell them their only child was living in a shelter. I couldn't bear to be their screwup kid one more time. I decided early in my homeless adventures that I wouldn't tell Joan and The Captain about my circumstances until I'd improved them. The only thing they could do for me was worry, and they'd done enough of that on my behalf already. So I decided to do it on my own. You got yourself into this on your own, I thought, you can get yourself out of it alone.

In the shadows of giants

Since the shelter kicks people out every day at 8am, if residents don’t have a job they have to get creative when it comes to where they can spend time all day. Simply riding the bus all day isn’t an option—I once saw a homeless guy get kicked off a bus after having been on for an hour. Even the most tolerant of fast food restaurants will eventually need the space for paying customers, so that’s out too. Many homeless head to the Cameron Village Regional Library. It’s climate controlled and has couches, tables and nooks designed specifically for spending large amounts of time. CVRL is the largest of the area libraries, and has the most facilities for day lounging.

Located at the end of a long row of posh upscale shops, the Cameron Village Regional Library is a two-story structure with a wall of glass windows lining the front. Throughout the library, there are tables with electrical outlets and usb ports  for people who bring their own devices. Upstairs in the computer lab, there are about 30 pc’s for public use, and this is where most of the shelter residents hang out. If a computer is available, you can reserve it for an hour at a time. Once your hour is up, if no one else has it reserved, you can extend your time for another five minutes. You can keep extending your time as long as there are no upcoming reservations.

From what I could tell, the library was the first choice of homeless people looking for a place to hang out. A few people liked to stay at the shelter all day, but that wasn’t a very appealing choice. For one thing, unless it was a holiday or a weekend, the staff didn’t provide lunch. So unless you bought something out of the vending machine, eventually you’d have the leave the shelter to eat anyway. And with nothing to do other than watch tv and sleep, it got boring as hell after a while.

Those who wanted to get out of the shelter for the day but lacked bus fare to get to the library would usually just hang out downtown. Personally, I loved downtown Raleigh. The streets were busy and diverse, and I could easily spend hours people-watching. The only problem is that there were certain things most homeless people were seeking in a hangout spot, and those things were sorely lacking downtown. They are:

A place to sit down for uninterrupted periods of time. When you don’t have a place of your own, you tend to stay on the move and the need to just sit down and not be bothered would arise. Even the computers at the express library downtown were on high counters with no seats. I honestly think it was set up like that to prevent people from whiling away the day there.

Electricity. For those of us with tablets, phones, or other electronic devices, the areas surrounding electrical outlets were prime real estate. It was even more serious when that electronic device was your sole connection to family and far-flung friends. For me, my tablet (which I named Tallulah) was my lifeline to sanity. Writing and posting on my blog and Facebook page kept me sane, and without the juice to run it, I’d have lost my shit.

Free wifi. See #2.

Public bathrooms. As with seating, electricity, and wifi, restrooms downtown are either employees-only or reserved for paying customers. I can’t really blame the businesses—I’ve seen what people can do to public or all-access bathrooms and I wouldn’t want to have to clean up after that either. But when the closest public bathroom was in the McDonald’s three blocks from the heart of downtown Raleigh, it could make a simple potty break very complicated.

For those reasons and others, a lot of homeless tended to just hang out at the bus station or in Moore Square Park across from the bus station. During summer months, it was common to see groups of homeless denizens clustered around benches and low stone walls, sharing brown paper-wrapped cans of Icehouse or passing Newports back and forth. At the bus station, the patrolling cops were pretty vigilant about enforcing the statutes: no smoking (at all), no alcohol, no rowdy behavior, etc. They would do laps around the station, rousting sleeping figures and generally keeping what order they could. I never saw them actually arrest anyone, but I think that had more to do with the fact that people knew they wouldn’t hesitate to do it and chose not to give the officers a reason to pull out the handcuffs.

Across Blount Street in Moore Square Park there was a little more leeway granted. While drinking in public was still technically illegal, as long as nobody’s behavior got out of hand and they weren’t too obvious about it, the cops would generally look the other way. The same could be said for people sleeping in the park in warmer weather.

Moore Square Park always struck me as a rather extreme paradox. A block away glittering apartment buildings, soar into the Raleigh skyline, home to some of the area’s most affluent residents. Moore Square squats in the shadows of these crystalline giants, giving meagre shelter to some of its poorest. The contradiction is glaring.

"My pride fell with my fortunes" - Shakespeare

One day at work I was talking to a coworker when he mentioned having seen me walking with two friends downtown. I didn't have a car, and I lived and worked downtown, so seeing me walking downtown wasn't all that extraordinary. But when he mentioned we were walking past Oak City Outreach, I understood what he meant and got a little nervous. The day before, Kindred and I had run into Calm Down Phil, and together  we'd walked to OCO to see about getting some free toiletries and snacks. Apparently we were deep in conversation and I didn't see my coworker when we passed him.

Being spotted like that made me nervous because I was trying to keep my residential status as low key as possible. While there's no particular shame in being "residentially challenged," there's no pride in it either. I've noticed that people tend to identify new members of a social group by the most easily identifiable trait. It was bad enough that half my friends knew me as "the gay one," I didn't want to be known among my new work friends as "the gay homeless one." I don't think I'd have been able to bear it.

Throughout my journeys in homelessness, I struggled mightily with my pride. When a photographer from the local paper appeared at the shelter to take pictures of the volunteers serving the homeless, I kept my head so low that I nearly got gravy on my nose. I once declined to join Kindred in line at the soup kitchen because my best friend was in town for the weekend, and I knew she was staying at a hotel a few blocks away. The thought of her driving past and seeing me in line robbed me of my appetite and produced a fit of anxiety that sent me scurrying back to the shelter for a lunch of peanut butter crackers and soda from the vending machine.

Deep down, I knew I'd have to set aside my pride in order to ask for the help I needed. Metaphors about squeaky wheels being greased reminded me that if I didn't share my misery with those closest to me, I'd be doomed to spend the rest of my life mired in it. But I just couldn't bear to admit to the people I loved how much of a trainwreck my life had become.

A little motivation

First night in the shelter

For about six months, I’d been living with my friend Charlene, but the property manager at her apartment complex found out I was there and threatened to evict her for breaking her lease if I didn’t leave within 24 hours. With nowhere else to go, I made my way to the men’s shelter on South Wilmington Street in downtown Raleigh. My first night there was kind of a blur. I was pretty relieved to have a roof over my head at all, but eventually the reality of my situation began to sink in and I found myself becoming overwhelmed.

Even though I’d only packed a fraction of my actual possessions, I still had a duffel bag full to overflowing with clothes, and three plastic supermarket grocery bags full of shit (for lack of a better term). Surveying my pile of belongings, the caseworker doing my intake paperwork murmured “I don’t think you’re going to have enough space for all that. I’d advise you to lock up the important or valuable things and keep a close eye on the rest—things can get stolen pretty easily around here.” I’d been lucky enough to get a bed, which meant I got a medium sized drawer under my bunk and a small wall locker. In my haste to vacate Charlene’s apartment, I’d never considered that I might have more items than the storage space allotted to me could accommodate.

The caseworker, a diminutive New York Jew named David, promised to keep an eye on my things while I walked the two miles to the closest store that sold locks. When I returned, I was afraid that someone would have sold them for crack but they were still there, meagre and pitiful looking, but untouched. I crammed what clothes and shoes I could into the lockable spaces and put my tablet and loose papers in my bookbag, which I vowed to keep within arm’s reach at all times. Somehow I knew that the tablet would be a connection to the life I’d known and was determined to never be without it.

I’d arrived at the shelter just in time for dinner. My first meal as a homeless man consisted of baked chicken coated in greasy ketchupy barbecue sauce, soggy boiled potatoes, limp green beans and a square of yellow cake that had clearly seen fresher days. The shock over my sudden change in circumstances had dimmed my appetite, but I knew I should eat all I could. The only thing worse than going to bed as a homeless man would be going to bed as a hungry homeless man.

After dinner the TV room was cleared so the Chore Team could come in and clean up after us. They swept, mopped and made room for the overflow guys who didn't have an actual bunk and would be sleeping on mats on the floor. On White Flag nights when the temperature dropped below 32, the entire cafeteria would be filled with mats, as many as 70 men sleeping on thin green mats. But when temps were "warm" enough, we'd be allowed back into the cafeteria to watch TV until lights-out at 11.

I've always had a hard time going straight to sleep when I lay down, so lights-out in the shelter meant laying in the dark listening to the other guys in the dorm snoring and farting. Hardly lullaby material. But that first night, I didn't heard them at all. My mind was reeling from the new reality I was facing: homelessness. I couldnt even bear to think the word, yet I could scarcely think of anything else. Eventually I drifted off, and (as these things tend to go) I felt better in the morning. Having survived my first night in the shelter, I awoke more determined than ever to find employment and get my life back on track.

Kindred Spirit

One of the first real friends I made in the shelter was Kindred. I spotted him sitting across the cafeteria from me one afternoon and I noticed that we seemed to be staring at each other. Later I found out that we both thought the other looked familiar but neither of us could figure out where we’d met. On my part, I always thought it was because he looked like a funny character from a popular sitcom, but he hated the resemblance so I tried not to bring it up too often.

He was ten years younger than me, with an old soul and cynicism that made him seem closer to my age. We were both Black, but with his pecan brown skin and soft curly hair, he had a look that suggested a diverse ancestry. In fact, his hair was the first thing I noticed about him—I was insanely jealous of his hair. It was afro length, and bunched in loose twists. I just knew that if I tried the same look I’d resemble a frayed, dirty cotton swab, but he pulled it off with style.

Normally a guy like Kindred (good-looking, smart, sarcastic as hell) would have been my “type” but a couple of things prevented that. For one thing he was straight. While he was comfortable with having gay friends, he was totally into women and made no bones about it. Also, I wasn’t trying to be part of a homeless shelter romance. I’m not sure what that would have looked like, but I wasn’t trying to go down that road. I’ve seen people (of all different orientations) engage in amour sans-abri (“homeless love”), but I wanted to fix my own life before affixing it to anyone else’s.  

We would hang out whenever we had free time, working on our respective writing projects. Jointly we came up with ideas for a graphic novel about a moon man and a perpetually stoned koala bear. In a way, the insane adventures of Milton The Moon Man and Kairo the Koala kept us sane. We’d share inside jokes about others in the shelter, exchanging knowing looks every time Calm Down Phil would bounce into the room. I think we both thought of ourselves as different from everyone else. Not necessarily better (at least not most of the time) just apart. We both readily admitted that we weren’t “about that life.” Kindred was one of the few people I could see myself socializing with once we’d left the shelter. In a lot of ways, he was my lifeline; he was my connection to the creative side of myself that I’d been afraid was dying in the shelter environment. 

This is what "homeless" looks like

According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), there are as many as 49,000 homeless veterans on the streets of America. As of November 8, 2015, that number included me.

To be honest, there’s no one reason that I’m now living in a men’s shelter. Bad decisions, brushes with the law, alcohol, and just plain bad luck have all contributed to my current circumstances. But more important than how I got here is how I’m going to turn things around. Faith in God, faith in myself, and a little help from my friends will all be crucial as I plan my ascent from homelessness. 

By sharing my story, I hope to accomplish two things. I want people to look past the “typical” story of the homeless and see the humanity that lies beneath it. Just as important, I want to be an example. I still have a long way to go, but I want to prove to others (and myself) that it’s never too late for redemption.