Homeless in the Time of the Plague

 

[Editor’s Note: This piece is part of the “Topical” series, with each piece solely submitted to and chosen by the Final Reader Pietra Dunmore.]

 

It’s winter here now. Snow on the ground. Lots of new faces. Sad, angry, scared faces. I can tell with some degree of knowing them that will do what they need to do to survive, and will. Them that won’t, and won’t. It takes some a while longer to get it that the same man that passes them by with only a dismissive glance will gladly empty the change from his pockets to follow them into the alley and see them on their knees in front of him.

This is the world we live in. The real world.

I saw in the paper the other day there are over half a million homeless people in this country now. They say because of the plague there could be twice as many by next Christmas. I’m sure lots of folks look at me and figure that’s how I got here. Figure I’m some poor victim of the sickness. Never figuring I’ve been on the streets nine years now by choice. Never understanding why any sane person would choose this.

So, okay . . . maybe I ain’t so sane after all.

My story is my own but not too different from lots of others I run into. My mother was an artist and my father was a trumpet player that spent half his life on the road with famous people like Miles Davis. When he was away mom’s artsy friends came to keep us company. When he was around it was a nonstop party with folks coming and going day and night. Folks like “Uncle” Lenny Bruce, Buddy Rich, Arthur Miller, and Jackson Pollack. Guess that’s why I grew up closer to my mom than dad, with a love of both art and music. But also a love of drugs and whiskey. Reefer and whiskey, cocaine and whiskey, uppers and whiskey, downers and whiskey, heroin and whiskey. Coke and whiskey’s what finally stuck. And never further than a phone call away.

Just so you know, Mom drank herself to death by the time she was forty. Dad overdosed on heroin at forty-three.

By the time I was nineteen I was getting known for my art. I took to piano and wrote lots of songs but my art seemed the best way to make a living. After my first showing in San Francisco in ’88 I was commissioned to create a few original pieces for a new L.A. film director named Quentin Tarantino. This led to a gig as visual-art director on his movie Pulp Fiction. That’s where I met my future, lovely wife, Angie. She was script girl on the set. Less than a year later we married and bought a house in Hollywood Hills and started living the dream. That dream lasted until ten years ago when Angie was killed by a drunk driver. Head-on collision.

She died all alone. We never got to say good-bye.

I tried to hang on after that. Tried not to lose my mind. But nothing seemed to matter. I lost the house. The cars. The friends. Just walked away from everything else. Then one day I woke up and found myself sleeping on the sidewalk. Bumming cigarettes, begging spare change, eating garbage from dumpsters in the alleys. And I didn’t care. Then the day came when I realized I felt right at home on the streets with all the other homeless. And like I already said, my story ain’t too different from lots of others. I met lawyers and professors and stock brokers and cops and doctors and actors and priests out here all in the same boat. No matter who you are or how you get here, you adapt or die.

My turn finally came. I caught the plague this past August and spent most of September, October and November trying to get medical help, in and out of shelters, emergency rooms and walk-ins. They didn’t even pretend to care. Three of my street buddies died from the plague since this all started. They were good people. Their only crime was trying to survive. Did the wrong thing at the wrong place and time. And nobody giving a shit when it happened. Doctors don’t care. Cops don’t care. Them that runs the shops and stores don’t care. And them passing by and looking all disgusted at you sleeping on a park bench sure as hell don’t care.

But really, I ain’t no different.

Yeah, I could teach the neuvo plague victims how to survive out here, but I won’t. And I could invite some back to my cardboard and tarp-covered shack hidden out in the woods to get out of the cold, but I don’t. Because in the end it comes down to survival. And if they’re right about this plague putting more and more people out on the streets, then hand-outs will soon run out. Times are already tough enough. I ain’t no martyr. Just a homeless man trying to stay alive another day.

Time will tell.

Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.

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