PART ONE
Chapter One: Speedy 7
Chapter Two: Lucky 11
Chapter Three:Tiger 17
Chapter Four: Shadow One 21
Chapter Five: Shadow Two 25
Chapter Six: Lucky One 31
Chapter Seven: Trust Me 34
Chapter Eight: Shadow Three 39
Chapter Nine: Homeboy 43
Chapter Ten: Lucky Two 47
Chapter Eleven: Mudpie & Merry 55
Chapter Twelve: Mudpie & Merry Two 63
Chapter Thirteen: Homegirl 65
Chapter Fourteen: Vet 79
Chapter Fifteen: Birdy 87
Chapter Sixteen: Raven & Jeremy, Sweetleaf, Star & Doug 89
Chapter Seventeen: Shadow Four 103
Chapter Eighteen: Jailbait 105
Chapter Nineteen: Billy 115
Chapter Twenty: Moongirl 119
PART TWO
Chapter Twenty-one: Leroy & Leona 127
PART THREE: How To Squat 161
Halogen light streams down through the fog. I walk the empty streets by the waterfront. Aside from the distant traffic, I hear the hum of the halo-lights that hover over the sidewalks. The streets here can give you the creeps. Once new structures of concrete and steel look jagged against the night sky. Their dopey twisted remains tell me about the world I live in, a world I never made.
I stare up at the burnt-out husk of a decrepit skyscraper. A rusted metal frame hangs in the air. Incomplete stairways wind their way like spinal cords through the ribcage of the structure. The foundation is littered with crumbling plaster and chunks of concrete. Twisted pieces of metal spiral out from them.
I pull my eyes away and hotfoot it through the graveyard of the old world. The Willamette river stretches out to my right. I walk on through the park At one time it was covered in grass. Now the soil is too barren for anything to grow there.
I look out over the water. Through a veil of yellow vapor I can make out the blinking lights of the rest of the city. A billboard sticks out in the air over the clocktower, advertising Coca-Cola on a 3 dimensional display screen. Other billboards clutter the sky. The water is a stagnant pool of sludge but the old bridge still spans it. As cars speed across them, kids look out their windows. They crane their necks to look down on the water. It bubbles with shit and old condoms. What would happen if I slit my wrists? Just a little maybe.
My clothes are held together with scraps of leather and other material, a patchwork sewn with dental floss. I don't subscribe to the disposable economy of our oppressors. They rule from orbit, detached from the planet their money governs. It's always been this way. The wealthy control is from the space stations circling over us, locked in orbit around the earth.
I hear a scuffling sound in the shadows to my left. A large brown mass scurries out into the light, then disappears into a doorway. I shudder, more from cold than fear. I've had encounters with the rats here before-rats the size of small dogs who feed off garbage and sometimes us or the remains of us.
...We are the rats in their eyes, roaming the massive landfills they call cities, while they lounge in the skies.
I throw back my head and look to the sky. the scraps of metal threaded into the rat's hair, clank together. I used to dream of living there, high above the wasteland in a safe cubicle of my own-one pumped with fresh oxygen and purified water. I used to dream of escaping the world of filth and disease. I stopped dreaming when I realized what I would have to sacrifice to get there.
Gears in my mind turn and grind. The cold grows stronger. I shove my hands in my pockets and move along. A few blocks away the abandoned apartment complex looms into view. Tomorrow I won't that much mind being picked up again on a 5150 and taken to John George Pavilion. The funny farm. As long as it's not East Bay Hospital. At least if I take their meds I'll get free food and some saint volunteer might bring me cigarettes. A candle flickers on one of the third story windows, a moment of hope in this desolate land called California. Maybe it's a squat. Maybe there are friends there. Maybe they will let me in.
It was one of those times-I had the feeling-I'd get it regular-that there was no point in living anymore. One day, I had pawned off all my musical instruments to my drummer in my band for forty dollars to get enough junk to O.D. on. And he went and got it and came home, and I didn't wanna fuck up and miss, you know what I mean? I didn't wanna miss the damn vein and, like, blow the whole trip. I just wanted to die, so I said, "Hey, man, Just shoot me up. Right there, do it." And,uh, I did a hundred cc's of heron that was, like, dark. I mean like thick brown solid heroin. Idid it all. And he goes, "I think you did too much." I go, "I don't give a fuck if it is," you know? I said, "Just don't miss." He goes, "You know if you die, you know I'm not gonna revive you." And I go, "Good, don't." "So don't be mad if you fucking do." So he shoots me up with a hundred cc's, right? Imean we're talking four or five times as much as I need to get off. In other words, to nod really hard. I'm gonna die. And he does it, and I'm, like, being cool and I was like, "That wasn't enough. do it again." Two hundred cc's another hundred cc's. He goes, "Really, man. It's just too much." I go, "Well, fuck you, just put it in my arm and if I die, don't revive me." He goes, "I won't." I go, "Okay," So he shoots me up, and then, uh, he says, "There's a lot left in this spoon." I say, "Take it, go," 'cause I know I'm dying, I'm about to die any second. I say, "Go," so he walks off. And the thing was, I had made a deal with the drummer in my band, I said I'd sign a piece of paper saying th at I will give you all my musical equipment if I don't pay you by the first of next month. But I hadn't actually signed shit yet, right? So Dave walks out the door, shuts the door behind him. I take two steps and on the third step, Igo down. And what death is like, if any of you are interested, is it's like this: It's as if you were a glove, your body's a glove. It's on the ground, and your hand is in the glove. It's like a giant, elastic rubber band is attached to you going straight up to the end of the universe. And when you die, it's like the glove lets go and you go, "Whew." It's not like being propelled from the bottom it's like being pulled from the top, that's one way you can describe it. And I went right through the ceiling, and Icould see the wood and everything just as if I was going through it. And I went up and I went through the whole universe, and that was pretty intense. And I thought, "This is cool," this is what Star Trek was like, actually, was what I thought. To the ends of the universe. And then there was a big-I don't know, it was almost like a smokey tunnel, but the smoke was actually spirits. Each little wisp of smoke was actually a spirit, a soul. And I got right to it, and I got right into the light, and right when I got into it felt as if I was made out of salt and I was dropped into the ocean and I was dissolved instantly. And so the salt became part of the ocean, so I was part of everything. It's hard to describe, but it was, like, dissolving, and I became a part of everything. And I had perfect cosmic consciousness, I knew everything. Any question I had in my whole life was answered, and I understood exactly why everything in the world was the way it was, and how we were all connected, and everything was one and it didn't matter, it's all good. And I was just about to, like, totally cross over and then I fragmented into several parts. And one part of me, like my spirit going to heaven, and it was like when you're in a dream, you don't see your hands, your feet, your legs but you see where you're at, you know? And I was in this giant, flat, grassy, flowered field that was huge. I mean, I looked all around me, three hundred and sixty degrees, and it was all flat and beautiful. I don't want to say Little House On The Prairie, but it was like that, like the intro to that show. But, I mean, it was beautiful. And way off in the distance-at the time it seemed almost like a Dead show because there was some sort of big carnival, party, concert, some big event going on, something, wany in the distance, and I could see the banners, and I could see balloons, and then so I started moving towards it. And at the same time as this is happening, the other part of my consciousness is going through the tunnel of light, and its getting right to the light, and its dissolving. And at the same time as this is happening, in real life, my body has been dragged, by now the drummer says, "Oh, you didn't sign the paper, go get it." So they look in there and go, "Oh, my God, he's dead, oh fuck!" So they grab me, they took off all my clothes, put me into the bathtub and they pour ice in there, cold water, they're slapping me and they're giving me mouth to mouth and CPR. So all this is happening at once, it was really weird being in three places at once, but I was there. And the tunnel of light thing, right when I started to really enter it, I mean, to the end of it, I heard telepathically, "Not yet, its not time. you've got more to do." And I got sucked back, just exactly as if it had been reversed and the rubber band was sucking me back into the glove. But now my body is in the tub, in ice, and I didn't go right back into my body but they had woken me up enough to-I was borderline death. I've been on the borderline of death numerous times, like twenty, thirty times. And it's very precarious, you can go either way, you could die or you could live. It's like balancing on a beam, but balancing on a razorblade. And they're giving me mouth to mouth and CPR, and they stop for a second and before they stopped, Dave, the one that shot me up, who's now giving me mouth to mouth, he's reviving me. It was so weird, my spirit went in, it got sucked through the universe, back down, to this breath, and I went inside of him. And then he blew me into my lungs, he blew me into this lung right here, I saw as if I was a molecule with eyes, but with lights or something because it was dark and I could see. And I went to the right, and I went down into my lung and my spirit went right into my body. My spirit actually entered through his mouth, in through his nose, into his lungs, out of his mouth and into my fucking lung, and then into my body. And they go, "Okay, let's stop for a second. Let's see if he can breathe." They go, "Wait, those eyes, they see consciousness," 'cause I'm there. I'm half there and half at the paradise place. I'm half and half. And I realize I can pick, do I want to breathe or do I not want to breathe? And so I go, "I don't want to breathe, I wanna die." So I didn't breathe. And they go, "God damn it." And they keep doing me. And so I'm looking at this paradise, and I'm getting closer and closer and there's, like, flags and tents and balloons. and the balloons are all up in the sky. And eventually I come to consciousness, and the balloons all turn into everybody's eyeball, is where all the balloons were. And I come to, and they all go, "Oh, he's back," and they grab me out of there and they put me on the couch. I spend the rest of my night all fucked up, I can't kill anybody. I wanted. I was so mad. but I'm not scared of shit. I don't give a fuck about anything, I'm not scared of nothing. There's nothing anybody can do to me that I haven't done to myself worse.
My name's Tiger. I've been squatting since I was about fourteen years-old. I've squatted all over Berkeley. Every possible spot you can sleep in, I've probably slept in. I come to Berkeley like once every year and just travel around and come to wherever I can in fuckin' Berkeley. I sleep wherever. I just crawl up on a sidewalk somewhere. In the squats I meet usually either really cool people or really stupid people. There's a lot of junkies, I don't do drugs myself, I never do drugs. I used to smoke pot but I quit two years ago. I just basically drink and smoke cigarettes. I'm on pills, but that's about it. But there's a lot of junkies around. You know, I don't really give a shit about who's a junkie or who's not, 'cause some of my best friends are junkies. I just don't do it myself, personally.
Sometimes the Berkeley squatter scene is cool, sometimes it's not. I've been to better places, I've been to worse. Sometimes Berkeley's really fuckin' cool, there's a lot of nice guys around and sometimes there's no one around, you know? I come here once a year just depending on when I'm passing through, I always come through Berkeley. And sometimes there's no one here and you're just sitting around and you're all bored and sometimes everyone you know is in town and it's really cool to hang out and drink with everybody.
I got busted in a squat one time and this police dog, it was a German Shepherd bit my hand and I picked it up off the ground and I started kicking it and I gave this fake name to the cops and my friend got woken up and he's all, "No! Fuck that!" And he gave my real name, he's all, "Just give 'em your real name." And I was all, "Man, no, I can't. I got warrants!" We were all really destroyed, fucked up drunk. And he actually said my real name and I was sitting there kicking this police dog. But we got off. That was, like, the only time I got busted in Berkeley.
I've been busted in other squats, in other places, where I got busted and thrown in jail for a couple of months. Squatting's fun. It's more fun than waking up, going to work, coming home, going to sleep. I've done that. It's not fun at all. I don't like to do it. I will do it if I gotta but it's not fun to me. I like to have fun. Life is all about fun. If you can't have fun, then life's not worth living. But squatting's boring when you're sitting there trying to panhandle all day and you can't get shit. It's fucking really boring. You're sitting there just all, "God damn it!"
When I was fourteen years old I hung myself by my parents' garage rafter. And I was dead for seven minutes by what the paramedics said, and I had a dream when I was dead, and, see, I don't believe in fate or God or anything like that. I don't believe in any supernatural powers, but this trips me out because I had this dream of, like, five different faces and I've seen three of the different faces and it's supposed to be the five faces I saw before I died. And then I talked to this psychic and she told me I was supposed to die when I was twenty five, and she told me the details of my death and what she was telling me was the exact same details that were in my dream.
Anyway, so there were these five faces, and the fifth face is going to be the guy that kills me. And I remember all these faces vividly, I know exactly what it is, I've seen three so far. And the fifth face is-I'm trying to start a band, and I'm supposed to be playing this show in Hollywood and going to the store and I'm supposed to buy two quarts of Miller and a pack of gum and a pack of Camels. And I'm supposed to walk out the door and see some guy who hates me from something else, something I did to him, and he has a scar across his face which I guess I gave to him because I slashed him with a knife, which is something I would do, and I guess him and a couple of his friends take me around the alley and stab me thirty-six times is the number they gave me, and I lay there for three hours then I die.
And I've actually seen three of the people that I saw in the dream and all this shit fits together for me, but it trips me out-that's why I want this guy to kill me tomorrow because that way it'll prove that fate doesn't exist and I don't believe it does.
Yeah, I live with my friends in squats,our lives on our back and a primal fire raging inside.
The mentality of state always exploits and ravages-yet retches under the weight of ramifications its own bottomless ideologies create. The state holds no concept of a preservation of a real future. Only short-sighted devastation-justified by escapist and subservient drek-the deferred blame of religious institution-the systems moral shields in which they rinse their hands so clean, so sterile-almost virgin.
Yet once they realized their God was dead they reclaimed power through the bomb instead, or faceless technology, or whatever it may be. We strive for something better through some sense of economic regressi
It's Sunday morning, and the home we have been squatting has been busted and evacuated. We built so much foundation upon the old place. I figured it would be around for a while longer, yet it was bound to happen. Property values through the roof and major campaigns of economic strategy tangented against the alternative lifestyle. They see us as economic criminals-a force of state treason. I don't mind. They talk of property values as if it was a person. They speak of such injustice as if it was their dying mother. Yet "they" have a face-a name.
We woke up early in the morning to a strict pound on the door. "Police, come on out." We had earlier changed all the locks-so it came to their attempting to file the door until we finally decided to end this thing and come out. We've done it a hundred times before.
They owners were a working class family-marginalized and robbed of any dignity and personal opinion after years of societal callous and indoctrination. They were very confused as to what we were doing on "their" vacant property and almost immediately tensions flared. The Oakland cop seemed to have an exceptional loathing for our situation and took it upon herself to take each one of us aside and personally attack us on an individual basis-above and beyond the call of duty I guess she would call it.
They say I'm young. I should be working and dying for their cancer-nine to five it is, with nothing to say, nowhere to go. No thanks. Illegal pictures were taken by the Real Estate Manager. They said it was either that or be placed under arrest and escorted downtown. The pictures were taken and we left. Time to do it all over again.
I hate the vacant lies of supposed necessity-the filling of socially imposed inner holes with the product-fulfilling the role of the consumer model-an undying inner bitterness-apathetic and bereaved on all levels-subsisting within a wasted body-a life that will never be lived-yet constantly struggling to maintain that aesthetic smile on the outside, suggesting that their world of concrete and plastic will somehow work out in the end. War and deculturation never solved anything.
Such incessant destruction is inherent in such preconstructed mentality-a society of errors and victims of victims-all raging-so deculturated of primal/instinctual tools of understanding-the consumer no longer holds an ability to ascertain the creative fires waiting to be unleashed.
I turned down such a bleak contract on life. I will not subscribe to their paradise of plastic and infrastructure. Everywhere we turn there are imposed obstacles-from those who cannot understand, our lifestyle will never truly be accepted. But we never asked for such justification. We live-simply-we live relatively free-we are the faces of an idea-the wandeon-using what is there instead of perpetuating more waste-reducing the homeless and using the homes-not falling for the subjugation of self the capitalist mentality thrives upon-the loss of sense-the bereavement of mind.
We attempt to sustain an economic system outside of the system. To travel and build a viable community for ourselves whereas alienation is so prevalent in this society. It all may sound somewhat idealistic-it may not. But we try. No Gods. No masters. I'm hungry. A slice is a buck fifty. I was going to be a vegan but I love pizza with melted cheese too much. Hope it doesn't rain.
The restaurant that we turned into a squat was real nice. We had the locks changed and everything. I built a lot of additional storage space in it, we had it so long. Only on Sunday, two weeks ago, we knew there was trouble-all of a sudden the dogs were going crazy and Sam's dog doesn't do that unless there's actually a problem. And next thing we knew it was, "Open, police. Open up! " So we had to say goodbye to our neat squat and it was crazy. When we actually got evicted, the whole family that owned it and the realtor was there and everything. And they ended up taking illegal photos of all of us.
It was pretty weird. Supposedly it's their private property and they'd rather have people sleep on the streets than actually utilize what's there. But It turned out it wasn't even theirs anyway. It was owned by the state and they owed five hundred dollars in back taxes so it was actually an illegal eviction, and they took illegal photos with a surveillance camera, and both cops who were with them were stepping in line,. We weren't under arrest, we just kinda walked away.
But what really saved us was we had gotten box-chains and stuff, and if we hadn't done that, they would've gotten in right away. They had a key, but when they realized their key didn't work it gave us some time, 'cause they were trying to file the door and stuff. It gave us some time to get our stuff together and get out on our own time, instead of just them coming in, and scaring us off without even having time to collect our instruments and amps and things. They usually don't cite you, and they usually don't arrest you. But one day you have a home, the other you don't. And then you have to go through the whole thing again.
Like the house we have now, it's on 47th. It's pretty precarious because it's in a family neighborhood and they don't understand our lifestyle at all, and they'd just much rather just not have us there at all. They figure we're trashing the place or it's a drug house or stuff like that. They don't understand what we're all about at all, so there's an immediate polarization about us. So I doubt this place will last long. Plus, it's pretty nice, too, so it's probably owned by a realtor. But we just need it for another two weeks because this one girl is going to be, like, housesitting for a month. She's gonna let us stay there with her. So that'll be nice.
Homes Not Jails isn't exactly hunting for places. I mean, it's good what they're doing, but they're not really living the lifestyle. It's more like they're advocating.
Out here in California it's all private property, it's all owned by landlords. So the cops are right in line with the landlords. If you even have a squat for two weeks it's kind of a significant amount of time.
Whenever you go to a squat, you only start moving in your things that matter if you've been there at least three weeks to a month.
Living in a squat kind of takes people off the economic cycle where it's nine to five, and then consume and go to bed. It gives you more time to express and think and just do what you need to do. Just living simply and just kind of sustaining an economic system outside of the system. To really be consuming zero, 'cause every single dollar is just another nail towards your coffin.. Plus, I love it. The people I hang out with, it's a choice, I'm sure. It's definitely a choice. Trying to consume the least possible, trying to be as free as you can be and not support something and not fight and not work for something that you don't agree with in the first place.
Just to live free, work free, I guess, for as much as you can. Plus, you can go anywhere and get up any time you get up, and just go. Nothing will hold you back, really. You engage in kind of a social community all around the U.S. because you're always traveling, hopping trains, seeing something that 90% of the population never sees. The beauty of the landscape hasn't been exploited yet.
I really don't have any heroes. I wanna stay away from that, I really don't have any forum to look up to or anything. Everyone's got something to share equally. Everyone's got a different perception, story they have to learn from. But to follow down the exact same road and glamorize another is ridiculous.
I personally live with people I wanna live with. I don't get into housing situations I can't stand. The people I live with are my best friends, are like my brothers and sisters,. We have kind of a family kind of bond, we're on the same level. We can cock our head a certain way and know exactly what that person's thinking, we're on that same kind of wavelength. And that's the way I like it. I don't think there's anything at the squat that I hate. Maybe living with two dogs kinda sucks at times but that's about it.
But there's no foundation. You could be tired as hell and just wanting to go to bed, you just can't wait to go to bed, and then you look up and suddenly it's reboarded up. I've been through it so many times, I've been doing it for years, so nothing surprises me anymore as far as the drawbacks. You just kinda deal with it and keep on going. You can never let it get you down, you can never let it break you,. You just gotta keep on going.
I wouldn't want free housing from the government. They have such an gruesome way of keeping people down, keeps their system from inflating.
It's intruding. You're always having to go down for the way these people live, and how they poison the earth. If you pay rent, do the regular thing,you're in the same boat with them, in a way, even though you try your best not to do their trip. Plus, they condemn us right off-they can't stand at all what we're doing or why we're doing it. They think we're mentally ill or something. They just can't understand why we wouldn't subscribe to their crap.
I saw the peace in our commune, our squat., I saw the happiness in everyone's eyes. It's as much of a utopia as you can get, just away from all that mainstream suburban garbage.
I went to this alternative school that I really enjoyed a lot even though I didn't graduate from it, I loved it. I had taught a couple of classes myself and had gone through all of the classes, sometimes twice. I grew out of it. Sure, I was seventeen years-old, but in my mind I was a lot older than that. So I decided to leave one day. It was nothing malicious towards them.
I met Sam back in Madison, Wisconsin. There was this festival that was going on out in Dayton and I was with a couple of friends and we were in this van and we were going there and Madison. There's not many over there, so we were passing them and I said "Wait, wait. There's three squatter kids over there, let's take them to Dayton with us." We pulled up next to them, and they had a ride with someone else actually, another real good friend of mine, so we ended up kicking it in the same circles and I met Sam again out here about six months ago. That's another thing, you're always traveling. People you met in New York you meet in Berkeley walking down the street. So you have kind of this community all over.
He wanna know what your opinions is. He wanna know how you doin', which way, you know, gravity is goin'. All this. He be in it. He don't be just for him or just for the White House. He be for the world. He ain't just for one. He work for everybody.
If we don't get to the shelter soon we aint getting in.
Lissen Leroy, if we got a crowbar we could try that old house. My mind not into the shelter tonight.
Well I got the foam mattress so you aint sleep on no hard ground when you with me.
So there I am, kicking back in the squat and I'm trying to write a song and nothing's coming to me. And sometimes inspiration comes to you and its like you're a radio just picking up the transmission and not actually playing, but it just comes through you like you're the instrument and not the player, like somebody else is playing it. Or writing it. Sometimes words come to me and I scribble 'em down as fast as I can get them out.
So my friends Tag and Julie come over, and they're these junkies I know. And they'd been hanging out with this other junkie I know, his name's Jackpot. And they're all gonna get a place together. They'd been talking about it for, like, three weeks and they got two thousand dollars for first, last and security deposit, so they come over and tell me.
"We just gave Jackpot two thousand dollars. He's holding on to it for us and we're all gonna get a place together and it's pretty cool. And we're all fucked up right now, we all just shot up heroin, as a matter of fact we just shot up Jackpot First we shot ourselves up, then we gave him some and then we came over here."
And I talk to them for about fifteen, twenty minutes and they go, "Well, we gotta go back over there and see that he gets the money to a landlord."So they leave, and the second they leave,, all of a sudden, I've gotta get a pencil and some paper and start writing down these words. And I sit down and music comes out. So this song pours out of me and I can't even keep up with it. I'm writing as fast as I can, it comes to me like a lightening bolt. And the second I'm, like, writing the last word and putting the last period down, the garage door opens up and Tag comes back, without Julie. And he says, "Dude, something's really wrong." And I go, "What's up?" And, like, I already knew 'cause I wrote about it.
Well, what happened was when they went over there, before they came over before we wrote the song, they went over to Jackpot, and he had been drinking, doing valiums all day, and he told them, "Hey, man, I'm pretty fucked up on these downers and alcohol. I just should probably do half a balloon, not a whole load. Leave me a half a shot." Well, these guys did their own shots first. And they shot up, and they were in a bad condition as they were fixing his spoon. And they put the whole balloon in there and shot him up. And he made a gurgling noise and they said, "Hmm. That doesn't sound right." So they put their head up to his heart and they said, "Well, it's still beating. Well, he's just nodding. Let's just cover him up."
Then they left and came over to my house, talked to me, left, and then this song poured out of me. They went home, and in the course of time it took them to go to my house, four, five blocks away, they went there and discovered he was dead and the song was out. And he says, "Yeah, dude, I think I fucked up and killed him 'cause he's dead." And I said, "Well, where's Judy?" And he said, "Well,Julie didn't want to leave because Julie's conscience won't let her leave." So she stayed there. And Jackpot was gay, so he had a lot of gay porn mags and dildos, but it was all put away. It wasn't like he was blatantly gay. I didn't even know he was gay until this.
So she calls the police and says, "Help." And they come and arrest her, end up arresting Tag, eventually, as soon as they caught him, for manslaughter, and pulled out all Jackpot's porno mags and dildos and put them all over the place so when his parents came, they'd see all of that, to ridicule them. And they stole his two thousand dollars that Julie had given him. They said, "Well, where's the money?" The cops said, "What money?" And they saw him-Julie saw the cop take the money and put it in his pocket.
So that's where the song came from. It's called "Goodbye Again". And Tag told me, "I think that'd be cool." And I go, "Oh, my God, I just wrote a song about it." I go, " Look at the lyrics," and he freaked out and left. He did nine months, that's not long, in prison for that. He's out now. He went into a rehab and now he's pretty cool.
I work at the Lusty Lady, which is the sex club that just unionized, so I have tons of friends there-Most of the women I work with have college educations. I don't, but even for the ones who don't, it's a special place to work because you're working with these intelligent women who are hardcore activists out
The Lusty Lady? It's in San Francisco. We've had the union for a while now and we finally got our contract signed. And I was actually fired for union activity at work. Staging a work protest. Basically, they fired me saying that I caused a work slow-down, which is just-how can you cause a work slow-down at a peep show? I mean, it's just lame. So they fired me and at the time that they fired me I was-it was in January, I moved in here in February, so I'd been couch-surfing at my friend's house for three months. I was just about to move in here.
And I had my son and the only security I had was that job and I was saving up my money from that job to move in here and they fired me. So I organized-I have to say, people in the bargaining committee were just awesome. They did so much more work than I ever could've done. But me and a bunch of women, we organized a picket line and we picketed in front of the Lusty Lady. I took my son down, and we picketed and hung up flyers and I told people,"Look, I'm a single mom. I don't have a home, I'm staying with friends of mine and they fired me because I support the union and this is bullshit. So don't come in here. Take your business elsewhere." We picketed for one day, and they ended up shutting down the entire place, and keep in mind this is the sex industry which makes millions of dollars, they're open twenty four hours, they ended up shutting down the whole place for four days 'cause we drove so much of their business away.
And then we went into negotiations, and I had gone and they were like,"Look, are you gonna picket?" And our union rep said, "Look, we're not gonna talk about it unless you rehire Autumn," which is my stage name. And he's like, "Well, why would we wanna rehire her?" kind of thing. This went on for twelve hours. I had got there at nine and left at seven, but the people I'd been staying with on the bargaining committee got home at twelve o'clock at night.
Finally, they came home and they said, "Look, we got your job back on the condition that you're suspended for two weeks, just so they save face and make it look like they didn't fire you illegally, and on the condition, also, that if we do any more protests or picketing we have to notify them first. So I ended up getting my job back, and being able to move in here, but ever since I got my job back, my bosses have been really hostile towards me, I've gotten letters in my checks saying if I'm late one more time, they're gonna automatically fire me. Just totally harassing me, trying to scare me and what not.
Actually, we just had a benefit at the CoCo Club, which I performed at, and we raised over four hundred dollars for the exotic dancers union because we're an open shop, not a closed shop. That means that if they hire a bunch of new employees, they don't have to join the union, meaning that they can overthrow the work we've done. Although we do have a year-long contract, but that means that we have to basically do all the work to convince these people to join the union, keep the union strong. And also to, when a year comes up, convince everyone that, "Look, we want it for another year." So basically, we're doing all the work, we're not getting paid for it. The shop stewards get paid now because of the contracts, but before that, the negotiations, nobody was getting paid. It was all of our free time. And the people who own the place are women, it's run by women. And recently the general manager resigned.
It's been really crazy. There's people who have been fired in the past without just cause and that's the reason why-actually, the main reason that we unionized is because we work in a peep show and there's three windows, we have thirteen booths, I think, where the windows go up and the customers can see us. There were three windows that were one-way, two on the side and one in the middle, and customers would come in and videotape us, and take pictures of us, but because they were one-ways, it was not detectable, at least not all of the time.
And this has been going on for years, I've worked there for going on three years now, and ever since I've been there it's been going on. I finally went and bought wigs to conceal my identity so I wouldn't have pictures of myself on the internet floating around the city and whatnot. And we had told our boss, "Look, this is not consentual, this is exploitation." And they were just like, "Yeah, well, we'll look into it," and had never done one single thing about it. So we finally got together and we unionized because they hadn't taken the one-ways out.
It's totally illegal but the fact is that there's nothing we can do about it. I mean, we have security there and support staff, but all they can do if they get a call saying someone's got a camera, is ask the person for the camera, but the person doesn't have to give it to them. They can't legally confiscate his property or film. They can just say, "No, you can't have my film," and walk out and get away scott-free. I've had incidents where that happened. Where I've had people, not even in the one-ways, just in the windows where you can see through, come in there so bold, bring in their camera and videotape me,while I'm working and walk away.
That's exactly why we were just, "Look, this is bullshit." We're coming here to work because, yeah, I credited the Lusty Lady as an exceptional place to work in the sex industry because you don't have to work that many hours, you make a lot of money, you don't have to hustle, you get paid hourly, you know, it's ideal for single mothers and students. but then to have people come and tape you, it's just outrageous. We're totally vulnerable. Don't ask me about being a runaway when I had my son. That's all over and done with. I'm supporting myself now and doing good.
We went through the hole in the fence into our squat, and we realized the door was open. And we were like, "Oh, shit." Someone was in there. Okay. So we're really scared and we just had this one lighter that was hardly even working, and we were like, "Hello? Hello?" And there was no one in there, so we locked the door. But at, like, two in the morning, all of a sudden Sam's dog Barb starts barking and freaking out really fucking hard, and it's pure darkness and him and I are sleeping, but we get up and we're like, "What is going on, Barb?"
And all of a sudden, next thing you know, there's this guy jumping up into the air, and we hear all his change fall out of his pockets and he's like, "I'm going to shoot that fucking dog!" We're like, "Holy fucking shit." He's like, "Grab your dog, grab your dog! I'm going to kill your fucking dog!" Sam and I both know that we're awake, but we're just scared, we're like, "What the hell is going on?" So we're just really quiet, laying down, just letting Barb bark.
Ten minutes later Barb is still barking, and this guy is freaking out on her. And there's small silences where it's like, "What happened to Barb? She's not barking anymore." After a while, we were like, "Screw it." We said, "Barb, come here." And then Barb ends up shutting up and going back to Sam. And we're like, "Well, what do you want?" He's like, "I want two barstools." He was not cool either. No way. So he wants two barstools or something like that, and he just had this lighter that didn't really have fluid in it anymore, so it was kind of surreal-looking. It was real dark, we're all scared shitless. We don't know if this guy has a knife or what he's got or why he's here. And this illuminating spark just flashing everywhere. We're like, "Alright, here's your fucking barstools!" And Sam grabs two barstools and goes up to him. But the guy's lighter isn't working. He's like, "Light your lighter, light your lighter!" Because Sam didn't trust him and this guy didn't trust Sam. It was pretty crazy. I don't know what happened, he ended up just getting the barstools and we said, "Don't come back here." And so we locked it up and we put this keg that was just sitting there from this old restaurant and put it in front of the hole that he got into and went back to sleep. But, like, twenty minutes later we hear, "BAM!" The guy kicks the keg across the room and is through this hole within three seconds, which usually takes us four minutes to get through. We're like, "Oh. God! What is going on?"
Barb starts freaking out again. And the uncool guy goes out, he comes through here, then he kinda goes out the front door again. He didn't do anything. We realized that he had left the door open exactly the same amount as when we first came in. So we were like, "Fuck it. This guy cannot come in anymore." So we lock the metal door, the front door, and Sam and I, our adrenaline is pumping so hard, we take this, like, two hundred pound desk, which normally we'd never be able to pick up, and we pick it up and get it through this crawlspace corner that we would never normally be able to get it through anyway either. So we just put it right in front of this door and we kind of barricade up this hole and we're just about to fucking barricade it and all of a sudden he moves it and he's trying to get in again and I'm like, "Oh, shit." And I jump into the air, and then Sam slides the desk and slams the guy's fingers in the hole. And he's like, "Fuck, fuck, fuck! You slammed my fingers!" He's like, "If you don't give me two more barstools I'm gonna call the cops!" We're like, "What are you talking about? You're robbing the place. We're just staying here. What are you talking about, you're gonna call the cops?" Blah, blah, blah. He's like, "Well, give me two fans, two ceiling fans." We don't have any ceiling fans. He's like, "I know you have two ceiling fans." This guy was not dumb. I mean, he knew where everything was, he knew what kind of stuff we had in there, everything. 'Cause there was probably about ten thousand dollars in restaurant equipment there that we had just moved and put into the kitchen.
So he's threatening us that he'll call the cops. We're being blackmailed by a thief. It makes no sense. So when he says he wants more ceiling fans and stuff like that we're like, "All right. Fuck it. We'll give you a ceiling fan but do not come back." It was really weird. He's like, "I'm a heroin addict! I need my fix in twenty minutes! I I want these barstools, these ceiling fans, whatever!" We know this guy by now, if he had any weapon, he would have pulled it And we were just like, "Well, whatever. You can have your ceiling fan." So I picked one up out of the kitchen and one of the blades broke off, trying to get it through the doorway. I give it to him and he's like, "That one's broken. Give me the other one that's there. That one's broken, too. Well, then give me two more barstools." So we give him two more barstools and we're like, "Okay. You better not come back." Because we know by now this guy is a wingnut.. He was so messed up that he was selling barstools at four in the morning at the side of a gas station, so that's pretty pathetic. So we ended up closing up the next day, we got the locks changed, we got our own personal keys. Then maybe a week later, we hear him sometimes kicking the water heater outside 'cause he can't get inside. And stuff like that. But after that we're okay. That's just stuff you have to deal with. whenever you're in a squat. It just kinda adds a little excitement you don't really need, to the life.
They call me Homeboy. When I first ran away I lived up in Humboldt or camped out in Seattle or something. But now I'm out in Berkeley. It's a pretty nice little area. People treat you nice, usually, unless you get in arguments with other squatters 'cause other squatters got their power trips 'cause they've been there longer than you, you know? But otherwise, squatting here in Berkeley is just one of those things that is there. People gotta realize that we're here and if they wanna to make sure they don't see us here they gotta fight for our rights as well as their own rights to keep us off the streets and keep us from panhandling in any which way they say may be aggressive or not and help us find a place to stay. A lot of us like staying on the streets just because its outdoors, So give us a park to sleep in and then we will be off the streets. Otherwise, you guys have to live with us. You guys can send us to your jails and your prisons and all that but all its gonna do is take just as much of your taxpayers' money as it would be if you guys helped us find a place where we could stay. I've been in a bunch of squats, I would say, probably over twenty in the last two years. I've squatted in Eugene, Seattle, here in Berkeley, Richmond, I've squatted in Oakland a few times, a lot in the Humboldt County, Arcata, Eureka area. Eureka is pretty easy. People generally leave you alone. If you're squatting in an area in Humboldt County, there's a squatter's limit just like almost any place in California. If you're there more than three months, they have to let you have a legal residency there until they can either sell the home, demolish the home, or rent it out to a new rentee.
But usually after people see that a squatter's been there they don't wanna be there because they think it's some sort of bad omen or something, I don't know what their trip is. But I think San Francisco or here in Berkeley is better than Richmond and Oakland because you don't have your gang warfare going on and you can just be out there squatting without having people come in and try to just take over your own scene or nothing. But I kinda like it up there in Arcata and Eureka because everybody's just pretty much living in a squat, leaving you alone. You walk into somebody else's squat, it's cool to stay.otherwise they'll show you someplace else to go.
I never squatted in San Francisco but I slept a lot of times on the streets. It was quite humiliating a couple of times because I almost got mugged while I was sleeping so I just decided I'd move counties, over to Alameda county here, or whatever we are. Still, Frisco's a nice town. One time I was sleeping up at that one park right there on Ashbury Street and this guy's all mugging somebody one night in the middle of the night and I have a fifth of whiskey so I throw it out there in the middle and it breaks up where they're standing and they all just scrambled and shot a couple rounds in the air. It was a big, funny fucking joke.
Me and my girlfriend were so scared because all I had was an umbrella and a bottle of whiskey. So I decided I'd savor the whiskey one last shot and then throw the rest. So Frisco's a little bit strange for me but it's a good area. There's a lot of squatters there that need the same assistance as people need anywhere, wherever they are. I don't know how anybody can stop us from being that way, maybe by legalizing drugs. That way we wouldn't be spending all our money on drugs and could have something left. I might kill myself if things don't get better soon. It's a cool thing to do.
Okay, this is how I am. I can be in a great mood and then just, like, a little thing can totally set me off and make me get, like, totally upset get violent. I'm not the kind of person who just lets things go. Like if somebody disses on me or if someone disrespects me or whatever, I let it happen over and over and then finally I just freak out because I don't know how to handle it any other way. Um, I just go, "Well, I wont let it bother me," and finally, it really does bother me and I get so pissed. I used to get pissed for like months and years at a time, feeling helpless in the situation I was in, where I lived, the dudes around me, or whatever. See, you feel so frustrated that eventually you get mad.
When I get mad, I just stay mad for like long, long periods of time. It would take a lot to get me unmad. Not so much then, but now I find sometimes that like-for instance, I went to the BART station. There's like, five-hundred people there, and they're all talking-they're all having different conversations. Nobody knows me, probably nobody's talking about me. But then I hear them talking about me as if I walked into a room and they really were talking about me. Like, "Oh, look at that guy." Blah, blah, blah. And saying all kinds of negative stuff, stuff that bothers me. And logically I know, "I'm just tripping out or something because why would they be talking about me? You know? I'm kind of a big, scary-looking guy.
I'm the kind of guy you go, "Oh, let's just not say anything and hope he walks by without him doing anything." Because I have this persona I've built up so that people won't screw with me and people won't try to beat me up or anything. Because I used to get bullied a lot, now everybody's scared of me. So I find myself-I get depressed pretty easily, too, but it's not the same way as it used to be, I used to feel all grey and cold and just sit on the couch for hours and hours and hours and not even do anything. I'd just feel so cold. That's how I can tell if I'm really depressed, I start feeling cold and I know I'm really, really depressed. And now, the years have gone by and I'm frustrated with a lot of stuff and I'm not really pushy enough.
It should be a case of where, like, if you have an agreement with somebody, and they start screwing you around on it, you should just say, "Here. Why aren't you doing this in a civil manner? Why are you screwing me around? Well, I'll just not say anything." That bugs me. And so finally, they'll just do one thing-like the straw that broke the camel's back-and I'll freak out. I know that's not the way you deal with life and I'm trying to change that but it's really difficult for me. Now the problem is I get pissed too quick and it's like, you know, like I said at the BART station, sometimes that happens. Sometimes I'm thinking thoughts in my head, but it's almost like it's not me because it's like somebody else-and they're saying all kinds of negative stuff. Maybe about stuff I've done or stuff I should've done or like, I could go, "Oh, I've always wanted to tour with the Grateful Dead. I never did. It's over with. The trip's over." And part of me goes, "You fucker, you totally blew it."
And I'm mad at myself. And I end up feeling all screwed up and one minute I'm, like, nice as pie and the next minute I'm fucking punching a hole in the wall, which isn't right because my hand breaks all the time now. So I'm just trying to do the best I can do and I've decided I wanna try to change my life because I never adjust to my problems. I always hope it'll go away. I say, "I hope this problem will just go away." Even if it won't, I'll do that forever. So finally, somebody else either takes care of the problem or I have to take care of it. But by then, I have to take care of it in a way where I'm like all pissed off and aggressive to the point where people are kind of scared to come and kinda take care of, you know, work could be done on my house, or whatever. So, and I kinda like that in a way, that people are scared when they see me because I don't like giving them fear, but I want them to not fuck with me. I don't want anyone to start thinking that they can rob me or anything like that.
I hear other voices. A lot of times it's me going, like, "You fucker, you idiot. You should've done this". See it's like this. This is how I feel like my life is like: there's always different choices that come with my life, but it's usually really easy. This or that. And one way is, like, the quick, easy gratification way but it's the stupid way, really. Because if you were intelligent, you'd go with that, and then when you went with that, then in the long run you make a lot more money and reap better benefits from whatever you're doing, right? So, but with me, I got the choices there, and then I go, "Okay, I'll go with this instead." And that's screwed up, because it makes it hard to do anything when you've always spent all your money every night.
It's like, I have twenty dollars, I'll spend twenty-five. A hundred dollars, I'll spend a hundred and five. Two hundred dollars, I'll spend two hundred dollars. And it's like, I'm getting a little bit better than that. I'm starting to get into arts and crafts and stuff, but it's hard 'cause I'm sick. It's really hard for me to get around. And everything hurts when I get up or go to sleep and I just have all these physical problems and then on top of that, somebody can be talking to me and I interpret what they're saying as an attack on me.
I finish their sentences in my head. Like if someone says-let's say you say, "This can be done that way." And the person says, "Oh, yeah?" And then I'd finish that with, "Yeah, you don't know how to do it at all. You're just stupid." Blah, blah, blah. All this super negative stuff that you don't wanna have to be there but its there.
And then, because this is how I interpret it, so then I react as if that is what was said even if it was just "Oh, yeah?" But I'm misinterpreting it maybe, because that's what I do. I do that a lot. So then I come back all aggressively 'cause I get mad. Maybe not as quick as I used to. I'm trying to control my temper but it's like, when I'm really mad, it's like, I don't give a shit. That day I almost broke everything I owned. And I stopped after a few things and realized, "I better fucking mellow out. There's no point in doing this. This is so stupid." I get mad much too quick, and when I get mad, I get mad, I mean, I get fucking mad. And I don't wanna hurt anyone around me, and I don't wanna hurt myself and I'm like-I could.
I get really, super, super strong when I'm mad. I'm not that strong normally, but when I'm angry I'm really strong. It blows me away how strong I am. Matter of fact, I'm so strong, I can pick shit up and break my bones because I have enough strength and adrenaline or whatever it is to pick up something so heavy you shouldn't be able to but then my bones snap because they're all brittle. I wanted to get some sort of therapy for, like, anger management and just-some sort of counseling would be good because, you know, your friends don't wanna hear about all of your problems. Some of them say, "How are you?" But if you really start telling them how you are, they're like, "Uh, too much information, man, gotta go."
I drink to try to get knocked out, but it started causing me a lot of problems. You can't be an alcoholic or anything because that's stupid. I don't know how long I have to live, it could be tomorrow or today I could get hit by a bus but I want to-I have a lot of talent in me and it really pisses me off that I'm doing nothing nothing with it. Nothing. I'm doing nothing with my whole fucking life. I'm tuned better than most people, I gotta admit that. I mean, the way I spend my days and stuff is pretty good when I'm not fighting. I don't mean physically fighting, I mean, like, verbally. I get in shouting matches and stuff. I keep making wrong choices all the time. And I'm scared of a lot of things, I'm scared of the government, I'm scared of the police, I'm scared of psychiatrists and stuff 'cause who knows if they're a good person or a bad person.
You can have a lot of good cops, but there's gonna be one or two really bad ones who are like murderers and serial killers or thieves or drug dealers. I know because my friend's dad was a cop and he was selling dope and coke and guns and all kinds of shit that he would confiscate from people. So that's scary, and I'm the kind of person that they don't want around. Unfortunately, I'm getting too old to throw the monkey wrench at society's machine but I just wanna play some music and not get so upset that I want to smash my guitar. I want to be able to deal with life in a better way. I get so worried about fucking money and shit because I have none. I'm pretty smooth usually in a lot of ways and I can find some way to get some money, so that's good. But the thing is, its like, you get nickels and dimes here. You get ten dollars here and twenty dollars there and then when you do that you just spend all of it on food and bus fare. And sometimes there is no means of work.
When I'm down, I'm really irritable. And I sit there in my head and say all kinds of shit that's just stupid. Like, "This is fucking bullshit. I hate this fucking shit." Depression, rage, they're like really close to me. I'm trying to get my act together, keep my house clean and have it actually look like a home, even though it's a piece of shit. I don't really feel like I'm capable of dealing with the stress of trying to get a new place, even though I'm unhappy there. I don't feel like I can go anyplace and get hired, that's why I don't even care if I have a mohawk.
It's like, well, fuck you. I wouldn't even be able to get a job here, so why even bother? I break shit a lot. I mean, if something gets me mad, "boom". It's over with. It's broken.
Or if somebody else gets me mad and we're arguing about something stupid, like we're arguing about that cup of juice, and we argue too much, I'm gonna fucking smash it or throw it. If it keeps going, I'll pick it up and smash it, I don't give a fuck. And then later on, you're all like, "This is stupid. This is my house. What have I been doing?" And I wanna be able to take care of that because I don't wanna hurt anybody, and I don't wanna be hurt. I mean, I like violence. I discovered I like violence. But the thing is, what I mean when I say that I like it, it's just like boxing, for instance. To be boxing, to be able to punch someone with a pair of gloves is cool. What I mean is I had some problems with this guy and he hit me in the head, and I jumped up about four feet and landed on him and just wailed on him, and that's the first time I ever beat anyone up, really, except for being a little kid. And so I discovered, "Uh, oh. I like violence." I'm the kind of person that like-if somebody's doing something really wrong, really wrong, for instance, if somebody was molesting a little kid or trying to steal an old lady's purse or fucking with a blind guy, I'll get up-even if I don't know them-I'll get up and protect them.
And then I'll kick some fucking ass, its like, "Oh, cool, its righteous."
And if something's righteous, I love it, man. It's awesome. 'Cause if somebody just did something really bad to somebody that was helpless against them, I'm for the underdog. I'll go, "oh, guess what? You're not so helpless because I'm here and I'll knock the shit out of somebody." And if somebody tries to fight with me too badly, then I might kill 'em, if I had to. So like I said, I like violence, I like, kind of, boxing and shit, but I don't do it because people look at my eyes when I get to that point and go, "Fuck. This guy looks like he's going to kill me." And so they don't want to fight ever. And I'm more of a diplomat.
I don't want people to be fighting. That's not what I'm trying to say, what I'm trying to say is I like to bring people together, make everyone be a big, happy family, but sometimes, occasionally, there'll be a dumb uncle or something that does something stupid and has to be beat up, but that's the way it goes.
We waited until night to board our train. Most of the day we spent hidden in a ditch on one side of the tracks. Boy it was hot this time of year in Wisconsin, and the mosquitoes were relentless in their hunt for human prey.
The four of us had just come from Minneapolis. A month there had been too long for me and Dilly, who had rode on the high-line from the West Coast. Frank and Jordana had been settled there since May. The summer made it rough for any of us to rot in one place for too long. So in spite of warnings and rumors of trouble on the border, we decided to venture into Canada.
The first worker we talked to was helpful. He got us water from out of one of the units, and dispelled the stories we'd heard of heat sensors locating tramps who tried to slip undetected over the border. Kids had been telling us all kinds of tall tales in uptown when we'd told them of our intentions.
We played hide-and-go seek with the bulls that night, darting out of sight of the spotlight and climbing up ladders with our heavy packs. It would have been safer to catch out on the fly, but we were new to this yard and unsure of what was headed where.
Once safely tucked away in some grainer holes we swatted mosquitoes and waited in silence for our train to get moving. Frank and Jordana were in the car opposite us, holding their puppy Rita to keep her silent. The bulls spotlight flashed over us several times until the train finally broke air and we were on our way.
That night we climbed up on top of the grainer, riding the train like a metal snake that laced its way through the countryside. The wind was furious, tugging at us as we struggled to make ourselves heard.
The next morning, when we came to the border, we ducked back down in the holes of the grain cars. After nearly an hour of motionlessness, each minute fearing discovery, the last search was over, and our train broke air again.
It wasn't until we were half an hour from Winnepeg that the shit really hit the fan. Our train stopped at a road crossing in the middle of nowhere. Looking around we saw no sign of a 2 mile and we were far from any yard.
"Alright fellas! Come on out of there!" came a gruff voice from the porch of the grainer.
There was no escape. One by one we crawled out from our hiding places. Two Canadian railroad police stood by the train. Our belongings were searched and we were questioned while a second squad car was on its way. We made sure to make our answers vague-especially in regards to where we had gotten on the train.
Once they brought us to the station they searched us a second time. Our hands left dirty smudges on the wall.
"Just look how filthy you are!" The guard snorted, pointing at our dirty handprints. "Do you realize how BAD you smell?" He had a shaved head and a gold tooth gleamed in his mouth when he smiled, making him out to be a villain from a James Bond film.
When Merry's bag was searched the guards were convinced his protein powder was an illicit substance we had smuggled with us over the border. From my holding cell I could overhear them arguing.
"Don't play smart with us, eh! We know what this shit is."
"What are you talking about?" Merry said in exasperation.
They threatened to hold us there until they had the powder tested at a drug lab. Somehow we got it through their thick skulls what it really was. After that ordeal we were sent to the Reman Center in Winnepeg, where the real fun began...
An incoherent rumble of voices. Dice roll across the tables. Sometimes you can make out words over the blaring T.V. screen. Black, white, and brown faces. Blue prison uniforms. Guards watch behind thick window. Imprisoned for my way of life. Do I have to change to avoid punishment? Steel bars. Heavy doors. Voices give orders. Mechanical voices that speak from the ceiling People ask me about the states because I came on a train. An immigrant, an illegal alien The meals here are terrible, meat that could have come from a dog And if you don't eat meat like myself you go hungry. Fed off white bread and a grim portion of greens.Then the KLAXXON blares "LOCKDOWN ". Everyone skatters to their The last Lockdown a fight broke out on cellblock 8, a war between rival gangs.Gangs control things here, black market, changing hands
They have more power here than on the outside.
Why are we here? All come from different backgrounds. We've all different "crimes".We go to court in four days. All we can do is wait and go hungry.I tell them I'm a vegetarian. They serve me hot dogs for lunch. I eat white bread
The jail we are in now is extremely overcrowded. Last night we slept on the floor of one of the shipping and receiving rooms with five other prisoners.
We talked to our lawyer today. Apparently we aren't under any criminal charges, but as illegal immigrants we must be detained until a decision is reached on our fates.
Mudpie was sent to a juvenile facility and the dog Layla was brought to the pound. We haven't been able to get hold of them or any news. The three of us are terribly hungry. We were assured by the nurse we'd be brought vegetarian meals. In Canada it is their policy that you can only get veggie meals for medical or religious reasons.
At lunch today we were served corn beef hash, white bread, and soup made with chicken broth. We told the guards we don't eat meat and that it would make us sick.
"We can't make any exceptions without approval from a doctor."
The doctor wouldn't be in for another five days. Until then we eat only white bread.
Before we went to trial we got a story straightened out. A man called from the Winnepeg Free Press. I don't know how he found out about us but I told him our story. Rather than admit our plan to go to Montreal we decided to play dumb. I convinced the press and the judge that we were trying to go West through the U.S. and had mistakenly gotten on the wrong train. It saved us from being deported, but we had seven days to leave the country because we didn't have any money. You can't be a tourist if you don't buy anything.
Our story was printed on the front page under the headline: THEY JUMPED THE WRONG TRAIN, FACE IMMIGRATION CHARGES.
I was suddenly made a celebrity by the other inmates. They asked me about California like it was a completely different world. I became fast friends with the meanest looking fellow on our cellblock so no one dared to fuck with me. Merry and Frank were put in the same cellblock but I was left to fend for myself. The other inmates were there for everything from rape and robbery to murder. My friend J.M. and his cellmate Ali were the only black men I'd seen in the jail. Most of the other inmates were white or native Canadians. J.M. was writing a book of poetry and another book about racial prejudice. He gave me pen and paper. We would sit and write, he read me his poetry. Ali was from Jamaica. "When we get out mon, you can come over. I'll smoke you up and we'll listen to Bob Marley."
Ali and J.M. traded all their bread and salad for my meat. Ali had figured a way to get extra trays of food. When the guard came with the cart everyone rushed in to get their food. During the clamor and confusion ALI crawled on his hands and knees and slid extra trays over to J.M. from the bottom rack. J.M. would hide the trays under the table. I was always given everything that didn't have meat.
Drugs were more available in jail than on the street. I got stoned a few times while I was locked up. The other inmates would blatantly smoke pot in the main room. Sitting by the TV with their backs to the guard they would pass around a joint. One person was always assigned as a lookout.
My cellmate showed me a trick to getting high after lockdown. First he made a wick out of toilet paper, rolling it as tight as a fuse. They won't let you have matches but there was a lighter on the wall in the main room. Before lights out he would sneak a lit cigarette up into our room by concealing it in the palm of his hand.
Once the wick was lit he hung it over the ventilation shaft. Taking a flat piece of cardboard, he would smear toothpaste along one edge to glue it against the vent to hide the burning end of the wick.
When the guards finished their check to make sure we were in our cells he uncovered the wick.
"Fetch the roaches, they're under my mattress!" Je told me.
I got the two roaches of weed from under his bed while he lit the cigarette with the wick and stuffed a towel along the bottom of the door. Taking turns we would stand on the toilet to breath the smoke out into the air vent. By setting the weed on the burning end of the cigarette and cupping it in our hands we were able to suck up the smoke as it burned. Neither of us had the foresight the first time to bum a rolling paper from someone with cigarettes. If the guards came back on the cellblock there was a buzzer that sounded when the doors to the main room opened. There was always enough time to put out the cigarette and cover the wick back up so it could be used again when they left.
The inmates were some of the most inventive people I have ever known.
It didn't take us long to hitchhike to the US border. We left as soon as we were able to get our dog out of the pound. She was miserable there. Her mouth was covered with sores from the restraining muzzle and she was sick from dog food they had given her that was mixed with meal worms. Winnepeg was dull. We spent almost a week there after our four days in jail.Kids there make money squeegeeing cars at intersections. We had our hand at it, too.
U.S. Customs gave us a difficult time at the border. While we were searched they interrogated us.
"Why are you nails black?"
"Because I painted them with nail polish."
"For what reason?" The officer prodded.
"Why? Is it illegal?"
The inspector dropped the question and continued his search through my belongings. I watched in annoyance as he picked up my journal and started reading through it.
"Hey, you can't read that. It's personal!"
He looked up from the book and looked at me like I was an ignorant child. "At the border, everything is open to inspection."
I was probed with more and more questions.
Why do you have this chain?..What are these safety pins for?..When was the last time you used marijuana?..What's your religion?..When was the last time you took a shower?...
The litany of questions was ridiculous. He treated every answer like it was some severe crime.
When it was Frank's turn to be searched they accused him of poaching. He had a bag full of animal bones that he used to make jewelry. He explained to the custom officials that they were taken from roadkill. One of the inspectors examined a piece of opossum vertebrae under a magnifying glass. He insisted it was from a rare species of bird native to Canada, and threatened to arrest Frank for it.
Eventually we were released, but not after more hassle. Our welcome home to the US reminded us once more that our way of life was unexceptable to mainstream society.
Countries are so protective of these false lines of division they've created.For example "Americans" are outraged by Mexicans coming here in search of better lives. As for undesirable runaways like us, the US was just as hesitant to take us back as Canada was eager to keep us out.
I had my baby at seventeen-I was just a kid but I knew what I was doing and was upset about how uneducated some of the others having babies were. I got really angry about it because the people running the clinic didn't really have the time or the energy to educate all these young women and let them know their choices. And so I just started learning everything that I could and started volunteering to teach pre-natal classes at the clinic and trying to get the women together and get them enthused about what is going on with their life and the choice that they've made. That's when I decided I wanted to be a midwife-because I wanted to help educate women.
Because I feel it's like a disease in this country that women just don't know about all of their choices and so they have traumatic experiences, and that, of course, affects what comes later. You know, if you're gonna have a traumatic experience with the pregnancy and birth then that's gonna somehow leave a scar on your child's life. So I just decided, "Hey, I got a cause, I'm gonna run with it now." And I became a certified birth assistant right after I had Paige. I took a course with a group that's actually from Southern California and they have nurse/midwives travel around the country and teach groups of women to be birth assistants.
And so I took the course and got certified, and I attended a few births, but it was really hard for me to just jump right into it because I was working a bunch of jobs to support Katie because I was a single parent. So I wasn't really able to do much in that way. Plus, it's really conservative so, you know, when they see someone like me with tattoos and piercings, a lot of those middle class Christian women are afraid. Well, what I had decided to do was go to Eugene, Oregon because I wanted to go to school there. And I got there, but I had some problems because what had happened was Katie had turned two, and then two days after her birthday we left.
I sold everything and we got a van and traveled to go to Oregon. The van broke down on the way and I had to spend a lot of money to get it fixed so by the time I got to Oregon, I didn't have any money. This was two summers ago, it was probably in July of '95. We camped. At first I thought it was a really great community. I went to get assistance, to get some food stamps, and started looking for a place to live and for a job. Well I guess Oregon was one of the first states to do welfare reform, so they basically did not want any new single mother welfare cases. Which is kind of a shame because when they discouraged me they actually turned someone away who was going to give a lot back to the community.
And I got really upset because I was seeing single white hippie men coming in and leaving the same day with food stamps. But they wouldn't even give me food stamps. I had to go to the soup kitchen and churches to get free food just so that me and Katie could eat. Social Service there was kind of just stringing me along, they didn't wanna give me any help at all.
I'd say, "You know, I need help getting a place to live and tapping into the resources of the community so that I can get into school and get settled here." And finally my case worker told me, she called me in and she sat me down and she was like, "People like you scare me." She told me that I was a bad example to my child, because my lover at the time had facial tattoos. So what if he decided to decorate his body like that, that's not for her to judge. But she told me I was a bad example to Katie-she just went off. And so I got really afraid that they were gonna take my child away because I'm living in a van parked outside my friend's house. She has a kid, too, and so they started messing with her, they were like, "You didn't tell us you had somebody visiting you." And she was like, "I didn't know I had to tell you that someone was parking their van outside of my house." And they were like, "Well, this is unacceptable," you know, they were like, "we're gonna come and check out your house and we're gonna come and check out her van."
And she got upset with me being there because she was like, "Oh my God! What if they find something wrong with me and they take away my benefits." She was working full-time, paying for day care and still getting assistance. I mean they totally had her trapped. I don't know what happened. So I closed my case and I filed a formal complaint and I had to find someone who could watch Katie for two days so that we could panhandle because we didn't have any money, we didn't have any food and so we just, we all panhandled for two days and then we left, because I was really scared that they were gonna find me and take Katie away.
I have my own ideas about raising her and I feel like they're right for me and for her and I don't feel like I'm neglecting her, I don't feel the traveling and living in the van did did anything detrimental to her. I think if anything it did a lot of good for her, you know, to experience this stuff. I think that at her age, before she's put into the school system, it's really good for her to experience life and to feel free and happy as a child should. Why put so much structure on her life when it's all gonna be forced upon her when she gets older? And society's just gonna do that. I deal with her like she's a person. I try to talk to her instead of being, like, domineering.
I think this prejudice is because I'm young, I was seventeen when I got pregnant, eighteen when I had Katie. And they even refused home birth, because they said I was high risk. I was on Medi-cal and if you get pregnant when you're seventeen, they consider that high risk, which was really shocking to me because women in tribal countries are lots of times on their second or third child when they're seventeen. Well I was informed enough though, to ask for birth assistants. And I had a hospital birth and it went ok because I was in control. I had made my choices and had nice people around me.
I think in Oregon that it was more that the social worker's boss, her supervisor probably told her that they didn't want any new people. You know what I mean? I mean sure she could've gone about it in a completely different way, in a kinder way but she didn't. I don't think that's an excuse, but people were over her telling her this was what she had to do. That's a whole other thing with all this welfare reform. If a rich white woman in the suburbs stays home to raise her children, she's instilling family values. If an eighteen year-old single mother was to stay home with her child, she's lazy and sucking off the system.
And that's why I feel like I need to help build a place, a sanctuary where women can come and educate themselves, where women can get support from other women so that we can say 'fuck the system' and we can have our own day cares and help each other out so that we're not forking over lots of money for child care where children are probably getting abused.
There's a lot of judging too. I mean, the fact that we're in our teens. People don't think we're responsible enough, or mature enough, to be having babies. It's not fair.
Yeah, I was sure a runaway.About my mom I guess I was just kind of a part of her life she was trying to forget. Last summer I went to visit with her and I came out to her and told her that I had been dating women. I thought she was gonna react really negatively because she's a Jehovah Witness and they're really against that, and we've had a rocky past anyway. But then I found out that a woman we lived with had actually been her lover and we lived with this woman for two years when I was younger so I was just like, "Wow," you know? We lived with that woman for a while and then my mom met her current husband and became a Jehovah Witness. And so I really believed that stuff because I was a little kid and I was really bummed out because we didn't have holidays anymore (they don't allow holidays) but you know, you're mom's telling you something is true, you just believe it when you're a kid.
I was so scared. I didn't think I'd ever live to drive a car. I didn't think I'd ever live to have sex or have children or do anything because I thought that Armageddon was gonna come. And I thought, "Well, okay. God says you're not supposed to do all these different things," which included, like, masturbation.
The religion believes that you're not supposed to masturbate, right? Whatever. And so I was going, "Okay, this is wrong and I'm doing it and nobody else knows but me and God. So when Armageddon comes, He's gonna know, and I'm gonna die." I was just like, "Oh my God. All because I wanna touch myself." So then finally I got a little older and was like, "Wait a minute. This is stupid." And I started going to performing arts school in fourth grade because I started playing violin when I was five, and I was really obsessed with it. I wanted to be a violin player, I played my violin constantly.
And so my mom put me in performing arts school from fourth grade to twelfth grade. It was a really great experience to have all of these different generations affecting me and going to school with me and creating things together with people. It really made me feel like I was doing something. As a fourth grader I played for symphonies. I played for operas and ballets and musicals and I had several different quartets that we did, like individual performances.
It was the only school in the city that didn't have dress codes because it didn't wanna infringe on our expressiveness and so everybody had crazy hair and shaved heads and ripped up clothes and all the punk rockers went there. So in the fifth grade I started to identify with that. I dyed my hair black, and then I shaved my hair and had a mohawk.
And so my mom started freaking out but so I went there until eighth grade, and I was doing really good. If my kid had a mohawk and they were sitting there in their playing opera, I would be so happy that my kid, they would be able to do this even though they were able to do that, too. But she just didn't dig it. She took me out in the eighth grade, she withdrew me from the school and I told her, "If you take me out of this school, I'm not gonna try anymore," because music was my passion and it was the only reason I went to school. You gotta have good grades in that school if you wanna keep going there. So that motivated me to do good in school because if I didn't, I wasn't gonna be able to play violin.
But she took me out and she sent me to this critical thinking school where they had no art program, there was nothing. I had all academics and each day we'd have a lab in a certain area. We'd have a biology lab, so for two bells we'd have biology, and then we'd have all our other academics and it was the same with all of the different Englishes and everything. I just wasn't down with that because there was nothing motivating me to try or to want to learn anymore. I was like, "What type of reward am I gonna get besides a good report card," which I don't really give a crap about. And I don't care about all this stupid stuff they're trying to teach me because I'm not gonna get to play my music.
So I started skipping school all the time, and I got kicked out of there because I skipped school too much and they were trying to get my mom to control me or whatever but there's nothing she can do when I'm walking in and right out the back door, you know? So they kicked me out and she decided to home school me because she decided that that would be the best thing. Just home school me because she felt that, I guess, that I was getting too much evil influence from the world or something.
She just wanted me to be in a prison, and she wanted to control me. That's what it was about.
So basically, I went completely insane. At fourteen, I had a full-on nervous breakdown. Her husband was physically abusive and she was physically abusive to me, too, which was easier to deal with when I had a life outside of my home. Then, all of a sudden, when the only time I got to leave the house was when I'd go to church, I just couldn't handle it. And so I started hurting myself because I needed to feel I had control of something, feel like I had some power, so I finally left.
At fourteen I left home. I went to a friend's house and then-I left on a Saturday night so that she'd come to wake me up for church and I wouldn't be there, I had planned it that way. So I called her the next day, late in the afternoon, and she was really upset. I mean, of course, it had everything to do with her. Going back to the school where I could play my music was out of the question because she felt like there were people there that were gonna influence me in a way she didn't feel healthy.
She found out I kissed a boy, and he happened to have a huge, mohawk that was stuck up everywhere and it was orange and red and yellow. And that just really freaked her out. I mean, I guess if you had a beehive on or some penny loafers she wouldn't have gotten so freaked out but she saw me kiss this boy and that was the end of it. She was like, "Oh my God, my kid's turning into this punk!" And her concept of what a punk rocker is is pretty distorted anyway, so I did tell her.
I told her I wanted to go back to school, but at this point I was over it.
They put me in Juvenile Hall because my mom would put a warrant out on me. 'Cause, like, they won't arrest you if they don't file a runaway report. So they arrested me, they called my mom, and instead of coming and getting me that night, she'd leave me in jail overnight. It happened about a half dozen times. I would get arrested, and I'd get stuck in Juvenile and then they'd come and pick me up the next day and either they had to take me home, or to a group home. So they took me to a group home. The first few times they took me to a group home and it was the type of a place where there's like, six people in a room and you've gotta follow the rules and you were able to go out and do stuff. It was cool for a while, but they were talking about getting me into some work corps program and all this, and I was just like, "I want to travel and I want to live and be happy, I don't wanna do what society is telling me I have to do.
When I left home, my mom sold everything. There was a violin that I had bought, I had had a job when I was really young, and I worked and I bought a violin from one of the other kids.. And then there was another violin that my grandfather had bought for me which, to this day, is hanging on the wall. The violin that I bought with my own money, she sold it to somebody at the church probably for, like, twenty dollars. I paid close to a thousand dollars for it, this is money that I worked my ass off for. She got rid of all my clothes, she went through all of my papers and threw out my pictures and just left nothing. I think that actually, she did fuck me up, in a lot of ways. I have a lot of problems dealing with my anger and dealing with my emotions and that's a direct effect. She was teaching me and because she has a screwed up concept, she kind of passed that onto me but I was lucky enough to have left at fourteen. And I don't think I would've stayed any longer but she definitely affected me.
How did I support myself? I panhandled and ate out of the trash and mooched off of people. I was going to school with people who were so much older than me, so I knew a lot of people who were a lot older and already out of school. People there liked me a lot. And in that school we had a big sister/big brother program, so I had a big sister who-she was really cool. She helped me out a lot when I was around. I traveled, I went-I mean, Cincinatti's a really central location. I went to New York a few times.
We went south, I went up and over to Chicago. I went up to Minneapolis a few times and Michigan. So I would just leave and travel and then I'd come back. I mainly spent the winters there. But I got arrested a lot. After the first maybe six months after running away then they really didn't fuck with me that much. She'd put a runaway warrant out on me if she felt that whim.
And then I would just be walking on the street and the cops would pick me up because she'd, like, describe the way I looked. So they would see me and pick me up and send me straight to the group home because they knew me by then. Then my mom would come to pick me up from the group home and drop me off on the strip. And I'd be like, "Hey, will you take me out to lunch or something? Or will you give me some money so I can get a Subway sandwich?" And she'd tell me she didn't know if I was gonna use this money for drugs. Oh my God! $1.69 for a six-inch sub sandwich. ? Right. What am I gonna go get with that? Oh, I completely just skipped the whole really fucked up thing she did. When I first got arrested, they took me to a mental institution up in Dayton. And they stuck me in there for a little while. And then I told people in the mental institution how her and my stepfather used to hit me.
Then when they approached my mom with it, my mom withdrew me from the psych unit right away. I guess child protection services were like-and I was going, "No, they don't hit their children, they hit me." Their kids were little, they didn't hit their kids. She had a son and a daughter, who I love very much with all of my heart. When they started getting older I started seeing the patterns where she was gonna start working into being physically abusive to them. I would always just step in and make a big scene so that the energy would shift back to abusing me because I was-I'm a big kid now and I've been dealing with this my whole life so I would rather keep dealing with it and take on whatever she's gonna try to put off onto them because I didn't want them to deal with that.
My mom is just-she came here on my birthday in February. My birthday's on Valentine's Day and they don't celebrate birthdays or anything but she called me and said she was flying in three days before my birthday. So I was like, "Okay. This is one of those 'I'm not really coming for your birthday', but really she is, kind of thing." And so I was really excited because-plus, she was coming alone and she had just told me the past summer about this woman that she lived with, and I was like, "Yeah, my mom's gonna come out and she's gonna realize Jehovah's not right and that she's a dyke and she's gonna be happy and she's gonna be my mom. Yeah!" So I had a lot of expectations on it, and, interestingly enough, a really good friend of mine read my cards the day she got here and totally predicted everything that was gonna happen. Just that there was gonna be a major confrontation. And the cards that came up were what I wanted to happen, it was the star part and it was just the most beautiful card and then the other side was the devil. I was like, "Oh my God, what is this?" And he was like, "You're not gonna know to expect this confrontation." Sure enough, when my mom gets here she calls the Jehovah Witnesses. From the airport all the way home I had to listen to her talk about how great their religion is.The visit was a nightmare. She ended up storming out. It was just like the day I ran away only this time she was running away from me.
Last September I was sleeping in the squat It was about 10:00 in the evening. I had been sleeping until noon because of a previous binge Suddenly I heard a knock at the door. It was Buddy, a previous drinking buddy of mine. Norm was with him. He was just a Saturday night drinker, but a drinking buddy also.
At the time I was pissed, because in my alcoholic stupor I blamed Norm for blowing up my old van that I used to live in. When actually I could have had more concern for a can of oil for it rather than wonder where my next beer was coming from.
I managed to cool down enough to invite them in. We talked for awhile and Norm said why don't we move? I was broke at the time and thought anything would be better than living in the squat where we were without money, without beer, without hardly anything.
Off we go in an old ford pickup truck. The ride there was terrifying. We were probably doing ninety miles plus, and both of us were drunk. Even at that speed and the both of us drunk it seemed to take forever to get to Norm's girlfriend who'd said she had a twelve pack. We decided to sleep for awhile. Norm gave me the front seat where I slept pretty sound. When I woke up we were only twenty miles from his girlfriend's place.
Here we were in Nowheresville without any money, gas or food.
We went to a mission of course. They'd do something for us but not beer At least they had rolls and coffee. Poor people could hang out there during the daytime. The mission was ok except for all the talk. When I was broke I used to hang around AA clubs and try to pass the time with them. Missions are different.
I remembered when we were in the junking business with Norm's old Ford pickup truck. We'd get a load of junk sell it and get drunk. I had my tools in his truck and one day he wasn't around. he was gone, my tools were gone. The next thing I done was go to the junk yard where we sold the junk we picked up and they told me that he went to California.
I used to go to a temporary labor outfit where I'd get part-time jobs to keep in beer money. I met a guy at one of these times that was worse off than me. We became drinking buddies. We started talking one day about San Diego, Las Vegas and Oakland. I decided to move there and find a squat.
In the meantime I was dealing from a car with another guy that I met at one of the AA meetings. Finally the First came. I get a check for Veterans benefits. I made a down payment and bought the car I was dealing from. I packed up all of my belongings and started out for Las Vegas. Norm had tole me about a squat in Oakland but I thought I'd try Las Vegas first. I'd heard a nobody could get rich there.
Things were going just fine until I approached the Nevada border.
In the mountain just before reaching Nevada on Highway 15. Suddenly I found out no way could I stop my car. I was going up and down the mountains and around curves but I couldn't stop my car. God bein willing I reached a level rest area where I managed to turn the engine off and coast for a while.. By wiring secondary back on carburetor. I found out the engine would slow down. This way I made it to Mesquite, Nevada. By this time the car was acting up again. I was in Mesquite, Nevada with $50 in my pocket. I spent the $50 in a bar in Mesqite, and I was homeless again, I was starting to get desperate so I made a few calls. Finally I went to the Police Department where I could get a ride into Las Vegas.
I was in the Police Station asking the lady about some help. She must have thought I was some off duty cop making a trip to Las Vegas. She called some dudes and made a connection for me to go to Las Vegas. I was to meet them at my car. I was standing outside my car for a while waiting for them to show up. Three men showed up in a luxury car. As we talked the driver told me to get my stuff and put it in the trunk. In the next breath he told me to hurry up. I left behind some very valuable stuff that I could have dealt in Oakland. But at least I was on my way to Las Vegas.
We were on Interstate 15 for about a half hour when we spotted some smoke to the west. As we approached we saw a car on fire. The guy that was driving stopped the car to help out. The first he done was grab a 2-way radio to summon help. He first went on top of a hill where he couldn't get reception. Then he came back down around by the car which was itself like an antenna so he was finally able to bring in a fire engine. This is where I assumed they were off-duty cops.. They done a very professional job of summoning help and they set a Traffic Control Post. I just done my best to stay out of the way.
About an hour later I was in Las Vegas. The driver asked me where I wanted to be dropped off. I didn't know the town very well so I said anywhere. He dropped me off at a bus stop.
I was sitting at this here bus stop with all my stuff wrapped in a sheet. I looked around a little bit and saw some free pamphlets of attractions in Las Vegas. Wished I hadn't blown my fifty that was left after the car down payment, in a goddamn bar.
I wandered around for a while and tried to meet somebody to talk to. I finally meet this guy sitting on some steps with a beer in his hand. We talked but it didn't seem to lead to anything so I continued to walk, I was looking for a place to panhandle.
I walk around for a while and meet a guy who's pretty much in the same boat. Together we walk to down town Las Vegas. Then we separate and I go my way. I'm just sitting on my behind on the sidewalk for the longest time. Someone tosses me a quarter even before I work up the nerve to do any panhandling. I wanted to make a connection with someone at a squat-I hate to go to shelters. So I just sat there, trying to talk to people. Finally it was starting to show signs of daybreak. Suddenly time I meet up with the dude from before who 'd pointed me towards downtown Las Vegas
He told me of a place where we could get a free meal, so we walked there. It took a long time and carrying my stuff in a sheet was a real drag. There was a big line at this Mission.. The dudes in line were fighting and for some dumb reason we didn't get anything to eat right away. We went on to another place. This place had a big yard where a lot of homeless dudes and women could stay during the day without some sort of trouble in such a place. We separated again. I was told of a place where I could get tobacco real cheap. I was still carrying my stuff and I came across a big bush where I thought I might be able to stash my stuff and no one would see it.. It was great to be rid of having to carry it. I stayed at the place for the afternoon and finally some of were called to take a shower. We done so and afterwards we were fed. Still I wanted to find a squat where it wouldn't be so sad.
I was clean, had a clean shirt on and headed toward Main Street. Here I commenced panhandling. It didn't seem to go too bad. I was making enough to keep me in cigarettes and food and decided to sleep in the woody spot under the stars. During these broke times I didn't drink cause I just made enough to get by.
Next day during my wandering I sat down at a Bus Stop. Some dudes were sitting there talking. Somehow you can tell homeless people from the others. The one dude told me cops were trying to get rid of the homeless in Las Vegas.
A few days later I still hadn't found a squat. Due to my disability I thought maybe I could get into a hospital for a while. I walked for about 5 miles one day to get to a hospital but when I got there I found out it only catered to the rich. I was hoping to get into some place so I could holdout until my next check would come.
So then I went to another hospital.No way would they keep me. In Las Vegas it seemed there was no way of getting off the street or to get meds for my particular diagnosis. Then some one told me about a VA outpatient clinic. I found it and they gave me my meds. To clean up though I would have to go through the bleak process of staying at the Mission. So let's face it I might have been a little funky.
Later, I can't remember the exact time, I was panhandling along Main St. As the day went by I got change from a few people. One guy stopped and asked me if I was hungry. I said yes, He gave me a ticket to get a meal and coffee at El Cortez Casino Hotel. I went there and got sausage, eggs, hash browns and coffee.
Finally I lucked out. A dude who was going to Oakland, told me about the great squat that he and his buddies shared there. He played bass in a band but nobody liked their music so they weren't making enough for rent. He said I could come along since I had a driver's license and could drive when he got tired. So here I am in Oakland. The squat got busted two days ago so now I'm looking for another.
I was homeless when I was pregnant with my second child. My mother kicked me out in the middle of winter. She was mad because I did not sweep the floors, so she kicked me out and I was pregnant at the time. And that's sad, that's really sad for a parent to throw you out because you didn't sweep the floor. And I was homeless for a good two years, and I decided, "I'm going to go to Florida where it's warm." So I went to Florida after I had my daughter and I got on SSI there in Orlando. And I became pregnant with my son at the time that I got SSI. And he weighed nine pounds, six ounces. He was huge.
And I had lost custody of my daughter at the time because I was homeless, and then when I came back I said, I have an income now, the SSI and the AFDC and I have a son. And I want custody of my daughter." And that's when I started going with this guy who abused her and me. I went with him until my son was close to five years-old, and then I left him and went to San Francisco.
I was with the kids in a squat for almost two years. It was safe in a way since the guy i'd been with didn't know where we were.Then the social worker helped me get into an apartment,. They paid my deposit and second month's rent and part of my first, and that made the difference. But the guy found me and he beat me again. And I was forced to go back. So then I waited until he went to work and we ran away to a squat in Hollywood. We got thrown out so.we stayed in a shelter for three months, and I saved my SSI money up in the shelter and got my own apartment. And then two months after I lived in Hollywood and had my apartment, I met Buddy, and then we moved to a squat in Berkeley.
I ran away from home when I was younger and went on Dead tour and just kinda ended up here, coming to the West Coast I'm from Virginia.
I had uh, family problems. My family's kind of weird I'm the sanest. And I'm a bit of a wingnut myself. My bus stops at outer space if you know what I mean.
Jeremy
I went to Berkeley High. but by age fifteen and a half I ended up in the juvenile court system. There was family problems. Me and my ma was on different planets. What happened was this-I had been in Juvenile Hall a previous few times and I said, "I have a feeling, Ma, that the judge is gonna let me go. Well, do you promise to let the judge let me go?" She said yes, and I said, "No, promise me." She says, "I promise." Come that day, the court and the judge goes, "Will you accept Jeremy back home?" So he said if she wouldn't accept me, I'd have to stay in Juvy until they got me in a group home. And she stood up and said no. She lied to me. She said no when she knew if she said no they'd have to keep me.
Sweet Leaf: Uh, when I was seventeen I took off from home to go explore the world because of how it was at home. I had a crazy childhood and then all of a sudden my mother married a really rich dude, and I just felt like I needed to get away. Come see the world. Yeah, ever heard that saying "can't buy me love"? That's exactly what it was. Can't buy my love. And, I just, I don't know, it just didn't feel right. He was just weird. Anything I wanted, he'd get it for me. It wasn't the way it was suppose to work out, I wasn't happy. So I went on a Grateful Dead tour like most kids-came to California-banged around for a while. I met a kind family who taught me a lot of things, a lot of values, a lot of morals. More than what my family could've taught me, I believe.
Star
For a while, during the summer, when I ran away, uh, I stayed in abandoned houses, under bridges. For a while, for, like, a day, I stayed in People's Park. Just for a day, though, because the police bothered me that first day and I left. Well, after I was arrested for running away, um, the police officer that I had known for seven years, the same one that I threw a car door at, uh, told me that I was the reason my mother was so depressed, told me that I was only causing her problems and that, he basically told me that I was the worst child in the world and that I didn't even deserve to be alive, is what he portrayed across to me. And I think after that moment I really-somebody I had known since I was seven years-old told me this just because he was paid commission to do it. I got arrested for running away. I'm only thirteen.
Doug
I'm running away from government, school, all the restrictions that we have on ourselves, you know? If you put yourself in one place for so long and do things over and over and over for so long, it gets so old and boring and tiring. That's why you have to leave and do things, you know? You have to get out and adventure and have fun and make people happy. And, no, you can't just sit around and watch TV and go to school and work and listen to people tell you to do this and that for the rest of your life. It's impossible, it's immoral, you know? It's-in fact, it can't be done. It just can't be done, I don't know, it's.... I like it out here better, anyways, it's so much freer, it's, it's lovely, you know? You get so much, people love you, people pay attention actually sometimes, you know, especially when you have beads like this, and jewelry, and they laugh at you and, get people to smile, yes, that's fun. I don't know, I don't know. I guess being straight and dreary is all I'm running away from.
Raven
Well, both my parents are supposedly, schizophrenic, I don't know, I don't believe it. I think it's like, a government plot. 'Cause they both, were stationed in San Francisco in the late 60's, and they both, were like flower children. My dad has talked me down from a bad LSD trip and, you know, you just can't do that unless you've been through that experience. And my parents are pretty lenient people but when they got put in this hospital I moved in, I guess, with my aunt and uncle and they called me a bad influence on their children because I would stand up for my rights with them and they called that 'bad talking' so I had to leave. Well, it was kinda like, not my choice My grandparents thought that my parents were too lenient and because of the situation they're in, the courts and everything, the grandparents didn't pay attention to my parents. Yeah, they're just crazy, you know, 'children are to be seen and not heard'. I was sixteen years-old and I got beat with a belt because I had a pack of cigarettes. It was like, you know, my uncle made me take my pants down and stuff, at, like, sixteen years-old. It's like, you know, you pervert. Whatever. I didn't understand that. My parents never gave me spankings or anything when I was young and it was just really weird. Um, well I started going to Dead shows, and I went on tour and was havin' a blast. Yes I was havin' a blast like everybody else, and I really liked that life.
Jeremy
I was so pissed when Ma said no to the judge. Cold hearted bitch. I couldn't get over that matter, you know, to realize why she would do such a thing. You know, breaking a promise to her son. Four days away from my sixteenth birthday, I ran away from the group home they put me in because I saw myself as, you know, sixteen. For girls it's sweet sixteen, they get to wear makeup and go and date. Well usually for guys they get their driver license, you know, they go out with their girlfriend, well I was in a group home. I didn't want that. I wanted to go out, have a birthday party, fun, you know? So I ran. And. you know, sayin', "Hey", you know, to the system, you know, "You're not gonna stop me from celebrating my, my birthday", you know? " You can't do that to me. "
Sweetleaf
I grew up with a dad who knocked us all around regularly. Then all of a sudden, Christmas night my freshman year, we get thrown out of the house. My mom takes me to a brand new home. I found out she'd been having an affair with this man for eight years, and they say, What do you want? They could buy me anything I wanted. It was so overwhelming. And I hated the guy for it. He didn't show me any love, just bought me a lot of stuff. He'd feel me up when she wasn't looking and make me hold it. He;s still in Nevada but I don't talk to him any more.
Oh, he was great with his fists and sometimes a shovel towards me and my brothers and my sisters and my mom. Oh, yeah. He'd bang me around. Then he'd try to get into my pants. Then my mom would start screaming and try to stop him so then he's bang her around. It was Saturday Night Live. My mom would slash her wrists a little and someone would call the cops. Then she'd say it didn't happen and she wouldn't press charges.
Star
I spent two nights in juvenile hall.for running away For for about a year I've been on probation, and I'm gonna be on probation till I'm, like, fifteen. I had to stay in the police station, in the interrogation room for about five hours.
Doug
I don't really classify what I done like running away in my head because I think it's wrong what they done to us, you know, I think it's wrong that they can try to keep you restricted, like, I mean, you're restricted from birth, I mean, you're in a cage in a crib, once you're born and then you grow up, you go to school every single day, you have to get up and do this, do your housework, do your homework, watch TV, go work. You have to work all the time. What is with work? Everybody doesn't have to work. Work isn't for everybody, you know. I mean if I tried to get a job they'd probably fire me or something because I stink too bad or something. It's impossible, you know? For some people, you just have to do things like that sometimes. People just have to go out on their own and have fun and be themselves. That's what it's all about. Being yourself. And that's the whole key to it, I think. And happiness and love and peace.
Raven
Well I kind of got dropped off at Berkeley the first of this year. It was New Year's Day and I didn't have anything so I spanged and got about forty cents. Coffee's a buck around here. It was wingnut time in Alabama. Freaked me into aliensville.. The first few days I was here I was scared to death. I didn't know anybody, I'm like, "Oh, oh God" I finally like worked my way in and figured 'oh this isn't really a bad place to be homeless', except for the cops, they give you trespassing tickets and stuff and wake you up at 5:00 in the morning, I had a dream about being fifty-one-fiftied but it was just a dream. How to get moisturizer on whdn you're homeless? Where to get day old cinnamon buns. Where and how to pee and shit. Where to change your Modess before you look like a murder scene. But it's really easy to eat here and easier to be homeless than in New Orleans say. So, it's like, you have people to relate to. Wingnuts like me. Tribe of wingnuts. Platoon of friendly wingnuts. Company of wingnuts. It's not totally isolated. I've got friends of all kinds, I've got gutter-punk friends, I have hippie friends, I have junkie friends, I have tweaker friends. You know, I'm pretty much friends with everybody unless they try to hurt me.Then I do my act. I off them with a potion call;ed kubakatchie or spelled something like that. Got it from a West Indian friend. I mean they don't die or anything. It's not poison. It just stops guy from even wanting to get it up They just feel hexed. Their aura darkens or something.
Sweetleaf
Yeah, I'd say I'm houseless, not homeless. Homeless by choice. It's not exactly great but it's better than where I was before.I meet a lot of aliens like myself in this purple striped space ship. We hang out in the park a lot because that's where the spaghetti trees grow.
Jeremy
And so I ran, you know. I ended up out here in Berkeley, homeless, and not knowing much about it, you know, I learned the street Once I ran, everything else from that point on was my fault. You know, I don't blame my mom for that, because it was me who ran, it was me who made the decision, to get out of there. Now my mom understands why I did get out there.But she won't take me back. She's scared of me.
Star
And the horrible thing was I hadn't eaten for, like, two months, so when the cops got me I was asking "Could you at least get me something to drink, something to eat?" They're all saying, "No, you can wait until your mom gets here".Aren't cops supposed to get kids ice cream while they wait for their moms. I told them they should watch more TV and get civilized, I told him he could eat my pussy if he got me a tuna melt.
Yes they did they were going to send me to the G-ward, as a 5150, which is, um, being violent against yourself, 'cause I had scars like all over my legs and on my wrists and stuff. But that wasn't from me that was when you sleep under a bridge it's very hard to keep dudes from coming down and trying to wake you up. So that time one of my Blood friends came down from L.A., and, um, his way of waking someone up is cutting them until they do wake up, so, yeah. So they were gonna put me in G-ward as a 5150.
Sweetleaf
My father would get pissed out of nowhere and he would take something and he would put it somewhere where he knew it would be hard for us to find it. It'd be really hard, and he would come to us and say,"Okay, I need you to come out here and find a hammer," and we'd go out there and be searching for hours and hours and he would be calling us every name in the book. I was in third grade when he did this regular, he was calling me every name in the book, throwing things at me, I mean, and he just beat the shit out of me. You know, my mom would come out there, she's like, all "BOOM" and just, you know, would knock her to the ground. There were times when I stopped my dad from killing my mom. This one time I was in the bathroom and I look out the window, and there's my dad kicking the shit out of my mom, I mean, literally kicking her in her stomach and her ribs, while she's down on the ground and screaming. And when I get out there he tells her right in front of me, "If it wasn't for her you'd be dead. You're lucky she's here."
All my brothers and sisters ran away 'cause they're like, a lot older than me. Well, the second youngest, she's five years older than me, she ended up getting caught and kept coming back but all my brothers and sisters are gone.
I mean, it was embalm you. But then I pulled through it 'cause I was the baby. I mean, I was the only thing my mother really had. I mean, I came from a white supremists type of environment where it's all white people, and, like, I remember this one time this black kid came to our school, and he didn't even last a week. His whole family moved, it was really sad.
Raven
Well, the hard thing's like, day to day, like, is keepin' your self-esteem. If you're panhandling then some people say stuff like like " Good job, you bum" or you know they give you this look like you're the lowest form of life on the planet you're and it sort of wears on you sometimes, just thinkin' about it. Stuff that's been hard in Berkeley is like, when I first got here I didn't know anybody I was freakin' the hell out. I'm like, walkin' all over the place, just walkin' around, like, "uhhhhh". I don't know where to go, what is goin' on, just walkin' around and, I slept one night in this alley, and this guy, this crackhead, oh God, kept coming up to me.
At first I'm in this alley and there's another homeless person crashed there, and I was like, "Okay, there's somebody crashed here, this is a cool spot", he was just passed out, so I just, like, got on the other side. Then this crackhead wakes up, comes to me and he's like "here, do you wanna hit this, do you wanna hit the pipe? Blah blah blah, blah blah blah," you know, and he's all tweakin', and he's all, "You're not a cop, are you? And I'm all, "No, I'm just tryin' to sleep, man. Go away ". And he just, you know, wouldn't leave me alone. I'll tell you, that's the worst time I've had in the Bay Area, right there. just, That was just like, "Oh my God, is every day gonna be like this?" I'm gonna be sleepin' in some alley with some crackhead?
Jeremy
I ran again, and by that time-the third time, I was acting up bad, you know? Yeah, I mean, those places weren't for me, you know? I mean, in the time I went in there and ran three times and went into another group home and split from another group home. I graduated from Group, groups all day long, you know? Really, hardcore. You wake up, you do chores. You go to a meeting. You eat breakfast, you go to school. You get a break, you go go back to school, you go to lunch, you go back to school. You get out of school, you do chores. And by that time it's about 4:30, 5. Depending on how the counselors feel, there's more group until transport. Transport's about 9:30. So you got like 5 or 6 hours of just straight groups, groups of this,, groups of that. It can drive you into Grand Central Station in Planet X, Dinasaur Drive.
Star
Well, my mom and dad are divorced of course. Isn't everybody? My dad didn't want me in the first place. He's a spoiled priest. My coming embarrassed the hell out of him. Uh, my mom kind of still regrets having a child, but, she deals with it sometimes.. Uh, my mom waa kinda scared but I called her now and then so she wouldn't get her systolic pressure up to strokesville.. She's on vicodin. She likes downers. She'd have to turn down the CD to hear me. when I'd call.
When I was home I'd get about like ten dollars a day. I dumped that for being on my own. And I'd help people. I have a heart of gold, I'm like Mother Teresa's sister. When I was home I spent most of it on alcohol, I used to be an alcoholic. It was, uh, a year ago. Yes, I used to be an alcoholic; all summer, everyday it was just I have to get another bottle. Um, I'm pretty much dealing with her right now. I'm gonna move out when I'm 15. Yeah, I'm getting along better. Um, my mom rarely bothers to threaten to send me to my father's anymore, except for occasionally. We're pretty much getting along..a little better now.
Sweetleaf
This is my second time really hanging out in Berkeley, and Jeremy and me were hanging by the Grove in the park so when we were by the Free Box we introduced ourselves to each other. And he showed me around Berkeley, showed me around the park and everything.A good time was had by all. And to all, a goodnight.
Jeremy
You know, we find our places. I'll find a really beat up car somewhere, one that really doesn't work, you know, some nights we sleep in that. You know, I mean, sometimes it really sucks because the other night all we we're doing is trying to sleep, you know, till we get woke up by the cops. It's 2:00 AM, you know, and they're like, "You're going down, kids." And we're just trying to sleep, man.
Sweetleaf
They were pretty cool, though, you know, they didn't try to ticket us or anything so it's just like, we went through that but, you know, we just wandered down the street. We stood there for a half an hour just like, "Where are we going to go? What're we gonna do?" And he's just like, "C'mon, let's just go back to that car." Its okay, they don't come back and we get some sleep.It's so confusing. It sucks. Running away doesn't solve everything you know.
Jeremy
Money can't buy you love.
I'm gonna be hopping a train out of here tonight at, like, nine o'clock. I'm going to Roseville Yard, which is-it's a four-way yard. And then I'll be going to Portland on the Highline, which is a freight train line that goes through Montana, North Dakota, and drops me off right at Minneapolis, so that'll be nice. I should probably be there in a week or so.
It's free, it's going your way, and you literally see what ninety-five percent of the population never sees, I mean, going on the highways. You never experience anything, you're not really a part of the environment, you're not really bringing any stimuli. But when you're on a freight train in the middle of the night, you're on, like, four hundred tons of steel... it's amazing, it really is. It's really an adventure, plus, it's free. And it goes everywhere.
There's a lot of danger to it, though. There's a certain vacuum-usually when you hop, you have to hop on the fly, which means it's going around five miles an hour. The train creates a vacuum that can actually suck you under, so that you can actually go under the wheels, which is not a good idea. So usually you want to wait until it's stopping, or whatever. Plus, there's the bulls, who always try to pull you off. And there's always the chance you get a junk train that's going to drop you off in the middle of nowhere for three days, you know, it happens. You have no water, no food. It's all part of it. You gotta stock up on plenty of food and water. Going to the Highline there's a thirty-mile tunnel, and so you have to kinda wet your handkerchief and put it over your face to reduce the carbon monoxide, 'cause you can suffocate on it. And it's pure darkness. And so you just have to stay in one place and keep this wet rag to your face or else you can fall off. And if you fell off you'd be dead. You'd have to drag your broken leg or whatever, like, thirty miles to the end of the tunnel. And there's not much space between the track and the walls of the tunnel.
Last year a bunch of us runaways were living in an abandoned house. Some of us were just, like, fed up with society. I sure was. We were all ages. The youngest I ever saw walk through the doors was, like, nine. So there was a really big range. The place was pretty much abandoned. It was owned by a slumlord. I feel kinda weird talking about it only because I was only there for a little over a year and I guess the house has been there since 1960. So I was a newcomer, being there the last year or so... until it was closed and condemned. See when I got there the house was not in great shape... there was maybe two, three window panes left. The rest of the window was covered by cardboard. There were holes all over the walls. There was no heating and it was really cold. The plumbing was so that for most of the time the toilet didn't even work. The electrical system was if you plugged in the refrigerator and the toaster at the same time, all electricity in the house blew, and sparks would fly out of the shed where a couple of the kids were sleeping. If you walked up the staircase, or if anybody had "intimate times", you know, sex, uh, the whole house would shake so, like, it would feel like an earthquake. And so we always knew what was going on. Strangely enough it was in one of the niceset areas of town. It was surrounded by big Victorians and white picket-fences, and it was a big Victorian house. I don't know how it all got started, I just know that after it ended people I talked to told me that they had been running, like, a Food Not Bombs type-thing in the 1960's, like, feeding the poor out of that same house. The father of one of the kids who ran away and moved into the house said when he was sixteen he also ran away in the 1960's, and when he ran away he moved into that house, too. So it has a really long history. I don't know how it all ended up becoming that house but it just did. It's a big emotional attachment to a lot of people.
I love my family to death but I couldn't really spend time-I couldn't live with them. There was a lot of problems going on in my family, emotional stuff, and I started telling my mom I was sleeping over at friends' houses. Actually I was sleeping in a car by the railroad tracks, because I just couldn't deal with going back and dealing with things, and it was just too hard. One day I met a couple of punk kids. I had seen 'em around before and had met 'em before 'cause they had bummed change from me. And they asked me if I had a place to stay and where was I staying, so I told 'em I was staying in my car.
And they walked with me for a while and said, "Well, if you ever need a place to stay just come to the Humboldt Street house. It's on the corner of Humboldt and Walnut, and if you show up there you can always stay." I actually didn't show up there for, like, four or five months, and then I did. I showed up there and the first thing I remember was walking in and, uh, there were a lot of kids sitting around talking and smoking. There were stencils of, like, different things all over the floor and little baby kittens runnin' around. Someone had dropped off baby kittens and I showed up there and stayed for a year until it ended. That was the first place I really moved in to. It was a three bedroom house with maybe a studio or, or something like that, which my room would've been. My room was very, very small. You could fit a bed and a bookcase in it, that was it. There was a tiny walk-space between the bed and the bookcase. And one window.
My bookcase was a work crate anyway. There was one bedroom downstairs and one bedroom upstairs. When I lived there there was this leaky washroom thing and people in the shed outside. There were people sleeping in the living room and people in the two upstairs rooms. And then there were three people who eventually lived in the ceiling. They put holes in the ceiling and built ladders up there. One made it through the closet. And the others just put holes right up in the ceiling and built platforms on top of the rafters and slept up there. So it turned into a lot more bedrooms than it seemed. I shared it with a guy I was seeing at the time and my cat. Well, it wasn't my cat exactly it was the house cat, but he slept in my room a lot. I also shared it with my sister when she ran away from home. I shared it with those three people and then everyone else shared rooms. We got the toilet to work eventually-they didn't work for a couple of months and then my friend Rob (thank God for him), he braved it one day. We had it duck-taped shut, I mean, it was a really bad situation and he went and, like, I don't know what he did but I smelled it and kept my door shut. And he got it to work.
The house was very dysfunctional. We had an open-door policy, it was never locked. If anybody knocked, they obviously didn't know what the house was, because none of us ever knocked. It was always a parent or police or a stranger who really didn't know the house. We didn't knock, we just walked in. Because we had an open-door policy, it took quite a bit of trouble for somebody to be kicked out of the house. There was a lot of noise complaints and people getting in fights or loud music and stuff like that. It was the fact that there was between, like, nine and twenty people at one time, you know, staying at each night, in the house. So the neighbors complained about the noise, and about us in general. They didn't like the look of us. We were right next to an elementary school. They didn't like that-they probably thought that we weren't good for young kids. They didn't like the garbage and the spraypaint and everything else that was often around. They wanted it to be a nice, pretty Victorian house with a nice, pretty all American family and two and a half children and a dog. When I moved in, the group had made a really big effort to make sure we could stay in the house. To try to make sure that, that the neighbors understood that we weren't the enemy. So we walked around and left letters on all the neighbors' doors explaining who we were and that we weren't going to look normal and we weren't even going to "act normal" but we didn't want to disturb their life. And if they had complaints, that we weren't going to hurt anybody, they could come to the door and come talk to us.
We wanted to set up a community Sunday lunch where everyone would get together and bring food, pot luck, and, like, talk.
We wanted to work with them because we were having problems with people stealing our bicycles, and tried to start a community watch thing. We were trying to build up the community and also help them understand that we weren't hurting anybody, that we were just living an alternative lifestyle to theirs and that a lot of us didn't have choices and a lot of-and a lot of us that did have choices chose not to live that kind of lifestyle that they were living. That started to work but most of the people whenever they had a complaint either went straight to the police or straight to the landlord.
So we never heard the complaint until the police or landlord was at the door and it got so bad that if anybody was even walking down the street after nine o'clock at night talking, they would call 911 and make a complaint about the noise. And so we started getting complaints like crazy. It was pretty much that they wanted to oust us from the community as fast as possible. Some of the complaints were valid, I have to totally admit that the house was the best and definitely the worst in life. I mean, it had the best qualities where people really took care of each other as family, and then it had some of the worst qualities where people really were falling apart, where violence took place and where noise took place and where, you know, it was kinda like a place where people kinda tore themselves apart.
Some people, not everyone, but some people tore themselves apart and then would try to rebuild and that's not always pretty. We had a couple of homeless guys that'd show up and stay on the couches for a while. And then we had a guy named Pappy. I'd, I'd assume he was in his fifties, but I really don't know, I'm just making an educated guess, so if he ever sees this and gets pissed at me, I'm sorry. Actually, I don't even know how we met him, exactly. He was staying at another house and he was sick so I brought him chicken soup. And he asked me if I had a father, and I told him "no". That my father died when I was younger. So he said, "Well, I'm gonna be your pappy, then", and from that point on he declared himself my Pappy.
Later he went traveling and wrote me letters while he was traveling telling me that I should get into photography, which was what I was always into. He had his problems, he was an alcoholic. And so then he came back and had no place to stay so we voted that he could stay on the couch for a while. So, um, he was kinda funny. He was also kinda like the house, the best and the worst. When he wasn't drinking, when he wasn't completely drunk he was a great guy. And he'd sit there and crack the funniest jokes. He used to say stuff like, " You know why there's no toilet paper in this house? Cause there's too many assholes around here."
And then he'd swill on his forty, you know, and glare around at everyone and, like, laugh to himself. And then he'd say stuff like, uh, "This house is like a cocoon. You either die or become a beautiful butterfly." And then he'd swill on his forty again and eventually pass out. He'd get really drunk. Eventually what happened is he got really drunk and harassed a couple of the girls. So I had to kick him and kicked him out of the house. He was upset, you know, he understood that, you know, we-actually we made a deal-we made a deal-we didn't kick him out of the house right away. We told him that he couldn't drink in the house, which is a really hard thing because everyone drank in the house. I mean, not everyone, but ninety-percent of the people there were drinking.
So that would mean that he, being an alcoholic could drink, but he couldn't come back in the house drunk and he couldn't drink in the house, even though everyone else was. Some people smoked pot, but most people drank. Yeah, most people drank and, uh, and then-you know, he acted like a father in some ways. He'd wake up early when I had to go to school, he'd wash my clothes and make me breakfast, and he'd take me places and he'd, he'd talk with people and try to be a father figure. It kinda felt like he was this old wise guy.
And so, you know, he said a lot of good things and he was really close to a lot of people. And he held up, actually, not drinking in the house for a couple of weeks, I believe. We were really impressed and then one night he got drunk again and came on with nasty stuff to one of the girls so we just asked him to leave. I think he tried to contact me-well, I know he tried to contact me, but I didn't get his address.I haven't seen him since then.
Now that the house is gone so, I don't think he knows. I mean, I'm not in town anymore. He acted almost like a father but that's a pretty crazy family to be a father to, so...So was he the oldest? Okay, so tell me about the youngest, about the nine year-old.
Um, the nine year-old stayed for, like, a week. And, um, the nine year-old showed up-he might've actually been about ten. He was pretty close to nine, though, he was young. What happened is, um, one night I was sitting on the couch and this, uh, this guy-this kid showed up, who I didn't really like that much anymore, he was a skater boy who hung out on downtown, but, you know, he's... one of the people, and he showed up at the house and said, "Here. I don't know what to do with this kid. I found this kid on a bus." There was no kid that I could see. The kid, I guess, was outside and he's all, "I found this kid on a bus and he ran away from a group home and he's trying to get to Sacramento, and he's tryin' to hide out 'til tomorrow so he can get on the bus and leave. And I'm wondering if he can stay the night here 'cause he's really young." He was this young little kinda gangster-attitude kid, I mean, I mean he's not really a gangster kid. You know he's sportin' a kinda gangster attitude, little tough kid. And he walked in and he looked around, didn't know what he was walking into. And I said, " Okay, you can stay the night." So he stayed that night. He had an attitude that a lot of people didn't like. He thought he was so tough, but he didn't really know anything. And he was running away from the group home his parents had put him into.
Well I was born in 1977 at the tip of upper peninsula Michigan. And I was born in a small little commune with my parents and another family. It's kinda like, it's like a barnhouse with four or five acres, and it was, uh, they somehow got it for, like, fifteen bucks a month off this old guy. They had this old, elaborate farmhouse and this hunting cabin. And it was real beautiful. I would usually go there, like, every August with my dad. It was real crazy.
There's all these stories from where I came from, all these paths I'd trot. I go there today and I see all these huge, tall trees my dad planted when he was young, about my age. And then we ended up-I was like eight or nine years-old, ended up going to-well, they figured they might as well enroll me in public school by then. So we ended up moving to Portland, Michigan and we ended up moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and then back up to Madison, Wisconsin. So pretty much all over.
It was just me and another family, our family and another family so I guess they had to expose me to a social atmosphere, I'd assume. And plus, they were both-he wanted to be a social worker and she was. And they really couldn't do it up there. You know, it's real impoverished up there.
Well, I left home-I don't know why. I had a great family. I was pretty independent. I moved out of the house at seventeen, went through a couple of apartments and then started living this kind of lifestyle, I guess. I'm the oldest of four.
Well, I went to a public school and we moved around a lot, I never had much time to meet kids and stuff like that. And then we went to-the public schools were pretty bad in general. So they were like, "Well, we're not religious or anything but we're gonna enroll you in a parochial school." And that was the worst, I thought. They just wanted smaller classes, and stuff like that. But that was a horrible education. I went through that, I went to their high school, a little standard high school, and then I stopped going, I was like, "This is ridiculous." And so I ended up enrolling in an alternative school, for, like, kids who are fairly intelligent but can't handle standard schools. It was started in the 1970's by these hippies and it was a great school. I loved high school. I learned a lot. It was very-they told the truth. They really did.
Teachers were your friends. Everything was on a first name basis, and you did what you felt you could do. They didn't teach you anything, they didn't talk to you, they just gave you the tools to teach yourself. Which is basically what you need in life. And to make your own decisions, and express your own individuality, you know? It was great. There were no tests, there were no grades, no nothing. It was who you are, basically, and it all worked. It's a wonderful school.
I never ended up graduating from that school.I was there about three years and that school was never funded by the public school system. So they had a real small class selection, so I ended up teaching. I taught a class on Anarchist history, I taught a year of Kafka, a Kafka class and an Anarchist's history class. I was there for three and a half years and I had taken all the classes, some of them twice, so I ended up having to go to a standard technical school, just to finish up high school, But that sucked. I was like, "No way. This is ridiculous." There was a psychology class that was basically teaching me how to assimilate to this modern world, which was making me sick, it really was. And then the rest of it was, like, it was just garbage. So I never actually graduated high school because I just couldn't stand it, couldn't deal with it.
I'm really into music a lot. I'm in a new band. I was touring and living that lifestyle. Later in life I wanna get the GED so I can go into business at some survival schools in Arizona. There's the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont. Just a lot of ecological stuff. I'm planning on doing that later in life, after I've made my move.
That's just my plan for now. I really don't plan much, just live day by day, I guess I like it better that way.
Mimi's a good friend of mine, but me and Billy and Billy's girlfriend and this other guy, we live in this old restaurant. They tried to renovate it, they ran out of money so they just let it sit. So we just broke in there. It's immaculate. Functioning bathrooms, electricity, we wired electricity in there. Got a stage and our own personal bar, it's weird. It's real weird to be living inside of a restaurant. But it's completely immaculate. We got the locks changed and everything. We've had it for a month, which is pretty long in this area. The property value is pretty incredible out here in California so usually the cops are in the landlords' pockets and the squats don't last for more than two weeks. New York is somethin' different, Europe is somethin' different. S.F. and California in general, it's real hard to maintain a squat..
Every once in a while, luck comes your way. I mean, the neighbors are all-they all know we're there, they like us. They're real indifferent, basically 'you don't screw with us, we won't screw with you'. That's what the neighborhood is like around 56th and Martin Luther King Way.
What makes me happy? Expressing myself. Wandering aimlessly just thinking, just taking everything into learning. The music, the writing.
I used to be on about five different tranquilizers for about ten years. Tranquilizers and mood-altering drugs. They call them psychotropics. Legal stuff. Hospital stuff that they give you when they take you in on a fifty one fifty. Not fun. Straight-jacket for the mind. So I was on all these drugs and when I got off them-I used to be in a mental ward, in and out-it was like a spinning door.
And one time it kinda dawned on me in there when I was going off, I never used to talk or say anything, and then finally I decide to get pissed off because one of the doctors said, "Well, you know, we could always give you another pill for this." And they had brought up things from my childhood. I was an abused kid and I just basically got pissed off and said, " There's not a pill that'll make me better."
What it is is you have to put the pain in it's place and try to help people that have gone through it or stop it from happening to other people, or at least realize that it happens. You have to have patience. Its things you have to work through and different people have different ones-there's no such thing as sanity. And when people try to sit there and talk down to you and sit above you and say, " Oh, you're out of your mind." We should answer, "I'll show you out of your mind. If you wanna see out of your mind, there's a difference."
Different people handle things differently, or the world's too much, or it's a lot of static coming at us and it goes through and doesn't filter out in a way that's acceptable to other people. And then they think, "Oh, well, we'll put you on these drugs and you'll need a drool cup and you won't have any thoughts of your own but you'll be manageable for us to deal with you in this world." Give you a little check, enough to pay somebody to let you live in a little board and care but its not really enough to live on and become a person and have a life and buy the books you wanna read, or art paper if you wanna draw. If they're capable enough not to be home and the government don't care if they're out on the street, and they don't give a shit if they're under a bush and sleeping in the rain, then why do you care if they got their own money to buy their own needs, what they want. And even if they don't know how to manage it and they're broke in a couple days, at least they might have a pad of paper that could last them a month and they could draw, or they had a good day, or got to eat what they wanted.
The world made me a fuckin' mean son-of-a-bitch. Its easy to get hit, its easy to get hurt, its easy to hit, you just fuck up. And everybody does it. So what you gotta do is just move on and say, "Well, so what? I'm living now." Because if you live right now, there really is no then. In the future 'then' doesn't exist 'cause we are creating it now. And what happened then, that was then, and that doesn't really exist anymore 'cause it doesn't really affect us now. I mean, it might, you know, to some extent. You may have gotten poisoned back then and have to deal with it now, but hey, we've got bacteria that are eating fucking sulfuric acid. I'm sure there's something that can deal with the pollutants. Mother Nature's like a real son-of-a-bitch. She can really fucking deal with anything including us. I kind of believe that there's a heaven on earth. I know there's a hell on earth and I know there's a heaven on earth. 'Cause I've been to a few Dead shows where when they said, "This must be heaven," I was going, "You know what? Yeah, right." And it was. And that's all I got to say.
Growing up must be neat because people actually listen to you, your opinion matters, people can't hit you, and people have to respect you and you have to respect people and it's just a cool thing. And then getting older and worrying about-I hear women have vanity and vanity is like a cheap thing. Because when I was a little girl, I used to be real cute, kind of, a little bit. Then I got older and guys always like whoever, but, they'd say," Why don't you get your teeth fixed, you'd be so cute. Don't missing teeth bother you?" I go, "No, they bother you, that's why you say something."
I've never had problems with guys. I've had more dates than... you know what I'm saying? I'm a very quiet person. I'm a bookkeeper. That's my profession. I've lived in Europe and America and all I've ever noticed in America, and this is a bad thing, people want to cart their older people off. They should be learning and knowing that they're our treasure. They remember how things were, how they are, and how they could be because they've gone through all kinds of different times. I was raised by a Buddhist mother, Oriental, Vietnamese, Japanese. My dad's Swedish, so it was real white-white and Oriental. It was split right in the middle.
I can remember having respect for the older people. They lived in your house. You didn't go, "Okay, it's time, Grandma. We're gonna push you off." Instead of the nursing home thing, why not have a big home where the government makes it a real nice thing, not a hospital. Sterile, white, no one caring. You ring a buzzer 'cause you need something, you need something constantly. Stimulus. The whole world was stimulus, now all of a sudden they want you to shut down and have nothing.
Older people are valuable. I think getting old-I like seeing the lines come in. I think that if there is a feast at the end, then I've wrinkled their suit they gave me, you know, I've used it. I hear women that go, "Oh, oh my gosh. I'm getting so old, I gotta go fix it." What does that mean? No lines to show you've seen anything? You've lived any life, you smiled any smiles, or you've cried. Your face shows all your emotion. What do you want, someone that'll fix it for fifteen hundred bucks and act like you've never lived anything? You look good laying in a box. For who? Someone who wouldn't give the time to talk to you when you were living? Never understood or gave a shit about you when you were living?
But getting older is the only wisdom there really is. I think that you love all my lines, and I love that people listen when you talk, not that you're gonna be right or wrong. That's why I don't like to argue. Because there's no argument. Everybody has their own view.
See, that's how much I love you, Leona. See, it wasn't just about the money. We gotta bust in again tonight. Not enough money for a motel, no ways. I got the crowbar. I love you because it's just the way you are, you know. Yes, it's the way you are. It's the way you smiles, the way you look, you know. You're really nice, you know. But see, it's more than one thing I really love about you. Remember that time I saved your life?
You did Leroy. I had the worst seizure I ever had. That was in August. I mean, it was where I could've died. You was praying to God while I was in it, right. Cause I was unconscious I mean, I was out. It wasn't the conscious kind of a seizure, kind of where I'm woke, and I know I'm having 'em. It was definitely where I was out. That's the only one I've ever had like that, and I was sure out. And you was there. And all my sisters was there, right? But you know what? As far as I know, they didn't do too much, except for Marie. Leastways she tried to help.
Yeah, but see, Billy told me to put water on your face. That wasn't gonna do no good. And Bree was talking about slapping you.At first I was standing up there crying and crying. I heard you can't do much for seizures.You know,there's a lot of things that I've done for you cause I cared for you. I'd give you anything I've got. You know it. Sometimes you get mad cause of the things I take back, but I only go sell 'em, you know, when I gotta.
It's because when you don't have the money.
Right
I could understand it, you know. But leastways some things you give me, you don't take 'em back-I mean treasureful things that I will not let you take back.
Yeah, I know. And you're just like that-but sometimes it ain't ' cause the stuff is valuable.
I still wanna know why you love me. Tell me, Leroy.
Well, cause..this is what I'm trying to explain to you. See? See, I love you cause you're yourself. I love you cause, you know, you come to me. See what I mean? So we both got a part of each other, see what I mean? And one thing I do feel about you. Like I sees things is happening and I feel things is happening. So that we's like two peas in a pod.
Sometimes things happen. And I could feel it before it happens.And I could feel it when it's coming.
And I tell you that that's gonna happen. Sometimes you say, "Some things is about to happen. I got a feeling." Like can't nobody walk behind you like late at night without you knowin' it, even if they're trying to creep, because you has hair on your neck in back-a little right here. And the hairs just stand up automatic On their own.
Just like a dog. You know how two dogs get up against each other. And they don't know each other, and they got their hairs all up on their back. See, that's the way I feel, you know. That's just like a dog, though.
I know, but it's just my system. You know, God give us so many ways of feeling things. And just like, you know, that's one of 'em. And He let me knows, that's for sure. See? Cause they can get so quiet and I won't move, see? And I can feel somethin' is around me. It's looking at me. And it can reach out and get me. But see, I gotta be lookin'. I gotta be on the alert, just like they is on the alert on me. See? And then somethin' tell me, "Leroy, get on! Go!" And I do it. You know.
I know. But Leroy I'm getting tired. If you got the crowbar let's go get in. We'll be nice and warm all night.
We'll go soon. I got the place sized up. Nobody know we be squatting there. We're okay there. But like you was saying before, about how we do sometime. How I know when guys or cops is out for us. you know I be telling Joey, "I feel somethin", Joey, and I don't like it, you know. And just like God, was just well like God is around you, you know.
One night, I'll tell ya. This is it, right? Cause there's this spooking in that pink building. My mother-she's runnin' around and we got differences. I've never stay long in that building because to me it were all bad luck. You know, she's a preacher. My mother has her own church, store-front church. And uh, she's real strict and into God. Right? So she's very precautious of her kids. And so, um, I went over there to get somethin' I left over her house. I don't even remember what. So I said, "Leroy, would you walk me around there because you know, it's too late to walk by myself." And I didn't wanna do it. So I said, "We're just gonna go over there and get it," whatever it was, I said, "and then come back."
And you said, "No." You said, "I can feel something. Something's gonna happen to us if we go" Right?
I insisted so we finally went over there and got whatever it was-sweater or coat, whatever. And we was on our way back. And then when we got there, this guy was shooting at all the people outside. Because my sister had stabbed another dude, because she owed him ten dollars, and she wasn't gonna pay him the ten dollars cause she didn't have it anyway. So it was he said like, "I'm gonna take it out on your butt and anyone around." He was gonna beat her up, so when they got in a fight, she stabbed him. And so he went and got another friend, right, cause he was hurt. That was the trouble that you had just felt. was gonna happen. Cause I'd said, "Well, I feel funny too." But I just ignore it, Didn't feel it that strong. Whatever's gonna happen just gonna happen. So I said, "I'm just gonna get my sweater or coat, and then we're gonna go on back,."
I had to put my force into you Leona, you know.
I'd said, "Well, I'm not fixin' to go, and I'm leavin' you if you do." So when I saw you was right I left with you. To a different place that was cool. And then a little bit later, the shooting happened, you know. But they didn't shoot my sister..But it could've been that and us, you know. Anyways let's get to where we're going before I pass out asleep. Take twenty minutes to break in. Even with the crowbar.
That's right, Leona, see, when I feel somethin' in my mind, you know,I think about it, and I feel it in my body, you know, it drive me crazy! You know somethin' gonna happen. I mean it seem like I could feel it. You know, you could be three or four hundred blocks away. Somethin' gonna happen to you I can feel it. I can feel somethin' happening.
Just like if your man is in the war-even though they broadcast over the news.
Wham-bam, you know! Europe is broke out in war. or something. You just don't imagine your old man is dead. They don't have to say it on the news. You can feel it, see? If you got your belief, your ol' man is still livin'...It's gonna come to you. Just like it come to me. If you got the power. It's gonna save you, you know.When we're not together stuff happens to me....you always save me Leroy...
OK. Every time when you get back down there, on that side of the town where I ain't around somethin' always happen to you. But I feel it. And that's why I don't like you down there lessen I'm there to take care of you You see what I mean? Somethin' did happen to you, you know. I don' want you in any squat if I aint there.
Because then it causes me to be upset or hurt. Right? Because it's the fact-you do protect me. But that ain't the only reason why I'm around. It's also because I love you Even though we aint got a permanent place to stay and we having to bust in and keep the door closed tight behind us where we busted in. I'd miss you. bad if you wasn't here.
When we're together, you never had a seizure but that first one Leona.. You never gotten sick. with me. When we went back to your mama's place home, your mama say, "Leroy, my daughter lookin' good!"
She say that cause I looked restful and like I was all right. I had to be eatin' well, you know. Cause it wasn't even fast food I was eatin', but fresh stuff that wasn't makin me sick. When we get food you aways say, "Well, what do you want?" You know. And I pick whatever I want if the price is right.
Well, see, that's one thing I do for you. You know. Like I say, I don't care if I do go to jail for you, cause of you, you know. Cause it's you, you know. Cause I don't care what I have to do to keep you going to just point A. You know, you ain't got no lazy man on your hands don't wanna do nothin' but lay around, wanna go to the shelter. I don't do that. You know.
Yep. I know you worked. I saw you work your butt. hard.You had that eight-hour job every day. Didn't you work at Standard Oil.? I remember what they did? OK, you know how you had to work a week in the hole when you first started, right? You didn't understand that they wasn't really gonna keep you there. But when you left.you knew they put you back a week in the hole if they start you again. But they didn't give you your money, your pay when you left. After a week in the hole.
They only give me but $95 for the week in the hole and nothin for the second week. cause they said I walked off.. I was mad. Two weeks I worked my black butt. I mean, I'm workin' night and day.
See? OK. They done like, I can get off work at 1 o'clock in the mornin' and they'd be back at 4 o'clock in the mornin' gettin' me. And I get off at 4 or 5 in the afternoon or evenin' and they want me back same night.
I'd say, "Leroy, they're at the door. You're gonna have to go back.." And you wouldn't want to get up. But you'd get up and put on your pants, and go in.
One day I like passed out on the job, you know. I was that tired. Cause I mean, they worked me. I mean, I been doin' work so hard my hands hurt.
You could sleep through storms, fires, anything. I can't sleep, cause I have insomnia since a child, and it grew all the way up in me.
OK, just like... I can get real mad some nights. I mean, even if it's really rainin', I wouldn't wear a hat or coat. I would walk in the rain till I just, steam be comin' off me, you know. And people say, "Man, what's wrong, man? Steam be comin' off you. You just standin' there in the rain."And sometimes... See, you gotta have somebody to talk to, or you gotta sit down by yourself, or you gonna walk out to the Bay, or you gonna walk in the hills somewhere. As long as you get away from the "I aint got nothings "you know.
See, just like in the neighborhood. I can go to this part of Fruitvale and look at all the happenins on the bottom ground. I say, "Look at all that nutty stuff down there." You know, I say, "If I was down there, I'd be just like them. Now I'm just somebody sittin' up here on top of the hill, lookin' down." I say,"Look at all that stuff going on down there."
Like to go fishin", be fishin' and not catch no fish. But you had the relaxin' part of it.
I know
"Well, what is you up to today?"
"I'm fittin' to find some work. And I have some more stuff to go do."
`Don't you go be seeing another woman, Leroy! Maybe I have a jealousy problem. OK? But it's way better. I used to really be worried about you, Leroy. But not as much now. When I had other boyfriends, I used to go off, right? And I've gotten better. Right? You was jealous too.
I knows you love me, Leona. That's all I want. You and me. It's just like I told you and my aunties. They think I want someone that's rich. You understand what I'm sayin"? Like, OK. They think I want some million dollar mansion or somethin'.Live in a squat, sit on your auntie's hat.
No we don't want no mansion, just a studio with microwave and cable.
Wait a minute. Now, what we got is what we got! OK?
Only trouble is, soon as we get anything at all, we won't have no money for food, no money to put the PG &E on, no money for first and last and security deposit. And they make you pay for your own line, and your own water.
Some lines you don't have to pay for. Like in Sunrise Park.
Yeah, well I be glad when we got a place. We'd be back on East l4th Street if we could.
They remodeling now.
Are they raising the rents then?
Mmm. I don't know. See, they puttin' in stuff. it's gonna be all new, you know. So they's probaly gonna raise the rent.
You put down any money on a hotel, you can't just bring what you wanna bring up there.
That's true.
You see? And that's what I'm tellin' you. I'm tellin' the truth. It's just like,-OK.-You know, they got TV's already for you. They got the bed for you. They got the chairs. You might wanna bring a refrigerator, a couch, all this. And they won't let you have all that up there. See? Cause they got what they want up there for you. See what I mean?
And some hotels is runnin' like 35, 40 dollars-a night and day. The cheapest one I ever knew was 24 when we was stayin' there. You see what I mean?
The only thing I like about it, the people don't come bother you.They just say, "Just don't get in no trouble."
And we didn't.
What I'm just saying, is they don't come bother you none in your room. You know. "You better not have..." "You need such and such this? Or you need such and such that?" You know the maid might come by and they might put you out you room, and get you another one, and put you in another one. You know, cause they gotta clean that one up.
Yeah.
And see... And it's just like I say, you know. It's great but it cost too much!
Paying $5 0 a night, we can't do it.
Sometimes... I don't care if I do have to stay in the squat, you know. That's savin' up somethin'. I ain't payin' nothin' on the squat, you know.
Mm-mm. Not a dollar.
You know somethin'? If anybody ask why our people's in jail too, it's cause a lot of 'em ain't got nowhere else to stay. So then when they get back out, they don't know where to go. Looka here. I'm gonna tell you somethin'. Let me tell you somethin', Leona. There's a lot of times, I had my mind set to do... like hurt myself. But I said, "Don't forget her." When I hurts I think I'm gonna kill myself.
Leroy and Leona are crossing the street going South on Telegraph Avenue. They're on their way to Oakland for needle exchange. They start to make a left at Channing. Leona sees the light is against them and steps back, trying to pull Leroy with her. Leroy loses it and runs into the traffic head on. He runs towards the headlights. Nobody knows why and he sure don't. The car stops as soon as it can...A student breathes for Leroy for like ten minutes he should get a medal. Then Leroy's breathing ok himself like whatever it was has passed.
An ambulance takes him to Highland. where he waits nine hours for Xrays but they keep him on some primo demerol so he got no complaints. Leona has a miscarriage for which she thanks Jesus.
The truckdriver says Leroy ran in front of his truck intentional, so they put him on a fifty one fifty and keep him in the psych unit for seventy two hours. They would put him on a fourteen day hold but Leroy tells them he was drunk when he run out, which he wasn't. Can't hold you for acting crazy when you're drunk, only when you're not drunk. Trust Leroy to know what to say.
Three days later he be back in the hospital. He pass out and this time he has hardly no pressure so they take him off the stretcher right away and hook him up to a bunch of stuff. He got a blood clot in his head and it touch and go for eleven days.
Leona wish she didn't miscarry cause she scared of Leroy passing away and she want something to remember him. Her auntie caring for her big daughter but this woulda been a angel baby.
Luckily Leroy lives so they back looking for a place by end of August after Leona's mother say she got no room for the both of them. You know what, Leroy ? Since I've known you,you told me "Hey, maybe I should be dead," a coupla times. And it really hurted me, you know. Don't say that stuff again, okay?
We don't have no money and nowhere to stay. except that break in place but I 'm still with you. I ain't goin' just because of no money. I with you cause I love you. It's just like bein' by yourself right here, in the world. See? And then you try to get involved with the world but the world just movin' off more, you know, away from you. See what I mean? Only time the world will really come around, is when you got somethin' for 'em. See that's why I say, "Everything is up for sale." You see what I mean? If you ain't got the money to buy, they don't wanna deal with you.. They don't like you no more. Just one thing. What I see... They can find some old battered building and build so much into it, you know. But it's still just like a shelter, though. And like, you know, you can rest there all day, rest there all night. But it just feel like somebody on guard. Just like somebody break out with a fight here, you gotta go and, don't come back for two weeks, or somethin' like that, see.
Before that you can come in and get your sandwich, get some coffee, some wine, or use the restroom. You can get your little sleep. And then you can go, you know. But see, what they got today, it just ain't good. It's just, the system is just gettin' more worser and more violent, see? It ain't just cause of the way people sleepin' outside or in shelters who ain't got no other place to stay. It's the way they treat us. You see what I mean?
I hope that place we stayed last month ain't boarded up again, though. Cause we was gonna buy a rump roast, right? And me and you was gonna eat off that until Tuesday.
I got the foam mattress, Leona.
I ain't sleepin' outside again, Leroy. I asked you a question.
If it's boarded up again we'll bust in again. I got a crowbar. I was watching a program at my auntie's so what it was-they just let the President talk. Donahue lets everybody talk. He let them say what's on their mind. See, but presidents wanna get up there, and wanna talk over everybody when nobody else can get no words in.
He's says he can do stuff that he can't. Cause the congress won't let him.
That's right. And um, what's that guy's name on "Twenty-Twenty?"
Hugh Downs? Harry Reasoner?
I think so.
Or are you talkin' about "Sixty Minutes?"
Umm. "Sixty Minutes," yeah. With the young guy.
Oh yeah! That show... I know what show he's talkin' about. I forgot the name of it But it's where he helps you. He say, "Now what are we gonna do about the.. uh... whatever it is...poverty or whatever?" And then he have good answers. And whatever it was, he really do somethin' about it
He might only ask you one question. But see, you gotta come up with a hundred answers. That's the one thing I like about him, you know. Now he might ask three or four questions, but you have somebody with him with fifty more questions, see? Cause he be serious.
Right.
Ain't it a nice day Leroy.? Couldn't take much more of that rain. Pretty weird yesterday when we bumped into the lady who couldn't have no kids. Remember?
Sure. I aint forget it. They couldn't have any. So they adopted one. But see, they wouldn't let 'em have the baby at first cause their income and stuff was low, right? Most of their apartment was empty. She was so sure she'd be able to adopt a baby, so what they originally wanted was a little boy with blonde hair and blue eyes, right? Only foster care, they didn't have a boy. So they took the little girl that they found and let her stay for a coupla weeks just on a trial basis. And then, the lady came out there to inspect the house, right? To make sure that the baby would be cared for.
And the house was just like raggedy inside.
It was ugly, till they got to the nursery...
So in the front room the social worker say, "We don't think we're gonna be able to give you this baby." So the lady say "Please let me show you the nursery."
"I don't know." At first the lady didn't want to see it.
See, she seen the rest of the house, and she say, "This here apartment is empty."
So the lady didn't wanna let them keep the baby. So the lady begged her to come see the nursery. So when they finally opened the door, the lady thought it was gonna be sham-shacked like the rest of the place was But it wasn't.
And boy, that lady was shocked.
She said,"Oh, it's so beautiful!"
You know, they had the baby stuff hangin' from the ceiling-all the, you know, baby toys, new baby carriage, new crib with pink quilt and lace pillow, everything!
It was just a palace inside that baby's room.
And the Foster lady was so shocked, about the baby's nice things. And she was impressed!
The baby was about 18 months old. But he was smart. When the lady would say "We need more income, ask for a raise." the baby's eyes would open so wide!
It usually take grown people to understand about income. But that baby knew what income was. She knew food weren't gonna be there, she knew money weren't gonna be there. Wasn't gonna be no clothes for her. When the lady said "Low income." That baby didn't like that word. And the baby couldn't talk, but it knew what they was talkin' about. It listened to everything they said.
That baby she didn't want to be homeless or living in a squat. That baby she had brains.
Leroy, remember the movie, The Humpback of Notre Dame?
Yep, we seen it on TV. But I feel sorry about the hump-back, cause of the way treat him, they beatin', they throwin' stones at him. They tried to everything you could do to hurt that man, you know.
And he was human. He just had a disfigurations, you know. People are like that. They'll pick on people that look different.
Yeah! You know? And I don't like that, you know. It's just like, you know, just seven or eight guys jumpin' on me at a shelter. I got crazy at a shelter one night, you know.Like I say, I'm jealous myself. I love you Leona. And like, I didn't know where you went. And so I left from the Park, and didn't tell you I was comin' to the shelter. So you got on the bus and went on down there. So I come up there with all my gear and everything on my back, you know.
So I get to the shelter. They tell me you leaved out, you know. So, the man said, "You wanna stay here, you know, pay four bucks." I said, "I ain't got it, you know." He say, "Well, then you can stay and do the work, you know, in the mornin' and stuff. So I went out lookin' for you. So they tell me, "Don't go down this certain street." You know. I said, "I'm goin' down it anyway. I don't care if they got guns, knives, or whatever. I don't care who it is."
So me and this other guy walked down there. So we saw you but you didn't know who I was.
I did. Cause of the way you walk. It was you.. I just played like I didn't know who you was.
So these two guys like they was on the side of me, you know. So I get real crazy. "I'll shoot you all," I said. "I' ll kill you! You know what I mean?" And I told you, you know, cause I love you..
You know what they did? All we did was went to the store, and one of them bought me a pack of cigarettes, right? And then the other guy, he said, "Do you guys want somethin' to eat?" He said, "Well, me and him always eat out. You know. We don't never eat here." So I said, "Well I'm gonna head on back." He said, "No, you can eat dinner with us. I'm inviting you to dinner. I'm paying for it-everybody's dinner." So I said, "OK."
We went to this restaurant, and we ate and stuff, right? And we was walkin' back. And I had the cigarettes. And here you're comin' facin' like this, right? You're walkin' like this, and we're walkin' like that. And you went crazy. When I seen you, I said, "Nah. That ain't him." You know. I kept on walkin'. And the guy, he jump back. He look like "Damn, man." You know. "What is this?" You know. "Why you goin' crazy?" Cause they wasn't doin' nothin' to me, you know, harmin' me at all. They were just bein' nice.
But you went nuts. Remember you said, "I'll shoot you so-and-so," and on and on.
Yeah, well see? You know, OK.
It was all over there just because they were with me Did did you think they was messing with me?
Nah., it ain't.. This the point, see. Nah. It's.... OK. Now, you tellin' me, cause you know. It don't make no difference. It just the point. It's two guys can take you off somewheres, do anything they wanna do to you-in the dark. Kill you even.. I don't care how nice they seemed, buying your restaurant food and all.
They wasn't touching me-but you was scared. You was right in the sense they could've done anything.
Folks could beat you up, who would know? See? It's just like you and your sisters, now. They go jumpin' in people cars they don't know. Now see, I'm your real boyfriend. The first thing they gonna look at, "Hey, we lookin' for Leroy., cause the murder's gonna be on him!"
Mm-mm. My sisters have jumped in people's car.I'm glad you talked to Shorty about that. He told us you tole my sisters "I don't think you should jump in them people's car that you don't know. It aint cool."
Which is true. They wasn't. But he can't stop 'em. I can't neither. I'm their sister, and I'm older than them, and I look out for 'em. But we can't stop them.
No. But see. OK. It's just like one night, I don't know, it was at a talent show. This girl Sandra had these little short hot pants on. And, you see, some tough guys was in the audience. And then when that girl left, that same night they found that girl on the track dead. Right after she left there.
Ahh.
You see? And the next mornin' they investigatin' how she got killed, cause those guys, you know, did it. They wanted somethin' from her. There wasn't no money. It's just that they wanted some sex, or her love or somethin', but they took her away from here.
And before it happen I told her, I said, "You see, it ain't cool doin' that stuff."
I don't jump in people's cars, though.
I never go nowhere now, unless you're with me.
So you see, it ain't cool to go alone with strangers. Specially when it's dark and you don't know who you gonna face out there. You don't know who gonna beat on you. You don't know who gonna get you. You gotta, you know, be alert. It's just like in the army. When you out in them battlefields you gotta watch out for your mens. You can't just watch out for yourself, talkin' about, "Oh, I'm gonna run." See, cause your own mens 'll kill you for runnin'.
See. You gotta watch out for them. You gotta watch out for the next ones over there. And see like I told them, I say, "Hey, I'm not gonna run." You know. Cause that's the way I feel. I say, "I'm in the street life. I'm gonna be in there for a long time. And when it's my time to come out of the street life, I'm gonna get out of it. We can make it in squats but we gotta be careful. Not everybody's good like us.
Leroy, seems like sometimes nobody be on our side. Like that other time you was hurt. Not from the car. I didn't see why they didn't call an ambulance and take you when your leg was bleeding.
They didn't care. See, just like I used to tell them, you know. "You don't give me no money. I'm just gonna go out there and do somethin'. And if I go to jail, or whatever, I'm just there." You know. So like they tell you, "We're not gonna bail you." They never gave me nothin'. So why should they bail me out on somethin'? Let me do my thing. And that's it." So like, when I was a kid, the cops could say "Hey, Daddy," you know, (sounding like they was half joking so nobody couldn't get em for it) "could I get two or three dollars?" My old man might give 'em five or six dollars.
But if I come and say, "Daddy, could I have a dollar?" I got a quarter, every Thursday.
Not fair.
No, but see, that's when I real young, you know. You know candy was just a penny then, you know. And like, you know, suckers was just a nickel and stuff. You know, back then. But you know, that's just the way my father treated me like I wasn't worth as much as my sister or even the cops
Why did they do you like that? You was his baby too. You know, I don't make a difference with my son and my daughter. And when I give one somethin', it might have a different color, but they got the same thing. And one is a boy and one is a girl.
How'd you get your kids anyways?
Come on Leroy, you know how I got eM. How I got my son., I was raped. You know. I already tole you. Their father....Cause we wasn't married. It was a illegitimate baby. He raped me and stuff and I kept the baby, you know, because my auntie told me to. And so she said, "Well, let's keep the baby" Cause I didn't wanna be a mother then. Of a raper man. I didn't want no babies.
She said, "Well, if you carry, you know, and have it and everything, I'll raise the baby." And I said,"OK." Cause I didn't wanna be a murderer and really kill it because it was a foetus. It wasn't a embryo. It was foetus already where it was really a baby inside. So I kept it and had it and everything. And she kept the baby for me cause I still didn't wanna be a mother. You know she still got them.
Why they live with her, it's not because I don't want them. You know that. It's because I don't have nowhere for them to stay. And by her getting their A.F.D.C., she can manage okay. She don't get every nickel that she's supposed to cause she's not their mama. But she got her Section 8 apartment when you could still get 'em, so she okay.
It makes it where if they're still living with her, she could still get by. Now, if I have somewhere to live, they're coming with me. and that'd be better. Get what I mean?
Mm-hmm.
And it don't even have to be a two-bedroom. Cause I would put them in one room. If we could only get Section 8. I had Section 8 in Oakland. But their father caused me to lose it. He made it real terrible for me.
The father of my babies, he was like.... He had certain problems much worse than you has-the jealousy stuff where-well, he weren't really jealous of dudes but he's jealous of like the togetherness I have with my sisters and my mother. See. He was my old man then. Henry. See Henry's mother's dead too. OK? And so like when another person's mother is gone, I don't always throw mine up to them, you know. My mother, she didn't like Henry, but she sure took to you My mother couldn't stand Henry.
Yeah, she took to you, for sure. I mean, really close. When she met you she said,"Do you know what?" I said, "What?" She said,"I feel sorry for him." And she had the same spirit I do, because when I met you I felt sorry for you too.
I thought you loves me, not just feels sorry for me.
I does,but sometimes like it's both.
Well, that's OK.
See, I got deep feelins about you. It's just like... One time there was a look-alike just like you. When I first met her I thought it was you You know. I thought you was another lady.
You thought I was Nicole.
This girl named Nicole. Like. OK. Nicole used to be stone crazy. But I mean, she didn't want no women, nor men around her. But she said she'd give me anything I wanted, you know. And I told her, I said, "Hey, I don't really want what you got." You know.
I don't wanna hear about Nicole, Leroy. I wanna hear again how we met.
OK. You seen me on the back porch. OK. I was sleepin' one day. And like I used to get in.
You're not gonna let me talk.
Go on, say it. Go on, Leona, I ain't stoppin you.
You're not gonna let me talk. Cause you didn't meet me. I met you OK? Cause it was like from here to across the street. Like that, right? And so I didn't have any cigarettes. It seem like it's always somethin' that happen. But I was outside. And there was this other man out the window. And I already knew the other man, right? He's a drinker. He's alcoholic. So then I seen you, and I said, "Hey you, come here, you know." And you came. You said, "Wait a minute." And then you really came. You ran over. And when you got to me you was smilin' from ear to ear.
So when you got there, I said, "Do you have a cigarette?" You know. And you said, "No, but I'm goin' to the store, and I'm gonna get some on credit." Cause this store, they used to give certain little things, you know, credit. And then you said, "Well, I'll bring you back a pack. I'll bring you some." So I told you "OK."
So we still didn't talk for a few minutes, and you really left, you know. But then you said, "You know what? You look just like this girl named Nicole." I told you flat out, I said, "Well, I'm not her." You know. You seen that once you got close enough. But then that's how we met, was by me askin' for a cigarette. Doncha remember? That was the end of that. Or the start. We could've left it as that, but you liked me.
Seem like you used to see me all the time, but I never seen you.
You would be gamblin'. Just little stuff. But I didn't know who you was.
Then we got together and since then we be together all the time.
Remember how when we first had our checks we stayed at the Bar Hotel, and you would get up and cook in the microwave for me. Wash clothes, clean up the room, all that.
You know why, Leona?
Three years you done it. I never got outta bed in those days though. For two weeks straight I didn't leave the room, did I?
No.
I didn't leave that room. I mean, you know, no outing at all. And one day you know what you said? You said, "Do you wanna leave now? Do you wanna go for a walk or somethin' ? You've been in here two weeks." Which I had. And I still didn't leave. But then one day I said, "Yeah, I'm ready to go out now." So I went and bought a bottle of wine and came back.
Doctor at the clinic, he give me pills but that stuff don't help cause you have to keep getting more and more and more for the pain....
Also it keeps you sleepy most of the time.
That's what I wanted. I'd take anything that make me feel sleepy.
See, but like I say, you know, I worries about you and I like to watch over you. But see, you know, like I worry about how the guys feel about you or what, if they just leave you alone. Just like I told you I say, I wouldn't really leave you nowhere stranded.
Once you left me though. I didn't have nowhere to go. And then when I went to my mother's house, the bad seizure happened to me. See, if you hadda stayed there, then you know it wouldn't of.
Uh-huh, Leona, but I didn't know it was gonna happen.. I didn't know you were gonna have a seizure.
Yeah, that's true.
Well, see, Leona. Something a woman must understand from a man, sometime when he make up his mind, when he' fittin' to go, he fittin' to go.
You know what, my sisters was arguing with me because of your phone call.
I was just tryin' to let them know I was goin'.. You see what I mean?
Don't make up no excuse for leavin' me, Leroy.
Oh, no, no. OK. OK.
I didn't ever go for that.
Now, wait a minute. Now,I;M just like me and you got mad now. I might leave out the door. But I might sit right there on the porch. and just cool my temper down and walk right back in.
So later you went to my mother's house yourself.
Well, I cooled down so I came back. OK, just like. I used to get real mad. I mean, it'd be raining nights. I mean really raining. I wouldn't even wear a hat. And I have a coat on. But I would walk in the rain till I just, you know, I mean steam be comin' off me, you know. And people say, "Man, what's wrong, man? Steam comin' outta you. You just that mad, huh?" I say, "Yeah. You know."
And sometimes, see you gotta have somebody to talk to, or you gotta sit down by yourself, or you gonna walk out to the Bay, or you gonna walk in the hills somewhere. Long as you get away from a lot of that stressin', you know. See, just like in the neighborhood. It's just like I used to... I can go on top of Point Columbus and look at all that's happenin' on the bottom ground. I say, "Look at all that crazy stuff down there." You know, I say, "If I was down there with them, I'd be just like them,
Here I somebody else sittin' up here on top of the hill looking down."
You would go out there just to get peace of mind.
Fishin' too.
Cause you'd would go fishin' and not catch no fish. But it's the relaxing part of it.
Yeah. And always that, you know. that's why... One thing about goin' up that big hill..I just tryin' to get away from all this other stuff.
Mm-hm. That's what you say when you upset. So I say, "Hey, you know, you might be mad, just like me sometimes." There was this girl one day. And I don't know. Her boyfriend got killed or something on a motorcycle. She said he got killed on a motorcycle in front of the house some kind of way. So this other guy came up to her, and he was real mad at her. "I think you're the one that got him killed."
And the girl say nothing. And it was rainin' too. And she be cryin', you know. She be cryin' and stuff, you know. And so I come over there. It was cloudy, you know. It looked like it wanted to rain. And so I sat down there and talked to her about like a hour, you know. And like, she stopped cryin'. You see what I mean? She just stopped.
And like, you know, when I was talkin' to her, the clouds and everything just cleared up. You know. It just got sunny, you know. And then she started wipin' the tears away, you know. And she thought I was gonna wipe her tears. But I brung the joy back to her. I say, "Little lady, forget him. Think about other stuff. Maybe go to church and stuff. Maybe sing."
So I was still talkin' to the girl, you know. And so the girl, she got happy. Then she say, "What is you? Is you a wizard or somethin'? Or what is you." You know. I say, "I'm just a person just like anybody else. I just like to make people happy, you know."
Leroy, you ain't always happy yourself.
No, but I is more than most folk.
So I was trying when I was talkin' to the girl. And like, the girl kept askin' me. She said, "I mean you go around here, you just make everybody happy like that? I say,"I can't make everybody happy. But when I see somethin' deep down in somebody, knowin' I could raise it back up to 'em, and make 'em feel wonderful, you know, it makes me feel good myself. So she say, "Next time I see you, I want you to come back by here and we got another conversation."
Now you gonna sit here and talk to me about another woman...
Nah, Leona. But the girl was fine. I mean, you know.
I'm not interested in that. Talk about somethin' that I can discuss too. I'm hungry. When we gonna get the rump roast?
Soon. Last night you was starved. You went and bought two packs of cookies and ate 'em all too. And the packs was about 50 cookies apiece at least.
See, I got 'em cause they two packs for a dollar. So, you know, just like anytime you got fifty cents, you can get you one pack of cookies. Every time I see a deal on cookies, I'm gonna get 'em. I love cookies. I jist love 'em, you know.
Leroy, we been together three years-how long has it been since we had a place we knew was our own.?
It's been a while. First and last and security is what stops everybody from getting apartments.
First, last, and deposit.
But see, you gotta look at it sometime. It's just like I told you, you know, my aunties, they get mad at me. They think we want to be rich. You understand what I'm sayin'? Like, OK. They think we want some million dollar mansion or somethin'.
It would be nice.
Sure, but wait a minute. Now, what we got is what we got. OK. Like me and you would sure like gettin' us a nice little one-bedroom instead of squats.
If we does that we won't have no money for food, no money to put the PG&E on. And they make you pay for your own water..
Some waters you don't have to pay for, like in Sunrise Apartments.
Yeah, well I'll be glad when we gotta place. See, once I had an apartment-one room, but its own bathroom. Wish we could go back there. On that ok part of East l4th Street.
Yeah. See, they burned that up. But they rebuildin' it. They're remodeling now.
But are they raising the rents then?
I don't know, Leona. See, they puttin' in new stuff. It's gonna be all new. See when you was stayin' up there it was OK, you could afford it. When they fix stuff, they usually throw folks out and raise the rent. If we could just sleep through a month we'd have enough when we woken up, to afford a place.
My sister is in the same boat. She never gets an apartment because the check is just enough to get by at the the beginning of the month. After a week or two it's not enough for her to live on.
So instead it's just like this, you put down all your money on a hotel, first week when you get your check and you can't even just bring what you wanna bring up there. You knows I'm tellin' the truth. It's just like OK, you know they got TV's already for you. They got the bed for you. They got the chairs and a lamp. You might wanna bring a refrigerator, couch, all this. But they won't let you have all that up there. See? Cause they got what they want is up there for you. You see what I mean?
And some hotels is runnin' like thirty-five, forty dollars a night. You see? The cheapest one I ever knew was twenty-four when me and you was stayin' there. You see what I mean? You know somethin'? Only thing I like about it is the people they don't bother you. They say, "Don't give us no trouble."
And we didn't.
Right. But I'm just sayin' this here. They don't come at your room, you know, any time, you know, or bang on the door. You know the maid might come by there to make the bed and gives you towels is all. But they might put you out your room and get you another one, and put you in another one, you know, cause they gotta clean that one up. And see, just like I say, you know, we don't mind. But it cost too much. That be the trouble.
With twenty-four a night, you can't do it.
That's what I was tryin' to tell you. I don't care if I do have to stay in the squat again Leona. You know. That's savin' up somethin'. I ain't payin' nothin' on the squat.
Mm-mm. Not a dime.
You know? That's just like you mighta all just gone on to jail. You might as well just. You ain't payin' nothin'.
I'm just sayin' that's why a lotta people is up in jail for, cause they ain't got no money. You know somethin' though? Why a lotta peoples in jail too? Cause a lot of 'em ain't got nowhere to stay. And then when they get back out, they don't know where to go.
Folk in jail, aint they been out somewhere doin' somethin' against the law.
But see, some of 'em do that, cause they ain't got nowhere to go Let me tell you somethin', Leona. There's a lot of times I had my mind set to do something to myself. I mean, I wanted to. But I said, "Forget it. Leona miss me. I really better do something else before I hurt myself or kill myself.
You know what? Since I've known you,you told me "Hey, maybe we should be dead," a couple of times. And it really hurt me, you know. Cause you had just said, "Hey, look. We don't have no money, nowhere to stay."
But I answered," Leroy, I'm still with you. I ain't goin' with you cause of money. I'm goin' with you cause I loves you." And you aint the lonliest one. A lot of times my mama wanted to kill herself. She tried to kill herself like three times. She took 48 pills one night. And another time she turned on the gas jets and closed the windows. Because she just wanted to die. She felt alone. She felt like nobody cared for her.
We feels like that sometimes. The world just movin' off more, you know, away from us.. See what I mean? So best thing you know, only time people will really hang with you, is if you got somethin' for 'em. See that's why I say everything is up for sale, you see what I mean? If you ain't got the money to buy, they don't wanna deal with you. They don't like you no more. Cause all your money's gone right? You and me,Leroy, we like people broke or not. It don't make any difference.
Remember how that man was gonna shoot you cause we have that mattress on some roof? When we first got here we was here about a week and a half. We was sleepin' up on top of these apartments on the avenue. But we wasn't botherin' nobody. Nobody told us to move or nothin'. So, one night we was sleepin' up there, then this man, he come by out of nowhere and said, "Get up or I shoot you."
I say, "Hey, man. You ain't got to talk to me in that tone of voice, man. What's wrong with you?"
And the more nicer I was to him, the more meaner he got. And he was a jerk. I had a stick like this here. I pulled it out my bag. It was real thick. And I say, "Hey, man, well, shoot me then, cause I'm gonna beat the livin' mess out you." I hated to do it, but you know, I ain't said nothin' rude to this guy for him to be standing over us like he did.
So he says, "Get your stuff and get out." So look here, a dude was right behind him. He didn't say nothin', you know.
But you know what? You know why he didn't? He's the one that was the real owner. And he was really frightened to tell us to leave, so he went and got this other dude to tell us.
Yeah, but see, now if that dude would've really shot us, the real owner would've been sorry probably.
He was a wingnut. The one that did us bad about shooting
Yeah, see, cause they ain't scared to die. You know, some wingnuts ain't scared to die. "Just kill me," they'd say. You know. And see like, I ain't got nothin' against that guy. telling us to leave. But now the way he went to raisin' his voice and all that, that really had got me against him. You see what I mean? And see, just as like, if I had run into him one day in the street or anywhere else, I'd remember his face. He'd get racked up on by me, you see what I mean? Cause I'd snatch him and start wolfin' on him.
I'd say, "Remember when you told me you were gonna shoot me? Now, you shoulda done it that night, cause the way you done me when I wasn't botherin' you. Cause it was wrong for you threatenin' my life like that, you know." I say, "Me and my old lady was sleepin' up there. And we didn't have nowhere else to sleep, you know. So then we was walkin' along. We walked for about three hours, so finally we seen this white dude, and he said, "There's this church where you folks could sleep." And he told us how many blocks it was. But it was full up when we get there.
Everything is always full up when we get there.
Shut up Leroy, we aint got no cause for complaint, we okay for tonight.
So we really came there. And it was like at least forty people that was out there already, right? So we wasn't doin' anymore harm than they was, sleeping in this empty church.
Right.
And I said, "If I tell you what, Leroy. If they gonna bust us, they gotta bust them right along, right?
Mm-hm.
But no one never came. The janitors and everybody told us-"Sleep there long as you be quiet. And throw out the trash and stuff," right? But you know what, this man, late at night, he start cussin' and actin' real foolish, right? And he caused us all to have to leave. Right? Because he was the floor show. And it really hurted me because then we had to find somewhere else. So we went to this other yellow church, that's further up, you know, on whatever that street.
So then we went there, but at least they let us sleep there for about two or three weeks at least.. So that was good.
Like I told you before, everything's okay long as we don't kill ourself.
Wasn't that like what I say when I first met you? Every bad day have a happy ending Leona. Let's get the rump roast. I still got the crowbar to get into the squat.
There have been squatters for as long as there's been the concept of owning land, and squatting on land or in buildings which officially belong to someone else, takes place all over the world. For millions of working-class and poor people it is absolutely basic to their survival.
There are probably as many reasons for squatting as there are squats, but one thing all squatters have in common is poverty-- they are either earning a low income or are unwaged workers collecting income, if anything.
The private rental market is controlled by real estate agents and land owners who often discriminate on the basis of age, race, gender, marital and employment status. The extra high rents demanded often make it impossible for low income people to afford. And yet, many privately owned houses remain empty.
After exhausting all other possibilities, many people turn to squatting as a solution to their housing problems, either temporarily or on a long-term basis. It provides immediate shelter and frees up money (usually paid out for rent) to go to other necessities such as food and clothing. Ultimately it can break the vicious circle of poverty, homelessness, etc. It is also an empowering tactic to resist the system that treats us like products and takes away our basic rights to food, clothing, and adequate affordable housing. Through squatting, we can solve our own homelessness, and at the same time fight for a better standard of housing, one based on need not greed!
FINDING A HOUSE AND SETTLING IN
DIFFERENT APPROACHES
The easiest way to find a house is to walk around a local area. It is not hard to tell if a house is vacant - look for an unkempt garden/ broken or boarded up windows/ uncollected mail and other telltale signs. You may want to ask a postal worker, a local shop owner or a neighbor if anyone is living in a house you think is empty. It's important to know who owns a building you squat or consider squatting. An easy way to find out is to check the letter box or ask the neighbors. You can get information about a property by going to the local City Hall, saying you are a neighbor so you may need the name of the owner next door. A story saying why you want the owner's name would be useful, such as "the fence is falling down, trees are causing damage, etc." If there are plans for the house to be demolished or renovated, these would be submitted for approval at the town planning department. Anyone can go there and ask.
Empties may be owned by individuals, companies or government departments. Depending on their attitudes and the reasons they've left the building empty, you can expect mixed reactions from them. (some governments already have policies about evicting squatters. Deceased estates aren't really owned by anybody. They are being looked after by public trustees until a relative or private trustee can be found. The public trustees aren't likely to evict you unless they find out that you're there, so it's a good idea not to tell them. In some cases it can take years for a private trustee to be found.
You may choose to contact the owner before you move in, explaining that you are homeless, on a low or no income, and want to live in the house as a caretaker, looking after the place and keeping vandals out.
It is very easy for the owner to refuse you when approached like this, so you may prefewr to move in first. This way you can create a home, doing any necessary repairs and work on improving the property so that when you contact the owner he or she may be impressed that you are putting work into the place. You may then want to invite him around so he can see what you've done. If or when to contact the owner is a hard decision to make. Some owners may appreciate your decision to contact them rather than waiting till they find you on their property, and if they've had problems with vandalism before, they may like the idea of having you look after their place. If this works it can be particularly good because you will have an idea of how long you can stay, or at least be given some notice before eviction.
However some owners will be shocked or outraged that you are living on their property and evict you as soon as they find out you are there. This is why you may choose to wait until the owner comes around - it may mean you'll have more time in your squat.
Sometimes people who don't own the house may come around. (police or people pretending to be the owner.) If you know who the owner is, you can tell them they have no right to be bothering as you have an agreement with the owner.
As a squatter, you may choose not to tell anyone you are squatting, perhaps because you don't feel comfortable with the fact that you cant afford to rent or own your own home, or maybe you just feel your squat will last longer if you are quiet about it. There is no need to tell the utility companies like PG&E etc. that you are squatting - it is none of their business. It can be a good idea to talk to your neighbors, letting them know you are improving, not trashing the place, because they may be supportive, especially at eviction time.
You may even decide to leaflet the area to get community support, or start a local squatting group.
GETTING IN AND SECURING YOUR SQUAT
On opening your squat, bring along new barrels for locks, slide bolts, torch or candles, hammer, screwdriver, etc. If you can not get into the house easily crowbars are very useful items but hard to hide while carrying.
You can usually save yourself a lot of trouble by finding an easier way into the house. Try the obvious ways first, doors, windows, skylights, etc. They are often unlocked. Louvered windows can often be easily pulled out of their frames. Old style windows with rotating catches can often be opened by slipping the catches with a knife. If all else fails you may be forced to break a window or door. Be sure to repair it and clean up immediately. Never admit to having broken anything or you may be charged with breaking and entering. If you have to make much noise it may be wise to go away and return when the coast is clear.
As a last resort you could consider going through the roof by removing several tiles and entering through the ceiling hatch. If there are several of you, have someone as a lookout while getting in.
Once in, change all the locks you can. If there are any doors where you cannot change the locks, either nail them up or put bolts on them. This applies to windows as well.
As a general rule it would be best to have someone in the house for the first week of squatting it, and to make sure it is locked at all times after that. It's important that the house is secure and that the only people who can get in or out are you and your friends.
LOCKS
Once you are in your new home you will need to change the locks so you can feel secure and safe. If the lock is a common one, you will need a Phillips screwdriver to remove the three screws from the back section. Two long screws secure the backing plate and the barrel/cylinder to the door. Remove these and the barrel will be released. The barrel should be the only part that needs to be replaced. You may find that when you position the new barrel, that the tongue is too long. The easiest and most accurate way of solving this problem, is to remove the tongue from the original barrel and place in your new barrel.
To do this, release tongue by sliding the U-shaped clip around with pliers or some kind of lever until the notch moves and the tongue is released. Repeat this process on the other lock. To refasten, put tongue in position and push U-clip closed with pliers until the notch is in place and the tongue secured. Now you can put your lock back together making sure that the barrel is straight and all screws are secured tightly. If you encounter a deadlock, don't despair. It's a bit more tricky but not impossible to deal with. You may need two or three people, a crowbar and/or screwdrivers.
Jimmy door from doorway and, using screwdrivers, forch the lock tongue and deadlock button back into the lock and then the door can be opened. Be careful of glass panels when using force. Once the door is open, remove the screws from the side to take the back off. With some deadlocks, the back section is all one part which cannot be dismantled. If this is the case you will probably have to get a whole new lock. If the lock is in separate sections it is possible to reuse it.
DOOR NOTICES
Often the police and owners used names on doors (in order to get mail) to evict squatters. Having a door notice is a sign to police and owners that you are squatting and have to be evicted through the civil courts. Door notices will get you evicted faster than anonymity so get your mail through General Delivery or a friend or a social service organization, saying you are homeless.
A door notice announces you are squatting to the neighbors. Some may support your action and some may just ignore it but others may inform the owner that you're threr which could lead to an earlier than necessary eviction. Without a door notice up most neighbors will assume that you are paying rent. It's up to you to choose if you want to use a door notice or not. Here is an example of one:
TAKE NOTICE.
1. That we the residents of this property have made this our home because we are homeless and on low incomes.
2. That we have not committed any criminal offense in occupying this home and we have no criminal intention.
3. That if you attempt to enter by violence or by threatening violence we will prosecute you under section 207 of the crimes act (forcible entry).
4. Squatting is a civil matter between us and the landlord.
5. Our sole aim is to make a home for ourselves (and our children).
6. We are prepared to pay a reasonable rent and ask to live in peace.
YOUR HOME
Just as you have taken the initiative to search out an empty and turn it into your home, so can anyone else. You may choose to have an open squat with lots of people living in the place and any visitors welcome to stay as long as there's space to crash. But there's no reason to think because you're squatting you have to open your house to anyone who knocks on the door and says he or she is homeless. It's up to you, the people who open the squat, to decide how and with whom you want to live. Be strong and live in your home the way you want and don't let other people take over or turn your home into a place where you don't want to be anymore.
ESSENTIAL SERVICES
State government guidelines state that all essential services must be connected on request regardless of status of the resident i.e. tenant, owner, squatter, etc. This, however, has not stopped refusal of services as a tactic against squatters, both by private landowners and government departments.
When moving into you new squat, it is usual that the electricity, gas and water are disconnected. To get them connected all that is usually needed is a phone call to the appropriate companies: local Electricity supply, Gas and Fuel and Water. The numbers are in front of the White Pages. They might ask for a work and/or estate agent number as a character reference.
Try not to tell the service departments that you are squatting. Always check and, where possible, repair plumbing and wiring before you apply for connections. Officialdom will often back down, if they are hassling you, when you remind them of department policy.
If parts are damaged and services are unavailable until repairs are made, then you may need a tradesperson to repair such things as removed power meters. Electrical wiring has to be safe before it will be connected - they don't like exposed wires. Try to do as many repairs as possible yourself - there are home repair books at local libraries. Try no to let trades people know you are squatting if you need professional repairs as they may think you won't pay and refuse service.
Gas:
Connections can be arranged over the phone, no ID is required.
If they know you are a squatter you will have to pay by one of their plans for temporary residents. This means you pay a deposit and make payments each month based on the consumption of the occupants who lived in the house before you. This may mean you will pay for more or less than you use. If you miss several payments in a year, you will be disconnected. If they want you to pay for the energy you use they may ask for a security deposit.
Electricity:
Local councils will request you come in and fill out a form and produce ID.
A good story (busy moving in and need to warm baby's bottle - need electricity today) can often get them to connect without ID. A pseudonym is then possible.
The same applies to gas if they know you are a squatter and/or on a low income.
Water:
Is usually connected, but if not, check the water meter tap, and then ring the number listed in the white pages to get the main turned on.
The owner should pay water rates but each month or yearly, there will be a water consumption bill. This will probably be small but you may need to pay it unless the owner is very generous.
Some owners who leave properties empty will also neglect to pay rates. If the water board threatens to restrict supply you may negotiate and pay the rates for the amount of time you've been there. This will mean explaining that you are squatting and have no contact with the owner. If you are in contact with the owner she/he wont pay the rates you may have negotiated to pay. Perhaps on the assurance that you can stay for the rest of the year.
Telephone:
Is difficult, but possible to arrange over the phone.
Has been refused to squatters before.
If there is an outstanding bill, you may be able to negotiate connection by paying a deposit.
SQUATTING AND THE LAW
Squatting is NOT a crime. There should be no criminal charge for occupying a house without the owner's consent. It is a civil matter, not a criminal offense. By the act of squatting you are committing trespass to land and the owner may sue. However in practice this is rerely if ever done. Squatting and taking direct action over homelessness, directly challenges the notion of property, ownership and the use of land. It is a political action and thus the squatter must keep in mind that such political action may come to the attention of the police, the armed wing of the ruling class property owners.
Squatting should be a matter between you and the owner; the police should not be involved since it is not strictly a criminal act. However, police generally resent people who take control of their own lives and this may try to involve themselves through criminal charges. It is quite easy to avoid committing a crime through squatting, but you should know the type of offenses the police may try to pin on you. Arrests of squatters are not common, most owners and some police just want you off the property, it is only in the case of resistance or when you come across the real PIGS that you will probably be arrested.
When attempting to squat, that is before you have entered and secured the place, you could be charged for a number of offenses. Remember they have to catch you in the act and remember that the penalties listed are the MAXIMUM only handed down in extreme cases. For minor infringements in your situation of homelessness the fines are low, and the court can impose bonds, community services, suspended sentences, etc. with imprisonment or probation only as a last resort - but remember it is THEIR law and THEIR court, not ours.
Forcible entry - Taking possession of land by force (breaking in). This applies to squatters, police and sometimes owners alike, unless they have a proof of possession. (Max. penalty: 1 year imprisonment or 12,000 fine or both).
Crimal damage/Willful damage: Unless caught in the act, it is difficult to prove any damege was caused by you, especially if the place was empty and others have entered and vandalized the property before you squatted it. However, it is likely and easy for the police to pin it on you if you hAve any tools on you when caught. It is best to repair any damage done (whether by you or by others) as soon as possible so it can't be pinned on you. (Max. penalty: criminal damage - 7.5 years imprisonment or large not fixed fine, willful damage - 6 months or $2,500 fine).
Possession of implements with intent to commit a burglary: This is when you have been caught with tools, but there has been no break in or they can't prove it. However, the police must prove you were intending to steal (unlikely the case in squatting) or to commit an offense involving criminal damage (also unlikely in the case of squatting, only vandals!), but it could possibly be used against squatters. Don't admit anything! (Max. penalty: 3 years or $36,000 fine)
Possession of house breaking implements: This is an alternative to the above offense. It is easier for the police to prove, but is a lesser offense. Dont't admit to anything. Although an explanation of lawful purpose could help, once you start talking it is difficult to refuse other tricky questions. Although you have to prove lawful excuse and not the police, save it for the court! (Max. penalty: 3 years or not fixed large fine.)
Unlawful presense on premises without lawful excuse: Lawful excuse means whether your presence on the premises was excusable and that your conduct may well be innocent or excusable although not legally defensible. The crime is supposedly intended to punish behavior linked to a criminal purpose or violating community standards of decorum and tranquility that is likely to put occupants in fear. Attempting to squat empty properties for emergency housing should not fit this definition, and is arguably excusable. (Max. penalty: 3 years or large not fixed fines).
While actually squatting there are a few offenses to be aware of:
Unlawful presense on premises without lawful excuse: Mach harder to prove when you are actually squatting because you are the occupants. Residing on a property is surely an excuse for being on a property.
Having arrested all on the property there is no barrier for the owner to throw your possessions out on the street and secure the place. You are then faced with no home and a criminal charge to defend.
However if the property was under a tenancy agreement withthe previous occupant within the last 12 months, the owner can ask for an order of possession. This doesn't cost much and is a fairly quick procedure. The court will make an order of possession, and the police will carry it out. However the squatter can force the owner to enter into the same tenancy agreement if he or she would suffer a greater hardship than the landlord (apparently there must be some connection between the squatter and the previous occupants but try it anyway). This is worth a try if you are desparate to keep your home and are willing and able to pay rent, but rarely works.
This information is intended only to provide the main legal issues around squatting. The law is not clear on the subject because squatters usually cannot afford legal costs to challenge it. If you have any hassles with the law, contact your local Legal Aid and if you are a lawyer who is willing to assist squatters, contact the Squatters Information Network which gives 24 hour legal assistance.
COALITION AGAINST POLICE VIOLENCE
This is an organization whose aim is to expose the violence police can perpetrate against ordinary people and where possible to support people in their complaints and actions. So far the group has organized demonstrations, supported individuals in court against the police and is in the process of compiling a book detailing attacks by police on the community. Since, on occasion, squatters may find themselves the victims of police harassment and assault this group may be of interest to you.
HOMES NOT JAILS
This is an organization based in San Francisco which helps squatters locate in abandoned buildings, providing support. They are not listed because they are a guerilla organization but you can get their number from some of the people connected with the organization Food Not Bombs or the Info Shop at Long Haul listed in Berkeley, California.
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE POLICE COME.
1. Do not open the door. Speak to them from a window.
2. If they attempt to enter, ask to see their search warrant and identification. If possible, write down names, ID badge numbers (on their hats!), license plate numbers, what police station they're from etc. Ask them whose orderss they are acting upon, t.e. police, owners, neighbors, etc.
3. To delay them while you contact a support group. Tell them that you are in the process of negotiating rent withthe owner.
4. If they ask you how you go into the building tell them the door was unlocked, window was open, or you may be charged with forcible entry, criminal or willful damage, or possibly burglary (though you are very unlikely to be convicted even if they try).
5. Draw their attention to you door notice (if you have one), telling them that further information can be obtained from it.
6. Remind them that squatting is a civil, not criminal offense, and that you have received legal advise to talk only to the owner.
7. Do your best to avoid antagonizing them.
8. Try to establish a lawyer that you can refer the police to if they wish to know any further information.
9. If the police have come to evict you at the request of the owner, that usually means the end of your squat but you can try stalling them by telling them that you are in the process of negotiating rent with the owner.
10. If they aren't acting on behalf of the owner, explain to them that they have no right to be bothering you as you are living in the house with the owner's permission.
11. Be confident and don't let them tell you otherwise. They have no right to break in the house without a warrant of possession or a search warrant. They may not be legally allowed to break in, even with the owner's permission, in order to arrest for Willful Trespass, but the law needs to be challenged to order to be certain. It may be worthwhile to clain that any attempt by them to break in is Forcible Entry.
RESISTING EVICTION
So, you've been given an eviction notice and you want to stay there, this will fill you in on how to Resist Eviction. There are three things you can do. You might choose one or more of these methods.
1. Approaching the media: Contacting the media will inform the public abvout your situation and squatting in general. Through this you might gain public support and the owner might reconsider evicting you or giving you more time. It is important to trust the media people who you have contacted, as you don't want them to distort the story. You might try to contact public and commercial radio, current affairs and other television shows, local and other newspapers.
2. Community support: This is when you have liasons with community groups and neighbors to inform them of your situation and gain their support. It can be helpful to start this as soon as you move in, as you can be on good grounds when it comes to eviction time. You can visit neighbors or leaflet letter boxes, contact housing groups, welfare groups, councilors, and other community groups. Their support can be shown in a letter or phone call to the owner(s) or local newspapers. You might ask them to sign a petition or to personally turn up to support you upon the day of eviction.
3. Physically Resisting: It's eviction day and the owner still wants you out. Feel pissed off, angry, frustrated? Then maybe you should physically resist. This is a common practice in many squats overseas, which have large squatting movements. Sadly, in some countries like Australia, often you will get thrown out, even after trying to resist. This is a way of releasing you frustration and anger, and not giving up without a fight. It's also fun to piss off the police and give them a hard time, which might give you a warm inner glow.
What to do: Barricade yourselves inside, so it's impossible for anyone to get in. You may want to have a selection of things to throw at the evictors, such as: water bombs, flour bombs, rotten food, unpleasant things which do not cause physical injury. These can make an effective deterrent when thrown at or dropped on a potential evictor. These actions may result in arrest so be prepared and try not to get caught. Good luck!
GOVERNMENT POLICY ON SQUATTERS
As far as the law is concerned, all public housing is owned by the Department of Housing. In 1987, when many people were actively resisting evictions, the housing department together with the police made a policy which defines squatters and instructs staff on what to do with people squatting in abandoned properties. They gathered information for files which were assessed by various departments. When approved, a staff member would visit, asking you to leave and promising to return, although not telling you when and carefully not mentioning that the police will be with them next time. So later on they would turn up early one morning with the police to evict you and your possessions. They would ask you to leave again. If you wouldn't you could be arrested for trespassing. Part of the information they will have gathered on you is the amount of your possessions. They will have a truck ready to put all of your things in and they will pay to have them stored until you can collect them.
This may make you feel like steering clear of housing department empties as potential squats, but remember that some of their properties are left empty for years - so you could be lucky. With their policy in mind it would be foolish to contact them to try to negotiate staying there. It could be particularly important to introduce yourself to the neighbors so they don't turn you in. Unfortunately, if you are found squatting in a government property and you are on the waiting list for public housing, you will be put at the bottom of the list.
MEDIA MYTHS ABOUT SQUATTING...
A lot of people are afraid of squatters because of the lies propagated by the media. Here's some of the arguments you might come up against and some simple answers:
LIE: Squats lower the tone of the neighborhood.
ANSWER: The biggest threat to working class suburbs (especially the inner city) comes from yuppies - not other working class people like squatters.
Yuppies force the price of living in an area up by being able to pay more. They create extra demand on housing, leading to higher rents, turn local pubs into wine bars and local delis into "gourmet take-aways". Likewise local schools get closed or run down as yuppies send their kids to private schools. Just ask a friend what it's like living in these towns that have been taken over by yuppies these days - if they haven't been evicted yet, that is.
Meanwhile squatters send their kids to the local schools, use and defend local community services, prevent houses from becoming derelict and alleviate pressure of the rental market by reducing rents.
Who would you want as a neighbor - a yuppie or a squatter...
LIE: Squatters jump the queue.
ANSWERS: There shouldn't be a line for housing when there are 10,000 empty houses in one city alone. If a government was serious about solving the housing crisis, they'd force these houses to be used... but don't hold your breath. If the government forced the homes to be used, it would break the back of the high private rents in this city - and we all know who has the government's ear.
That's why poor people have to squat, and make sure that as much of the empty housing as possible is used - thereby benefiting the whole community.
LIE: Squatters trash houses.
ANSWER: A few squatters do trash houses - just as some tenants do. However empty houses run down if no one lives in them or they get vandalized. And most squatters have to make a lot of repairs to make their homes livable.
Anyway, the real house wreckers are the businesses that have been demolishing thousands of homes in the inner city since the war. Developers out only to make profits are still destroying communities.
Vandalism is far worse when the vandals are getting paid for it and according to leaked documents, government policy is to rip out the toilets to make abandoned property unlivable. They also chainsaw up floor boards. Aren't thry the real vandals?
LIE: Squatters are cheats.
ANSWER: There are some cheats in this country and some squatters are cheats, but that doesn't exactly define the movement.
The rich have had tax cuts after tax cuts. Aren't they the real cheats?
LIE: Squatters move in when you're on holiday.
ANSWER: This is the worst one... squatters need a home, not a place to get evicted from. Obviously if someone is on holiday, the house will look lived in and no one will move in.