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