Robo Hobo Homo #104

I also took some time Saturday to call up some pawn shops in the area. Even packaged and in mint condition, they're not interested in my eBay phone. Don't quite know what I'm going to do about that.

I could ask folks around the shelter in person if they would like to buy it, but that's a whole other deal. I don't think anyone is going to steal anything, but my mind would rest a lot easier knowing that no one knows I've got anything worth taking.

Still, I can't sell it if people don't know I have it.

Robo Hobo Homo #103

From Friday 'til about Monday night, I ate a lot of bread and raisins. There's always bread here. Loads of it. Not sure why. I guess we get donated food that goes bad, and bread goes bad relatively quickly.

There's always bread out in the galley for folks to wander in and eat. Enough that despite the incredible varieties, I'm getting a bit sick of bread.

We also have raisins. Cases of raisins. I can only assume that someone donated a lot of raisins. So we have those hanging out the kitchen too. Now, I don't like raisins, really. They're not that sweet and they're kind of dry. They're even kind of ugly. They're talented musicians though.

I have come to love raisins. I can pack a little box to help me stay alert through a night shift. They have 120 calories in those little boxes, but they're still not a bad light snack or a rough meal replacement.

Raisins: They're a food that's not more bread.

Robo Hobo Homo #102

I got the mail, which included the phone I ordered on eBay. I really liked the lobby shift. It was basically barge work plus standing a watch. I managed to take some phone calls, remind guys when they had mail and laundry, and otherwise just do stuff for two hours straight. I really liked it.

I also finally got around to doing my laundry. I had forgotten on Thursday do it, and in all of the confusion had to put it off Friday and I finally got a heap o' stuff washed. Bono called in and he said he was going to be working late with his disabled brother and wanted me to pass that on to Yesbert, who—as I'd suspected—told me that a phone call about that shit wasn't enough.

A lot of folks here are recovering from drug problems so it's important that they not be able to vanish for a night and simply come back in the morning. Purgatory House doesn't want to help folks that are just going to crash here between getting high, so suddenly going on an unauthorized absence with no notice is a red flag.

I rebuilt the personnel list and discovered that I didn't have a card on file. You know what they say, the misfile you find may be your own. I kind of miss me being on lobby because everyone since then has misspelled my name.

Lunch rolled around, and I guess Dennis is adamant that folks on lobby can't duck out to get food. I'd like to stay on his good side, so I was resigned to not having any, but Wheelchair Guy offered to get me some. Heart of gold, that guy.

Between being on watch and having to shake people down for watches, I've been learning a lot of people's names.

Robo Hobo Homo #101

When I got in, Mike asked me to pick up a lobby shift that morning in exchange for the one he'd taken care of.

I crashed for a bit, then got back up for my shift. It was my first lobby, and after all of the action on the previous day it was a relief to get on with it. It went pretty well.

The Mumblr I talked about earlier was discharged. Everyone was on edge. It turns out he's certifiably crazy. While I was hanging out with Larry the previous day, he talked to me about his lobby watches. Larry, like many people's grandparents, pretends to get up really early, but cheats by taking naps. Larry prefers staying up at night so he takes night shifts in the lobby.

During one of those shifts, he caught The Mumblr pissing in the bushes outside. At every meeting I've attended here, Dave mentions how there's no urinating in the bushes in the front of the shelter. I assumed that it was guys who were smoking and lazy, but it turns out it was The Mumblr, deliberately pissing in the bushes at night.

His story was that he took tobacco out of the garbage on the back patio to put in his pipe. He's pretty broke, so that's how he gets his tobacco. Apparently he accidentally put marijuana from that garbage into his pipe and then...somehow he's peeing in the bushes?

He was certifiable and despite all of my sturm and drag over the fates of other guys around here, I didn't feel bad about that. I mean, there are other shelters and he can get health care.

I guess I'll talk about how wrong I was when I get to Thursday though.

Robo Hobo Homo #100

I did make the most of it though. As I had left, I saw some candy machines in the not-a-mall. They only took quarters and my change collection was almost exclusively nickels and dimes. Just to show I did learn something in college, I availed myself of a nearby vending machine. Because vending machines dispense change and returned money in the most efficient denominations, you can turn small change into quarters. Twenty seconds later my dollar of loose change wealth had been redistributed into four quarters.

Larry had asked me expectantly about candy at some point during the past. I hadn't had any at the time, but things were good and I wanted to share with one of my closest friends at the shelter. Two quarters got me enough Mike & Ikes to satisfyingly fill one of my smaller zip-loc bags.

I don't remember much of the walk to the shelter. It's not quite a ninety-minute blank spot in my memory, but it's close. According to my calculations, once I started doing 10 hour shifts I'd be spending 13 hours on each work day working. Assuming—ha!—eight hours of sleep, that would be three hours for every other bodily function and personal need I might attend to.

Reflecting on it later Saturday morning, it didn't feel like a good match. I thought about continuing working on it while looking for something else. 

“If nothing else,” I thought humorously, “I could become a blogger.”

Robo Hobo Homo #099

Inside of work was Kitty. She was friendly with a slight accent or maybe a speech impediment that picked up when she was on a call. I think it was a change in her voice that she used to put people at ease. I kind of do the same thing with my very, very understated southern dialect.

The work was straightforward. We answer call queues where we provide information, take messages or alert on-call staff. We remotely monitor equipment and log or dispatch personnel. It's pretty straightforward in retrospect, but that night, tired as I was, it was overwhelming.

When I arrived, my email account didn't have some group permissions, but everything else was set up just fine. Navigating the system was a great way for me to try and stay awake while learning things, but it wasn't effective enough.

I was drained, but I didn't want to make any trouble by brewing coffee. Eventually I remembered that I'd packed some raisins and water and, remembering my SEAL training (Watching G.I. Jane counts as SEAL training!), rationed them out to try to help things.

The night didn't go well. I left thinking that I'd found another job I couldn't stand and afraid I'd never find one that I could.

Robo Hobo Homo #098

There is a game store here. I may have mentioned it before. They were playing Friday Night Magic. I wandered in and asked about Journey into Nyx. It's out. It was so weird not knowing, after being plugged into the Magic news machine while I was plugged in.

Troy from the shelter flagged me down. He spotted me from a block away. It's my curse that my taste in jackets is so distinctive. It was thirty minutes until the Purgatory Shelter curfew and he thought that I might have a ride back. He was disappointed that I didn't, but he either found a way back or didn't get caught.

While I was walking, I thought about my schedule, what I'd need money to pay for. If I could get an apartment of my own. If I even wanted to live alone. What would the appointment at the Mental Health Center be like on Wednesday? It was all a bit scary, to be honest.

I would eventually gave up wandering and sat inside of the not-a-mall building that my work is in. Then it occurred to me that I was thinking weeks in advance instead of just days. I took it as a good sign and headed into work.

Robo Hobo Homo #097

I got downtown around seven thirty and realized I had about four hours to kill with no money.

I walked downtown to the pier, well, one of the piers. There were plaques about the city history and a few displays. There was also a tiny stage donated by twenty businesses around town. It was something that could've been whipped up in someone's back yard in a long afternoon. I don't know; advertising is advertising, but I was underwhelmed.

They have a Dairy Queen. I was aware of it before. You can't really take a bus in this city without being aware that there's a Dairy Queen here, but I mean, wow, I never thought there'd be one up here. It's just the last place I'd expect a Dairy Queen.

As the sun set, it got colder. No matter where I walked, the wind seemed to hit me directly. The streets are comfortably wide, so they don't block crosswinds that well. You have to be right up against a building to get into its lee side. The thing about this place is that, I swear to the gods, there is a wind that comes down from the mountain and a wind that comes off of the beach.

It's brutal.

Robo Hobo Homo #096

With the dishes done around seven, I had to skedaddle to get onto the bus. I had to turn around because I forgot to sign out. It might have been some attempted self-sabotage, but it ended up being irrelevant anyway because I didn't sign back in. Procedurally, there's an accounting for overnight sign-outs but practice, again, doesn't bear that out.

 

The bus ride cost me one of my last dollars, but I thought it would be worth it. If I walked, I'd be heading into my first day of work sweaty, and that seemed like a bad idea. It was night and it stays cool up here, but I could still work up a sweat making the walk from the shelter to downtown.

The bus that serves the shelter also serves the local Native American reservation at certain times of day. I was in a seat facing forward when the guy on the bench in front of me mentioned that we'd met each other at the unemployment office that doesn't feel like an unemployment office the other day. We joked about the woman that certainly didn't know how to use that thing that he needed to use, then lapsed into an awkward silence.

Before the ride was over, his girlfriend crossed from the bench across the bus and began desperately making out with him. I think Requiem for a Dream had a sadder woman trying to make a man happy, but this was a close second.

She had a really wired energy about her. I mean, being a woman in your late twenties and desperately macking on your reluctant boyfriend on a public bus might be normal for some people. 

I'm sure there are plenty of non-drug-related reasons to do that.

Hanging out at Purgatory Shelter, certain things come up. Drugs come up a lot. Unemployment. Relationships with women. I don't know if I just have these things on the brain now or if I'm just more aware that they happen.

They got off at the reservation casino and my buoyant high managed to stick around.

Robo Hobo Homo #095

There was still the matter of chores. Washing dishes from five to seven pm is a big chunk of time, but it was—and still is—the best chore I could have for the schedule I have. Dinner that night was spaghetti.

If you don't do dishes often, let me tell you about tomato-based sauces; they fuck up your dish-doing. They form a film on the top of the water that coats everything you put into the sink. They leave an invisible residue on dishes. They sink into wood. Spaghetti is a pain in the ass.

We do have a restaurant setup here. As a shelter, the kitchen has to operate to code. We've got a rinsing station. We've got a sink for washing, a sink with a bleach soak, and a rinsing sink. It's the whole nine yards. Tosh recently got us pH strips so we can log the effectiveness of the chlorine solution in the bleach soak. It helps a bit.

I didn't get any spaghetti that night, but I did have to wash a lot of it.

Robo Hobo Homo #094

Another guy, let's call him Jesus, offered me a lot of button up shirts that didn't fit him. I was taken aback by it because I had him pegged as a bravo.

Y'know, I spend a lot of time classifying people in one way or another. I like having a reference point for these things, but it does occasionally lead me to forget that most people are generally good.

There's another guy, Aubert. He wears frosted sunglasses inside, big, colorful shorts that are too big for him, and a sleeveless undershirt as a regular shirt. He dresses gangsta, is what I'm saying.

Aubert doesn't acknowledge people in the halls. He doesn't follow the rules. But he does realize why the rules exist and acts within those parameters. A lot of the guys here roll their own tobacco. When they do it inside, they usually create a tobacco-y mess. So the caseworkers made a rule that it wasn't allowed. Aubert still does it. He picks up after himself though. He breaks the rules and he projects a certain image, but he's still a good guy who responsibly acts as a member of the shelter.

Again, once—perhaps especially—you get past the labels, most people are good.

Robo Hobo Homo #092

While I was taking care of this business, Pally moved out and Andreski moved to the back hall. Have I talked about the back hall? Hold on, I will later. With those two gone, there were only four people in our emergency room. That meant I could move to a downstairs bunk and quit tripping over Wheelchair Guy. He's a good guy, but living quarters are especially tight when you're talking about someone in a wheelchair. Take the personal space you need and multiply it by 50% and that's probably just the down-payment on the personal space someone in a wheelchair needs.

I took a shower and when I came back, I had a fresh feeling, my duties in order, and a space of my own.

I did not, however, have enough time to get any sleep. I broke down and bit the bullet. Before arriving here, I drank a lot of caffeine. Like, "familiar with caffeine overdose symptoms," a lot. When I'd quit on the 14th, I'd lucked out that I hadn't lost a day to withdrawal. I was proud of the fact that despite the ready access to coffee a Purgatory Shelter, I hadn't had any.

Until that night.

Some mail had come in for me while I was gone. It was a letter from the Food Stamps guys about how I needed to set up an appointment for an interview. It didn't really say for what, but because of the weekend, it'd be until Tuesday until I could get in there and see what was up. I could have called, but I really don't find phone calls to be...satisfying or definitive.

Robo Hobo Homo #091

After my sandwich break, I needed to get to the business of interacting with a lot of people. I needed engage with people and ask them the favor of swapping watches with me at the last minute. It was awful, but I did my best at it.

It wasn't very effective. I finally had to get with Mike, the guy who handles the lobby watches, to take care of my shift that night and I knew I'd still be spending most of the next day taking care of my Sunday shifts.

The next issue was getting an overnight pass from a caseworker. They're pretty strict about curfew. I guess they don't want guys skulking around at night and doing drugs. Daryl was out for the weekend. The thing is that there aren't any caseworkers here on weekends, so you can't get an overnight pass on a weekend. Plus it was Memorial Day Weekend, so it'd be Tuesday before anyone came back. Down here, you gotta be nimble to take advantage of opportunities that come up and holidays are not nimble.

Fortunately, Brandi was there late. Is three pm late? Whatever the case, she wasn't sure on the overnight working paperwork, but Yesbert, the house coordinator, was familiar with it and helped us through it.

I also made some handwritten copies of my schedule to distribute to Dennis, the chore coordinator, and my case worker. It didn't occur to me that that half of that schedule would have passed by the time Dennis saw it, but I was lucky to get anything done.

It sounds really easy, but there was a lot of running around and anxiety about it. Everyone I've mentioned and at least that many people who are unnamed were performing their own duties, trying to get away for the weekend, or trying to get work of their own.

Worth it though.

Robo Hobo Homo #089

I had the job. I had my lunch. I walked home, thinking about everything I had to do. I had to get off of lobby duty for that night and Sunday night. I had to get overnight passes from my caseworker. I had to somehow get enough sleep to make it through to 0500 Saturday morning.

Worse, it felt like things were falling apart. I didn't have a way to diagram all of my responsibilities. I carry around a notebook in my back pocket. I bullet-point things to do and carry them forward, but I ripped half the pages out when I was getting ready to climb the mountain. Nowadays, I have to keep a lot of reference materials.

The trick with reference material is that you have to be able to find it. The best way is to simply collect all of the information you need to reference, organize it, and create an index. If you're constantly adding reference material--for example, discarding a list of potential employers in favor of contacts with your new coworkers—then it's hard to keep them up.

When you're combining them with a log-style book that I keep, it's even harder. I've tried to put certain pages aside for it. I've tried removing and making new pages as things change, but it's still a rough system and I'd been losing track of it for a while.

I was loosing my handle on things and my concern was that it would trip me up if I didn't suddenly know everything going on with my life in the next week immediately.

Instead of panicking, I ate my sandwich and drank my gatorade instead.

Robo Hobo Homo #087

It wasn't even a place that gave out hygiene products. It was a free shower place.

Of course. I got him to take First Street in a straight shot back to downtown and hung a left to get to the Safeway. We talked about a few things, nothing in particular. He misses his grandkids and can't wait to get his Social Security money.

I hope he gets it. I talk a lot of shit about Larry, but given that he's an ex-con over fifty who doesn't want to work, I'd rather he get some money to take care of himself than end up living in shelters for the rest of his life.

Deep down, I'm afraid that there is no money coming. He tells a great story about pretending to be insane to get the money and how he's always just waiting on it, but sometimes I don't know if he's pretending for us, telling us that things will be okay when he's going to be spending the rest of his life in one shelter like this or another.

Larry is kind of my closest friend right now and I want to help him so much but I can't.

But on that Friday we talked, I bought him a sandwich and gatorade with my EBT card, and wished him good luck.

Robo Hobo Homo #086

Oh, right. Larry.

He caught me just before the eleven o'clock buses pulled in. I walked over and he offered to show me where the hygiene dispensing place was. Finally happy to have him show me this mythical valhalla of deodorant and shaving cream, I accepted.

Because we'd be missing lunch at the shelter in order to go on our adventure, I offered to break open my EBT card and buy us both sandwiches at the Safeway. He showed me how to call and check the balance on my card.

Larry has a habit of hitting someone in the arm to begin a sentence. It's like the upside down exclamation point of his personal punctuation scheme. In the first five minutes of our trip, my left arm was already aching.

We had a a nice trip up First Street. A few blocks west of downtown proper, he turned up a dirt and gravel road that pulled up a hill between an abandoned shop and an auto parts store. His path cut to the left and he began pointing out familiar buildings with me as we continued on a side-street further west.

Eventually, my curiosity gave way to frustration and my frustration gave way to the sort of pure amusement that only life's inevitable, blithe stupidity can evoke.

The twisting path we'd followed and Larry's incoherent directions both led me to a small building just next door to the Thrift Store.

Robo Hobo Homo #085

Before I tell another Larry story, let me talk a bit more about Mr. McCoy. He is a pretty great guy. I don't know if I could have a bigger advocate for me in the unemployment office that doesn't feel like an unemployment office.

He is also a poster-child for the pretty libertarian ideas out here. Whenever he mentioned living in San Diego, he mentioned he had to leave he made mention of Tijuana and explained, “because trash blows up against the fence.” He clarified that he meant actual waste poured into the Pacific Ocean by Tijuana, but it didn't dispel the “dirty immigrants” implications of his initial station.

I also reordered a copy of my DD214. I have a scanned copy, but Daryl told me that a new copy would be better to have on hand. I don't think he's wrong and McCoy was the guy to get it for me. He was reluctant to have it sent to Purgatory Shelter though. Very reluctant.

We need a word that means, “eventually just shy of eventually,” or “right before the end.” Because it was at that stage in our conversation that he relented and agreed to send it there. However, when I finally checked my email on Wednesday, I saw that he had changed his mind.

I've never had a problem getting mail here. Writing this up a week later I'm still waiting for my Safelink phone, but that's not a receipt problem. Look, we're a bunch of homeless dudes, but we're just guys living in a rough circumstance. This isn't a den of thieves. This isn't Lord of the Flies. Sure, some guys are getting past drug problems and occasionally we'll get a guy who isn't past them. Sometimes, we'll get folks with intense mental problems. There are some problems here, but Purgatory House is a good place with good people in it.

I don't know if Mr. McCoy's problem comes from a personal experience or an ugly bigotry against the homeless who aren't of the anointed military caste, but his actions are a repulsive mark on an otherwise impressive and warm character.

Robo Hobo Homo #084

After I was done with my email, I followed-up with Mr. McCoy. He was super-enthused that I'd gotten the job and even though the hours were still uncertain, he was ready to get me with Scotty from the local housing assistance program to get me into an apartment Saturday morning.

I am only slightly exaggerating about his enthusiasm.

After that, I updated my information with the Food Stamps office (that typo in my address line carried over from my healthcare application) and headed to the bus stop to hurry back home and complete the mountain of paperwork I needed to finish for my night shift.

As I was waiting, Larry called out to me from across the bus center.

Robo Hobo Homo #083

I walked back to the unemployment office that doesn't feel like an unemployment office and logged on to ask my old roommates to send me a copy of my birth certificate. I filed everything away pretty well for record-keeping purposes so I was hoping they could find it and send it to me.

These guys have helped me out so much I felt bad for asking them to spend money to send it to me, but I needed it to get this job and I hoped they would understand.

To give you a sense of how life works down here, I would receive the certificate in the mail before I could check my email to see their response. Anyone who tells you that “snail mail” is obsolete has the privilege of regular internet access.

Robo Hobo Homo #082

The interview having gone well, I had to get a background check. I also had to get identification for tax forms, including my social security card. I still had to follow-up with Mr. McCoy.

The background check was conducted through a local temp agency about twelve blocks down the road. It was a bit of a walk, but it taught me that the city expanded a great deal further east than I had originally thought. I passed Pace Road, which leads to the mountain, and saw a few pawn shops that might let me sell the phone I'd ordered off of eBay.

The lady at the temp agency was really nice. The background check paperwork was standard procedure so there wasn't much to talk about. There was a guy there who seemed like a bit of a closet case, but then I don't much believe in gaydar.

I did think that maybe temp work would work for me. I have clerical experience. I like learning new things and seeing new environments. Temp work would be a great way for me to hone my core marketable skill set while still keeping my wanderlust satiated.

...and maybe I'm a Chinese jet pilot.