The Girl's Guide to Homelessness (11 page)

That was kind of the point. “Corporate visited yesterday, that's all. When they visit, they always send someone out to post those flyers on the RVs. Luckily they don't even bother leaving notices for the homeless living out of cars and vans—just the trailers. It doesn't mean much, we never
actually
tow anybody.”

For good measure, Pete showed the lady all the Walmart receipts he had accrued, demonstrating just how much business the store got from allowing him to stay. I explained that we were quiet and kept to ourselves, never littered and so on. I explained that I was not a “bum,” and that I, too, bought supplies from Walmart. I just needed a place to park while I transitioned out of this, and that was why I had called ahead to make sure that would be OK.

She told us that we seemed nice and respectful, and recommended that we just stay in the parking lot. She
reiterated that the store managers would not call the police on us or have us towed—they didn't want to have to pay hefty fees to tow giant RVs out, plus, they really had no problem with our being there as long as we didn't draw attention to ourselves. It was just the corporate office's beef, and they had left already. She said that if someone filed a complaint with the police, or the police came by of their own accord to speak to us, they would most likely only ask us to move, not ticket or tow us. She said that if that happened, she would recommend moving to another Walmart a few cities over, or to Sam's Club, for a night or two. Then we could come back.

So we stayed, and there were no further problems or requests to leave. I felt terrible for the people they scared out of there with those mean flyers, though. I wondered where they went.

Sadly, the Lord of the Generator was not one of the ones that left. You'd think he could take a hint.

 

In early March, I was offered a position as an executive assistant at a small web design company of five people. The pay was nothing near what I had been making at KBB—the hiring manager blamed it on the recession, of course—but I didn't care. I needed a job, and I was humble enough to take anything that paid more than unemployment.

I stopped filing for unemployment benefits as soon as I was hired, but I had yet to receive any of the checks for the previous several months for which I had filed claims—there were so many “unavoidable delays” and it was nearly impossible to get through via telephone with the swarms of unemployed people in California bogging down the lines. The Employee Development Department (EDD)
also didn't have an answering machine, or a Hold line: If you called while all the lines were busy, which they always were, they would ask you to hang up and please try again. After spending several hours straight hitting the Redial button and hoping for good luck, I gave up and resorted to contacting them via email about the problem, which often resulted in a canned response, bearing little to no relation to my problem, or no response at all.

I sighed it off. I would continue pursuing the EDD for all my back checks, but in the meantime, I had something. I had a job. There would be options for me very soon, in the future. Matt was the first person I emailed to share the news.

 

Brandon and my best female friend, Sonia, were the only two people in my life aware that I was living in a parking lot. Nobody else knew, not even my own family, who hadn't given any further thought to where I was going next, after watching me trailer off bumpily into the sunset. Brandon and Sonia agreed that I could mention them in my blog, and I offered them their choice of pseudonym. Brandon chose “Dwight.”

“What, like Dwight from
The Office?
” I asked incredulously. He seemed wounded.

“No, like Dwight from
Sin City!
”

“Ah.” Brandon didn't remotely resemble Clive Owen, even if Clive Owen had been Asian, but OK. Dwight it was.

Sonia couldn't think up a pseudonym.

“Just call me whatever,” she said. She was too busy working on becoming the first Bangladeshi soldier in the U.S. Army to focus on trifling things like pseudonyms. We had known one another since junior high school, when
her family had immigrated to California. Sonia is a tiny, delicate girl with lovely huge eyes and the longest, curliest, blackest hair you've ever seen. She looks like some kind of fairy-tale princess. I was scared to death for her, and begged her not to go into the military. I just knew they'd somehow break her in half with all that boot camp stuff. But she was bound and determined, and there was nothing I could do to stop her. She would be leaving for boot camp in May, so I had less than two months to spend with her. I decided to rechristen her on the blog after one of her favorite actresses, Aishwarya Rai.

“Oh my gosh, really? Stop insulting Aishwarya. I don't look anything like her. Pick something more low key” is all she would say, eternally humble and self-disparaging.

 

On a whim, Sonia and I drove out to Hollywood one night to see the movie
Sunshine Cleaners
at the only California theater in which it was currently playing before going into wide release. The movie was great—touching and funny. I knew going in that it was a dramedy about sisters who start a crime scene cleanup business, and I figured that parts of it might remind me of recent events, but I hadn't expected the opening sequence, in which a man walks into a sporting goods store, asks to see a .20 gauge shotgun, and promptly sticks it under his chin and blows his brains out right there. I suppose it hit a little bit too close to home for me.

Also hitting close to home was Amy Adams in a role that just wrenched my gut. At one point, she says, “I'm good at getting men to want me…not date me or marry me…but want me.” I wanted to start bawling right there. It was one of the rare public bouts of self-pity that I indulged in, and I went to Starbucks the next morning and
wrote an in-depth blog about just how crummy it felt to wonder if it would ever be possible for anyone to love me.

Matt wrote me that evening, as usual.

“I read your latest blog post. It almost brought me to tears. It saddens me to know that you suffer such feelings. I can empathize to some extent, knowing what it feels like not to be loved back. Impossible to fully comprehend though what it must be like to endure it repetitively and exclusively. I know it sounds somewhat trite, but it really will happen for you someday. I realize I don't know you that well, but I've seen enough to know that you have a great deal to offer and I have no doubt that sooner or later (and probably sooner) someone will discover your true worth.”

I got a little misty, reading his email. I responded in as upbeat and positive a manner I could, to reassure him. Then I asked, “Hey, wanna see what I look like?” and attached a photo of Sonia and me that I had snapped that night with my phone's camera. It was the first time he would see my face, and he told me that I was beautiful. It was the first time I'd ever believed it.

 

Meanwhile, I was continuing to work full time and the blog was garnering a bit of attention. I was contacted by a reality TV show, MTV's
True Life.
They were interested in finding out more about my situation and potentially shadowing me for an upcoming episode on homelessness. It was a surreal feeling; my blog still had very few readers and I was keen on remaining anonymous. I expressed my misgivings to the producer who contacted me, but told her more about my story. She backtracked rather rapidly. I don't think I quite fit the “downtrodden” mold they were going for. That evening, I passed on the news to Matt.

“They said that since I'm educated, resourceful, don't utilize shelters and now have a job, they don't believe that I am representative of the general homeless population. I told them that I don't necessarily know if anybody is ‘representative' of the issue. If anything, I'm trying to buck the commonly held myths and stereotypes about the homeless—pointing out their resourcefulness, their value, their ability to contribute to society, their desire to work and continue leading normal lives and their drive to create a sustainable lifestyle while they try to reverse their circumstances.

“But, I understand and I'm not offended or anything. If anything, I can see how a story about a LGBT kid kicked out for being ‘different' or a kid on drugs or a kid living in a cardboard box would make for much more compelling TV than me; when it comes down to it, I can't compare to that level of interest or drama. And those kids are probably the ones more in need of the help (and money!) that such focus will provide them. In the end, they're trying to put the issue out there, which is great.”

Matt was decidedly more upset at the news than I was. “I could feel my blood starting to boil as I was reading. That really irks me. Not representative? Of course you are, and that's the point. You are the reality of modern-day homelessness. One of the missions on Twitter mentioned today that 50 percent of their clients are employed full time. They just want someone who will fit their comfortable, narrow-minded image of homelessness, and that is exactly how stereotypes continue to be reinforced. I would have torn them to shreds if I were you. No wonder they work for MTV. Raaaaaaa!!!!

“OK, rant over. I'm going to be helping a friend highlight a problem concerning homeless deaths. Her mother
had alcohol problems and mental health issues and was believed to have been homeless for years. She searched for her for years, was in contact with the local authorities on a weekly basis and posted stuff all over the internet. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago she discovered that her mother had passed on a couple of years before. The problem is that despite the ease with which the family could have been notified, nobody ever did and, as a result, she has been buried in a pauper's grave. She cannot even place a headstone for her. She wants to bring her home.”

Just when I thought I couldn't have any more of a crush on him, there he went, being all noble and self-sacrificing like that. I loved that he cared so much about helping others. When was the last time I'd cared about helping anybody? This was a man I respected and wanted to emulate. Plus, this was the first time I'd seen him go on a rant. It was surprisingly sexy. Beneath all that stoic English-ness, there was passion and protectiveness, too. It made me want to bury my face into this near-stranger's chest and feel safe. So, clearly, I was nuts.
He'd never think about me that way. Not in a million years.

 

Around the same time, I was contacted by another homeless activist, who was gaining notoriety for his video interviews with homeless men and women throughout the SoCal area. He wanted to do a video interview with me in my trailer, in the Walmart parking lot. He seemed a little bit pompous and pushy, and I was still very keen on anonymity, so I balked and asked Matt, who knew the man, for his opinion as to what I should do. If there was anybody whose opinion I respected, it was Matt's.

“I have no doubt of the value of his work,” he said. “If you do it, though, you should definitely let him know that you don't want your name or location revealed, for safety reasons. You're justified in wanting to stay anonymous. Rarely does a day go by that I don't read about some poor homeless person set on fire in the news. There are some very sick, prejudiced people out there.”

I hadn't known him long enough to realize that he was choosing his words very carefully. I thought he was just being British and polite. It turned out that, while Matt truly did believe that there was value to the man's work—that of putting faces and stories to homelessness—he didn't always approve of his personality, methods or ethics. The man would later go on to do a month-long sponsored road trip across the nation. He would draw criticism for leaving his rent unpaid during the trip; running out of money nearly immediately, due to poor planning, and subsequently sponging off sponsors and demanding freebie stays from hotels; and begging for donations from his Twitter followers. Most of all, he was criticized for sneakily filming children and domestic violence survivors in shelters, against the express instructions of staff, and posting their unblurred faces online, endangering their safety and privacy. He has since publicly attacked homeless individuals who have expressed reluctance to meet with him and put their names and faces on film, calling them the “fake” homeless and asserting that a
real
homeless person would never turn down an opportunity for “help.” I have since made it clear that I am not in any way affiliated with this activist, and refused to engage when he publicly attempted to castigate me for distancing myself from his version of “help.”

Of course, none of this had yet occurred, and I trusted Matt's judgment. If he thought that my speaking on camera would be of value, then I would do it. The activist promised that a pseudonym would be used, and that my location would not be revealed. He came to my trailer a few days later (over two hours late), stayed and filmed me answering his questions for twenty to thirty minutes. Then he asked me for a hug and prayed aloud to Jesus for me, which made me incredibly uncomfortable. There's really no polite way to interrupt a praying Christian and explain that you're an atheist, and ask if he could possibly do his praying for you in his quiet private time, is there? I was relieved when he left.

A few days later, the video was posted on the activist's website. I was shocked to see that my correct first name and my location were used. Panicked, and sure that there had been some mistake, I contacted the man and requested that my name and location be removed immediately, reminding him of our agreement.

“Oops,” he laughed. “Well, it's too late now. Somebody else hosts the site for me, and I don't think he'll want to change it. Besides, all the
other
people I've taped have used their own names, and they've been fine. Don't worry—this video is going to do great things for you and get more people interested in your blog. You shouldn't be ashamed of it. Embrace it.”