On Friday I took the day off from work to hang with some of the boys from downtown. Today they are teaching me how to live homeless. I met them at the shelter at 8 and spent 24 hours on foot, on the street. Its perhaps a silly experiment. How much can you possibly learn when at the end of 24 hours, I get to shower off the streets and climb back into a warm bed.... but perhaps in the interest of walking a mile in someone else's shoes, I'll walk 20 miles in someone else's shoes and spend 24 hours without my phone, my wallet, my car, my comforts of home, and put my trust in the experienced shoes of my friends. And a bit to my surprise I met a raleigh I didn't know and saw a raleigh I had not yet seen.
I met Michael and Ricky outside the Wilmington Street Shelter at 8 in the morning. We chatted it up with the large group of guys hanging outside the shelter getting ready for the role call of their drug rehab program being hosted by the healing place. A woman that Ricky and Michael knew was watching the men line up to have their names checked off a roster sheet.
"Now this is where you get a man" she said.
"you don't have to worry about getting them clean, you just have to worry about keeping them clean."
She launched into her plan:
"Now, you don't want to keep them too comfortable. Get 'em and then get 'em a working right away. Get 'em up early, give them breakfast, make them lunch and have dinner waiting for them on the table when they get home. But don't let them stay home and flip channels with the remote sittin' all up in the air conditionin'. They start to love how cool and comfortable it can be. What they should be doing is gettin' out there to
struggle. Struggle hard. And make it. And once they've made it, well, come on home, baby, flip the channels and sit right down."
She looked up and down the line perhaps picking out which man would best fit this role for her.
It was time for us to be movin' on. We had to get to the "office" (Cornerstone) to check for mail and to make a phone call or two.
We walked through the projects and through the tunnels on the greenway. In the daylight it is a beautiful walk, but it is not such a safe walk at night my friends tell me. The bridges and breezeways are hot spots for smokin' and drinkin' and dealin' and other riff raff. Best to be avoided.
Pete and Mike, two acquaintances of Mike and Ricky's were sitting on a park bench on the walk to the office. Pete was nursing a large bottle in a plastic bag of some kind of cheap beer. He had had a few before that one it looked like. He got up immediately though and offered me his seat. quite the gentleman. The gossiping started right away, lots of "god-damn's" and "maderfucker's" and the latest info on everyone all flung around quick and sloppy. Quicker and sloppier than I could keep up with. It was all I could do not to just look like the innocent white girl sittin' on a bench.
The conversation eventually turned to Martha, a homeless woman who was recently murdered and perhaps raped downtown raleigh. The volume and severity of the conversation elevated. Pete was swaying and leaning and pacing and speaking passionatly on his own personal, very large, apparently rocking soapbox. "Rape is absolultly inexcusable. period." And he kept throwing an appology in my direction, as if the conversation was too raw and explicit for my ears. quiet the gentleman. "When a man can get a woman for the short of a cigarette and a taste of a forty... rape is just inexcusable." He glances again in my direction and appologizes again.
Our gossip eventully winds down and it was time for us to be movin' on.
We left the greenway with two more in tow and progressed down Saunders street, the "dirty south" Mike called it. We crossed streets haphazardly and without looking really for cars. "tramps don't watch for cars, steph." We see Reggie, another downtown friend of ours, coming out of a convience store. We crossed to say hello and then ventured in the store for Pete to buy a couple of beers. We all walked in the small, unkept store and mingled about. The boys visited and exchanged a lot of smack with the attendant, who was familiar with most of them. Pete put two cans of beer on his tab (??) and Mike and I admired a large wedge of cheese under a bell jar.
"have you had hoop cheese before, steph?"
"I don't think so."
"Oh, it is so good. It just sits there and sweats and its so delicious."
"I don't think I am a fan of sweaty cheese."
"oh no, you'll love it."
Mike gets Sam's, the attendant, attention and requests a dollar's worth of cheese. Sam pulls a large cheese knife from under the counter and cuts two wedges off the larger wedge under the display glass, wraps it in a paper towel and hands it across the counter to Mike. Mike hands him a dollar and hands me the cheese to pull a piece off to try. He was right, it was sweaty but delicious. The boys were hassling Sam in an attempt to win the last little bit of hoop cheese from under the glass for free.
"Come-on, Sam, whose gonna buy that little ol' piece? Wouldn't you rather just give it to us so you can clean that up and get a fresh hoop?"
Sam would not budge. Instead offered various dildos from underneath the counter. Blue beaded ones, pink vibrating ones...I was suddenly uncomfortable and walked out with the boys soon on my heals. We were still tryin' to get to the office, and it was time to be movin' on.
So it was down Saunders, across cabbaras, up boylan to Cornerstone. Everyone was recounting memories as we traveresed the ghosts of a life spent poundin' the pavement:
"I had a job there in '78".
"I had some kind of summer job in '78, I think."
"It used to be all blacks and indians down here."
"There is an injury lawyer that lives there in that house. He gave me a case of wine once. It was some cheap ass ol' wine, but we drank it."
Its 10 o clock when we finally stroll into the office.
For a brief moment I felt Uganda in the air as we walked up. There was an older woman, tall and deeply black refolding and stacking clothes into a garbage bag. Her hair was intricatly braided, twisted and piled on top of her head. I think it was the way she was severly bent at the waist, butt in the air attending to her belongings with care, that resonated with me. She could have been in the village, loud print clothes, laundry and hot, humid air. That merried to my spirit of being "escorted" in a" foreign place" and whispers of Africa swept over me for a precious moment.
We opened the double doors of Cornerstone to a wall of cool air-conditioned air. We sign in and attended our important business. (I of course have no important business other than to blend as much as possible). No mail for Ricky, no mail for Mike, but Pete and Ricky have important phone calls to make. So Mike and I sit and visit, read News From Our Shoes brochures and enjoy a few moments of rest from the heat outside.
One of Mikes friends was cracking jokes and had us all rolling. The highlight was his "bubbles" routine. He acts out the whole process of some poor,nominated soul telling Michael Jackson's Bubbles that MJ has passed and won't be coming home. (this of course has to all be communicated through sign language) and the act is complete with Mike's friend acting out Bubbles' reaction, tearing up the chimp cage. No words can describe how inappropriate the joke was, nor how hilarious the whole production was.
But all joking aside, our important office business had to be completed and it was almost lunchtime, it was time to be movin' on.
Lunch was at the "Tavern on the Green" as Mike and Ricky called it, better known as "The Shepherd's Table Soup Kitchen." We stood in line outside the church where I met some more of "the boys" including T. T, Mike tells me, is sharp as a tack, and always talks in similes and metaphors. I had a feeling i was going to like him a lot. And I did. T is 19, has been on the street since he was 14. He just recently got into the program at the men's shelter and boasts that the program has really changed his life. Knowing the things I hear about the program makes me hesitant to give it any credit for anything, but who am I to dismiss credit where it might be legitimately due.
T is amazing guy. He may be 19, but his presence feels like a weathered storm that has finally blown itself out. His spirit is quiet and still. He watches attentively and I am pretty convinced that he sees, really sees everything around him. He cracks jokes and sits comfortably with old men, young men and woman alike. He looks at me with a bit of a puzzled expression. "Why exactly are you doing this?"
I honestly feel a bit embarrassed as I am trying to explain wanting to experience life on this side of things for a day. My explanation seems very trivial and naive as it is coming out of my mouth. I feel like a kid talking to a parent, even though I am almost 10 years older than he is. But he humors my intentions and warns me to stay close to mike and ricky. "Just be careful out here, okay?" I felt the weight of my naivity a little and assured him I'd keep my eyes and ears open. (although what I am supposed to be looking and listening for.... ???)
Lunch was actually really good: pork tenderloin, salad, candied carrots, chocolate cake, sweet tea, and a sandwhich to-go if you wanted it. We sat and ate till we were full and when there was nothing left to eat or say we got up and left... it was time to be movin' on.
.....to be continued.....
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