"This isn't happening to anyone else but you."
Monday, March 30th
My last day in Philadelphia, I got the first ounce of luck I'd been granted in months and received the redertimination questionnaire in the mail. Had it shown up the next day or any day after that, I would have had no choice but to have Tia fill it out for me and forge my signature. To my surprise, the thing had no questions about medical history or recent doctors. It was mostly personal questions regarding how I feel I am incapable of working, what I do from the beginning to end of a single day, what my hygiene was like, how well I go about certain everyday things like grocery shopping and household chores. I answered it honestly, which made me feel more disabled than I wanted to be. In the back, it offered extra lines for anything else I wanted to add, and I basically wrote a long, frantic, rambling paragraph about myself and how much the phone call regarding redetermination had physically destroyed me the last week or so. As soon as I sealed the giant envelope and delivered it at the post office, I started second-guessing everything I'd written. The process of having to prove your mental illness to a federal welfare organization whose mercy you are helplessly at is a very daunting, humiliating, cruel one. I started thinking things like, "Shit, I go out and buy my own groceries--does that mean, to them, I'm not disabled?" The anxiety and the ulcer showed no signs of letting up.
I wanted to go right back to sleep, but Tia suggested we go out and do something since the weather was tolerable. We went to South Street and ate a buncha food at Vegan Tree that we mostly split between us: sushi, chicken nuggets, chickpea soup, a strawberry smoothie bubble tea. That place always left me feeling unusually refreshed rather than full until I was sick. Not long after we got back home, I could hear loud talking out in the kitchen from my room. It was about the latest electricity bill. I heard another absurd number in the several-hundreds that I couldn't completely decipher. I texted Tia and found out that the bill was over $600 and that, split between us, we all owed a little more than $130 each. What the fuck were these kids doing wrong? Tia said before I could that she knew I couldn't cover that and she would pay it. I felt awful that she would be doing that, but I was about to be homeless and that would have killed me. Suddenly, I could hear Tessa in the room over, freaking out on the phone with her mother and/or father.
"We turn the lights off every time we leave a room!" was one of the things she exclaimed, which was really funny to me since, no, neither she nor anyone else in the house did, and in that very moment, I walked out to a house where literally every single light was on: the hallway by our rooms, the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, the stairway to the second floor. I was the only person in the house who practiced conservative methods with the electricity. Since my heat was inefficient, I turned it completely off, and I only used the space heater when it was absolutely necessary; TVs and lights were always turned off when I wasn't using them or left a room; things were unplugged when I was done with them. The others, including Tia, on the other hand, exaggerated the cold and kept most of the heat on at high, and almost never turned lights off when they left the room or even when it was daytime. Almost every night, around 4 to 6 in the morning, I would go take a piss, see the light coming out from under Tia's door, and then see it turned off as I left. I brought this up to her not long before then and she said she didn't remember doing that, even though it had become a nightly tradition for me to witness. The girl never had turned her fucking bedroom light off when she'd be about to go to sleep, and even turned it on when the sun was still up. Few things frustrate me more than living with people who don't turn lights off--for environmental and financial reasons.
Tia and I talked about it in her room for a little bit and realized how confusing it all was. Despite how partially at fault I felt everyone was, the gradually increasing bills still seemed outrageous. Naturally, I was paranoid this Kurdt kid who managed the electricity bills was screwing us or was just still so inexperienced in adulthood as a nineteen-year old suburban college kid that he was doing something wrong. One thing that stood out was that we were asked to pay electricity bills twice in one month. That seemed suspicious to me, since most electricity bills operate on a month-long cycle, give or take a few days. We went upstairs and tried to talk to him. He had the last couple of months' bills in a pile on his neat little desk. On the latest bill, it listed two recent payments, neither of which made sense based on the last two times we were asked for money. He started saying something about how Tessa was thinking maybe someone was stealing electricity from us or something and I asked if I could see all the bills to look them over. Tia and I went to my room and started doing the math. The latest bill was for something like February 10th to March 11th, which really threw me off since I had been asked for $69 on the 19th of February and, as far as he remembered, $49 on the 13th of that month. The most recent bill had come two weeks before all this was even being discussed and I had no idea why we were just hearing about it. After an hour of doing some math, everything did seem in order, though, at least according to the chronology of the bills. In the end, they really were either using way too much electricity or being mercilessly overcharged. If anyone was being screwed, it was me by Kurdt, who had asked me for money that technically went towards bills in place before I was even there. Had he not overlooked the fact that he didn't make me pay for the last bill of $49, I would have been mad.
Since I had a lot to do before leaving, I stayed up all night. Tia and I brought everything in my room down to the basement. I packed my new bag, which was far tinier than I was used to, and took a shower. Once again, I was relieved at the idea of not paying rent or being around the people I currently lived with, but not necessarily satisfied or excited about the situation of homelessness. Schenectady was of course not an optimal place to be homeless again, especially with Matt still gone on tour, but it was what was most familiar to me, and I knew more people there than I did in Philadelphia. More importantly, it was geographically in between the two zine fest locations I would be tabling at that month.
Quite possibly my favorite sushi in Philadelphia is at Vegan Tree.
Tuesday, March 31st
10am Chinatown bus to New York City picks up a half hour early. Get into Chinatown around quarter after noon. 1pm Chinatown bus to Schenectady. I mostly slept through both rides, but the one to Schenectady was pretty rough. Even with headphones blaring in my ears, I woke up to an old Indian man sitting right behind me, screaming stuff about Biblical text to a younger guy across from him who was a practicing Muslim.
"Abraham was a man! He was a nigger!"
I'd never heard the "n" word used so many times in a single bus ride.
He repeated that sentence at least five times. He was brown, so no one was mad at him. I got up and angrily moved several rows back where his voice wasn't keeping me awake. When I got off, I walked straight to Bombers for a terrible burrito bowl with rice that was hard from being either too old or undercooked. Dave Hughes saw me and came in to hang for a half hour. It was cool talking with him for a bit. I texted everyone I knew in the area, letting them know I was around for three weeks and wanted to hang out. As usual, just about all of them were busy with their jobs, their relationships, and their families. I didn't want to be wandering around with my rolling luggage filled with zines, so I called my aunt and she had my uncle come and pick it up to store at their house for the time being. I sat at Bombers for a little while at a tiny table and read while Titanic played on the muted, closed-captioned flat screen.
I'd already gotten to hear some of the great things I'd missed since my last visit to my hometown: a fire on Jay Street killed two people, according to my aunt; a CDTA bus hit a four-year old, according to Dave; a kid I knew back in the day died in a meth lab explosion, according to my brother. I absolutely did not want to sleep outside that night. It was really chilly out. For the first time ever, my aunt actually invited me to stay over at their house. I'd never pushed it because I knew the house was full of animals and cigarette smoke and that I'd probably die there, but I took her up on the offer. When I walked in, the stagnant, trapped household air hit me hard. The odor was nostalgic, just as I remembered from when I was a kid and I'd stay over there and play SEGA Genesis with my brother. Between the stale stench of dissipated cigarette smoke stuck to all the walls and carpets and the accumulation of ten cats', three dogs', and two birds' collective dander, I almost instantly felt like I was suffocating. I was welcomed by the loud, incessant yelping of Miss Lily, my dead grandmother's beloved maltese who now lived with them, and then with the louder, rougher barking of the Great Dane and Scotty blocked off by a gate in the kitchen. Despite the conditions, I found my place sleeping across a chair and a foot rest in between three cats and passed out before it was even 10 at night thanks to little to no sleep.
Freebrrd.
Family portrait: Snuggles, Tia, and I watching Netflix.
This is what I unfortunately looked like at this time.
Some more pictures of Snuggles, because why not?
I made, like, over a hundred pigeon stickers to cover the city in.
A new cat-anarchy patch for my hoodie.
Some food I made at Fontain...
Tofu scramble.
White quinoa prepared in vegetable stock.
Mac and cheese.
Soyboy raviolis topped in Go Veggie! Parmesan cheese and nutritional yeast.
Flour tortilla wrap stuffed with Santa Fe chicken strips, quinoa, spinach and kale, tomato, avocado, and topped in taco sauce.
Cinnamon buns!
Pizza bagels!
Beyond Meat chicken strips fried with avocado topped in buffalo sauce with a bowl of sweet peas.
Chicken broccoli mushroom garlic stir fry.
Garlic grilled cheese.
Pork flavored Stove Top stuffing is vegan!
Chili dogs!
Found a big bag of vegetarian tofu dumplings at the grocery store!
Jambalaya, using Zatarain's rice mix and Tofurky Italian sausage.
Wednesday, April 1st
When I woke up next, it was only 3:30 in the morning. I have this sleeping curse where 99% of the time I actually fall asleep at a human hour, like anywhere between 9 and midnight, I will wake up three to four hours later and not be able to get back to sleep. By that point, my mouth and throat were dried up from the atmosphere of the house and my nose was running uncontrollably as soon as gravity showed up. No extreme asthma issues yet, though, so I survived. Because of a leak that was destroying their bedroom, my aunt slept on the couch and my uncle on a little mattress on the living room floor, directly to the left of me. I sat there, wishing for more sleep, watching some shitty local news station. A forty-something-year old man was arrested for trying to molest a four-year old at a Dave & Buster's in a local mall. I got my laptop out and watched the movie Everly to pass the time until sunrise. By 6, all of the dogs were barking like they were roosters announcing sunrise. The cats were awake and ready to eat along the front window. Seeing that many cats in one place was surreal to me. Not really sure where to go next, but knowing I needed to get out into fresh air, I left and walked to the nearby Price Chopper in Mohawk Commons, just half a mile away. I ate a doughnut and some Ritz crackers with roasted red pepper hummus and pepperonis, though not much because of a really bad ache in my abdomen, which could have been from either anxiety or soreness from where and how I slept. A little while later, I walked over to the Panera in hopes of free wifi and black bean soup. Unfortunately, when I got there, the woman told me they don't prepare the soups that early in the morning. So I got a shitty veggie sandwich that I didn't even finish. I did get to use their wifi, though, and eat a baguette. I watched some Breaking Bad as my body slowly became more and more uncomfortable in the chair. At quarter to 11, I asked the woman if soups were ready, since that was when she told me they would be. A couple minutes later, she told me they were. So I ordered a black bean soup. When they called my name, the kid behind the counter told me they didn't have any black bean soup, offering to give me something in its place.
"I don't want anything else."
I asked if they just, like, don't make black bean soup on some days, and he said yes. Everything considered, it was a whole lot more disappointing and frustrating than it probably should have been. I just wanted a goddamn black bean soup. At 11:30, it kicked me off the wifi and told me to "try again at 2pm".
I told myself before I got to Schenectady that I would start walking everywhere, in part for exercise during my soda-free water cleanse and in part to take up some of the over-abundance of time I'd have on my hands as a homeless guy in America's worst city. So at noon, I left and started walking down State Street to the Stolen Cellphone Store a little over two miles away. My phone's 3G still wasn't working at that point and I could finally bring it to the store and have the guy look at it. The weather was pleasantly surprising and I even got to take my hoodie off for it. It felt good to walk, and even though it was the city I hated most, the familiarity of every crack in the sidewalks felt more comfortable than the still mostly new feeling that Philadelphia had. I was at the cellphone shop for almost an hour. He tried everything he could, called some people, and in the end said, "This isn't happening to anyone else but you," and offered to order me a new phone to replace it.
"This isn't happening to anyone else but you."
That sentence, even though in the context of smartphone service, echoed exactly how much of my life left me feeling. I still had some time to kill before my 3pm physical, so I walked to a different Price Chopper up the street from it for another doughnut and to fill my Nalgene with some more water. When I got to the hospital, they asked me for my insurance cards. I didn't have any. I'd lost my Medicare card and threw out the rest of the health care related cards I had because I thought they were worthless after being told I wasn't covered for medicine anymore back in November. She let it slide even after scanning my photo ID that had been expired since my last birthday. I was covered in sweat from anxiety as I sat in the waiting room.
The first nurse to come and see me did all my vitals. I hadn't lost or gained any weight since the last time I was weighed, whenever that was. The number that showed up made me feel good about not drinking soda. She was very friendly. My blood pressure was fine. She asked me where I was living and I had to tell her I was homeless. Of course, she responded with sympathy and was clearly unsure of what to say. The next woman who came in was really pretty. I told her about how I had to be there for a physical because Ellis wouldn't respond to paperwork sent to them by the Department of Labor until I got one from them, having not had one since 2013. I didn't know until that day that physicals were supposed to be annual. I felt like a disgusting loser as I answered her questions about my mental state and how things in my life were going. She asked me about my diet and I told her I was vegan. Thankfully, she was young enough to not have anything stupid to say. In fact, when I told her the acid reflux from my stress-induced ulcer had died down in the last day or two, she said, "Yeah, that vegan diet will help with that stuff." She pushed around my gut a little. There was a loud wheeze when she put the stethoscope to my chest and back, but she didn't say anything about it. She told me I could get a psychological evaluation from someone right there at the hospital and scheduled me with someone for the next day. I felt relieved by that. The secretary heard I was homeless and tried to give me a big Ziploc bag of hygiene products, but I gratefully declined since I had all my own stuff.
"Unfortunately, I'm a professional in this field," I told her.
She laughed solemnly and uncomfortably.
I walked downtown to the Happy Cappuccino to drink a chai latte and use their wifi. They closed at 6, so I went across the street to another cafe called Apostrophe. At that point, I was just trying to kill time until Tall Matt got into town with his teammates. I put my head down into my arms at a table and passed out. When I woke up to him calling at 7:30, I had drooled all over my iPhone screen. I hopped in their van and we headed off to Albany for dinner at Little Anthony's. Matt was nice enough to split a twelve-cut with me, and they said it'd be okay to stay at their hotel with them for the night. Hanging out with Matt was uplifting. I shaved his head in the room at the Extended Stay and we were asleep by 10. I kept waking up to my nose dripping out of my face and onto my pillow. My sinuses had been demolished by the one night at my aunt's.
Miles walked: 7.2
A fraction of the cats eating by the front window.
The cats who slept near/with me the most.
Seen on my walk: a dead pigeon, a robot in a store window, a piece of straightedge graffiti I did when I was a teenager that is somehow still living.
Thursday, April 2nd
In the morning, I grabbed a packet of oatmeal from the hotel and they dropped me off at a bus stop. They were on their way to Massachusetts. I got off at Mohawk Commons and returned to the Price Chopper by my aunt's. I ate pizza leftovers for breakfast. I wrote for a little while. I eventually noticed that my phone was suddenly working again and immediately dived into using the Internet on it since the Price Chopper had no wifi. I didn't question the miracle and figured I'd still take the new phone when it came. My second appointment at Ellis was at 3pm. I walked again, as the weather was still pretty splendid.
I got there a little early and, in turn, got to see the doctor early. She was really young and cute, which made me feel even more insecure and anxious about speaking honestly about things. Right off the bat, she told me she couldn't give a legitimate psychological evaluation because she did not have a PhD, and suggested I reach out to my previous psychologist for one. Instead, she talked to me for an hour, heard me out, and kept offering me local resources for mental health care and shelter. At the least, she said that her notes, where she would write the signs of certain mental illnesses I showcased, would and could be seen by the Bureau of Disability when and if they looked at it. I asked her some stupid questions that had been on my mind a lot the last couple of weeks of having to think over how to "prove" my mental illness. I asked her if mental illnesses like depression really were something that one could "overcome", as I hear people on the Internet and stuff claim they've done. Perhaps they're being hyperbolic, but so many people tell me they have "crippling depression" and still get up for work every day and make doing normal adult things look so easy. I asked her if sometimes feeling okay, or being able to do something that is usually outside of my comfort zone, like going to a concert or something, invalidates my mental illness. She told me that those moments were normal and that they were, like, the real me trying to break through, even though it only can some of the time. I asked her if therapy and medication were really the only options for managing these problems and she hesitantly avoided answering because the truth was that they were, and normally had to be in conjunction with one another. Medicare apparently paid for both of these appointments and I had no idea how, but didn't question it. As far as I knew, Medicare didn't work across state lines. Oh, well, fuck 'em.
I went back to the Price Chopper up the street and ate the rest of my pizza leftovers. I was overcome with discomfort from saying so many things out loud, and anxiety from knowing that I still had to put effort into finding a psychological evaluation elsewhere. I talked to Sacha on the phone and he told me I could have Brian's old room at the end of April. It would be $300 a month plus upwards of $100 for utilities. He also wanted a $300 deposit, but was willing to work something out with me, like breaking it up into installments. I was happy to be getting the offer, but as it soaked into the fabric of my brain as a real option, the issues with it became bolder. I really, really, really needed something no more than $250 a month. Living expenses that came to a collective ~$400 would leave me with only $259 a month for transportation, enjoying myself, and that one week of each month where I'm out of food stamps and have to buy it with cash. As I knew from living on Pulaski for nearly $400 a month, this wasn't manageable. Part of me still wanted to take it just to live somewhere for the summer. It would be a white flag. But then I realized that I probably shouldn't move into somewhere when I wasn't even certain I would still have an income for much longer after. I wasn't sure what to do. I walked to the park nearby and jumped over a fence to the back of the abandoned restaurant there. It was scattered in picnic tables, shards of glass, and the tattered remains of the sign that used to hang on the front of it. I investigated the windows and doors to see if it would be easy to get inside, but everything was sealed tight. I sat there in silence and looked ahead at the surrounding trees and the frozen pond. A little boy asked me if the place was open. I told him it wasn't and that I hopped over a thing to get to it. He joined me and did his own exploration before asking me if I ever went fishing.
"I like fish, I don't want to hurt them!"
He left without saying a word.
I got a call from Jess's mother, who was in town again for a court meeting about Jess's son and the ongoing custody battle that had ensued since July. I'd asked them to bring my old pack, which I had given to Jess to make carrying everything on the streets easier for her when I left her behind and moved to Philly. The new bag I was using was just too tiny and was beginning to bruise my arm pits from how tightly it fit around my shoulders. I met them at the hotel downtown and transferred everything from one bag to the other. The difference between the two was so extreme. I missed that damn bag. It was stained with travel and sentimental value; it had been all over the country with me. I went to Happy Cappuccino again and loitered there until closing. I ate a barbecue chicken nugget burrito at Bombers and watched all of the happy couples and oblivious groups of drunk people go up and down the stairs. At the bus stop, a homeless man told me he'd just gotten out of Attica after fourteen years in lock-up. I told him I was homeless, too, and couldn't help him. He said he was thirsty, though, so I gave him the rest of my orange juice. He was really grateful for it and boasted after a big sip, "That just rejuvenated me, yo!" I spent the night at my aunt's again.
Glorious leftover pizza.
Being alone at an abandoned restaurant in Central Park.
Miles walked: 7.6
Friday, April 3rd
The night was pretty restless, even against my mind and body's extreme exhaustion from my new fifteen-hour days and constant walking. My uncle Chris snored like he was gargling gravel. My aunt would wake up to it and start screaming at him to stop, as if he was doing it intentionally. Chris talked loudly in his sleep a lot as it was, but when she would start screaming at him and eventually poking him with her cane, he would let out a loud, "Oh, my god!" Meanwhile, I had several cats walking all over my body and trying to sleep on or beside me, even though there just wasn't enough room. One of the cats let out rapid-fire sneezing. And then the sun would begin to rise and the dogs would begin barking.
Price Chopper became my go-to morning spot for loitering and eating, as it was the only thing open that early that wouldn't tell me to leave. I used the pack of oatmeal I got from the hotel, heated it up with some water in the public microwave and ate it out of a makeshift bowl I made from a cut soda refill cup. I sat there and read for a little while, then went over to Taco Bell for wifi. Most of the sites I used were blocked, though, and the burritos I got were so horrible that I couldn't eat the second one. I had plans to reunite and hang out with my old friend Trevor that day. Even though he was a total mess, loving alcohol and hating most other things, and suffering from borderline personality disorder, I was excited to see him again. He had been, after all, one of my best friends at one point. I considered walking the whole way, which was about five and a half miles from where I was, but didn't because of the painful inner thigh burn that had already developed the day before from all the walking. Instead, I took the bus to the corner of State and Broadway and then walked the remaining 2.1 miles to his house, up the steep Broadway hill. It was brutal. At his house, we just sat around and caught up. He told me all the stories he had from the last couple years of his turbulent life. Like me, he just never caught a break. His arms and hands were covered in thick, vertical scars, one of which separated a tattoo, from a night he got black-out drunk and sliced himself up with a boxcutter. It was a sad and scary story to hear. He had a comfortable home with a long-time girlfriend who was somehow patient and caring enough to deal with him and his issues. I envied that about him. I shared my own horror stories with him. He kept saying, "Ya win some, ya lose some," even though we clearly mostly lost some. I met his two cats. The young one was skittish and the other, who lived with feline HIV, was fat and friendly with a handsome but goofy face. Trevor was into a lot of things I was not, like poker, Magic the Gathering, alcohol, and TV shows. It was still good to be with the kid again, though. Overall, he hadn't changed much. I laid down on his broken couch and we gossiped between episodes of Impractical Jokers on his flat-screen. Some girl scouts came by and I bought a box of thin mints off of them.
At 5, my little sister picked me up. My brother Kyle was in the backseat, coincidentally with his head shaved just like mine. Amber drove us all to Red Robin. It was a fun time hanging out with two of my siblings. My brother was funny and caught me up on a lot of things. We talked about film a lot and he told me things I didn't know about some of the local mutual acquaintances we had. He made some transphobic remarks about someone we knew who had become a girl, but when I objected, he simply said, "I don't care about that stuff. I say whatever word comes to mind." He was currently close with a very unlikely array of people, but it being Schenectady, I couldn't really blame him. Had I had the patience he seemed to, I would probably be friends with just about anybody, too. He knew where he was going next, but I didn't. I didn't want to go back to my aunt's because of how uncomfortable it was, but I knew I just as badly didn't want to sleep outside. It was a lot chillier that day. Amber felt bad and she didn't want to go back home to our mother, either, so we kept driving around. She got me a Coolatta from Dunkin Donuts. I felt bad for the girl. All she did was work, and despite all of her working, she still couldn't afford to get out of my mother and father's house. She told me my mother would constantly hit her up for money and, at that point, she would just give it to her to avoid a scene. I thought about all the people I knew who could or did live with their parents completely free of charge, and how normal it was for that to be the situation. But not with ours. At least she had a loving, long-term boyfriend.
I got dropped off at my aunt's. It was a weird day of catching up with people. Everyone was trying to survive, but seemingly just as much waiting to die. I talked with my uncle a bit before passing out on the chair. It was another restless night as the schedule of cats, snoring, my aunt screaming, Chris's unconscious dialog, and the dogs eventually barking played out.
Miles walked: 2.7
A hobo oatmeal.
A turtle I found on the side of the road.
A cool Breaking Bad poster Trevor had on his front door.
He found King of the Hill pocket sand on Etsy!
His adorable, HIV+ cat.
Thin mints!
Saturday, April 4th
Despite this, I tried to sleep as late as I could. 7 was the best I could do, though. It was a really cold and windy day, which made just the walk to Price Chopper unbearable. I wrote and read a lot, jerked off in the bathroom to porn on my phone, and spent a few hours browsing Tumblr. I was beginning to see how useful having a smartphone was, but still couldn't relate to how it was useful for anyone who wasn't homeless, honestly. I ate at Chipotle for lunch, then took a bus downtown for no reason in particular. I loitered at Happy Cappuccino again until they closed at 7. At one point, I turned to my right in time to notice a girl moving her mouth in my direction. I took my headphones off and asked her what she said, but she responded, "No, not you. Him." She was talking across my worthless body to a pretty boy at a table to my left, sitting with books and notebooks spread out in front of him. "I like your sweater," was all she wanted to say to him. It wasn't even a nice sweater; just some jacket with a sports team logo on it. Music was on in my headphones again, but I watched as, "I like your sweater," somehow lead to her being invited to sit with him. Every time a track would end, I could hear a part of their conversation, which was mundane pleasantries and him talking like a scholar about absolutely nothing, saying he liked Schenectady way more than where he was from in California, and then giving her cliche relationship advice before revealing that he was just taking biology in school. Was this really how human beings met each other?
When I left, I had no idea what to do or where to go. I just wanted to jump into the sky and float away into space, maybe grab on to some of the junked satellite pieces orbiting our planet. I took each step like my ankles were weighed down with anchors; they felt like they were. I crossed the street, turned around, and saw my brother outside of Bombers with a kid who used to be good friends with us back in the day named Devin. I didn't know my brother hung out with him anymore. I waited for my brother to acknowledge me so I knew it wouldn't be embarrassing for me to come over to them. I talked to them for a few minutes and then they had to leave. My brother said, "I feel bad just leaving you." I told him it was fine, and that I just had no one to talk to.
"That's because you made enemies with everyone."
I don't know why, but how lonely I felt made that sentence sting much worse. I crept slowly up the State Street hill, watching the bus I needed get there before me but not having the energy to run towards it. I started thinking about the people I'd done shitty things to or pushed away, as well as all the people who just got sick of me and left. Nine out of ten abandoned me what seemed like out of nowhere, and I never got closure or explanation from many of them. I was an unlikable person who was oftentimes hard to deal with, but I was a good friend. I guess my loyalty and trustworthiness just weren't enough to outweigh how unbearably shitty of a person I was. But I knew one thing: my brother was wrong; I did not make enemies with everyone. For some reason, most of the people who eventually threw me away just grew to hate me later on. I sat on the stairs to an abandoned autodealer and cried a little. I felt so alone. Well, I guess I was so alone. I texted my brother and he said vague things about not wanting to say anything that would make me mad or start a fight. I had no idea what he could have been alluding to, so I told him I'd rather know if I'd done fucked-up things to people so I could learn from it. After all these years, I knew I was damaged enough to do shitty things without even noticing it. He said we could talk about it in person, which I preferred. I told him not to hang out with me out of pity and he said, "I don't think I am." Another night at my aunt's. I really missed my grandmother.
Sunday, April 5th
I woke, looked at my phone, and saw two texts from my service provider. One said I had insufficient funds and couldn't receive a text or call I'd apparently gotten. The other said, "As requested..." my service had been shut off. What the fuck? So my phone didn't work at all. It was Sunday, so the Stolen Cellphone Store was closed. Not that anyone out there was trying to communicate with me, but having the Internet on it really helped the time go by. It was Easter, I guess, so the Price Chopper would be closed for the day. I wasn't really sure what would be open, so I used my aunt's computer to check. I knew Denny's would definitely be open no matter what, so I took the bus downtown and ate there. I got a veggie skillet, subbing the eggs with avocado, and a side of fries. I added some pepperonis I still had sitting in my bag. I love how long it takes for unrefrigerated vegan meats to go bad. I read for a really long time because I wasn't sure what else to do. A shitty old white couple across from me asked the waitress, who was Latina, "Are you from Mexico?" Watching her have to take it with a fake smile and chuckle hurt my soul.
I originally had plans with two people for Easter Sunday, but both backed out the day before. So I decided to take the bus to Albany and spend the day at the movies. The Spectrum, which has been the only provider of indie and foreign film in the area (albeit not that great of one), was open all day. The walk from the bus stop to the theater was a little over a mile. It was another chilly, breezy day, and my inner thighs were sore and raw. I got there early, bought a ticket, and then drank a hot chocolate at the cafe next door while briefly using the Internet to check my e-mail and Facebook, in hopes that someone had reached out to me. Of course, no one had. The barista working the register told me he had recently become a vegetarian, adding that he was only going to do it for a while, but liked it so much that he wasn't going to stop. I congratulated him and tried to fit in that his idea that free-range or organic grass-fed meat was better on the human body was totally false. He asked me where I was traveling from and I just said, "Around here." He told me he was going to be "going around, too" soon. I asked where, to be nice, and he said, "Ecuador." I guess I was too young for it to be obvious that I was homeless and not traveling recreationally.
My brother insisted I see this new indie horror film that did well at Cannes and Sundance called It Follows. It was my first film of the day and totally creepy. I had an hour to wait, but after, I saw a dark Spanish comedy called Wild Tales that was just as great. I don't like going to the movies alone, but it wasn't that bad. It sucked thinking about all the times I'd been there with Burgundy way back when, and seeing all the old people come in together as couples. I was the only person there alone. I walked two or three miles from there to Ichiban for dinner. A loud, obnoxious family sitting at a long table annoyed me while I sat and waited for my food. The motherfucker brought me sesame chicken, which made me angrier than it probably should have in the moment. The food was good, though, and I would have leftovers for the next morning. There wasn't much else I could do with my day, so I got the bus back to my aunt's. I wasn't exactly ready to sleep, but there were no outlets in the tiny house for me to use my laptop and no wifi signal since she didn't have wireless. In fact, she didn't even know what "wireless" was. I watched some crappy old musical that was playing on the TV and fell asleep. One of the two old, miserable parrots who have spent their entire lives in cages would sometimes say, "Shut up." I hadn't heard him say anything else while there, in fact.
Miles walked: 3.2
The old "Shut up" bird.
Cool street art on Delaware Ave in Albany.
Monday, April 6th
I ate leftover sesame tofu at Price Chopper. I was especially bored because my phone still wasn't working. The Stolen Cellphone Store didn't open until 1, so I had a lot of time to kill. I wrote for a little while, ate some sushi, and watched an awesome film called A Gun For Jennifer about a gang of feminist vigilantes in New York City who castrate rapists and abusers. I started walking. The stroll from Woodlawn to lower State Street was devastatingly ugly and boring. I was already very sick of it. At least this time I went to the cellphone shop, he told me that the problem I was having had been happening to people a lot recently. The provider of my service that he goes through, according to him, has either been not logging or flat-out deleting logs of payments made, so people's phones would wind up shut off only days after their payment was made as if it had never been paid. That's what was happening to me. I still felt cursed. Thankfully, he was able to fix it, even after he called them and they were no help to him.
"Fuckin' A-rabs on the phone," he complained even though he was also middle-eastern.
I walked downtown to a shady parking lot and sat down on a curb. I talked to Tia on the phone for a little while and then got a call from Matt, who after over twenty-four hours of not hearing back from me or seeing any presence on social media, had begun thinking I'd finally killed myself. I also got a call from a strange 518 number who had already hung up when I crossed over to answer. According to some reviews online, the number was the Industrial Medicine Association. Some said they were a legitimate organization involved with Social Security; several others insisted it was identity theft. A familiar homeless guy made eye contact with me as I sat there on the curb and asked me, "How's life treatin' ya?" I scoffed and said, "Not well." He then had the nerve to sit down next to me, a dirty looking guy with a scraggly beard and a giant backpack who just told him life wasn't treating him well, and ask for money. When I told him I was also homeless and that I meant it when I said life wasn't treating me well, he got right back up and started going on a tangent about God and how I will one day stop making the same mistakes.
I stood outside of Taj Mahal and patiently waited for them to open at 4 so I could eat Indian food for dinner. I walked to Bombers afterwards to loiter and use wifi. After a little while, my brother was suddenly standing over me. He had just come in with a bunch of his friends who wanted nothing to do with me. He kept alternating between sitting with them and standing over me. It made me feel more like an alien than I usually did. I left shortly after 8 and returned to my aunt's. I woke up two hours later to the most disgusting, painful sounding snoring I'd ever heard. At one point, I sat up and started considering sleeping outside, but it was set to rain later on.
Miles walked: 4.5
Aloo chana with naan.
Tuesday, April 7th
I got out of the house and to Price Chopper while the rain was still gone after hocking up some really thick, gluey snot into the toilet. My aunt had absolutely no consideration for me and lit up cigarettes as soon as she woke up each morning. I could feel my lungs burning and my sinuses tickling. I got food stamps and I still had a $1 Gardein coupon in my wallet, so I bought chicken sliders for breakfast and used the public microwave there to heat them up. I cautiously stayed at Price Chopper for longer than I usually would because I assumed it would start raining again any minute. But by noon, it was still dry, although grey and cloudy, so I left. I decided I'd go try and buy pants so I could look more like a human being and to cover up my legs that I recently decided I was insecure about. The walk was almost five miles and took me through my old neighborhood, where my first apartment upon moving out at seventeen was. Memories collected on the shoulder of the roads next to the illegally dumped trash and the tiny cemetery. I thought about Maura, who lived in the apartments next to mine, and all the fun I'd had when I was still living there. Subsidized housing made living while living somewhere possible. It was hard not to dramatically think that everything had been downhill since I moved out of there back in 2010 for a safer place in Albany that would only wind up falling through at the hands of two selfish alcoholics. I walked through the small tunnel splattered in terrible graffiti and by the old house of my first real girlfriend, Lisa. It was like I was re-experiencing my city, this time all alone, like my life was flashing before my eyes as I was about to die--and I did feel like I was going to die.
Trying clothes on is one of the worst things ever. It was the reason I even wore shorts so exclusively: they're often elastic and it's easy to find pairs that fit. Not knowing my actual waist or leg length, the best I could do was trial and error, going for sizes that seemed too big to me, and then finding out that they still didn't fit because of this giant fucking gut that was more like an abdominal tumor that ruined my life. I found two pairs that just barely fit and bought them, then sat on a curb outside, wanting to disappear. I continuously sent texts to Matt and Tia, even though both of them took hours to respond to what eventually accumulated as a mess of unrelated texts. I had no one to talk to. I felt like a ghost. I had spent twenty-six years of my life in this city and the only friends I really had in it weren't there. Anyone else I knew was busy with their real lives; their partners, their families, their jobs. What did I have to show for myself? Oh, I was straightedge and vegan and homeless. How free I was, right? Sure didn't fucking mean much as I walked through a parking lot by myself with nowhere to go next. I waited for the bus downtown and sat online at Happy Cappuccino and then Bombers. I fucking hated myself and my only solace was that I was such a piece of shit that none of the happy couples or groups of people going up to the bar would even notice I was there.
Miles walked: 4.6
I found another dead pigeon. Someone had clipped a fake flower onto this one.
The old graffiti tunnel by my first apartment.
Wednesday, April 8th
When I woke up, my lungs felt collapsed and sunken in. I tried to cough away the high-pitch, persistent wheezing, which sometimes works if things aren't too bad, but it wouldn't go away. As the hour went by, I could only breathe less and less. I took a shower for the first time in a week with a bar of soap I took from the Extended Stay I'd been at with Matt and changed into my new pants, which made me feel bigger than I actually was and got me worrying about whether or not my outfit matched and all this other stupid shit that didn't or shouldn't have mattered. The fresh air slowly filled my deflated lungs back up with air on my walk to Price Chopper. Little droplets of rain started falling from the sky. When I got there, I made chicken patties for breakfast. I missed cooking. I watched two documentaries on my laptop.
Sacha called me because he didn't know I was still in upstate New York. He wanted to know whether or not I was taking the room. Unfortunately, I had to turn down the offer. After days of sitting on the idea, I knew that, had I taken it, I would have just been making another big, long-term decision based entirely out of desperation. Decisions made out of heightened emotions or desperation were always bad ones, as I'd learned numerous times throughout my life. A higher electricity bill made the cost of a room at Sacha's about the same as what I was paying on Pulaski. I would have inevitably wound up in the same place I had there: too broke to live any type of enjoyable life, with no more than $200 to my name.
"I spend well over $200 a month on going out to eat and going to shows and stuff, yeah," Sacha empathized.
I also didn't even know if I'd have an income for much longer. If I were to be rejected, sure, I could prolong it by appealing their decision, but I'd inevitably be rejected again and then find myself at a loss and with them suffering along with me. As badly as I wanted a home, I knew I couldn't make this decision. Once again, it came down to choosing to either pay all I have for a place to live and have no money to live, or have nowhere to live and sometimes be able to live. They were going to give the room to Tia, instead, which I thought was a great idea. Sacha told me I could stay over at the house "sometimes, like on bad weather days". I knew he was being nice, but it sucked to hear him add that I "couldn't, like, stay for a month at a time or anything". It was almost as bad as when I told Tia to take the room and said I could stay in it with her while homeless and she expressed concern about how much it would inconvenience her. Of course, I couldn't question it; it was up to them what they did and how they operated at the places they paid to live. At most, I'd cost a little extra electricity, but I could not figure out in my head why no one was okay with letting their friend stay with them for free in their time of need. If roles were reversed--and they had been with Matt last summer--I would do everything I could to help without question, ultimatum, or hesitation.
I took the bus downtown instead of walking so as to avoid the next spontaneous blast of rain. It started as soon as I got on the bus. I went to Happy Cappuccino and by the time I sat down and started browsing Tumblr, Gary texted me and canceled the plans we had to hang out. It was raining, anyway, so I wasn't too bummed. A few minutes later, I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. As soon as I answered, I knew it was Tom. He said he was at Gary's. An immediate, 'What the fuck?' came to mind. He asked if I wanted to hang out and I was in no position to decline. A little while later, him and Gary showed up and sat down with me at the empty, four-chair table I took up too much space at. I didn't have much to share with them about my life, but they did. Tom now had a kid, nearing their first birthday, and had a high-paying job processing microchips (mostly just babysitting robots that do everything for them). Gary had since moved, his two kids were growing up fast, and he killed a man. Like, seriously. A crackhead climbed up to the second floor of his last place at 4 in the morning. When he heard a noise in the kitchen, he found him, and as soon as the guy went for his pockets, presumably to grab a weapon, Gary started striking him indiscriminately with a sword. The man died and the cops didn't even question it, nor did they clean up the blood or chalk outline. It was a crazy story. They were more or less up to date with my shitty life because of my blog.
Gary, wide-eyed, looked at me and said, "That shit was interesting," while Tom chimed in, "Seriously, I couldn't wait for the next part." It made me feel good about my writing, though it sucked that all I had to offer the world was tragedy. I felt like such a loser sitting with them. They had love, family, and shelter in their lives. I had absolutely fucking nothing.
Tom had parked his car in the nearby garage and was worried about having to pay a ton of money, so we got going. He suggested we all go out to Dave & Buster's. It sounded like a great idea. We stopped at Gary's so he could wake up Michelle and see if she wanted to join us. His daughter, now seven, greeted me and asked, "Who are you?" I tried to remind her that I had stayed at her old house for a week a long time ago, but I guess she was too young to remember. Their son, who could now walk upright and talk a little, Casey, came to say hi, too, as did the dog, Onyx. The house they were staying in was carpeted and spacious and wooden, and even though he was splitting it with his horrible mother, he had it really great. I was so jealous. Michelle called out of work the next day so she could stay out late and we all headed out to Crossgates Mall. There was a ninety-minute waiting list for food, so we ate dinner at Johnny Rocket's, exchanging stories. We spent several hours at Dave & Buster's. It was half-off Wednesdays, so $20 got you a long way. Tom was addicted to Flappy Bird, which gave you 1,000 tickets if you were able to beat the day's high score. He proceeded to break it three more times and accumulated a few pounds of tickets, even emptying the machine at one point. We played Pac Man Versus, a trivia game, Connect Four, four-person air hockey, and Mario Kart, then split up and did our own thing. I was feeling really anxious there, so I tried to keep near someone in between pathetic attempts at independently enjoying my night. As it got later, I knew I was missing a chance to stay at my aunt's, so I asked Gary and Tom if I could stay at one of their places. Gary said I could stay in their basement, which was a relief. Now an old man and a stay-at-home dad, Gary was sleepy by 9pm. I was, too, but only because I was on a homeless guy schedule. They all amassed a ton of tickets and went to exchange them for prizes. I had a cup-full, as well as another full cup I had found sitting unattended that I snatched. I gave it all to Gary.
It was almost 11 when we left. It was the most fun and the most human contact I'd had since I'd gotten back to Schenectady, and I truly appreciated it. Leaving the mall, Tom pulled out into the oncoming lane. Thankfully, there was no traffic coming our way when he did. The kid could not drive. The basement at Gary's was just as spacious, and the room they gave me down there was carpeted and adorned in walls stamped with jackrabbits and deer. His mother had stored a bunch of her stuff there, including a bed that I was able to use. I immediately said, "Holy shit, let me move in and take this room." Gary laughed and said he would if he could. I didn't question it. I slept really well that night. I could breathe and stretch out. I hated the idea that it was only for one night.
Flappy Bird spitting out a thousand tickets, and me with a Yoshi helmet.
Gary's dog, Onyx, with laser beam eyes.
Thursday, April 9th
I woke up at 10 the next morning, which at that point was "sleeping in" for me. I felt rejuvenated waking up. I woke Gary up and spent much of the day sitting around with him in his house as the kids hopped around energetically and watched cartoons on the tiny TV set in the living room. Every now and then, Onyx would rush over to me and beg for attention, rubbing his itchy butt against the furniture and pissing Michelle off with it. He was a good dog. We ate standing up in the kitchen and tried the new Morningstar spicy Indian patties, which happened to be vegan. They tasted like an Indian dish in a single patty. It was rainy and cold outside and I did not want to leave the comfort of their home or company, so I stuck around for as long as I felt welcomed. Walking to Stewart's, I asked them again to let me move into that room in the basement. They said I couldn't because their landlord won't let anyone else move in. He'd even rejected Tom and his girlfriend already. It was a bummer, especially since I was practically begging--not a good feeling.
I spent the rest of the day downtown at Happy Cappuccino and then Bombers, as usual. My lungs instantly felt like they were about to seize once I walked back into my aunt's later that night to sleep. I felt more angry than sad. Angry at all the couples who sat and flirted with each other around me at Happy Cappuccino; angry at all the happy people going up to the bar at Bombers; angry at Gary and Tom for having lives that I could never have being the person that I am; angry at the strong stench of cigarette smoke, cat piss, and ammonia; angry at the cat clawing at my backpack. And then my mother called. She was drunk, of course, and started ranting about how Kyle, Amber, and I had all gone out to dinner without our youngest brother, Bryce. She tried to trick me into talking to him when I answered, calling to him and saying, "Your brother wants to speak to you!"
I immediately asked, "Are you drinking?"
She happily said, "Oh, yeah, I am!"
So I hung right up and ignored the next two or three calls. She left me a crazy message saying that she was leaving everyone behind and moving to Philadelphia and that I needed to talk to my brother. I texted Kyle and asked if he ever got bi-weekly drunken phone calls from her, or if it was just me.
"I just got multiple."
It honestly made me feel better to know I wasn't the only one. Apparently, this freak-out had been going on since the day before, over "what we did to Bryce". My little sister had been dealing with it, too. A few nights before, my mother was harassing her in her room, so Amber pushed her away by her face. A fist-fight ensued and my sister gave her a bloody nose. My mother called the cops on her and everything. I was angry at my mother.
My last day in Philadelphia, I got the first ounce of luck I'd been granted in months and received the redertimination questionnaire in the mail. Had it shown up the next day or any day after that, I would have had no choice but to have Tia fill it out for me and forge my signature. To my surprise, the thing had no questions about medical history or recent doctors. It was mostly personal questions regarding how I feel I am incapable of working, what I do from the beginning to end of a single day, what my hygiene was like, how well I go about certain everyday things like grocery shopping and household chores. I answered it honestly, which made me feel more disabled than I wanted to be. In the back, it offered extra lines for anything else I wanted to add, and I basically wrote a long, frantic, rambling paragraph about myself and how much the phone call regarding redetermination had physically destroyed me the last week or so. As soon as I sealed the giant envelope and delivered it at the post office, I started second-guessing everything I'd written. The process of having to prove your mental illness to a federal welfare organization whose mercy you are helplessly at is a very daunting, humiliating, cruel one. I started thinking things like, "Shit, I go out and buy my own groceries--does that mean, to them, I'm not disabled?" The anxiety and the ulcer showed no signs of letting up.
I wanted to go right back to sleep, but Tia suggested we go out and do something since the weather was tolerable. We went to South Street and ate a buncha food at Vegan Tree that we mostly split between us: sushi, chicken nuggets, chickpea soup, a strawberry smoothie bubble tea. That place always left me feeling unusually refreshed rather than full until I was sick. Not long after we got back home, I could hear loud talking out in the kitchen from my room. It was about the latest electricity bill. I heard another absurd number in the several-hundreds that I couldn't completely decipher. I texted Tia and found out that the bill was over $600 and that, split between us, we all owed a little more than $130 each. What the fuck were these kids doing wrong? Tia said before I could that she knew I couldn't cover that and she would pay it. I felt awful that she would be doing that, but I was about to be homeless and that would have killed me. Suddenly, I could hear Tessa in the room over, freaking out on the phone with her mother and/or father.
"We turn the lights off every time we leave a room!" was one of the things she exclaimed, which was really funny to me since, no, neither she nor anyone else in the house did, and in that very moment, I walked out to a house where literally every single light was on: the hallway by our rooms, the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, the stairway to the second floor. I was the only person in the house who practiced conservative methods with the electricity. Since my heat was inefficient, I turned it completely off, and I only used the space heater when it was absolutely necessary; TVs and lights were always turned off when I wasn't using them or left a room; things were unplugged when I was done with them. The others, including Tia, on the other hand, exaggerated the cold and kept most of the heat on at high, and almost never turned lights off when they left the room or even when it was daytime. Almost every night, around 4 to 6 in the morning, I would go take a piss, see the light coming out from under Tia's door, and then see it turned off as I left. I brought this up to her not long before then and she said she didn't remember doing that, even though it had become a nightly tradition for me to witness. The girl never had turned her fucking bedroom light off when she'd be about to go to sleep, and even turned it on when the sun was still up. Few things frustrate me more than living with people who don't turn lights off--for environmental and financial reasons.
Tia and I talked about it in her room for a little bit and realized how confusing it all was. Despite how partially at fault I felt everyone was, the gradually increasing bills still seemed outrageous. Naturally, I was paranoid this Kurdt kid who managed the electricity bills was screwing us or was just still so inexperienced in adulthood as a nineteen-year old suburban college kid that he was doing something wrong. One thing that stood out was that we were asked to pay electricity bills twice in one month. That seemed suspicious to me, since most electricity bills operate on a month-long cycle, give or take a few days. We went upstairs and tried to talk to him. He had the last couple of months' bills in a pile on his neat little desk. On the latest bill, it listed two recent payments, neither of which made sense based on the last two times we were asked for money. He started saying something about how Tessa was thinking maybe someone was stealing electricity from us or something and I asked if I could see all the bills to look them over. Tia and I went to my room and started doing the math. The latest bill was for something like February 10th to March 11th, which really threw me off since I had been asked for $69 on the 19th of February and, as far as he remembered, $49 on the 13th of that month. The most recent bill had come two weeks before all this was even being discussed and I had no idea why we were just hearing about it. After an hour of doing some math, everything did seem in order, though, at least according to the chronology of the bills. In the end, they really were either using way too much electricity or being mercilessly overcharged. If anyone was being screwed, it was me by Kurdt, who had asked me for money that technically went towards bills in place before I was even there. Had he not overlooked the fact that he didn't make me pay for the last bill of $49, I would have been mad.
Since I had a lot to do before leaving, I stayed up all night. Tia and I brought everything in my room down to the basement. I packed my new bag, which was far tinier than I was used to, and took a shower. Once again, I was relieved at the idea of not paying rent or being around the people I currently lived with, but not necessarily satisfied or excited about the situation of homelessness. Schenectady was of course not an optimal place to be homeless again, especially with Matt still gone on tour, but it was what was most familiar to me, and I knew more people there than I did in Philadelphia. More importantly, it was geographically in between the two zine fest locations I would be tabling at that month.
Quite possibly my favorite sushi in Philadelphia is at Vegan Tree.
Tuesday, March 31st
10am Chinatown bus to New York City picks up a half hour early. Get into Chinatown around quarter after noon. 1pm Chinatown bus to Schenectady. I mostly slept through both rides, but the one to Schenectady was pretty rough. Even with headphones blaring in my ears, I woke up to an old Indian man sitting right behind me, screaming stuff about Biblical text to a younger guy across from him who was a practicing Muslim.
"Abraham was a man! He was a nigger!"
I'd never heard the "n" word used so many times in a single bus ride.
He repeated that sentence at least five times. He was brown, so no one was mad at him. I got up and angrily moved several rows back where his voice wasn't keeping me awake. When I got off, I walked straight to Bombers for a terrible burrito bowl with rice that was hard from being either too old or undercooked. Dave Hughes saw me and came in to hang for a half hour. It was cool talking with him for a bit. I texted everyone I knew in the area, letting them know I was around for three weeks and wanted to hang out. As usual, just about all of them were busy with their jobs, their relationships, and their families. I didn't want to be wandering around with my rolling luggage filled with zines, so I called my aunt and she had my uncle come and pick it up to store at their house for the time being. I sat at Bombers for a little while at a tiny table and read while Titanic played on the muted, closed-captioned flat screen.
I'd already gotten to hear some of the great things I'd missed since my last visit to my hometown: a fire on Jay Street killed two people, according to my aunt; a CDTA bus hit a four-year old, according to Dave; a kid I knew back in the day died in a meth lab explosion, according to my brother. I absolutely did not want to sleep outside that night. It was really chilly out. For the first time ever, my aunt actually invited me to stay over at their house. I'd never pushed it because I knew the house was full of animals and cigarette smoke and that I'd probably die there, but I took her up on the offer. When I walked in, the stagnant, trapped household air hit me hard. The odor was nostalgic, just as I remembered from when I was a kid and I'd stay over there and play SEGA Genesis with my brother. Between the stale stench of dissipated cigarette smoke stuck to all the walls and carpets and the accumulation of ten cats', three dogs', and two birds' collective dander, I almost instantly felt like I was suffocating. I was welcomed by the loud, incessant yelping of Miss Lily, my dead grandmother's beloved maltese who now lived with them, and then with the louder, rougher barking of the Great Dane and Scotty blocked off by a gate in the kitchen. Despite the conditions, I found my place sleeping across a chair and a foot rest in between three cats and passed out before it was even 10 at night thanks to little to no sleep.
Freebrrd.
Family portrait: Snuggles, Tia, and I watching Netflix.
This is what I unfortunately looked like at this time.
Some more pictures of Snuggles, because why not?
I made, like, over a hundred pigeon stickers to cover the city in.
A new cat-anarchy patch for my hoodie.
Some food I made at Fontain...
Tofu scramble.
White quinoa prepared in vegetable stock.
Mac and cheese.
Soyboy raviolis topped in Go Veggie! Parmesan cheese and nutritional yeast.
Flour tortilla wrap stuffed with Santa Fe chicken strips, quinoa, spinach and kale, tomato, avocado, and topped in taco sauce.
Cinnamon buns!
Pizza bagels!
Beyond Meat chicken strips fried with avocado topped in buffalo sauce with a bowl of sweet peas.
Chicken broccoli mushroom garlic stir fry.
Garlic grilled cheese.
Pork flavored Stove Top stuffing is vegan!
Chili dogs!
Found a big bag of vegetarian tofu dumplings at the grocery store!
Jambalaya, using Zatarain's rice mix and Tofurky Italian sausage.
Wednesday, April 1st
When I woke up next, it was only 3:30 in the morning. I have this sleeping curse where 99% of the time I actually fall asleep at a human hour, like anywhere between 9 and midnight, I will wake up three to four hours later and not be able to get back to sleep. By that point, my mouth and throat were dried up from the atmosphere of the house and my nose was running uncontrollably as soon as gravity showed up. No extreme asthma issues yet, though, so I survived. Because of a leak that was destroying their bedroom, my aunt slept on the couch and my uncle on a little mattress on the living room floor, directly to the left of me. I sat there, wishing for more sleep, watching some shitty local news station. A forty-something-year old man was arrested for trying to molest a four-year old at a Dave & Buster's in a local mall. I got my laptop out and watched the movie Everly to pass the time until sunrise. By 6, all of the dogs were barking like they were roosters announcing sunrise. The cats were awake and ready to eat along the front window. Seeing that many cats in one place was surreal to me. Not really sure where to go next, but knowing I needed to get out into fresh air, I left and walked to the nearby Price Chopper in Mohawk Commons, just half a mile away. I ate a doughnut and some Ritz crackers with roasted red pepper hummus and pepperonis, though not much because of a really bad ache in my abdomen, which could have been from either anxiety or soreness from where and how I slept. A little while later, I walked over to the Panera in hopes of free wifi and black bean soup. Unfortunately, when I got there, the woman told me they don't prepare the soups that early in the morning. So I got a shitty veggie sandwich that I didn't even finish. I did get to use their wifi, though, and eat a baguette. I watched some Breaking Bad as my body slowly became more and more uncomfortable in the chair. At quarter to 11, I asked the woman if soups were ready, since that was when she told me they would be. A couple minutes later, she told me they were. So I ordered a black bean soup. When they called my name, the kid behind the counter told me they didn't have any black bean soup, offering to give me something in its place.
"I don't want anything else."
I asked if they just, like, don't make black bean soup on some days, and he said yes. Everything considered, it was a whole lot more disappointing and frustrating than it probably should have been. I just wanted a goddamn black bean soup. At 11:30, it kicked me off the wifi and told me to "try again at 2pm".
I told myself before I got to Schenectady that I would start walking everywhere, in part for exercise during my soda-free water cleanse and in part to take up some of the over-abundance of time I'd have on my hands as a homeless guy in America's worst city. So at noon, I left and started walking down State Street to the Stolen Cellphone Store a little over two miles away. My phone's 3G still wasn't working at that point and I could finally bring it to the store and have the guy look at it. The weather was pleasantly surprising and I even got to take my hoodie off for it. It felt good to walk, and even though it was the city I hated most, the familiarity of every crack in the sidewalks felt more comfortable than the still mostly new feeling that Philadelphia had. I was at the cellphone shop for almost an hour. He tried everything he could, called some people, and in the end said, "This isn't happening to anyone else but you," and offered to order me a new phone to replace it.
"This isn't happening to anyone else but you."
That sentence, even though in the context of smartphone service, echoed exactly how much of my life left me feeling. I still had some time to kill before my 3pm physical, so I walked to a different Price Chopper up the street from it for another doughnut and to fill my Nalgene with some more water. When I got to the hospital, they asked me for my insurance cards. I didn't have any. I'd lost my Medicare card and threw out the rest of the health care related cards I had because I thought they were worthless after being told I wasn't covered for medicine anymore back in November. She let it slide even after scanning my photo ID that had been expired since my last birthday. I was covered in sweat from anxiety as I sat in the waiting room.
The first nurse to come and see me did all my vitals. I hadn't lost or gained any weight since the last time I was weighed, whenever that was. The number that showed up made me feel good about not drinking soda. She was very friendly. My blood pressure was fine. She asked me where I was living and I had to tell her I was homeless. Of course, she responded with sympathy and was clearly unsure of what to say. The next woman who came in was really pretty. I told her about how I had to be there for a physical because Ellis wouldn't respond to paperwork sent to them by the Department of Labor until I got one from them, having not had one since 2013. I didn't know until that day that physicals were supposed to be annual. I felt like a disgusting loser as I answered her questions about my mental state and how things in my life were going. She asked me about my diet and I told her I was vegan. Thankfully, she was young enough to not have anything stupid to say. In fact, when I told her the acid reflux from my stress-induced ulcer had died down in the last day or two, she said, "Yeah, that vegan diet will help with that stuff." She pushed around my gut a little. There was a loud wheeze when she put the stethoscope to my chest and back, but she didn't say anything about it. She told me I could get a psychological evaluation from someone right there at the hospital and scheduled me with someone for the next day. I felt relieved by that. The secretary heard I was homeless and tried to give me a big Ziploc bag of hygiene products, but I gratefully declined since I had all my own stuff.
"Unfortunately, I'm a professional in this field," I told her.
She laughed solemnly and uncomfortably.
I walked downtown to the Happy Cappuccino to drink a chai latte and use their wifi. They closed at 6, so I went across the street to another cafe called Apostrophe. At that point, I was just trying to kill time until Tall Matt got into town with his teammates. I put my head down into my arms at a table and passed out. When I woke up to him calling at 7:30, I had drooled all over my iPhone screen. I hopped in their van and we headed off to Albany for dinner at Little Anthony's. Matt was nice enough to split a twelve-cut with me, and they said it'd be okay to stay at their hotel with them for the night. Hanging out with Matt was uplifting. I shaved his head in the room at the Extended Stay and we were asleep by 10. I kept waking up to my nose dripping out of my face and onto my pillow. My sinuses had been demolished by the one night at my aunt's.
Miles walked: 7.2
A fraction of the cats eating by the front window.
The cats who slept near/with me the most.
Seen on my walk: a dead pigeon, a robot in a store window, a piece of straightedge graffiti I did when I was a teenager that is somehow still living.
Thursday, April 2nd
In the morning, I grabbed a packet of oatmeal from the hotel and they dropped me off at a bus stop. They were on their way to Massachusetts. I got off at Mohawk Commons and returned to the Price Chopper by my aunt's. I ate pizza leftovers for breakfast. I wrote for a little while. I eventually noticed that my phone was suddenly working again and immediately dived into using the Internet on it since the Price Chopper had no wifi. I didn't question the miracle and figured I'd still take the new phone when it came. My second appointment at Ellis was at 3pm. I walked again, as the weather was still pretty splendid.
I got there a little early and, in turn, got to see the doctor early. She was really young and cute, which made me feel even more insecure and anxious about speaking honestly about things. Right off the bat, she told me she couldn't give a legitimate psychological evaluation because she did not have a PhD, and suggested I reach out to my previous psychologist for one. Instead, she talked to me for an hour, heard me out, and kept offering me local resources for mental health care and shelter. At the least, she said that her notes, where she would write the signs of certain mental illnesses I showcased, would and could be seen by the Bureau of Disability when and if they looked at it. I asked her some stupid questions that had been on my mind a lot the last couple of weeks of having to think over how to "prove" my mental illness. I asked her if mental illnesses like depression really were something that one could "overcome", as I hear people on the Internet and stuff claim they've done. Perhaps they're being hyperbolic, but so many people tell me they have "crippling depression" and still get up for work every day and make doing normal adult things look so easy. I asked her if sometimes feeling okay, or being able to do something that is usually outside of my comfort zone, like going to a concert or something, invalidates my mental illness. She told me that those moments were normal and that they were, like, the real me trying to break through, even though it only can some of the time. I asked her if therapy and medication were really the only options for managing these problems and she hesitantly avoided answering because the truth was that they were, and normally had to be in conjunction with one another. Medicare apparently paid for both of these appointments and I had no idea how, but didn't question it. As far as I knew, Medicare didn't work across state lines. Oh, well, fuck 'em.
I went back to the Price Chopper up the street and ate the rest of my pizza leftovers. I was overcome with discomfort from saying so many things out loud, and anxiety from knowing that I still had to put effort into finding a psychological evaluation elsewhere. I talked to Sacha on the phone and he told me I could have Brian's old room at the end of April. It would be $300 a month plus upwards of $100 for utilities. He also wanted a $300 deposit, but was willing to work something out with me, like breaking it up into installments. I was happy to be getting the offer, but as it soaked into the fabric of my brain as a real option, the issues with it became bolder. I really, really, really needed something no more than $250 a month. Living expenses that came to a collective ~$400 would leave me with only $259 a month for transportation, enjoying myself, and that one week of each month where I'm out of food stamps and have to buy it with cash. As I knew from living on Pulaski for nearly $400 a month, this wasn't manageable. Part of me still wanted to take it just to live somewhere for the summer. It would be a white flag. But then I realized that I probably shouldn't move into somewhere when I wasn't even certain I would still have an income for much longer after. I wasn't sure what to do. I walked to the park nearby and jumped over a fence to the back of the abandoned restaurant there. It was scattered in picnic tables, shards of glass, and the tattered remains of the sign that used to hang on the front of it. I investigated the windows and doors to see if it would be easy to get inside, but everything was sealed tight. I sat there in silence and looked ahead at the surrounding trees and the frozen pond. A little boy asked me if the place was open. I told him it wasn't and that I hopped over a thing to get to it. He joined me and did his own exploration before asking me if I ever went fishing.
"I like fish, I don't want to hurt them!"
He left without saying a word.
I got a call from Jess's mother, who was in town again for a court meeting about Jess's son and the ongoing custody battle that had ensued since July. I'd asked them to bring my old pack, which I had given to Jess to make carrying everything on the streets easier for her when I left her behind and moved to Philly. The new bag I was using was just too tiny and was beginning to bruise my arm pits from how tightly it fit around my shoulders. I met them at the hotel downtown and transferred everything from one bag to the other. The difference between the two was so extreme. I missed that damn bag. It was stained with travel and sentimental value; it had been all over the country with me. I went to Happy Cappuccino again and loitered there until closing. I ate a barbecue chicken nugget burrito at Bombers and watched all of the happy couples and oblivious groups of drunk people go up and down the stairs. At the bus stop, a homeless man told me he'd just gotten out of Attica after fourteen years in lock-up. I told him I was homeless, too, and couldn't help him. He said he was thirsty, though, so I gave him the rest of my orange juice. He was really grateful for it and boasted after a big sip, "That just rejuvenated me, yo!" I spent the night at my aunt's again.
Glorious leftover pizza.
Being alone at an abandoned restaurant in Central Park.
Miles walked: 7.6
Friday, April 3rd
The night was pretty restless, even against my mind and body's extreme exhaustion from my new fifteen-hour days and constant walking. My uncle Chris snored like he was gargling gravel. My aunt would wake up to it and start screaming at him to stop, as if he was doing it intentionally. Chris talked loudly in his sleep a lot as it was, but when she would start screaming at him and eventually poking him with her cane, he would let out a loud, "Oh, my god!" Meanwhile, I had several cats walking all over my body and trying to sleep on or beside me, even though there just wasn't enough room. One of the cats let out rapid-fire sneezing. And then the sun would begin to rise and the dogs would begin barking.
Price Chopper became my go-to morning spot for loitering and eating, as it was the only thing open that early that wouldn't tell me to leave. I used the pack of oatmeal I got from the hotel, heated it up with some water in the public microwave and ate it out of a makeshift bowl I made from a cut soda refill cup. I sat there and read for a little while, then went over to Taco Bell for wifi. Most of the sites I used were blocked, though, and the burritos I got were so horrible that I couldn't eat the second one. I had plans to reunite and hang out with my old friend Trevor that day. Even though he was a total mess, loving alcohol and hating most other things, and suffering from borderline personality disorder, I was excited to see him again. He had been, after all, one of my best friends at one point. I considered walking the whole way, which was about five and a half miles from where I was, but didn't because of the painful inner thigh burn that had already developed the day before from all the walking. Instead, I took the bus to the corner of State and Broadway and then walked the remaining 2.1 miles to his house, up the steep Broadway hill. It was brutal. At his house, we just sat around and caught up. He told me all the stories he had from the last couple years of his turbulent life. Like me, he just never caught a break. His arms and hands were covered in thick, vertical scars, one of which separated a tattoo, from a night he got black-out drunk and sliced himself up with a boxcutter. It was a sad and scary story to hear. He had a comfortable home with a long-time girlfriend who was somehow patient and caring enough to deal with him and his issues. I envied that about him. I shared my own horror stories with him. He kept saying, "Ya win some, ya lose some," even though we clearly mostly lost some. I met his two cats. The young one was skittish and the other, who lived with feline HIV, was fat and friendly with a handsome but goofy face. Trevor was into a lot of things I was not, like poker, Magic the Gathering, alcohol, and TV shows. It was still good to be with the kid again, though. Overall, he hadn't changed much. I laid down on his broken couch and we gossiped between episodes of Impractical Jokers on his flat-screen. Some girl scouts came by and I bought a box of thin mints off of them.
At 5, my little sister picked me up. My brother Kyle was in the backseat, coincidentally with his head shaved just like mine. Amber drove us all to Red Robin. It was a fun time hanging out with two of my siblings. My brother was funny and caught me up on a lot of things. We talked about film a lot and he told me things I didn't know about some of the local mutual acquaintances we had. He made some transphobic remarks about someone we knew who had become a girl, but when I objected, he simply said, "I don't care about that stuff. I say whatever word comes to mind." He was currently close with a very unlikely array of people, but it being Schenectady, I couldn't really blame him. Had I had the patience he seemed to, I would probably be friends with just about anybody, too. He knew where he was going next, but I didn't. I didn't want to go back to my aunt's because of how uncomfortable it was, but I knew I just as badly didn't want to sleep outside. It was a lot chillier that day. Amber felt bad and she didn't want to go back home to our mother, either, so we kept driving around. She got me a Coolatta from Dunkin Donuts. I felt bad for the girl. All she did was work, and despite all of her working, she still couldn't afford to get out of my mother and father's house. She told me my mother would constantly hit her up for money and, at that point, she would just give it to her to avoid a scene. I thought about all the people I knew who could or did live with their parents completely free of charge, and how normal it was for that to be the situation. But not with ours. At least she had a loving, long-term boyfriend.
I got dropped off at my aunt's. It was a weird day of catching up with people. Everyone was trying to survive, but seemingly just as much waiting to die. I talked with my uncle a bit before passing out on the chair. It was another restless night as the schedule of cats, snoring, my aunt screaming, Chris's unconscious dialog, and the dogs eventually barking played out.
Miles walked: 2.7
A hobo oatmeal.
A turtle I found on the side of the road.
A cool Breaking Bad poster Trevor had on his front door.
He found King of the Hill pocket sand on Etsy!
His adorable, HIV+ cat.
Thin mints!
Saturday, April 4th
Despite this, I tried to sleep as late as I could. 7 was the best I could do, though. It was a really cold and windy day, which made just the walk to Price Chopper unbearable. I wrote and read a lot, jerked off in the bathroom to porn on my phone, and spent a few hours browsing Tumblr. I was beginning to see how useful having a smartphone was, but still couldn't relate to how it was useful for anyone who wasn't homeless, honestly. I ate at Chipotle for lunch, then took a bus downtown for no reason in particular. I loitered at Happy Cappuccino again until they closed at 7. At one point, I turned to my right in time to notice a girl moving her mouth in my direction. I took my headphones off and asked her what she said, but she responded, "No, not you. Him." She was talking across my worthless body to a pretty boy at a table to my left, sitting with books and notebooks spread out in front of him. "I like your sweater," was all she wanted to say to him. It wasn't even a nice sweater; just some jacket with a sports team logo on it. Music was on in my headphones again, but I watched as, "I like your sweater," somehow lead to her being invited to sit with him. Every time a track would end, I could hear a part of their conversation, which was mundane pleasantries and him talking like a scholar about absolutely nothing, saying he liked Schenectady way more than where he was from in California, and then giving her cliche relationship advice before revealing that he was just taking biology in school. Was this really how human beings met each other?
When I left, I had no idea what to do or where to go. I just wanted to jump into the sky and float away into space, maybe grab on to some of the junked satellite pieces orbiting our planet. I took each step like my ankles were weighed down with anchors; they felt like they were. I crossed the street, turned around, and saw my brother outside of Bombers with a kid who used to be good friends with us back in the day named Devin. I didn't know my brother hung out with him anymore. I waited for my brother to acknowledge me so I knew it wouldn't be embarrassing for me to come over to them. I talked to them for a few minutes and then they had to leave. My brother said, "I feel bad just leaving you." I told him it was fine, and that I just had no one to talk to.
"That's because you made enemies with everyone."
I don't know why, but how lonely I felt made that sentence sting much worse. I crept slowly up the State Street hill, watching the bus I needed get there before me but not having the energy to run towards it. I started thinking about the people I'd done shitty things to or pushed away, as well as all the people who just got sick of me and left. Nine out of ten abandoned me what seemed like out of nowhere, and I never got closure or explanation from many of them. I was an unlikable person who was oftentimes hard to deal with, but I was a good friend. I guess my loyalty and trustworthiness just weren't enough to outweigh how unbearably shitty of a person I was. But I knew one thing: my brother was wrong; I did not make enemies with everyone. For some reason, most of the people who eventually threw me away just grew to hate me later on. I sat on the stairs to an abandoned autodealer and cried a little. I felt so alone. Well, I guess I was so alone. I texted my brother and he said vague things about not wanting to say anything that would make me mad or start a fight. I had no idea what he could have been alluding to, so I told him I'd rather know if I'd done fucked-up things to people so I could learn from it. After all these years, I knew I was damaged enough to do shitty things without even noticing it. He said we could talk about it in person, which I preferred. I told him not to hang out with me out of pity and he said, "I don't think I am." Another night at my aunt's. I really missed my grandmother.
Sunday, April 5th
I woke, looked at my phone, and saw two texts from my service provider. One said I had insufficient funds and couldn't receive a text or call I'd apparently gotten. The other said, "As requested..." my service had been shut off. What the fuck? So my phone didn't work at all. It was Sunday, so the Stolen Cellphone Store was closed. Not that anyone out there was trying to communicate with me, but having the Internet on it really helped the time go by. It was Easter, I guess, so the Price Chopper would be closed for the day. I wasn't really sure what would be open, so I used my aunt's computer to check. I knew Denny's would definitely be open no matter what, so I took the bus downtown and ate there. I got a veggie skillet, subbing the eggs with avocado, and a side of fries. I added some pepperonis I still had sitting in my bag. I love how long it takes for unrefrigerated vegan meats to go bad. I read for a really long time because I wasn't sure what else to do. A shitty old white couple across from me asked the waitress, who was Latina, "Are you from Mexico?" Watching her have to take it with a fake smile and chuckle hurt my soul.
I originally had plans with two people for Easter Sunday, but both backed out the day before. So I decided to take the bus to Albany and spend the day at the movies. The Spectrum, which has been the only provider of indie and foreign film in the area (albeit not that great of one), was open all day. The walk from the bus stop to the theater was a little over a mile. It was another chilly, breezy day, and my inner thighs were sore and raw. I got there early, bought a ticket, and then drank a hot chocolate at the cafe next door while briefly using the Internet to check my e-mail and Facebook, in hopes that someone had reached out to me. Of course, no one had. The barista working the register told me he had recently become a vegetarian, adding that he was only going to do it for a while, but liked it so much that he wasn't going to stop. I congratulated him and tried to fit in that his idea that free-range or organic grass-fed meat was better on the human body was totally false. He asked me where I was traveling from and I just said, "Around here." He told me he was going to be "going around, too" soon. I asked where, to be nice, and he said, "Ecuador." I guess I was too young for it to be obvious that I was homeless and not traveling recreationally.
My brother insisted I see this new indie horror film that did well at Cannes and Sundance called It Follows. It was my first film of the day and totally creepy. I had an hour to wait, but after, I saw a dark Spanish comedy called Wild Tales that was just as great. I don't like going to the movies alone, but it wasn't that bad. It sucked thinking about all the times I'd been there with Burgundy way back when, and seeing all the old people come in together as couples. I was the only person there alone. I walked two or three miles from there to Ichiban for dinner. A loud, obnoxious family sitting at a long table annoyed me while I sat and waited for my food. The motherfucker brought me sesame chicken, which made me angrier than it probably should have in the moment. The food was good, though, and I would have leftovers for the next morning. There wasn't much else I could do with my day, so I got the bus back to my aunt's. I wasn't exactly ready to sleep, but there were no outlets in the tiny house for me to use my laptop and no wifi signal since she didn't have wireless. In fact, she didn't even know what "wireless" was. I watched some crappy old musical that was playing on the TV and fell asleep. One of the two old, miserable parrots who have spent their entire lives in cages would sometimes say, "Shut up." I hadn't heard him say anything else while there, in fact.
Miles walked: 3.2
The old "Shut up" bird.
Cool street art on Delaware Ave in Albany.
Monday, April 6th
I ate leftover sesame tofu at Price Chopper. I was especially bored because my phone still wasn't working. The Stolen Cellphone Store didn't open until 1, so I had a lot of time to kill. I wrote for a little while, ate some sushi, and watched an awesome film called A Gun For Jennifer about a gang of feminist vigilantes in New York City who castrate rapists and abusers. I started walking. The stroll from Woodlawn to lower State Street was devastatingly ugly and boring. I was already very sick of it. At least this time I went to the cellphone shop, he told me that the problem I was having had been happening to people a lot recently. The provider of my service that he goes through, according to him, has either been not logging or flat-out deleting logs of payments made, so people's phones would wind up shut off only days after their payment was made as if it had never been paid. That's what was happening to me. I still felt cursed. Thankfully, he was able to fix it, even after he called them and they were no help to him.
"Fuckin' A-rabs on the phone," he complained even though he was also middle-eastern.
I walked downtown to a shady parking lot and sat down on a curb. I talked to Tia on the phone for a little while and then got a call from Matt, who after over twenty-four hours of not hearing back from me or seeing any presence on social media, had begun thinking I'd finally killed myself. I also got a call from a strange 518 number who had already hung up when I crossed over to answer. According to some reviews online, the number was the Industrial Medicine Association. Some said they were a legitimate organization involved with Social Security; several others insisted it was identity theft. A familiar homeless guy made eye contact with me as I sat there on the curb and asked me, "How's life treatin' ya?" I scoffed and said, "Not well." He then had the nerve to sit down next to me, a dirty looking guy with a scraggly beard and a giant backpack who just told him life wasn't treating him well, and ask for money. When I told him I was also homeless and that I meant it when I said life wasn't treating me well, he got right back up and started going on a tangent about God and how I will one day stop making the same mistakes.
I stood outside of Taj Mahal and patiently waited for them to open at 4 so I could eat Indian food for dinner. I walked to Bombers afterwards to loiter and use wifi. After a little while, my brother was suddenly standing over me. He had just come in with a bunch of his friends who wanted nothing to do with me. He kept alternating between sitting with them and standing over me. It made me feel more like an alien than I usually did. I left shortly after 8 and returned to my aunt's. I woke up two hours later to the most disgusting, painful sounding snoring I'd ever heard. At one point, I sat up and started considering sleeping outside, but it was set to rain later on.
Miles walked: 4.5
Aloo chana with naan.
Tuesday, April 7th
I got out of the house and to Price Chopper while the rain was still gone after hocking up some really thick, gluey snot into the toilet. My aunt had absolutely no consideration for me and lit up cigarettes as soon as she woke up each morning. I could feel my lungs burning and my sinuses tickling. I got food stamps and I still had a $1 Gardein coupon in my wallet, so I bought chicken sliders for breakfast and used the public microwave there to heat them up. I cautiously stayed at Price Chopper for longer than I usually would because I assumed it would start raining again any minute. But by noon, it was still dry, although grey and cloudy, so I left. I decided I'd go try and buy pants so I could look more like a human being and to cover up my legs that I recently decided I was insecure about. The walk was almost five miles and took me through my old neighborhood, where my first apartment upon moving out at seventeen was. Memories collected on the shoulder of the roads next to the illegally dumped trash and the tiny cemetery. I thought about Maura, who lived in the apartments next to mine, and all the fun I'd had when I was still living there. Subsidized housing made living while living somewhere possible. It was hard not to dramatically think that everything had been downhill since I moved out of there back in 2010 for a safer place in Albany that would only wind up falling through at the hands of two selfish alcoholics. I walked through the small tunnel splattered in terrible graffiti and by the old house of my first real girlfriend, Lisa. It was like I was re-experiencing my city, this time all alone, like my life was flashing before my eyes as I was about to die--and I did feel like I was going to die.
Trying clothes on is one of the worst things ever. It was the reason I even wore shorts so exclusively: they're often elastic and it's easy to find pairs that fit. Not knowing my actual waist or leg length, the best I could do was trial and error, going for sizes that seemed too big to me, and then finding out that they still didn't fit because of this giant fucking gut that was more like an abdominal tumor that ruined my life. I found two pairs that just barely fit and bought them, then sat on a curb outside, wanting to disappear. I continuously sent texts to Matt and Tia, even though both of them took hours to respond to what eventually accumulated as a mess of unrelated texts. I had no one to talk to. I felt like a ghost. I had spent twenty-six years of my life in this city and the only friends I really had in it weren't there. Anyone else I knew was busy with their real lives; their partners, their families, their jobs. What did I have to show for myself? Oh, I was straightedge and vegan and homeless. How free I was, right? Sure didn't fucking mean much as I walked through a parking lot by myself with nowhere to go next. I waited for the bus downtown and sat online at Happy Cappuccino and then Bombers. I fucking hated myself and my only solace was that I was such a piece of shit that none of the happy couples or groups of people going up to the bar would even notice I was there.
Miles walked: 4.6
I found another dead pigeon. Someone had clipped a fake flower onto this one.
The old graffiti tunnel by my first apartment.
Wednesday, April 8th
When I woke up, my lungs felt collapsed and sunken in. I tried to cough away the high-pitch, persistent wheezing, which sometimes works if things aren't too bad, but it wouldn't go away. As the hour went by, I could only breathe less and less. I took a shower for the first time in a week with a bar of soap I took from the Extended Stay I'd been at with Matt and changed into my new pants, which made me feel bigger than I actually was and got me worrying about whether or not my outfit matched and all this other stupid shit that didn't or shouldn't have mattered. The fresh air slowly filled my deflated lungs back up with air on my walk to Price Chopper. Little droplets of rain started falling from the sky. When I got there, I made chicken patties for breakfast. I missed cooking. I watched two documentaries on my laptop.
Sacha called me because he didn't know I was still in upstate New York. He wanted to know whether or not I was taking the room. Unfortunately, I had to turn down the offer. After days of sitting on the idea, I knew that, had I taken it, I would have just been making another big, long-term decision based entirely out of desperation. Decisions made out of heightened emotions or desperation were always bad ones, as I'd learned numerous times throughout my life. A higher electricity bill made the cost of a room at Sacha's about the same as what I was paying on Pulaski. I would have inevitably wound up in the same place I had there: too broke to live any type of enjoyable life, with no more than $200 to my name.
"I spend well over $200 a month on going out to eat and going to shows and stuff, yeah," Sacha empathized.
I also didn't even know if I'd have an income for much longer. If I were to be rejected, sure, I could prolong it by appealing their decision, but I'd inevitably be rejected again and then find myself at a loss and with them suffering along with me. As badly as I wanted a home, I knew I couldn't make this decision. Once again, it came down to choosing to either pay all I have for a place to live and have no money to live, or have nowhere to live and sometimes be able to live. They were going to give the room to Tia, instead, which I thought was a great idea. Sacha told me I could stay over at the house "sometimes, like on bad weather days". I knew he was being nice, but it sucked to hear him add that I "couldn't, like, stay for a month at a time or anything". It was almost as bad as when I told Tia to take the room and said I could stay in it with her while homeless and she expressed concern about how much it would inconvenience her. Of course, I couldn't question it; it was up to them what they did and how they operated at the places they paid to live. At most, I'd cost a little extra electricity, but I could not figure out in my head why no one was okay with letting their friend stay with them for free in their time of need. If roles were reversed--and they had been with Matt last summer--I would do everything I could to help without question, ultimatum, or hesitation.
I took the bus downtown instead of walking so as to avoid the next spontaneous blast of rain. It started as soon as I got on the bus. I went to Happy Cappuccino and by the time I sat down and started browsing Tumblr, Gary texted me and canceled the plans we had to hang out. It was raining, anyway, so I wasn't too bummed. A few minutes later, I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. As soon as I answered, I knew it was Tom. He said he was at Gary's. An immediate, 'What the fuck?' came to mind. He asked if I wanted to hang out and I was in no position to decline. A little while later, him and Gary showed up and sat down with me at the empty, four-chair table I took up too much space at. I didn't have much to share with them about my life, but they did. Tom now had a kid, nearing their first birthday, and had a high-paying job processing microchips (mostly just babysitting robots that do everything for them). Gary had since moved, his two kids were growing up fast, and he killed a man. Like, seriously. A crackhead climbed up to the second floor of his last place at 4 in the morning. When he heard a noise in the kitchen, he found him, and as soon as the guy went for his pockets, presumably to grab a weapon, Gary started striking him indiscriminately with a sword. The man died and the cops didn't even question it, nor did they clean up the blood or chalk outline. It was a crazy story. They were more or less up to date with my shitty life because of my blog.
Gary, wide-eyed, looked at me and said, "That shit was interesting," while Tom chimed in, "Seriously, I couldn't wait for the next part." It made me feel good about my writing, though it sucked that all I had to offer the world was tragedy. I felt like such a loser sitting with them. They had love, family, and shelter in their lives. I had absolutely fucking nothing.
Tom had parked his car in the nearby garage and was worried about having to pay a ton of money, so we got going. He suggested we all go out to Dave & Buster's. It sounded like a great idea. We stopped at Gary's so he could wake up Michelle and see if she wanted to join us. His daughter, now seven, greeted me and asked, "Who are you?" I tried to remind her that I had stayed at her old house for a week a long time ago, but I guess she was too young to remember. Their son, who could now walk upright and talk a little, Casey, came to say hi, too, as did the dog, Onyx. The house they were staying in was carpeted and spacious and wooden, and even though he was splitting it with his horrible mother, he had it really great. I was so jealous. Michelle called out of work the next day so she could stay out late and we all headed out to Crossgates Mall. There was a ninety-minute waiting list for food, so we ate dinner at Johnny Rocket's, exchanging stories. We spent several hours at Dave & Buster's. It was half-off Wednesdays, so $20 got you a long way. Tom was addicted to Flappy Bird, which gave you 1,000 tickets if you were able to beat the day's high score. He proceeded to break it three more times and accumulated a few pounds of tickets, even emptying the machine at one point. We played Pac Man Versus, a trivia game, Connect Four, four-person air hockey, and Mario Kart, then split up and did our own thing. I was feeling really anxious there, so I tried to keep near someone in between pathetic attempts at independently enjoying my night. As it got later, I knew I was missing a chance to stay at my aunt's, so I asked Gary and Tom if I could stay at one of their places. Gary said I could stay in their basement, which was a relief. Now an old man and a stay-at-home dad, Gary was sleepy by 9pm. I was, too, but only because I was on a homeless guy schedule. They all amassed a ton of tickets and went to exchange them for prizes. I had a cup-full, as well as another full cup I had found sitting unattended that I snatched. I gave it all to Gary.
It was almost 11 when we left. It was the most fun and the most human contact I'd had since I'd gotten back to Schenectady, and I truly appreciated it. Leaving the mall, Tom pulled out into the oncoming lane. Thankfully, there was no traffic coming our way when he did. The kid could not drive. The basement at Gary's was just as spacious, and the room they gave me down there was carpeted and adorned in walls stamped with jackrabbits and deer. His mother had stored a bunch of her stuff there, including a bed that I was able to use. I immediately said, "Holy shit, let me move in and take this room." Gary laughed and said he would if he could. I didn't question it. I slept really well that night. I could breathe and stretch out. I hated the idea that it was only for one night.
Flappy Bird spitting out a thousand tickets, and me with a Yoshi helmet.
Gary's dog, Onyx, with laser beam eyes.
Thursday, April 9th
I woke up at 10 the next morning, which at that point was "sleeping in" for me. I felt rejuvenated waking up. I woke Gary up and spent much of the day sitting around with him in his house as the kids hopped around energetically and watched cartoons on the tiny TV set in the living room. Every now and then, Onyx would rush over to me and beg for attention, rubbing his itchy butt against the furniture and pissing Michelle off with it. He was a good dog. We ate standing up in the kitchen and tried the new Morningstar spicy Indian patties, which happened to be vegan. They tasted like an Indian dish in a single patty. It was rainy and cold outside and I did not want to leave the comfort of their home or company, so I stuck around for as long as I felt welcomed. Walking to Stewart's, I asked them again to let me move into that room in the basement. They said I couldn't because their landlord won't let anyone else move in. He'd even rejected Tom and his girlfriend already. It was a bummer, especially since I was practically begging--not a good feeling.
I spent the rest of the day downtown at Happy Cappuccino and then Bombers, as usual. My lungs instantly felt like they were about to seize once I walked back into my aunt's later that night to sleep. I felt more angry than sad. Angry at all the couples who sat and flirted with each other around me at Happy Cappuccino; angry at all the happy people going up to the bar at Bombers; angry at Gary and Tom for having lives that I could never have being the person that I am; angry at the strong stench of cigarette smoke, cat piss, and ammonia; angry at the cat clawing at my backpack. And then my mother called. She was drunk, of course, and started ranting about how Kyle, Amber, and I had all gone out to dinner without our youngest brother, Bryce. She tried to trick me into talking to him when I answered, calling to him and saying, "Your brother wants to speak to you!"
I immediately asked, "Are you drinking?"
She happily said, "Oh, yeah, I am!"
So I hung right up and ignored the next two or three calls. She left me a crazy message saying that she was leaving everyone behind and moving to Philadelphia and that I needed to talk to my brother. I texted Kyle and asked if he ever got bi-weekly drunken phone calls from her, or if it was just me.
"I just got multiple."
It honestly made me feel better to know I wasn't the only one. Apparently, this freak-out had been going on since the day before, over "what we did to Bryce". My little sister had been dealing with it, too. A few nights before, my mother was harassing her in her room, so Amber pushed her away by her face. A fist-fight ensued and my sister gave her a bloody nose. My mother called the cops on her and everything. I was angry at my mother.