For many years, I lived in the cheapest rooms for rent that I could find, in the worst neighborhoods of San Francisco. My neighbors were Section 8ers, formerly homeless, or only temporarily not homeless. Outside the building, I came to know some street people, who were my neighbors.
They have a rough life, and I sympathize with the poor, the struggling, or people so low on luck they’ve stopped struggling. I’m always willing to give cash, food, or hugs to any bum who asks, and sometimes those who don’t.
‘Bum’ is the word I use, on purpose. I picked up from Clint, one of my best friends from that neighborhood, that era. “Don’t call me homeless,” he said. “My home is right over there,” and he’d point at a path through the bushes, which led only to more bushes. “That’s my home, so I’m not homeless,” he’d say, “I’m a bum!” He’d laugh when he said it, but Clint said it often and meant it, so I’ve come to think ‘bum’ is only an insult if it’s intended as an insult, which is never my intent.
Since moving back to Seattle a few years ago, I got to know another bum named Bucky, who roamed the neighborhood near my favorite cheap restaurant. He died recently, as often happens among the down and out, so I’ve been thinking about Bucky, and Clint, about the hellish lives of people who have nowhere to sleep, no fridge, no bed, no nothin’.
America has millions of homeless people, ignored by most folks and despised by the rest. I’ve been poor at times, come close to being a bum more than once, but I’ve never been homeless, and don’t know jack crap about the reality of it. Only what I’ve been told, and what I’ve read.
Suddenly, a crazy thought occurred to me: Give homelessness a very, very slight try. I thought it over for a week and couldn’t talk myself out of it, so I did it. I’m about to tell you about it, but first, a major disclaimer:
It was nothing like the real thing. It was homeless tourism. If something had gone wrong, I could’ve returned to my apartment — a huge advantage over anyone who’s on the street by circumstance, not by choice.
Also unlike the real thing, it was humiliation-free, because I wouldn’t need to beg, wouldn’t have to eat at a shelter, and endure a sermon. My wallet was with me, and inside it, my bus pass, and debit card.
One night without a roof seemed too easy, and three nights without a shower would be sticky, so my plan was to spend two nights artificially homeless. Also unlike the real thing, I got to choose when it would start and stop, so I selected a few late-summer days when the forecast was free from rain but also not too hot: Wednesday and Thursday, September 11th and 12th, 2024.
♦ ♦ ♦
As the sun rose on Wednesday morning, I shoved a blanket into my backpack, along with a light jacket, my mace of course, and a few beef jerky bars. I left my laptop and cellphone at home, because you don’t often see homeless people scrolling their iPhones.
A bus took me to West Seattle’s Lincoln Park, a green space so huge that even when it’s crowded it’s easy to find an area that’s not. Nobody bothered me there, and I read a book until it bored me, then read another book to the end.
When hunger said hello, I bused to Walgreens for the same poor man’s menu I’d eaten decades ago, when I was desperate and destitute but not quite homeless — the cheapest generic bread, and fake margarine in a tub. At a tiny park, I ate half a loaf of my bread-and-spread, and it was OK, because I knew it wasn’t what I’d be eating again and again and again. A hot meal was at most two days away.
Then I bused to the West Seattle Library, where I spent the afternoon reading magazines. (Yeah, there are still magazines!) The library has internet access, but surfing the ‘net would’ve felt like cheating, so I stayed with the printed page.
As sunset approached, it brought my biggest worry in all this — nightfall. I’ve heard accounts of bums attacked, beaten, even killed while they were sleeping, so in planning this stupidity, I’d explored the park closest to my home (which for that reason I won’t name). At its western corner, I’d found a way under and then behind some shrubbery, where my hope was to be invisible to “normal people,” and especially to the police.
After busing to the park, I walked across the grass in the dark, and nobody saw as I hunched myself down, and crawled to my pre-selected hiding spot. I laid on the dirt and wrapped my blanket around me, my head on my backpack as a pillow, and waited a long, uncomfortable time for sleep to come.
The earth was hard on my hips and butt, and I slept shitty and intermittently, waking every few hours to pee in the bushes, and worry.
About what? Well, except for camping trips long ago, every night of my life I’ve slept safely behind locked doors. In a lifetime of being poor, I lived for a while in my car, and locked those doors, too. You can’t lock a bush, so I worried that trouble might intrude.
The sound of voices woke me, but it was only a young couple with a flashlight, walking and occasionally kissing. From the inanity of their conversation, I’m guessing they were teenagers. No friskiness, though. It was as wholesome as a Jimmy Stewart movie.
I was in the bushes at that park for about nine hours overnight, and may have gotten two hours of sleep. That’s just a guess, since I don’t wear a watch and checking the time on my phone would’ve lit up my hiding space.
It was summertime, when even the darkness isn’t too cold, but midway through the night, I slipped into my jacket for warmth.
Something large crawled across my neck, and instantly, instinctively I slapped at it, but it was moving at about 30 mph and got away. There was almost enough light to see, and I think it was the largest spider in recorded history, not counting sci-fi. I hate spiders like Indiana Jones hates snakes, so I was awake for a long while after that, and a nightmare of spiders was waiting when I fell asleep.
Much later, at the height of blackness in the darkened park, men’s voices woke me, from a trail about twenty feet away. They were probably harmless, and seemed to be drunk, but I froze like a snapshot. Even after their voices and footsteps faded, I couldn’t stop thinking how dumb it was, what I was doing. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt as vulnerable. Sure, my mace was within quick reach, but mace isn’t a gun, and anything could’ve happened.
Walls are a safety you never think about, until the walls aren’t there.
♦ ♦ ♦
When the sun began slowly rising on my second day of fake homelessness, I packed my blanket back into my pack, and crawled out of the bushes, wiping dirt and bugs off me.
I was achy. I’m twenty years older than the last time I’d been camping, and this time there’d been no tent, and no soft sleeping bag. Only dirt and rocks had been under me, and apparently a billion bugs.
All day, I walked slower and more painfully than the day before, as aches from the night hung on stubbornly. Some of my morning was at Lincoln Park again, where I squished a few tiny critters crawling up my back and inside my pant-legs.
The book I’d borrowed from the library wasn’t good enough to keep my mind off the ouches and itches, and I was tired. When I wasn’t thinking of bugs and aches and sleep, I thought about the night before. I’d been really quite frightened, when those men walked by. To anyone actually homeless, not play-acting like me, my five minutes frozen in fear would’ve been five minutes of ordinary.
I bused to the library in the International District, where I returned the lousy book I’d checked out in West Seattle the day before, and read another book for long enough to be sure it didn’t suck, then checked it out.
Also went online for a while. Hey, real bums use the library computers to go online, so an artificial bum can do it too.
I fell asleep on the internet, and a security guard tapped my shoulder. “You’re not allowed to sleep in the library,” he said. He didn’t order me to leave, and even smiled politely, but leave I did.
After that I took a few long bus rides, each time falling into and out of sleep until Metro’s electronic voice announced, “This is the last stop. All passengers should deboard at this time.”
In the back of a mostly-empty bus to Bellevue, I ate the second half of my loaf of bread-and-spread, and fell again into a shallow sleep — exponentially better and less painful than sleeping under the shrubs, but not a fraction as restful as sleeping at home.
I was awakened by yet another tiny bug that had been riding me since the bushes the night before. The bugs were eating me alive, and my back was still hurting, so I said to myself, Screw this whole idea, and headed home.
♦ ♦ ♦
Turning my key and walking in, I was no longer ‘homeless’. I swallowed six aspirin to beat the aches, ran a load of laundry to get the chiggers out of my clothes, took a long, warm shower, and settled into my dilapidated recliner that barely reclines any more. The cat was happy to see me, and I was happy to be back. And I slept.
Grand total, I’d spent about 35 hours pretending to be homeless, not the two full days I’d intended. In that time, nobody hassled me, no cops threatened me, because even after a night rolling in dirt, I wasn’t disheveled and stinky enough to look like a bum. And I’m white and overweight, which helped — in a security guard’s eyes, a fat white man can’t be homeless.
I’d been curious, so what the hell, I did it. Nothing disastrous happened, yet still, I wasn’t tough enough to last even a day and a half. My back still hurts, and my neck is still red with bite marks.
It’s wonderful to have walls, and a roof, and outlets and a sink and a shower and a cupboard with cans of soup in it, and all the other conveniences of home. It ought to haunt our souls every day, every night, that so many people in the world’s richest country don’t have any of that.
Doug Holland has no credentials, no accomplishments. Nothing much to be said about him. He’s just an old fat fart with a blog.
