Daniel

“I first became homeless because of a woman!  I’d been with her before in Oregon, and she told me she had four properties but it turned out she had one broken down trailer and was a meth dealer.  So I was like yeah… homelessness seems like a better proposition at the moment.

So I moved over to Pasadena and various other shelters around here.  A lot of the homeless shelters aren’t too bad.  I mean some are real shit holes but a lot of them aren’t so bad.  Especially the ones run by the Catholic Church.  But they’re not taking anybody in – cause of Covid and stuff.  But actually, I haven’t noticed there being more homelessness cause of Covid.

That’s actually what I’m doing is going up to LA Conta right here. I have emphysema and COPD. I’ve been trying to get into a program but I’ve been held up from getting benefits because I don’t have $40 dollars to give them.  I’m trying to get into a hotel room, called Project Room Keep.  The biggest thing is just sticking with it because they’re not just gonna give it to you.

I was working full time – saving money and staying at the St. Vincent DePaul’s.  Then poof, COVID.  I lost my job and had to leave the St. Vincent.  People don’t realize that the biggest thing that screwed the homeless is that the libraries are all closed.  I was working full time, got laid off, and now I can’t apply for unemployment because I can’t get access to a computer.  Santa Monica library is supposed to open back up next Monday, which would be an absolute godsend!  They’ve been closed for six fuckin’ months now.  That’s where the homeless have access to computers, chargers, and then they’re like ‘bloop, sorry.’  You can go to church, a restaurant, but not the library?  Screwed me the hell up.

Home? Shit, I don’t have any idea of ‘home’.  19 years, a lifetime, I’ve been out here.  My children are all grown.  I like to travel.  Home is where I’m sittin’ my ass at a given moment.  I don’t think I’ll ever have a ‘home’.  Everything is transient to me.  Every place, every person is transient to me.  Whoever I meet along the way, great, maybe we’ll become friends, and I’ll be on my way.

I just had all my shit ripped off.  I went on a bender, in El Monte of all places,  I don’t know what the fuck I was doing in El Monte… But I was down there wasted for 5 days, and lost all my shit.  Got it stolen.  But I had way too much stuff, almost 100 pounds of shit I was lugging around.  Now I’m down to what you see right here.  It’s alright, I’ll start over again.  No biggie.”

I was planning on being in Europe this year, teaching English.  That obviously ain’t happening.  Everything that we thought we were going to do this year isn’t what we are doin’ this year.  So adapt, overcome, try not to die along the way.  That’s all we can do, isn’t it?