From Wilmington to New York
About two years ago I was living in my hometown of Wilmington in Delaware. I had been sort of going to school, but not attending my classes. The whole reason I was in school was due to the fact that I needed a place to live and regain my health and sanity after a long period of not eating enough, not sleeping enough, and identifying with Bill B. too much. My mother was cool with me staying with her until I got better, which didn't take that long.
After being pretty sick, staying up all night and watching shows like Taxi, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Dragnet in my mother's basement it was time to start seeing daylight again. I didn't usually leave the house. I spent a lot of time on my computer, and a lot of time on irc.
Mom was pushing for me to go to school. I was down for it and figured if I didn't have to get a job it was a good idea. I took a couple of classes. I think that I did pretty well in the C class, and probably not too bad in the others if I went, but I can't remember. When I got bored of school, I stopped going. This set a deadline for me to get a job. I wasn't happy at all at my mother's house at this point, so I started staying with some friends who shall be known as Yaryaria and Drankcoffeeallthetimeandneverslepta, who we just called Din'tsleep for short.
Well, my good friend Erik was seeing this girl Yaryaria, and we were all pretty much hanging out every night. Erik had just come back from Tibet and was on this big kick about not eating meat or ingesting poppies. So instead of barbecuing every night (which was a bad habit we had all developed), we hung out and drank Mickey's malt liquor a lot. Erik had a pretty cool job where he ended up with a lot of cash at the end of every shift, so he would buy 22oz bottles by the case.
Another friend, Jay Tigabinowitz was spending some of his time over at Yaryar and Din'tsleep's house. He drank now and again. He was also always on a mission to find requited love. Tigabinowitz loves the ladies. He was also studying computers and networking with wild abandon. That Tigabinowitz was like a hookworm in the bloodstream when you got him on a network, I'll tell you what!
Things were pretty calm and quiet. I was mostly not going to school, and started looking for a job. My looking for a job consisted of me walking around downtown Wilmington looking for computer stores. I was pretty clueless, and should have thought about the fact that there aren't that many computer retail stores in downtown Wilmington and I wouldn't have wanted to work there anyway.
We had all been firing up the barbecue almost every night, and things were getting pretty bad. All of my clothes had barbecue sauce on them and my face even had that red, irradiated look of beautifully barbecued dark meat. Most days we didn't eat anything except for meat with big old spoonfuls of fat going right into our bloodstream. Tigabinowitz didn't eat no barbecue. He just marinated in some Mickey's or whiskey maybe on one or two occasions. Yaryaria worked in a gourmet food store, so she usually didn't feel like eating barbecue either, I guess.
I was worried. At the rate we were going, I was going to put on a lot of weight, if not have a heart attack.
About this time, my good friend (and co-conspirator to many interesting campaigns) Loot started e-mailing me and calling me and whathaveyou. I was pretty depressed, had no money, had no job, had wasted my Mom's money on school by not going anymore and was beginning to get sick again from all the freaking barbecue I was eating. Things weren't looking up. Loot was suggesting I come up to New York City to find a job. I explained that that wouldn't be possible since I didn't have a dollar to my name and nary a place to stay.
Aha! but Loot had other things in mind. He immediately suggested that he would lend me money and pay for my bus fare. It was starting to sound crazy enough and interesting enough for me to stop imagining what it would be like and to try to go. We worked out an arrangement where another mutual friend set me up with bus fare, since he was in town. Much thanks to Turpentine, Son of the Magician for that one. I sort of still owe him for that. Loot also offered me space in his room for a month until I found a job and an apartment. His family was very cool and very hospitable. (remind me to put up a special pot roast recipe I picked up from his Mom.)
Within a day or two I had a job making 5 bucks an hour, off the books. I was now part of the commuting, working masses of New York City. It was really cool. I even thought it was cool to be working at Action Discount, the store where I got a job. Now I needed to find a place. That wasn't as easy on a budget of 200 dollars a week. New York isn't cheap. My one month period had expired, and I may have been all the way up to about 6 weeks at Loot's house. It was time for me to go.
So I saddled up and headed back into the city from Flushing. Got my gear and rode the 7, not quite sure where I was going to go. I may have had to go to work, which bought me time, but not exactly a place to stay. It's a little fuzzy now, but that week I think was the roughest. I spent at least one night in a homeless shelter in Bedstuy on Atlantic Ave. I don't think I'll ever forget that night.
Waiting in one shelter with very sick people, very concerned that I was going to catch something by merely breathing in the air. There were no more beds in this shelter, the 30th Street one. We waited for an hour or so and then a van came and picked us up and took us to Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn. It seemed everyone knew each other. There wasn't really an air of desperation. The fellows I were in the van with were just sort of napping or eating bologna sandwiches and apples and milk and talking. The ride wasn't too long, and I love riding in cars in New York in the middle of the night so it was pretty cool.
When we got the Atlantic Ave. place it was a bit of a weirder scene. It was already like 'light's out' time and there were these big bays with rows of beds. How should I describe the air. Hmm. Well, it was like a really great fromagerie. We passed through metal detectors and then were directed to a particular bay by some system that I don't remember. It was probably on the ticket they gave each of us.
The bay was really dark when I went to look for a bed. I found one but there was no blanket. That was actually fine with me, since I was a little scared of anything textile-like which had been intimate with many of my more dirty and dermatologically impaired homeless brethren. The bed was covered in plastic and someone had stolen the pillow. Not so bad. I had a black hooded sweatshirt which I pulled over my head and tied really tight. I put my backpack under my head. Someone came over and offered me a blanket, saying something like "I was using it, it's O.K." I was fine, told him to keep it, and thanked him. I fell asleep.
In the morning I woke up around 8 or so. I think they must have been serving breakfast or something, because awkward, unwieldy limbs were sliding and flailing and getting broken down bodies out of beds. I got out of bed and went to the door, where someone asked me for a cigarette. I gave him one and was suddenly met with a chorus of abbreviated and dialected requests for cigarettes by anyone who caught sight of the green box of Newports I had in my hand. I gave away most of my pack and then left.
I probably wandered around looking for the train in this pretty sketchy neighborhood where the shelter was and then went back into Manhattan to wander around some more.
For around a week I would go to work and then ride the train all night or something, then go back to work and stuff. One night I was so exhausted from half-sleeping on the trains that I went to Port Authority and asked the teller for a round trip ticket to Baltimore. She asked when I wanted to leave, I told her the next bus. She asked me when I wanted to return. I told her that I wanted the next bus coming back after I got there. She stared at me and asked, "You want to come back as soon as you get there??" I nodded yes, and probably said "That's right," or something. She thought I was playing with her and said she wouldn't sell me the ticket. I went to the next window and bought the ticket, went downstairs, got on the bus when it showed up and slept on the ride down to Baltimore. There I got off, changed buses, and slept on the way back. I think I got back around 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Worked again.
My friend Nina hooked me up on one or two nights and let me sleep in her dorm at NYU on like 9th and 3rd Ave. Around this time I also met Samuel the Swede, who ended up being very hospitable and who I spent a lot of time with by eating bagels and bananas and playing chess or hanging out in Washington Square. When I first saw him he was wearing this pink back pack I think and was talking to some sketchy older skinny black guy who was calling himself Kojak and suggesting that Samuel go get an I.D. with him. We were telling Samuel that he needed to get married so he could stay in the U.S. and get a job.
Anyway, I ran into Samuel the Swede again in the park and we maybe played chess, I don't remember. When Samuel learned that I didn't have a place to live really, he cautiously offered for me to stay at the apartment he was living at while he was visiting New York. He seemed surprised that I didn't have a place to stay and appeared to be calculating something when he offered. He's prone to tilting his head slightly and going over ideas for a brief pause before he comes back with a response during conversation.
With the advent of Samuel the Swede having offered for me to stay at his house, and my having saved up around $500 dollars or so, i was able to being looking for a room with a weekly rent. This basically means a room in the ghetto in New York. I happened upon an interesting post in the Village Voice online (before it came out in print) and called. It said something like 'Harlem Renaissance. Furnished rooms in building across from police station on 135th street. 110/wk and up.' Something like that. Well, I called and ended up with a room the next day. I was pretty excited. I had a job, I had a room, and everything appeared that I was now living in New York City.
At this point, or a point like the week before, enter Ivan the Good, David, and Galileo. Let me figure out how that went, because Ivan hooked me up with a place to stay at his apartment on 2nd Ave. which he shared with Galileo while I was still homeless. I think maybe the last couple of days I was staying with Samuel the Swede he was busy and there was fear that his father would show up from Chicago, Tokyo, or Stockholm or something and some weird NYC vermin would be mooching off him and sleeping on his sofa.
Ivan, Galileo, and David become characters in my life after this, and when I dig into the actual living in NY part, they'll show up.
