A Tale of Two Homeless

There's happy and sad in this entry.

I've mentioned in previous posts that one of the former Tuesday night regulars has gotten back on his feet and is currently working as a truck driver transporting goods all over the US. We hook up when he's in town. He hasn't minded my sharing things we've talked about which I have done, but he has requested that he not be identified by name. I will refer to him as Rob going forward.

When Rob was still here in town, he developed a friendship with another homeless person (whom I will call John) which led to their sharing the same campsite and becoming frequent companions during the day. I thought it a somewhat odd pairing at the time, but I've since discovered that they're shared the same trauma of having been molested as a child and having spent most of their childhoods in foster care..

I suspect that the shared trauma was a factor in Rob inviting John to join him on the road riding in his cab. My understanding is that John was essentially a passenger the entire time, dependent on Rob for meal money, etc. This and other things led Rob to tell John that he had to come back to Pasadena, and Rob dropped off John in S. Ca, gave him some bus money, and Rob went back on the road.

John never showed up for dinner on Tuesdays, prompting a bit of concern on both my part and Rob's part.

Rob came back into town and we spent some time together yesterday. It turns out that he's been offered a chance to take a job in Las Vegas where he'd still be driving a truck, but he'd be based locally and have a place to call home. More importantly, it would give him a chance to explore opportunities to help the homeless himself, which apparently has become his long term goal - he also now considers me a mentor - which definitely blows me away - so he wanted to go over the pro's and con's of the situation with me.

We also took some time to check out Rob's & John's old campsite (there's another story just about this that's waiting to come out) to try and determine if John was there. We found evidence of John having made it back to the campsite, but the place had been ransacked (another possible entry about that) and looked like it had been unoccupied for weeks.

Rob did a online search this morning and found out that John had been arrested on a felony charge back in August and currently being held in lieu of $130,000 bail.

And there are the stories of two homeless people, both having experiencing the trauma of being molested as a child.

I admit that I am woefully ignorant of how molestation can affect one's life, but I do know that it's common for those who were molested as a child to become molesters themselves. This was John's choice, and as a convicted sex offender, homelessness was obviously the easiest option - even if he found gainful employment (the only job John ever had was delivering the LA Times), he would have had a difficult if not impossible time finding housing as a registered sex offender. And now it looks like he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Rob, on the other hand, while contemplating marriage to someone with two little girls, had already confessed to me a fear that he would do the same and knew that he needed to get help to ensure that that didn't happen. And now his long time goal is to help the homeless in some way.

I'm motivated to get this out there, but I confess that at the moment I'm not sure why. Part of it is to mourn the choices of someone who clearly had some bad things happen to him that were beyond his control, and he was unable to get past that. Part of it is to celebrate someone who clearly had some bad things happen to him that were beyond his control who is fighting the good fight to not let what happened in his past define him and his future. There's resonance with both stories here. I've made some poor choices, which I can't undo, but nothing that limits my fundamental freedom to dream about goals I may not be able to reach but am still free for which to aspire. But tweak a few details, and maybe I would have made a choice that would have irreparably repressed my freedoms. There but for the grace of God go I?

The important part of the story.

At this point, I am working on my fifth rewrite of this particular post.

It started with me being at the library again today seeking a respite from the heat (it was 104 degrees) but also hoping to run into Willie (in the wheelchair) and continuing my conversation with him. I did in fact see Willie and my subsequent conversation has clarified my thinking a bit and my initial intent for this particular post was to go into detail about that, Simply put, it's not about me - and the story that I choose to use to solicit funds shouldn't be about me either. And this post was going to concentrate on that - how the story was going to change. But even that would be making it about me - which is something I want to repudiate.

As I was finishing my conversation with Willie, I caught sight of a woman entering the library. A year ago, I wouldn't have even noticed her, whereas now, my mind instantly noted all the details that prompted me to categorize her as homeless. The fact that I now possess this awareness deserves a dedicated post of its own. But what is most remarkable about this particular event is how I was affected by the facial expression that I'd characterize as a mixture of sadness, apprehension & fear and the empathy in my own response. And in that moment, it hit me, though it's taken me hours to come up with the words; it's about the people out there who are in need and the kind of good that can be done.

So I'm going to rewrite the description to make it about the people I'm helping. If my story comes to light, it will be because someone else feels that the story is worth sharing.

Another Guy In A Wheelchair

I have a different story today involving another person in a motorized wheelchair.

I'm actually still at the Pasadena Public Library as I post this. I came here to do some studying in air conditioned comfort (despite it being late September, it's still 90 degrees out here in LA).

There was a gentleman whizzing around the library lobby in a motorized wheelchair. I didn't pay him much attention until he engaged in conversation a woman standing near my table. It seems that the woman was homeless and had started attending a local church where this gentleman is an active member. I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but I began to listen more intently as this guy who introduced himself as Willie told this woman that if she was a member of their church, the church would take care of her, though it would be a process and the results would not be immediate. The first thing to be done was to get her connected to a female member of the church (because it would be inappropriate for a male) who could take her dirty clothes and get them laundered once a week. And as it was nearly lunchtime, he told her where she could get lunch today if she wanted to, but didn't have to. And he kept repeating that she wasn't alone in this anymore.

I was struck by how he extended dignity and hope with his words, and I found myself being very aware of how ungracious my typically snarky words can be when I'm at the park. In typical Asian fashion, I've rationalized this by pointing that my being there should be enough given how no one else would return given how I almost got killed doing this. More on this later.

I approached him and told him how struck I was by how he extended hope and dignity with his actions and speech and how inadequate I felt having witnessed that even though I make dinner for the homeless on a weekly basis. We talked about a number of things I'm not going to go into depth about, but our conversation turned to our passions for what we both do and so it came out that I continue to pursue this passion despite how I nearly died doing it.

While I was touched by his speech, apparently he was equally touched by my story and the result was that he now wants to enter into a partnership of sorts where we begin to meet regularly just to talk, and how I might become the first link in a chain that helps homeless people reintegrate into society. I am of course blown away by all of this. What gives me pause is his response that my story should be publicized more than it has been. If anything, most people DON'T want to hear the story as it typically makes them uncomfortable though I'm not sure what it is exactly. Part of it is obvious to me - some people just don't want to face the idea that their lives aren't...'safe' for want of a better way to put it. I think others are put off by how I keep telling the story almost as a comedy monologue - as I keep saying, once you get past the initial premise, most of the story IS pretty funny - EVERYBODY laughs at my assigned name Gustavo Perez.

The idea that my story could somehow be inspirational has never really occurred to me (though I've often speculated with substantial snark how I'd be a CNN poster boy if I'd been of any other faith; "THIS JUST IN: MUSLIM/ATHEIST/WICCAN HEROICALLY CONTINUES TO FEED HOMELESS DESPITE NEARLY  GETTING THROAT SLASHED BY CRAZED BOX CUTTER BRANDISHING WOMAN  CLAIMING TO HEAR VOICES FROM GOD"). The  reality is that if my mom finds out I that I nearly died she'll have a major spazz attack. The 'official' story I told her initially over the phone was that I was hit in the neck by accident during a church function - which it more or less true as far as it goes. I waited five months to tell her when I finally saw her in person when I went back to Ohio to visit - and only that I'd been stabbed in the neck and not that the anterior branch of my carotid had been severed. The entire time I was in the hospital, I greeted every person entering the room - doctor, nurse, visitor, whatever with the same question: "How do I tell my mom what happened to me?" I guess the point is the thought has been that publicizing the details would result primarily in more stress than anything else.

I guess the bottom line is that I'm going to have to live with the idea that should I choose to bring attention to what happened to me, some people will view it as self-aggrandizing when the hope is to be motivational.

Customer Support

I've just spent almost two hours chatting either online or on the phone with various reps from HP.

I suppose that I need to backtrack. I contacted HP support on behalf of someone named Chris. Chris began showing up Tuesday nights a few months ago. He's disabled and confined to a motorized wheelchair due to his being afflicted with palsy. His speech is difficult to understand at times. The problem is that the people who raised him equated his inability to speak clearly with a lack of intelligence and apparently Chris was never given a chance to learn how to read, I discovered this one night after dinner when Chris approached me and asked me for a favor. He told me that he wanted to be able to start reading the bible he'd received recently. I've spent the last few weeks contacting various literacy programs and not gotten a response from any of them. So I'm going to take a crack at getting him able to reach a functioning level of literacy. But i digress.

Chris can read numbers and tell time, stuff like that. Last night he showed me some bank transactions off his phone app and apparently he was charged 3 times for the same item that he ordered online from HP.

The bank entry had an 800 number as a reference so I called it. I provided a laptop model number and the serial number and the rep was able to find the transaction and from that asked me to confirm Chris' full name and the amount, which I did. Apparently the transaction was associated with tech support so I got transferred there, only to be told that their phone lines were available only during certain business hours. I went home and tried their online chat, only to be kept waiting for a rep for 15 minutes before giving up until I tried again this afternoon.

No one on the tech support side could identify the transaction just by model number and serial number and three different reps kept asking me for an order number despite my repeatedly telling them that all I had was the model number and serial number. After almost an hour and a half with tech support, I tried online chat on the sales side where someone helpfully suggested that I call the 800 number again but this time specify that I wanted to speak with a case manager which I did. The end result - HP maintains that they only charged Chris once, but it's possible multiple authorization attempts were made. and to check with the bank.

It took me two hours to get to this point, and I can read, write and talk (sort of).

I try to imagine what it's like for Chris on a daily basis. And I realize how much about life I still take for granted.

A minority experience - bowl haircuts

Asian american males typically joke about the bowl haircuts they received as kids. The running gag is that asian parents simply place a rice bowl on top of their kid's head and then trim off any exposed hair. And of course, they did it themselves to avoid the expense of paying a barber. I hated those bowl haircuts, but knowing that the look served to emphasize how different I was from mainstream America actually isn't the most unpleasant memory I have associated with those haircuts.

My folks didn't actually use a bowl when they cut my hair, but they did use a set of electric clippers; haircuts were much quicker that way. One day, my father was giving me my haircut when he accidentally clipped the top of my right ear. This started an exchange that went kinda like this (translated into English at some points):

"OW!"
"What's the matter?"
"You cut my ear!"
"No I didn't"

I'm not sure when I started crying. It may have been before or after I showed him where my ear was bleeding, to which he responded:

"Well, it's not that bad."

I didn't develop a pathological fear of clippers. My ear healed completely.

What makes it memorable is that it went pretty much the same way conversations go when the topic is a grievance and the participants in the conversation include a minority and a non minority.

The issue is typically not the initial injury. The issue is the frustration that results when the initial injury is made to seem to be trivial - or even worse, there is no avenue to even air the grievance.

And that kind of frustration doesn't just fester. It corrodes the soul.

And this is something non-minorities just don't seem to understand.

More often than not, we're not seeking to redress grievances. We're just looking for empathy. We're not talking about sympathy. You may feel badly about someone else's situation, but that's not empathy. Empathy is about being able to understand and share someone else's feelings. It often takes a vindictive direction because it seems to be the only way for the aggrieved to get any sort of sense that the transgressor understands the impact of the transgression which usually goes beyond the actual injury.

While I'm a minority, I can't claim to understand what it feels to be black, or maybe even worse, native american. But I think that I do understand what it feels like to have no voice, to feel marginalized. When you try to state your case reasonably, you get ignored, which often results in feeling like you have to do something extreme to make your voice be heard. When you resort to something at that level, you get their attention, but now they're in a defensive state of mind because your actions are perceived as being threatening in some way.

And it sucks.

My Life Under The Bushel

Thinking about Francisco and his relative invisibility started a thought process that's still coalescing in my mind. It's on an emotional level like Einstein's Unified Field Theory - I can get glimpses of it in its entirety from certain angles, but I want to be able to present it in a way that it all hangs together regardless of the perspective.

It starts with my own emotional history, and my trying to categorize it.  However, while absorbing stories of the unique situations and the resulting pain others carry, there seems to be a commonality such that there is perhaps a common avenue of remedy.

I've always had a hot button when it comes to feeling like I'm not being and haven't been heard and feeling invisible. but it wasn't until recently that it's become clear that I create much of the invisibility myself as a consequence of some painful moments that were made worse by also not having the right to protest or to make my feelings heard. This has been a repeating motif within my family, within my friendships, within my work situations, and most painfully, within the church. The result is that I have chosen to expect mistreatment or being ostracized and having no effective voice in protesting what's being done. The short version of the story is that I can see how this has resulted in a lot of self-sabotaging behavior and I can see direct correlations in the ways I've tried to self medicate the hurt, the anger, and to fill the vacuum.

But there seems to be an overall pattern that has two basic components - the hurt/trauma/what have you, which is bad enough, but what might be the more traumatic part follows when the victim has no advocate or safe place to go, or even register a protest.

To avoid feeling betrayed, we limit who we trust. We avoid risk. Whatever light we might still have, we hide under a bushel. And to a large extent, that's been the story of my life, even more so after I got laid off even my boss acknowledged that it was his fault, but there was nothing that could be done about it. And I took a 15 year sabbatical, essentially hiding from the world and only allowing selected portions of the world in through my monthly dance parties.

But even then, there's buildup of resentment over time, to the point where it becomes enough just to be heard, to have any sort of voice, to feel that you have their attention, and the actual pain that was a consequence of the initial grievance have been more or less forgotten. So there's no real chance for the oppressor to experience the empathy that seems to be necessary for true reconciliation.

I think there's more, but this seems to be a good stopping point.

Mole Mirror.

I was reading a LA restaurant review which prompted this entry which is a memorial long overdue as a long time Tuesday regular passed away late last year.

Francisco (I never found out his last name) was a short, somewhat chubby but typically cheerful hispanic guy who could have been anywhere from 40-60. He'd apparently worked on a number of restaurants in various capacities and was very knowledgeable about food as well as other topics in general, enough so that I found it hard to believe that he was out of work. I suppose some of it might have been due to the fact that it was sometimes difficult to understand what he was saying as he had a cross between an accent and a sibilant 's'.  But if I had a business and needed a gofer, I would have hired Francisco.

On the nights he showed up, he'd frequently stay for the bible study and devotional time and afterwards we often talked about food quite a bit, and one night the topic turned to Mexican regional cuisines, It turned out that the region of Mexico he was from was known for mole. I'd told him that I'd never really had an authentic mole, and he'd promised to make mole for me and bring on a Tuesday night. So for a while when he showed up I'd ask him if he brought the mole he'd promised.

Last year he disappeared off the radar for quite a while and then showed up again for dinner. Apparently he'd contracted the West Nile virus, and he was in the 1% for which it causes serious neurological problems, resulting in him being hospitalized for a number of months.  That was the last time I saw him. A few weeks later, someone in line told me that Francisco had passed away, I assume it was from complications from the illness.

He's not the first person from the collection of people who've come for dinner that have passed on. But this feels different in a way I'm having problems verbalizing. Jay was Jay - the reason he was on the street was because he couldn't control his drinking. Ditto for his girlfriend Uno (who, according to rumors, did NOT die. I don't know what to think), who really let herself go after Jay died. I miss them, but I miss Francisco in a different way. I guess it's because I discovered a genuinely likable person that most people probably never got to know, and now he's gone. And I don't want a few people thinking the same thing about me when I'm gone, I guess.

Ignorance IS Bliss

I found out something about one of the Tuesday regulars I really wish I didn't know. At present, this knowledge won't change my behavior, but it presents complications if new people join the group and I will have to make a choice as whether to divulge this knowledge.

I REALLY REALLY REALLY wish I didn't know this - though in the long run it's probably better that I do. And I hate feeling like I need to be vague about this.

The Rat Lady and Other Musings

Earlier this week, I got a call from one of the former Tuesday regulars who has since gotten a job as a trucker. He keeps in touch with a few people he'd met while he was on the street. He told me that he was passing through St. Louis and then said:

"I heard you met the Rat Lady!"

I had no idea who he was referring to. Apparently there's a homeless woman who keeps a pet rat, and what makes her noteworthy is that she allegedly puts the rat in her mouth. I'm not sure I ever wanted to know that, as this week I figured out who "Rat Lady" was.

About a month ago, a woman showed up at the park for dinner. If I had to guess, I'd say she had a Mexican-Indian ethnic background. It was hard to understand what she was saying, and there was something in her affect that made me uncomfortable even talking with her. But hearing/knowing the rumors has made it made more difficult for me to control my feelings.

Maybe I'm making too much of this; my convictions are that love is not about the feelings we have, but the way we act towards others. I can't manufacture warm feelings toward this person, but I can respond to her as kindly as I respond to anyone else who comes for dinner - listening to what she has to say without letting her monopolize my time, making sure that she gets a full meal if she wants one, etc.

This morning I was running an errand in downtown Pasadena when I ran into the lady who has the big cardboard sign at the corner of Lake & Green. During my conversation with her I got a lesson into how sheltered my life has been, She pointed out a drug pusher across the street talking with a girl currently residing in a nearby halfway house. He was, among other things, trying to get her to be his supplier inside the halfway house, The dilemma was whether or not to notify the police, while he would get busted, the girl would also get into trouble as well. So we just watched as the girl tried to walk away a few times, then finally got on her bike and rode off. Then the pusher got on his bike and rode off in a different direction.

It was a little unnerving to know that this was going in the commercial/financial district of Pasadena.

Kicking it was the easy part.

There's a homeless woman who hangs out at the northeast corner of Green and Lake in Pasadena. She sports a cardboard sign saying that even a smile is appreciated. I struck up a conversation with her today while waiting for the light to change. I told her that dinner would be available at Central Park around 6:45 pm. She told me that she couldn't go because the other homeless would make trouble, While she'd managed to get clean (kick her habit), it seems that her past behavior had resulted in a lot of scorched earth in terms of her standing among the other homeless. I told her that that wasn't who she was anymore, and I wouldn't allow the others to mistreat her during dinner. She responded by saying that they'd treat her badly afterwards. I was still hoping that she'd show up last night, but she didn't.

It's hard enough to be homeless and shunned by society; but to be homeless and shunned even by other homeless even after you've made positive strides towards getting your life together,...

March Forth

The third anniversary of my attack was this past Friday and i chose to observe it by having a get together i called March Forth.

One person questioned whether it was a typo. It wasn't.

Recently, I came to grips with the fact that I've been depressed a great deal of my life. It played a large part in my 15 year sabbatical, not to mention my problems in working in sales. I've been encouraged by my mentor to consider anti-depressants. While I don't doubt that they can be effective in treating the symptoms of depression, my view of depression is that it's anger that's been turned inward/suppressed. Treating the symptoms may  be helpful in the short run, but there's a danger in believing that that's enough just to be able to remain functional and to then get locked into a dependence on the meds. So I've resisted the idea.

The point is that I've come to see that I've been angry about having suppressed my creative side, particularly in music. I've had an outlet in my DJ-ing, but I've also recently been given opportunities to perform and to teach and it's made a huge difference. I now see that my depression was linked to my sense of passivity, that there was no reason to bother trying because things were already stacked against me. Simply put, I've lacked faith, and what I need to do is to put myself out there and march forth. So my celebration last Friday was as much about that as surviving.