Hospital Duty

Spent the last three nights at Good Samaritan Hospital, sleeping on the floor next to an acquaintance's dog. The patient was the fellow homeless person K— I mentioned in the last post, whose lung had apparently collapsed Saturday after a fit of screaming at Portland Patrol security personnel (for whatever perverse dissident grandstanding reason). I ran into him at the Northwest neighborhood public library branch on Sunday, whereupon he told me about the collapsed lung and that he discharged himself against medical advice earlier that day because hospital staff told him that unless he could find someone to watch over and walk his dog it would have to stay at the pound until he's released. I sympathized with his refusal to let his dog go to a Guantanamo detention facility for animals where a simple mistake can result in his dog being lost or even put to death, so I agreed to help him out when he asked me to return with him to the hospital. Alas, I've never been good at refusing people.

I had NO IDEA what I was getting myself into, though I dreaded the certainty of it being an ordeal for me. This was confirmed by the charge nurse of the emergency ward, where K— had to go to be re-admitted. I was under the impression that I'd simply have to swing by three times a day to walk the dog (named Shorty), but she fixed her flinty Baba Yaga gaze on me and insisted that I remain in K—'s room all the time I wasn't walking Shorty, else the hapless companion be forced to sojourn x-amount of days in Doggy Gulag. When she went so far as to say that I wouldn't even get a cot to sleep on, I almost asked her if I had permission to stand in the corner at parade rest or would I be required to stand at attention the entire time! The reason I was needed was because all of K—'s friends that live indoors have dogs, and Shorty tends to forget that he's small and twenty years old in his Charles Bronson posturing with other — often much larger — dogs, which could easily prove disastrous or even fatal. Fortunately for me, leveler heads prevailed upon the whimsical winds of hospital policies when we were admitted upstairs in the intermediate care ward: I only needed to walk the dog three times a day and remain with him in the room overnight and when K— underwent surgery.

Shorty's a good little dog, and charmed the babes in scrubs to an enviable degree. (If you can put up with K—s confrontational ranting, here's a YouTube video that shows his dog.) Considering how anxious he was while at the hospital he certainly would have been terrified in a cage surrounded why barking and whining dogs! But, K—'s getting released this afternoon sometime, so my tour of duty is over and I get to gleefully divorce myself from human proximity, bask in my usual day-to-day selfishness, and return to less exotic and more familiar and (perhaps dismally) comfortable environments. Whatever good karma chits I garnered from this fit of nobility I'll just leave at a bus stop; I don't believe in that thimble-headed nitwittery, anyway, and it's not like it'll buy me any beer.

Isn't it funny how hospitals can be comforting when you're a patient but are almost invariably vaguely distressing to visitors? I'm reminded of when I was drinking with some neighbors back at my old place, how I glibly remarked once that I always had a good time whenever I went to a hospital. This must have been a recent development in my life. After all, I watched my dad die in a Veterans Administration hospital in Seattle at the tender age of ... nine? ten? Well, it's obvious that I stuffed that traumatic event deep beneath the cushions of the couch of my memory. But, yeah, I didn't exactly enjoy myself at Good Sam; apparently I need to have surgery done, liberal application of pain medicine, and delicious room service to properly enjoy myself in hospitals. Making my besotted assertion of at best only halfway true. I'd even go so far to say that if ever hospitals were to be run entirely by artificial intelligences and robotic machines, the vast majority of us would willingly succumb to injury and illness and end up dying on the streets or in our homes.

The Jack Pack

The nearby Jack in the Box is a locus of traffic for local tramps. Every morning and evening I see up to half a dozen in there: munching on value menu items and sipping on coffee, reading, waiting to use one of the bathrooms, or just loitering for a bit to rest tired feet, gather the morning's addled wits, duck out of the rain, or formulate or reassess plans. For some reason, the Council of Elrond comes to mind whenever I think about it, even though that was a much more sober gathering. It's nice to have access to such a place, especially one that's closed for only five hours a day and which sells two tacos for a dollar. Management and employee reception is warmer and they're more lenient toward facility use than the handful of McDonald's are downtown — not to mention the old Carl's Junior was that went so far as to remove bathroom stall doors to discourage IV drug use. Don't get me wrong; I completely understand a fast food restaurant manager getting sick of legions of the more egregiously disgraceful and disagreeable bums repeatedly trashing the bathrooms, making the more domesticated and monied customers uncomfortable in the lobby, and aggressively panhandling outside the business doors. I suppose what this treatment really indicates is how much better the street scene is in the Northwest neighborhood than in downtown. Perhaps I ought to introduce some of my fellow Jack Pack members to you:

• K—
  This is the guy at the Friendly House who drives me crazy with his obsession with the corruption of city hall and the police, sex offenders, and contempt for "yuppies". While we generally get along with each other and I agree with many of his views, I get sick of incessant negativity streaming out of the mouth of a person who refuses to acknowledge obvious lack of listener interest and prattles on when it would have been more considerate to get the hint and zip it. Ah, well: we homeless are all socially challenged in one way or another.
• D—
  A former Maginot resident who has managed to successfully kick a heroin habit (thanks to methadone) and is also trying to get a grip what may be an alcohol problem emerging to replace the old drug habit, and with the help of Antabuse seems to be doing pretty well at that. He's the guy I chased the Midnight Creeper into Crack Town with in an attempt to recover his stolen backpack. A smart, funny, guy who walks with a limp and speaks with a sort of nasally East Coast-sounding drawl. He camps with a friend who is also one of the more upstanding members of the local bum community.
• G—
  This guy's lived in the Northwest neighborhood FOREVER, or at least for the fourteen years I've lived in this town this time around. A quiet guy who keeps mostly to himself, all I've ever seen him do is push a shopping cart full of bottles and cans and drink malt liquor all day. I think he's a Vietnam vet, but I'm not sure; he's certainly old enough to be one. A good, generous guy to run into when you're out of smokes or feel like drinking with someone who is more mellow than the average street drunk.
• S—
  This is the guy who used to stay around the corner from me when I was beneath the freeway and kitty-corner to the disbanded Maginot shopping-cart Compound. Also the guy I saw pull a bat out on someone once in a nearby meal line and sock his girl in the face one morning down in Crack Town, it's obvious he has serious anger issues and has probably had a REALLY rough life. Still, he doesn't do any serious drugs and hardly ever drinks, and is industrious, responsible, and looks out for his neighbors. His girlfriend is almost a Silent Bob to his more subdued interpretation of Jay.

Sitting in the lobby of Jack in the Box last night, chatting up all the above people while munching on cheap tacos drenched in Chipotle Tabasco® sauce, brought home to me a recent realization that the poor comprise more colorful communities than those in your average suburban enclave or hill-cresting ziggurat. Is it that security and comfort, and having settled early on into a predictable and monotonous lifestyle trajectory, makes for cookie-cutter personalities and social modalities? I suppose, but I've met a few bland drones who lived much more exciting lives than I ever conceivably could. It may have more to do with the fact that there's a lot of troubled and unstable people who come from a wide variety of backgrounds and life experiences, whereas along the cul de sacs and in the gated communities you find yourself where birds of a feather (truly) flock together and among those who have embraced the status quo. Put simply, we tend toward hard-headed independence or outright rebelliousness, are generally more screwed up, and the petri dish wherein we eke out our squalid lives gets shaken up too much to settle into a state of fractured homogeneity. While it makes for some interesting characters and conversations, it also makes for a lot of contention.

All Quiet on the Northwestern Front

At least under present circumstances, it feels pretty awesome, having nothing much to say about my life. A lack of excitement is usually a good thing when you're homeless. It's not that nothing's been going on, it's that I'm not watching cop cars prowling around or parking nearby and spying on me through their side-view mirrors, I'm not shirking before shadowy figures engaged in theft by the light of the stars and street lights, and I'm not getting my tarp blown down the street by an icy wind or getting rained on while lugging a heavy bag full of bottles and cans. No news is good news.

I moved again, this time even farther out and actually inside the industrial district of Northwest Portland, instead of being perched on the edge of it like a vampire lurking outside a cottage window. I'm also doing something different this time: I'm sleeping on a loading dock. It feels a little bit like sleeping in a doorway, only a very large one with better overhead cover; I haven't slept in a doorway in fourteen years and have until now considered that kind of practice to be for noobs, nutters, and burn-outs. A small tent in a thicket and out of sight of any roads or residences — and far enough away from freeways or railroad tracks to be at least reasonably peaceful — is what I consider the ideal; or, rather a feasible ideal, because a boat or a utility van would undoubtedly be preferable, especially with access to electricity and potable water. Still, I like this spot, and hope I can use it for at least couple months: there's almost no traffic on the road in front of me, even during the day, and I'm concealed from view from one direction and even from the other direction a person would have a hard time noticing me because I'm tucked away in a dark corner in a black sleeping bag.

Which begs the question: when will I get back into housing? Answer: in a VERY LONG time, probably at least one-and-a-half years, though I suspect it may be more like around two years. I just went to the Fountain Place recently to check my number on the wait list, and discovered to my dismay that after over three years I've only gone down one to #8 from #9, where I stood four months ago (I started out at #20). Even if I allow for an average of three months per number I'm looking at a two-year wait, especially considering there's only fifteen subsidized studio units in the building ... which means two more winters spent outside. Not only that, but even though the wait list is currently frozen because it's so long, if it gets unfrozen any time while I'm on it I can easily start crawling back up in the list because of tenants transferring from unsubsidized units to subsidized ones — they're given preference, you see. The housing coordinator at Central City Concern has me on wait lists for two or three other places, but I can't help but think that they'll end up being as bad or worse than the last dump I lived in. Under such circumstances it's pretty hard to feel optimistic.

But, in the meantime, it's almost summer and the past week has been absolutely gorgeous to live outside in. I may as well enjoy what I have and keep plugging away at improving my living situation and seeking employment. Fretting over long housing wait lists will only serve to ensure my heart is drenched in a soggy winter even whilst strolling down a sunlit street on a balmy July evening. There is, after all, such a thing as borrowing trouble, to use another apothegm.