Wednesday, October 29, 2014

The Monsoon of Gloom

Our lovely Monsoon of Gloom has finally arrived, though the way I'm saying it makes it sound like it's overdue, which it isn't. The climate here usually works is there's a spring of volatile weather — during which days coats are constantly being donned and doffed — that lasts from March through June, which is followed by a very dry Mediterranean summer that can get QUITE warm (temperatures in the nineties Fahrenheit, low- to mid-thirties Celsius) that usually doesn't end until near the end of September, after which there's two to three months of a gradual cool down and easing into rains until December, when it REALLY starts to get chilly and the intermittent rains of fall give way to a nigh incessant and often blustery deluge. We get anywhere between seven to nine months of rain during the year, which for the homeless presents the grave challenge of staying dry, or at least having a dry place to sleep. Failure to do so can result in chronic bronchitis or even pneumonia, on top of discomfort and logistical headaches such as finding dry places to loiter during the day and leaping over or walking around lakes that form when drains get clogged with leaves.

You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do poster from FuturamaWhich is why I've been wearing plastic bags on my feet. I have a pair of cross trainers I picked up during summer, a nice pair of Nikes just sitting on a dumpster — practically brand new! (Even after decades of living outside I'm still amazed at what useful things people throw away or casually discard.) Well, they were great for hot summer days, but nowadays even a puddle only half an inch deep will soak my feet! Being shod in plastic bags is another one of those things I used to swear to myself I'd never do, by the way, alongside pushing shopping carts and rummaging in trash cans for food. In fact, I'm probably going to start wearing garbage can vests beneath my jacket on days when it rains especially heavily or I'm out canning in the more intermittent or light variety. You gotta do what you gotta do, as the Futurama poster guy over there so poignantly says.

Fortunately for me, a good friend of mine works for Dr. Martens and is going to hook me up with a pair of decent footwear tomorrow. Which makes the next hurdle in my race against walking pneumonia finding suitable and affordable rain gear, probably in a thrift store or the bargain basement of Next Adventure. That and a pair of good long johns are the only remaining clothing items that will cost me any significant amount of money; everything else I can buy, find, or get donated to me by local charities. Which reminds me of the scarf another good friend of mine has waiting for me to grab at TPI's mail room, which I need to do soon because when those fools aren't losing mail they're returning it (I seriously need to get a PO box one of these days!). In short, I'm probably more worried about getting through the winter than I need to be; I've always been a fretful soul.

In order to ameliorate some of my anxiety I've decided to whittle down my clothing stockpile to just two sets that will each be worn four or five days, leaving me with less belongings to attract the attention of the roaming packs of thieving tweakers that now swarm Portland's streets like a bad parody of a biblical plague. Other than buying another can of bear mace, which is forty dollars at Andy & Bax, I don't know what to do about them except avoid them and hope the rain and the police keep them at least a few blocks away from me. My buddy K— will be moving into an apartment soon and has offered me his spot, but his street sees a lot more shady midnight creeping than mine does so I doubt I'll take him up on it. God damned homeless “occupational hazards”; I'd better not wake up one of these nights with a face full of metal pipe because some dope fiend out of his mind from three weeks without sleep thinks my backpack will score him another bag. Only idiots of an astronomical scale get hooked on a kamikaze pilot drug.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Shadow of the Spectre

A pall has fallen over the streets of Portland, and the streets are all abuzz about it and its cause: methamphetamine. Poor ol' junkietown's gotten itself all spun out, hearsay declaring the Mexican cartels have flooded the market; I know one can buy quarters (of grams) for as low as ten dollars. (I don't do the stuff, though I used to on occasion for two or three days.) I've been talking about tweakers off and on since I've been out here, but I have a feeling I've only been seeing the shadow of the spectre all this time — the foreboding, as opposed to the menace per se. Last Friday I went to my old freeway confluence stomping grounds, in search of free boots from a church school bus from Chehalis, and I saw tents and tarp-draped shopping cart pillboxes strewn all over the place; I'm guess the average block held AT LEAST ten people. Piles of junk, too, of course; every single one of the slinking figures I saw had sunken cheeks and scabs on their face. Tweakers, the real children of the corn.

It is a menace, too. Not only are they negative attention attractors because of how much crap they accrue and nest themselves in and how much of a nuisance they are as around-the-clock scrappers and thieves, but they can get outright sketchy and violent. In fact, one of them called me out at the boot line last Friday when I objected to his claim of being at the head of the line (which doesn't even exist — it degenerates into a (literal) bum rush as soon as things are unloaded out of the bus)! Of course, I wasn't even about to deal with that crap; I just walked away determined to can up the money for something decent at Goodwill. A peer of mine just told me a couple days ago that he had a knife waved at him over four bottles he'd just canned. Considering the floodgates of heaven have finally opened up on us, heralding the return of our dark drizzly monsoon season, tempers are bound to grow more excitable.

One benefit to the otherwise inconvenient and uncomfortable rain is that it tends to wash most of these guys downstream to the overpasses and bridges, leaving those of us on loading docks or camped out in the woods alone for the most part; it really is nice to be able to stash stuff and not have to worry about it being pilfered! It's also good for washing the pollution out of the air. But, still, it would have been nice to have gotten a pair of boots that night! I managed to soak me feet pretty thoroughly in the cross trainers I'm still wearing from summer; so far today it's rained 1.20 inches. I'm going to have to start making daily trips to thrift stores as soon as I can up fifteen dollars, since the free lines now not only disappoint but also imperil. Yup, as much as wary as I am of the tweakers I'm more concerned about the rain, a concern which adds up in dollars I need to expose myself to the elements to get.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Caveat Emptor

Bed bugs. What I thought I'd left behind at that awful Fairfield roach hotel I used to live in crept back into my life a few days ago, hitchhiking on a pillow I bought at the William Temple. Well, it may have come from elsewhere, but the fact remained at the time that I had to do something about it, and QUICKLY! Especially after a few nights of feeling bugs crawling all over me and waking up with bites here and there, which may or may not have been real — it's pretty easy for me to freak myself out about that kind of thing, given my revulsion to most members of the insect kingdom.

I've had to deal with these particular members three times back when I was in housing; such buildings are pest (and disease and dysfunction) incubators and vectors. The solution then was to bag all clothing and bedding up and run it through the wash using hot water and through a dryer on high heat for a full hour and to have pest control spray your room, and hope that you don't have any of them holding up in upholstered redoubts like couches and reclining chairs. Bed bugs can survive up to eighteen months without feeding and can hibernate through temperatures down to freezing, which makes them very difficult to eliminate. Unfortunately, not all of my stuff can be washed and dried at high temperatures, and I don't have the money to steam or bake or freeze things like my thermal pad. So, I went with adding a LOT OF Pine Sol­­™ to a commercial washing machine's pre-wash cycle. I don't know if that will necessarily work, but I did read a few assertions as to its effectiveness online. I wouldn't be surprised if it did work, considering the stuff is used in institutions as a disinfectant and I have witnessed for myself cockroaches aversion to it. We'll see. I have plenty of Pine Sol™ left, so I'll probably just keep adding it to the pre-wash cycle of my laundry until it's used up. Bloody expensive, though: $4.50 for a small load of clothing at the local laundromat.

Which brings me to Dave's idea, that he mentioned to me yesterday while we were toking it up with another buddy of ours. Dave doesn't do laundry, he just buys new clothes from thrift stores. Considering during this time of year I can wear a pair of jeans and a hoodie for up to two weeks, and a t-shirt for up to a week, and free socks are given out everywhere, I can get away with spending only about $10 a week ... and not have to worry about the cost and logistics of locker rental or someone discovering my stash and stealing from me. I can just keep my long johns, winter and rain gear, and socks in my backpack with my sleeping bag. However, I'm a bit reluctant to try this because of the cost, considering a locker at the Friendly costs only $10 a month. Still, it's an intriguing idea.


I'll stop being lazy about this blog and resume weekly updates on Wednesdays. Sorry to those of you who actually take an interest in this.