Looks like I won't know if I've passed my background check — the first of the eligibility hoops for me to jump through so that I may return to living indoors — until Monday at the soonest; the Fountain Place building manager is out until then, receiving training according to the maintenance man. I'm pretty confident nothing will come up that will prevent me from being approved, since I have no felonies or even recent gross misdemeanors, have no evictions, and even though my credit is lousy I don't have a legion of collectors after me. I just wanted the next phase of the process to at least be underway before the arrival of Christmas and the inevitable closures and days taken off that come with it and the week following. Anyway, I was going to wait to post until I heard some good news, but I'm not going to skip what's been a somewhat eventful week.
Like I said before, I'm sick of living outside. It's not just that I miss my privacy, the security of having lockable doors and windows, paltry creature comforts and luxuries like mattresses and the ability to watch TV, and of course a fridge and an oven ... it's because it's gotten crowded out here, and by crowded I mean with thieving dope fiends, thuggish punks, and unpredictable and unsettling nutters. It's like Folsom Prison and Arkham Asylum are dumping their inmates/patients onto Portland by the bus load while the local meth labs are having a protracted liquidation sale. I watch people all the time now, and glance around me as I walk down the streets at night, and the only way I get sleep at night now is to swallow a pill of hydroxyzine and plug up my ears. To illustrate, one guy got hauled out of the Friendly House by a couple cops a couple days ago after he staggered in the bathroom shitfaced drunk and threatened to kick everyone's ass and started banging his head against the wall. As if we weren't getting enough grief in that place from the guy who likes to crap himself in the shower, the ex-con who enjoys chatting while pacing the bathroom naked, the bearded wingnut who entertains himself with guttural Morlock self-talk while conducting his ablutions, and the brooding California fugitive-looking creep who skulks in the bathroom in brooding silence!
And then there's the fucking tweakers in my neighborhood. Even though they've been all but removed from their intermittent encampments within a three-block radius of me, lately there's been a MARKED INCREASE in Skeletor's bastard children prowling my street during the wee hours, which is probably what's been rousing me out of slumber into that state of shallow closed-eyed restlessness that feels like night misspent in drunken catatonia when I get up in the morning. It's gotten bad enough that I've decided to bring another person to sleep there nights with me, as a sort of discouragement for miscreant opportunism. Her name — rather her nickname or street name — is Mouse, and yes, she's a girl. No, she's not a girlfriend; the streets are probably about as bad a matchmaking tidal pool as a trailer park in the soggy outskirts of Lovecraft's Innsmouth. A pity she wasn't there when that asshole swung by while I was in my bedroll reading a book, who screamed curses at me as he rode off on his bike because I told him the spot was taken and I didn't know who the hell he was when he started up the stairs leading up to my loading dock; she showed up later.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Is it any wonder I'm such a misanthrope? Where are the quality people? Among the homeless and the poor that would be someone who isn't larcenous, a thug with a boar's temper, a sexual predator, a pathological liar, or mentally unhinged ... and, that's it. Sure, some of us are reading Voltaire and Murakami, but they're also dating crack whores and flipping out on their drinking buddies or they chase away the voices that plague them with China white, etc. Sure, the One Percent is my TRUE enemy, but it's not the yuppies, the politicians, or the cops that are trying to con me, steal from me, or intimidate or beat the crap out of me. I may never fully immerse myself in society; forty years of observing and experiencing first-hand the vileness inherent in human nature won't get whitewashed by housing, cognitive behavioral therapy, or even a woman's ardor. Human beings aren't roughshod angels; peel away literacy and education, safety, the comfort of largess, and nurturing fellowship from a any of them, all that remains is a vicious carmine animal.
