4:24pm: 101010111010001110101010
Canada has one of the highest homeless rates per capita of any developed nation. In fact, in Toronto, admissions to
homeless shelters increased by a shocking 75% between 1988 and 1998. Seventy-five fucking percent.
While there are many sources of this problem, the largest is a lack of affordable housing. Over the course of the 1980s the government of Brian Mulroney significantly reduced the amount of low-income-geared homes built each year. In the 1994 federal budget brought in by the new government of Jean Chrétien almost completely halted these federal housing programs. In 1995 the Ontario government of Mike Harris did the same, ensuring that in Ontario virtually NO subsidized housing would be constructed for the next decade.
Something has to be done. I swear to god that even if I find a home from now on I must fight for those who don’t (with the exception of those who are homeless out of a life-style choice). AFFORDABLE HOUSING NOW!
Anyhow, I’ve decided to start a journal of my time homeless – hopefully it’s interersting and not just a four-page hog of your livejournal friends page.
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Monday:
Apon my return to town, I run into Julia (chick that smashed the toilet at my old place) – She appologizes for smashing my toilet and upon hearing that I’ve nowhere to go, tells me I can sleep in the tent in the backyard of the place she’s staying at. Paul finds me and her and gives us both a tablet of mdma – these pills were bunk and did very little considering their size. We get to her place and me and her played battleship for a short while before checking out her tent. Upon finding out that there are more earwigs inside the tent then outside, I end up laying down on the reclining lawn chair in her backyard.
My leather jacket as a blanket, my backpack as a pillow - I manage to doze off for about 15 minutes all together. The mild effects of the pill are just enough to keep my mind from aloting any kind of rest. The light drizzle that follows – just enough to be annoying and cold – Ensures that no sleep is found. I couldn’t really leave because I had left my cellphone inside to charge. So upon daylight, I sit and read about 75 pages of Naked Lunch while waiting for her to wakeup. During this time the owner of the house (According to Jullia, a “loon” with bi-polar disorder who’s letting her stay there because she wants Jullia to be a replacement for her late, younger sister) comes outside to do some gardening, she apparently didn’t know I was going to be sleeping in her backyard and a whole spew of akwardness follows. Jullia eventually comes out and then me, her, paul and her father smoke a joint. Jullia’s father falls backwards in his chair. This brightens my day some.
Tuesday:
After many hours of reading Naked Lunch in and about downtown, I finally manage to get ahold of Kyle. We chat it up a bit then sam and casey come over – we go to The Silver Spur and then leave. Casey is passed out on the bed, drunk until we kick him out and Kyle is freaking out because I accidentally over-flowed the toilet. Eventually things calm down and me and Kyle watch “Big Money Hustlers” (best movie ever) and I leave. I end up sitting in the covered area of city hall in order to shelter myself from the insane amounts of rain that were crashing down. I begin reading once more.
An old homeless man runs into this shelter and sits down. He’s about 70 years old, has bushy chin lenth white hair and an insane beard. For about 15 minutes, he’s oblivious to my precence while I sit on the ground near the corner. Eventually he sees me and say’s “hi” – he seems almost like a ventriliquest becaust I can’t see his mouth move from behind all that beard. He asks “are you on the streets, too” and I reply affirmatively. Then he asks me for a smoke, which I give out of the strange sense of comradery I feel for this man. “He’s one of ‘us’”, I think.
Me and this man talk a while. Turns out he’s been homeless more on than off for the better part of 35 years. He offers me a swig of his wine, which I turn down because it’s Sherry (ew). After a few hours of comfortable silence, watching the rain crash down and laughing at a bird hopping around the covered area in circles to avoid the rain, finally daylight hits.
I wander into city hall and sit down. By this time I’m terribly tired so I fall asleep sitting up. Security comes and wakes me. I call my mother and ask if I can come over to clear up some trouble with my cellphone. I fall asleep on her couch and she’s nice enough to let me sleep on her couch for an hour until steve comes home. She gives me $20 she owed me and I leave.
Wednesday:
Again, I sit reading much of the day. By this time I’m done Naked Lunch so I have switched to finishing Please Kill Me, which is about the early New York Punk scene. A story about Iggy Pop laying in a gutter when David Bowie’s limo pulls up and he asks him to come with him to Berlin to record “The Idiot” inspires a similar fantasy of my own.
I run into Paul, pay an outstanding debt with the $20 my mom had given me and then we decide to try some of the lsd that he had bought. We each take one hit. After a couple hours, we felt little effects so Paul decided to just leave to his ex’s for the night. After he left the drug started to take some effect. I sat down in the same place as the night before and began to read a bit. Tracers and some other subtle visual effects combined with racing thoughts made it slightly hard to read, although less boring than the the previous night. Frustrated with my obstructed reading ability I decide to do the opposite, write. I write two psycotropic-inspired songs – I also had music written for them both, in my head – but upon sitting in front of a keyboard, I realized that the songs were in a key that doesn’t exist:
“The Days/Daze”
it’s not a cry for attention
it’s a whimper for rejection
A second wind as short as the last
I can’t have a future if I don’t have a past
The streets pain flows through me
In legatto elegance
You know, I used to have a reason
That is, beyond deliverance
Fleeting memories in a time that’s self-cautious
Instead of finding the problem
They simply buried it
it’s a dirty world
yet our fates are so sterile
nowhere else to go
our purpose has been filed
the bright city lights
shine on our dirty city dreams
based on shitty fabrications
of a city puking you to be clean
the gutter glory hole
where sympathy blows my soul
back handed genorosity
leave me shameless and cold
taken away, the days when I used to be clean
I used to be clean
The run down shops
Where I can browse my broken options
I run round in circles
The states broken adoption
“Nothing”
nothing left do do but nothing
nothing left to say but nothing
nothing left to want but nothing
nothing left to have but nothing
nothing left to be but nothing
nothing left to leave but nothing
nothing left to sing but nothing
nothing left to scream but nothing
nothing left to see but nothing
nothing left in me but nothing
do… nothing
say… nothing
want… nothing
have… nothing
be… nothing
leave… nothing
sing… nothing
scream… nothing
see… nothing
in me… nothing
nihl zero negative!
There’s nothing in you
Don’t let it live.
I run into some punk girl I had met before named Molly with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend is in a Nile shirt so I decide he’s cool. Molly is on acid, apparently – so we connect. We wonder around a bit vandalizing the odd sign. Then I leave. I show up at my mom’s at 7am with a mild after-glow. “What” she says… “I want some cereal” I reply.
I eat a bowl of some Fudge Swirl shit and then lay on the couch and watch a documentary on the Ku Klux Klan. Apparently, when it started it was just a club – it had no racist-ties… Weird. I fall asleep and my mom wakes me saying “you’re not supposed to be sleeping here! I leave.
Thursday:
Derek has returned so marijuana and liquer are the focus of the night at Kyle’s. At around 11pm I show up at my mom’s drunk and ask her to hook me up with some food. I eat left-over sausage, steak and taco meet. A wonderfully varied, carnivourous meal.
I leave my mom’s and wander into victoria park. I decide to capitalize upon my drunkeness and it’s ability to make me not give a fuck about where I sleep. I find a park bench that is obscured by bushes and lay down. A few ‘shady’ characters walk by and I’m afraid I’ll get beat up or robbed. Luckily, noone goes as low as to rob or beat up a homeless guy. I eventually pass out.
The cops wake me up some time later. I give them a fake name, knowing full well that they would turn my park bench sleeping into “disturbing the peace” and arrest me for breach of probation. On top of that, I’m supposed to inform my probation officer upon any change of address. They don’t accept “homeless” – they’d make me go to the house of friendship. I would rather sleep on a bench then sleep there. Too many shady characters – not to mention an 11pm curfiew. Luckily, they buy the fake name, and let me off saying I can’t sleep on a bench. It disgusts me how the country criminalizes homelessness, a problem they helped fucking create.
I wander back downtown and look at the clock – it’s 4:30 – I managed to sleep about four hours, which means I only have three more to kill until a few buisnesses open. I sit and read, finishing Please Kill Me.
Friday:
Sometime, somehow Thursday night I seem to have severely injured the right side of my ass. My guess is it’s from long periods of sitting where my wallet was digging into it. I’m bruised and my hip bone hurts like a bitch to sit or walk. Eitherway, I walk to Waterloo, smoke some weed then go to the library. After spending some time there, fucking around online – I head downtown. I start panhandling – something I don’t do very often. It’s a bad day for panhandling and I only make about 4 dollars in two hours. I use this money to buy a hotdog.
There’s some stupid car show downtown that I refer to as a “mid-life crisis parade” – after watching a bit of this, I head to kyle’s. We smoked some weed with Trotsky-Mike and I passed out on his couch for a couple hours. Surprisingly, Kyle was nice enough to let me sleep there. I woke up to the house being full of people – Derek, Femme-Casey and Michelle had showed up. I felt akward for having been asleep the whole time.
Since my parents were away, I called my sister and harassed her to let me stay there the night. It took some convincing, but she let me. I make a huge fucking chocolate milkshake then go to bed.
Current Mood: 
awake
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high
blah
thirsty