Houseless Part 2

When I first began living in my car on a full time basis, I would curl up underneath a blanket in the driver’s seat, with a tire iron in one hand, and a flashlight in the other. I was prepared at any moment to defend myself from certain danger; mugging, murder, or worse.
after only a few nights, I realized it was ridiculous to pretend I was any safer with these two objects clenched in my hands. For one thing, I was losing sleep. Protective awareness was only allowing me to sleep an hour at a time.
The second thing I realized about sleeping with a weapon in my hand, was that it would be far too easy for a police officer to mistake the tire iron for a gun, possibly shoot me in the head, and ask questions later.
One night in Balboa Park, about two-thirty in the morning, a very nice security guard came up to my car, and tapped on the window to remind me that 2 A.M. was the cut-off time for cars to be parked in the lot my car was in, and wanted to warn me that if the S.D.P.D. rolled in, I would certainly be ticketed for parking illegally, if not cited for illegal camping, which was, and still is, I believe illegal almost everywhere in San Diego city and county.
The man was honestly being nice and doing me a favor by warning me about my parking situation. Everyone knows though, what it is like to be woken up unannounced by a stranger. I came very close to raising the tire iron up in a defensive position when I awoke to a man I had never seen before standing at my car window staring in at me.
Because things like this happened to me numerous times involving police, not just armed security guards, I stopped holding anything in my hands while sleeping my car, and also, attempted at all times to have my hands somehow exposed while asleep, so passerby’s could see I was not molesting myself while in my vehicle, or hiding anything in my hands underneath the blanket, or sleeping bag that covered the rest of my body.
Another thing I found ridiculous about the act of arming myself while I slept, was that in a very realistic way, anyone could approach my car, and do numerous misdeeds, if they chose to, way before I had any kind of chance to hit them with the tire iron, or even step outside of the car.
I learned, eventually, that it was almost safer to sleep outside, with two or three walls at my back, or surrounded by bushes, or trees than it was to lay in the driver seat of my car where I could not see, even if I was wide awake, anyone approaching me from about the entire peripheral of my vision.
It does not take a fucking trained Army Commando to figure these things out. A person realizes, over time, that it is incredibly difficult to live outdoors and appear harmless to the breadth of humanity that is always wandering by, but also to have enough awareness of personal safety to sleep extremely well.
After months and months of sleeping either in my car, or out on the ground somewhere, I was only bothered by one person beside the police. I believe it was a solicitation for sex; a man pulled up next to my car twice, in a five minute period, to ask me how I was doing. I considered it very threatening, since I had purposely parked far from a residential neighborhood, in hopes of being able to sleep and not come in contact with people.
The second time he stopped next to me, I said something like, “What the fuck do you want?”
I don’t remember the exact wording of the phrase I used, but it did cause the man to drive off and not come back. I slept okay that night, but only after staying up for a couple of hours to make sure the man did not drive by again.
That was a common misconception I found amongst most people who observed me, or anyone else, sleeping in a car, or on the street. People believed all homeless individuals to be drug addicts, rapists, child molesters, prostitutes, or some other kind of degenerate criminal. Certainly, that element is always present in all communities, homeless or not, but the idea that a person like myself had no stable source of income, and had no magic safety chord to pull in order to immediately remove himself from this desperate situation eluded many people.
Once again, feeling threatened like I had when that man stopped his car next to mine, only happened once. I felt most safe while parked in a residential neighborhood. I always tried to park my car next to someone’s side, or back fence, as opposed to in front of the walkway to their front door, or right next to their driveway.
Many times, because I would arrive at my car to sleep late at night, and usually be up very early, I think most people in these neighborhoods I was in didn’t even see me. I found several locations in San Diego that were close enough to houses and apartments that the place was considered residential, yet, where my car was actually parked was far enough away from people’s homes that there should have been no logical reason for anyone to overtly observe me, much less call the police on me.
The criminalization of homelessness, whether it was in the form of city ordinances banning people from sleeping in public, or other legalities; like the aforementioned time limits on how long a vehicle can be parked in a certain area, waned a little near the end of 2008. I think police, certainly city officials, and many of the public at large, came to a realization that the growing homeless population around them was in direct relation to their own financial circumstances, as well. Unemployment was at an all time high, and home foreclosures, also, skyrocketed around the same time.
This kind of economic climate wasn’t good for anyone, especially the poorest of the poor, but at least, hopefully, more people became aware that unfortunate economic events were often times out of the individual’s control, and that balancing act of stability could be lost to people who previously believed themselves capable of weathering any monetary downturn.
My biggest problem and concern still, to this day, is finding stable employment. One thing a tremendous recession like this does, is give companies great leeway in which employees to keep around, and which to get rid of. In today’s economic instability, even companies that are not losing money, or on the verge of bankruptcy, can still get away with laying people off, or firing them indiscriminately. And, people in charge of terminating members of a company’s workforce, whom may have friends or family members in dire circumstances, feel little or no sympathy for other people they hardly know outside of the work environment.
These kinds of cutthroat situations; whether at a large corporation size company, down to the smallest independently owned business, should constantly remind everyone of the cruel and selfish nature of humanity; especially, when people feel most vulnerable, and fear for the basic necessities of what they believe they need in order to survive.
When I have a conversation with someone, anyone, on topics such as war, genocide, mass rape, torture….and the person I am speaking with is exclaiming that the perpetrators of these crimes are animals, lacking in a basic human compassion, or worse, just purely evil, I cannot help but agree, but it makes me wonder also, whom in this world is purely good, or generous, or kind?
There are very few real charitable souls in this world. I don’t think I can even call myself one, either. If you fall down, I will try to pick you up, but if you throw a rock at my head, I most likely will throw one back. I’m not necessarily vengeful, but I don’t want to be stoned to death, either.