The Other Shoe Drops

Homeless; it’s a word that conjures up fear in its most primal form. You are exposed, vulnerable. You have no succor from the stress of whether you are going to live to see the sun rise. And the rising of the sun is cold comfort for it only brings about yet another long day, sometimes fruitless of looking for food; the very nutrients that serve to sustain you in this miserable existence. The rain beats down on you as you sleep; you are always cold and at the mercy of the elements.

People always say that it’s bad life choices that brings the threat of homelessness. But that is only true for the drug addicts and winos (chronic alcoholics).

Not every homeless person has met his current situation at the pointy end of a needle filled with psychotropic drugs or by staring down the bottom of an alcohol bottle in a bleary haze to kill the pain.

Circumstances: a lost job because the owner thinks of his workers as checks and balances against a spreadsheet and needs to lose a few expenses to buy his next Mercedes (a penny saved is a penny earned, so they say); overwhelming grief over a beloved spouse lost to a life-threatening illness or an unfortunate accident that consumes the surviving spouse in a haze of unresolved what-ifs and wondering if it is worthwhile to even go on any longer after one loses the one person in their life that meant everything to them (they just give up on life); a landlord looking to renovict or turnover tenants, jacks up his rental rates to the point where his tenants have no place to go other than the streets because the other landlords seeing him jack up his rents causes them to jack up theirs in turn in order to compete.

Life is cutthroat and it appears that there is no room in the pillars of success for those who have empathy. Because very few have it in them who are in a position to help those who suffer and very few are willing to stick their necks out for those who are less fortunate than they are.

For me and my wife, it was the last. Our last landlord decided to jack my rents up to over §1200 a month and thus we were forced to find our next accommodation on a 5x5 plot of land somewhere in countryside. Because law enforcement will tell you to move along, you’re at their mercy. If you get a good cop, you’ll get off with a warning against loitering. If you get a bad one, you’ll get a ticket that since you’re homeless and you don’t have any money to pay it off other than by pan-handling and diving in dumpsters trying to look for things to sell for a quick simoleon, you end up a criminal and get hauled off to the cooler or Crowbar Hotel for a few until they deem you rehabilitated to the point where they feel you won’t be a menace to society just for trying to survive. Society can be a real bastard to those just trying to survive. So far we’ve been lucky enough to run into the cops who are nice enough to just tell us to be on our way and not make our life any harder than it is. But they’ve also told us that there are some bastards who will go out of their way to ticket you and make your life tough just for their own shits and giggles.

Let’s not get into how society treats those who are unfortunate enough to be both homeless and disabled. Both River and I are able-bodied. We can work, we can rummage through things and make ends meet, however it’s always a narrow line between trespassing and survival. The shop-keepers don’t like us rummaging through their stuff and the cops are always on our ass telling us to begone and don’t scare the paying customers who if they are willing enough will toss us a few simoleons so that we can buy a bite to eat. We mostly survive on fruits and vegetables that are one day from going bad thanks to the magnanimity of a shop-keeper who was once homeless himself and knew exactly what we’re going through.

Not everyone is capable of working in those money-making positions. Everyone has their strengths. Those who haven’t found theirs yet haven’t had the luck in their life to get a chance to know what they truly are good at. And mainly that’s due to finances. The almighty simoleon. You need to be able to have money to get the post-secondary education to put yourself in a position where you can find out what it is that you’re truly good at; if you don’t you’re destined for scudwork and being at the mercy of your boss’s magnanimity. If he likes you, you’re ok till he doesn’t like you. If you don’t have the simoleons, you don’t have power; buying or control over the course of your own destiny.

For us, we knew we needed to find shelter; the 10x10 plot of land that we were occupying wasn’t enough to build anything on and the only thing that we could put on it was a bench that one could nap on for a few hours at a time, taking turns. I don’t believe that anyone could get a decent night’s sleep. And breaking in anywhere such as the firestation to use their facilities was an absolute no-no. So...we had nowhere else other than to fish for our food and hope the conservation officers wouldn’t catch us because that would yet be another §5000 fine that we couldn’t pay. Loitering was §250.

The instant we found ourselves homeless the more we found that money, food and shelter were the primary things that were the most important, whether it came from hustling those who had money (pan-handling) or digging through the dumpsters for things to sell. I hadn’t gotten desperate enough to steal a car yet. And hopefully I never get to that point. It certainly wasn’t a situation I would wish on anyone at all. River and I were starting to get to know all the places where we could find free food – on the trees, which would allow us to at least take the edge of the constant hunger that we had. It would also give us extra food that didn’t go bad at least – it would be eaten long before it went bad. At least it was something and water was free, at least until Nestle decides to monetize it so that only the rich would be able to consume it and the rest of us are condemned to drink polluted water like those in the third world.

Unfortunately it seems in this world that everything is monetized up to and including life itself. Insurance companies end up offering you coverage based on how much they think you’re worth and it can be a real eye-opener when it comes to that. You think you can earn about $2.5M over the course of your life time at a certain wage per hour, well your insurance company thinks you can only earn about 2/3rds of your calculation and bases your insurance payout based on that while jacking up your life-insurance monthly payments to them. And the company life insurance that River and I had, well, we lost it the moment that they fired us for being homeless. So frankly the idea that it’s all drugs and bad choices that lead to homelessness is a load of horse manure and compassion is in short supply.

River and I stood for a long moment wondering how it all came to this. The simple fact that we found out via letter that our rent went from §900.00 to §1200.00 and the rent was payable on the first of the month which was in three days. Our savings were minimal since we had to eat and pay for our car expenses (gas and insurance) which came out in total to about §225.00. And at that job, my wife was making $1100.00 and I was making §975.00 which meant an influx of §2075/mo. On top of that. Being billed for cable and internet which ran us around §260.00/mo did not leave us very much at the end of it all. And now we had §0.00 income. So when you did the math, §2075 less §900 for rent less §225 for car insurance and the minimal gas that we could get and less §260.00 for cable and internet for the minimal enjoyment that we could get out of that since River and I didn’t go out to the movies or eat out much at all; in total came out to what was left of §690.00 which barely fed both of us including lunches and dinner. So frankly when the bill came that they were raising the rent by §300.00 it took half our food budget right off the table.

It’s easy to say well, cut your internet and cable. But to deny someone any sort of enjoyment of life and condemn them to drudging through life without anything to keep them from going stark-raving insane (all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy) is what is known as psychological torture. We only live once and what enjoyment we get in life is what gets us through the day. It is easy for those who already have life’s good stuff to say, “Deny yourself this, get rid of the internet, get rid of your cell phone. It’s eating money you can’t afford.” It’s another thing for them to have done it; and when they complain about how high their bills are and you ask them, “Well, why don’t you get rid of that second home that you own, or your secondary car? “Well...I need that second car? Do you really? Or, “I need the income from the secondary home...”. Well, if it’s going to be such a drain on your resources, then why do you have it anyways? Why not get rid of it and just save the money and put it away in an investment somewhere where it will grow money?” “No, I can afford it...”

Well then quit complaining about how high your bills are then; just shut up and pay it. You put yourself into that position, now quit complaining. Oh, wait...YOU don't like that kind of attitude directed at you, do you? See you want sympathy. See what I mean about the road going both ways? The answer is because they don’t want to cut their expenses even if they know that they'll save money that way. They get too much enjoyment out of being able to be able to complain and whine about their financial situation because they wanted to keep up with the Joneses whereas those who have need of their internet because of their situation is fixed that they need it because society is changing. They have been placed in a position where they aren’t able to function without the internet in their home. Everybody now uses online-banking, everybody no longer uses payphones, jobs expect e-mailed resumes, they no longer want you to walk into their place of business and hand them a paper resume. The paper resume goes directly into the circular bin. So what’s the choice. The libraries don’t want you to upload files through their computers for fear of viruses. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. These are the thoughts that run through River’s and my head as we sit here in the rain wondering what our life has come to.

“Well, at least we have our cellphones, right, honey?” I say sardonically to my wife.

River lets out a sarcastic snort of laughter (or was it a bitter snort? A flash of anger goes through me as I see that her faith in humanity is wavering). At least her humor is still intact. I love my wife. She’s the one that’s carrying me through this. If I didn’t have her, I’d be lost in a state of depression so deep I wouldn’t be able to see the other end of this.

The only thing that we can do is hide out in our tent and hope to hell that the rain lets up in a couple of hours so that we could go out food hunting in the community gardens. And frankly the fact that the rain is keeping the summer temperatures down is a godsend.

I don’t know if my faith is being truly tested at this point, but frankly, it’s taking a lot to remain in such a position. The old saying of “There are no atheists in foxholes.”; well you have a mix when it comes to the homeless. There are ones that think that “the Watcher is a figment of one’s imagination, there can’t be a Watcher this malevolent to put us through this.” and then there are those who hope that “the Watcher will bring us through this...and into a better life.”

Our first job considering that we had nothing to our name was to go make sure that we had food in our stomachs and that meant raiding the fruit trees that weren’t the property of someone else. They also say poverty shows us who our friends really are. Because when life throws you a haymaker, everyone else ducks for cover in hopes that they don’t get hit...or they don’t catch what you have – the horrific malady of poverty might be catching.

We hesitated to even look at dumpster diving because of the smell that it imparts to your clothing but when one gets desperate enough. Well...one has to deal with the smell in favor of the items that one can potentially collect from the dumpsters. Selling a good couch or two on consignment might put at least §600 simoleons in one’s pocket which might give us a chance to put some money away provided the banks would allow a pair of smelly people into their establishment. The only way that we had to get through this was to chock money aside to make sure that we were able to save some money and be able to pull ourselves out of this position that we were in.

Talking to the consignment store owner allowed us to put two items on consignment a day of anything that we could locate at least until he was sure that we were able to give him something of value. We’d sell the two highest value items that we could and drop the rest. And we could sell insects at the science center, but even there was a limit. It had to be a value of minimum uncommon. The common insects had to be let go as there was no value in them. Fines were tabulated and at the end of the month they were added to the total taxes...and if one couldn’t pay them then things were taken from us.

The fines were levied as followed:

Selling Government Controlled Elements (Tiberium or Plutonium) - §50,000.00 and government seizure of all substances (in possession)
Selling Government Protected Species (Falcon, Spotted Sixam) - §10,000.00
Poaching - §5,000.00
Prostitution - §2,500.00
Polluting a Waterway - §1,800.00
Pets causing damage (digging up holes) - §1,500.00
Garbage - §800.00
Dog /Cat with no License – §800.00
Dog/Cat off Leash - §500.00
Loitering - §250.00

Licenses - Government License to sell Minerals - §25,000.00 (paid up front to be able to sell gemstones and metals.
Fishing License – §2500.00

For owning pets one faced other levies. Dog license – §800.00
Cat license - §300.00

Yes, society had a way of making things tough for the homeless to do anything. If one wanted to have a pet to while away the time and keep one company, then you had to pay out the nose. You couldn’t just have an unlicensed dog or cat or one would end up having the pet get taken away. And frankly, the fact that society cared more for the welfare of the animal than the human who was on the street, showed just exactly how society thought that those who were on the street were nothing more than vermin on par with rats, cockroaches and other disease-carrying scum.

When we had a job, we were able to take care of our appearance, wear decent clothes provided that we got them at an outlet store. Clothes, again, were expensive and we didn’t go out every other week to buy new clothes. Frankly, River and I wore the things until they were nearly threadbare and needed replacing. Clothes weren’t really all that important, you can find clothing practically anywhere. The important thing was that we had a way to communicate (the internet) and a way to call and let the spouse know that we were going to be late (cell phone)...and a way to get from point A to point B...the car...and well...after we became homeless, we had to sell the car and we took what we could get for it, which was less than §5,000 which bankrolled our tent, a firepit and a small financial base from which to make sure that for the first little while we weren’t going to be starving to death. It was a matter of making what was left over grow into a bit of a nest egg to restart our lives in a better financial position than what we were in.

We also still had to look for work, but who was going to hire a pair of homeless bums on the street? Society’s trust of us went when our money and roof over our head went. If you were out on the street, you were untrustworthy according to society whether the assumption was true or false. If you weren’t able to be trusted, you sure as hell weren’t going to get a job that paid you anything that gave you enough to live on. The owner figured that you were going to raid his cash box and float the first chance you got. With all that aligned against someone who had no roof over their head, was it any wonder that people turned to hard drugs and alcohol to cope with the stress and the emotional pain of trying to eke out an existence? Hey, it may not be the best choice in the world but whatever gets you through the day, right?

But no, River and I weren’t going to resort to that. We were going to fight tooth and nail for what we could. Even if we had to dumpster dive, risking hepatitis and other potential illnesses just to put some money in our pockets. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. The fruits and vegetables coming off the trees and plants were not to be sold, they ended up in our pockets as food for us. We could sell fish to the market by poaching them from the lakes, rivers and ocean, provided the Department of Fisheries and Oceans didn’t catch us. It was a dice roll whether they would catch us or not. And we could consign things that we found provided that we could vouch for their quality.

It was going to be a struggle and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be easy, but River and I were not going to go down without a fight.