Thursday, June 14, 2012

Day Thirteen

    ****NAMES CHANGED TO PROTECT PORTLAND'S STREET KIDS***** 

I was too tired to even consider taking anyone's shit this morning. I talked to Director Lady about making an exception for me to have a pillow until my head healed. No go. I left shelter as soon as possible and took the long way to OI. I found Jesus curled up in the elevator with Queer. I joined them and laid on the floor happy to see everyone in one piece but not caring about much else.

Jesus was talking about some girl he met during his night out. As expected Emo Kid bailed on him almost immediately to try (and fail) at getting laid. Somehow he met up with this girl who was apparently amazing. I wasn't sure if he was trying to make me jealous or not but I was so tired I was completely unresponsive and barely heard half of what he was saying.

They offered up free acupuncture at breakfast. I decided this would be a good idea seeing as it was a major help with the exploding ovary of doom I figured it might be helpful with the concussion. My head was aching from tossing and turning all night and my neck throbbed from staring down at the morning crossword puzzle. One of the acupuncturists had a dog with her and I immediately scooped up the puppy and held her on my lap. It was nice being in a place that didn't care I was homeless and would let me pet their dog anyways.

The acupuncture didn't seem to help much though. In part it was my fault, I should have stayed longer but I had to pee. I decided enough was enough and I obviously needed a break. I met up with Jesus and booked the two of us a hotel. I had slightly more in my bank account than I thought I had and figured a concussion and BLA qualified as a pretty good emergency.

We bumped into another street kid waiting for the max. He had a bucket of chalk he had found somewhere, left over from the Rose Festival. I picked up a pink and drew on the sidewalk until the max came. Jesus and I had agreed to tell no one where we were staying and just say we were going to stay with a friend. Jesus is the only one who knows I have a bank account. I intend to keep it that way.

We got to the hotel shortly after check in. We originally went too far on the bus and had to backtrack. We unloaded our bags and showered. Jesus hadn't had a shower in three days since he didn't get on the shower list soon enough at OI after his BLA. After my shower we had intended to walk and find food but we fell asleep in a tangled mess on one of the beds instead. When we woke up three hours later I forced us to walk to find food. We weren't hungry yet but I knew we would be and there was no way in hell I was walking around 82nd at night.

We found a Plaid Pantry a few blocks away and rummaged for snacks there. While standing in line to pay for our Pringles and gummies a black dog ran up to us. I dropped on the floor to pet her and get kisses. She covered me in slimy drool that I wiped on Jesus' shirt before he dodged away.

"I don't know where she came from." the clerk told us, "She just walked right in like she owned the place." He was on his knees stroking her, "But you can stay in my store as long as you want you happy dog."

I checked her collar and though she did not have any tags with her name and phone number she had a tag saying she was micro-chipped  at Banfield Pet Hospital. The clerk told us the vet was just a few miles up the road. I looked at Jesus who shrugged. "I'm not leaving her here." I told him.
"Me either." he said.

So that settled it. I asked the clerk if he had anything that could be used as a leash. He gave us his boot lace and I double knotted it to her collar. We walked up 82nd with the dog sandwiched between us. She was well leash trained and we had few problems even though we were walking her with a flimsy shoe lace. After awhile she seemed to get tired and was dragging her legs behind her. We called her to us calling her "fatty" and "sweet heart". Once I had to get behind her and push her a few feet. We tried bribing her with Pringles but she turned her nose up at those.

We prayed to the flying spaghetti monster that the vet would be open. Jesus prayed for an award. I highly doubted that outcome. Spaghetti favor shined down upon us and the vet was open. The redheaded vet lady scanned her tag then said, "Oh this is Ebony."

"You have a name." I said to the dog, "You're Ebony!!"
"Yes, Miss Ebony has a history of escaping and running away." the vet told us, "I'll call her owner."
"You naughty puppy." I stroked her, "You need to stop running away."

Turns out Ebony is an old lady: 14 years old and still spunky enough to adventure by herself. We gave her water and weighed her (65 pounds) while we waited for her humans to arrive. When a skinny black woman walked in Ebony started thumping her tail. The lady offered us a ride back to Plaid Pantry to return the shoe lace to its rightful owner. She thanked us for returning Ebony and we thanked her for the ride and patted Ebony goodbye. We gave the clerk back his shoe lace and told him Ebony made it home safely. He seemed surprised we returned the shoelace and got Ebony safely to her rightful owner.

We both felt much happier after such a successful quest. Our quests make me feel better about life. See, you hear so many stories about how street kids are dishonest drug addicts but we're not all that bad. You'd just never see the story of how two homeless kids returned a lost dog home on the news. It's not as exciting as two kids killing each other over one last hit.

We decided that since we had a bath tub the only sensible thing to do would be to take a bubble bath. We dumped hotel shampoos under the running facet to make bubbles then climbed into the bath tub wearing boxer shorts and tank tops. I fit perfectly in the tub. Jesus was a tad bit more crammed. We made a playlist of Disney music on my itunes and relaxed in the tub pretending to steer a boat with each others' legs and blowing bubbles back and forth.

Once we were wrinkled we decided to climb out and watched Seinfeld eating our nutritional dinner of potato chips and sour candies. We weren't sure if the bed was really as comfortable as we thought it was or if it was just the fact we haven't slept in a real bed in weeks. In the end we fell asleep holding on to each other with the television on.  (Oh to sleep with television! Anyone who knows me knows what a glorious night that must have been after being without for so long!)

I dreamed about my mother and family dinners. I woke up several times in the morning but continuously fought to fall back asleep. It was my only chance to get rest and sleep in. At 9am I pulled ourselves up to get the complimentary breakfast chanting "oatmeal, oatmeal, oatmeal." I got my oatmeal and Jesus got some cornflakes then we went back upstairs. I ate then took another bath, shaving with the broken off top of my shaving razor. We fell back asleep until 15 minutes before check out. We scrambled to get everything shoved in our bags and ready to go.

When we checked out at the front desk the man asked us, "Where are you going?"
I get asked this a lot by people who see my airport tags and don't recognize I'm homeless.
"To downtown Portland," I say, "Going on an adventure."

The man smiles and nods. We close the door and head off back to OI, thinking that spending almost twenty-four hours pretending we aren't homeless were some of the best twenty-four hours I've had in awhile.

--mm

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