Day Sixty-Nine

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

Kitten Lady's splint doesn't stay on very well and falls apart in the night so in the morning we go to see our doctor and have her rewrap it. She decides to do a full cast so we spend most of the morning in the office. We borrow the little lights when she's not in the room to look first in the cat's ear to locate ear mites, then in each other's ears. We put it back quickly when we hear her approaching but help ourselves to anything in the room. This doctor must really like us. I don't know how anyone could tolerate us with as much as we come in.

Once she's cast-ed we go to #2 where I fall asleep hard on the couch with the kitten. When I wake up it's almost five so I try to rush KL so we can go to the bank and deposit my check. She is painting her face to look like the kitten to spange later. We go to the bank and I tell her that we'll tell Houdini the check bounced.

After that's finished we go by Voodoo Doughnuts to spange. I make a sign and sit where people first enter into the line. I offer them jokes for cigarettes, doughnuts or dollars. My sign reads 4.0 GPA Homeless Thanks to Sallie Mae. I make a total of one cigarette, two doughnuts and $4. For my first time spanging that's not bad I think. I wasn't doing it for very long either. KL makes $30 by offering jokes and songs. One guy tells her that he'll pay her to sing with him. He sings out of pitch with her for at least five minutes. This makes me smile.

I like spanging at Voodoo. I like getting doughnuts. I missed them a lot. And I just sat there and read my book, glancing up to ask for money when I saw people approaching out of the corner of my eye. I spend most of the day sitting around anyways. Why not make money while I'm doing it?

We go up to Plaid Pantry where I buy us a pack with the $4 I made. I had promised to buy something for the both of us since I was spanging in her spot. We then go to the grocery store where I steal soda because I'm so thirsty I can't stand it and the lines are miles long. A girl sits outside with a sign that reads, "Spaceship outta gas". This may be my favorite sign.

KL asks someone for a cigarette. When they say no she yells back, "Why are you so stingy? I didn't even ask you for a spaceship!"
I am laughing, "You didn't ask them for a spaceship?" I ask her.

We laugh so hard I can't breathe.When we need to leave the store in a hurry I complain that I've just reached the climax of my book and I don't want to move. KL says she'll read it to me while I push her. She does and we are dying of laughter at the thought of the sight of us: KL reading to me, as I push her in a wheel chair with her face painted like a cat. "Portlanders are weird." we say. Then, "Stories for a dollar."

I buy her a cotton candy while we wait for shelter. It's house meeting tonight which somehow I end up leading again. The agenda tonight lists topics about pee and nipples which I can't help but make jokes about and Director Lady can't help but giggle at. Ginger Kid and I end up getting in a debate about masturbation because he says it's weird and nasty to masturbate.

"No," I say, "It's a healthy thing that helps prevent prostate problems and erectile dysfunction. It also helps you to know your body so you know if something is going on that shouldn't be like lumps or whatever."

Director Lady sits back and lets this go on. I can't help it. I used to want to be a sex educator and I'm not one to sit back and let someone preach that you should be ashamed of your body or natural, healthy behaviors. I am satisfied with the way everything wraps up.

I do dishes for the first time in weeks. Blue Eyes is working downstairs tonight and comes in a few times chatting with me. He asks me how life is and I tell him, "You know being homeless keeps it exciting." It's chilli mac night for the third night in a row so there's hardly any dishes and the ones that are in there are half full of noodles people got sick of halfway through eating. 

I dig the noodles out of the drain and throw them on the side of the sink. Blue Eyes comes in to wash the coffee pot and asks, "Are you going to eat that macaroni?"
"Naw man, it's all yours."

I miss the staff downstairs. They actually have personalities. I finish dishes before 11:30pm which is record time. People are really sick of chilli mac. (Three days in a row can you blame us?) I'm cool with this though as this means I'm in bed before midnight. I finish my book laying in my bed before I fall asleep. For the first time in weeks I do not have nightmares.

--mm