The Most Humiliating Blog Post You Will Ever Read (Day 88)

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

My morning starts out the way I wish every morning would. At breakfast there is a box waiting for me and inside is $50 worth of Jelly Belly candies: dinosaur eggs, pet alligators, pet dinosaurs. I am surprised by how much Joy sent me. I was only expecting a few of each but this is enough to give some away and still have plenty to last me.

I shuffle through the box all through breakfast. I don't eat any of my treasured candies I just flip them around in my hands over and over again. It's the feel of home between my finger tips. Bernard asks me what it is when I go to talk to him at the front desk. I show him the candies and tell him about my childhood growing up with my own Willy Wonka in my backyard.

One of the guys comes over and looks in my box. “What is all this?” he asks as he peeks in.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” Bernard warns him, “M will bite your hand off.”

“Oh shit,” The guy says, “I know she will.”

“I haven't had them since Christmas,” I say, “No one better touch these.”

“Had what? A machete?” the guy asks.

“Naw, I always have one of those in my back pocket.”

Kitten Lady is asleep outside. She looks small, sad and pathetic like a little kid lost in a shopping mall. I don't want to talk to her or hang out with her but I want her to know I still care. I drop a gummy alligator in her wheel chair and hope no one steals it from her.

I chat with Beard Man for awhile to kill time. He mentions that he used to play water polo. I'm surprised we've known each other eighty something days and have still not discovered we both played the same sport in high school. It makes sense though and I'm surprised I didn't guess it before. He has the broad shoulders and general build of a water polo player. Plus, he has some aggression issues. He asks about my gators and dinosaurs so I tell him about the factory. I tell him to ask me anything he ever wanted to know about jelly beans. He asks where they came from. I explain how no one knows their exact origin but they suspect it comes from the European treat Turkish Delight.
“You're a nerd.” He says.

“My childhood was awesome.”

I ask Bernard for a night out to stay at Baby Mama's new apartment. She has furniture now so she's ready to break her shit in. I have a couple of errands to run in downtown before I go. I need Director Lady to let me into shelter so I can get my toiletries and a change of clothes. I also need my bank card and food stamp card that I forgot in the morning. Once I get my bank card I want to buy a new backpack from Ross. Mine is duct taped together and killing my back. Ross has a really nice backpack with a laptop pocket and the cushions that help release the tension off your back. It's $20 but that will save me about $400 should the bottom of my other bag rip open and kill my laptop. Plus, it'll be a good investment for boosting.

Director Lady can't let me up until 5:30pm so I kill time until then. I go down to my various spanging spots but they are all either taken or there's not enough people there to be worth my time. I look up jobs online but this quickly overwhelms me. I used to be so good at filling out job applications and getting through interviews. If I wanted work I got it. Now, just looking at Craigslist for jobs is too much for me. I don't even really know why.

When Director Lady finally lets me up I give her one of my gummy alligators. She is ecstatic. She says she thought they'd be small alligators but clearly they are not; they are almost a foot long. I get my things I need and chit chat a little bit before I head out. Her sidekick is outside unloading a van full of groceries. “Does this mean we might not have lasagna for awhile?” I ask him and he laughs at me.

I take the max to meet Baby Mama at the mall. We ride the max until we can transfer onto a bus that will take us to Walmart and the Dollar Tree. We go to the dollar store first to see what we can get for a dollar or with my lovely five finger discount. She tells me if I steal her silverware and baby stuff she'll pay me back for them. She doesn't have to pay me to do it, I'm happy to try and help. I need practice stealing.

I steal her a bunch of butter knives but they don't have any other silverware. I get her baby wash cloths and other baby supplies. They have some Jelly Belly flavored lip balm so you know of course I grabbed some of those. Baby Mama pays for the house supplies she's buying then we head out to Walmart.

We see a stack of t-shirts sitting out for $5 a piece. They are ridiculously cute and I want them bad. I get greedy and grab one of each. I have really been needing t-shirts. My chub is making it hard to fit in a lot of my clothes and my boobs have been getting out of control.

We finish up and check out. Baby Mama is $14 short so I slide my debit card and tell her to get it back when she can. We walk out the door and I'm smiling until someone crashes into my cart. It scares the shit out of me. He pushes the cart into me and says, “Walmart security, you need to come with me.” My mouth just hangs there. I have no idea what to do in this situation.

“What's going on here?” Baby Mama yells at him.
“She has been stealing from our store,” the guy says, “How old are you?”

Before I even have a chance to answer he yells at Baby Mama, “How old is she?”

“I don't know.” She says, even though she does.

“You've been shopping with her all this time and you don't know how old she is?”

She shrugs, “Can I just get my bag and go?”

Bless her. If she just picked up her purse and walked away she'd be walking away with all the proof I had stolen anything. I'll be free to go.

“She put things in your bag.” He says.

“She did what?” Of course Baby Mama knew that I put things in her purse. I wouldn't have done it had she not given me permission to. She pretends she had no idea so well though that I forget she knew for a second.

They drag us into a back room and tell me to give the stuff back before they go through my belongings. I figure my best chance is to just do what I'm told. I'm nervous but not nearly as nervous as I should be. Baby Mama takes her stuff and leaves as if she cannot believe I stole anything while she was with me. This is all preplanned too. She's not being a bad friend; we had a deal that I wasn't going to let her go down for anything I stole. She's due in five weeks, I'm not going to let anything happen to her.

The guy begins counting out the dollar amount of everything I stole. Another one of the under cover guys pulls in another girl. She is about eight feet tall with long brown hair. Her makeup is done up and she's wearing a low cut top that barely goes past her belly button. I guess immediately that she is a stripper. My t-shirts come up to $30 and she has $94 in makeup hidden in her purse.

To say that my tremors are bad is no joke. I'm pushing my hands between my knees to try and keep them from showing how much I am shaking. I keep thinking to myself I will not break. I will not cry. I will not be ashamed. I will not break. I will not cry. I will not be ashamed. I'm so sick of people telling me that I should be ashamed of myself; that I am subhuman all because of a lack of zeroes in my bank account. I do not want to sit here and hate myself for trying to get new clothes. I'm not going to be embarrassed that I too want nice things.

I'm not even going to pretend I felt bad for the other girl getting caught. I was thankful. I did not want to go through this alone. She is a godsend. The way she starts talking to me everyone thinks we already knew each other. She jokes around and starts annoying the security officers. She keeps saying, “How could I be so stupid?” but she has a big smile on her face. She asks me what I stole and why I stole it. I tell her the truth, that I stole just to get some new clothes to feel good about myself since I'm homeless. She looks me up and down and says, “You could strip. You'd make a lot of money.”

She asks the security guards why I have to be arrested too when she stole $100 and I only stole $30. They tell her it's the same charge when it's under $100. A new law recently passed in Oregon requires theft three charges to be booked and released at the jail instead of just cited at the store. “Cops hate it,” he says, “They have to waste time booking and releasing you instead of taking care of real problems.” They can hold us for one hour after they make the police call. It is the last priority of the police department to take care of things like this. If they don't arrive within the hour we are free to go.

I appreciate her trying to help me out by asking why I couldn't leave. I don't usually have people to look out for me; it's nice to have someone watching out for me instead of me trying to to take care of everyone else for a change. She says she didn't need to steal; she had money. When the police officer comes in five minutes later he asks if we know each other because we're laughing when we really shouldn't be. He's searching me while he's asking this. She winks at me and says, “No, I'm just being a brat.”

She keeps asking the police officer questions about going in for being booked and released. She must know the answers though because she's been through it before. I can only suspect that she is asking to put my mind at ease. Now that we know we are being booked she tells me, “You better get your lip gloss on girl; we're about to be in Busted*!”

He cuffs us and takes us to the police car. “Do we have to walk through Walmart so everyone can see us?” the stripper asks. The police officer offers no alternative. The loss prevention guys say, “You're in Walmart. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

While we walk through the store in front of people I stand straight and look at the back of the police officer’s vest, not the ground. I keep thinking I will not be ashamed. I will not be ashamed. If I'm going to be arrested it's going to be with dignity. I get in the police car first and the officer buckles me in. Before he shuts the door I hear the security guard ask, “Can we get a discount at your work?”

The stripper has to cram into the police car. She does not fit. It's like trying to shove all your laundry into one of the small shelter washers. It just doesn't work. Once she's in with the door shut I ask her, “Did they really just ask you for a discount to the strip club?”

“Yeah. I'd give them a lap dance right now if they just let me go. Sleaze balls.” She rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, getting a girl arrested is not a way to get favors at a club.” I say.

“No shit.”

We talk the whole way to downtown. She has two kids: one and a half and five years old. Her oldest is a boy; youngest a girl. She still breast feeds the girl which is commendable. I know I'm stereotyping but I never really thought of strippers as being the best parents. She talks about her babies so much I develop pictures of them in my mind. I can tell she loves them more than anything in the world. She asks me about my parents and how I ended up here, in the back of a police car on a Tuesday night. I tell her both my parents are far out of the picture. I say, “I don't talk to them. They did a lot of fucked up shit to me.”

“You know that's not your fault,” She says which makes me wonder if she can guess what that fucked up shit is. Stereotyping again, but I can imagine she knows what fucked up parents are like.

She asks me to scratch my nose with the bill of my hat. I stick my head forward and let her rub her nose against my hat until the hat falls off. She tells me I'm a sweetheart. She starts messing with the police officer asking him, “Are we whining too much?” about our complaints that we don't fit quite right in the car and the handcuffs hurt our wrist and we're cold and we're tired and we're....

She asks him if he thinks stealing is people being greedy or a sickness. He doesn't answer her. She asks if he ever stole before and he shrugs, “Never had a need too.” Spoiled rich white fuck. She tells him she'll pay him $20 to put lip gloss on her. He ignores this.

She keeps conversations flowing and laughter going all the way to the police station downtown. I'm already trying to think of where I'm going to sleep tonight. It's 10pm. The book and release process takes 4-6 hours. This means I'm likely going to be let out after the max stops running. I can't get into shelter after 11:30. I have no idea what I'm going to do. She tells me, “Girl, you're going to be alright.”

When we pull up to the police station the officer puts my hat back on my head. I thank him. We are searched and un-cuffed by a female officer. My wrists are swollen from the cuffs and my carpal tunnel. I shake them out. They tell me to take my shoes off. When I do I apologize; my feet reek. “Honey, that isn't anything,” the female officer tells me. I have to take off my jewelry. On my finger is the only thing that really means anything to me: my grandmother's ring. “Please,” I tell her, “Please don't let anything happen to this ring. It was my grandmother's. Please.” She promises me it'll be safe and they'll give it to me when they release me.

We are told to sit in the front row of some chairs in front of a television. I sit next to her. We chat the whole time about her kids, stripping and just some straight up nonsense. They take us to the back to get our finger prints and mug shots. I smile big when it comes time for my mug shot but some voice sounds from the ceiling barking at me, “Lips together, no smiling.” I still try and smirk.

They lead us back to where there are inmates sitting, waiting for whatever comes next. The girls and guys are separated by a small cement wall. I look over and see Dreadlocks. When he notices me he has a look on his face of complete surprise and confusion then he starts laugh. Shit, I'm laughing too. I pray he doesn't tell Drama Girl he saw me here. Then everyone will know. I see two other guys from shelter. I wish I could talk to them but there is no communication between males and females in jail.

Stripper and I are both starving. All I ate before being arrested was peanut butter toast three hours prior. There are brown paper sacks on the floor, left by inmates who were served food when they arrived. They will not give a sack to us. We rummage through the sacks to find left over food. There are four pieces of bread with bologna in saran wrap. We unwrap them and split it between the two of us and another girl we have started talking to. I just take the bread plain the meat looks sketchy to me. The stripper offers me mustard but I shake my head and stick out my tongue with a scrunched up nose.

They put a hospital wrist band on me with a small thumbnail of my mug shot. The stripper and I compare our wrist bands. “You look sexy,” she tells me even though my hair is a giant fuzz ball mess from my hat. At least I don't have tear streaks or running makeup. “You did good,” She tells me, “You didn't cry or anything. That's really good.”

We sit in some more chairs to wait even longer. We talk as if we have been best friends for years. We start talking to another girl who has the same name as me. I ask her if she goes by the same nickname and she says she does. When they call out our first name we both turn around. She is in for a probation violation. She says she has two kids, one of which she had when she was fourteen. She said her baby never got taken away though, she just grew up fast. She's not going to be released like the stripper and I will be. She's waiting on them to find a bottom bunk for her in a cell because she has seizures.

The stripper asks me if I take pills. I tell her no even though I really would like some right about now. The other girl wants some so she goes into the bathroom and leaves some pills on the sink for her. She hid them in her underwear to get them in. As they start to get high off of Xanx I regret turning them down. I could really enjoy being fucked up right now. I know I made the right choice though because I need to be on top of things when I'm released to the streets with nowhere to go.

The stripper girl tries to convince me that I could be a stripper and get out of this mess. I tell her I'm too fat. She picks up the jail pants I'm wearing over my shorts and looks at my stomach, “You're fine hunny you could do it. You'd be good.”

A girl walks in, so dirty we can see the lice and mites moving around on her clothing. Her hair clearly hasn't been brushed in a week and she has the same scabs Pizza Face gives herself. Every time she walks by us we hunker close together, praying her bugs won't fall on us. I get pulled back to get my finger prints taken on a machine to put me in a database for criminals or something. The guy wipes it down with a sanitizing wipe so I ask him if I can have one to scrub off any potential bugs. He's nice and gives one to me. I've never really seen my finger prints before so it's kind of interesting to see this whole process. The guy is gentle after I tell him my wrists have carpal tunnel when he has to turn them to get prints right on the screen.

When I'm done I wipe the shit out of my arms with the sanitizing wipe. I am not going to get lice or scabies. I will keep my dignity. At least today I will keep my dignity. The stripper is released first because she's already in the system. She asks the guards for a post it note and a pen and writes her name down for me so I can find her on Facebook. I thank her for being so kind to me.

I go to the desk where the police officer sits and supervises all of us criminals. I have to stand on the tips of my toes just to get my eyes to where I can see her. I ask her what to do about having no where to sleep. I tell her I know Dreadlocks because he sleeps in the same shelter. “He's not being released tonight,” she tells me. “I figured,” I say, “I can guess what he's in for.”

The girl that shares my name is taken upstairs to jail. An hour or so later I'm finally released. It's after three in the morning and I have no idea what to do. I have been at the jail for five hours. I call Baby Mama and wake her up. I tell her what happened and that I'm stuck without a place to go. She tells me to get on the max the minute it starts to run again at 5am to get to her place. I think about calling Savior Man but there's no reason to bother him if I can't even get out there. I text him telling him to call me if he's still awake, which is more than possible.

I ask the police officers in the lobby if I can come back if I can't find a safe place to be until the max runs again. He says I can't and he doesn't have any suggestions for me. “What if I get raped or killed?” I ask him.

“I've worked here for twenty something years and that's never happened.”
“You're trying to tell me there has never been a rape in Portland?” I must look fucking stupid. Portland is a safe city but it's still a city. Shit happens everywhere. Even in Portland.

I leave the police station anyways. I hope that I can find Kitten lady sleeping outside. She's not though. We don't even have any blankets since Pizza Face stole them all. I walk up to shelter to at least attempt getting in. They can't let me but Douchebag Guy throws my blankets out a window for me.

I catch them and walk up to Walgreens to see if it's open. It's not. I walk back down to McDonalds where I go through the walk up window and get a large fry. I'm starving. All I've had is bread we stole out of lunch bags. I eat the fries in two minutes. I don't know where else to go so I see if any of the kids are sleeping at the fountain. There is an old Chinese man sleeping in a cardboard box like a sleeping bag and another girl sleeping on the bench. Inside the fountain is a Mexican boy I think I know.

I jump into the fountain to take a nap. I figure it's a good spot since it's close to the max, shelter and McDonalds. I gives me plenty of places to go if I should run into trouble. I lay out on my blankets and try to curl up the best I can to keep my body heat inside me. It's not freezing out but in a t-shirt and jeans it's pretty fucking cold. The guy gets up and pees outside the fountain. He's not the kid I thought he was. I don't fall asleep but I doze and shiver for about an hour before it's time to catch the max. I wrap myself in blankets waiting for the train.

The guy who gave me the laptop charger comes up to the max station. “You sleep outside last night?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I sigh.

“Why?”

“Got caught stealing at Walmart and just got released.”

He shakes his head at me. I shake my head at myself. I'm a mess.

I struggle to keep my eyes open on the max ride. I get off at Rose Quarter to get on the bus I'm supposed to take to get to Baby Mama's house. I ask the driver for my stop. I try to keep my eyes open but I'm asleep before we get out of downtown. The next thing I know we are at the Gresham Transit Center. The end of her line. I now have to wait until the next bus comes. The lady says I can wait on her bus and then leaves me alone. I steal a bus ticket to make up for the time I lost falling asleep on the bus like I did.

I wait on the bus trying to stay awake until my stomach feels like it's going to be ripped open. Stomach problems are just part of shelter life. I expect at least a stomach ache a week, usually they aren't the end of the world but when I screw up my medications I can expect a mess. I just recently screwed up my medications. I run off the bus to find a bathroom.

I ask every person I see if they know of a bathroom in the area. There aren't any public bathrooms and the stores aren't open. I scramble desperately looking for a bathroom and find porta potties. I run to them as if I'm being chased by the ginger demons. They are locked. There's nothing else nearby. I cannot wait one more minute. I am left with no options. I run behind a bush and squat.

It's disgusting and humiliating, much more than any mug shot ever could be. It's not a very neat and clean thing and I have no wipes, napkins, nothing. I try to tidy up the best I can but I don't even have hand sanitizer. Everything is with Baby Mama. Everything but my phone and crochet hooks.

I tried so hard not to feel ashamed or bad about myself through this whole thing but dogs have more dignity than I do right now. I am ashamed. I am now that crazy dirty homeless person that shows up in Busted and reeks. I try to cover up myself in the blankets but I still feel stinky and dirty. Anytime someone turns their head I think they are trying to find whatever homeless person stinks, so that when they find her they can ignore and despise her.

When I finally make it to Baby Mama house I ask for a shower before anything else. It's 7am but I jump in the shower and scrub each body part clean multiple times. When I'm done I finally lay on the floor of the baby's bedroom and fall in and out of sleep without any sleeping pills.   

--mm