Day Three

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

So last night as I was walking out of Whole Foods when Gold and Yugio (the street kids I was hanging out with) walked in. Yugio had an ice pack on his shoulder and was groaning. I walked up to the table with him to try and help him and Gold out.

Apparently, they had run into Gold's ex-boyfriend. He started harassing her, calling her a bitch etc. Then he called Yugio a fag and as a result a fight broke out. Yugio beat the living shit out of the douche-bag but landed on the concrete hard fucking up his shoulder.

"Jesus, I leave you kids alone for two hours and you already get in trouble."
"Sorry mom."
Damn my maternal instinct.

They decided they wanted to stay out so after I made sure they were okay I went to the shelter. It was pretty much completely dead. A lot of kids had chosen to stay out. I took a shower and got some dinner. While I was getting my food I noticed a black guy (dreadlocks) and white girl (drama girl) fighting. He was fixing her a tv dinner and she was mad because he didn't do it "right" and as a result it was "disgusting". Honestly, I thought she was being bitchy. Don't like it cook your own damn dinner.

After eating I went to brush my teeth and they had moved the fight over there.

"I'm sorry. If you don't like it don't eat it." He said after a few minutes of her whining at him. He held the edge of the sink staring down into the bowl, bracing himself, tired of arguing with her.

Even though I had committed to staying out and making friends I felt out of place and tired so I went to my bunk to read until I fell asleep. A few pages in Drama Girl came in crying and stripped her bunk below mine. Our eyes met and I was less than an inch from her face. I thought about saying something, anything but I didn't. She walked off crying. I rolled over and went to sleep. Not sure if that makes me a bitch or not.

After breakfast today Mario and Jesus offered to walk me and another new kid by where day services are. We walked past the Unitarian church. I felt very odd. I was torn between wanting to go today and not wanting anyone to know I'm on the streets.

On our way we passed another girl (Vampire Girl) from shelter.

"What are you doing? #1 doesn't open until 1pm"
"They don't know where it is I'm showing them." said Mario.
"They don't even know where #1 is?" she scoffed as if every street kid is born with the knowledge of where day services are. Mario said that she is a vampire kid. She cuts herself and has guys drink her blood.
 
Jesus found a stick of incense and lit it, leaving a trail of smoke behind us. We went to Whole Foods to get snacks and use their outlets to charge our phones. We bought brownies and alphabet cookies with my food stamps. Jesus is currently trying to spell "fuck you" with the cookies. He's been at it for awhile. Right now he has "Fucken".

There's a group of us here. Whole Foods seems like a popular spot. They leave the street kids alone and let us do our thing in the corner of the cafe.

If you're wondering the alphabet cookies are currently "Moo Fucken Bang"

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The activity offered at day services today was yoga. If you go to three yoga sessions you get a free movie ticket. Mario, Jesus, and I attended the yoga class to kill time and get those movie passes. The yoga room was quite stinky. The mats smelled like homeless kid butts. By the end we all smelled homeless if we didn't before.

The yoga instructor did a meditation exercise after the yoga work out. She told us to tense every muscle in our body and release it. I froze. That quickly I was back in the hospital with David and him teaching me how relax tension in my muscles caused by PTSD. It shook me. It was the most visceral time I've been back there mentally in a long time. I stared at the ceiling looking at the sprinklers and thinking about all the things that happened five years ago.

I wondered if he was ever a street kid. I missed the hospital so much in that moment. But, it was fleeting. I know that I will never go back.

After yoga we played hours of Apples to Apples. It's the only game not missing pieces. It wasn't all that bad though. Staff kept coming to yell at us for being too loud because we were laughing and making jokes. Somehow during the day it had been determined that I was God. Jesus was arguing with me about a game or something and I said, "We aren't playing that because God said so." (The truth was missing pieces). He wanted to be God too so I said he could be Jesus. Since then he's been calling me "dad" and I've been threatening to crucify him a second time. This is how he got dubbed the name Jesus.

Day services closed at 8p.m. which gave us 45 minutes to kill. I took the elevator down while Jesus took the stairs. He dialed into the elevator phone. My face lit up when I heard the sound of one of his funny voices coming through the intercom saying "Please enjoy this music on your ride." Then he played his ringtone. It made my day.

Jesus and I walked to Safeway and bought cookie dough and sour candy. We walked back toward the shelter and talked. Turns out Jesus was a Youtube star before he was homeless. His channel has millions of viewers. I wish I could post it without breaking his anonymity. But just like the rest of us here a number of circumstances led him to being on the street. And just like the rest of us the story has to do with bullshit parents. But, it still surprises me that even Youtube celebrities can end up homeless.

We met up with the other street kids at the fountain across the block from the shelter. I took a last chunk of cookie dough and told Mario to pass it around to everybody. Jesus kept his with him but handed it out to the kids. Dinner was some sort of mysterious pasta dish that most of us were skeptical about.

"I ate cookie dough for dinner," I told staff, "I'll just have veggies."
"Where did that cookie dough come from?" August asked, "Everyone has been walking around with it."
"Jesus and I bought some and we couldn't eat a whole thing of cookie dough so we gave it out."

So two things of cookie dough fed about 40 street kids. Communism at it's finest.

The boys complained that I go to bed too early instead of hanging out. I told them I feel awkward and tired so I just go to bed but I would stay up with them. There was a new guy (to me) there who had stayed in shelter before but had been gone. He was hot. Enough said. I was eye-ing him until he said he had a girlfriend. He is starting tonight as a male stripper in one our the local clubs. Gold came in and jumped all over him. I was more than a little surprised by that. The rest of us got to watch them have dry sex most of the night. We decided to play Monopoly. We opened the box to find that all the Monopoly money was gone.

"We're so poor we don't even have Monopoly money."

We found this hysterical. Emo Kid decided it would be easiest to keep track of everyone's money on a piece of paper. Problem solved. To fix the problem of having no pieces to move we used condoms and rubber bands. Even the staff laughed when they heard us saying "Can you move my condom please?" (I was of course a pink condom).

We got scolded a lot for being too loud and more than once staff threatened to send us to bed. I became hall monitor shushing people so we wouldn't get sent. However, not even street kid Monopoly can be capitalist. We ended up forming alliances. When only the three of us in my alliance were left I called for world peace because I could not pick a side. I used all the towers we had built (we were playing Lord of the Rings version) to build Emerald City and made all the condoms run away together in harmony.
 
--mm