Cruelty

 

Bus Depot in St. Helens, Oregon
© 2022-Nathan Tompkins

Usually, when I go on tour, I have places to stay, couches to surf on, or a hostel bed to lay my body down, whiskey, beer, and weed working together to press myself down to sleep.  My last trip, though, was just an overnight to Everett, Washington.  I arrived, did my set, and the evening finished.

Now usually I have a place to stay.  Unfortunately, this time I didn’t.  When I was young, it would have been no problem.  I slept in parks, my car, and off bike paths, many times when I had been drinking and no place to stay.  It was always not a big deal. 

But, I’m not a young lad anymore.  My body doesn’t bend, mould, conform to its surroundings like it used to.  I get up, and I sound and feel like a walking bowl of Rice Krispies.  So, I bought three tallboys, and a little whiskey.  Then, I walked to a bus stop across the street from the train and bus depot.  

The bus stop is covered; but the walls are wire screens, providing no protection against the chilled wind rolling from Possession Sound.  The black bus bench had arm rests, like the one in the picture.  They may sound convenient, especially if you’re waiting for the bus, but like the perforated walls of the shelter, they are specifically designed to prevent homeless people from sleeping on the benches, from camping in the shelters. 

For the seven hours, I sat at the stop drinking and smoking, finding solutions to get warm, my shaved head wrapped in a pair of sweat shorts, my leather jacket zipped up to the chin, hands thrust in a pair of socks, watching the strung-out mumble to their ghosts as they jerk danced down the sidewalk.  Others sitting at the depot, talking to the security guards as they wandered on their rounds, periodically waking people up.  No sleeping allowed.

When the station finally opened at 6 am, I had already been awake for 24 hours.  I dragged my frozen legs, still intoxicated from the night before, across the street, the muscles cramping as I slowly made my way across the orange and yellow lines. 

As I drank my hot coffee, I thanked the gods of my ancestors that I never fell into the junk trap, though I watched many of my friends and relatives fall.  That even though, I am hard of hearing, that even though I struggle with my mental health, I have family, I have a base that would protect me from homelessness.  At least for the moment, because that can always change.

It also made me realise how cruel these anti-homeless ordinances are.  For instance, the bus stop I stayed on.  The rain spray through the wire screen walls, carried by the breeze.  No way to really get comfortable and sleep on a bench designed to keep you awake.  There are ordinances and laws across the country against feeding or donating money to the houseless.  There are places with spiked embedded into the concrete to prevent sleeping, and now Portland pack the houseless to internment camps, forgetting that there have been camps in the past, that the city got rid of, mainly because they were in places where tourists and rich people can see them.

Houseless people are people, too.  It doesn’t matter how they got there, whether it’s from their addictions, or life dealt them several bad hands in a row.  People need to realise that we’re not closet billionaires waiting for our break, that healthcare is a joke in this country, that we are all a paycheck or two away from houselessness.  It's the only way this cruelty can end.

Nathan Tompkins