Homeless

The Blue Danube is streaming through the loudspeakers; stereo just like my thoughts. Perhaps I’m even thinking in surround sound because there’s no one here but me. There usually isn’t anybody but me here. I call it my home. I seem to finally have settled down after moving around for the past 20 years. Let me see! 10 times. I have moved 10 times.

Between the 8th and 9th time I was homeless; living on the streets. I suppose I just had to try that as well. I was psychotic so I didn’t notice my deprivation. I could sleep sitting up. I would roam the streets when they closed the shelter down during the daytime. I wandered aimlessly about; it was autumn just like now and very cold and rainy. My thick woollen poncho kept me warm and dry and I wrapped a scarf around my head; only my hands were bare and my neck. I thought that if I was cold in one part of my body, my neck, then I wouldn’t freeze anywhere else and I was right, I didn’t.

I became uncaring of the biting cold. I would wander from bench to bench. I might even buy a beer and uncap it on the wooden bench. I had learnt that from the blokes who used to hang out on the square outside the local grocer store and beer supplier. This was when I lived in my council flat.
When it all seemed a bit miserable and cold I would go to the burger bar and buy a cup of coffee, turning every coin as I had just handed over the bulk of my income to the political prisoners in Turkey- by way of The Workers Newspaper. At the burger bar I took my coffee into the gaming section and made a rollup. You were allowed to smoke here. It was very cold trying to make rollups outside.
I once had a peek inside the Christian Crusader’s coffee house but there were so many people that I got frightened and walked away. I was very psychotic and almost enjoyed being all alone most of the day..

I liked roaming the streets. The hustle and bustle of Copenhagen. The Whites, the Yellows, the Blacks, we were all different colours; black babies in prams, Romanian prostitutes, Indian shopkeepers, saris, brightly coloured headscarves, flat Maroc moccasins, Bedouin pants, small Chinese merchants, Arab take away kebab houses, a polish boy minding a mobile phone store, cars, buses and taxis- the cacophonic sounds of the city.

In the afternoon, about 3pm a shelter for prostitutes and other socially excluded, opened for the evening and night. It was warm inside. It was run by the YWCA. There was coffee, tea and toast with butter and cheese. In the evening you were served a completely free meal, well prepared and cooked by the volunteers. The place was exclusively for women, run by women volunteers. You could get a bed for the night- you just had to be out by 10 o’clock the next day.

One night I was shattered and went to a room with 4 bunks. I was about to lie down on one of the bottom bunks when the girl in the top one seemed to be sleeping very uneasily. I felt her sheets and they were drenched with sweat. I asked her if she had withdrawal symptoms and she told me that she was HIV positive and that this happened almost every night. I told her to get herself a cup of tea and I would change her sheets. She was overjoyed and asked me my name. She couldn’t thank me enough- she was very grateful. She grinned from ear to ear at the thought of being able to get back into a clean, dry bed.
She was a skinny little mite. I slept very comfortably despite the sounds of the city and the neon signs flashing on and off on the adjacent building.

Then there was the clean former prostitute and heroin addict. She had tattoos all over her body. She had a sun tattooed on her belly and every time she flexed her muscles in and out, the sun would rise and set on the horizon. I was in awe and asked her if she really had sold her body for money. She stated that I was egotistical for being so brash.. The young prostitute sitting beside her declared that she was considering moving back to her abusive partner as she said ,she could easily knock him down before he did too much harm.

I had visited the shelter on another occasion with a lot of homemade knitwear and this time I had more in my bags and baskets which I lugged around the streets with me and watched over carefully- all my worldly belongings were in those baskets. The girls were like hawks on their prey when new- used clothes and shoes arrived at the place. My boots disappeared as soon as I had taken them off my sore and tired feet. No matter, I had woollen socks and leather sandals. That is what I had of footwear that winter which was the snowiest winter for more than a decade.