How I Became A Genuine Tourist In The U.S.A.

How I Became A Genuine Tourist In The
U.S.A.

A good friend once told me, while buying me a cup of coffee, that the
line between
becoming a bum living on the streets of America and having a
respectable job was a
thin one. He said that it was easy to slip out
that door into the netherworld of the unwanted, damned to wander in
some earthbound hell of man's own making. No truer words were ever
spoken. Most Americans live two to three paychecks away
from becoming destitute and sleeping on the
pavement that runs underneath their windows.
Many believe or think that it could never
happen to them; that they are somehow immune to the horrors that await
them, if
they should lose their jobs or income. Most
assume that there are services provided by
the state or federal government to help people, who may find themselves
without a
warm place to sleep at night. Most assume that a person must be
mentally ill, alcoholic,
or drug addicted to end up on the streets.
Most are wrong. They walk unknowingly on a
thin glass floor; whose transparency could
slip from underneath them at any moment.

According to the Urban Institute, an estimated 700,000 people may find
themselves sleeping on the streets on any
given night, making a total of 2.3-3.5 million
homeless Americans per year. (The larger
number is an estimate from persons not
counted, persons staying in hotels, or shelters). 10\% of poor people
will find them-
selves homeless with-in any given year, while
at the same time the amount of affordable
housing has shrunk 19\%. The way that these
people finally end up on the streets varies
with each individual, but the traditional stereotype continues to slow
down serious
solutions to the problem. Mental illness, alcoholism, and drug
addiction are the normal
reasons given as causes of the problem. These do little to address the
real problem
of poverty within our society. Povery seems
to have been misplaced as a medication, as
the divide between rich and poor has grown
in the last decade. Many a struggling waitress
has been prescribed with lithium, as her
children were placed in social service orphanages or wealthier homes;
which causes
many to wonder if these cases are symptoms
of manic depressive illness or a government
unwilling to help the poorest families in our
nation stay together.

My case is similar to the thousands of displaced workers wandering
around the country today. In l995, after losing my job
as a down expeditor at Spanky's, I soon
discovered just how fast homelessness can
occur. First, the electricity is cut off, then
the deposit is taken by the landlord; afterwards the second month rolls
around, and soon a 600 or 800 dollar debt can amass
rather quickly. Losing your personal belongings is difficult; but the
loss of freedom
may be the hardest adjustment to becoming
homeless. Imagine having complete control
of your life one day, and then losing that
control the next; for once having become
homeless personal choices over your life
are relinquished. Someone in an authority
position will determine what you eat, when
you sleep, where you can go, what time of
night you can stay or leave a shelter facility,
when you can awaken to start your day,
whether you will be able to sleep with your
wife or chosen lover, what type of God you
may worship. I remember listening to a
fundalmentalist preacher espouse his views
on every topic from abortion to homosexuality
to a captive audience of homeless men and
women in a shelter in Seattle. For one hour,
we were forced to listen to his personal ravings on God and the
universe, before we
could eat our evening meal. Seperation of
church and state. Forget it, because once
you enter the homeless world, your right
to believe or not to believe may be determined
by whether you want to eat or sleep indoors
for another night.

I soon found that getting off the streets is
more difficult than entering the streets. In the
past seven years, I have been through countless rehabs, psychological
institutions,
jails, incarcerations, minimum wage jobs that
fell below the 400-800 dollar a month minimum for most rental housing.
I have
seen places in America that make scenes from
a Charles Dickens novel look tame. Homeless
abodes underneath bridges, beggars in the
streets of a majority of our cities, people avoiding the countless
trespassing tickets,
as they slept in their cars inside abandoned
parking lots and roadways, Oliver Twist-like
social service institutions that dump the seriously mentally ill and
unwanted adolescents onto the streets, shelters that
warehouse people in cramped, unsafe conditions. Many of the homeless
find themselves forced to choose between the
terror of the city streets or the violence and
sexual molestation found inside the nation's
shelter system. Picking the correct shelter to
stay in resembles an insane shell game, where picking the wrong shelter
may bring
disasterous consequences.

I first became homeless when I was 32
years old. It was not long before I awoke
one morning, and realized that I was 38
years of age, and had been in most of our
major cities in this country. I had lived in
and seen most of the country from the depths
of the suburban underclass, a hidden America
that few witness from their T.V. stereo systems or car windows. I had
been given
the name traveler, vagabond, guest, visitor,
tramp. I had become a tourist in my own
country. The label and role soon became a
part of my identity, and I found my being
defined by my homeless situation. My memory went back to the pages of
The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellis, and I could not
help but identify with the narrator, as he
merged into the crowds around him unseen,
unnoticed, undefinable. Beach bum, vagrant,
hobo are just some of the names that cities
use to identify the homeless, using this
stigmatization to move them to the next
town, city, or shelter. "Not in our town" has
become a national motto. Each town or city
seemed to have its' own special way of moving each new homeless person
to the next
county. Some sheriffs have even been known
to deposit unwanted homeless persons at
the line of the next county.

As for my friend, upon hearing my story,
he saved the advice, and bought another
round of coffee. He just didn't feel like
lecturing me on getting a job anymore. I
think that he finally understood.