Travelogue #26
Staying at Sally's in Tampa (pt.1)
I frequently get the "homebum" title from other traveling types. "You faggot homebum!" has been said more times than I care to remember, and these are my friends.
A homebum is simply someone who doesn't travel, gets stuck in a town because of the ease of living, and adopts a role in the town. Whereas travelers always have the option of The Road because there's always another town on the horizon? Homebums are quartered in publicly-subsidized housing. If they don't get Section 8 housing, you will see the phenomenon of the unwashed and failed lining up at 5pm, 6pm, 7pm... They're waiting for food or shelter, or both.
So, sitting around a spacebag (Franzia's brand of box-wine, minus the box), I reveal that I go to these shelters. "You homebum," says the alpha-male, and I laugh inwardly, coming up with meek arguments to divert the slight. Really, he just wants to put me down to get in with the ladies. Girls love the romantic notion that you don't kow-tow to The Government and The Man and The Establishment, that you live wild and rollick towards EXPERIENCE! Or worse, I'm what is refered to in Traveler-ese as "an oogle". So, I'm a homebum, traveling across the country more times than I care to remember... and when its eighteen degrees out, I'm sorry, save your honey-pussies and pinky-finger-sized assholes, I'm going to sleep in a homeless shelter.
Behold, the Cold Snap of Florida, circa January 2010! It was mother-fugging cold, dropping to the lower 40's. Tampa, by the Gulf of Mexico, was cold and damp, and in desperation, walking past a Salvation Army, I decided to go in. Perhaps it was my own idiocy--the night previous, I gave up the opportunity to travel with these heroin junkies and be part of their "crew"/"krewe", but really I travel alone. Tonight, I was regretting my decision to ditch them and their van--it was warm and inviting.
"Its gone get cold out," said a bum as I walked down a street. Yeah, I've got a sleeping bag, I told him, which was a lie--mine had been stolen in Jacksonville. I turned another corner and all the human debris were lighting fires, arranging their shopping carts for a cold night's slumber, and where was I headed? Ybor City? On a Tuesday night??
So, I chose Salvation. I chose Slave Nation Army. I was broke, I was a homebum, and I was a broken, broken man...
After checking in the front desk, a mandatory shower was administered. From a separate booth by the showers, I was reluctantly given a towel and instructions on how to return the dirty towel. The guy in the booth looked tired, sitting next to a hamper full of discarded towels. Even outside the booth, the sight turned my stomach. Imagine how it must smell...
But, there was the shower. Naked homeless men were seated and standing, some quite jolly. Their genitals ran the gamut: some housed in copious amounts of untamed pubic hair, another dangling like an elephant's trunk, but thankfully, no erections. I found a spare spot on a bench, sat down, and began to undress. Meanwhile, men passed me by to shave, some not bothering to put their clothing back on, and their buttocks were face-level. I held my breath and tried to practice voluntary memory-loss.
To my right was an extraordinary specimen. A black man, naked, was seated on his own bucket pilfered from a restaurant. In front of his chubby belly and sad-looking nipples, he was washing his clothing. It made a hideous sound, swop swop swop, and the washer man was not careful about his task: water was beyond the radius of his operation, so that naked men in neon flip-flops were disgusted. And what water, too! It was grey! How dirty do you have to be to turn the water opaquely grey? Maybe it was his soap, a cheap dollar store variety. Oh, but it gets worse, as he would periodically wash his genitals, firmly stretching his foreskin to reach the water, mixing with the clothes-water. He was a prank installation to anyone who would walk by--"Oh, fucking hell!", "Now I've seen everything!", and other exclamations of infinite variety.
Jean Paul Sartre was laughing at me: "Hell is other people."
The showers were too hot, too cold, too much pressure, too little pressure. When showers were turned on and off by some of the bathers, the water remaining water distribution would either sear your skin or cold-shower prank everyone into a mutual groan. Other men were queued up and watching the shower availability through their peripheral vision.
There was a cheap body-soap dispenser in between the showers that led to much awkward confusion and speculation as men grabbed for the same dispenser. I imagined the soap to cause my hair to dandruff, but it had been days since my last shower. Dandruff or head-oil slime?
When I came out of the shower, the black guy was still at it, washing his genitals in the grey water.
Football was on in the common room. I checked my wallet for the money that remained from the previous night's busking: $10 in singles. It seemed to mock me--sure, you can buy food, but you can't get a hotel? And if you got a hotel for $10, would it be like The Joyce in Portland, with slimy carpet floors, bathrooms like explosions of human waste, homosexual thumping club music from below...
Even showering, my genitals seemed to be a vestigial organ. I thought of the women that I dated, the heinous things I've done to them, and would I be loved now that I've fallen into the graceless pit? Just how far would it be before I would have my own Asian-food bucket full of my clothes, examining the skin around the head of penis, maybe whistling an out-of-tune Jethro Tull tune that no one would understand, head half-distorted by fortified wine, and say, "well, there once was this girl in Manhattan with pink hair..."
So, I made it to the mirror with my clothes on, shaving my facial hair into a mustache. It looked terrible but reinforced the idea that I Would Never Get Laid Again. Now, I blended with the others. I was the youngest person in here by far--where did the other ones go? Did they do the smart thing and get a job? Were they in college? Were they housed by girls in a studio apartment with breakfast served topless, scooping scrambled chicken embryo into his mouth as the young guy sticks his free hand into her pants... Mmmm, he says, these eggs are great, to which she replies with, ahhhh--not quite a laugh, not quite a shout of pain...
It felt weird to have an erection in a homeless shelter.
Staying at Sally's in Tampa (pt.1)
I frequently get the "homebum" title from other traveling types. "You faggot homebum!" has been said more times than I care to remember, and these are my friends.
A homebum is simply someone who doesn't travel, gets stuck in a town because of the ease of living, and adopts a role in the town. Whereas travelers always have the option of The Road because there's always another town on the horizon? Homebums are quartered in publicly-subsidized housing. If they don't get Section 8 housing, you will see the phenomenon of the unwashed and failed lining up at 5pm, 6pm, 7pm... They're waiting for food or shelter, or both.
So, sitting around a spacebag (Franzia's brand of box-wine, minus the box), I reveal that I go to these shelters. "You homebum," says the alpha-male, and I laugh inwardly, coming up with meek arguments to divert the slight. Really, he just wants to put me down to get in with the ladies. Girls love the romantic notion that you don't kow-tow to The Government and The Man and The Establishment, that you live wild and rollick towards EXPERIENCE! Or worse, I'm what is refered to in Traveler-ese as "an oogle". So, I'm a homebum, traveling across the country more times than I care to remember... and when its eighteen degrees out, I'm sorry, save your honey-pussies and pinky-finger-sized assholes, I'm going to sleep in a homeless shelter.
Behold, the Cold Snap of Florida, circa January 2010! It was mother-fugging cold, dropping to the lower 40's. Tampa, by the Gulf of Mexico, was cold and damp, and in desperation, walking past a Salvation Army, I decided to go in. Perhaps it was my own idiocy--the night previous, I gave up the opportunity to travel with these heroin junkies and be part of their "crew"/"krewe", but really I travel alone. Tonight, I was regretting my decision to ditch them and their van--it was warm and inviting.
"Its gone get cold out," said a bum as I walked down a street. Yeah, I've got a sleeping bag, I told him, which was a lie--mine had been stolen in Jacksonville. I turned another corner and all the human debris were lighting fires, arranging their shopping carts for a cold night's slumber, and where was I headed? Ybor City? On a Tuesday night??
So, I chose Salvation. I chose Slave Nation Army. I was broke, I was a homebum, and I was a broken, broken man...
After checking in the front desk, a mandatory shower was administered. From a separate booth by the showers, I was reluctantly given a towel and instructions on how to return the dirty towel. The guy in the booth looked tired, sitting next to a hamper full of discarded towels. Even outside the booth, the sight turned my stomach. Imagine how it must smell...
But, there was the shower. Naked homeless men were seated and standing, some quite jolly. Their genitals ran the gamut: some housed in copious amounts of untamed pubic hair, another dangling like an elephant's trunk, but thankfully, no erections. I found a spare spot on a bench, sat down, and began to undress. Meanwhile, men passed me by to shave, some not bothering to put their clothing back on, and their buttocks were face-level. I held my breath and tried to practice voluntary memory-loss.
To my right was an extraordinary specimen. A black man, naked, was seated on his own bucket pilfered from a restaurant. In front of his chubby belly and sad-looking nipples, he was washing his clothing. It made a hideous sound, swop swop swop, and the washer man was not careful about his task: water was beyond the radius of his operation, so that naked men in neon flip-flops were disgusted. And what water, too! It was grey! How dirty do you have to be to turn the water opaquely grey? Maybe it was his soap, a cheap dollar store variety. Oh, but it gets worse, as he would periodically wash his genitals, firmly stretching his foreskin to reach the water, mixing with the clothes-water. He was a prank installation to anyone who would walk by--"Oh, fucking hell!", "Now I've seen everything!", and other exclamations of infinite variety.
Jean Paul Sartre was laughing at me: "Hell is other people."
The showers were too hot, too cold, too much pressure, too little pressure. When showers were turned on and off by some of the bathers, the water remaining water distribution would either sear your skin or cold-shower prank everyone into a mutual groan. Other men were queued up and watching the shower availability through their peripheral vision.
There was a cheap body-soap dispenser in between the showers that led to much awkward confusion and speculation as men grabbed for the same dispenser. I imagined the soap to cause my hair to dandruff, but it had been days since my last shower. Dandruff or head-oil slime?
When I came out of the shower, the black guy was still at it, washing his genitals in the grey water.
Football was on in the common room. I checked my wallet for the money that remained from the previous night's busking: $10 in singles. It seemed to mock me--sure, you can buy food, but you can't get a hotel? And if you got a hotel for $10, would it be like The Joyce in Portland, with slimy carpet floors, bathrooms like explosions of human waste, homosexual thumping club music from below...
Even showering, my genitals seemed to be a vestigial organ. I thought of the women that I dated, the heinous things I've done to them, and would I be loved now that I've fallen into the graceless pit? Just how far would it be before I would have my own Asian-food bucket full of my clothes, examining the skin around the head of penis, maybe whistling an out-of-tune Jethro Tull tune that no one would understand, head half-distorted by fortified wine, and say, "well, there once was this girl in Manhattan with pink hair..."
So, I made it to the mirror with my clothes on, shaving my facial hair into a mustache. It looked terrible but reinforced the idea that I Would Never Get Laid Again. Now, I blended with the others. I was the youngest person in here by far--where did the other ones go? Did they do the smart thing and get a job? Were they in college? Were they housed by girls in a studio apartment with breakfast served topless, scooping scrambled chicken embryo into his mouth as the young guy sticks his free hand into her pants... Mmmm, he says, these eggs are great, to which she replies with, ahhhh--not quite a laugh, not quite a shout of pain...
It felt weird to have an erection in a homeless shelter.
