Night At The Emergency Shelter

The homeless shelter in Brattleboro — like in most rural areas — is tough to get into. It can take weeks. The procedure is to call in every morning until a bed opens — however long it takes. I’ve tried a couple of times, for lack of anywhere better to go, to get into the place. It’s hard, though, for me to maintain the sustained effort required. Not here in my hometown, where I generally can find some place to stay — stressful & wearisome as finding someplace to stay has become after all these years.

Mind you, there is a real short list of places I can stay. 2 of my friends who generally welcome me into their homes, most anytime I need, are out of town at the moment. That makes the list critically short. In fact — last night at least — the list was non existent.

They’ve opened an emergency overflow shelter for Brattleboro’s homeless this winter. I could have hung around the bars — tired as a dog & with no money — and eventually someone may have put me up. Like I said I end up somewhere most nights. Most, but not all. Last night I was plain not in the mood to spend hours hanging around the bar with no money hoping I would end up somewhere warm. Some nights you’re just not in the fucking mood.

I remembered about the emergency shelter. It opens up during snow & ice storms and when the temperature drops below 20 degrees F. — basically the emergency shelter operates when a persons life is threatened were they to sleep outdoors.

It was mighty cold last night. The emergency shelter was open — from 7PM to 7AM. They have it in a church basement on Main St.

12 people found refuge at the emergency shelter last night. 10 men, one woman — and one undecided. Looked like a chick last night. Yet despite the high heeled boots looked quite like a dude in the cold light of day. Anyway.

The accommodations were comfortable enough; blankets, a pillow, a sleeping pad & a spot on the carpeted floor. My only complaint, shared by most others in my vicinity, was that someone’s feet reeked. Unfortunately those feet were mine. I left the last place I stayed in a hurry and was forced to wear my boots without socks. I was tempted to leave my boots outside the shelter but feared they’d be gone in the morning. I wished I’d taken my chances.

Other than that it wasn’t too bad. They fed us beef stew in the evening. I fell asleep almost immediately. In the morning there was coffee & donuts.

The biggest drawback to the emergency shelter is the 7AM check out time. Actually it was better this morning, being Sunday. On Sunday, while they make you wake up and put your bedroll away before 7, folks are allowed to hang out in there the basement until 9:30 — when church begins.

Good thing. Sunday is a rough day to be homeless — Sunday morning especially. With the library closed, there’s not much to do when you’re broke on Sunday besides just kind of walk around & try to stay warm.

Which I did for some hours. Eventually I occupied a table at a coffee shop. Though I could not buy a coffee, people who work there know me and left me alone. It’s uncomfortable though, being in a place where people buy things, with no money. I didn’t stay long.

Once outside I ran into a friend. Bummed a smoke off him. He then blessedly offered to buy me breakfast. Then we went to his place for a few bong hits. By the time I came back out the Bar was open, and now here I am. 24 hours later, wondering if it’s cold enough for the emergency shelter to open tonight.

Wishing I had some socks.

So Goes Omar

You have to play the game, have to keep the psychological advantage. That’s the tenacity of gangsters. He knows she may be lying but he has to make her believe she’s fooled him. Lies can be magic. Lies are gifts from gangster heaven. Besides, perhaps she was telling the truth.
>>Galloway

Omar was a stick up boy.

Why not? You got to make a fast buck. And that’s one way to.

I liked Omar quite a lot. Not everyone does. I guess since most people are scared Omar will rob them. But I got jack shit that’s worth robbing.

Last month Omar stuck up Prop Joe.

He stuck a gun in his face. Not because he wanted to shoot Prop Joe. Not necessarily. Omar merely meant to discover whether a healthy fear of buckshot in the face would inspire Proposition Joe. Inspire him to act swiftly on his own behalf — do things he would not but for his wish to not die.

Two weeks later Proposition Joe was coldly executed by a local drug dealer’s kingpin’s hired assassin.

So it go.

The new kingpin enjoyed watching Prop Joe die.

Bad kingpin!

13 years ago, when Omar was young — maybe 8 years old — he & his people famously stuck up a middle-aged, working class man for a fast $17 bucks.

“You know what this is?” He rhetorically asked the guy, who was seated at a bus stop.

Omar stuck a pistol in his face.

“Yeah.” He assured him & jabbed the gun a little closer. “You know.”

Stakes were a bit higher, last month, when Omar stuck up Prop Joe. Prop Joe was in his fifties. He sold drugs for a fast buck. Sold drugs Big Time — kingpin big. If you’ve ever bought drugs in Baltimore chances are they came from Prop Joe.

True ‘dat.

Every drug dealer in Baltimore bought their dope from Prop Joe because Prop Joe got the bomb dope.

Good kingpin.

To make the cops think he didn’t sell drugs Proposition Joe fixed clocks.

Omar stuck up Prop Joe in his clock-fixing shop. He walked in. Prop Joe suddenly fell startlingly depressed. He knew Omar. Shit they were friends practically. So Prop Joe knew Omar wasn’t there to get a clock fixed. He was there on Business.

Omar handed Prop Joe a broken clock.

“What’s wrong with it?” Prop Joe asked fretfully.

“Out-a time.” Omar pronounced.

“Ain’t that a shame.” Prop Joe shook his head.

Omar drew his shotgun from behind a large coat and jammed it up in Prop Joe’s face.

Young Omar felt it was wrong to steal the $17 bucks, those many years ago. They robbed chump change from some poor fool while he waited to take a bus home from work? In quick retrospect Omar thought it wrong.

He lodged a protest. Said they should give the money back. Give it back! His friend, older & nearly twice Omar’s height, scoffed & rebuked him. Omar spoke no more of it. Instead the 8-year-old stick up boy stood tippy-toed & raised his arm & cocked the pistol in his coconspirator’s face & simply insisted.

A man got to have a code.

Omar didn’t aim to kill Prop Joe. But that’s just my opinion. I’m not Omar. How could I know for sure?

How for that matter could Proposition Joe.

He thought. Thought fast. One thing Prop Joe could do real good was think fast. Fast enough — most days. Most days Prop Joe — like all gangsters — was at his natural best when literally in front of a gun.

“Maybe we can settle this with a certain…proposition.” Joe suggested.

Omar’s expression didn’t change. His shotgun barrel brushed against Prop Joe’s cheek. But his finger eased off the trigger. Prop Joe was speaking his language.

Omar listened.

He proposed to tip Omar off to the locale & time when Baltimore would receive its’ entire next heroin & cocaine shipment. A wildly reckless move. Cold-hearted people would be murderously displeased with Prop Joe when their shipment, payed for up front, got stolen — but not until Later.

Prop Joe had a Problem. Now not later. Now is what counts.

Just then the stick up boy let Prop Joe live.

Just then that’s what counted.

Omar stuck up the delivery truck.

Then he made a proposition of his own. Omar proposed to sell the city’s entire coke & heroin shipment — for which Joe had already been paid — to — guess who? — Proposition Joe. Prop Joe agreed; he would pay Omar 40 percent of it’s original value.

I don’t know how many drugs were in the truck. Enough that they’re still getting high on ‘em in Baltimore even as we speak. Suffice to say that at 40 cents on the buck Omar got paid heroically.

He promptly retired from the stick-up boy racket.

Prop Joe turned around & resold the whole truckload of their own product straight back to every drug dealer in Baltimore — at a tidily profitable 50 cents on the dollar.

Fast thinker.

Know what I remember best about Omar? The way everyone in his neighborhood - adult & child alike, anyone who didn’t want to get robbed — would warningly scream his name “OMAR!” and skedaddle fearfully whenever he walked down the street.

Except the ones he wanted to catch. They tried to run. But Omar never chased them; they’d get a gun stuck in their face before they took their first step.

Omar stopped into a Korean grocery the other day for a soft pack of Newports. And something else. I don’t know what; I never will. He was about to tell the cashier — when an 9 year-old boy unexpectedly popped a cap in the back of his skull.

Happened so fast I get the feeling the old stick up boy don’t even know he got bagged up yet. Omar saw the boy walk into the store. But paid him no mind — just another 3^rd grader playing hookey. Boy blew Omars brains out of his eye-balls.

Poor Omar never saw it coming.

I get the feeling the boy knew he wouldn’t.

Is that why he killed him — because he could? Just to say he did? For the sake of upward gangster mobility?

Or for less sophisticated reasons? After brooding on it all week, it suddenly struck me. The boy killed Omar, in part, because he wasn’t scared to. He knew he could. But why did he want to?

Boy didn’t like Omar.

Dang.

So it go.

But dang. Boy cold.

Truth is.

I believe I would surely have killed myself, perhaps long ago, without all those illegal drugs to cheer me up along the way.

Yeah. But my life was saved by rock & roll. 

Aliens On CNN

I realize I’m a little behind the game on this one, since those UFOs in Texas haven’t been on CNN for weeks. But something I saw when they were has intrigued me ever since. 

The experts were all on Larry King, talking about how the Government doesn’t want us to know that Unidentified Flying Objects fly regularly through US airspace with impunity — and reportedly have for decades.

Now. Regular speedWay readers know that I delightedly eat freeze dried alien turdz for breakfast, whenever I get the chance — and am therefore unsurprised to learn that they saw a UFO down in Texas. It was interesting to see them talk about it on Larry King though.

One of the guys on there was talking about how he used to work 60 feet below ground in the control room of a nuclear missile launch silo. He said that one night the above-ground guard at his facility radioed him. The guard, agitated, jabbered about something he saw in the sky. The control-room guy asked the guard to identify what he saw. The guard could not. All he could say was that some kind of object kept flying by.

And suddenly the silo was disarmed.

This was back in the late 60’s. Inside the silo a nuclear-tipped missile was pointed at Moscow. But the launch-guy — the dude on CNN — could not have nuked Russia if he wanted to. A UFO flew by. The silo was disarmed. No deals.

Kind of gets me to thinking. What are those UFOs doing here, flying with impunity through US airspace — and why does the Government want to cover it up?

Here’s a theory:

Sometimes I am utterly amazed that human beings — well equipped as we are to — have not blown ourselves into a giant shit-puddle already. Strikes me as likely that our dumb asses would — if only inadvertently.

Well what if we…can’t? 

What if aliens, aided by superior technology, simply won’t allow us to?

What if, were we to try, those aliens would go ahead & benevolently disarm the launch mechanisms of our ICBM facilities? 

That would have made the whole Cold War into a bit of a very expensive yet politically expedient Farce — and surely answer that “Why the Cover Up?” question.

Grove St. Inn

They say you can’t believe everything you read on open container speedWay. Actually I said that. You can’t believe everything you read here on open container speedWay.

That’s a fact.

George McGovern, the one-time Democratic nominee for the presidency, also said that you can’t believe everything you read on the speedWay. Actually that’s not true; but he would have if he ever happened to read this pile of blog doo.

George McGovern did –really — say that Hunter S. Thompson’s novel Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail was the “least factual, but most accurate” thing written about his doomed 1972 candidacy.

Thus the good Doctor achieved the highest journalistic ideal:

Clarity.

In the interest of clarity:

I did not email Clark Hoyt to demand immediate payment for One Stinking Dollar, or I would take my story elsewhere, thanks anyway dude. I thought about it though — big time. Everything I said in the email was true. I do direly need pay. And if another publication wants to buy that story I’ll owe it to myself to sell.

Because I really do need a place to live more than anything on Earth.

At the same time, Clark Hoyt says that, while he can not at this time guarantee Dollar will run in the NY Times Magazine, he assured my phenomenal new agent that it “looks promising.” For that reason I’ve chosen to let One Stinking Dollar run its’ course, deserved or no, on the Public Editor’s desk — a fine place for it to be.

So the email was never sent.

To solve my immediate cash flow catastrophe I’ve opted to pitch a different story to the Valley Advocate. While there’s more to tell — I hope they’ll let me double the word count — here is a brief-as-feasible synapse of the article I want the Advocate to buy instead:

In August, 2007 my friend Sophie and I approached a staff member at the Grove St. Inn. We have both been homeless – living in Sophie’s car mostly — in the Brattleboro area for 3+ years. A bit of bad luck — $100 worth of old parking fines which needed to be paid immediately to keep Sophie’s car out of impound – had recently stranded us in Northampton with no gas money.

Since we’d both long been fed up with our prospects for self-betterment in Brattleboro, we decided to see what Northampton had to offer the homeless. I used my one worldly possession – my laptop – to locate the [local homeless shelter] Grove St. Inn.

We were greeted coldly at first; Sophie & I were turned away before we even got out of the car. We drove off. I got angry. We drove back. I went into the shelter and politely asked the woman who had just turned us away if there was a waiting list we could sign on to. She said yes. And then, as we spoke face to face rather than through the window of an obviously lived-in car, the woman warmed up to me.

She listened while I explained we were not on drugs. That we were both survivors of childhood sexual trauma and our lives were messed up from it. I grew misty-eyed then – no longer angry but profoundly sad.

“We just need some help.” I pleaded.

And she – it seemed miraculously – agreed to take us in.

We would sleep on the homeless shelter’s couches. Wonderful! There is a “Home Sweet Home” sign hung above the Inn’s front door. After 3 years sleeping in a car…what a gigantic relief.

This was on a Friday. The woman did our intake and told us to relax; we were in a safe place now. We did our laundry & showered & stretched our legs out the whole way on our couches. We were in a homeless shelter. It was awesome.

I checked out the Help Wanted section of the local paper, over the weekend, and was thrilled to see a far greater number of job opportunities than exist in Brattleboro. I resolved – aided by a roof to sleep beneath each night & a shower to take in the morning – to go out & find work first thing Monday.

But when Monday rolled around we were informed, to our utter shock & dismay – not to mention the shock & dismay of the Inn’s other guests – that our stay on the couches was only authorized for the weekend. There were no issues of misconduct. Nevertheless those couches at the homeless shelter remained empty once we were inexplicably booted back out in the street.