by Brianna Karp
I got a little misty, reading his email. I responded in as upbeat and positive a manner I could, to reassure him. Then I asked, “Hey, wanna see what I look like?” and attached a photo of Sonia and me that I had snapped that night with my phone’s camera. It was the first time he would see my face, and he told me that I was beautiful. It was the first time I’d ever believed it.
Meanwhile, I was continuing to work full time and the blog was garnering a bit of attention. I was contacted by a reality TV show, MTV’s True Life. They were interested in finding out more about my situation and potentially shadowing me for an upcoming episode on homelessness. It was a surreal feeling; my blog still had very few readers and I was keen on remaining anonymous. I expressed my misgivings to the producer who contacted me, but told her more about my story. She backtracked rather rapidly. I don’t think I quite fit the “downtrodden” mold they were going for. That evening, I passed on the news to Matt.
“They said that since I’m educated, resourceful, don’t utilize shelters and now have a job, they don’t believe that I am representative of the general homeless population. I told them that I don’t necessarily know if anybody is ‘representative’ of the issue. If anything, I’m trying to buck the commonly held myths and stereotypes about the homeless—pointing out their resourcefulness, their value, their ability to contribute to society, their desire to work and continue leading normal lives and their drive to create a sustainable lifestyle while they try to reverse their circumstances.
“But, I understand and I’m not offended or anything. If anything, I can see how a story about a LGBT kid kicked out for being ‘different’ or a kid on drugs or a kid living in a cardboard box would make for much more compelling TV than me; when it comes down to it, I can’t compare to that level of interest or drama. And those kids are probably the ones more in need of the help (and money!) that such focus will provide them. In the end, they’re trying to put the issue out there, which is great.”
Matt was decidedly more upset at the news than I was. “I could feel my blood starting to boil as I was reading. That really irks me. Not representative? Of course you are, and that’s the point. You are the reality of modern-day homelessness. One of the missions on Twitter mentioned today that 50 percent of their clients are employed full time. They just want someone who will fit their comfortable, narrow-minded image of homelessness, and that is exactly how stereotypes continue to be reinforced. I would have torn them to shreds if I were you. No wonder they work for MTV. Raaaaaaa!!!!
“OK, rant over. I’m going to be helping a friend highlight a problem concerning homeless deaths. Her mother had alcohol problems and mental health issues and was believed to have been homeless for years. She searched for her for years, was in contact with the local authorities on a weekly basis and posted stuff all over the internet. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago she discovered that her mother had passed on a couple of years before. The problem is that despite the ease with which the family could have been notified, nobody ever did and, as a result, she has been buried in a pauper’s grave. She cannot even place a headstone for her. She wants to bring her home.”
Just when I thought I couldn’t have any more of a crush on him, there he went, being all noble and self-sacrificing like that. I loved that he cared so much about helping others. When was the last time I’d cared about helping anybody? This was a man I respected and wanted to emulate. Plus, this was the first time I’d seen him go on a rant. It was surprisingly sexy. Beneath all that stoic English-ness, there was passion and protectiveness, too. It made me want to bury my face into this near-stranger’s chest and feel safe. So, clearly, I was nuts. He’d never think about me that way. Not in a million years.
Around the same time, I was contacted by another homeless activist, who was gaining notoriety for his video interviews with homeless men and women throughout the SoCal area. He wanted to do a video interview with me in my trailer, in the Walmart parking lot. He seemed a little bit pompous and pushy, and I was still very keen on anonymity, so I balked and asked Matt, who knew the man, for his opinion as to what I should do. If there was anybody whose opinion I respected, it was Matt’s.
“I have no doubt of the value of his work,” he said. “If you do it, though, you should definitely let him know that you don’t want your name or location revealed, for safety reasons. You’re justified in wanting to stay anonymous. Rarely does a day go by that I don’t read about some poor homeless person set on fire in the news. There are some very sick, prejudiced people out there.”
I hadn’t known him long enough to realize that he was choosing his words very carefully. I thought he was just being British and polite. It turned out that, while Matt truly did believe that there was value to the man’s work—that of putting faces and stories to homelessness—he didn’t always approve of his personality, methods or ethics. The man would later go on to do a month-long sponsored road trip across the nation. He would draw criticism for leaving his rent unpaid during the trip; running out of money nearly immediately, due to poor planning, and subsequently sponging off sponsors and demanding freebie stays from hotels; and begging for donations from his Twitter followers. Most of all, he was criticized for sneakily filming children and domestic violence survivors in shelters, against the express instructions of staff, and posting their unblurred faces online, endangering their safety and privacy. He has since publicly attacked homeless individuals who have expressed reluctance to meet with him and put their names and faces on film, calling them the “fake” homeless and asserting that a real homeless person would never turn down an opportunity for “help.” I have since made it clear that I am not in any way affiliated with this activist, and refused to engage when he publicly attempted to castigate me for distancing myself from his version of “help.”
Of course, none of this had yet occurred, and I trusted Matt’s judgment. If he thought that my speaking on camera would be of value, then I would do it. The activist promised that a pseudonym would be used, and that my location would not be revealed. He came to my trailer a few days later (over two hours late), stayed and filmed me answering his questions for twenty to thirty minutes. Then he asked me for a hug and prayed aloud to Jesus for me, which made me incredibly uncomfortable. There’s really no polite way to interrupt a praying Christian and explain that you’re an atheist, and ask if he could possibly do his praying for you in his quiet private time, is there? I was relieved when he left.
A few days later, the video was posted on the activist’s website. I was shocked to see that my correct first name and my location were used. Panicked, and sure that there had been some mistake, I contacted the man and requested that my name and location be removed immediately, reminding him of our agreement.
“Oops,” he laughed. “Well, it’s too late now. Somebody else hosts the site for me, and I don’t think he’ll want to change it. Besides, all the other people I’ve taped have used their own names, and they’ve been fine. Don’t worry—this video is going to do great things for you and get more people interested in your blog. You shouldn’t be ashamed of it. Embrace it.”
I wasn’t ashamed. I was simply concerned for my safety. Matt, too, was angered by the man’s refusal to back down, and refused to communicate with him or promote any more of his work. After a few days stewing, I decided to shrug it off and let it go. The video did indeed send several viewers to my site, which was fine, but I would never again like or trust that man. The whole thing served only to make me more guarded about the people I was willing to speak to.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Matt spent hours painstakingly downloading the video interview on his incredibly slow, rural internet connection. I would later learn that he watched it over and over again, learning my mannerisms, the inflections of my voice, my nervous laugh. It made me all the more real to him. He noted that, at one point, I mentioned writing for his site, and when I spoke his name, an uncontrollable smile spread across my face. It was true. I couldn’t help myself. There was so litt
le to be happy about in my current predicament. His friendship and support were among the few rays of light that kept me going.
One night I received a text message from Pete in the Walmart lot. Some kids apparently were teasing Fezzik through the trailer window while I was at work and he started going insane barking (thus breaking that cardinal rule of “Ye must not attract any attention”). So, the other RVers asked me to move for a while, and I understood, of course. I felt terrible.
I moved the trailer to Sam’s Club a few miles away and texted Sonia, who told me to call her in the morning and she’d take me back to Walmart to pick up my car.
Big mistake.
First of all, the lot at Sam’s Club, while pretty much completely deserted at night (unlike Walmart), is located in a much crummier part of town. And it’s situated right by train tracks. This loud train came through honking its horn, all night long…waking me up about every hour and a half. Then, around 4:00 a.m., Fezzik started barking nonstop and I couldn’t figure out why, because he’s never been much of a barker unless he thinks that a strange man might hurt me.
I finally got up, stepped outside and found myself facing about fifty Mexican immigrants gathered around my trailer, cooking breakfast on a portable grill and appraising me confusedly. Apparently, I had chosen to camp out in the spot where they stand around all day waiting for under-the-table work.
Well, fuck.
So Fezzik was, of course, going nuts because he didn’t like all the strange men hanging around my trailer. But then, the only other option was going back to Walmart, and I figured I couldn’t show my face back there for a while, until I found somewhere else for Fezzik.
I decided that I had no choice but to board Fezzik. I didn’t want to stay in the Sam’s Club parking lot. Pete mentioned that he had sent another RVer out there to drive by and see if I made it OK, and he had seen all the day workers hanging around my trailer and was concerned. Walmart was a much safer option, and I was touched to learn that the other members of my little RV community cared enough to drive by Sam’s Club and watch out for me.
Brandon fronted me the money for one month of boarding, until I got my paycheck from work. It would stretch my finances a bit, I knew, and probably even prolong my homelessness, but Fezzik has always been worth every bit of it.
Matt talked me through my despair over the Fezzik situation. He had to give up his two cats when he lost his home and he mourned their loss. He recognized that I would give up Fezzik if I absolutely had to, and became unable to care for him, but I wanted at all costs to exhaust every option before that was necessary. I still hoped that I wouldn’t be homeless for too much longer, even with the added expense.
I wasn’t much of a fan of the boarding facility. They didn’t allow the dogs to play together, they said, so I told them I wanted to come and take Fezzik out to the dog park on weekends.
“You can,” said the nebbishy lady at the desk reluctantly, “but we discourage it. It’ll just depress him. They get all excited and happy about seeing you, and then they get sad again when you bring ’em back.”
I was seriously starting to doubt how much better this boarding thing could possibly be for Fezzik. It sounded to me like he’d be getting less exercise and absolutely no interaction with other animals. Plegh.
She slipped a flimsy little string lead over his neck to take him back to the room. I offered the woman his Halti nose lead, since he was used to it and it kept him awesomely under control. Just a little tug and he’s putty in your hands, since, like all dogs, he follows the direction of his nose. She said no, took it off, gave it to me and led him to the back room.
I signed the last form and turned to leave. All of a sudden, commotion, and then Fezzik came hurtling madly out from the back room, dragging the hapless receptionist behind him.
She silently took the Halti from me with as much wounded dignity as she could muster, and this time he went along meekly. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
It was around this time that Matt and I finally got down to brass tacks and figured out just how much we meant to one another. For some reason, a Hotmail glitch randomly and suddenly prevented his account from receiving my emails and stuck my IP address on the “automatic spam” list. Likewise, his emails to me vanished in a cyberspace vapor, never arriving in my inbox. I became alarmed when he didn’t respond to any of my emails for several days, although he was still posting articles on Homeless Tales. Perhaps he was just busy, I rationalized. Too busy to talk to me. Or perhaps our increasingly flirtatious emails had scared him off. Perhaps he realized that my feelings for him were starting to become rather strong, and I was mistaken in thinking he could feel the same way.
A week went by with nothing from him. I was devastated. I had somehow scared off my friend. I later learned that on the other side of the world, he was an equally nervous wreck. He couldn’t figure out why I was ignoring his emails. He had never believed that he could love anybody again after his wife left him, and now foolishly he had allowed himself to hope. He was angry with himself, and as hurt as I was.
We finally figured out what had happened when I had an instant message conversation with a mutual friend and homeless activist, Jon, also known as “Beat on the Street” in homeless circles. Jon was from Ireland and as crazy as…well, an Irishman. He was also hilariously good-natured and proactive, and Matt’s best friend these days, although they had never met in person. They were currently working together on a “homeless hike” in the UK, planned for September, in which they would camp wherever they could find for two weeks or so across Scotland, from Inverness to Edinburgh. The hike would be sponsored and filmed to raise awareness of homelessness, and the proceeds would benefit homeless charities in Scotland and Ireland.
As Jon and I chatted, he explained that he was also chatting with Matt, who was online on gtalk.
“Oh?” I spoke cautiously, probing. “Is he very busy? I haven’t heard from him in a week, I guess he hasn’t had a lot of time to answer any of my emails….”
Jon pinged Matt.
“Hey, bro, I’ve got our friend, Bri, in another window. She’s wondering about you.”
Matt responded in a decidedly dejected manner.
“If she wanted to talk to me, she’d answer my emails.” Jon was confused.
“I dunno. She says she hasn’t heard from you in a week. She really does seem like she wants to talk to you. Just send her a chat invite already!”
In that way, Matt and I connected via gtalk, and soon figured out the Hotmail glitch. He had to do some digging around to determine what had happened, and change a few settings to begin getting my emails again. But that one horrible week had made both of us realize just how much we meant to one another. I found myself repressing hysterical sobs in the middle of Starbucks as I typed.
“We could have never figured it out. We could have gone on forever thinking that we hated each other for some reason. It’s so scary.” He agreed, shakily. The shock of how close we had come to losing whatever it was that we had sent us reeling to our cores, and seemingly before we knew it, we were spending every day after I got off work at the web design company, and all day on the weekends, chatting together. We were spending upwards of ten hours a day with each other, and we both realized very quickly what it had become. And it terrified the hell out of both of us.
Love.
Chapter Nine
A few months after I started blogging, a web developer named Adam wrote in and offered to buy me my own web domain and host my site for free. So, I became www.girlsguidetohomelessness.com, and I was no longer simply a free blog, but a true-blue website.
I tried to focus on my happiness about the dot-com development, but I was too busy missing Fezzik. I missed having his huge oafish self around to hug and cuddle, and I also missed how protective he was of me. Every time I entered my trailer late at night, I was now superparanoid about opening the door; there was always the possibility that somebody had broken in and was lying in wait. I always h
eld my keys in a fist, pointy ends poking out through my knuckles, just in case.
Working for the web design company was starting to wear on my moral compass as well. I hadn’t realized, when I’d taken the job, the nature of our clientele.
There were only five employees, including me. The life of an executive assistant isn’t particularly glamorous or exciting. It mainly involves being at the computer for long stretches of time, drafting correspondence of Excel spreadsheets, Human Resources paperwork, fiddling with accounting and payroll, and occasionally picking up lunch and coffee for the boss. Boring stuff. Essential, but boring. So I focused more on the administrative side of things. I was managing the money coming in, but it took a couple of months before I realized exactly where it was coming from, what kind of websites we were selling and building—loan modification websites, for mortgage scammers masquerading as legitimate foreclosure assistance programs.
It first clicked when, within the span of a week, several of our clients across the United States were arrested and shut down by the government. It was apparently rather publicly handled, and our company started receiving a lot of hate mail for being willing to work with that kind of scum. I was in charge of sorting incoming emails, so I was perplexed at the sudden onslaught of threatening letters. When I asked one of the web designers about it, he laughed.
“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but nearly all of our clients are scam artists. They’re our bread and butter. There are so many loan mod companies springing up now, offering to help homeowners in foreclosure, for a fee, and the government’s going through a major crackdown right now on it.”
