2006-07-22 - 2:40 p.m.
I was tagged by Katie a while back. She bet I wouldn�t do this because she says my entries always have a point. But I�ll see if I can find one in this. Here are the rules: People who get tagged need to write a blog entry of 6 weird habits or facts about themselves as well as state this rule clearly.
1. Nya has pointed out that often when I�m grandly expounding and pontificating (generally, no one�s listening) and want to emphasize a particular point, I�ll gesticulate with my little finger. Like I�ll shake it and make pointing gestures. I don�t think this actually draws any further attention from my (non)listeners, but it�s probably pretty amusing to watch.
2. When I worked in property management, a coworker noticed that when I was yelling at a vendor on the phone, I�d stand up when I was particularly incensed. �Uh oh, Geoff�s standing! Things are getting serious; there�s gonna be trouble.� Not like anyone could see me stand up over the phone, but I wonder if doing so made me a sharper negotiator. Probably not.
3. When I�m especially ticked off, I�ll make a two-fisted gesture of displeasure that Jill dubbed the �Gladstone double-bird�. (This was actually mentioned in a profile of me in the Brown newspaper.) It�s generally accompanied by a bitter facial expression with a lip-curl and sneer.
4. This move has occasionally gotten me in serious trouble. I was once waiting for a bus on the side street by Boston�s Prudential Center. While I was waiting, the driver of a large truck decided it was okay to ignore the �BUS STOP � NO STANDING AT ANY TIME� sign and pull over for a nap. When my bus came, it didn�t notice me behind the truck and went past. Annoyed, I headed for the subway and flipped the truck driver the double-bird as I passed.
He was apparently awake and saw this. He came out of his cab and started screaming at me in a heavy townie accent. He was flexing and threatening to hit me. I wouldn�t back down and yelled at him about illegally blocking a bus stop. We were both quite red, but he put a final note on things by spitting in my face before hopping back in his truck and taking off.
A passing woman who�d seen everything asked if I wanted her to call the police for assault because he�d spit on me. I tried to calm myself down and said it was okay, he was just being an asshole. Then I realized she had her little daughter with her and I�d just said an inappropriate word in front of a child.
5. Sometimes when I�m sleeping, I drool on my pillow.
6. In September 1997, I was homeless and slept in an abandoned building near Jackson Square on the Roxbury/Jamaica Plain line in Boston. Part of it was a beautiful (albeit covered in pigeon droppings) nineteenth-century firehouse and the part where we slept was a plain cinderblock building that had been grafted on when it was later used as some sort of service garage.
This was probably the rock-bottom nadir of my mental state. I don�t often talk about it. One of the few times I have, someone said that I was just �playing� at being homeless because, after all, I could have gone to New York and stayed at my parents�. But doing this was absolutely out of the question. I was so ashamed that I hadn�t gotten a new place and didn�t have the money for one.
There was no way I wanted to crawl back to my parents with that sob story. Additionally, I suspect I thought (subconsciously at least) that I�d just be confirming their impression of me. �Hi, Mom and Dad! I am indeed a smart-but-totally-adrift rootless wastoid with no home, just as you�ve thought since I left Harvard! Can I sleep here?� No way.
I realize that most people confronted with this situation would turn to friends and couch-surf. But I really didn�t want to be a burden to anyone. Furthermore, I think I understood (subconsciously again) that I was entirely out of my right mind and didn�t want anyone else to see me up close all the time, like if I were living with them. Although this fear seems patently absurd now, I can assure you that it made sense at the time.
It�s been noted that mental illness is often a result of homelessness, but it can also be a cause for it. I should also point out that many other homeless people have parents or children or siblings or friends with whom they could stay. They just don�t. They don�t maybe because they can�t stand the idea of someone they love seeing them in such dire straits.
So when I heard that a few people were squatting an abandoned building near Jackson Square, it made perfect sense to me. Here was a space I could have as my own and not bother anyone. I heard the black kid with the crazy hair who I�d seen around Fat Day house wailing on the sax was staying there and that settled it. He seemed cool (we would go on to become best friends for years until he burned me quite badly).
To make myself feel better, I tried to think of it as �urban camping�. The squat had been started and originally broken into a few weeks before I moved in (I think as some sort of social statement) by a couple of other guys. One of them went on (despite holding anarchist views) to be a pretty successful graphic designer. The other moved to San Francisco and (despite being a Brown graduate) started hanging around with junkie lowlives.
While I was there, I kept exceptionally clean. I had the idea that no one would suspect I was homeless if I didn�t smell like a homeless person. (This may not be an uncommon reaction. There�s a moment in the movie Basquiat where Jean-Michel Basquiat tells a girl he�s hitting on that, even though he sleeps in a cardboard box, he smells nice and clean�)
I would shower at other people�s houses in the middle of the day. Hey, is it okay if I use your shower? Yeah, y�know I just played basketball� (Right, like I ever play basketball.) Folks must have thought it was a little odd, but no one ever turned me down. Plus, using borrowed bath products always seems fun to me. Trying out a wide variety of different soaps and stuff is pretty neat. (Oh, give me a break.)
Our building developed some sort of word-of-mouth reputation and became like a mandatory stop for crusty squatter-punks passing through town (I imagined they�d all hopped rides on freight trains like Depression-era hobos). In any event, we always seemed to have crusty houseguests.
One night we were in the basement for some reason. I was talking to some visiting kid. I pointed up to a waste pipe on the ceiling and explained that I was trying to hook the toilet back up so it was functional, then we wouldn�t have to piss in bottles. I�d been learning a lot about plumbing and was talking about it in great depth to someone who could care less.
He took a swig from a beer we�d given him. �Man, fuck that! Who needs plumbing? You don�t need a toilet! Just rip open a sewer pipe and shit down that!�
I stared at his stupid piercings in rage. Get the fuck out of my house, I wanted to scream. But it occurred to me that it wasn�t really my house and I didn�t have the right to evict anyone.
It�s been suggested that this experience is why I became so interested in place-making and urbanism. I don�t know. It�s true that I got into these things afterwards, but it wasn�t right after. And if you�re looking for cause-and-effect, wouldn�t you expect me to become involved in Homes Not Jails or less-radical social service provision? I don�t really know.
I used to have some really intense dreams while I was there. The kind where you can�t quite tell if you�re awake and things are real or still asleep and dreaming. I think I had them partly because I was terrified of the place deep down. Maybe I�ll recount some of these in later entries�
Hoo. I just let that out; it actually feels better. Now I�ll pass the tag on to:
S.K. Smith,
Rachel K.,
Ursula Bear,
Hiss and Tell,
Stella Rose,
and Kate.
� 2006 Geoff Gladstone
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