It’s Too Expensive Being Homeless

When most people rush to the shelters for their one act of kindness for the year, Thanksgiving is the time for me when I am reminded of my disgust for the homeless. Thanksgiving was the day that I found out my own aunt was homeless. I didn’t feel sorry for her though, I felt embarrassed that she was related to me. It wasn't because of how she looked, or smelled, or how her teeth were rotting out, it was the fact that she had let this happen to herself, and everyone was at fault except for her. Our familial bond was softened when I saw my aunt pull into our driveway in her blue van-house, stagger out of it wearing a negligee and sweatpants cut way too short, carrying a balding white dog and smudging her thick, bright pink lip stick with every shaky drag she took from her menthol Virginia Slims. My perception of the homeless completely changed in that one moment. I didn't tell anyone though, just like I don't tell anyone that I get bored at funerals, people just wouldn't understand.

You could say it started when her husband finally got fed up with her outlandish business ventures that were driving them further and further into debt, but that'd be simplifying her journey to insanity far too much, it wouldn't give the adventure justice; her delusions really began as a small child. She was a pretty child, but she was far from the prettiest, yet everyone around her would tell her that she was. She'd turn her hair white with peroxide, wear naughty shades of lipstick, act fast and think slow because to her this is what pretty girls did. By the time she was in her teens, you could say she was the prettiest girl in her class, maybe in the whole city.

Aunt Sophie liked to talk a lot too. She talked non-stop about garbage and usually the only way to get her to shut up was to tell her she had a good idea, or tell her she was right. If you ever tried to dispute something she said, she'd through a hissy fit, scream and rave about what a fascist you were. She thought fascist meant homosexual.  Her parents couldn't handle it 40 years ago and neither her extended family, nor her acquaintances could handle it now. So everyone would always say to Aunt Sophie how great her ideas were and compliment her on how smart she was. Aunt Sophie was now the prettiest and the smartest girl.

The most important piece to her puzzle of delusion is her dead serious belief that she is still just a child. The woman is 44 years old, has been married twice, once to a drug addict and once to an illegal immigrant, she's been in and out of jail, she has started two businesses, one for hand made Christmas decorations, the other for handmade sex toys, and she has two children of her own, but in her mind, she's still just a child. No ones really sure where this idea came from. No one remembers ever complimenting her on her youthful persona or her childlike whimsy. This was original Sophie, no outside influence to confirm this delusion, she organically believed in being forever 13. All of these delusions came together and formed a critical mass which decided to make a change within Sophie; a stubborn and stupid change that prohibited her from compromising her beliefs, even if what she believed made her ugly, got in her in trouble and eventually caused her to loose everything and everyone.

Her life now was held inside of a van, barely. The van was worn and tired and ready to quit on life, but Sophie wouldn't let it. When the hinges fell off, she tied the doors onto the body with shoe strings and now when she drove they'd sway back and forth as if the van was liquid. When the windows broke, she'd link grocery bags together and tape them up in the vacant space and when it'd run out of gas and roll to the side to die, she'd put on her jellies and belly shirt and convince the creepy insomniac over at Thrifty Gas to fill her up, the van too. Before life in the van she lived in a small room in the middle of an old ladies hallway. Everything was fine until Sophie got bored. Her sex toys weren't selling and her children stopped visiting and she decided she was getting a little chunky. She couldn't afford a gym membership, so she started using meth again. In her mind it made her beautiful. She'd loose weight, her cheeks would cave in like holocaust models and she'd feel a healthy buzz night and day. She stopped sleeping and needed something to fill the time. She'd take walks, sometimes push a shopping cart around because it was fun to jump onto the back and squiggle around on the sidewalk until hitting a crack.  The more meth she used, the further she'd walk and the more exquisite the sites would become. One night she came across a trash bin. The house it was in front of must have just recently cleaned out the garage because inside of it was sticky sports equipment, faded plastic childhood toys and pissed stained stuffed animals with bits of rat shit all over them. Sophie saw this and her eyes grew wide. She had a new business idea and no deadbeat husband was going to stop her from pursuing it. She walked to the closest market, got a shopping cart, and started collecting these types of things from the trash. Her idea was to clean them up, fix the small things that she could and then re-sell the finished product. The only problem was that she never fixed the items she collected. This went on for nearly a year, nightly trips around the neighborhood raping trash bins for their belongings. Each morning before sunrise she'd unload the booty and lock herself in her room with a bottle of Dr. Pepper and a National Enquirer. The day would come and go and by midnight she'd be back out in the streets, treasure hunting. At first the items were contained to her room and while the other tenants found it odd, they didn't mind because it was out of sight. Slowly the treasure-trash began to creep into the hallway, and then into the common areas and eventually onto the front lawn. Before anyone could truly grasp the extent of her excursions, the entire front of the house was stacked high with fisher price tables, stuffed bunnies with missing ears, rusted bicycles and many other juvenile objects from other people’s childhoods. There was one small path that weaved through the maze of tainted nostalgia and lead straight to Sophie’s room. It had gotten so bad, that the city threatened to condemn the house if the trash wasn’t disposed of. One neighborhood kid commented on how it looked like an ant farm and all though disgusted, onlookers had to admire her ability to collect so much shit. One night while Sophie was out of the house, the other tenants, neighbors and even a few concerned family members used the cover of night to completely liquidate her stock of garbage. The city donated three 20 foot trash bins that barely contained the amount of stuff just in the front yard. On the way home the next morning, she noticed a difference from down the street. She began running and didn’t stop in front of her house because she refused to believe that her treasure was gone. The empty front lawn couldn’t have been the naked foundation for where her treasure towers once stood. She ran around the block two, maybe three times before finally accepting that her collection was gone, it had been stolen. Frantic, she called the cops. She told them her house had been broken into and tons of irreplaceable items had been stolen. She requested that a squad car be sent over immediately. A few hours later the cops showed up. Sophie was pacing back and forth on the front lawn with a headless baby doll in one hand and bottle of Goldschlager in the other. The cops saw her matted down and tangled hair, her dirty shorts that hung loose around her legs and exposed her genitals and the tube top she wore without a bra. Their first step was to put on latex gloves, unclip their pepper spray holders and then approach. She took a swig of Goldschlager before lighting up a Parliament and then when she was ready to talk, she turned around to greated the officers. "Do you see what they did, the damn fucking little gangsters in this neighborhood, DO YOU SEE WHAT THEY DID? Why didn't you guys stop them? That's your job, to protect us, the good people. WHATS WRONG WITH YOU? HOW COULD YOU LET THEM DO THIS?" She was in tears, breathing heavily but remaining composed enough to take a drag of her cigarette and exhale it through her nose. "I pay your salary. My taxes pay for your houses and your cars and your children’s toys and you can't even keep the gangsters away from my treasures?" Sophie had been unemployed since she was 15, but she really did believe she paid taxes.

Sophie was taken to jail that night for being under the influence of a controlled substance. It wasn’t the first time and it wasn’t the last either it was simply one step closer to her transformation into being homeless. When she got out, she was greeted by an eviction notice on her door. She had conjured up that her family was behind this, they were usually the root of all her problems, so she cursed them, grabbed her ill fitting clothes, cigarettes and lipstick and hit the road. The one thing of value she actually came across while scouring the city was the van. It had been left in the driveway of an abandoned remodel. She had seen it many times before; it was only 3 blocks away from the place she lived, so she knew no one drove it. After searching the dumpster at the abandoned remodel, she hopped in and to her surprise someone was already living there. He was a man named James and they had a brief relationship, but both of them were interested in their obsessions more so than each other. James ended up leaving Sophie and as a consolation prize he left her the van. She took it home one night and parked it in the driveway of the old ladies house and let it sit, leaking oil, in the midst of her treasure. It was out of gas and she didn’t have a license so when it was time to leave she just rolled it around the corner and started a new chapter of her life.

She lived behind the YMCA now and besides for getting a little chilly at night, life was pretty good. She had convinced the workers at the front desk to let her shower twice a week and on Sunday’s they had a pancake breakfast she’d invite herself to. She still did meth and she still went treasure hunting, the only difference was that she had to really just focus on the primo finds and leave all the other stuff behind. Her van bulged at the seams from the amount of crap stuffed inside. In the middle she had burrowed out a small space to sleep curled up, the rear she used as storage and the front was transformed into her closet. Since moving into her van many people have tried to reach out, but every time they did, she pulled further away. She had finally found an area where she could be her, free of societal constraints and she vowed to protect this space forever. Inside her van she was able to stand with conviction for her beliefs on beauty and brains and social constructs of age and this made her feel complete. Like everything of value to her, she ended up finding her best friend on a treasure hunt. Her name was Coco and she was a malnourished poodle with a skin condition that caused her hair to fall out. Sophie created her own little universe inside this van, she invited Coco along too and it worked for her.

It’s still unclear to me if I despise her filth or her willingness to commit, but either way I can’t look her in the eye, When she visits on holidays or I see her on the streets our interactions are less than familial, on my part at least. I feel bad for the way I feel, but at the same time am unwilling to change it. I suppose I live in a van of my own, my little space is in my head though and hers is out in public draped with her unmentionables and guarded by a ratty little bald poodle.