March 16, 2012

Bathing

As a homeless person you learn to bathe and do the things you need to do as the opportunity arises. Like a lot of the homeless most of my bath time came in the form of a sink in a public restroom. There is nothing quite like the cold water in the sink hitting your body at 6am.

Most of the time if I was lucky, I would find the handicap stall empty and I would have more room to bathe and do the things that I needed to do, such as shave and change clothing. But most mornings I had to use the sinks near the door of the bathroom and that meant a quick "Whore's Bath" where you basically take a wash rag or whatever you have to wash up with and you wash under your arms and various other locations on the body. The whole time, guys would be coming and going from the bathroom either looking at you like you were a fucking idiot or just in awe that a person had to stoop that low to get cleaned up in the morning.

I remember one morning I was washing up in a restroom and as I was trying to wash my hair some dick walked in and stole my backpack with all my clothes and the towel that I needed to dry my hair with. So after I rinsed my hair and realized I was without my bag, I had to use my dirty shirt I slept in that night to dry off with and wear the rest of the day. Not needing to say this but it wasn't exactly how you want to start your day. Actually any day that you have to start homeless isn't the way you want to start you day.

So, there I was in a soaking wet shirt, hair sticking up all over the place and I was now missing my backpack that had my radio, hygiene products and my clothes in it. I wander around the park to see if I could find my bag sitting by someone or on someone, but I had no luck. One of the guys I knew told me he seen a guy take off with it on a bike, so at that point I just chalked it up as a lesson learned. Never take your eyes off your bag for more than 30 seconds on the street, you will never see it again.

I just had to move on and try to replace the things that I lost that morning, which is quite difficult because those things I lost, alot of the people on the streets needed also. I eventually got a bag and my stuff  that I needed back together, but let me just say it was a total pain in the ass and to this day I hope whoever stole my stuff needed the stuff so badly that they had to steal it from me. I hope they had put it to good use.

1 comment:

  1. I wish you would have got a hold of me.. I would have helped. Kathy

    ReplyDelete