REVISITING : 16 Ways I'm Like a Homeless Person
I mean...a person experiencing homelessness. WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY PETER MOORE
I ATTENDED A COMMUNITY SCREECH (meeting) RE: The Homeless Problem, near my home in Fort Collins. My neighbors impressed me because they actually seemed to care about the problem, rather than just wanting to rant, throw things, and blame liberalism. There were many kindly, caring ministers on hand as well, including a great guy from Catholic Charities who described his homeless charges as “the really fun people.”
But ministers bring out reflexive guilty feelings in me, so my mind began to wander. I mean, really, am I all that different from the homeless “other” we’d all gathered to fret over? The thunderbolt struck, as I eyed the pile of free cookies provided for the event: In many salient ways, I am just like a homeless person.
I really appreciate free cookies. And coffee!
I moved to the center city because I like easy walking access to food, drink, and entertainment. Plus the pretty flower boxes and, OK, the pretty people who walk around there. At one point, a neighbor proposed providing homeless people with bus tickets to Elsewhere. Out of state, out of mind.
I like to sleep out on random grassy lawns. No, I really do. I have napped brazenly outside the world’s finest museums, which always put me to sleep. (Louvre: French for “time to lie down.”) I am to public sleeping what dogs are to sniffing: It just comes naturally.
I often sit in coffee shops nursing a coffee, hoping not to be thrown into the street. Or, in the case of this favorite café in France, hoping not to be thrown into the Baie de Cassis.
I’m always wandering into places to leech off of free Wifi, because of an ongoing battle with my wifi provider. That battle makes me unique, I know.
I often accost strangers with strange utterances. My sons think of it as “dad being dad,” but I truly do enjoy attempting to lure people I run into on the street into banter. My wife often leaps in to translate my humor for strangers, but hey, “puzzled” is better than no reaction at all.
One of my favorite things to do is to wander stinkily outdoors with all my possessions on my back. OK, most often I’m on a mountain trail when I do it, but make no mistake: The stink is part of the fun.
I walk. Everywhere. It’s one of the reasons I moved to Fort Collins in fact. I searched the walkability scores on Trulia until the internet police accused me of being a foot fetishist.
I spend waaaay too much time in the Library. I’m a writer, so books are my buds. And like I said, excellent Wifi. One morning there I got into a kind of jousting match with an actual homeless guy on the second floor of the Library, because evidently I beat him to his fave chair, at 9:01. We resolved our differences peacefully.
I’m happy to eat food straight off the floor. At my house it’s a five day rule.
I’m often awake in the middle of the night, wondering just how it is that people can remain asleep for a full eight hours. Don’t they have anything to think about?
I harbor deep resentments against certain government officials, votes, and behaviors, and shout out imprecations, in all caps, on Facebook. Sometimes spittle forms on my lips when I do this.
I enjoy gathering with groups of buddies drinking beer from open containers, debating national affairs, sports, and saying nonsensical things just for a laugh. Book groups are great!
I like to swear, right out loud. Researchers at Keele University, in Staffordshire, England did a study where they repeatedly plunged volunteers hands into ice water. And they let them. Their study showed that the foul-mouthed showed “increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing.” Damn!
I regularly skip meals. I practice intermittent fasting, which is good for my mitochondria, you see, which I’ll explain to anybody who’ll listen and some who won’t. That’s borderline delusional behavior too, though, obviously.
I’m an unhinged loner. I was chased back into my shell by the Omicron variant way back in 2021, and may not emerge again. And there’s so much good to stream on HBOmax, using my son’s girlfriend’s sister’s username and password!
OK, fine, there are important ways I’m not like a homeless person.
I am aggressively, gratefully, reliably, expensively homed, having bought into the cusp of the Colorado real-estate boom.
I have regular access to sanitary facilities, and my wife empties the clothes hamper before my underwear hits the top of the pile.
I am at leisure, and well fed enough, to toy with all the behaviors the homeless and I share. But I do it voluntarily.
The men and women who shuffle the streets of Old Town Fort Collins don’t scare me, as they do some of my neighbors. I share many of the same needs, foibles, and weirdnesses they do. There but for the grace of mental stability go I. So I can share the sidewalk with them, and step lightly around their sleeping forms. I hope they can tolerate me on the sidewalk, too.
And if you see me sleeping in a chair at the library, do me a favor: Don’t wake me up.
Brilliant! I just spent an hour at the library and I was telling my husband how much a library means to the community. I saw several people who seem to live there, just like the middle school kids whose parents pick them up when they get off of work. Your post totally resonated and made me realize just how entitled I really am.
Peter, an extraordinary post - so beautifully considered, considerATE and of course laugh-out loud funny. You have such a gentle but firm touch on the issue of homelessness, and this post of yours is right up there with the very best. Bravo.