My name is Peter, and I have lived on the streets of Portland for over 10 years. Unlike many people, I did not have a bad experience.
I managed to keep clean and well-fed, and my health is excellent. I supported myself by selling Street Roots newspapers in front of the Pearl District Whole Foods and have not used the services at all. The people who shop there are kind and good. If they think that someone needs them, they want to help and be as friendly and accepting as possible. I will always love those people.
Someone might want to know how I survived on the street. For many people, the sidewalks of their own city are as alien as the surface of Venus. If you live on the street, nothing is about you.
Like Scarlet O’Hara, your welfare depends on the kindness of strangers and, more often than not, on their first impressions. For someone who is overly concerned with their own identity, this can be very difficult to cope with. If you assert yourself too much, you may alienate others. Someone who hustles money on a street corner cannot afford to do this. Humility and concern for the feelings of others are necessary for comfort, especially if you are a penniless outsider.
I did not use the showers available to homeless Portlanders. When I first landed on the Portland streets, many people had badly infected feet. Their feet were cracked and discolored. They were limping.
The people who worked at the Roxie let me use one of their bathrooms. It felt rude washing up in there. When I came out of the bathroom drying my hair, people looked at me funny. My friends at the Roxie were gay and nasty and couldn’t care less, but I am asexual and easily embarrassed. I love people who are gay and nasty and don’t care what the righteous think.
I learned that by disinfecting every place on my skin where there are ducts or large pores, I could completely avoid bad odor and skin infections. The hand sanitizer has something in it that dries out pores, along with plenty of ethyl alcohol. It works best. Every morning, I disinfected every place where bacteria could get in and cleaned every place in my body odor could get out. Then I washed my hair with a gallon bottle of water, and I was clean.
I learned to take the empty water bottle to bed with me. It is very important to pee in a sealed container and dump it far away from where you sleep. Pee is mostly water, but if you pee in the same place over and over, it will really stink, and the smell won’t go away. If you pee where you sleep, you will start to smell like it. To pee where you sleep or in the doorway of someone’s business is a sure way to make enemies.
The most dangerous thing I encountered was the sidewalk itself. The city sidewalks are huge, partially buried slabs of concrete. In the winter, they act as a heat sink. If you are not insulated, they will suck the heat right out of you. Lying on bare concrete in the winter will cause hypothermia. It will kill! Cardboard is one of the best heat insulators. This is because it is filled with tiny air pockets. It is best to select sturdy pieces of fresh cardboard so that the air pockets are not crushed during the night.
The street is not really such a bad place. The problem is not that it is harsh, but that it is different.
Our culture has become rigidly authoritarian. This is a terrible thing to say to people who value diversity and freedom, but it is true. We are taught to do everything a certain way. To do things differently is not just wrong; it is insane, and anyone who tries it is a fool. People who accept this sacrifice their ability to adapt to a new environment. If the way they have been taught doesn’t work, there is something wrong with the world.
Rather than change the way they do things, they try to change the world. How they have been taught to eat, wash up, wear their hair, and so on becomes a moral principle. If they cannot do things exactly as they have been taught, they become entitled and defensive. They will wash themselves in the public restroom, and when the people who have been waiting in line complain, they will defend their rights.
If they are left out in the street, they become dirty, physically ill and hostile. These people, who are such a royal pain, do not come from a place where bad behavior is customary. They are our own people. People much like us.
All around the city are hundreds of square miles of houses, shopping malls, apartment buildings and trailer courts. The street folk used to live there.
We went mad or broke, got too angry or knew too much, and our own people drove us out. We wandered downtown because there was nowhere else to go and stayed there because everybody has to be someplace.
The inability to adapt to a humbler condition and a simpler way of life is part of a culture we all share. Perhaps I am not susceptible because I am old and have been around. I had a lot of this worked out before I got here. But I remember my sweet suburban childhood and the first time I was cast out 40 years ago. It felt like I had been cast into Hell.
As we change our world, we become even less able to live in it. Our nation has been sinking into poverty for a long time now. Someday, the street may be all we have.
Those who have yet to fall off the hay wagon gaze with shock and ill-concealed disgust at the awful conditions, the madness and the disease from which others suffer. But that is where we will all go if we refuse to humble ourselves to change and to the needs and feelings of others.
To accept poverty gracefully and without fear is to be free of worry. Only people who have learned to be poor without suffering can enjoy money without guilt. It is not the street itself but our reaction to it that makes it repulsive and scary.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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