appendix A

i think i understand. Just moved in to my converted-hotel-box and though I am now a part of the hous'd population again there are things I can never talk about because those people would never get it, they would not believe the things I have seen and probably wouldn't care. the fact that the worst drug addict I ever met was a man with an apartment from the rich part of town (also a probable killer with ties to a white power prison gang, one day I will find a way to write about good old JohnnyMike even if I never mention any other part of it, each and every second I spent with him was one adventure after another!), but also there is the woman who throws herself into my arms, calls me a vessel of love and sits on my lap at the park, also a hopeless alcoholic who is always running from something, and later I learn that she has ties to a man who traffics girls and makes them disappear and I think to myself "oh Lord have mercy, hwat have you done?" You feel somehow grungy and tainted as a person for knowing this stuff, there is a murderer here who has never been caught. I am quite certain that he has killed at least one woman before and he tells me he dreams of doing it again... yet I can also remember his sadness as he sees that his phone is nearly snapped in half from being dropped so often and later this beater of women tells me that he likes to watch dog videos on Youtube... I don't know what to do with all this information and it feels terrible to have it in my mind. The man who tipped me off about the lady who was killed is a schizophrenic methhead, in the middle of a hysterical breakdown his mother sobbed out something to the effect of "and it's not normal that my son rapes me all the time!" What do you even do with that kind of information, do you blame me for knowing it? When I got out here I thought of it like a fairy tale where I was the great reporter who would tell the world what it really means to be a homeless-American citizen but now that it's over I've realised that I can't hardly talk about any of it, it's just too much for people to handle, too pointlessly depressing with no resolution and no closure. Something grotesque and terrible happened to me and a friend several months ago and I was openly breaking down as a person, a whiteman named Chris from the Mission came to see what was the matter with me and I compared this whole homeless journey to the pulpy horror novel Velocity, by Dean Koontz, where a writer is stalked and assaulted every day by a man who leaves notes saying things like "Are you prepared to receive your first wound?" I told Chris that being homeless was exactly like being stalked by that psychopath because each and every day you knew for a fact that you would be somehow wounded (you will lose something, or break something, or a horific act of violence will happenin front of you) and there is nothing to do but brace yourself for the next misfortune. I was creeping him out and he quickly started to walk away, a hateful and sadistic impulse compels me to call out after him: "get ready for the next one, Chris—you know it's fuckin' comin'!" It is experiences like this that separate me from civilised humanity, now and for-ever; I feel as though a part of me will always be homeless for as long as I live.