Sour Milk
On being homeless in San Francisco at probably the most physically capable time in my life.
I don’t really remember actually arriving in San Francisco. It must've been by bus.
I remember being stuck with my boyfriend at the Sacramento bus station until we left, so we must've arrived at the bus station in SF and then made our way to Haight street. It was really quite magical for little ol’ California Dreamin’ me to be there at 18 years old, though really not how I expected it to feel. There were crowds of tourists, overpriced tchotchkes, tie dye and grateful dead shirts, and designer purse stores.
The rest of my memories are much more fragmented. I needed to find a place where I could receive mail so I could have my sister send my ID and then I could get food stamps. I remember walking up and down Haight asking for change in the sun. I made a couple friends, though temporary, including two different people named Moses.
My body ached all the time. I didn’t think of it as a bad thing then, just part of the day, like the dirt under my nails or the thinness of my arms. The sun baked my scalp and shoulders, and my feet were always sore. I remember sitting down felt incredible, like a deep breath. Lying down on the slope of the park was far less restful and more of a blank surrender. The ground was never level. Roots pushed up against my back. I’d wake up with pine needles stuck in my hair and I felt like I’d been grown there, just another creature living off scraps and sleeping in vague unsafety. That was what it cost to be there.
I found clothes every once in a while in charity boxes. In fact there's one photo I have from this time where I’m wearing an orange and white horizontally-striped shirt with ¾ sleeves and layered over it, a striped grey and black slip-dress. I wore a periwinkle bandana around my neck, typical for most street kids, and several necklaces. One necklace had a brass hindu deity pendant, Ganesh i think. I was dating and travelling with someone who had read the Bhagavad Gita and so I was very interested in hindu icons and their symbols.
Somewhere along the way to San Francisco I had found a small hinged tin, like an Altoid tin, with an image of Krishna on it. I was keeping waxed floss and needles and a pair of slip-n-snip scissors in there with a few buttons. I used it mostly to sew patches onto my hoodie, hardly ever to actually repair any of my clothes.
I had traded someone a handmade skirt I had bought at a street market for a skirt made of men’s ties. It had many pockets, perfect for me, including a secret one at the hip under the waistline where I kept my cards, money, and eventually my ID. I also traded for a powder blue and brown day pack that was made by someone out of patchworked corduroy. I envy my body then; it wasn’t even very comfortable since the straps dug into my shoulders if I carried more than ten pounds in it.
I must’ve been much thinner then, too, which makes sense if I think about what I was eating: primarily water, granola, coffee, dry fruit, the occasional free spaghetti they passed out to homeless people, and bagels with cream cheese. Maybe a Clif bar. Tons of free and found clothing fit me and I rarely had to alter anything.
We stayed on Haight at the top of Buena Vista Park to stay close to resources and stay hidden in the trees to keep out of view of cops. I don’t remember ever sleeping, but we probably did, on uneven dirt and duff from the oaks and pines. I vaguely remember someone bringing us coffee one morning. We met and befriended many travelers from all over. Meeting trainhoppers from the east coast was fascinating to me. I absorbed their stories and we played a lot of music together. I would pick up someone's ukulele and play the few chords I knew or I would just chain smoke and listen to old folk songs or punk songs I had never heard before on guitars with too-few strings. Occasionally I’d recognize someone from a city we had passed through and we’d talk about where they were going or best places to ask for money.
I drank occasionally, but I've always been a very cautious drinker. I did mushrooms though, one time I had taken some and went on a walk all the way down Haight until I got tired and turned back. I was scared of getting lost. I found some sidewalk chalk and drew small doors on the sidewalks and buildings on my way back, calling them portals. I didn’t write much then, though I told a lot of stories out loud. Not always true ones.
Sometimes I’d mentally narrate my days, like I was in an indie movie and the camera was following behind or parallel to me. If I was walking alone, I’d imagine someone what song would play in the soundtrack. I think that was the only way I could claim some time for myself. By pretending someone else might see it. I drew trap doors on the sidewalks. That counted, maybe. Those little doors I drew were for other people like me, the ones who needed a way out or a way in. Maybe I'm reading too far into a very silly mushroom trip.
One night as we headed to our camp, I found one of the Moseses sitting on a bench under a streetlight muttering to himself and throwing the contents of his tan leather suitcase into the street. He was tall and scrawny and dirty with sandy blonde tangled hair. He smelled like cigarette butts and a little bit like piss.
Occasionally he would shout and I worried he would get stopped by the cops so I checked on him. He asked me to check to see if he had lice (he did, I informed him after getting him to calm down and do a quick check) and he told me about his daughter, eventually I held him as he wept for a bit and then I helped him get the few possessions he had back into the suitcase. He walked off into the breezy warm night. But all the nights were warm and breezy. I understood why it was such a great place to sleep outside.
At some point two weeks before we left, I came to possess a freezer bag full of weed shake that I traded some tweakers for a dog who I called Sarah Bellum, or Sarah B. I loved her, but she pulled when we walked, constantly and understandably anxious, which I don’t blame her for. Once, she decided the middle of a crosswalk was the perfect place to shit a perfect soft-serve shit. The driver of the car that had stopped laughed with me.
After about a week and a half, we were told that Sarah was pregnant, so I had to give her back because we couldn’t travel with puppies. With her behaviour problems, as disappointed as I was, I was also a bit relieved. We did NOT get our humongous bag of shake back when we returned her to her previous owners.
Not long before we left to travel east, we found a few of my belongings scattered on the sidewalk and in the grass down the hill from where we stayed. Someone had taken my backpack and rifled through it, tossing various things. I guess I had been robbed, but we recovered most of my clothes and personal objects. It’s not like I had very many. We found the sewing box, bent a bit out of shape, but it still opened and closed securely. It still had my scissors and everything in it.
I don’t know if there was one moment I realized I couldn’t stay. It was more like a slow unsweetening, like when milk isn’t quite sour yet and you drink it anyway so as not to waste it all. The magic never disappeared entirely, but it got brittle. People we knew moved on. Someone OD’d, someone got arrested, someone found a ride to Santa Cruz. My boyfriend was always talking about how we were supposed to meet up with our friends from Seattle and go to the Rainbow Gathering together.
Eventually I started listening. I think part of me wanted to stay and try to make it, but ultimately we chose to go east, maybe visit my dad, maybe go where we should meet our friends, maybe New Olreans. Finally it just felt right to leave, so we did. With money from my boyfriend’s disability check (forwarded painfully slowly from Portland) we caught a bus heading to Colorado, where we could stay with my dad for a week.
Found this absolutely spooky cover of California Dreamin’ by minimalist synth band Denial from 1982. Give it a little listen! This rendition is stellar.