Becoming Homed

When I first decided to become homeless, I knew that it would require some adjustment. I failed to realize that the return would also require adjustment. I have been homed for months now, but I still catch myself relapsing into my homeless mindset. It is the same kind of feeling that I have when I walk out of the kitchen with a plate of food. I stop and think, “I can’t take this food out of the kitchen. It is against the rules.” Then I realize, that I am an adult now. Mother won’t see me, and even if she did, she wouldn’t disapprove in the slightest. That rule, that principle, that phase is over.

I still catch myself putting on sandals whenever I leave my room. When you live in an automobile, it is good to keep a pair of sandals handy so that leaving the “house” to use the bathroom doesn’t require putting on socks, lacing up shoes, and then repeating the process in reverse a few seconds later. Since the “house” is just one room, it becomes a habit; when I leave the room, I put on sandals. Now that I live in a house, I walk across the room to put on sandals just to go to the bathroom. I have to verbally remind myself, “No, you don’t need sandals just to go next door.” I tell myself, but I still won’t listen.

I remember the giddiness I felt when I first put on a pair of pajamas. I removed one pair of clothing and put on another pair that was designed just for sleeping. Wow. Sleeping clothes! Not only that, but I could both remain standing AND have privacy while doing so. Before it was a choice: either I would change clothes while inside a sleeping bag or I would stand up and wait for no cars to be driving by. And sleeping in a sleeping bag fully clothed gives a new level of meaning to the term frumpy.

One activity that I enjoyed while homeless was the listening of audiobooks. The library has no short supply of them, so I would spend many night getting a bedtime story from Jeffrey Devers, David Sedaris, or some no-name up-and-coming. It was great. When I became homed again, I found “Life of Pi” on my computer hard drive. I was so excited to listen to it again. I spent a few minutes trying to decide if I should put it on CD or copy it onto an MP3 player. The former would be more convenient later, but then I would have a stack of CD to carry around until…wait a minute. I had to shake myself. Why not just listen to it? Go ahead, just play it. I double-clicked on the first chapter and sat back to listen. I had forgotten that I could have recreation time in a place that didn’t have a steering wheel.

Then there was the day that I went clothes shopping. I wanted to make a good impression on the parents of my first crop of students. I knew that I would need some respectable clothes. Earlier that month, I had been putting the finishing touches on a play that I had been working on. I was volunteering at a homeless shelter. I had been working with several homeless children at a summer school program, but since the program shut down, these kids had no where to go. I decided to put on a play and use these homeless children as the cast and crew. One step to putting on the play was getting costumes. I had made an arrangement with Deseret Industries to have black T-shirts and denim pants given to every child that didn’t already own such. I felt like Santa Claus on the day that I delivered them. There were slim pickins at D.I. when I went there, so a few of the boys had to were girls’ shirts. They didn’t care. They were so grateful to have a real costume. And then there was me. I went into a mall and purchased $200 worth of clothes in 30 minutes. When I got out to my car I felt sick inside. Why do I get so much? I called my brother right away and he talked me through some cognitive re-framing exercises to mitigate my guilt. That was over a year ago. I haven’t purchased jeans from a mall since.

Yes, coming back was difficult. I still find myself choking on the excess and gluttony with which I am surrounded and involved. Life is simpler without. Sometimes I wonder how much I have reverted back into apathy. But a few days ago, I got home from work after a long day to discover that the power had gone out in my part of the city. Life wasn’t much different that night from any other night. When the power came back on, I didn’t change what I was doing. I didn’t catch myself saying “Finally!” or “Thank goodness!” Instead, it just happened.

To me, that was evidence that you can put a boy in a house, but you can’t make him homed.

The Itch

I saw a van for sale today. $250. I got this feeling…

The van was parked outside of the end of semester Utah State University “yard sale.” The University sells a bunch of stuff that it isn’t going to use anymore, so I like to stop in and see what cool stuff they’ve got. (Incidentally, I spent seventy-five cents on used office supplies.)

I looked at the sticker on the windshield of the van. $250; sold as-is. Awesome. I looked in through the window of the full sized van. There were two bucket seats in the front, a center bench, and the rest was open space. That’s when I felt The Itch.

I just finished having a conversation with friend of mine about a Christmas dilemma that I am facing. I don’t want stuff for Christmas this year, but I don’t know how to explain that to my family. If I say “please don’t get me anything,” they still will. The problem is, they will be left to their own imaginations to find out what I want. They will buy me something for my personal life or my classroom, neither of which will be very valuable to me. I have what I need. Most anything else would just get in the way. On the other hand, if I tell them, “I don’t want anything, but if you MUST get me something, please get me this and this and that”, then they will listen more to the second part and not the first. What’s a brother to do?

So, here I sit in my eerily bare bedroom, typing this message. My room is WAY to big for me. I don’t have enough stuff to fill up a room. If only my landlord would let me rent out the closet like I offered, he could make more money, and I could have a more appropriately sized living quarters. All I really need is an area about the size of the back of a van.

I’ve been homed (home-ed) now for four months now. It’s terribly boring. So when I see a “mobile home” on sale for $250, my mind starts racing. I pay more than $250 for rent. I could convert one month of rent money into a home that would last for a year at least. I have a nice enough car that I could just park the van wherever I liked and live there at nights. I have plenty of connections. I could park it in Paradise (the city, and the state of being) by Georgianne’s place. I could park it at Rich’s farm. I could park it on Pat’s property. I wouldn’t even need to register it and use it as a van. It would be a tent that would be weather sealed against the rain and snow. Awesome.

One of the big reasons I bought my convertible was to discourage me from living out of my car again. In all, I have lived in a Lincoln Towncar, a Mazda 626, a Pontiac Trans Sport, and a Chevy Blazer. It is just too easy to be homeless. I had to find something that couldn’t protect me from a Logan winter. I thought the convertible would protect me from The Itch. I was wrong.

I got huge paycheck this month, and I have a Christmas bonus on it’s way, so buying the van wouldn’t affect my budget. I could keep the room I rent and STILL be a homeless guy. You know, just on weekends and holidays. I could have an easy place to shower on Sunday, but still have the simplicity of homelessness. This way, I could be “in the home” but not “of the home.” I could honestly tell people that I am not homeless, but I could still live the homeless way.

I know that I shouldn’t think about it. But every now and then, I just feel The Itch–a call from the other side of the hill, reminding me how green I feel when I am homeless.

Maybe I should go camping this weekend.

There’s No Home-like Place

A few months ago, I found myself in a very strange place emotionally. I felt like a foreigner no matter where I went. In the tumult of my pilgrimage, I sought to find home. It was a new dimension of homeless. I wanted to find that feeling of being home.

They say you can’t go home again. I was determined to show that I could. For the summer months, I left the fair town of Logan to attend school at Salt Lake Community College. I moved in with my parents. They didn’t have a room for me—nor did I want them to. I specifically asked that they not. While living there, I juggled the dynamic of being both adult and dependant. Not fun. During those months, I realized that my parent’s house was not home. Home was somewhere in Logan, and I had to find out where.

I went back to Logan as soon as I could. I packed my bags, put them in the car, went to my last class, and immediately made the trip to the great cold North. I didn’t have any place to live, but just to be back was a shot in the arm.

Since I drive a convertible now, I have to be a bit more judicious about my living quarters. Logan gets pretty snowy, so I decided that I should park in a garage—or at least a car port. I found a place right away that was a dream home. Unfortunately, they I couldn’t move in for two weeks. I would have to find accommodations.

Accustomed to being an urban camper, my first impulse was to sleep in the canyon. On the way up the canyon, I friend of my mind pulled up behind me on his new hog. He didn’t recognize me because of the new car, but I got him to pull over. He invited me to his place, and I spent a couple of nights at his place. It was a home in which I had lived for years, but it was his place now. It wasn’t my home, it was his. We talked about the old days and he admitted that the neighborhood had changed. Most of the people that knew me were gone. Careers, spouses, and opportunities had called them away. Not even the neighborhood was home.

In the meantime, I went to a three-day training conference for teachers. It was different than last year, because this year, I was experienced. I could weight the content against what I knew, not just what I anticipated. Regardless, the significant part of the conference was when I was giving a presentation and looked out into the hallway.

Watching me like a proud mother was Ann. Ann had been my mentor teacher that I had hand picked to be my mentor. She is a fantastic teacher. For the first time, I realized that she wasn’t going to be my mentor anymore. I was no longer in her nest. She was no longer my home.

After two weeks and one day, I called on the bedroom that I was anticipating. “Sorry. That room was filled.” Jerks. I went looking for a new, new place. I considered moving in with the gentlemen that I had lived with last year. Turns out all three of them were either engaged or married. Even my most recent home had dematerialized.

By this time, I starting to wonder if I would ever have a home again. The new school year was quickly approaching, and “my” class would be in third grade. I don’t know if every teacher goes through this, but I felt like getting a new class would somehow be cheating on the other. These little eight-year-olds were like my own children, and I wasn’t allowed to keep in touch with them. Third grade is like a bitter ex-wife that says that I was a lousy father and that I shouldn’t see the kids ever again. I could start again, but “my” kids would never see me again.

In this time of existential crisis, I turn to old reliable: Chinese food. It isn’t a very solvent coping strategy, but it is…well…reliable. Or so I thought. Even the China King Buffet, the mother of all Chinese Food, was gone. I guess their last Department of Health closure was their last. It is now “The House of Chen” and serves a different menu. No more General Tso Chicken, and their Sweet and Sour Sauce tastes like every one else’s.

The feeling of being foreign was back, but this time, it was accompanied by a new feeling of despair. I didn’t have any place to go. I had no refuge to which to return. I had no safe place where I could lick my wounds before returning to battle.

So I threw myself into my work. I went to my classroom and made preparations for the coming year. Even when the essentials were covered, I continued working with foresight (a commodity that I didn’t have last year). I copied reams and reams of paper. I measured and re-measured lines on posters. Having something to distract myself from my sadness was valuable. Before I knew it, the new class came and Grant was Mr. Bushman again.

I got home—which, for tonight was my sister’s home. Took off my shirt and stood in front of a fan. I was hot and tired. I started preparing for sleep. I emptied my pockets. Handkerchief, wallet, keys, and phone. And marbles. Marbles are points. Group leaders get points at the beginning of the day, and I take them away when group members require correction. The group leader gives them to me, and I put them in my pocket since I don’t have time to walk across the room and put them in the green coil pot.

I don’t have a church, a neighborhood, a place to live, a mentor, children, a favorite restaurant, or anyone with whom to discuss it. I am homeless. But somehow, seeing three oblong marbles on a make-shift bookcase made it okay. Home isn’t a place or a person. Home is a feeling. I don’t know how to produce that feeling, but I was encouraged that three little pieces of glass could. These days, home is having a pile of green Bushman Bucks poking out of my pocket. Home is having little voices yell whatever crazy statement I coached them to yell. Home is getting more French Fries than any of the other teachers. Home is helping baby boomers not be scared web-based applications. Home is work. Work is home.

If that last paragraph was touching to you, then you were probably under the same delusion I live in. Work is home? That isn’t touching, it is a sickness. The bell rings at 3:10, then home starts to fade away. Like a dream from which I am forced to awaken, home gets softer and softer, replaced by the tumultuous silence of homelessness. I go back to the place I live. I eat food. I watch youtube. I go to church. I go to parties. I flirt with girls. I get high fives. I drive my cool car. I call my family. I pray. I read. But, these places, these people, these things, they aren’t home. Most people can’t look forward to their weekends. I hate weekends. I count down the minutes until Monday Morning. I’ve got a five day weekend coming up, and I can barely breathe when I think about it. To enjoy one’s work is good. To enjoy nothing but work is dysfunctional.

Why am I writing this? Why am I publishing these thoughts on the internet? Why am I shouting into the vacuum? I guess I’m just waiting for an echo. When I hear it, I will walk toward it. Right now, the only thing that echoes is an Elementary School.

Night Terror

One evening, I was parked in the canyon, making preparations for another night of sleep. Massaged by the sounds of the river, I decided to have Mother Nature tell me a bedtime story. I stood by the river and slowly, my eyes adjusted to the moon—nature’s night light. The river tussled and flowed, sprayed and eddied. It was beautiful. I went back home to the front seat and pulled out a flashlight. It was time for a nocturnal nature hike.

As I walked, the flashlight made the shadows move in a way that was unsettling. The forest was moving with conspiratorial stealth. Every bush, every tree was watching me. Leaves chuckled in brief rustles. The snaps of twigs soon conjured feelings akin to the Haunted Castle. Fright was only the consequence of frequent startling. The more I moved, the more the illusory vertigo glazed my perception.

In time, I was legitimately frightened. I confabulated sounds of other-worldly creatures. They lusted after my fatty flesh. I would be their pleasant morsel. I knew, I knew, I knew that such creatures didn’t exist, but reality was something reserved for times of calm. My frenzy had no interest in rationality—only survival.

I mustered my courage and walked forcefully for my four-wheeled domicile. Somewhere in my panic I remembered that the look of confidence would confuse some predators. That’s when the flashlight started to flicker. It was right out of a bad slasher movie; my flashlight flickered and died. My eyes were not accustomed to the dark, so I waited in perfect stillness for my photon-saturated rods to return to use. In the stillness, I played the ostrich. Perhaps, my lack of vision would render me invisible.

Somewhere between visual acuity and insanity, I ran. I arrived at my parking spot, opened and closed the door in one fluid motion, and landed myself between plush and a windshield. Whew.

But I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Pun intended.

Much like the woobie of childhood, the car would protect me from evil, but there were still haunting calls. The sounds of the forest could penetrate glass and steel. While safe, I was still surrounded.

About this time, I remembered that I have a degree in psychology. I knew all about sub-cortical responses and pre-frontal negotiation. I went through the mental exercises that I would use on a child to calm him down. It worked, but only enough to get the engine started and get myself out of the canyon.

I spent the rest of the night in a parking lot—a cement safe-zone, free of goblins, elves, gnomes, and other woodland characters. While I was calm enough to get into a sleep-like state, I realized that a home can be a protection in ways that I had never considered.

A home is a grown-up’s woobie.

I Beat Up Fred Rogers

For reference, please watch the preceding clip.

In the past few weeks, I beat my inner Fred Rogers into a coma. He’s still alive, but he won’t be moving for a while. You see, I decided to take someone else’s advice for a change. I decided to do what everyone else does to find happiness. I bought something. More specifically, a convertible. Fred kept trying to talk me out of it, telling me that people would like me for me. He would sing “not your toys; they’re just beside you.” I am pleased to report that Fred was wrong—people like me more now. I am suddenly extremely cool and it had nothing to do with “they way I am right now, way down deep inside me.”

It’s been a long time since I bludgeoned Fred. A couple of years ago I was feeling so lonely that I decided that I would buy into appearances. I stopped taking Fred’s calls, threw out the wardrobe and spent hundreds of dollars on “the things that hide me, the things I wore, and the way I did my hair.” I changed “every part of me. My skin, my eyes, my feelings.” I got a great reaction not only from the ladies and the gentlemen, but also the chicks and the dudes. I became popular. I was getting noticed, complimented, invited, and praised. I was so happy that I gave old Freddy-boy a call on the phone. He invited me to lunch.

When I arrived, I fell right into his trap. It was an intervention. He tied me to Trolley, and drove me out of the land of make-believe and into the safety of his living room. Once there, he showed me how my new skin, eyes, and feelings were alienating me from the people that I really cared about, and more importantly, that I had no self-esteem anymore. All I had was praise from humans. He was lovingly disappointed and helped me realize that I had also let myself down.

I thanked Fred for his tough love, and decided that I was better for the journey. Fred likes me for who I am. The way I am right now, the way down deep inside me. So I went on my way.

Now, here I am, two years later. I have two fans. Fred and me. We both think I am great. But the time came when I had to betray Fred. He may like me for the way I am, but no one else does.

I guess what I have learned is that Fred Rogers is a big lie. If he were right, I would be swarmed with friends. If the value of a person is his heart, I would be popular. But Fred is wrong. What makes me angry is that I believed him. He has spent the past twenty-something years building a false hope in me. So, I had to shut him up. After I beat up Fred, I beat my self up pretty hard. I had to shut myself up too. I have done a lot of Fred-preach in my life, and I had to make sure that I wouldn’t ever dispense that crap again. Liking myself didn’t work, so I guess I will just have to rely upon the approval of others. And why not? It works for everybody else, right?

Now, I think I’ll put the top down and drive thru McDonald’s on my way to Wal-Mart. I’m going to need a lot more stuff.

A Non-Masterpiece

My friend Maggie wrote about my blog, “Is everything you write a masterpiece?”  I thought I should use that compliment to segue into a few disjointed notes that I have taken about being an urban camper.  The following are very real elements of my homeless life that don’t seem to fit into any masterpieces.

Hanging Clothes: Where is a brother supposed to hang his suit when he isn’t wearing it?  Since I wear button-up shirts almost exclusively, I think about this every laundry day.  I don’t use hangers.  Thank goodness I don’t have any linen shirts.  I don’t think that anyone can tell that all of my clothes come out of a hamper.  Folded, of course.

Viewing Media: It’s the weekend.  I think I’ll just kick back and watch a movie, right?  Not so fast homeless guy.  Kicking back is a different beast in public.  Watching a movie and checking email have become events for which I must plan, not default.

Being Thirsty: I can’t tell you how many nights I lamented not filling up the 3 liter bottle.  Between the hours of go-to-sleep and go-to-work, there are plenty of opportunities to be thirsty.  This isn’t a big deal when the tap is only as far away as the bathroom–unless the bathroom is miles away.  Although there are plenty of places to get water in the middle of the night, none of them are worth the cost.  Instead, I just hit my knuckles on my forehead and hope that I don’t forget again.

No Garbage Can:  When my living quarters take a corner at 20 MPH, it isn’t prudent to have a garbage can.  Garbage bags work much better,  but they also look like…well…garbage bags.  Luckily, I don’t produce much garbage in a day, so emptying the house every day isn’t much of a chore.  Garbage collection, however, is something that I consciously plan.  Real estate is prime, and I don’t want my home filling up with garbage.

Napping: Since I sleep and wake with the sun (and the rain, and the really loud trucks), I find that my night sleep isn’t as “quantitatively substantial” as I would like.  So I nap.  But, like viewing media, this becomes tricky in public.  Homeless Ben was shameless in this regard, but I still have too much shame.  I don’t want to drive out to a secluded place, but I also don’t want people to see me.  After all, I snore and I drool.  Not a pretty picture.  Homeless Ben was a beautiful sleeper; maybe that’s why he was shameless.

Storing Food: Because many of my readers would yell at me for doing so, I won’t tell you what and how I have stored food.  Let it suffice to say that storing food is very difficult in a place that changes temperature some sixty degrees every twelve hours–without Tupperware.  Canned food is good though, as long as I don’t have to add a can of water something like that.  A can opener and a fork are much better than bowls and cellophane.

Energy Consumption: I’m not sure if my carbon footprint is larger or smaller, but I like to be conscious of it.  In my home, all energy ultimately comes from gasoline.  Whether I’m charging the cell phone, listening to the radio, plugging in the computer, or running the heater, it all comes from the gas tank.  There is nothing that just sits there consuming energy.  Everything is very deliberately turned on, and then turned off.  If not, I either kill the car battery or run out of gas.  I like being energy conscious.

And finally,

Answering the Question, “Where Do You Live?”: I like this question because I can easily get to know if someone is just making chit-chat, or if they are trying to get to know me with an innocuous question.  If I don’t want to get to know the person, I will just say, “North Logan.”  If I want to get to know the person, but I’m not sure if the feeling is mutual, I will say, “Oh, here and there.”  If he drops it, so do I.  If he tries to reframe my comment with something like, “So…here in Cache Valley?”, I know that he is trying to categorize me.  If he says, “What does that mean?”, then the conversation can go a hundred different ways.

Maternal Instinct

I witnessed something extraordinary–and yet not.  It was something that I attribute to maternal instinct in its truest sense.  It was an instinctual behavior produced by a material organism.

I was driving on a dirt road, away from one of my favorite places to park my “home”, when I saw a mother bird and what I assume were her three little birds in the road.  They were running away from me in the same direction as I was approaching them.  My four wheels were much faster than their eight legs, so I was gaining ground.  Mother bird then took and abrupt right turn, removing herself from danger.  But the three little birds did not follow.  They were chirping and running, running and chirping, but they didn’t change their course.  I thought to myself, if I were a predator I could eat these little birds easily.  That’s when mother bird returned, barking as she ran toward me.  Then she stopped.  The little birds kept running, but the mother bird just stared me down.  “It ends here,” she seemed to say.  “Whatever is going to happen, is going to happen now, and it’s going to happen to me.”

Luckily for mother bird, I was not a predator.  I had no interest in eating, killing, or ever toying with her progeny.  I was just a homeless guy that was headed off to take a morning shower.  After I stopped the blazer, mother bird flew away, caught up with her little ones, and they all walked off of the road together.  This was not a noble choice made by a discerning matriarch; it was the natural consequence of genetic prescription.  Nevertheless, I was changed.  I thought of my own mother.

Once upon a time, there was an abusive lawyer and his abused son.  When the son spent the night at my house, the lawyer came early in the morning to get him back.  In one corner of the porch stood a three-piece suit, in the other corner, curlers and a nightgown.  Mother bird–although only mother by proxy–looked up into the face of a predator, and stared him.  “It ends here,” she seemed to say.  “Whatever is going to happen, is going to happen now, and it’s going to happen to me.”  The lawyer yielded.  The boy was safe.

At another time, I was in the hospital and I was in extreme amounts of pain because of nerve damage sustained from a major back surgery.  I could hardly talk.  I could actually feel people walking outside of my hospital room, and it hurt.  There was one doctor with particularly poor bedside manor.  He would kick my bed and I would wince in pain.  The first time, mother explained.  The second time, mother reminded.  The third time mother stared him down.  “It ends here,” she seemed to say.  “Whatever is going to happen, is going to happen now, and it’s going to happen to me.”

My inner scientist says that this behavior is strictly instinctual.  Mothers whose genes have constructed this fix action pattern as a response to predatory stimuli produce like-phenotypical offspring that survive and later reproduce.  It’s just textbook natural selection.  At first, my inner theologian resents this idea.  It seems to cheapen the sacrifices made by my mother.  To attribute her heroics to mere animalistic drives seems reprehensible.  But then my inner theologian asks me to compare my animalistic drives to those of my mother.  Left to my instincts, I would be addicted to chemicals and behaviors that would have killed me years ago, and there would dozens of people around to spit on my shallow grave every chance they got.  If Mother’s most base and primal urges are to lay down her life for me, I can only imagine the pinnacle of virtue she is, and has yet to become.  I am sobered to think that I am the beneficiary of natural benevolence.

At the end of the day, I don’t actually believe that humankind was the product of evolutionary development.  I know that my mother was prepared to be a mother long before she was born.  She was trained by scores of capable tutor in this an other vales.  She has overcome some of her own natural tendencies toward selfishness.  The whole me cannot attribute Mother’s virtue to circumstance alone.  She has trained herself into a new instinct.  She reacts maternally even at times when her genetics might prescribe preservation.  This too is sobering.

Call it nature, call it nurture.  I just call it home.

You Thought A Speedo Was Bad

This one’s for you Adam:

I have never been satisfied with my body. Even when I wasn’t fat or hairy or scarred or crooked, I had this mole centered between my nipples. I was so embarrassed by it that I hated going swimming. There are only a few times in my life when anyone has every actually commented on my physical short-comings, but those are enough to get the inner teenager to flare.

The inner teenager is usually dormant, but every now and then, he emerges. He usually giggles at innuendos or puns that really aren’t funny, but just that fact that the teenage “got” them, makes the outer adult fight grinning. (Case in point: I was in a Ward Council Meeting when someone mentioned the bottom copy of a paper. The inner teenager imaged a man photocopying his bare buttocks. I even made that half-choking-half-laughing sound. Whoops.)

Now that I am an adult, I have mostly placated the inner teenage when I go swimming. Most of the people in my demographic have some fat collection in places that they wish they didn’t. Almost no one is comfortable at the pool, so I can reassure myself by saying “they are more scared of themselves than they are of you.” This works in the men’s locker room time and time again.

On Saturday, I decided to get a shower at the swimming pool. I took my usual bag with a change of clothes and all the toiletries that I would need. With only a towel between me and the open air, I walked to the showers. There I saw two critics that the outer adult could not explain away: two pre-teen boys. Awkward. Ultra-awkward. And not just for me.

The outer adult chanted all of the positive self-talk I could muster, and I took off the towel. I was bare naked in front of two little boys. Their chatter stopped and I could hear the pointing fingers. The giggling. The mouths agape. I wasn’t the only one experiencing an event that would be recounted on a blog post.

Pre-teen boys don’t have an inner teenager, nor do they have an outer adult. All they have is boyish curiosity and discomfort. The chatter returned in spurts, but I could tell that they were affected. I tried not to make eye contact. Okay, honestly, I didn’t even face them. I thought that flashing my big-boy parts was not something that I wanted them tell their fathers.

The shower last about as long as it would have if I had been alone with no hot water. I took care of the absolute necessities, and then I was wrapped up in a towel again.

It is amazing how the naked honesty of the young can wipe away the obfuscated perspective of adults.

The Dudes

I have avoided writing about the Dudes for some time. Although they are part of my day-to-day, there hasn’t been anything that has warranted a written comment.

The Dudes are the four other guys with whom I regularly get naked. They use the Rec. Center regularly too. Of course, they usually use the gym equipment before they shower. We dress/undress in different areas of the locker room, so I had never known how much of me they saw (no innuendo intended). Did they notice me as a regular? Did they wonder why I would come in and go out, always wearing civilian wear instead of workout clothes? Did they wonder why they never saw me in the gym? Did they suspect that I am an urban camper? Would they tell the owners/operators of the Rec. Center that “some weird guy” was coming in every day? Would I be confronted? Would I have to explain myself? It is a very mild frenzy that I have every time I make eye contact with one of The Dudes.

At first, I thought The Dudes would be dubbed The Jerks. I find that guys who work out together often show the testosterone side of their lives while they are together, this way, they can pretend they have a non-testosterone side while they are around “the ball and chain.” At first, their vocal tones suggested that they were The Jerks. Then one day, they surprised me.

One day, after a good workout, The Dudes gathered around in a little cluster. They were talking in small tones that I couldn’t distinguish. I got the impression that they didn’t want me to hear, so I naturally wanted to listen. Chris, one of The Dudes, then said, “It’s like King Benjamin said, ‘For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, [something, something], even as a child doth submit to his father.’”

For those of you not fluent in Mormonism, that is a verse from the Book of Mormon. The Dudes were having a morning devotional.

After that, I saw The Dudes differently. I imagined that the four of them were buddies that wanted to improve their lives together. They keep each other in check physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually…

“Hey, aren’t you Mr. Bushman?” Chris caught me off guard. He had just walked past me and said his first sentence to me. I panicked on the inside. How in the world could he possibly know me? I hadn’t volunteered any information. None.

Chris didn’t wait for a response before continuing. “I’m Chris Bashaw. I’m Shannon’s dad.” (“Shannon” is one of my students—except that her name isn’t Shannon.) My shock did not dispel, but only converted to a new phase. I still had the same kind of mild frenzy that I experienced with The Dudes, but this time there were much greater consequences at stake.

Gary, my principal, started this school year making sure that I had an apartment. He said, “I would hate for any parents to find out that their child’s teacher was homeless.” I can’t tell the difference between when Gary is being playful and when he is being tactfully supervisory. When he asked me, I was indeed homed, but the question has haunted me ever after. Even though there is nothing morally wrong with homelessness, it is so deeply stigmatized that almost no rational parent would be comfortable with a homeless guy teaching his/her child.

“Mr. Bushman.” I was still a little nervous, but I don’t think it showed. “Yes. Grant Bushman is my name. How did you…?”

“Shannon and I were driving in the car and we saw you. She said, ‘Hey, that was Mr. Bushman,’ and I told her that we work out together. You were wearing a plaid shirt.”

“Well how about that.” I was both delighted and frightened at the same time. “Well, Chris, it was nice to meet you.”

“And it was nice to finally meet you. Shannon just loves you as a teacher.”

“You’re welcome.” I left the locker room with a big sigh. I don’t think he knows. Maybe if he had as much introspection time to watch me as I have to watch him and the other Dudes, he might figure me out. But as for now, he is just one of The Dudes, and I am Mr. Bushman. I know him as a member of a collective and he knows me as reported by an eight year old girl. Neither one of us really knows the other, but there is a slight familiarity between us—nothing more.

I think that is how it should be with men that frequently see each other naked.

Approached by “The Man”, Continued

This time, I asked for the Balding Cop’s name. It is Chad. He is a cool guy. He was able to recall every location that I have use in Logan Canyon. He seemed to be more approving and accepting the second time than he had been the first time. The third time he came upon my blazer, he told me that he just wanted to make sure that I was okay and that I had a place to go if I needed to. That was awfully nice. He also told me that the third time was the third time, not the second. Unknown to me, the second time he had encounter me, I was already asleep, so he just let me sleep.

Office Pugmeyer is a different story. He knocked on the window while I was parked at the airport.

To be clear, I don’t actually part AT the airport. It is on an old dirt road that is just East of the airport. I like it because it is in the sticks enough to be a low traffic area and low visibility. I can change my clothes outside of the blazer and no one can see. But, it is close enough to the city that I don’t have to drive too far to actually get somewhere. I still get cell phone reception and I am close to a gas station in case of “emergencies” that a PowerAide bottle won’t solve.

Office Pugmeyer was one of those big-words-make-me-feel-important kind of cops. Once I opened the door to the blazer, he did a lot of sweeps with his flashlight. He asked me the same kinds of questions that Chad did, but in a much more brash tone. He demanded my license and ran a check on me and the blazer. Since there are several family names associated with the blazer, he asked me about different family members and why things didn’t match. I tried to remain playful and casual, but he refused to be nice. It was all about intimidation and authority. Example:

Pugmeyer: Let me see your driver’s license.

Me: [Handing him my wallet] Here you go.

Pugmeyer: Please remove your license from the wallet. I don’t want to take the whole wallet.

Me: Well, I don’t meet a lot of people that say that. *Smile*

Pugmeyer: [Takes license] Hmmm. *No smile*

He is the kind of person that makes other people hate dealing with cops.

The cherry on top was Office Pugmeyer’s final comment. After running a check and interrogating me, he handed me my license and said, “You will want to see about procuring a residence if you don’t want police officers to hassle you.”

I am still surprised that I bit my tongue.