I was homeless in Brussels once. Someone stole my backpack with my passport in it, and just like that I was stateless. It was over a weekend, and the embassy to my home country was closed and wouldn’t open until Monday.
No food, no money, no water, I had nothing to do. I walked all over that city, really got to see every interesting corner of it. It’s like 5 different countries smushed into one, and you can see french/german/british influence almost everywhere. There’s an overpass that cuts right through it at one point, occupying nothing underneath and that’s where the migrants gather on Saturday mornings to host their wares in this long unyielding impromptu market.
I slept in their parks, talked with their police (who didn’t believe my story), and even struck up a conversation with a random Canadian I met at the train station, who fitted the stereotype to a T, and gave me money so I could get by another day, asking for nothing in return.
When Monday rolled around, I took a nice leisurely stroll to the embassy and got an emergency visa, ready for the long bus trip home, and genuinely sadly bid farewell to that beautiful crazy mess of a city. It shares a special place in my heart, bureaucracy be damned.
In a server room, multiple times, not amazing but the blinking lights are kinda fun to look at at it’s basically like a very loud white noise machine. Also it’s nice and cool.
On a bench in under construction zone of a subway station. I had to explain security guards hard enough that I was neither homeless nor a terrorist (the security there were pretty much anti-homeless).
Top shelf of a walk in closet that was obscured from view from the door.
Under a futon couch.
On the roof of the house in the angled portion where 2 downward slopes come together.
In the back of a truck in the back yard.
In the middle of a grassy area behind our garage
My parents used to wake me up at 4:30 in the morning to take a cold shower and then spend the next 4 hours doing religious worship. The only time I could read “Horrible secular books” like Mutiny on the Bounty, the three musketeers, and the man in the iron mask was late at night after everyone went to bed. I would stay up till 2:30-3:00am sometimes reading and I knew waking up at 4:30 was just not gonna happen.
Yeah, I got in a bunch of trouble when I came out of my hiding spot the next morning, but sometimes it was worth it.
Pile of cardboard at work because I was pulling 90 hour weeks and I had to work in like 5 hours at the end of my previous shift and I figured the extra time spent traveling home was better spent sleeping.
Various convention floors. Mother would take me to her various fiber arts things, I’d get tired, I’d sleep under a table with my coat on me, or wrapped around my arms.
I’d explode if I slept on the floor these days.
On a golf course putting green.
I was drunk as a skunk.
I climbed the fence and then I took the big ball markers that mark the tee of each hole, and I stabbed the stabby part into a tree until one tree had all the markers stabbed into it.
Then I went to sleep.
Not super proud of that
I once feel asleep, standing up, at a Static X concert. 12 straight hours of drinking will have that effect…
I used to do sail washing and we would store the sails in this giant wooden rack. All the spinnakers went in a big pile on the top. Me and my buds would take turns having naps up there while we waited for the sails to dry. That was the best winter job.
December 23, 1995: On a wooden basement staircase, in an empty house, with no heat, with my dog. My parents lost the house. All our stuff had been moved out. Our nervous dog wouldn’t settle. I couldn’t leave him. That was the last night I slept in the house where I grew up.
December 1998: On a basement floor near Ottawa. At least it was carpeted. Hammered after some party near a college. In the night, some angel draped a blanket over me. Best feeling of my life to that point. Some guy’s sister was kind to us.
May 2009: Coober Pedy, Australia. Slept in a hostel that was in a mine. Slept underground in a room with bunk beds and no windows. It was weird. Felt like a bomb shelter.
December 2011: Wadi Rum, Jordan. Slept outside under the stars on a sleeping mat on a rock of biblical proportion. The guy in the tent next to ours was snoring. Loudly. My partner couldn’t take it. We dragged our mattresses out onto a rock 300 m from camp. I reasoned — scorpions were less likely to find us. Coulda been wrong. Still here to tell the tale.
I’ve slept in some weird places.
On a picnic table in a state park. I was sober, just very tired.
In a Walmart parking lot. in a van, with three homies… in a random state. Was it Georgia?
in a forest on a pile of sharp edged boulders
Long story on how I got there but I slept part of a night in the engine car of an old steam train in a city park.
In the women’s locker room at the shipyard. Nobody ever goes in there, it’s clean, it’s never used, and I just got off a sixteen hour shift of welding. I was damn tired and couldn’t muster the strength to drive myself home.
I got about five hours of sleep which was enough rest to drive myself home and call out “sick” the next day.
