Soylent Homeless

Oh, this may be the crown jewel of bitchery in this series, Folks. It’s one thing to dislike co-workers, nice people, semi-retarded dogs that shit in cars, but I’m going to go ahead and drag my soul through the mud on this one because…..well, because my PMS insanity knows no bounds and I’m shameless in flexing those muscles this month.

Where I’m originally from in Maine there are almost no homeless people and the ones that you do see, you want to shake the hands of, because you have to be one tough son-of-a-bitch to survive a Maine winter outside…..which is why most of them are also insane. The two are correlational conjoined twins. Furthermore, in Maine I was in the habit of leaving my restaurant leftovers in conspicuous places in downtown Portland, Maine to help feed said tough homeless people. I would also occasionally give them some spare change or a dollar, and most of them are too proud to even ask for it, which I quite like. I mean, shit(!), living in a house with a parent-monitored thermostat is hard enough during a typical Maine winter- -I can’t imagine enduring it outside. It’s like an episode of Survivor. In fact, at some point the networks will probably have that show when we’ve exhausted all other soul-depleting options for bad reality TV- -“Homeless Survivor: Maine Edition- -Tune in next week to see who didn’t make it through this big Nor’easter.”
I’d like to say I wouldn’t watch, but I’ve voluntarily subjected myself to The Hills and Rock of Love, so who’s to say? I would, however, be more apt to watch “Homeless Gladiator Death Match: Portland, OR edition.”


This brings me to my next point. Upon arriving in Portland, OR for the first time I concluded that I had never seen SO MANY homeless people in my entire life. It’s like a stinky piñata spewed forth an army of these smelly, non-working, drug-addicted, semi-insane parasites of society. I didn’t realize how different the Maine homeless people are from the Oregon homeless people and my naivety went unrewarded when I offered a homeless “starving” person (or so the classy cardboard sign indicated) my leftovers from dinner when I first moved here, to which they declined. Tell you what- -how about the next time you’re “starving” we just grind up your Stinky friend who’s sitting there next to you and we can kill a couple of birds with one stone…..And so began my romance with abhorring this particular segment of society.

The Portland, OR homeless come in two varieties. The insane kind who can’t take care of themselves because of X, Y, Z that was out of their control (who I can muster sympathy for- -also women/children who are victims of domestic violence and are thusly displaced)….and the rebelling youths from the neighboring suburbs who are of sound mind and body and could easily be working, but they choose to hang out in or around Pioneer Square during a normal work day and ride our city’s free transit and ask the working man for money and ruin the dining experiences of anyone in eyeshot or olfactory distance. GET...A...FUCKING...JOB. I can’t muster any sympathy for people who are between the ages of 16-35 and aren’t working and who are living off the giant Liberal hearts of a city.

I live just a street or two outside of the immediate downtown and I have to say that two of my “favorite” Oregon homeless phenomena are: 1.) Picking through my entire neighborhood’s trash, and then dining on their findings, and then leaving the remaining trash in a heap somewhere in the neighborhood. Fun! I’m pretty sure that flies do this same kind of service, only are less offensive and bothersome. 2.) Urinating and shitting anywhere they please. Honestly, if these people had homes, I would give serious entertainment to a home invasion solely devoted to urination and defecation. I’m sure I could rise above any kidney or intestinal shyness for this task. I’d like to come up with a list of said perpetrators so that when I don’t ever become a politician later in life, I can create a task force. Congratulations, you now have a home...and we’re going to pee in it. Have a nice day.




The people who are homeless as a result of meth addiction are a special breed of scary. I am nearly certain that directors/screenwriters who have manifested Zombie and Undead films were doing so in homage to Portland’s tweakers. They’re skeletal, unwashed, discolored and bare no semblance of brain activity until they see you at an ATM on a dimly lit city block around midnight and then their catatonic saunter quickly escalates to a terrifying sprint. I’m thinking that if I accidentally “double tap” on of them in the skull (with the cricket bat I don’t yet carry), I probably have ONE “I thought it was a zombie” get out of jail free card with the Portland police.



Also, there is just the social unfairness of demanding a dollar from passersby and having them fucking relent to an extent that you can actually sustain life in this manner. Are you fucking kidding me? Your stench doesn’t hypnotize me into opening my wallet, it makes me want to run away so that I don’t puke from involuntarily assessing what attributes of your anatomy have brewed that stink. It’s the grizzled and hardened New England man (with the likeness of R. Lee Ermey) in my psyche that’s like, “You want money? Great! Go get a job” like my parents said to me when I was growing up.



I had a teenage homeless girl ask me for money as I was walking through the downtown and I afforded her the courtesy of an answer by telling her that I didn’t carry cash, I only had a card…to which, she retorted, “Yeah, well McDonald’s takes cards.” To which I replied, “you’re right, they also take applications.” I thought punctuating my “Oohhhh, Snap!” moment by purchasing some item from McDonald’s and feeding it to her dog might be investing a little too much energy into scorn- -plus, nothing deserves to have to eat that shit, especially not a precious dog.

I once had a homeless guy with vomit around his mouth and on his shirt demand a dollar from me, and when I inquired what he would do with my dollar, he hesitated….which is when my anal fissure flared up and took over and I reactively taunted, “Exactly! You want my dollar to drink and I want my dollar to drink, and guess what- -I win!!!” Then I may or may not have discussed the tenets of free will and how the choices I make to not be a piece of shit differ from his own employment of free will. I’m sure he swiftly heeded my advice, and has since turned his life around. (So WHAT if my current uppity bitchiness is accessorized with a soap box?!?!?)


Maybe all of this is just a childish jealousy that while the rest of us have to work in jobs we hate so that we have homes, and worldly possessions that we are enslaved to- -these people are handed free money by strangers just from sitting on street corners and looking pathetic and stinking. They have no schedules, no strongholds to social conventions, they are about as free as it gets. The local government feeds them and provides them shelter- -all they have to worry about is finding cigarettes and booze so that they can get drunk out in public. They are given so many free passes in society that the middle class isn’t afforded. I actually had an unmedicated schizophrenic homeless man attempt a home invasion in January of 2009, which is pretty scary when you are a female living alone in a basement apartment. I called the police after the guy threatened me and tried to break down my door for 30 minutes. He eventually left, but the cops had the courtesy to call me back to let me know that they hadn’t done anything but “send him on his way” because “he’s just a local crazy.” What?!?! Wow...is that all you have to do to get away with shit these days. I have every capacity to be an unmedicated schizophrenic for at least 4 days out of every month.

Solution, you ask? Well...I hadn't really thought of one.




Talk to me next week about compassion. This week is about multiple personalities all failing at coexistence.

My Misconception of Yoga

Yoga: My trials and tribulations (Wow, that sounds whiny and middle class)

I was very late in getting into yoga, because……well, because I hate everything that’s new and super trendy. So, all these years that people have been “oohing and aahing” over yoga, I’ve been sneering at them and their efforts to convert me…and avoiding yoga at all costs (not dissimilar to how I started reading The Davinci Code last year. Same reason).
I attempted to jump on the yoga bandwagon in secret when I was in high school. I was all ready a member at the YMCA and they offer classes for free, so I optimistically put my name on the yoga class list and showed up one day. I’m going to try to find the best way to start these next sentences, so bare with me. There’s a lot to be said…The “meat and potatoes,” so to speak, is that the yoga instructor was the hippiest dirty hippy the world has ever known. Now, sometimes (operative word=sometimes) I love hippies. I love the hippies that get stoned and sing songs and are happy and free-spirited….and don’t protest on street corners, fooling passersby with the façade of their dreadlocks and second-hand clothing. Anyway, this woman was clearly opposed to any form of bathing and shaving. It was like the perfect storm of body odor- -her underarms, her vagina (yes, vagina), and even her breathe. I made the mistake of identifying myself as a first timer…so, she felt the need to stand by me and critique every move while standing in positions that were the most conducive to me benefiting from the tsunami of odors. Have you ever walked into a damp basement or shed and your lungs adamantly refuse to inhale? This is what it was like….except the painful irony is that yoga is all about breathing. Breathing deeply. Every lungful I could taste all of the foul molecules that were just emanating off this woman, and on several occasions the shining achievement of “downward facing dog” was not vomiting on my mat. Needless to say, this yoga experience was traumatic and after I went home and showered and shaved….several times…..I wrote off yoga as terrible and a fad that I would not be endorsing any time soon.
Fast forward a few years. Now I’m 19 and I’m visiting my favorite aunt and uncle in Seattle for College Spring Break. My aunt had recently found herself a part of this never-ending yoga trend and she was really excited to try to convert me. I appease her and attend her regular yoga class. This class may have lacked the luster of a hygiene-protesting instructor, but where it fell short there, it more-than-compensated in the Circue Du Soleil-like style that this new instructor employed. We were in headstands and backbends the whole damn class….but still, I had limited knowledge of yoga, so now I was under the impression that yoga is like the Special Olympics of gymnastics. Still not impressed.
Years have passed and sort of washed away most of my ill feelings towards yoga, and again, I give yoga a chance. I’ve completely written off the first two classes as “yoga trickery” and have attempted to completely forget the experiences. So, one day during my lunch hour, I walk three blocks to my gym to attend the noon yoga class. The whole way I’m thinking about yoga: stretching and relaxing in a dimly lit room while an instructor encourages me to “find my inner peace.” I’m excited. It’s been a stressful day at work, and frankly, I’m excited for the opportunity for the Boot Camp of Relaxation.
I get to the gym and find that the room is dimly lit. Check. The yoga instructor doesn’t smell of feet, BO, and patchouli. Check. Other people seated around me are preemptively stretching. Wow(!) this might be something I could really be into, as it has conformed to all the visions in my yoga-specific rose-colored glasses!!!
Wrong. The teeny tiny, flexible instructor starts us off with some light stretching…but I quickly learn that every position ends with “plank” into “upward facing dog” into “downward facing dog.” In short….you do thousands of fucking push-ups through the whole class. For those of you who played high school football….these moves done in this order is like doing slower, more graceful belly-whackers….over and over and over.
The push-up segment ends and then begins lunge-a-palooza. You lunge and lunge and lunge until your legs shake to the point that you’re fantasizing about doing more push-ups. I broke a friggin’ sweat.
Then, when you think you can’t resent this yoga trickery any longer….the instructor has you lay down on the mats, and she reads you a short comforting story from Buddhist proverbs. Something like, “There is no set path in life, where you walk is the path” and then she tells you the exhale out all of the bad and she tells you to enjoy your day. I was confused, because despite all of the abuse via stretching, lunging, and push ups….I felt good; better somehow. I felt like how Tina Turner must have felt when Ike put his belt back on and was like, “Hey babe, you know I love you.” So, that’s what yoga is….it’s not about flips and dirty hippies. It’s about ending the nuanced aerobic abuse on the upside…so that your brain is tricked into allowing you to return for more in the future.