Livin Da Vida Homelesso.......A Happy Ending Vicariously

It's about 3:27AM and I have left K.O.T.S. for the night or morning, I should say. I think I slept a total of 2hours.BECAUSE, I have to sleep along side derelicts with fucked up sleeping habits. On top of that, it rained really hard and long last night at K.O.T.S. luckily I got the last bunk inside although the roof still leaked slowly onto different parts of my body covered by the thin pink sheet provided to me. It gave me a sense of what water boarding would be like and I don't me out on the ocean, I mean the torture technique. But I still managed to get a decent night's sleep. I was thankfully for not being outside. Now to explain, there are 4 enclosed barracks that house 26 people per barrack, once they are filled up, the rest of the less fortunate sleep outside on the same 2 inch thick green 2 foot by 7 foot mattress used inside.In the back side lays about 15 mats under a white tarp that hangs down about 5 feet off the ground. When it rains, you don't get wet but that is determined by the wind, and of course that too has a drip leak on certain mats, again, of course, on the spot I chose. That's just my luck. I could win a prize if losing was the goal of winning. Anyway, I miss the rain storm the night before but when I came in last night, I was stuck with picking a spot outside and I have learned that number 10 is the best because it is one mattress over from the edge and the amber streetlight doesn't shine in your eyes all night. But last night I got a mat on number 10 but it was soaked with water, the surface was dry but the internal part of the mattress had sucked up the water from the night before like a sponge. So I try to go to sleep, unbeknownst to me that, there's water in them there hills, uh..mattresses.After a shower, I slept for about an hour, woke up and my shorts were wet and believe you me, it wasn't a wet dream. I even had a thick pink blanket under me. So I said, O.K. there's nothing I can do, I can live with being wet, deal with it. Then almost entering rem again, so pesky little fuckin mosquitoes decide they are hungry for blood, and of course, mine is the sweetest one, or so it seems at the time while everybody else is snoring away with their little pipe dreams except for this one asshole next to me whom I have never seen before starts tossin' and turnin', he still has his boots on and every fuckin 2 minutes shuffles his feet across the green vinyl mattress, making a sound like zipping up a zipper on a tent. His legs went up and down every 2 friggin minutes, which drove me nuts!! Back and forth, non stop all night into the morning. I can change spots because KOTS is full, so I am trapped between him, the mosquitoes and the wet mattress. It's 2 AM, I go out to the common area and smoke my last cigarette er... little cheap cigar that look like cigarettes but are 4 times cheaper, a real pack of cigarette for 4 bucks versus 1 dollar for a pack of 305 cigars, the new official smoke of the homeless, thanks to the tax hike in regular cigarettes.I finish my cigaro and I go back to my boat, I mean,my mattress and try to get some kind of sleep, to no avail. The motherfucker next to me is still squirming and the mosquitoes are still swarming. So I lay there defenseless, wondering what am I going to do. I laid there for an hour and said fuck this I'm out of cigarettes and I can't sleep. I picked up my shit, left KOTS and headed to the gas station on my bike without any lights, where I know they have my cheap cigarettes and bought a Natty Ice because it was still before 4 and I had a dollar and change and 1.34 on my debit card. And here I am, typing in the dark at a bus stop across the street from McDonald's where I can pick up WiFi for free, especially at 4 in the morning, only knowing 2 people that will read this and that would be Terra (my former bosses roommate) and my KOTS shelter mate, Bobby. Good Morning, Terra and Bobby! I guess it's better than cell mate. Other than that, it's weird writing what I have been through and not knowing in the whole wide world who will come across this. I don't promote it, maybe on Facebook, but it's cathartic. If anything, I like doing it, I do this because I want to, I don't get paid to do it,...yet!
Shift from sleep deprived pissed off to something I had a chance to do for somebody that I will never be able to do until the day I die,... I can only hope.


I met this guy at KOTS about a month a go.
He kind of looks like a gold miner with a bandana without the hat or gold.

He calls himself, Murphy, and has a personality between Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn and walks like he needs a cane. He claims, "he from a country called, Texas" his words not mine. And always asks the question in a fast, slurred tempo depending on how much Vodka he's had to drink, "whatchu gonna be when you grow up, boy?" and "Is you a vet?" He served in Vietnam. Anyway, how or who. He found out his son, who he hasn't seen since his son was about 3 years old, was on Facebook. The guy who told Murphy didn't stay long at KOTS, so I told Murphy I would try and contact his son through Facebook just give me your son's name, so he did and the hunt was on. I found his son and tried to become friends with him so I could give him the message that his father was looking for him.
His son confirmed me as a friend an sent a message to me asking, "Who are you and how do you know me?"

I replied, "Well, I stay at a homeless shelter in Florida and I met your father there and he found out you were on Facebook and since he doesn't know how to use the computer too good, he told me your name and he asked me to send you a message to see if he could get in contact with you. I'm just trying to help."

I got no reply from Murphy's son