Friday, May 20, 2011

"Shelter From The Storm........................"

Good Morning;
So it seems I made the right choice to stay in the shed.
It's 1:40 am. and since I signed off to go over to the Giant at 4:45 pm. (though the time on the blog post says 12:37 pm., that is when I first signed on, and then was distracted and did not get back to it for 3 hours...I wish that the "Post Time" would be the time it was actually published... there have been days when I've started a train of thought not relating to daily activity, and not gotten back to it for a week, and it still carries the inception date not the completion date....that's like counting birthdays from the night Mom and Dad had those couple extra drinks and forgot to stop at the drugstore on the way back to the house!...........lol!), it has rained six separate times, each one a deluge. It rained so heavily when I was in the foodstore it got so dark all the street lights came on, and it was a good 3 hours until sunset.

After I watched the 11:00 pm. news I ran over to the Giant to get a pint of milk, (hey...any port in a storm, it may help me sleep...if it doesn't tear me up inside first), and came back with a house guest, the very first one I ever invited back to the 'Homeless Hacienda'! There have been a number of occasions where I could have company male or female for compassionate, or coital reasons, but chose not to for a variety of reasons ranging from safety and security, to purely selfish comfort and simple logistics, (though in my own defense I must state that on no occasion did I ever either refuse a request or not extend one in a situation that placed the particular person in any danger or jeopardy, ie. severe cold or rain or snow, or leave a 'newbie' out alone without guidance and/or directions to a shelter or agency that would help them). The biggest reason is that the only way 2 people can fit in the dry area of the shed at the same time is either by sitting cross legged face to face in one body length or lying side by side in such close proximity that intimate contact is a given, & spooning is almost a necessity if lying on one's side is desired. (It makes me think of the way an old friend described his sailboat's cabin to people, as he put it... 'it sleeps 2 and stacks 4!', divide that by two..and you've got the shed.
Well, neither trusting enough, insane enough, desperate enough, (or in a few cases....ignorant enough-to take advantage of or even take a chance of the rumor of impropriety [there have been a couple of kids, most fleeing abuse of one sort or another] with)- to take my chances alone with the possible women and girls, who may have spent the night, and of the men....the one guy who I would have felt entirely comfortable having stay....was my size and when he saw the accommodations said "I see what you mean about the lack of space", and chose to crash out in the bus shelter until the bus started running again.
But enough background.

As I was leaving the Giant one of the employees who knows me and my story and reads the blog pulls me up and tells me someone has been looking for me. They told me to look out for a woman with a couple duffel bags who had been asking if anyone there knew me, and could point me out to her.
When I stepped outside, from next to the propane stack display I hear this quiet, quavering little voice call out softly "Dave?" and I turned to face a frightened looking woman who had the same nervous manner of a dog who has been kicked so much it never knows what the next contact will bring. She was soaked to the skin and shivering and one of her duffels looked to be sodden as well. When I cautiously answered yes she started crying and all the 'fight or flight' tension seemed to drop away and she started talking between the tears, but so disjointedly that between the tears and her shivering from being cold and wet....I could make no sense of what she was trying to tell me. I had just made myself a mug of my instant coffee while I was in the Giant, (the tap water had finally gotten hot again, the mug I made at 5:00 pm. was lukewarm), I made her take a big gulp to warm her up and try to settle her down. Which it did to the extent that she could coherently tell me that she had been reading the blog for about 18 months, which is how she knew to find me. I took her across the lot to the First Watch bench, (in full public view and well lit!.....once bitten / twice shy!!!!), and with the aid of a slightly enhanced "Russian Coffee", (which we shared, because damn if I was going to surrender all of my last couple ounces of vodka which I happened to have been saving for a rainy night like this...lol), I was able to coax the whole story of..... "what the hell are you doing here and how am I involved!" out of her.

Her name is XXXXX and she is 39 years old, widowed, recently unemployed and homeless when the man she had been working for and living with told her he wanted a 'newer younger model, with less mileage', (yeah the slimeball is a used car salesman). In one of the classic 'manipulator/predator' scenarios, it came to pass that when this man, (and I use the term loosely), seemingly came to her rescue as her knight in shining armor when her husband and daughter died 10 years ago he gradually alienated her from all her friends and the little family she had, siphoned off and or spent all the insurance money, savings, and convinced her to sell her house, which was free and clear of any mortgage through an insurance policy, and move in with him. A couple weeks ago she came in to work, after flying in from New York on some sort of bogus business trip 'he' had arranged to get her out of town overnight, to find the sheriffs putting padlocks on the business, (which he had in some way transferred enough of the debt of into her name), and they even confiscated the car she had driven in. After finding her cell phone deactivated she took a cab 'home' to find what was left of her personal items scattered across the curb, an empty house, and a letter taped to the wall, saying basically......
"see ya! sucks to be you! I'm going back to Russia!"
(Oh, and this is the topper, also a picture of him and his new wife waving from the steps of the court house where they were just married, and to add insult to injury, a check for $500.00......'for any inconvenience'!) Once she got over the initial shock, she went to the bank, and there was exactly $500.00 left in the checking account, the other accounts, personal and business either having been slowly drained or closed outright the day before. She called and cancelled the credit cards, finding out they were maxed out, the last purchase being a pair of airline tickets to Paris on a flight that had left that morning from New York. Meaning that the whole time she was in the airport, (Kennedy I think), he was also there...telling her he loved her, etc....while he and his new wife were in the International terminal there waiting to board! A real piece of work.
None of his Russian 'friends, acquaintances, cronies' would see or talk to her. All her family is dead and gone, and after 10 years she had lost all contact with her former friends.........but one.
Now it starts to get weird, (well for any one's life but mine...right Janet P.?.................lol), the one friend she kept in touch with is a bit older than she is, this friend had a daughter, this daughter, who looked on her mom's friend as a favorite aunt, or a big sister got hooked on dope and came into the rooms of NA to get clean, specifically in East Baltimore, even more precisely at a certain coffee shop in Fells Point...at the turn of the millennium, and became friends with an older guy, 20 years older in fact, who worked at that coffee shop. Now this lovely young lady and this older guy hung out a lot together, so naturally her mother was concerned, so she invited her daughter to bring him over for supper one evening. One dinner became two, became a regular occurrence, and though the daughter and the guy saw each other less frequently as she accumulated months, then years of clean time, and began to associate more and more with other young adults her age who were also clean....her mother and this guy became quite good friends, though in recent years the frequency of contact has dropped off. Imagine her surprise when she sees this guy written up in a local magazine and then finds his blog on the Internet. Well, of course she calls her daughter, (who had already seen it), and her old friend to whom she is the last contact of the life before the old friend married a Russian. The Russians wife remembers meeting the guy who writes the blog many years ago, and becomes a regular reader and follower.

And when shit hit the fan after her life fell apart, and she had 2 months of steadily worsening experiences trying to subsist on the street.......she somehow decides the guy she met 10 or 11 years ago who babbles on in his homeless blog can
???help???/???save???/???rescue??? her?

Yeah...fell a little dizzy huh..well how do think I feel after trying to write that and keep all the convolutions straight while building interest but not giving it away all at once?....lol!!
ANYWAY!
After we got the chronology, genealogy, etymology, and etiology straightened out I realized she was freezing her ass off, so since the Giant had closed and the gas station was too crowded...I brought her to the shed, turned on the lantern and showed her the dry section then turned to step outside and let her dry off and change into something dry.....and heard a strident but frightened "NO!, Don't leave me in here alone!" (Hmmmm, something's going on there...?)
So I stood at the other end and turned my back and played on the computer until she was changed. Since it's cool and damp I suggested she put on something like sweats, loose and long. I came back to the dry part, (my bedroom, changing room, reading room, TV and computer room, dining room, and pantry), and, OH JUST GREAT, she's got on a pair of flannel jammies that fit her previously hidden under many layers....perfect little Tinkerbell body like a glove! When I ask her if she has a robe or anything looser, she tells me no, (And then APOLOGIZES to me for not being attractive enough.....I don't know WHAT this guy did to her, but he's fucked with her head something awful.....I was able to get something about a 'closet with no lights' when she was bad, just before she fell asleep).

SO......she's in the sleeping bag lying next to me as I am sitting OUTSIDE the sleeping bag next to her. She's on her left side pressing up close against me every time I move even an inch, right arm thrown across my thighs, and like I say, whenever I try to adjust my big numb ass, to get some blood back into my cold feet....that arm tightens and the fingers reflexively grab onto whatever is handy.......get your mind out of the gutter.....lol!.................it is mostly the material of my sweats around knee level....but one time she snagged me right behind the knee and squeezed.....after almost passing out I was able to pry her hand loose...that friggin hurt!

I've been sitting here on the laptop and I made a few phone calls, one of which was to wake up my former therapist, M., who I TRUST more than anyone in the world, and with whom I had the best rapport with any mental health professional I have ever been to, (which is probably why I am so picky now and have been unable to find a new shrink), but who now specializes in women's issues exclusively, and is affiliated with a major psychiatric hospital that does a lot of Medicaid/charity/pro bono work. We talked and I called in an old favor, and he should be here....real soon actually, now that I see it is friggin' 6:00 am. already.

She knows me so well and knows my triggers and predilections better than I do.
She says to me, after I tell her the whole story and our current physical disposition, " And I bet you're sitting there forcing yourself to stay awake, so you won't lay down and be tempted to allow a woman to whom you are obviously more than attracted to, to act out upon a need or desire, real or imagined that you really want to happen. But because she is currently very vulnerable you refuse to proceed, because that very vulnerability is part of what arouses you, and you feel you would be taking unfair advantage........circular logic." There was more, but......well that's between me and my demons, phobias, fantasies....and her......lol.
But what can I say? She's right, I'm a sucker for the underdog, the flawed, and the damaged.

It's almost 6:30 am., and I have to wake her and have her dress, her ride will be here shortly.

I'm back...
It's gratifying to see a pro at work, within 15 minutes XXXXX was in the car, chatting with M. and beginning to relax again. I thought we were going to have a problem at first when I woke her up. The first few seconds of terror were apparent in her eyes as she came awake and saw the strange surroundings, then she focused in on me, and threw her arms around my neck and hung on for dear life. After she became fully conscious she saw that I had zipped her in the sleeping bag alone, and that I had my legs wrapped in a blanket. She got this very strange sad look on her face, and asked, "Don't you like me, is it because I was bad?" I took her head in my hands and told that it was because I did like her that I let her sleep alone, and that in 6 0r 8 weeks, if when she looked at things with a fresh viewpoint and a clear head and she wanted me to, I'd come visit. (This was recommended as a safe and non-committal way to leave things open ended with no promises that might be regretted, but where an obligation was felt that had to be honored.)
One thing I noticed by light of day were the old bruises on her face and neck that looked like hand and finger marks. She told me some the nasty shit that happened to her as she tried to deal with being on the street for the first few weeks, (she was ashamed to call our mutual friend or her daughter), a shelter where she was almost raped outside, one where the thug women took a lot of her possessions, being turned away from another in the rain, but nothing about being beat on like these marks revealed. I quietly pointed these out to M. as we said goodbye.
They drove off up towards the Beltway and I came in here to finish this.

Another sleepless night, and if you are curious....
YES very much so! If I did not have the laptop and the blog and Facebook and Youtube to keep me busy.....who the hell knows!

I'm outta here, I'm going over to the Giant to use the bathroom which I've needed to do for 4 hours, but did not want to leave her alone to go to the gas station to do.
Then, screw it, I'm going to try to sleep for 5 hours and get up and out.

In Dante's Inferno, the First Circle of the Nine Circles of Hell has space reserved for virtuous Pagans, Limbo, (which is all I'm hoping for since I'm not on the Judgement Day Rapture bus scheduled for this Saturday May 21st)......but this scum sucking Russian bastard deserves to be at least in the Eight Circle, First Bolgia!

I'm done.
Later.................................Dave

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