(38) Meeting Karin.

Cuddles and I ran around downtown Tempe, Arizona, seemingly joined at the hip. He was my best friend and a connoisseur guide to this homeless world that I didn’t yet know anything about. We loved to spend every day “playing” once we figured out how to eat. What did play look like? Well, mostly talking about the world with strangers while drinking coffee. That was the best activity in the world for much of my life. I’m not sure what happened, but the coffee-shop culture I grew up in has died in most of the USA. The atmosphere was unique because the music was never too loud to talk, and you could talk about anything. Nothing was off the table. The only time I feel this sort of spirit now is at a private dinner party where by pure chance, you meet a new mind you can get excited with. I didn’t realize it until writing this, but I miss those coffee shops and the simplicity behind all of us gathering there.

Lucky for me, I didn’t like to get drunk and still don’t. However, the rest of the people in my squat loved alcohol more than just about anything come nightfall. We’d sit around a fire, and they would pass around a cheap jug of wine. I don’t mean a bottle of wine; I’m talking about what they call a “bum jug” of wine. They would drink until they passed out. Given that I was sober, I would sit down and watch whatever came of them being inebriated. Sometimes it was funny, and sometimes pretty dark, just like life.

One hilarious moment I remember is of a squat mate who somehow found two fire extinguishers and decided to have a battle with another mate on the train tracks. To get to our squat, you had to walk down the tracks a bit, and Cuddles and I were coming home after our nightly coffee shop outing when we encountered this spectacle. They were covered in white foam and chasing each other around, laughing like they’d seen the Marshmallow Man. Eventually, they retired to the field, got the gunk mostly off them, and crashed somewhere.

All good things come to an end in homeless land. If you have something nice and don’t keep it to yourself, well, word gets around, and before you know it, eight squat mates turn 30, and it is time to move on. Usually, at that point, that means some riff-raff you don’t want to be around moves in. These are the hardcore drug addicts and what I like to call the “unhelpable.” They are people who don’t care if they live or die and want to go out the way they are currently living. They didn’t want to be saved, so they chose this life in many ways. They sometimes went so far as to tattoo their faces to cement this fate. Several in my crew had lines on their faces to let others know they were there by choice. These people usually didn’t believe in private property or borders, so all abandoned property was fair game.

Cuddles was best friends with a guy named Sphincter. Yes, Sphincter. Why that name? Well, he was an asshole. Sphincter invited us to his “secret” squat down the street that was in a shed. Only he and his girlfriend resided there, and we knew we couldn’t stay with all the druggies much longer, so we moved in and tried our best to keep it secret, but some friends followed us, and we knew the rules of the land. It isn’t ours, so one by one, some of the drug addicts moved into the tin shack. I would come “home” and find them passed out on the floor with needles in their arms. Heroin had made its grand appearance in our lives. That drug has never appealed to me. When I saw how people behaved on it, I made up my mind that my life didn’t end that way; plus being one of the only females in camp, I had to keep my wits sharp.

One night, Cuddles surprised me with a visit to see his mother. She was in town briefly after visiting Eastern Europe to have some shawls manufactured that she planned on selling. We walked the extended distance from Tempe to Scottsdale, where Karin and his mother lived.

When we got there, she looked at me, and her mouth dropped. What had her son gone and done?

The problem with enough time passing by and trauma are that you tend to forget the points in time correctly. Karin, who’s still a part of my life, reached out to me recently and told me that I was 14 when she met me, not 15 or 16, as I thought. Perhaps I wanted to believe I was older to make the pain of these memories more bearable. I’m not sure, but I’m here to reset the clock to age 14 in the story.

Karin towered over me at probably 6 feet and had fiery red hair. She had energy like nothing I had ever felt in my life, and I was beyond intimidated by it and her. When she spoke to me, I shook. Honestly, I almost wanted to pee because it was that scary. She wasn’t trying to be mean, but instead was trying to be direct and what was in front of her was a hot mess. I was dirty, shaking, couldn’t make eye contact, and was suspicious of all adult figures. She invited me in and made us dinner, but occasionally she would look up at me and look at Cuddles and say something or grunt.

The dinner was so nourishing and delicious and not like anything I had ever tasted. Karin is from Europe, Belgium, and she makes the most fantastic food. I took it all in, albeit with a view of my feet and the floor.

It was too late to head back to our squat, so Karin invited us into her bed, where her tv was. One of their family values was that there wasn’t a tv available in the house to sit and watch things. If you wanted to watch tv, it was a group affair, and everyone piled into her room on the floor or bed, got under the covers, and watched tv until we all decided to call it quits and go to our beds. Karin had a roommate at the time and didn’t have a bed for us, so we stayed in the room with her for the night.

Before passing out, I heard Karin ask Cuddles, “Just how old is she now?” “14, mom” “Ryan (his real name), you can’t do this. She’s too young,” to which Ryan said, “Mom, I have to, she has nowhere else to go, and I love her.” “Ok, well, I hope you know what you are doing. My lord.” And with that, we all went to sleep.

What I didn’t know at the time, though, was how important Karin would become to me. From that point on, we were linked because she would become an important role model, although I didn’t know it yet.

The next day we left and headed back to Tempe. Again, we had to flee our camping companions, so we moved into a vacant house that appeared empty for quite some time and miraculously had running water, electricity, and, holy moly, air conditioning. Well, that secret didn’t last, as you can imagine. Showers for everyone!

Knowing that we couldn’t ever really have a quiet and smaller place to ourselves for long, Cuddles and I decided we wanted to hitchhike to New York. I’m still not sure why I didn’t choose Chicago, given my romantic feelings towards the place, but we chose New York because we thought maybe there were more interesting people and who knew what would happen. Anything can happen in New York. It wasn’t like we’d find a small place to ourselves, that’s certain.

We sat at the coffee shop, projecting our vision to anyone who would listen so we could get our first ride out of town. We needed someone to get us started and drop us off somewhere. Eventually, two guys seemed up for the adventure. We told them that we only had maybe $10 to our name and that’s all we could contribute to the ride, but they decided the adventure was worth so much more, so we didn’t need to pay them. We honestly had the best part of the trip with these guys. They drove us to Fort Defiance, Arizona, where I met up with my friend Tamar so we could do some work around her house to earn some more money to keep going. Once we had some cash, the guys took us to Albuquerque and dropped us off on the outskirts of town at a Denny’s.

Denny’s has saved me more than once with their bottomless coffee and warmth, but their generosity only goes so far, and you have to leave. Usually, after a shift change, they let the next shift know how long you sat at a table, and then you get bounced, but if you are lucky, you can sit in a warm place and eat condiments, drink hot beverages and be safe for about 8 hours.

Well, the 8 hours were up, and it was time to stand on the freeway. Our luck was great because we were picked up immediately by what looked like a rape mobile. It was a van with no windows other than the front and a man inside covered in tattoos. He pulled over, hopped out, opened the door, and told us to get in. The scariest guy ended up being the most admirable man of all. This man was recently released from prison for murdering his brother (no joke) and had decided to turn his life around. He saw saving us on the side of the highway as something good he could do for another human being.

This man drove us most of the way to a commune outside of Jemez Springs, New Mexico, where we planned on staying until winter had passed, and then we were going to push onwards further East. When we got out of the van, he handed us $20 and gave us a blessing he claimed was from God. We used some of the money to buy french fries, and we then stuck our thumbs out again until we were picked up by two men in a hatchback that I decided to call Cheech and Chong. I fell asleep in the car for a bit until it started swerving. The car driver had decided to start drinking while I was sleeping and had difficulty keeping anything straight. Still, by some stroke of luck, he got us to the gates of the commune, which was at the bottom of a volcano crater with active hot springs all around, so the whole place smelled like putrid farts.

We said our goodbyes to Cheech and Chong and hiked up the rest of the way to our new home for the fall and winter, and we were greeted by none other than Dad, our former homeless friend who had Gandalf-length hair and a beard that was tinted purple. He gave us a warm hug, kissed us both on top of our heads, and then showed us to our trailer. We had a little trailer to ourselves with a tiny bed and blankets. It was heaven because we knew that 20 other homeless people wouldn’t invade us at any time. This place was ours as long as we worked and as long as we were welcome.