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).
In a little hut that the chair lift operator of the ski area (closed in the summer, when I was there) would use normally.
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.
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.
A window sill in a Vegas hotel. Was the broke friend on a guys trip and the floor was taken
On a train. It was at night and it was a long train ride, and it’s the only occasion where I remember falling asleep while sitting up!
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.
Bathtub full of vinegar and water after I got a bad sunburn.
Did that help?
Next to the exhaust vent of the local underground commuter rail (is that a metro or subway? It’s only for one stop). It got quite cold and vent provided a warm breeze. It was the last spot that night where security didn’t push me along from
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
When I was homeless I slept the kind of places homeless people sleep: Libraries, park benches, unused buildings, moving busses, the subway.
When I was in the Scouts I slept the kind of places adventurous campers sleep: an igloo I helped build, on top of and under picnic tables, brush lean-tos, under the stars on a mountaintop. The weirdest was probably one time the weather turned dangerous during a jamboree and we all decamped to the nearest YMCA and I slept on the hallway floor with a towel over my face because we couldn’t turn the lights off.
There was also the time I got locked out and couldn’t wake my wife up by phone or banging or yelling. It was one in the morning the coldest night of the year so I hopped the last train downtown and crashed in the break room at work on a massage chair.
On top of a torpedo in a submarine with loud af Navy Seals a few feet away.
How many hours had you been awake?
Oh, like, 12 hours. Maybe 13 or 14. Submariners live on an 18 hour day, not 24.
I once feel asleep, standing up, at a Static X concert. 12 straight hours of drinking will have that effect…
