Bed #54 - My Short Stint in Immersion Journalism

I usually spend my Sunday evenings in my warm house watching “Desperate Housewives” on my plasma T.V. Tonight I’m doing something different. Very Different. I’m checking into homeless shelter, as a homeless person.

Why? 1) I need to discover what it’s like to be in solidarity with the poor beyond e-giving and Christmas shoe-boxes, 2) I talk a lot about social justice and “the least of these” but I feel like there are so many barriers that keep me from understanding their plight, and 3) The journalist inside me wants an experience, some sort of immersion into the homeless life to see it firsthand.

My wife, Jenna, is dropping me off at a Christian mission in downtown Indianapolis. As I don my homeless attire: dirty jeans, unshaven face, brown hooded sweatshirt, black wool cap and threadbare shoes-shoes are important, I’m told-I begin to get nervous about my idea. I discard my wallet, watch, glasses and wedding ring, although, I take out four-dollars for an emergency fund, in case I need to bargain for my life or something. I should tell you that I have a nervous tic. My fingers like to twirl my wedding ring around when I’m anxious. Already, unconsciously, my fingers look for my ring and find a naked finger, it’s a strange feeling.

We drive by the mission, people are standing outside smoking. We pull into a nearby lot. Inside I’m scared and I want to call the whole thing off, but I don’t. I kiss my wife, open the car door and she smiles and says, “Get your game face on.” I pull up my hood over of my wool cap and begin walking toward the mission. It’s raining. Not a pounding rain but a pesky drizzle that gently covers the sidewalk on the way to the mission.

I make my way inside to find a crowded hallway. A bald black man grins and has me lift my arms as he wands me for weapons. He politely tells me where to check in-down the hall to your right, but wait till they call for first-timers. The hallway leads to an open foyer that they call the day room. It’s over packed. The temperature has dropped and the rain has driven many to the mission this evening. I walk into the day room, all the chairs are taken. There’s a broken down T.V. in the middle of the room with an old movie on. I fidget for a while then I find a place on the floor. I brought a book, Sherwood Anderson’s, “Winseburg, Ohio.” I don’t know why, but books are like security for me. I crack it open and faint reading as I study the room. There’s a guy in a chair behind my right shoulder, he’s talking to himself, or me, I don’t know, but I’m not turning around.

Soon a voice on the loudspeaker tells everyone that check-in can begin. Since it’s my first time, they tell me I can go ahead of everyone. I walk up to the sliding glass window where two guys are yelling at everyone to back up. The attendant takes my ID and then types my info into the computer with only his index finger and says, “What’s the cause of your homelessness?” He gives me multiple choice, “Alcoholic, loss of job, prison, mental illness?” I tell him it’s complicated. I don’t think he liked that. He wants to check a box. I tell him to check “loss of job.” He smiles and checks the box on the computer. He looks at a list of beds and discusses bed options with another worker. They assign me bed #54. The man jokes with the other attendant and they say they’re giving me the penthouse. I’m not sure what they mean, but I’m happy to laugh with them. Then they send me back to the day room.

Still seatless, I wonder around the room trying not to get into anyone’s way-which is nearly impossible. I ask someone where the bathroom is and serpentine my way across the room again. The restroom is full of people changing, packing and unpacking and the sans-door stalls are filled to capacity.

Back in the room I find a seat on the floor, leaning against the wall, Indian-style. There’s a guy with a suit on that’s talking to everyone like it’s a business conference and we’re on break from a seminar. I feel like an extra in a Pursuit-of-Happiness spin-off.

There’s a large man with a classic crew-cut hair style that walks by and tells another thin man with a beard that he is filled with the Holy Spirit and that he can feel it in his body and that his lips are quivering. The other guy basically tells him to shut up, that he got all his stuff stolen that day and he doesn’t feel anything, certainly not the Holy Spirit.

A tall black man with dreads calls me over and asks me to sit in his chair and save it while he goes out to grab a smoke. I nod and he hands me a large Bible and says, “This is the good book, take care of it.” I oblige. He comes back a few minutes later and I return to the floor. That’s when I met Louis, an ex-carnie with a fusty gray beard and knotty shoulders. He scoots across the floor and against the wall next to me. Louis tells me his life story without even asking. He traveled around the country with the carnival; he was a self-proclaimed alcoholic, thief and heroin addict with Hep C. He breaks the room down for me and points out who’s who. The dealers, the lifers and the ones that carry too much stuff with them to be on the street. I ask Louis if he believes in God. He says, yes, and tells me about the time when a gang member hit him in the head with a pipe and he went into a coma but two little kids found him on the street and got him help. There’s simplicity to his logic that’s unmistakably child-like: God exists because he’s good, even to a thieving drug addict.

The squalid smell in the room is beginning to get to me. Louis then tells me that he doesn’t like this shelter because one time he had to sleep in the chapel on the floor and a guy got up in the middle of the night and pissed on another guy. I think I’m getting sick at this point. My stomach turns. It’s the smells, the stories, I don’t know what, but I try to breathe, to slow down and convince myself I can do this.

There’s a young guy on the other side of me. I ask him if it’s his first time here. He says no. I ask him a few other questions and find out that his parents disowned him because of his mental problems. He’s on Social Security but he wants to find a job. Soon a voice comes over the loudspeaker and says that the chapel is open for overflow. I stand up and make my way in with Louis. At this point I hear the rumbling again that there may not be enough beds tonight. I told myself before I started that I wouldn’t take a bed from someone so I careen back to the sliding window and tell the attendants that I’m giving up bed #54, the penthouse, and then I maneuver through the crowd and back to the chapel to wait for dinner.

At this point two older men got into a scuffle. A heavy-set white man and a tall, slender black man with gray flecked hair and lots of bags, too much for the street as Louis points out. The attendant rushes out with a security guard and tells both men that they are kicked out. The older black man argues but it’s no use, he begins to gather his five-or-six trash bags and stacks them on a makeshift cart. He almost makes it to the door before the bags tip and the contents spill. No one gets up to help. I watch him for a moment and decide to enter the scene and give him a hand. We walk out the double doors together into the night and the cold rain. I hand him one of his bags and then I noticed that the doors lock from the inside and I’m now locked out. I give the tall black man two of my four-dollars with a subtle “God bless.” He thanks me and I begin walking away from the mission, leaving Louis and all the others behind. The rain falls on me but I hardly notice it-or the cold. I walk past a plush hotel with two women exiting. I wonder what they think of me. I head to Monument Circle and use my remaining two dollars on a Grande Christmas blend. I find my way to a back table and begin writing this, in its original, filling three Starbucks napkins.

I have to say I feel relieved, guilty, hopeful and sad all at the same time. At the beginning of my experiment I think I romanticized it-I wanted to involve myself in some form of immersion journalism like Gay Telese or Jon Krakauer but in the end, as a homeless person, I couldn’t even make it till dinner. I discovered that the distance between my life and the homeless is greater than I care to admit, or experience.

My fingers flit to twist my wedding ring again but only rub skin. I look out to the lights wrapped around the trees on Monument Circle and wonder who will sleep in bed #54 tonight, the penthouse.