Confessions of A Peanut Butter Junkie

So I wound up back at the Clearwater Homeless Intervention Project shelter. I got back in October of 2006, my second time starting over at the C.H.I.P. center.
I met a guy named Scott Rollins that time. He was cool, and he stands out as the only person I have met at the C.H.I.P. center that I genuinely liked and it’s to bad, because he was my enemy right from the start. He would bring movies back to the C.H.I.P. center and the movies he picked always seemed to have a subliminal message just for me.
One time Scott Rollins and I watched part of the old Tom Cruise flick “Legend” together. It’s a fantasy movie directed by Ridley Scott, and it’s not so great.
The movie features the devil and here is one of his lines,
The Lord of Darkness: Oh, Mother Night! Fold your dark arms about me. Protect me in your black embrace. I sit alone, an impotent exile, whilst this form, this presence, returns to torment me!
Right. Impotent exile. Got it.
He brought a few others that always seemed to have a ridiculous undercurrent or theme that had a little something to do with my hopeless situation.
He insisted on watching “The Ringer” with me. It stars Johnny Knoxville as a guy who fixes the Special Olympics by posing as a mentally handicapped person, all so that he can pay off his bad debt.
Mike Murphy, the fat bastard from Mercury Insurance was a big fan of “The Ringer” and I remember him actually pitching the film to me one time.
Despite Scott Rollins’s poor taste in movies I liked him any way. He had this way of talking and I loved the sound of his voice. Scott is a big guy. Big hands. Big feet.
Big. Not the kind of guy you want to piss off. Not for any reason. So I just stayed cool.
But eventually I called him on his odd choice of films for him and I to watch. He implied that I am a total paranoid schizophrenic. I implied that he is my enemy and that I know that he is my enemy. It’s a shame because I really liked him. Still do.
The guy I met my second time through the C.H.I.P. program that I didn’t like so much was named Rick. His last name sounds like but is not spelled like: Kazmarick. That’s kind of a phonetic spelling. Rick will talk your ear off. Rick is very well read, and smart.
Rick is a Republican, or at least he posed as one to me. Rick will defend President Bush, and will not concede that President Bush is a huge asshole.
But at least Rick would talk about things. Most people at the C.H.I.P. center had no interest in talking about greater social, economic, or political issues. I keep up on current events, and I have some odd opinions about some things. We talked quite a bit, because my bed was right next to Rick’s bed in the men’s dorm room. When I got to an issue I did not agree with him on, I always folded. I would concede and then just restate my own opinion. Often I would talk with him about things that I like such as books or movies, and I would do this to avoid a political discussion.
I never completely trusted Rick Kazmarick. He came on strong, and I always got the feeling he wanted something from me. My soul perhaps?
Ken, Ken, Ken, your saying. You’re a beer drinking, porno watching, drunk driving,
pill popping, pot smoking, coffee drinking, pervert, with no soul left what so ever.
Nope. I’ve still got nothing but soul!
Finally I want to tell you about a guy whose real name I don’t even know.
This dude is an ex junkie or a struggling junkie, and by junkie I mean the hard stuff.
A heroin user.
He’s spooky looking as hell. He looks like the lead singer from the Rock band Anthrax, he’s covered in tattoos, and he has this odd looking goatee. Everyone called him Tweak, because he was tweaking.
One time Tweak approaches me as I am sitting on my bed in the morning. I think I had just put on my shoes. He starts up a conversation. I’m not rude. I talk to the guy.
I admit to this Tweak that I am a convicted felon and things are not exactly looking to good for me and he turns around and says, “I can help you get an unregistered hand gun. It’s what I do.”
Hu? What?
What the fuck?
Then Tweak dropped off the face of the Earth. When I got back to the C.H.I.P. center later that evening he was gone.
Someone pitched a line of bullshit so long I think it stretched from Earth to Alpha Centauri. That’s 4.37 light years, or 25.8 trillion miles from home. If E.T. had been staying at the C.H.I.P. center he wouldn’t have had to phone home, he could have walked home on the line of bullshit someone was pitching.
See they told me that Tweak disappeared because he had an infection around his heart and had to go to the hospital and that he would be staying there a while. I think Tweak may have had an infection, but I think it was around his brain and not his heart.
My guess is Tweak was in jail. I have no proof though.
I think I would have been okay the second time through the C.H.I.P. program if it hadn’t been for First Global Services.
I was glad that they took me back, I needed a job, but man do I hate telemarketing. As much as you hate getting calls from telemarketers, I hate calling you as a telemarketer even more.
Despite how much fun I was having at First Global Services, I hung in until January of 2007. Then one day my boss called me into his office and said that I was not doing my part by not giving my attendees specific directions to wherever the travel seminar was being held. It was part of my job to really sell the seminar, and if the person I was speaking with agreed to attend it was also part of my job to make damn sure they got to the seminar by going over the driving directions with them. I gave the seminars a real soft pitch, and I never went over directions unless the person I was speaking with asked for them. I would give the address of course. But this was not enough. So considering that my boss was not happy with the way I was doing my job, and considering that I was not happy with the job I called it quits.
This created a big problem at the C.H.I.P. center. One I didn’t tell any of the administrators, and two they found out. I knew that they knew, but it was my duty to go to them and inform them. Because I didn’t I was punished, and punishment meant that I would be sleeping on the floor again. This is kind of miserable because you have no where to be. You have to roll out a little sleeping mat each evening and then roll it up each morning even on weekends too, so that you are effectively homeless again. You
have no where to be.
I started looking for work. I didn’t have much luck, so eventually I wound up at Special Data Processing. I took what I could get. But a lot of time had passed and because of my sleeping situation at the C.H.I.P. center I was exhausted. If I could have hung in there another week or so I would have been okay, but I couldn’t. One day I just had to sleep. It was on a weekend. So I checked into a hotel. By doing this I blew my budget. You have to keep a budget at the C.H.I.P. center. Here’s how it works. You get to keep 70 dollars each week. Everything else you come by has to be put into an account. They monitor this activity each week and violation on budget is a big one. They’ll kick you out for this kind of thing.

So I checked into a cheap motel to get some sleep. I crashed. When I woke up and felt a little better I went back to the C.H.I.P. center to get my stuff. It was February of 2007.
This year. I was homeless again.
Now before I left the C.H.I.P. center that time a couple of odd things happened. One time I was accused of smelling bad. The problem was I had just gotten out of the shower. I think three guys came over to my bunk and demanded that I get in the shower. I said no.
But they were really insistent. One of them called me dog. They use it as a kind of term of endearment I think.
“Hey dog, chill,” someone said.
“Don’t dog me,” I said.
See they wanted to get me into the shower for some reason but I was not in the mood to play along. I know I didn’t stink but that’s what they were accusing me of.
Another time I had a little problem there was in December of 2006. Some old guy named Lesley or Leslie, he was talking shit and he was in my area over near my bunk and he started to talk about poisoning the food out in the common are. See at the C.H.I.P. center there is a common kitchen area where you can keep a little bit of food if you want. I never do because people are always stealing each other’s food and I don’t want anything to do with it. But here comes this old guy Lesley and he starts talking about poisoning the food so that if someone steals his food they will get sick. Now I’ve told you about how I have been poisoned, and I have implied that I didn’t think it was so cool. Well when I heard old Lesley talking about poisoning someone, actually laughing about it, I got really pissed. Especially since someone had just poisoned me with dick juice. Right there at the C.H.I.P. center.
I tore old Lesley a new one. I called him a fucking freak.
“Poisoning someone’s food is not funny you fucking freak,” I said.
I called him a fucking freak several times. I yelled. I can be loud if I have to.
There were a number of people standing around, and I think I scared the crap out of all them. After that they tended to call me bipolar. But I am not bipolar. I am anti bullshit though.
Back when I worked at Mercury Insurance sometimes I would walk around all day without my glasses on. Someone once asked me about it.
“Hey Ken how come you don’t have your glasses on?” They asked.
“I’m maximizing my efficiency by minimizing my bullshit,” I said.
Old Lesley left not soon after that. I don’t know if he left because of me or if he had a few issues of his own. The C.H.I.P. center it just has a way of wearing people out.
Another time I was physically threatened by a huge fat guy with enormous bitch tits.
It was such a funny fight. He was trying to tempt me into hitting him, and I begged him to hit me.
“Hit me. Hit me,” I said.
We were fighting over the bathroom really. He had left his stuff in the bathroom and then disappeared so when I showed up to get a shower and I found his stuff I just picked it up and moved it out of the bathroom and then along comes Mr. big boobs and he starts threatening me and giving me a bunch of crap about moving his stuff.
This same guy, the guy with the huge man boobs, he was always going on about how the C.H.I.P. center is just like prison.
The Clearwater Homeless Intervention Project has a number of sponsors. And they are:
The St. Vincent de Paul Society. The Clearwater Police Department. The Salvation Army, and the Clearwater Housing Authority.
The C.H.I.P. center is a police substation. There are always at least two Clearwater Police officers on the premises at all times, although you hardly ever see them.
But still I hated to hear old Mr. Big Boobs saying a thing like that. You get to live there for free. You don’t pay rent, and you usually get at least one really good meal a day.
There was a guy named Rodney Calhoun at the C.H.I.P. center the second time I was there. I never heard Rodney use a sentence that didn’t have the word fuck in it. He never had anything good to say. Okay I take that back. He once went on for twenty minutes about some ribs he had eaten at a place in Minneapolis. It was a combo place. You could eat barbeque ribs and look at naked chicks all at the same time. Rodney Calhoun.
“Best fucking ribs I ever had,” Rodney says.
One time Rodney comes up to me as I am standing out in front of the C.H.I.P. center. I think it was a Monday evening. I was waiting to head over to the St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen for a bite to eat.
“They’re serving fucking hot dogs again,” Rodney says.
I didn’t say anything to him. Not my job to brighten up this guys day, and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have anyway. But what I was thinking about when he said that to me was how many times I had eaten hot dogs when I lived in my own apartment. See when I lived on my own hot dogs were a staple. I always had a pack of hot dogs and some relish in the fridge. Weather you boil your dogs, cook them in a pan on the stovetop or nuke them, they are a quick delicious meal. And if it is a quick delicious meal, it is the bachelor’s best, best friend. I love hot dogs, as American as apple pie or baseball for crying out loud.
But here’s old Rodney Calhoun, “They’re serving fucking hot dogs again.”
Yikes, free hot dogs with baked beans. Let me run for my life.
Many times as I eat a free meal at the St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen I think of my father, and the money that he has given to the Catholic Church over the years. I bet I could eat there once a day for ten years and not recoup that money. But I tell you, when I eat there I don’t feel guilty. I am thankful though, in more ways than one.
I never really completely understood organized religion until I became homeless. But each morning 7 days a week people from various Christian faiths, volunteers mostly, take the time to prepare and serve a meal to people who can’t afford to buy one. And on many nights, volunteers from various Christian faiths come back to the St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen and prepare another meal just for the people who are staying at the C.H.I.P. center. This is the one meal a day I would get usually Monday through Thursday. Weekends are kind of iffy as far as meals go if you are staying at the C.H.I.P. center.
But I swear it at least put some of Christianity into perspective for me. Seeing people actually doing something, rather than just spouting the gospel, suddenly all the years of attending Catholic Church at least once a week seemed to make a little more sense.
When I left the C.H.I.P. center in February of 2007 I stopped eating at the St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen. I got as far away from that part of Clearwater as I possibly could. I was working at Special Data Processing. I tended to travel up and down U.S. 19 because it was convenient to where I was working. I spent so many nights out doors. It wasn’t that bad.
I usually had two meals a day. I would eat at Dunkin Donuts in the morning, 2 donuts and a large coffee, and then at night I would hit any one of the number of restaurants that are close to the offices of Special Data Processing. Ci’Ci’s Pizza, Subway, Wendy’s, Taco-Bell, yada, yada, yada. Even though I was only having those two meals a day I actually started putting on weight. Eating donuts every day is not healthy.
I had a pay check coming in. It was tiny, but it was something.
“Sweepstakes entry center. May I have your ID number please,” I would say.
Then I would pitch the most unbearable line of misleading bullshit imaginable. They were paying me to.
“If you win the million dollar sweepstakes, how would you spend all that money?” I was paid to say.
After this inane mind numbing insulting rhetoric I would then bamboozle callers into subscribing to a magazine. Then I would pass the call on to a “verifier” whose job it was to sell the poor unsuspecting individual yet even more magazine subscriptions. I talked to some very lonely sweet old people who were being buried alive under as much as 8 monthly periodicals.
The place left me feeling dirty. All the way down to my soul. I knew that it was a temporary thing. I just didn’t have the heart to screw people over with such reckless abandon.
I was so sick of this in about the first five minutes.
With my check I usually squirreled enough away for two nights indoors each week.
The best days were Sundays, and Wednesdays. These were my days off. I would check in at a cheap motel as early as possible and either sleep or watch T.V. No partying. No booze. I didn’t do any writing either. I bided my time and waited to go back to the C.H.I.P. center yet again.