Old Town Abyss (Part 2)

I turned right on Broadway off Burnside and into Old Town and a wasteland of tents, tarps, shanties, garbage, graffiti, boarded up store fronts, men splayed and twisted on sidewalks, prone bodies in alcoves and alleys, men and women wearing blankets and bathrobes wandering through intersections, bedraggled human beings transporting belongings in baby strollers and bowling bags, stray litter everywhere, a darting rat, shredded landscaping.

I asked aloud: what has happened to my country? Mark didn't say anything.

My disbelief and disorientation were almost complete and when I saw what was formerly known as the bus station, they were. The entire building was fenced off and appeared as something out of the Battle of Stalingrad. The causalities were everywhere: men slumped against the fence; men passed out on sidewalks every few feet; someone asleep inside what used to be a geranium planter; a woman steadying herself by holding on to a lamppost.

I flash backed to my previous visit to this bus station. My journalism students from Newport High School had ridden the Amtrak from Albany to Union Station in Portland a few blocks away. We walked past this very spot on our way to Pioneer Square. We were on a unique field trip to produce a special train-inspired edition of our print magazine, the Harbor Light. That day we were the happiest publication crew in the history of American high school journalism. We'd met some charming weirdos in Old Town on that trip in 2013 but those characters were vanished forever and now it felt like a strange asymmetrical Civil War was quietly unfolding and the living detritus (an oxymoron) of that war was all around me but wouldn't be living much longer.

How any advocate for the homeless could argue that these people shouldn't move into temporary shelter or other housing and remain where they were so they wouldn't be traumatized by a move was immoral and they needed a calling out in public over that insane position.

The city had razed a few old buildings and erected some new ones in my long absence from Old Town. Some of the traffic patterns had changed and I was confused. Mark pointed the way to Central City Concern's Transition Projects. It was a concrete and glass institutional-like structure that was totally inhospitable from every angle of approach. There was no place to park at the front entrance, a single gate staffed by a woman wearing a sports bra and shorts equipped with a radio and clipboard. A few zombies milled near the gate. I double parked and told Mark to go inside and get the process started. I'd park a few blocks away and join him in minutes. He got outside and I drove away.

I circled around and witnessed more carnage. I found a place to park and jogged toward the institution. I passed a homeless man and woman drinking wine from a box and playing basketball, a shirtless homeless man riding a 50-year old Schwinn ten speed at breakneck speed down the wrong direction of a one-way street, an obese homeless woman jaywalking in a cast, an elderly homeless man with bandages on his bare feet in a daze while leaning against a building, a man living under a pickup canopy that was flat on the ground of an abandoned parking lot, a homeless woman nodded out and slumped forward as she straddled a BMX bike, a homeless man strumming a pink acoustic kid's guitar with no strings, and several homeless men and women in wheelchairs and walker with jury rigged containers to hold cans and bottles.

This was all in three blocks.

I rounded a corner and saw Mark outside the institution. I came up to him and asked what had happened inside. His story was confusing but he narrated something about someone wanting to take his photograph, some paperwork, and he just backed out. He was overwhelmed. His face wasn't really registering where we were.

Let's try again, I said and led the way through the gate. The staffer never bothered to face me. I told her why we were there and who had told us this was the place for an assessment.

He can fill out the assessment online.

No. There is no such thing. We're going inside.

She wordlessly issued me a number and I took it. Mark and I walked through a bleak courtyard and into a lobby surrounded by lockers. Two staffers stood behind a counter and a Plexiglas barrier. A homeless woman with her yoga pants down to her shins revealing black underwear was arguing about some mishap in the digital netherworld that somehow didn't register her existence and thus she wasn't receiving certain benefits. The exchange was heating up when I approached the other staffer with Mark at my side. This staffer wore a spiked dog collar and had a gelled hairstyle reminiscent of Satan's horns as depicted in medieval illuminated manuscripts.

I explained who I was, who Mark was, and our predicament. I explained that I was told on the phone by an employee working in this building that Mark could receive his assessment and possible referral to housing right here. All Mark had to do was fill out the form RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.

No. No form here. I don't know anything about it.

Can you call someone?

No.

I have someone here who is ready to get off the streets, ready for shelter. This is fucked up.

I didn't want to use profanity but it slipped out. I could feel myself losing it. I never lose it.

The staffer handed me a business card of someone who worked in the building on transitional housing for the homeless.

You can call or email her.

You mean someone in this very building?

Yes.

That's fucking ridiculous. We're standing here. My friend needs help.

You can take your friend to the Multnomah Safe Rest Village.

No I can't. It doesn't work that way.

I felt ready to channel the Peter Finch/Howard Beale character in Network. Mark hadn't said a word.

The staffer didn't care. We were a dime a dozen every 12 minutes of a day job. Would anyone making a living serving the homeless get off their ass and help one homeless person out of homelessness?

We left. We exited the bottom of the abyss. We walked to my car and I ranted. Mark listened but didn't add to my rant. A block away from the institution, the full force of my frustration boiled over and then I calmed down. I began thinking.

I had followed all the rules and procedures trying to help Mark. Nothing. I had approached his problem with conventional wisdom. Nothing. Conventional wisdom had never worked in any aspect of my professional, personal, creative and spiritual lives. If I had used it during my pariah status of incarceration, probation and the ongoing terrible aftermath, I'd be dead.

It hit me. I knew what I had to do to help Mark and it was going to be fun!

Mark was talking about something when I interrupted him. “Do you remember the television show, The Rockford Files, with Jim Garner?”

“Yes,” said Mark. “It was one of the four shows from that era where someone says, 'He's dead Jim.' Can you name the others?”

What the hell?

I ignored his preposterous question and launched into a rhapsodic review of The Rockford Files and explained how Rockford was always running some con in pursuit of justice and assuming ridiculous identities to obtain information or get around red tape. One of Rockford's identities was Billy Jo Meeker. Garner played the character to the hilt with a hick Southern drawl and bluffed his way through to achieve a desired result.

My desired result was obtaining residency for Mark in the Multnomah Safe Rest Village. To do so, I needed to go full on Jim Rockford, channel Billy Jo Meeker, and bullshit my way through the bullshit. It might not work, but I had to try.

Mark loved the idea and kept quizzing me on his trivia question. Finally, the answer came to me:

James West in The Wild Wild West.

Jim Phelps in Mission Impossible.

James T. Kirk in Star Trek.

Mark said he was impressed. That we were talking about classic television shows while walking through a hellish landscape of human misery and suffering was weird but somehow soothing.

On the drive home, I picked up more details about Mark's life. We talked more Rockford Files and I continued to rage against the abyss. I was doing everything I could to get one homeless man off the streets of a city facing a homeless crisis, a city with hundreds, if not thousands of paid public and non profit employees trying to alleviate the homeless crisis, and not a single person would help me help Mark. The idea of progressive governing was dying inside me by the death of a thousand bureaucratic cuts. I was advocating for Mark and getting nowhere. I could also tell from the look on Mark's face during the fiasco in Old Town that he was losing resolve. Any day he might tell me to just quit.

I parked my car across the street from Mark's sidewalk. Donny and Jacob were gone. We both got out and I handed over his backpack. I fished out a $20 bill from my wallet and told him to get lunch. Mark thanked me and slung the backpack over his shoulder.

“I'm not giving up,” I said. “I'm going full on Jim Rockford. Hello, Billy Jo Meeker!”

Mark laughed. We shook hands. He crossed the street and headed toward his sidewalk. I got in my car and drove one block to home.