How to be Homeless in Southern California, circa 1983
One finds oneself without a home in a number of ways. Mine was perhaps the least interesting.
Step 1: Marry the first boy who says he loves you. Never mind that you are but eighteen and broken by a childhood of trauma and have NO BUSINESS whatsoever getting married. Do it anyway.
Step 2: Allow that boy to move you across the country to a dilapidated family farm, attend your own wedding one week later in the garden of a library, surrounded by not one person you know, save for the man standing across from you emphasizing the “honor and obey” part, spend your wedding night in a cheap motel room next to the boiler room and lie awake all night wondering if the noise from the boiler drowned out your groom’s terrible, terrible words to passersby. Cry.
Step 3: When your blonde, blue-eye groom tells you he’s taken a job as a motorcycle mechanic working the graveyard shift, do not question him. When he moves the both of you to a pitiful, squalid motel along the highway just outside of Bloomington, Minnesota, do not protest.
Step 4: You may risk the ire of your new husband by calling home to your father to ask for advice. You do it anyhow. When your father responds that you’re an adult now and on your own, go ahead and panic. Then eat one dozen donuts from the shop across the highway. Throw up. Cry.
Step 5: Believe every word of your blonde, blue-eyed spouse’s story about being “persecuted for his faith” at work when he quits. NEVER question what the next step is. Let him remind you that your lives are in God’s hands and that the capital H He has a plan.
Step 6: Feel secretly relieved when Blondie shares that God has told him to return to San Diego. Pack your things into one small, sad bag and toss it in the trunk of your 1972 Dodge Dart Swinger.
Step 7: Make it all the way to Albuquerque before the Swinger throws a piston rod. Swallow every syllable of your “I thought you were a MECHANIC” tirade and empty the trunk, leave the Swinger to a junkyard, climb into the U-Haul, and pray for better days. Be disappointed.
…to be continued.