Two months from today, I'll start my fifth year of homelessness.
Many of the men whom I met while I was homeless were sex offenders, although they never told me they were. I don't know which of them were; we never talked about it. When you're homeless, you're homeless; you can control so few things about your life that you have to deal with what is there, like everyone else. People who can't deal with being homeless are homeless for longer than people who feel like they can't deal with it and who want to kill themselves every day, and yet deal with it.
Many homeless men harassed me; many homeless women also harassed me, as did many shelter staff. I am permanently barred from almost every shelter in the Boston area, because I was mercilessly bullied at all of them until I couldn't take it anymore and yelled at someone. I was barred from both the Long Island Shelter and the Woods-Mullen Shelter for one incident, in which a male staff person at the Long Island Shelter grabbed me by the arm and I subsequently punched him in the face. I didn't know he had grabbed me until later, when someone told me that he had. What I thought had happened was that he was yelling at me, I started to walk away, and then suddenly I was facing in the opposite direction from where I was walking, he was very close to me and I felt rage. I remember him yelling at me, I remember me trying to walk away, I remember being suddenly facing him again, and I remember the rage that I felt right before I punched him in the face. I didn't know that the rage was from him grabbing me. He grabbed me in a room full of people. I later met a woman who told me that she was repeatedly gang raped by staff at the Long Island Shelter, which closed in 2014. My telling a supervisor at the Woods-Mullen Shelter what had happened did not remove the permanent bar; those shelters are part of the same system. I don't know why someone decided to turn a former city morgue into the Woods-Mullen Shelter, or why it's been such a dirty, awful, dangerous place for so many years, where people sleep on bare mattresses or even on dirty mats on the dirty cafeteria floor. I don't remember if you have to get up at 4:30, 5:00 or 5:30 a.m.; I haven't been at that shelter for a few years. When one or more people cough at you all night for their amusement, whether you have to get up at 4 or 5 or 6 is meaningless. One of the most difficult things for everyone who is homeless is sleep deprivation; everyone is tired for years.
Since 2010, I have blogged against sexual violence every day. I've been tormented for it by the conglomerate, and I'm about to lose another apartment and be homeless again because of the conglomerate's dehumanizing abuse of me.
I blogged because I thought the conglomerate was capable of hearing what I said. I thought the conglomerate was formed of people who were temporarily insane, and that they would realize that they were wrong.
There's been no infinitesimal increment of time since 2010 during which the conglomerate has treated me as if I'm a person, let alone a "real feminist." Not that anyone who's part of the conglomerate was talking about feminism in 2010 or 2011, 2012 or 2013. Its vogue only started a couple of years ago, and that's mostly been from a bunch of women who don't know what it is, talking about it after someone has done their hair and makeup and bleached their perfect teeth.
I know that everyone who was already abusing me before the election has used my refusal to bully President Trump and his family as yet another excuse to say that I deserve what has happened to me and what's about to happen to me.
Not everyone who was homeless when I was homeless bullied me. I was grateful to be able to talk to anyone who didn't, but I'm sure that many of the homeless men who didn't bully me were also sex offenders. I'm also sure that the conglomerate will exploit this page to say that sexual abuse isn't bad and that sex offenders shouldn't have to register; thousands of them were taken off registries while Mr. Obama was President.
I think what I'm saying at this page is that, when you have spent years of your life sleeping a few yards from poor people who are rapists and murderers, because a group of hyperprivileged, ignorant celebrities and the sexist social institutions that exploit their stupidity have made you the target of their relentless sexual aggression, it's not that you don't care if the President of the United States has not spent every year of his life being a nice person. You do what you have always done, which is to appreciate everything that happens every day, everywhere, that isn't lethal.
Copyright L. Kochman, April 1, 2017 @ 1:20 a.m./Title edited, with additions, April 3, 2017 @ 3:05 a.m. I need to stop being intimidated by the conglomerate's scoffing at my code policies. All of my code policies are weak defenses; there's nothing I can do.
