Short Life

Photo by Nastya Dobryvecher on Unsplash

After a mostly dysfunctional upbringing near Boston, Massachusetts, I left home. I traveled back and forth between California and Boston for a few years before heading to London, England. Initially, I went on a student visa and ended up staying for five years.

By 1990, I had been in London for two years. The funds that had paid my tuition and lodging at a small American university were long gone, and I was in a dire financial situation. Not realizing I was eligible for British nationality, I was living as an immigrant who had permission to stay, but not to work. I spent my days traversing Zone 3 of the London Underground, going to houses that I would clean. It did not pay quite enough to live on. 

Eventually, I could no longer afford my bedsit in Balham, a neighborhood in South London. That bedsit, and its location, were two of my favorites of my entire bedsitting existence. There were only three or four of us in the house, each with our own bedroom. The shared kitchen and bathroom were located one level above my room. Hot water in the bathroom was obtained by inserting a 10p coin into the meter, as was typical for bedsits during that era. But unlike other places I had lived, it was good and hot, and you got a lot of it.

My bedroom had a bay window overlooking the scruffy back yard, which was full of feral cats. They howled at all hours of the day and night. One afternoon, as I watched from the window, I witnessed a cat get raped very loudly. Animal behaviorists may take issue with my use of the word “rape,” but the action was abrupt, violent, and alarming. I found this particularly devastating. By then, my expectations of human behavior were low. It was somehow more crushing to realize that not even cats are spared sexual violence.

I had a dear friend, whom I’ll call J, who had squatted a fair bit in the 1970s when it was widespread. Now, a decade later, there was less of it around, but it was still feasible for the determined. Being free, squatting seemed like a viable option for solving my financial problems. However, I knew that becoming homeless, for me personally, would be very bad. Deep down, I just knew that it would be destabilizing and worsen my functioning in other areas. But J was confident and suggested I should start squatting now, as soon as possible, in order to start saving money sooner. At that point in my life, I was swayed to an alarming degree by the suggestions of others. So, despite my inner misgivings, I left my bedsit and embarked on the search for a squat.

I made multiple attempts at this for weeks. All failed. [For another tale of the squat-attempting phase in my life, please see my story, Eyes Wide Open.] I was becoming discouraged. One late afternoon, I walked up to the top of a hill in Finsbury Park, where I was now staying in J’s hallway, and sat on the grass. It was not a particularly enchanting view. The hill overlooked the sooty train tracks coming out of Finsbury Park station. The early evening sun was an orange smear in the grey London smog. But, apparently, there is something illuminating about being at the top of any elevation. I thought for a long time and had an important realization.

I realized that squatting is obtained through one means only: networking. People had to like you. I had always had problems at school with rubbing people the wrong way. I was downright unpopular, even. No wonder I was not meeting with any success. On the other hand, I had always shown myself to be very resourceful and clever about earning little bits of money. I needed to redirect my energy toward the thing I had a proven track record of doing well, and free it from my historic area of weakness.

Resolved, I set about earning as much money as I could. I needed to supplement cleaning with other sources of income. One of my favorite stints was to hand out free magazines at tube stations during the morning rush hour. This was in the pre-digital age, when people still read print magazines. This one catered to the large Australasian community in London at that time. It was full of useful ads and articles aimed at non-English, English-speaking Londoners. I read it regularly. 

It was a great gig. I phoned the distribution office at around 6 am to ask which station I was assigned to. I’d go to the stated station, where there would already be a few large bundles of magazines piled at the entrance. I’d stand at the exit and hand them out to dazed commuters as they left the station. I did that until 10 am, or when the magazines ran out. Then I’d take the tube to Camden Town, go into the office, and get paid ten pounds cash. It was easy, involved almost no personal interaction, and the day was mine from 10 am. 

As I had learned from the squatting attempts, the well-being of the homeless largely depends on networking. J continued to be helpful and started a word-of-mouth chain through which I heard about a vacancy in a short-life house. In the 1980s, "short-life housing" in the UK primarily referred to the temporary use of properties, often council-owned, that were awaiting demolition or redevelopment. They were rundown and unrentable, but they were a godsend to a broke, homeless person like me. One of the regular inhabitants, a young woman, was traveling back home to Germany and would not return for a couple of weeks. Her room was offered to me until then. 

This particular house was large and would have once been elegant. It was in the neighborhood of Crouch End, north of Finsbury Park. It was quite far from any tube stations, and there were not even very good buses. Despite the excess of walking, I was incredibly grateful to have this temporary home until the occupant returned.

On the day of my arrival, I met one of the house residents, whom I never saw again after that first meeting. After a brief orientation, I was free to explore. A large staircase was situated to the left of the spacious entry hall. Beyond the staircase was the open-air kitchen, in a single-story offshoot of the house. It was not intended to be open-air, but that’s where the big hole in the ceiling was. 

The floor above that contained the bathroom and a huge master suite, which was occupied by a male whom I never met. Every evening, when I walked past, the doors were open, the room was dark, and a television played loudly in the corner. Later, reflecting on this, I recognized the benefit of the loud television that was on 24/7. Whether he was there or not, the house always appeared the same. 

The bathroom contained an old porcelain toilet and bathtub, both of which were stained dark rusty brown.  There was no heat anywhere in the house, and no hot water. The tap water looked clean, tasted okay to drink, and was icy cold. Bathing was achieved by squatting in the tub and pouring cupfuls of water over the areas you needed to spot-clean. Needless to say, this endeavor was completed as quickly as possible. 

There were two bedrooms on the floor above that. The traveling young woman occupied one. The other was vacant. I had suggested to the resident I met that I stay in the vacant room, but he advised against it. Apparently, there were squirrels living under the roof, right above that room. Nevertheless, it seemed so ideal to occupy a vacant room, rather than one that was occupied, that I tried it anyway.

That room, like most in the house, was large and had elegant crown molding. That night, lying on the floor, I heard the squirrels running all around under the roof. They didn’t sound like squirrels. They sounded like gigantic bowling balls careening into the ceiling and along the walls.  There would be a big cacophony in one corner of the ceiling, then suddenly, it would flare up in a totally different part of the ceiling. The pattern of where the noise would materialize was completely random. It was the inability to predict where it was going to come from next that was as bad as its volume. 

Defeated, I walked down the hall to the travelling young woman’s bedroom. This room was more like a converted utility room or even a large closet. The smallness seemed cozy, however, and it was clear that she had put effort into making it comfortable. She had a few possessions along the wall, and a simple bed consisting of a duvet folded in half on the floor. It seemed so intrusive, sleeping in someone else’s bedroom. It didn’t feel right sleeping on her bed, so I slept on the bare floor next to it. It was much better than the squirrel room, at least. 

The next night, I looked longingly at the folded-up duvet on the floor. The makeshift bed had cheerful yellow sheets. I thought it probably wouldn’t be too bad if I just lay on top of the bedding. I carefully spread out some of my clothing to cover her sheets, so that I would not directly touch any of them. That seemed like the least I could do.  I carefully deposited myself onto the makeshift bed, making sure I didn’t touch any part of her bed linens. 

The third night was noticeably chillier. Whilst sleeping on top of her bedding, I had nothing with which to cover myself. I resisted temptation as long as possible, but eventually, the desire for comfort overtook me. I got fully into the bed, under the yellow sheets, and snuggled cozily into them. Compared to the bare floor, it felt like a five-star luxury hotel. I felt waves of gratitude for my unknown benefactor, who had created this comfortable space. From a hair found in the sheets, I learned that hers was long and dark. This contrasted with mine, which was short and blonde. You could even say that my hair was more traditionally German than hers. I found the comparison amusing.

I lay there, thinking about her. I felt connected to her, this young woman in another country whom I would never meet. I knew there were so many of us out there: young women, with no family, whether by choice or fact, who choose to forge a life in a foreign city. She was undoubtedly struggling, like I was, but had managed to save up enough to visit her homeland. Like me, she was no doubt grateful for this comparatively luxurious bedroom in the house with no heat and a hole in its roof. I drifted to sleep in the comforting embrace of these thoughts. 

The two weeks that I stayed in this house were pivotal. I was able to save most of the money I earned from my various gigs, which, in turn, was enough for a deposit on a proper bedsit. The value of these seemingly small occurrences cannot be overstated. It can mean the difference between falling into long-term homelessness, with the perils that ensue, or being able to get back on track. I will be forever grateful to the chain of people who led to my stay in that house, which was so crucial in my eventual return to a normal life. And especially, to my unknown counterpart on the European mainland, in whose room I found such comfort.  We all have these connections to people we will never meet, whose circumstances echo our own. We are but a single junction in an endless web of human existence, always connected.