Living In Public

I got here too early. Way too early, at the end of February.

I wanted to get a good deal on a used car at a time of year when car sales are slow, and to pick up one from at least a year ago rather than a few months ago. Via Hertz Car Sales, anyway, more reliable than Bob's Random Car Sales Lot or a private party.

I have no home here anyway, so I needed to make a transaction happen within a span of days rather than of weeks or months. That part worked. And then what?

I sat. In the rain. In the rain inside the library. In the rain inside the car. In the rain, sleeping, at night, in the car, listening to the rain pound down. For a long time now. Like a week short of three months, although the rain let up about a month back. Despite that, I still have to wait.

First I waited for the rain to end, and now I'm waiting for high-country snow to melt.

I've checked. Anything above 4000 feet (1200m) still lies under snow. Can't walk there. Can't drive close enough to walk there. The backcountry is closed, the roads are. Even some low places I could go have washed-out roads, so I can't go there either. And now the Memorial Day weekend is here, and all sorts of nuts will be out driving around. Have to wait that out.

Maybe in a week. I will get out. I will. That's why I'm here.

Right now, though, I'm waiting. Still waiting. Waiting is harder than it sounds, partly because everywhere I go, I'm visible. Out there. A fixture of any public place I happen to be in, and there are no private spaces for me here.

I used to live here. I had an apartment. I liked it. I was in my apartment a lot, and when I wasn't in there, I knew that I could return to it, go through the door, shut the door, and be home. Alone. Alone and quiet and safe and private. I can't do that now, not here, not at this time.

I have a car. I can move, I can drive, I can go, but I can't drive home. I can't be home. I have none. I can be a guy sitting in his car eating in a parking lot, or a guy parked, sleeping in the back of his car, in what I hope is a place that no one will investigate.

Everything I do is public now — sleeping, eating, bathing, pissing, shitting, traveling, cleaning house, making my bed, reading, sorting, packing, unpacking. Everything. All of it.

Even if I'm out in the woods, privacy is temporary, if I happen to be in a place where no one else is, at that moment, then I am alone for that moment only. When others are around my privacy is partial — screened from one side if I'm on the other side of my car, which just leaves me open and visible and vulnerable, at least to being seen, on the side I'm on, anyway. There is no resolution, no absolute, as in closing the solid front door of my apartment and shutting out all the world without exception.

Now I'm out there, out here. I'm here, and if you are too, then you are too, and all I can do is to put up with it, or drive away. Meanwhile I have to do only those things that are allowed in public, and not do the others, and try not to look too "suspicious", which is a description these days.

It gets stale. It does.

If I do any more of this next year, and I might, or might not, I'm doing it in a van. It would not be glorious or luxurious but it would be private. That's all I really crave. I could sit on the floor of a van with a squirt bottle and washcloth and bathe. I could do that, with the cover provided by even a small van, and be satisfied, in my own little way, but I can't do that in the vehicle I have now, which is too small even for me, and all windows.

So later then. We'll let things stew for now. I have months to go. We'll let things stew and later on I'll decide yes or no, or stay or go, but I won't do things this way again. I am not a public person and need to live up to that

In Case Of Problems, Steal

One of my recent problems has been walking into a supermarket and forgetting to bring my own bag. You have to do that around here now.

I moved away at the end of 2012, and when I came back six months later, bags cost 5¢. If you wanted one, which duh?

And then they give you one of those old ⅙-bushel brown paper bags that begin to rip as soon as you touch them, like what we got every time we went grocery shopping in the 1950s. Progress, eh?

But they really expect you to bring your own, and if you walk out of Al's Sooper Markit without a bag, carrying a few goods in your hands, then they want to see your receipt. Unlike if you walk out of Al's Sooper Markit with a bag, carrying a few goods in that bag (which you got at Peggy's House-O-Valu, and carrying Peggy's logo), no one blinks.

Well, pisser anyway. So what do do?

Q: What to do about what?
A: What to do about going into any and every store and forgetting to bring my own bag.

Ah - I finally figured it out: Steal one.

I buzz through the produce section and grab a couple of those clear plastic bags they have hanging there. Some stores even have more than one size/weight option. They're small, but if I'm not buying much, I can use one of those.

Then, on the way out, I also drop my receipt into it, with the store logo facing outward, and don't have to get searched for not carrying my stuff in a $20 "sustainable" heavy cloth shopping bag, or a brown paper one which if I'm really lucky will mostly hold together all the way out to my car.

But wait - there's more. A better idea is to steal some of these produce bags every time I buy something. Then I hang one from a small 3M Command Hook I've stuck onto the passenger side of my car's dash, and use it for trash. Being plastic, albeit lightweight, they're good for both dry trash and wet trash.

I also bought some larger bags for random larger cruft I accumulate, and I can put several of these small bags into one of the larger plastic trash bags, and get the effect of double-bagging if I have something really messy, like dripping food cans, or used toilet paper/wet wipes. (I clean up after myself.) Or worse. (In case I need to do something while squatting inside the car. It happens.)

Neat. This works. I get the bags I need, and since I grab these produce bags only when I buy things, I'm sort of paying for them anyway.

One online vendor chosen mostly at random sells 2000 of these produce bags for $45, which is 2.25¢ each, retail. Wholesale is probably a tenth of that price, so three seconds of the cashier's time reaching for a paper bag to sell me costs more for both of us.

I'm not worrying.

---

Comments? Send email to hoofist@nullabigmail.com