Thomas Dunne Books buys US rights for Mop Men

Peter Joseph of Thomas Dunne Books recently aquired the US rights to Mop Men: California's Crime Scene Cleaners. The book will be an updated edition, and will be available spring 2009.

Thomas Dunne Books can be found here >>> thomasdunnebooks.com

Homeless in London

A Night on the Slabs Originally published in Time Out London

In the summer of 2004 I lived homeless and penniless on the streets of New York. My aim was to write a book that would capture, without drama and urban myth, the true reality of the life on the streets of New York City. To celebrate the UK release of ’31 Days – A New York Street Diary’ I took to the streets of London with a blanket and a disposable camera.


Day ONE - Wednesday 13th

I had completely forgotten about the boredom. Homelessness, not much fun at the best of times, is a time stopper when you’re without a companion. Since getting off the tube at Tottenham Court Road I have ambled restlessly.

Normally, when in the city alone, I go to a café and eat lunch. I make phone calls. I go shopping.

Today I walk up and down Charring Cross Road six times.

I queue in a McDonald’s on Oxford Street for the use of their toilet.

I sit in Soho Square watching students conduct surveys. .

It’s 3:45 pm, I’ve normally had lunch by now.


It’s late in the evening, around midnight, maybe later, when I find myself walking down Villiers Street towards the Embankment tube station. There are only a few people about, but when it starts raining heavily they quickly disappear. I take shelter in the doorway of the Pompidou Patisserie, which has been kind enough to leave the sun shade down.

The rain, getting heavier and heavier, bombs the pavement creating a wall of sound. Just as the first flashes of lightening fill the sky a man, smartly dressed and carrying a shoulder bag and umbrella, stops in the doorway. “Are you homeless?” he asks.

I am not into naff plot tricks, but there really is lightning in the sky and when it flashes and turns the man into a dark silhouette, I too think it is ridiculous, a lazy Hollywood film trick.

I am slow in answering. I don’t want to talk to anybody on my first night. I want to acclimatise first, to be alone. I certainly don’t want to explain my project now, late on a stormy night, to a silhouetted man. Being homeless in London scares me enough. In New York, I was always a bit of a novelty, my English accent cut me a lot of slack. Here in London my accent holds no value. So not wanting to explain myself, I lie, I say, “Yes, I’m homeless” thinking this will be his cue to move on and leave me alone.

“You lying cunt!” the man screams. “You ain’t fucking homeless, I should rip your fucking face off you cunt.”

While the level of aggression is shocking, I can’t fault him: after all, I am not homeless. It was naïve of me to think that my being slumped in a doorway with a backpack and a sour expression might be worth something in the way of validation. The man starts to walk up the hill, shouting as he goes, “I’m gonna come back here and fucking kill ya while I your sleeping. Y-o-u…”


Day TWO - Thursday 14th

Waking up is a big surprise. In New York I hadn’t slept at all on the first night, or for many nights thereafter. Even then it was never sleep, sleep. So while I feel relieved and a little excited to have survived my first night in London, to have slept even, I wake up exhausted and already sore.


I sit dozing in and out of sleep on Trafalgar Square at 7am. I watch two people feed pigeons from big sacks. The pigeons swoop and dive and swirl in great packs.

A man approaches the pigeon feeders and says something. One feeder turns to the other, “I don’t understand what he’s saying, do you speak any Russian?”

I don’t speak any Russian either, but going by the young man’s incredulous expression at the sight of two people feeding pigeons on a mass scale, I am pretty sure I could, with some accuracy, translate his meaning, if not his actual words.

But I don’t. I am too tired and not feeling very social or helpful. I decide to stop dozing and go into full on sleep mode.


Down on the Strand at 11pm a homeless crowd stands waiting for a scheduled food drop.

One homeless man looks at me as I shuffle on my feet. “It will be here,” he says. “They’re just running late.”

The man, I am guessing mid forties wearing a lumberjack shirt over a grey T-shirt, seems friendly and talkative. His name is Michael. He doesn’t flinch when I tell him about my project. Instead he asks where I slept last night.

“Look,” he says. “I am sleeping near hear in a theatre doorway, there’s a few of us there, but the guy who has the middle doorway is away, he’s gone to Basingstoke for three weeks, you can take his space if you like?”

It’s an offer I don’t refuse.


Day THREE – Friday 15th

The Strand has food drops most nights of the week. Tonight the crowd is well over 100 people, on account of it being ‘Rice & Chicken’ night. When the food arrives I am surprised by the neat and orderly queue that forms. Any shouting, pushing or shoving tends to come from people after they have collected their steaming polystyrene parcel.

“Fork? Where do ya fink I got the fucking fork? From the fucking Air?” shouts a pregnant girl as she barges her way back through the throng.

I start talking to a homeless man called James who, in his late twenties, peers out from under a fishing hat. James and I walk back along the Strand to find a doorway where we can sit and eat.

James asks me for the names of other publications I have written for; I mention the New York Post.

“Is that the same as the Washington Post?” he asks.

“Not quite,” I tell him. “The Washington Post is more credible.”

“Would Noam Chomsky think it was credible?”

“Does Noam Chomsky think any newspaper is credible?”

James laughs. I sit wondering, are we really discussing Noam Chomsky? If we are it’s going to be a short lived conversation, my knowledge of the bugger is very limited.

At this point a youngish guy, over weight with cropped hair and dark sunken eyes, who I also saw fighting on Trafalgar Square earlier today, stops in front of me.

He points a finger at my face and screams as loud as he can, “YOU! What’s you’re fucking name?”

“Alan,” I say as he stares angrily down at me. “What’s yours?” I ask, trying to keep things chatty. I watch as pure rage spreads across his face. “I was only going to say hello,” I tell him, offering him my hand. He stares angrily at first and then very daintily shakes my hand, or really just the finger tips and says, calmly, “Danny.”

Relief washes over me as Danny says, again calmly, “Give me a light.”

“Sorry,” I tell him. “I don’t smoke.”

“GIVE ME A FUCKING LIGHT!” he screams, bending into the shout.

Two of his friends come over. One, a girl I realise now and who I also (but thinking it was a boy) saw fighting earlier, turns and kicks the metal grill right next to James’ head. A nasty metallic crash fills the night. The girl keeps kicking.

James looks up between kicks, “Do you mind,” he says. “I’m leaning against that.”

The girl bends and shouts into James’ face, “I don’t fucking give a shit!” and goes back to kicking.

Danny is still shouting at me, though all I can hear is the crash of the metal grill.

James turns to me and with a slight grin asks rather loudly, “So have you read much Chomsky?”

I stare at him half frozen with fear; expecting any second to feel the full wrath of junky rage. But then I have another thought, James told me he’s been homeless for nine years, he must know better than me.

“I’ve read one of his books,” I say.

“I’ve read a few,” James tells me. “There’s a web site where you can read all his articles. I’ll give you the url.”

For the first minute of the conversation Danny continues to shout at me while his female doppelganger continues to kick the metal grill as hard as she can. She turns and says something to Danny, who screams back at her a torrent of expletives. She does the same back to Danny and very quickly they are in their own shouting match. A minute later they walk down the road, towards Trafalgar Square, not arm in arm, but peaceful at least.

I giggle nervously at James, “I thought that was going to turn into a fight then.”

“Nah, as long as you don’t say anything to them they soon get bored and move away. That’s the important thing, don’t say anything, But I said something, I couldn’t believe I was opening my mouth, I was so annoyed with myself when I heard my voice. Because these fuckers will stick a screwdriver in you without hesitation.”

“Really?” I ask.

“I’ve seen it happen!”


Back in the doorway of the Theatre Royal, (currently showing the Producers) I wake up at 4am. I watch as a young skinny guy with a can of beer peers into the doorways. He comes up close and stares, first to the un-named man in the furthest door, then Richy (who has retuned from Basingstoke but said it is okay for me to stay) then me (as I pretend to be asleep) and then on to Marijona, a Lithuanian, and then Michael. He then scurries off down the road suspiciously.

That’s one of them, I think in a moment of paranoia. Now they know where I’m sleeping. I lie awake and scared, until the sky starts to lighten.


Day FOUR – Saturday 16th

One homeless guy tells me Hyde Park is a safe place to sleep.

He says, “You have to hide inside at midnight, when the wardens come to lock the gates,”

Fair do’s. I stop off at Marble Arch first, thinking I will sit and catch up with some notes. When I get there I am greeted by a large yellow sign. It says ‘MURDER’.


We are looking for witnesses, can you help?

MURDER

On the 30th of August at about 00:30am a male was assaulted

Near to the subway entrance to Marble Arch. He died

From his injuries.

In strictest confidence, please phone 0207 321 7228


I walk back through the subway tunnel and ask a young homeless guys with long hair, a beard and a smattering of low denomination coins at his feet if he knows anything about this murder. Specifically, I ask him if it was a homeless man that was murdered?

“Yeah, I think it was,” he tells me.

The murder is two weeks old. I tell myself that it’ll be okay to sleep here. Then I slap myself on the side of the head: think wife, think daughter, and I start walking, quickly, back towards the Covent Garden and another night treading the boards, or the steps I should say, of the Theatre Royal.


On the theatre steps Michael is teasing Marijona about the likelihood of him getting an flat. Marijona holds a piece of paper with apartment listings, he asks, “What does it mean, this 280 points?”

“It’s like this,” Michael begins. “You need a lot of points to get a flat on welfare. If you’re a young girl and have nowhere to live, you get points. If you are an old lady without a home you get even more points. If you are a young girl and pregnant or with a child, you get even more points.”

“And me?” Marijona asks. “What is my points?”

“You,” Michael laughs. “A single working foreign male? You have no points.”

As we sit there laughing, with our cardboard beds set out for the evening, a group of young boys turn the corner and walk towards us. They are smartly dressed, like Ben Sherman adverts and though out in the big city haven’t quite mastered the art of hair gel. As they pass the lad at the back, while keeping his legs and hips in a forward motion, turns his upper body and his spiky little head towards us and says, thumbs raised, “Alright boys?” To signify that this is not a rhetorical question he arches his eyebrows, he says, “Sweet as a nut?”

Some time passes before the four of us have control of our laughter.


4am. The streets of London, or at least Covent Garden… no, let me narrow that down further, Catherine-Bloody-Street, should be clean enough to eat off. Is it really possible that those little road sweeping buggies, with their awful racket, are passing by my head every thirty minutes? Or am I at this point just going mad? Is it a bad dream? I grab my camera from my backpack and without sitting up take a quick picture as yet another one scrapes its way by. I must be sure its real.


Day FIVE – Sunday 17th

After a quick wash in the 24 hour toilets in Covent Garden, Michael, Richy and myself head off for a number 25 bus. We wait for one of the ‘Bendy Buses’ or the ‘Homeless Express’ as Michael likes to call them on account of being able to step on and off without a ticket. We take the bus to Bank. From there we walk, with the intention of catching another bus, to London Bridge. But a lack of Homeless Express’ forces us to cross the bridge by foot. We cut through the main station and enter a maze of back roads, (passing through one of the worst urine smelling stairwells in the world) weaving our way to Mellor Street and the Manna Centre, which is a day centre that is open five mornings a week, including weekends.


As we enter we are handed a bowl of porridge. Richy and I (Michael goes off to shower) collect a cup of tea and sit at a table along the right hand wall. Our eating is fast and sloppy. After which Richy sits reading the Racing Post, scribbling his picks on the front cover. I sit and watch the room, which is deep, tatty and packed with around 100 people.

Somebody brings out boxes and places them in the middle of the floor. There’s a rush as people go through them, searching for things they need like quilts, shoes etc.

Exhausted already I start drifting, am about to nod off, when…

“Sorry, what was that?” I hear myself asking to the man opposite. He sits with a shaved head and a black T-shirt tucked into his jeans, listening to an old walkman that he has clipped to his belt.

“What?” he says back.

“Oh, sorry, I thought you said something,” I say feeling confused.

The penny drops. It’s Richy’s giggling that gives it away. The man had been talking to himself, and I, apparently, was answering him.

“Oh,” the man says. “I was… it was… I was just saying… you know,” and with that he too has a little giggle and goes back to his music.

A minute later he leans forward and points at me, “Have you heard Madonna’s new album?” he asks.

“No,” I tell him, “I haven’t.”

Now, with what I believe to be a trace of Scottish, he says, “Yooo should get ya’self a copy, it’s fucking greeeeeaat!”


Michael appears with little pieces of tissue stuck all over his face.

The three of us move to the back of the room where a group of men sit around a bright yellow topped table playing chess. While I sit falling in and out of sleep, Michael and Richy manage to play several games while we wait for lunch. The standard of chess seems pretty high. I am offered a game but decline, knowing it will be know fun for my opponent.

The smell of food fills the air and I look up to see plates of pasta with meat sauce and sausage bobbing in different directions around the room. There’s a lot of pasta and rice in this business, carb’s a plenty.

We eat quick and take our leave. Richy is keen to get to Ladbrokes on Trafalgar Square, he doesn’t want to miss the first races.


Day SIX – Monday 18th

Monday to Saturday we have to wait for the theatre crowd to leave before we can make our beds. (If I were truly homeless it would be safe to say I have well and truly moved in moved into this space for good.) Then we have to wait for the crowd from the pub opposite to go home before we can get any sleep. Tonight we kill an hour or so playing chess with a small travel chess set.

After getting a thrashing from Michael and then beating Richy by making all the moves Michael calls out over my shoulder, I find myself in an architectural quandary. I am trying to build a little card wall, for privacy. But I am having problems: the card I have selected is too long and falls down easily. Michael and Richy offer advice.

“No, no, no, not like that,” Michael says as I take an un-flattened wine box and make a split half way down one of the long sides. I then feed the length of card I want to use as my wall into the torn slot. The box works as a stabiliser and my wall holds firm.

“Oh, that’s pretty smart,” Michael says and we all laugh at my little camp.

Richy sets his alarm for 5:30am.

He says, “I am off to Woking in the morning to sell the Big Issue.”

“Why do you always go out of town?” I ask.

“It’s easier,” he tells me. “There are too many Big Issue sellers and beggars in Central London, it makes it too hard. It’s not worth it. I go all over, Basingstoke, Romford.”

Richy and I bid each other farewell and get down to the business of sleeping.


When a group of Japanese men, wearing suits and ties, come and take over the steps between the doorways where Michael, Richy and I are trying to sleep, I am a little pissed to say the least. I am exhausted. In fact having not got close to a normal nights sleep since coming out to the streets all I do now is doze in and out of reality. Every time I stop moving I fall asleep. Whether I sit on the floor, on a bench or lean against the wall, my eyes start fluttering. What sleep I do get at night, I look forward to.

But the Japanese are loud and drunk and partying right next to my head. One second they kick over their half full wine bottle, the next they are dropping and smashing glasses. One of them even goes as far to try and take a piece of my card.

“Hey!” I say. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He speaks English now, “Oh, sorry mate, sorry.”

The Japanese, known for their manners, don’t appear perturbed by the fact that there are three people trying to sleep. In fact I find it hard to believe, given their shouting, that they are not being purposely loud. After about thirty minutes I hear Michael fidgeting. I am expecting him to say something, but he doesn’t, he is soon still again. Whatever hint he dropped worked. A few minutes later the drunken Japanese men move on.


Day SEVEN – Tuesday 19th

Michael and I sit on the steps of the theatre at 7am.

“Did you notice I got rid of the Japanese last night?” he asks.

“Yeah, I did. How did you manage that?”

“I took my socks off.”

We sit there laughing.

My main thought though, is with the fact that I am done. Today, day number 7, I am going home, or at least to my sisters house so I can get cleaned up and sleep. I think it’s a good thing I am stopping now. My feet really hurt. My underpants are the things of experiments and the delicate skin tissue between my testicles and my thighs is very sore, I guess my greasy under crackers have been sticking while I walk (I am so glad I am married and don’t have to worry about any potential lovers reading this).

I have a stiff neck.

I have tummy troubles too. Dietary issues. Meaning I haven’t had a shit in four days.

Sure, I could go to the Berwick Street Market tomorrow at closing time and get free fruit. I could go to the Manna Centre and get showered, pick up a pair of fresh under garments. But really…


The two occasions I have lived homeless have been by my own choice, part of a journalistic endeavour. For those of you who question the morality of these projects, of my eating food from soup kitchens, food meant for the homeless, I can assure you my activities had zero effect on the survival of the homeless. My doing this without money was not out of a sense of challenge, nor was it taken lightly, but simply because I don’t believe a true recording of homeless life can be made any other way. If I had money in my pocket I would have eaten in Pret A Manger, instead of from their garbage bags with regular homeless people. When the fear got really bad I would have hidden in a cinema. The truth is, I couldn’t do it with money in my pocket, I am too weak.


One defining area, during my short experience on the streets, where London differs from New York, is the level of aggression. London is plainly more aggressive. I am not talking about the homeless but the average man on the street. The Englishman, when you have the time to sit and look, is a bit of a Neanderthal. He walks around in a permanent state of alert. Part of a ‘who you looking at’ culture that doesn’t really exist anywhere else. I remember watching one man leave a McDonalds with his wife and two children. He walked stiff limbed and tight faced, swinging his arms and legs while surveying the area for potential enemies. A Chas ‘nd Dave song sprang to mind: Gertcha! The aggression in New York has become part of the cities personality. It never really goes beyond the verbal, beyond the ‘hey asshole!’. But the Gertcha Englishman will punch you in the face for little more than smirking at his gold.


I bid Michael farewell and go to the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street where my brother is coming to collect me, to take me back to my normal life. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back on the streets again. I hope not.

Oh, now that's tired!

I was just cleaning out my over stocked hard drive when I found this picture. It was taken with a disposable camera by JR, one of the homeless guys I met when researching the book '31 Days: A New York Street Diary'. JR lives in a makeshift home in an Amtrak train tunnel just off the West Side Park. This picture was taken just after I woke up at around 8am. It was the first nights secure sleep I had had in a long time, as it was the first time during this project I hadn't been out in the open, on a bench, or on the sidewalk. I think I could have slept for days.



For those of you that fancy it, below is an excerpt from '31 Days: A New York Street Diary', from the time spent with JR. This room he had was remarkable in many ways. JR was remarkable in many ways.

Day 23 - $2 on the Nose of Whichever Horse Wins the Next Race!


I sit by the fence that blocks public entry to the Freedom Tunnel. I am more patient now, knowing that JR and V are both still living in the tunnel, I know that if I sit here long enough it’s just a matter of time before one of them comes out.

Caught up as I am watching joggers, it is JR who sees me first, “Hey, you wanna come play the horses?” He asks as a way of greeting.

I slip my trainers on and together we leave West Side Park.
***

The OTB is loud and smoky. The OTB is depression. The OTB is joy.

There are no young people in the Off Track Betting shop on 72nd street. Middle-aged men with beer guts and old women with few teeth rule this domain. The elderly segment, prominent features being gums and hearing aids, sit in couples, man and wife. Form sheets shake in their spotted dry hands. Eyes swell behind bifocal bullet-proof spectacles. Transparent skin stretches as they squint up at the screen, rarely knowing where their horse finishes.

“1st?”
“4th.”
“5th?”
“2nd?”

The middle-aged men - vests, shorts, baseball caps and cheap gold attire being the official garb - strut up and down in front of a bank of screens. They are the noisemakers. They shout at anything and everything.

At the screen one man shouts, “You son of a…”

At a horse another man shouts, “You lazy good for nothing…”

At each other two men shout, “Fuck you!” And then, “No! Fuck you!”

Into cellphones they say, “I’ll be home when I’m home!”

To the cashiers they say, “To win, all of it!” Then they hand over two crumpled up, dirty, dollar bills.

They are peacocks with too many feathers and no women to impress. They are the atmosphere and soul of the OTB.

One man is doubled over riding an imaginary horse. “This is what you do…” He gallops on the spot, building up a good speed. In his right hand there’s a handful of betting slips. He uses them to whip himself into a faster gallop. He has a one hundred and fifty pound gut that dangles beneath him in the space where a real jockey would expect to find his horse. In total you could chalk him up at around two hundred and sixty pounds. “…in the final bend that’s when you start to go forward.” He’s an expert “…you don’t pull on the reins…” He increases speed, giving everything he has down the final straight. “You lean way forward” Beads appear on his forehead. “You cross the line…” Damp patches appear under his arm. “And I take my 8-1 and 100 down and I’m laughing, baby!” He stops, contorts his face and begins to rip his betting slips into as many pieces as possible. Fury departing his mouth in droplets as he showers the floor with the torn betting slips. “You son of a bitch!”

Onlookers laugh those silent, shoulder-hunching laughs like dogs in a cartoon. The Jockey turns and walks back to the cashier to place another bet.

JR selects form sheets from the horizontal rack that stands beneath the screens lining the wall as you enter. His greasy ponytail hangs limply from his baseball cap, moving only with the whim of selection. There are many races to choose from. JR walks away with the form sheets for Belmont Park, Bay Meadows, and Meadowlands. He leans on the railing by the entrance and studies the forms.

The form sheets list the day’s races for each track. They tell you who is running, who’s riding, who’s training, what the odds are, and how the recent form has been.

JR looks from the sheets to the screens as he chews lightly on his bottom lip, releasing the lip now and again to whisper to himself. He walks towards the cashier, changing his mind with very step. He slides his dollar bills through the glass partition.

He watches the screens.

Three minutes until the off.
***

Outside the OTB, JR stands four dollars lighter than when he entered. The loss has no effect on his smile.

We walk up 80th street, stopping to search every trashcan outside every house. Jauntily JR takes the steps that lead down to the half basement level where the bins are kept. His hands form pincers that twist and pull at the plastic to undo the knots. In no time at all he finds himself up to his elbows in yesterday’s life, oblivious to the twitching blinds and staring passers by - or maybe not oblivious, simply indifferent.

He rummages…

He finds a bottle of hot sauce.

“I could use that,” he tells me.

At the third house JR runs his hand over an as yet unopened black plastic bag. His eyes brighten. The bag is cold. It means that somebody has just emptied out their refrigerator. He pulls at the knot. Sitting on the top is a half frozen pack of eight chicken thighs. He removes them. Studies them. Sniffs them. He searches for a date; June 28th 2004…that’s today.

“Hmmmm… Well I guess I’ll just have to eat you tonight!”

He places the chicken thighs on the lid of an adjacent trashcan and reaches back into the cold black bag. He removes a packet of unopened chorizo.

“Mmmmmm.”

A bottle of Jägermeister.

Half a bottle of white wine.

Italian vinaigrette.

A large unopened packet of salmon.

JR goes through the same ritual with the salmon that he went through with the chicken, twisting it and turning it and smelling it. Is there a date? June 28th 2004. That’s also today.

“Now there’s a dilemma!” He says to himself, “Do I eat the chicken or the salmon tonight?”

He picks the chicken back up and stands there, weighing his options.

A young man walks past with fifteen dogs, all on leashes, that scurry along ahead of him.

“Chicken or Salmon? Well if I eat you then you’re no good to me… but I could… eat you and salt you and save you till tomorrow! Yeah that’s what I’ll do, chicken tonight, salmon tomorrow.”

JR continues to search the contents of the bag. Items that appeal to him are placed on the trashcan lid to his left, the items that don’t go in the open bin bag in a trashcan to his right.
“French mustard,” he says to himself. “Now I got me some of that, but what… What about an onion? Can I get an onion here?”

The front door to the neighbouring house opens and closes with a bang. A large woman appears, wearing an expensive sports outfit. She is possibly on her way to the sports centre that she joined more for social reasons than for health. An hour drifting on the rowing machine should be good for gossip. Her hair is blow dried into a storm of waves. Her Chrysler car keys dangle in her left hand.

At the bottom of the steps she stops abruptly. What’s that noise? Is it a rat?

No.

She studies JR. A little man who looks like he never found his way home from a Led Zeppelin concert. She tries to make out the items as he piles them up.

“Watcha got there honey?” she asks as she sidles around the front of the house. She reaches the gate and hops down to JR who continues to rummage.

“Oh a bunch of stuff.”

“What’s that? Salmon?”

“Yeah, today’s date though. I think if I salt it, it might keep another day.”

“Why not just eat it today?”

“Well, this chicken here also has to be eaten today…”

“Oh I see, salt the salmon then. Plenty of salt, mind.”

The woman walks past JR and stops at a bin two down from him. She pops a bag open and starts to rummage. JR hears the clank of glassware but doesn’t turn to look. The woman holds a couple of glasses in the air, one in each hand. They are thick glass, fogged from twenty-five years of hard service, the kind old aunties still serve their lemonade in, worthless to some but purchasable at twenty dollars apiece if you take a liking to them in a trendy second hand store. They would be the ones labeled as ‘retro tumblers’.

“Oh these are nice,” the woman says holding them up for JR’s approval.

“Pretty,” he assures her. She leans over, places them on the wall in front of her and digs back into the bag, coming up with two more of the same.

“Oh what a shame. This one’s cracked,” she says before coming out with a set of brown on brown Sixties style plates. She turns them over, studies them from different angles before deciding on the lot. Six plates and three tumblers slowly climb the stairs to her house before disappearing behind the big glass panelled door. A dishwasher starts its cycle while JR tops up his vodka bottle with Jägermeister.

JR takes time packing the food into his cart. He stands as if playing Tetris, trying to figure out the best order for packing, the system that will take up the least space. He packs and unpacks, spreading his bounty over the sidewalk to study the shapes. Eventually he covers the food with a large empty bin bag and moves on.

Three houses down JR breaks into a smile. In a plastic bag he has found twenty-five porn magazines, mostly seventies retro chic – Big Titties, Bum Shanks, Tender Steaks - along with ten porn DVDs. He wastes no time in collecting the treasure and, as is his style, packs them carefully into his cart.

He continues on his way.
***

On 75th street, between Amsterdam and Columbus he finds two still ice cold Miller lights and a Budweiser. On 73rd he finds an almost new hardback biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. On 72nd he finds a copy of The Idiots Guide To Camping. On 71st he finds five tins of soup, two breaded chicken breasts and a bag of carrots. He also collects bottles and cans for recycling. After two and a half hours of touring the neighbourhood, JR’s trolley is three quarters full. He digs out the pornography and separates the magazines from the DVDs. The DVDs go back in the cart under a bag of carrots. The magazines, in a bag of their own, are placed on the top of the cart. He drags the cart behind him as we head back to 72nd Street. We stop at the lights at Amsterdam and 72nd. We stand, like the other pedestrians, and wait for the crossing light to change. Unlike the other pedestrians JR picks a cigarette butt up off the floor and lights it, finishes it with two puffs, and throws it back again.

The lights change.

The cart can just about be heard as it crosses the road, rattling over ridges and holes. It clanks as it catches the rise in the curb on the other side but comes to a silent halt next to a man fifteen yards on who sits next to a table, on top of which are three milk crates.

The mans expression and body language suggests that he doesn’t like to interact with the white man. But business is business.

JR hands over the magazines and walks away. Standing by the window of the Gap he removes his vodka bottle and takes a swig. He tries to pay no attention to the man looking over his magazines. The man looks at the titles, inspects them for condition and flicks through the content. He puts them back in the bag, stuffs the bag behind a milk crate and walks over to JR removing singles from his pocket. He counts out five and holds them out to JR.
“I’ll have some more stuff for you later,” JR says smiling. The man nods his head to acknowledge that he heard what JR said and walks back to his crates. JR grabs his cart and together we begin to work the streets that we hadn’t visited earlier.

The cart trundles along. It stops at every other house and waits to see if it will bear more load. JR rummages and rummages, collecting more food than he can possibly eat.

More chicken cutlets, some drumsticks and a lettuce.

Everything is stacked precariously in the cart.

Flicking through a pile of unread computer magazines he says to himself, “I’m not too sure what to do with this stuff,” and he turns it over and over as if the answer will reveal itself in the handling. He looks at the cd-rom taped to the front of a magazine, reads the writing, and puts it down. Next he picks up a book, a big thick volume of dull text.

Mac Made Easy

He looks at a book cabinet that’s standing on the sidewalk.

He says, “Hmmmm,” and rubs the side of the tanned wood. “This could be nice for the house.” He tilts it on its side, rubs a scratch, feeling its depth with his thumb. The shelves to the cabinet are loose in the bottom. He picks one up and examines it, turning it over and over. He looks at the cart, loaded up. “Ahhh.” He’s still turning a shelf over in his hands. “Too much hassle.” He puts the shelf down, straightens the cabinet to leave it as he found it and moves along to the next house.

Aha!

JR ran out of olive oil three weeks ago and here’s a half full bottle of Eliki. He unscrews the lid and pours a little onto the sidewalk to be sure that it is olive oil.

Aha!

He loads it into the cart.

What else do we have here?

Half a jar of pickles.

A bag of peas.

A jar of sweet corn.

A roll of tin foil.

He finds a book.

He reads the cover: “The Gates Of Fire… Steven Pressfield” He turns the book over and starts to read the synopsis. He asks me if I know the book, but I don’t.

“Well,” he says, “I’ll let you know if it’s any good.” And he puts the book in his trolley and, as if this constitutes some kind of signal, he calls it a day.

On the way home we stops once more by the man with the milk crates and a large market share of 70s porn magazines. He removes the DVDs. The man raises his eyebrows and places the pile on the table. He goes through them one by one, reading the covers, checking that the discs inside match the covers. He removes the discs from each box, checks the play side for scratches. He blows on them and sets them back in their casings.

JR puts the thirteen singles in his pocket.

He turns to me as we walk away and asks, “You want to sleep on my couch?”

I laugh, “Oh yes.”

“Good,” he says. “You can help me eat this chicken.”
***

It’s dark outside when we reach the Freedom Tunnel. JR walks along the fence to an area where the dirt beneath it has been dug out. Taking the bags from the cart he slides them through one by one, being careful to keep the bags upright so that the contents doesn’t spill into the dirt. There are seven bags in all.

He makes his way over the fence by his usual route, hooking his fingers into the sharp little holes in the metal fence. He squeezes through a gap to an old plank of wood that flexes as it leads him down to the ground. I follow suit and by the time I am on the other side JR has unhooked his cart and is over gathering the bags that he slowly and meticulously reloads into the trolley.

It’s pitch black in the tunnel. The humming and bumping of cars as they race over the uneven surface of the highway above obliterate any sound below. JR walks in. Unafraid he walks an unmarked path with his heavy cart, with myself following obediently behind him.

“That’s where V lives,” he says pointing to a mezzanine up in the roof.

JR stands for a few minutes calling out to her, but there is no reply.

“Ahh,” he says. “Maybe we’ll catch her for breakfast.” And we start walking again.

As we walk I look out for her dance floor. Even though it’s dark, I’d love to see it. But I can’t find it.

Then seeing a plywood hut that wasn’t there before I am prompted to ask, “Is she still dancing?”

“No,” JR says, and with a nod he adds, “That’s her dance floor. The workman ripped it up to use as storage for their pant.”

We walk on in silence.

After about five hundred metres there’s a flicker of white ahead. Minimal light makes its way in through small grills above, but there’s enough, just for a split second, to pick up the movement of a white shirt.

“Who’s there?” JR asks, not so much in enquiry, but in greeting.

An Indian man in black trousers and an un-tucked white dress shirt steps into view.

“Hey how you doing, fella? I ain’t seen you in a while?”

“Hello. I have seen you.”

“Yeah, how you keeping. How’s that cough?”

“It is much better now, thank you.”

The two men continue their exchange for a few minutes. Talking about the weather, the Yankees, and the police who came into the tunnel a few days ago.

“Yeah, I couldn’t believe it, “ JR says with a big smile just about visible in the dark. “They even came up to my house, climbed up the ladder and everything. That’s brave. Anyways, they call out so I poke my head out, you know, as you do. And they’re like, ‘Hey, we thought you were still here. We brought you some coffee.’ And they gave me two cups of coffee. I was like, ‘It’s three o’clock in the freaking morning. I gotta whole tin of coffee in here!’ They were just laughing, it was nice of them anyway.”

The Indian man says, “I am going for a walk. Bye-bye.”

JR says, “Yeah you take care of yourself. You know where to find me if you need anything!” And off the two men go, one on his way out, one on his way in.

The cart is stowed in a dark corner, out of view from train drivers and passengers. There’s a ladder, it lies on the ground while JR is out. He picks it up and leans it against the wall with a swift, practised motion.

“Wait there,” he tells me as he gathers some of his shopping bags and mounts the ladder. It creaks under the strain. As JR climbs the bags bounce off his legs and hips. JR keeps climbing. Every rung of the ladder needs to be used. At the top he swings the bags up and into the darkness of a small entrance before he descends and hands me two bags.

“When you get up there, just stand still and away from the edge, then when I get up I’ll let us in.”

At the top there’s a thick metal handrail made of tubing. JR grabs it and pulls himself up onto the ledge, pushing me a little further into the darkness. He doesn’t poke his head back out to see if anybody is there, or if anybody was watching us as we climbed. He simply turns and with another of his practiced actions lowers the ladder back to the ground with a cord he has attached for that very purpose. Now we stand in the dark entryway. His reception area.

A heavy blanket hangs on the left wall. Beneath the blanket there’s a rug. JR Pulls both back to reveal a large square hole. He reaches in and gropes the inside wall until his fingertips touch a cable, he tickles his way along the cable to the switch and turns it on.

And then there is light.

“OK, in you go, just hop on the wall and then walk down the ladder.”

I do as he says, though I don’t make it look as easy as JR makes it sound. The wall is quite high and I have an embarrassing moment where I try to scramble over it, eventually only managing with some assistance from a laughing JR.

JR, considerably shorter than even me, swings his left leg up into the hole in the wall with ease.

On the other side is another smaller ladder. It is positioned like a ramp, leading up to the square portal. The ladder is partly covered with fabric, more blankets and rugs.

I hold my breath for a second.

JR doesn’t notice the smell any more. But to me the smell is strong, a mixture of food, sweat, smoke, feet, dirt and excrement.

On the immediate left, tucked into the corner I see a white plastic garden chair. There’s a hole cut into the seat. Beneath the hole is a bucket. Next to the bucket are four extra large water bottles. They are filled with a foggy, yellowy liquid that appears to have random brown shapes floating about inside. Some of the brown shapes sit at the bottom of the bottles. Others float on the top of the liquid.

JR puts his shopping down.

The room is about ten feet wide and twenty-five feet in length with a ceiling that must be fifteen feet high. There is stuff everywhere.

STUFF!

Unidentifiable stuff.

Plastic shopping bags that bulge in all different shapes and sizes are spread all over the floor. All of the bags are tied at the top, leaving a simple little bow. Most of the bags are adorned with the red and blue Duane Read logo stretched out of shape. It is not possible to know what is in each bag. Even JR doesn’t know.

“I mean, my guess would be food and clothes – mostly – and you know – stuff.”
For June the room is surprisingly cool.

“I got the place insulated about three months ago. I passed a site where they were in the process of renewing the insulation, so I got the old stuff for free. It works great too. I got it going all around. You can see it on the ceiling. Keeps the heat out in the summer and keeps the cold out in the winter.”

Fabric hangs on most wall surfaces. A huge maroon coloured duvet cover is draped over the exit. It is splattered with sunflowers of many different sizes and hangs crooked to where it rests on the ramp. The back of the room is split into two levels. A wooden ladder leads to the upper level, which is JR’s sleeping area. The lower level serves as a kind of living room. There’s a two-seat sofa pushed up against the left wall, mostly covered with dirty clothes and porn magazines. In this living area, two different fabrics have been chosen to add homeliness to the dwelling. On the left wall, behind the sofa is a seascape fabric. Blue and turquoise waves are littered with fish. Yellow fish turn back on themselves. Pink fish with blue zigzags swim from left to right.

The back wall is covered in a big square of deep red velvet. It hangs from ceiling to floor like a stage curtain, nobody would blame you for thinking that behind it the show is still going on. Especially as, along the top of the fabric, a row of multi-coloured Christmas lights sparkles away, adding a certain amount of kitsch and/or porn to the dwelling.

There are two pictures - watercolours on card - which are pinned to the top of the red velvet wall. The first is of a faceless woman tending a vineyard, then there’s a landscape of a pretty European village. There are other homely touches : a circular mirror framed in gilded metalwork, a Monopoly board game and copy of last month’s Playboy.

Along the right hand wall are cabinets and shelves. There’s a stereo, a stack system with a turntable, two tape decks and a radio. In the middle of the wall there’s a plastic shelving unit holding condiments: salt, black pepper, ketchup, mustard, honey, vinegar, oil, peanut butter, hot sauce.

Next to the shelving unit is a large oblong table, stained dark brown. Stacked up on the table are pots and pans, enough to man a small restaurant: six frying pans, four small saucepans, three medium saucepans, two large saucepans, five chopping boards.

There is no free space in the room. All flat surfaces have items stacked on them. The small table next to the sofa holds a lamp, an empty vodka bottle, an ashtray, five light bulbs and a medium sized indeterminate sculpture. All surfaces hold empty liquor bottles, mostly vodka, but also beer bottles.

“Make yourself at home,” JR tells me after spotting me standing there a little unsure. He attempts to move some cloths from the sofa, but it is a small portion. “Sit there,” he says and hands me the Playboy Magazine.

As a ritual, JR always gathers a few bottles of fresh water from the water fountain in the basketball courts that are en route to the tunnel. Inside his room he has an oversized bucket that catches the dirty water as he washes a pan. He puts back a bottle of washing up liquid on the third shelf of the plastic unit.

He swishes the water around with his hand as he sits on his knees. He doesn’t move the detritus around or beneath him. He doesn’t notice any discomfort as an overloaded plastic shopping bag causes him to sit crooked at an odd angle. He looks around, twisting over his right shoulder, then all the way around, over his left.

“Er… Er…”

Finally he sets the pan down on a plastic bag in front of him.

JR’s electricity is stolen from a power box that sends electricity up to the highway. And then there are street lamps. The two-hundred metres of cord needed to feed the power into his lodging was found in skips around building sights.

JR leans over and switches on the stereo.

“What we need now,” he tells me, “is some Rock & Roll”

He presses play on the tape deck and the room is filled with an unimaginable sound. I don’t know the band, but I know after the first bar that they are heavy rockers, punching the living daylights out of their guitars and, by the sounds of it, their producer too. The volume is high and bouncing off the walls, but this doesn’t stop JR from turning the music up even louder. Now the music is so loud it’s painful to listen to. But JR, who bounces his head and plays air guitar, is having so much fun that I don’t have the heart to ask him to turn it down.

Instead I scoot down on the sofa and rest my head on the back. Within a minute my eyes start to flutter. My last thought, before I slip into a deep abyss is, “Surely I can’t fall asleep in this noise?”

But I do exactly that.

Now that's a movie

Chris and I were fooling around making a video for EditRED.com. Though I don't appear in it physically you will get to see my natural talent for special effects. Going by the way I created true to life blood splatter it could be time for a career change...