Walter Herres
Annotations
Learn More [1]: “Official Site of The State of New Jersey.” Office of the Governor | Governor Murphy Highlights Investments and Progress for NJ TRANSIT.
Learn More [2]: “More Riders, Less Investment: A Blueprint for Failure on Public Transit in New Jersey.” New Jersey Policy Perspective, October 11, 2020.
TRANSCRIPT
Interview conducted by Hank
Interview conducted in 2018
Transcription by Kether Tomkins
00:00
Okay, so let’s just start with the basics. Where you’re from, where you’re living, your name, your age, and then we’ll kinda go into your biography and then we can, as we move through that we’ll go into what you’re doing now.
Okay. Alright. So my name’s Walter Herres, spelled W-A-L-T-E-R H-E-R-R-E-S. Um, I was born in Jersey City. I was not raised there. I was adopted away as an infant, maybe about nine months, I grew up in Helmetta. I was reared in the Helmetta and Spotswood area, ‘til I was about seventeen years old. So I, uh, that’s how... My upbringing was strictly suburban from an old veteran family. And, uh, my house was a shelter ‘cause it was a foster home, so I’d seen all different types of people. A hundred-and-fifty uh, people throughout a ten-year period and out of all of them I was the only one to be adopted. Minus one foster child that married my brother [laughs]. So, uh, I’m the golden child. I had my father pass young and then, like I said, I went from seventeen, uh, as soon as seventeen puberty hit and uh, I didn’t have a really good
agreement with my brother-in-law so I got kicked out. Prior to being kicked out, uh, I was on track for a football scholarship, a wrestling scholarship, and I even took something for the Art Institute of New York City and scored a ninety-two on it. But, let’s see, puberty, kicked me out the door. I ended up never encountering the system before ‘cause I was raised spoiled in the suburbs. So my first encounter with the state system, going to the juvenile shelter here in North Brunswick.
So, um, so you, um, so you were kicked out cause, you know, puberty hit. So you were a little wild?
I was, I was rebellious, I was very rebellious. And I didn’t accept him as a father figure. And he was really trying to raise me right, make me responsible: make your bed, clean your room. And, you know, save some of your money from pushing the carts at Shoprite. And I couldn’t hear that because my head was the size of the world, and, like, I was that football star guy and you couldn’t tell me anything-- I’m going to the NFL right out of high school, type guy. So, you couldn’t tell me anything. And that was the clash. And this gentleman he’s very well off, and I thank him to this day because he was a foreman at the time for a construction place, he’s still a foreman, making a hundred thousand back in the nineties, so you know, he’s very well off. Um, and like I said, he can… He reminded me of keeping the structure that was already enforced in me. But like, once I went through certain things, I was like, well, do five to ten minutes in the shower and turn the lights off when you leave any place. Those norms that he taught me helped me become independent and self-sufficient. So I love him now, I just couldn’t see it then that, you know. I thought he was being very harsh. Yeah. You know.
00:02:53
So you said suburbs, Helmetta, so that means you went to Spotswood High School?
Spotswood High School. And then my last year, because of that little falling out with my brother-in-law, I never made it to my senior year in Spotswood. And um, funny story is that we were undefeated my whole football season my junior year, and the only game we lost-- the game that I got kicked out of the game because someone made fun of me in my, uh, “Kung Fu” outfit. And I was taking, like I said, I was taking lots of martial arts stuff to curb my anger and my aggression, and I took that out on somebody ‘cause they made fun of my “Kung Fu” outfit during Halloween. And that messed up my whole best year ever for the school. We were undefeated, we were like Remember the Titans, and we lost that game. But, uh, yeah man, I just… really small suburb. Very, everybody knows everybody type thing. And it was good, it was fun, it just uh, it wasn’t my reality. It wasn’t my reality. Um, as I was, I was coming into something. I was coming into learning about my culture, about who I was and my, my ethnicity and history. So, uh, it was rough.
And speaking to that, I was actually, all kids make those little dirt jumps in the woods. So I was making little dirt jumps in the woods, and Spotswood has a lot of historic woods. So, I’m digging through the woods and I find an African Weaving Basket. And we’re actually studying these things in art class. And I touched this thing and I actually felt a little connection to it and I looked to the right and I found cat eyes. And the cat eyes stared at me I’m staring at them. And I had this weird moment, I’m like, wow, I found this basket in my backyard. And there’s this little three-foot space in my basement and there’s a railroad tracks not too far from that, that leads straight through to a broken down road that goes to the VFW. Hmm. This seems very non-cool. Meaning that, uh, when I did the history on it, there was a huge, uh, KKK presence there, and then part of the underground railroad ran through there. So I just came into some stuff. And I was just like, oh, this seems horrible. So I started to get my first taste of like, black rage, in a sense. Like oh man, like I gotta know now. So then I pushed my friend who’s picking on another kid. So I started coming into certain things and I just clashed. And I was raised-- like I said, I had no identity, I, I loved every person. I’d never seen color. But then, like when I started to read up on certain things it, it sparked something in me.
And I started to read up on Malcolm Little, uh, with Malcolm X. Because like Malcolm Little was in the streets like getting high and beating people up and stuff and killing and doing all type of stuff like that. So when I came to New Brunswick, I really thought New Brunswick would turn me out, but it was the opposite. It’s the fact that my parents kept me away from the street life, which my parents had already engaged in me, and fast forwarding, just a hint is that I found my birth parents and one of my grandparents was actually a bank robber, he used to do some crazy stuff. White gentleman, very, very rough around the edges and do what you do to have to survive so it was in me. So as soon as I came to New Brunswick -- oh, this is how you do this. And I would do, I would boost, I would steal, I would like, do drugs. And I was doing all these things because, like, I don’t want to sleep underneath the steps tonight on Rutgers campus. Or I don’t wanna sleep outside this building tonight. So I started to just do stupid stuff. And because I didn’t know anything about an urban area, I went right to jail. [Laughs] Right to jail. Standing in a school zone with heroin in my pocket like I know what I’m doing. And I had no idea. So thank God, I got arrested. I got arrested and the next phase of that timeline is about eighteen, no, I’m sorry, as soon as I turned nineteen, I went right to prison. And I would, uh, the county jail for seven months. And there it was like the crimes that they teach in sociology, so I was really into crime. Dyads and majority groups, the majority groups being the Spanish gangs and the black Blood community and like, the little section of like Muslims and stuff. So me, I didn’t understand that but I like to like, play handball and stuff. I like to work out, and I like to play chess. And then I learned all types of dynamic card games. But from those things you get to hear the testimonies of these guys and where they went wrong. So you’re like, oh, so that's what I shoulda did. And you’re sitting there every night like, you know man, I would’ve been a millionaire if I just like, had an exit plan. Like Robert DeNiro in The Score. Like seriously.
And you’re sitting here with all these guys, and I’m nineteen I’m taking this all in, like in this place, and then I moved up in status. Like the highest status you can get in a county jail is being like a “Trustee.” So I became a Trustee which meant I can clean up and I get a extra loaf of bread. And I can also give you an extra tray of food in the morning, lunch, or dinner. And then, it also means like, I’ll give you a tray of food for three candy bars and a honey bar. Or if you’re cool with a CO, he might give you a pack of cigarettes if you be like, I don’t know, buff the floor. Like, it’s all types of ridiculousness is hierarchy and policy enforcement. And that’s how the whole jail thing goes, but now, deep within this community in the prison is a subpopulation of all these guys who are already vetted, who have been to prison. And they’re looked to, like, the Varsity team. Because if you’re a young guy and you know you’re going to jail, you have you prepare yourself like, mentally physically to go to prison. And they’ve already been there, so like, these guys be like, nah man, you gotta keep your bed together, because if you go down like that, he’s gonna steal your stuff and you won’t know. So, oh, like, you have to um, walk across the hallway and keep your shirt tucked in. You don’t want to show the police like, whatever. If you’re taking anything with you, like products, you gotta boof those things -- stick it up your butt after you take a doo doo. You know, just so people don’t know that you have these things on you. So it’s a lot of weird norms in the prisons and the jail.
And, once again, I’m just a cocky athletic kid who can fight. And I’m like, that’s cool. And that aggression problem, I told you earlier I have an aggression problem. So it’s like, this guy might
Disrespect you. Meaning, if someone… I don’t know. Like, if they say a certain word, sex-games, or certain norms. Like you don’t play sex-games in jail. Like you don’t call someone out and be like, oh man, you’re dadadada. Or you know, there’s certain things that’s provocative and it means that it warrants a fight on the third floor. Which means that you have to go to the third tier, walk away from the gate, and fight that person. And then you work it out. And then if someone hears you, you get, everybody gets locked up. And they call “Count.” And the Count means that they put everyone in their unit and they count them up and they arrest the person that was fighting. So, like, there’s been instances where-- I didn’t really get into a fight there, I get into fights later-- but, I provoked fights. People wanted to fight but they wasn’t about that fight. One time I was playing with somebody and I dumped them on their head and they got serious and then because I dumped them on their head it was no longer that serious, and they were like, “Oh no, Walt’s not the skinny guy, leave him alone.”
00:10:04
You know. And then fast forward from there, seven months there, I… what happened was, I got caught up with the CDS in a school zone standing on Seaman Street and then after that I was caught up in a boosting ring, I was homeless. So, my homelessness, my tactic was this job for eight… no, then it was like seven twenty-five or something minimum wage [laughs]. Then it wasn’t enough, you know I had a moving job once in a blue moon, like standing on French Street. When they call-- when they call me. But, uh, like I said, I started boosting with this guy, he had a very bad habit. He used to shoot drugs in his arm and his girlfriend was a prostitute, did the same thing. I believe she had HEP-C, he had HEP-C. Um, so I’m riding with them because, see, I guess they felt comfortable with me cause I was black. Going from Elizabeth to Newark and it was like, their thing and it’s this urban area. And so to see where thought I would go with them, just moving things. So we’d go from Newark to Elizabeth getting coke and heroin, using it. I never shot it, you know, I never shot it. I sniffed it, I bumped it. And I would ride with them, just seeing them getting very high scared me from ever going that far. But the tattoo I keep on my neck, um, [unclear]...
When I got kicked out of my house, I first went, um, I believe to Fort Monmouth. I went to Fort Monmouth and the guy wanted to bring me in under some, the Army thing. And I was like ahhh I don’t know, maybe. And I thought on the base, the sergeant said if you have no where to stay you can stay on the base. So I was staying in the sergeant's main in the base and they told me one thing, like don’t go outside, and socialize people, like, fraternize people. So I go out and fraternize people. Like, “Yo what’s that? What you’re cooking?” And he’s like, “Oh, it’s hot dogs, like, what’s your status?” I’m like oh, I’m this um, I’m a candidate or whatever about to go. Oh. He snitched on me somehow. Boom [claps]. Sergeant comes down a week later, kicks me away, and I end up going to the mall before I went to the shelter, and I see my best friend who kill… well, he killed himself on Fourth of July. And I seen him, like, where you going? I’m like, you staying somewhere? He’s like, no. His father was actually a person who just passed recently who was my [unclear] teacher, we’ll get to that. He was like, oh, you can stay at my place. He’s very well off, his parents created thermoguard windows… very, very cool guy. But he’s been tortured. His mother killed herself. He’s been going through some problems. So um, we go to New York, he has tattoos all over himself, He says, “You want a tattoo and I’m like, “Yeah.” So I sip some Parrot Bay and I’m like, “Give me a tattoo on my neck with my initials so he’s like, “Okay,” and he gives me ink and I look in the mirror and it looks great in the mirror, but it’s reversed in the mirror. It’s supposed be WH, but it looks like HW, so I go to the mall and this girl [unclear] looks at me at is like, “what does HW mean?” And I look at him and I’m like, “Yo [unclear]” and when he killed himself, I kept it as a memory of him going forward and going back to prison life I guess, and doing the prison life thing.
These gentlemen try to guide you along and try to make sure that you’re living right and what it does, honestly, is teach you how to live in peace. You know there’s this old saying, “You do the time, don’t let the time do you.” These people have been in to do the time, so they’re learning how to do the time and keep the mind active so they don’t go crazy, but at the same token you have to look at it as a way to socialize, as your diet in this place. Your diet in this place, the purpose is to lower your testosterone, [unclear] all carbohydrates. A diet consisting of all carbohydrates will make you mentally ill, slowly but surely, then compound that with big pharma Seraquil and you’re tweaking out and you’re basically coming out of there like a mushroom. I avoided all that. I have a very serious background in Eastern and Western Health so I was always working out or doing something to keep me up, up, up on my game [unclear]. Going to prison, I’m on a big Blue Bird bus like they always told us about and there’s no seats-- it’s like linoleum, so you’re shackled up hands and toes but you’re sliding and it’s like sitting on a church pew, freshly polished. And like the bus would go, sideways, I remember I’m sitting there, everybody, like I remember one person fell, like I had to catch myself, like sit and squat, pop back and we finally get there, go through the full body [unclear], go through all this detoxification and cleaning you and everything and then you get your spoon [laughs]. You can get your spoon and your nice little jacket and you become state property. You already become state property the moment you sign up for sentencing and say, “I’m guilty.” They take all your rights away and you become a number and after becoming that number, you testify into being that number over and over again until you’re conditioned into being that number and then you try to identify, through your phobia, which group you are going to join.
If you’re not strong enough within yourself because you feel like, damn, they are going to beat me up and take me, whatever, all that kind of stuff. So, I’m eighteen, really cocky going down, still chilling and something intriguing like this white guy who was very in control of his area-- he had like a store and was giving stuff out, nobody messed with him, so I asked him like, “Yo what up?” [unclear, something about a Puerto Rican gang]. It happens in jail, these gangs, they are like social justice activists in jail, [laughs] giving peace and everything. I don’t know [laughs] so I became one of those things. I had to learn an X amount of norms and conduct myself a certain way, but I, at the same time, I was being recruited, like the Bloods were seeing me and were going like, “Yo, Blood, you want to get into fights, you don’t want to join them, you want to join us.” At the same time, the Latin Kings were like duh duh duh duh duh is a good guy [unclear] because it’s numbers, there are numbers so if your [unclear] if your guy is… you need a guy who is six two and armed and can make a machete. It’s all numbers and it’s weird, but like, looking back on it, going through puberty again, it’s just like, it’s phobia, it’s phobia. Yeah, and the fact that basically no one knows how to get along with one another. We know how to get along when there’s gambling, but that speaks to what they’re used to-- used to do on the streets, so it’s like, “Oh, do you want to play cards together, or when we eat together, or when we work out together, those are the basic things that people can do to come together and there’s no rules about who you are when you are with them.” So like I said, “I’m in.” Um, I’m in the camps at first, meaning that I’m in a place that’s low security because I already did seven months and I already have a little more time to go. So, I’m in the camps, I’m working on the farm, which literally means I’m stacking hay for about two dollars a day.
00:17:00
[Unclear question]
No, no. I was at North Brunswick County Jail, for seven months, and then I got expedited to Mountain View Lee’s Correctional Facility all the way out there in Mountain View, New Jersey like where they have Rutgers Prep, way past that. It’s funny, I used to know that guy that worked state from there. He was my bunk-mate, he lived in the next [unclear] but I helped him train for [unclear], I helped him train for it. The funny thing is, I’m in the prison and everything is good, but it’s just the fact that everyone wants me to become something, and I tend to go to the kitchen because in the county jail, I served people in the kitchen so I had a background and I was working with Elijah’s Promise prior to this, so I had somewhat of a culinary understanding. I keep pushing forward, something happens in the camp, some guy makes fun of me about something, I push him, he doesn’t have shoes on, he goes and gets his shoes on, he tries to push me back, I hit him to stop it, they call me into the cell, well, they call us into the county [unclear, something about mess], he goes to mess, I don’t go to mess, I wait for him to come around the corner, we fight, I beat him up, the only thing he got was my face, I push him back up, we start, I put him in a choke hold and everything. By the time the police come he’s looking like [unclear] I had no cuts, only a small cut on my face, and I’m in the shower acting like what are you talking about? They pick me up, throw me away. I do fifty days at [unclear] which means fifty days in a hole, fifty days in a hole and the funny thing is, he’s my bunk-mate on the other side and I can only see a tiny square window of his face looking like a raccoon, and I’m like [unclear] I’m like [makes noises] that’s how he sounded.
[Laughs] but you know, we got over it, it was whatever, we were real cool, but we went back to the wing and now we go from being in the camps, which is low security, which means I can like, drive from the camps to another farm and have a little more freedom. Now it’s high security because I got into this fight and that means I got a hit, getting a hit meaning that your time expands so your time lapses over, meaning that I only had three months to go. I had nine months with a three month stipulation, so I did seven months here, and then had to do three months in a halfway house. Because of the fight I did a whole ‘nother nine months. And then another three months following that in a halfway house. I was in the county and now that I’m in the compound, it’s different. I actually, believe it or not, went from working the grounds to working the kitchen, to working in the main kitchen compound. I worked in the house in the kitchen and fed 150 people, working in the kitchen transporting food.
00:20:09
That was fun. That was cool. Until one day I got set up because, uh, Thanksgiving and I was trying to make some things, trying to make a couple dollars. I was cutting the carrot cake extra small and someone snitched on me [laughs] and they let me go for trying to make a couple more dollars or whatever I was going to make. After all that is said and done, the highlight of that story is, before leaving this place I challenged the CO, who was a really cool guy, I said, Larry, if I can do this you gotta… I beat him in an arm wrestling match, that’s what it was, I beat him in an arm wrestling match, you have to jump on the table and do Beyonces and I promise you, in front of everyone I beat him in an arm wrestling match, and he went on the table and did ten Beyonce’s saying ‘uh oh, uh oh, uh oh,’ and I’m famous for that. From there I left and I went to Newark because I was homeless and I had no placement. I had to go to a halfway back program that would place me, right? And the halfway back program was in Newark. It was called Tully 2. So, I had to do, I think three months there and the furthest you get to go outside is a wall, a big giant wall, a square wall, that out of nowhere you might see a tennis ball fly over and if a tennis ball flies over there could be all types of things in there-- money, chocolate, condoms, whatever, so you’re just walking around and you see a tennis ball [laughs] and you go, “That’s mine, that’s mine.” [laughs] And things like-- “There’s a letter for you. Go to the window at three o’clock, and it’s like, “okay,” and all this random stuff happens, but you have to remember psychologically everyone here is coming fresh off [of being in] prison. You don’t know what prison they’re coming from and you don’t know how long they’ve done, but within this community they have all these places, like the hope wing, the integrity wing, all these special places to help modify your behavior, and a therapeutic community, meaning that there’s a credo. I forgot which one, I chose choice, they give you choices like, “I choose to excel, not to compete.” They have all of these things to help you with re-entry. Then they have a course on money, on the value of a dollar. They had breathalyzers. They had dogs that would come and you had to put your hand by this thing so they could come and smell your fingertip. They would do things like, “Oh, it smells you got weed on your fingers, so you’re going back to jail.” I got caught up smoking a cigarette so I went from a low intensity halfway back program to the high intensity halfway back program-- Delaney Hall. Delaney Hall was next to The Green Monster, the Green Monster was in Newark, the county jail of Newark, so I’m in Delaney Hall, next to The Green Monster [unclear].
This is just for a regular cigarette?
This is just for a regular cigarette. Because you have to smoke outside. I was inside just chilling with a friend. But these things are good. They’re called pull-ups meaning that they pull you up. They modify your behavior and get you ready so you don’t panic. Like-- here’s how you fill out a resume, here’s how you fill out an application. Let’s have a conversation like I’m the interviewer and you’re being interviewed. And these things were cool… if you never had experience in these things. Now, mind I wasn’t trying to show any bravado, but I’ve had those experiences. I was raised middle class. I’ve been on interviews before. I know how to tie my tie, things like that. So, it was funny, even when I went to prison on the first day, they put me in these classes that were [unclear] and I would be like, “Can I not take this class?” And they would be like-- take this test. “Oh, we’re sorry sir, we didn’t know you had a high school diploma,” and I would be like, “Yeah, go check my transcript.” And they would be like, “So what do you want to do?” And I would be like, “I want to go to work.” [Laughs] That’s it. But it’s unfortunate. Because it’s true. When I took the classes [on crime] all you see is people with low IQs. I had a guy who had such a phobia, he was 5’8, thirty years old, he would suck his thumb and sleep underneath the bed. He would not sleep on his bed, either high or low. He would sleep under the bed and even and home he would sleep under his bed because he had a phobia of something. He would be under the bed, sucking his thumb, and we’d chill and he’d read piss poorly because he’d be on a fifth, fourth grade level at thirty years old so I would read to him and we would talk and stuff and I would tell him that if he got out, there’s courses out there. So it’s unfortunate that there’s people that, yeah, they can make a million dollars on the street, but they can’t even read their full name so when they get so distraught when trying to apply into a regular workplace that they say, “Eff it, I’m just going to stay here and deviate and make these, I don’t know, five hundred, eight hundred a day doing nothing, realistically.”
00:25:10
But like I said, focusing back on the halfway back programs, the halfway back programs were cool because you had like, people that, their attitudes changed. You can get a glimpse of what it’s like in society. And the most sought after thing is the furlough. For that you get like, five hours, you can lie and say you’re going to work and not come back. Or you hear traumatic horror stories of a guy who, I liked to play chess with him, he went on the train and lost it. He just had like a PTSD moment and just lost it because he hasn’t been outside and around that many people in so long that he couldn’t move. He was on the train, everything was good, he was talking to someone for like fifteen minutes, and then the doors opened and everyone came in. [Snaps fingers] He lost it. They had to call the paramedics. They had to resuscitate him, help him catch his breath. He has anxiety medication, probably to this day. But my understanding, being around all these different things… my thing was, I was always playing chess because chess allowed me, one, to look at my brain, and I looked at mine from the county jail and to the prison. I had seen a difference. And also the difference in my chess game reflected on the difference in my behavior because, like, at first I was all sloppy, but I would tighten up, get myself more organized and then my chess game was more organized. I had a strategy, and it was very reflective, so I kept that because it was something like, if you can become a better chess player than you can [unclear] so if you can do it with all these pieces, how can you apply it.
And this gentleman told me a long time ago, his name was Jahad, and Jahad had murdered somebody, and he told me straight up, “Slow money is sure money.” Slow money meaning, if you work a Shoprite job it’s guaranteed that you get that check at the end of the week, if you just show up. You work that street block the same forty hours, it’s not guaranteed, even into the next hour, and your boy, the police, some thief, whoever could rob you. They could rob you without you even knowing. They could come back and give you some money and it could be a fake dollar bill and you don’t even know because you just put it in your pocket and keep going. And then you’re under arrest for fraud, going back to prison, as simple as that. He broke it down. He said, slow money is sure money, and it took a while to master that. I’m still trying to master that. But, in that sense, working class poor people like myself-- I’m under the thirty three thousand annually, so I know my income is below whatever it should be. But I had worked in a capacity where I had had that before, so going to jail and working with people, living and working with people who came from all different levels of education, all different levels of life, it kind of molded me because I grew up, I became a man in prison. Like from eighteen to twenty-one, I was behind the wall, I came out at like twenty-two, pretty much, fresh out of the prison system. So, coming out of the prison system, I came home to homelessness again because there was no shelter that was open to me. I ended up going to the shelter, turning around, put my name on the list, walked around aimlessly until I couldn’t walk anymore, then I had seen a friend and I asked and slept underneath the Rutgers boat complex, maybe two feet under the boat complex, and I had laid out cushions from couches, a little heat hook up, some covering and I was good [laughs].
There was a guy, he was a friend of a brother I knew in the streets, and he was like, you can stay, no problem, and we’d hang out. The next day, he’s like, you better go to the shelter because [unclear] wants you to have housing. I’m like-- I know, I know. I go to the shelter. They still don’t have anything, I had to wait. I’m still walking and I couldn’t walk anywhere, and out of nowhere, this evangelist woman come and is like, “What are you doing?” And I’m like, “I’m sitting. I can’t move. My feet hurt.” And she’s like, “Do you want to come inside for this prayer thing.” I’m like, “Sure.” It goes from, she knows the guy in the soup kitchen, the guy in the soup kitchen is like, “He’s a good guy, I remember him when he was younger, let him stay.” He worked at the shelter, this guy. He worked at the soup kitchen and the shelter, so he talked to people at the shelter, two weeks later I’m at the shelter. I stay in the shelter six months. My first day in the shelter, I spent about two weeks, then I hopped out the window and went to Rutgers campus and never came back because I had never seen a university before or a campus.
I met a Jewish girl, her name was Gemma. She offered me a one hitter, so we went under a tree and I never came back to the shelter that day. I would stop by for food once in a while and be like, “Yo, guys, you should come to the campus” [laughs] and another story that’s funny-- I went to Monroe football, and one of the guys, one of my best friends, that runs, that also ran a frat house so when I end up going to the football with some of the guys from the shelter, it’s like, “Woah, what’s up? You’re back.” There’s like an older guy, a twenty-seven-year-old, and me, I’m like 19, and he gets a circle of chairs and two strippers, and we ended up spending the whole night talking and the guys came up to me and were like, “Yo, Walt, we’ve never had such a good time in our lives, thank you for this.” And, I was like, “No, thank my boy over here this this and that.”
00:31:12
You hit this phase in homelessness or working class poor where you try to figure out how to live free. And I mastered living free. I promise you, after coming out of that, after going into the shelter, I was there for six months, I met a female, it worked out for about six months. I was twenty-two, she was thirty-two, I was staying with her for about six months. We were volunteering together at the soup kitchen. I’m staying at the shelter, but I’m messing with her. I left that, I left her for another thirty-year-old woman, a dancer. It was cool, everything’s great, but then, they were smart. I was twenty-two, they were thirty and I’m thirty-four now. I see it now, but didn’t see it then. They were like, this is great, but I have other things to deal with.
Well, let me ask you, hanging out with these friends of yours should be a part of living free.
Yes.
And, the question that came to my mind when you said that was-- how free do you mean?
In freedom ways, I mean this-- when I say maximum free, it’s part of your depression that makes you want to avoid responsibility and makes you want to stay in that space because it helps you not think about your current trauma. As you survive and live free, you think this is your reality and you sanction yourself off in this reality.
So, free means avoiding responsibility?
Yeah, so for example, I had three places to stay at like twenty-eight. I was staying in an old Victorian house on a couch. I was staying at this female’s dorm, and I was staying at this little crib spot I had in a boiler room, so I can choose from any three of those at any time I wanted. But, if things went left with the girl, I would go to the Victorian house, and then when all else failed, I always had the boiler room. And the goal, and the trick to living free, is to show respect to wherever you’re staying. You know, clean up, if you can put groceries in, pay the light bill, you know stuff like that, so it wasn’t free free, but they knew that I wasn’t on the lease or it was like a co-op… I had weed. I had bought weed and I was like, “Oh, you guys smoke so you can take like an eighth or whatever. You can take that for rent and here’s fifty dollars for the light bill.”
“Yo, Walt, can you do dishes?” “No problem. I still haven’t paid any rent. And I’m there for the entirety of your lease. I’m hosting parties with you. Especially with your friends [laughs].”
It’s crazy. The landlord comes in and is like, “Is he here?” And it’s like, “Nah, he’s not here. What are you talking about?” It was to the point where I was squatting for like eight months. My friends would tell me the landlord’s coming, you gotta go. I wouldn’t go. I would go to the basement or hide in the closet or something, so the freeloader thing, it gets you in here, and you think you’re living, but you’re not, you’re just surviving. You get into this mode where you roll up your bag. You have two rolled pants, two rolled shirts, a toothbrush on the side. And you’re ready to go no matter what, it’s like, oh, you gotta go.
So, in between all this mess of staying place to place or being chronically homeless, I was privy to meeting a woman named Lazan Finsky [?] who dramatically changed my life because she recognized my light, my brilliance that was in me, and I couldn’t see it because I was too busy wasting it. Until the birth of my daughter in, 2017-- in 2007, sorry, I was in another chapter [laughs]. So in 2007, the birth of my daughter kind of put me in this mode where like, if you work, you have to work for someone other than yourself and, dummy, you had a gentleman that fought in World War II, who drove 18 wheelers for you until he was like 70-years-old and had prostate cancer, you are going to help this small child and this is all you have. And these people were not my blood. These people loved me as their own child and, to the point where my brother, who is the heir to them, has told me, “Hey, they loved you way more than they ever loved me.” So, the point is, my daughter, her name is Naomi, because it means light and that kind of kept me on the fringes of over-disaster, meaning that I would push the limits but I wouldn’t push them too far because when I was trafficking before she was born, trafficking drugs before she was born-- I was selling dope, coke, heroin, everything, weed, like everything and I was subletting to a guy upstairs, to people downstairs who moved out and left because they guy was too flamboyant and they were like, we can’t take this, so as soon as they left, I brought in a crackhead and used him as a contractor. I would just give him a couple of things of crack and we would just sell ridiculous amounts of that and all types of stuff, because I had a baby on the way and I needed to make money. And even though I wasn’t getting along with the mother because I was cheating on her, I was doing this, that type of stuff, I was turning into a different person. However, going back to that freeloading thing I wasn’t being responsible with it. I was just blowing it on myself. I wasn’t paying the bill. I spent thousands of dollars doing dumb shit.
00:37:18
Now, fast forwarding, like I said, I had left the shelter. I was out in the wonderful world of New Brunswick and I’m trying to rent now. And my mother did something very critical too. She called social security, because I was adopted. As a ward of the court she had been receiving my check for me, so now that I’m old enough to receive the check I got the check in my own name, but before I got the check in my own name, I actually got a payee from the woman that I just mentioned. She was the one that was thirty-years-old who was sort of about to leave the shelter and move in with her. So, I leave the shelter and move in with this Trinadadian/Jamaican person and there’s some weird vibes, meaning that like she was into voodoo [laughs]. I’m serious. But I guess she was so infatuated with me that she didn’t want to let me go. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the movie City of God?
I know of it.
You know of it? There’s this scene in there where the bad guy sees the witch doctor and the witch doctor gives him a necklace and says, “This necklace will keep you safe, you just can’t have sex, you can’t do this, or you’ll snap.” So, she did something, so bruja, some negative shit, but she lied, and said it was positive or whatever and was like, “Put this necklace on and say these prayers and it will protect you blah blah blah.” So I’m walking around, police pull up, she’s standing next to me, she starts talking like “Hi Tom, duh da duh da duh” and the police just go away. I’m like, nah, it can’t be the necklace. It can’t be the necklace. So, one time we get into an argument, blah blah and I pull the necklace off. I pulled so hard to pull it off that it cut my neck. And then, basically, the point of the story was, when I got my social security and had everything switched over to me, she was my representative payee. It just so happened that I’m still very volatile from having the street edge. I went to the library, I’m locked into the library with a Rutgers guest pass, I know people there, I’m relaxing. I’m nodding off. Soon, the police come up to me and ask if I have ID. I know I have ID. I also know I have a municipal warrant. They’re like, “Please, sir, can you give us ID.” I give them the ID, the one touched my flight jacket. I go, “Sir, why are you touching my flight jacket?” He backs up. The one guy is still talking. I see them both out of the corner of my eye.
00:40:00
The one guy is like, “Oh.” Out of the corner of my eye I see him go [makes gesture]. He says, “Will you please put your hands behind your back?” I was like, nah. And that means I hit the steps and I ran out of fear. And from that mess I recall, and aggravated assault, resisting arrest from a state official and then it was dropped down [unclear] and I walked out of there paying two hundred dollars. Not to mention I was working as a sexton at the church and that pretty much saved my life. And I was enrolled in Middlesex and I was working full time as a waiter and I was collecting social security. Somehow I stayed under the quota and they didn’t mess with me. After beating that, mind you, I had just come back from prison so I was on my way to do another ten years.
Right then and there. That changed, went to Middlesex, stayed focused on Middlesex, left the crazy Trinadadian chick, and met another woman right after, so there was the two and then the third, who is the mother of my child. She came over, hanged out, everything was good, but then I went, like I said, I moved into the [unclear] Avenue area, and that’s when I did all that stuff in the house-- subletting, drugs, but with the intention of just, I needed to make money for my baby. But I ended up never saving that money, and that speaks to what we’re talking about, is that you get in such a survival mode that, matter what it is, that if you have a sense of stability, you learn to cherish that sense of stability. When you try to cherish that stability, you blow funds. Whenever you try to save your money, you have all these things to credit it up, all these fines. What I skipped over, is that you accumulate all these trespassing charges, all these fines, all these simple assaults and then when you don’t have an address, you get a contempt of court. And those fines just keep going up, and going up, and going up, and going up. You revisit that three months later, because you forget and it goes up again and then if you’re smart you made your time. So, there’s people out there in the streets who will be like, okay, lock me up. Let’s go. And they’ll do it day after day just so they can pay off their fines because they don’t have the cash to pay off the fines.
So, the jail time substitutes for the fines that you pay?
Yes, Yes. You can do something like $150 a day depending on what you verbally agree with the judge. So, there are people who just do that and just live that way. And when it’s cold, same situation. They go, “All right, well, damn, it’s twenty below.” They’ll break a window and go sit down and wait for the cops to come. The cops will come and be like ‘What happened?’ It will be like, “Oh, I assaulted that window over there.” “All right, you’re under arrest.” “Thank God, they got coffee.” [laughs] That’s what it is. [Laughs] You know, because, I’m not going to recourse this into a whole shelter story but, personally, with my situation, it’s like from being stable, upper middle class, living in a five-bedroom house, having formal instruction, retired army, 18-wheeler dudes around me, house moms, whatever you want to call, beauticians, and all these things, I had seen nothing but stability. Even my second mother was a woman at the gym and that’s where a lot of my foundation of health comes because a fifty year old woman-- vegetarian, very healthy, ran a gym, boxed, did yoga, all that stuff was like, “Walter, you can come here and this is your safe haven.”
So, snapshotting this whole thing-- it’s a picture-- is that stability, you have talents, you have an outlet, you have structure, right here. Move away, they take all those things away from you. They leave you under the bridge with a bag. What also broke my stride is that I left this bag underneath Hickman Hall at Rutgers-- and never let people sleep where you sleep-- this guy took my bag, and I had my letter to go take my SAT in Somerset. When I came back and my bag was gone I lost it, and I was just like eff it, and I just started to compromise. I was like, “Oh, yeah, I’ll sell drugs. Sure. Oh, you want me to punch that guy in the face? Okay. What do I get for it? Some weed? Okay.” You know, I was eighteen. I was dumb. But now, in retrospect I look back at my town, twenty or thirty years later, people are like, you could have made it to the NFL. That’s okay. I don’t want to be a billionaire with a slave to endorsements so I’m thankful that I suffered this stuff, because by me suffering this stuff I sort of developed who I was, who I am, and not only that, but I didn’t realize how integral the meditation, the kung fu, the chi gong, even the many teachers I met throughout the years would feed to me, because it gave me that discipline and that structure to get back into it. Meaning that, in the morning I would wake up early, wake up early, stretch out, stay warm, and when you have to do this, and when it’s twenty below and your feet are ice, you have to put weight on your feet to get the blood circulating through them. So I would stand in a certain meditation posture in the east at like five fifteen, and meditate and get my immune system and my breath back and stretch so I wouldn’t have any cracks in my feet all day. Then go, then at twelve o’clock, stop, eat lunch at the dining hall. Go get some coffee, go in the locker room, go check my Facebook, and act like I was, not act, but actually do it, organize open mics. I remember asking how we want to have this educational thing in New Brunswick, with the anticipation that I was going to get a salary out of this. But I wasn’t thinking realistically on a micro level, I was just looking at a brand level because I was suffering. I was like, “Oh, I have a resource, I have a laptop. And food. So all my resources are covered.” So I mastered that technique for like four years. So, I was like the undergraduate alumni on campus where I could just move around and chill and people would be like, “Yo, what’s going on?” “Walt, are you coming to my open mic on Friday?” “Yeah, I’ll come to your open mic on Friday. Where is it?” “At Hidden Grounds. Are you coming to Verbal Mayhem?” “Yes, I’m coming to Verbal Mayhem. No problem.”
00:46:36
So, that’s what happened. I found niches to redevelop my structure. Like Mondays, I’ll meet a friend of mine at Starbucks and simultaneously cleaning up my name. And a lot of my friends were police officers who are now working in New Brunswick, so they’re like, Walt [unclear] and the respect that I’m starting to carry now, does not zigzag into the streets anymore. It’s like, now what are you doing? I have an outlet. This guy, Mr. McGovern, did some outreach to me, he found me [unclear].
I’m staying with this crazy girl in a tent in her backyard. Sometimes we stay on this side of the Raritan and we hope books from Princeton to wherever, [laughs], floating around. She’s crazy. I’m a little crazy, too, but I’m not that crazy.
So, in terms of stable housing, having stable housing, you still don’t have that.
No.
You’re moving from place to place.
The longest stint, maybe seven months, and like I said, it was only under a condition like, “Damn, I feel bad for you. It’s twenty below, you can stay here. Or, you got that [snaps]. Yeah, I got that. Okay, you can sleep on the couch.” Or, it was the opposite. It was like, I would produce something for them if they needed it because, once again, if you’re a new person to the area and you have a habit, then I’m a person from the urban area that can get you that habit. And usually I would benefit myself, but I wouldn’t take too much of a benefit, so they wouldn’t think I was benefiting. And take a little benefit, and stay there with them. And that allowed me, that allocated me space. Does that make sense? But like I said, that lifestyle is that whole survivor lifestyle, it’s not, you’re not living. But the beauty of it is that, the conversations I’ve had at libraries over a cigarette or the friendships I’ve made waiting in the rain. Those things are priceless, those conversations are priceless, and then the people that I help down in my own gutterness because I’m aware of something they’re not aware of.
00:49:12
“You’re a veteran, sir? Hold on. Do you have an honorable discharge?” Yeah. Okay. Go over there and ask that person for this. It’s like eighty, it’s like twenty below, it could be a hundred degrees, no humidity and throughout that whole stint, maybe 2013 going forward, I’m walking past a guy now, he lives at Rutgers and he messed up his scholarship, he was down and out, he didn’t know what to do, and I was like, “Look, go to EOF, talk to Wally, he’ll take care of that situation.” Are you sure? Yes. I’m pretty sure about it. Just go. Again, he looked like he had a Maury makeover, he’s smiling, he looked like he lost twenty pounds. I ask him, “Yo, can I get a meal swipe. He’s like, “Nah, man. I don’t have any meal swipes. I only have a certain plan amount.” I understand. I get it, I get it. But I’ll see you tomorrow, when you have a meal swipe, right. And that was that. And I’m still homeless as this kid goes on with his life. I just walked by this person yesterday. He was complaining about when social security is going to hit. He walked by me with a Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas shit on like, “yeah, I work per diem at Robert Wood Johnson, thank you so much.” I’m like, “Well, I still have your number, right? So, we can talk about how you made it and see your success.”
00:50:23
And that’s the beautiful part because, these things that I’ve done, also put me into accountability with myself. I could keep giving away until… It’s like Confucius and Lao Zhu. Confucius was always wanting to be an imperial sage type person but all his students went on to become an advisor to the warlords and the emperors. He never became that himself. Lao Zhu was historian of records but he’s famous because they sat him down before he went to write eight chapters about the god of [unclear]. I mention the both of them because of the fact that that wisdom I learned from those two people, also helped me function. Because you can be homeless, but in harmony with the Tao. You can be in a political space and still be in harmony with humanity, heaven, and earth, so now that I’m in sort of a more political atmosphere and more religious atmosphere, I’m still at harmony with heaven and earth, I haven’t left my origin. And what I mean by origin is that, I may be from the streets, but I also clearly remember what it’s like to live suburban and upper middle class and I strive to do that. I strive to do that. I don’t strive to do that in a sense to be, like, better than anyone. I strive to be that, because I know that’s where my caliber is, and, I don’t know, like I said. I just, with my story, the important aspect of it, is that I made it out. I went literally from being out and about, being place to place, to pulling all these resources. Living in the bottom of this space, moving around this place, working around this place, just staying busy, I can do way more than grunt work.
Oh! I’m sorry. I skipped a very important thing. There’s also, from 2013 to the present, I always, periodically, just went to the city council and spoke my mind about what’s going on with the homeless epidemic, and as you know, part of that was the petition, part of that was co-organizers and groups on campus. And, yet, I was still running from that because I had probation. Or I was on the run from probation. I was on the run from probation for two-and-a-half-years and on a two-year probation. I did a four-year probation on a two-year probation. Because, one, I know my law, two, this should have never got on probation because prior to that I had gone nine to ten years without any charges, but because of that officer that I had fought, the aforementioned, were now the cops that were watching me and hunting me down, I trumped that up. Frank Hanson is back on campus and they can’t get me for stealing candy bars, they can’t put me in a cage this time. And that’s that.
It’s interesting that you mentioned all of the law enforcement, all of the justice stuff. It doesn’t, even when you got everything straightened out, make you choices right, but once you’re in that cycle, it just seems to chase you no matter who straight you become.
Unless, in the near future, there are steps up, a re-entry foundation, that puts a pool of money to that, brothers and sisters will be in debt and to the system, no matter how stable they are because your credit will be shot, the garnishment will still be there. Those things need to be adopted into homeless prevention. Because if you want someone to go on and live self-sufficient again, they can’t if they have a poor credit score. They can’t if they have so much debt taken from them. Like you can exonerate them from [hospital bills]. Just make a call and say this guy was homeless when he went to the hospital. Just say the guy is exonerated. I’m pretty sure big pharma will bounce back from it, you know, like it’s not that bad. It’s very important to look at that because without that criminal influence, I say criminal influence just as a title for it, but without that influence, that influential thing, meaning that, you have to remember I’m from the suburbs, so in the suburbs the rite of passage is, “You want to be a contractor? You want to go on to a four-year school.” In the hood, the rite of passage is, “How long have you done in prison, young man? What gang did you get? Is that a teardrop on your eye, young man? How many of those you got?” And the rite of passage is the opposite, but no one is communicating that to them. That’s why I’m grateful that we are going to be able to start a curriculum that will communicate basic life skills. We can be like, “Yo, if I save fifty dollars a year at twenty-five, until I’m sixty-five, I can be a millionaire with interest?” Wow. Yo, I was making like five hundred every day, and then I blew like three hundred of it and I blew the other two hundred of it on weed this same day. Wow. You have no wealth.
00:55:44
You see what I’m saying? And no one is breaking through. These kids, if you sat one of these seventeen year old entrepreneurs down next to a Forbes economist right now they would be best friends. The forbes guy might just edit him a bit and he might edit the Forbes guy, to make him more aggressive in the field. You know, and the next thing you know, it’s like, oh, wow, I didn’t know that, so it’s horrible. It’s horrible, and no one has been able to look at it and snapshot it, and I’m thankful for the way I was brought into this. I was brought into this not broke, I was brought in having something for it, so when they took it away I looked at Buddha. Buddha had riches. He pulled his riches and went to live homeless in the woods and came back to riches and had a kid and had to live his life every day, in short. So. I’m thankful and I know now, as I got older, I know when to turn off the urban guy and turn on the suburban guy. But within me, that’s who I am. I felt that I had to be one or the other. There’s no such thing. They’re just aspects of me.
How long, in Middlesex County you’re dealing with that, I’m turning on and off, suburban guy today-- that’s a lot to juggle identity wise.
Chess. Chess.
Okay.
And Chinese checkers. I say Chinese checkers because you can play it from many different angles. The question was how could I maintain myself? Well, I was what every American wanted to see. I was the super happy-go-lucky, super athletic, nice jock guy who had his family and people were like, “Oh, you’ll be a great token athlete one day. He’s doing so well at his sports.” That’s all they knew. My father who raised me probably went, “Wow, I identify with this guy that I adopted way more than my own son.” Love. And then when I learned to adapt, no, when I came into, that African basket weaving thing was the cusp of me identifying with my black culture. And then I had to remember, my mom is white. My mom is Irish, German and some other stuff that she don’t even know. And, to be straightforward, no African American knows exactly where they were stolen from so we can all be like we’re from abulakong and mind you, if you peep my history on Facebook there was a time where I went and took a whole different surname. A metra metra name that goes back to my ancient ancestors which is called the [unclear] and that means the God that speaks into existence about the original creation story the anand. [Unclear] And he created the one God theory where they worshipped the sun. As soon as I changed my name, I got a call from a friend of mine, someone I’ve known since I was little and they were like, “Yo, Walt, why did you change your name?” You wouldn’t understand. [laughs]. That’s all I had to say. But if you know, you know. Those that talk about the Tao know nothing about the Tao. The Tao is unspoken. You can see it. You can see its manifestations, but you can’t name it at all. You can hear it, You know what I’m saying? And that’s what happened to me on the inside. On the inside, something happened to me on the inside that said, you know what? I want to see my child grow up. And I know that most of my friends are dead, have really bad addiction, mental health problems, or are in prison. And when they come back home and I revisit them, they come to me like, “Yo, Walt, what’s up, man? What’s going on?”
You know what the greatest achievement for me, what I can say, was? I was working around the corner on a demolition job and I was able to pull my friends in, from the streets, to work with me on the demo job, and that felt pretty good. I was like, “Wow, because I brought them in and they were making just as much as I’m making.” It’s great. But I look at that and I say, “You know what? I know what it’s like to have a couple spare bedrooms because every night my mom would be like [knocking noise] “What was that?” I don’t know. [unclear] “Hi, Mrs. Such and Such, me and my uncle were having a bad day, and I can’t stay there anymore. Can I just stay here for tonight, maybe?” That person is there, for like two months later, they’re in the kitchen with my mom and my brother. And my sister and everybody and they’re telling me, “Walt, what are you doing, hurry up. Go take the garbage out. Do this. Go get the plates, you know?” And all those things and I don’t have to dig back because I was saturated with so much love from these people, that it permeated through all the bullshit that I went through no matter where I was. Like, if I was in the streets in the middle of Newark, with a dope fiend and he’s like, “Yo, I want to take a break and go to my boy’s house.” I go to the boy’s house and I take my shoes and show respect and I have the same empathy and care, I don’t care who you are. You can be the President of the United States and you could be Oscar the Grump [Grouch] from Sesame Street, I’m going to treat you exactly the same. And that’s that. But, like, where we are present day, where Shiloh is, I have been able to do a nice [unclear] to society thinking that I come as food and clothing guy and from the distance people go, “Wow. That’s a lot of food and clothing, but if you look, if you get close within earshot, you start to hear a narrative, you start to hear a story, you start to hear psychological questions coming in very simply.” You hear, “Wait, what did you say again? Wait, you’re how old? Oh, okay, so you had a bad divorce. When’s the last time you had to rent. Were you ever on a lease here? Do you have an honorable discharge? Oh, you do have, you do have social security. SSI or D? Or you have SSD? Oh, well, it’s the first right now, oh no, it’s the third, so did you use it all?” No, but I have like, two hundred left. All right, cool, so check this out. Save that. Let me see what I can do. If I can’t do it, point to that person.
And now, it’s like [unclear] because no one is coming down in real time, and doing this to people. It’s like, wait ‘til they get here and then when they get here they are coming into, like, they are coming into, you have to remember, where are they? It’s a client-centered approach and I hate the word client, but it’s a human-centered approach, like what trauma are they facing at the moment you are talking to them. If you can remove that barrier or you can distract them from their own trauma and get to the root of it, you’ve succeeded. If you can’t, leave it, give a gesture of hope, and dignity. Walk away and give another sense of hope like, hey, I’ll be back. And then, when you come back, they may not open up. And when you come back again, they may open up. When they do, you fill that gap, you fill that gap with love. You fill the gap with love. And that’s solidarity. In social justice, in any activity they… you have to stay in solidarity with the group being affected by whatever they are being affected by. And on another note is the fact that I am one in the same with these people, that I have suffered every aspect of what they suffered already and if not I was privy to knowing about someone who did suffer it and I worked with them and around it and it helps. It helps, because it’s all about trust. Because in the streets you never ever, ever, ever, trust anyone. You don’t trust yourself. You don’t trust police. You don’t even trust the bus guy showing up on time. You don’t trust anything, so you put on these natural defense mechanisms. And that’s also part of the reason we need a safe space and a center for folks so they can de-traumatize, go through a curriculum at first, feel a sense of hope and integrity, and if not any of those things, just feel a sense of community because you step on a campus, you step outside in Highland Park, you feel part of the community, you come to the Farmer’s Market, you feel part of the Farmer’s community. You don’t have that [out of prison]. You feel like a refugee, just walking around aimlessly, hoping that there’s a refugee camp that will take you in. But there is none. So, you just lay down on the street, at the benches, you’re at the park and then you have five, six different type of police hunting for you. Because there’s no public place for you to be. And, they know that so they extort that fact. And they take away from you, your prized possession of your ID and that lets me know, that’s when it becomes criminalized because they don’t have the answer, are not seeing it, but they have the answer for seven years from the face coming out of my mouth. And that’s what I said [unclear] people are in denial of this homeless situation. Straight up and down. I’m not here to pick points or put my opinion on anything. It’s just that we’ve mastered something from working within these gaps and pulling these people out of those potholes that no one even knows exist. Pull you right out and bring you into the light. Telling him that he deserves a chance. That’s what someone did for me so I’m just passing it on to someone else.
01:05:47
How much of this trust issue, was this trust issue, did it keep you from finding a better space to get to? [muffled]
About eighteen years. About eighteen years.
So, it’s still something you work with.
Yeah. It’s still something I work with. But the person who had the most impact on me trusting other people was my Grandmaster/Teacher Roger Polascio, who knew me since birth, since before I could walk. So I didn’t have to fake it around him. I didn’t have to act in any type of way. I would come see him, I was like seven years old, hanging out with his son again. It helped me so much. Plus he was like… [unclear] and it was winter time and he’d be like, “You better be on that train, coming to my house at seven o’clock or you’re not going to be able to make this money later.” He’d make a thousand, I’d make two hundred [laughs], but it was something. It’s funny because he was seventy, his mother was ninety, his sister was blind, you know, and there’s nothing seeing a seventy year old man being cursed out by his ninety year old mom. It’s so funny. Then he got the dogs. A little dog. A rottweiler. But all these things, in that sense, like I was saying back before, it brought me back home in my head like, “Wait, there is love. You’re seeing God.” And then I would see how he treated his mom and then I would get in contact with my mom. So I had that guidance from someone that I actually, genuinely knew and he would put me in positions like, all right, well, we are going to this big house and you’re going to do this, this, and this, so he made it so I had to trust people and they also had to trust me. I had put on this whole facade, not a facade, but after you act it, you become it. And I was never raised wrong. That’s the thing. I went left of how I was raised. It’s like-- you know right from wrong. [unclear]. My father said to me, one of his last words was like, you know right from wrong. Choose it. Stay on the straight path. I know right from wrong. It’s just sometimes you enjoy doing wrong to much. Or, you want to do an ultimate mic drop in spoken word, there’s no such thing as right or wrong. It’s just action. Your action is your religion. It’s something that derides you from making that action. So I learned to get intune with the observer within me. And when I found the observer within me, I quieted down and let it become calm, peaceful, and tranquil. And don’t get me wrong, there’s times when, like I’m in the streets, and I feel that, uh, how do you say it, the oppression of someone else? I’m going to speak on it, I’m going to advocate. I just talked to someone, I was in the middle of Remsen Ave, this was like three days ago, I was between Remsen Avenue and Leigh Avenue and I came with a box of bag lunches from Miltown. I had a bunch of boxes of about one hundred bag lunches. None of my volunteers are ready to go into the heart of New Brunswick yet so I go by myself. I double park in the middle of the street, I hope out and hustler comes and tells me, “Oh you can’t leave this box here, somebody is [unclear] but I passed next to someone I know and I used to be that hustler. [unclear].
01:09:43
And I’m still cursing out this guy, when I had my daughter, he would yell my name out like, I got weed over here. I’d be like, “Fam, don’t be yelling my name out in the streets.” And, the one guy is like, “Shut up and listen to him,” to this kid I’m talking to, because I know this kid, and I was like, I know you’re from my town, I’m from here from back in the day. I’m from here too, so please don’t yell my name out anymore, when I’m over here trying to see my child, and, two, where’s the Evangelist house, but he said it in a calm way, because he had seen my tone. And, as I’ve been saying this, trust, people that I have been serving at the street for three or four years, are like, “Yo, Walt, come this way, come this way, drop the box over here at the abandoned house, so I come, I’m in the middle of the block, at ten thirty at night with a giant box of [unclear].” I’m carrying it down the block with five teens behind me, people that I know, getting high, whatever, we get to the end of the street, I beep the horn, the guy comes looking for whatever he’s looking for because he’s human, these people are human and they still deserve to eat. They deserve a sense of dignity. And I said, boom, there’s a box of food at the abandoned house two blocks up on the left. “Thanks, Walt,” [makes high five sound] and I’m gone.
Now, for instance, just suppose the police stopped me. It’s fine. Do you want to know why? Because the captain of the police was an Evangelist gentleman who was out there serving the homeless as well. And, then, I went to high school with some of these cops out here, and then, I’m keeping the peace, and at the same time, what are they going to do, sell the apple back? Okay… It’s better than selling heroin or cocaine. Or they could just sell you the water for a dollar. Oh wow, that’s great, you can go to Trenton right now and get one from any street light. Or you can go to Newark and get a newspaper from a guy with a vest on. So, these are dignified actions that deserve merit, if not from a human, from the higher power that be, and if it not deserve that at least I can sleep better saying I gave an honest effort. That’s what I’m all about. Because people seen that I have some skill sets. I’m paying five dollars a month right now on the zone rehabilitation thing. When I was at Middlesex, before child support and craziness happened, I was on my way up, I got restriction, had a falling out with the baby’s mom, had some child support stuff, a little fight happened with some guy on the streets, so I had these warrants actively going on and what that did, it messed me up because if I would have done well and finished that course I would have made it all the way to Rutgers-- that was 2009-- you know? So, backtrack, staying focused, I’m on my way, that’s where Shiloh is, where I am as a human right now is, I’m ready. I’m ready for more. I’m ready for that next step and that next step may be, will be United Way, COO, I was talking to, maybe JD ventures, this program I’m working on. In the meantime I have some very dedicated friends, students, community members, and other national volunteer groups working together and it’s great. But I’m not content because I don’t have a building yet [unclear] and that’s that.
So, there’s two things going on. The organization is being built and you’re still homeless, right?
Yeah [laughs].
You said before, I think, that, you haven’t made any money, right?
No. I’ve made zero dollars. This is all God’s work right here. I’m being spiritually rewarded.
Are you doing other work?
Yeah. I mean, to keep pay in my pocket, was moving. I was working for a moving company for the past five years. I was working for an independent guy, and then I was working for some place by Middlesex County College. But once they started garnishing, from debt I had incurred, garnishing my education, garnishing my child support I was like: ‘Well, I need to work for more than thirty percent pay. Now, I’m working at Shoprite starting on overnight. They are still going to start garnishing, but if nothing, at least I still have something coming in. But the point is, this month on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of October, I go for a moving house support training. I was invited by the Middlesex County seat, which means something I can’t forecast. However, they don’t send you to training for no reason.
To get your certification or changes?
Exactly. Last time, in 2009, I went for a training in Trenton. And I came back, decently endowed with some FEMA funding, you know? However, there is no ideas other than the ideas that I’ve been casting them. I also dropped the county government a large email explaining, if we just took these twenty abandoned properties behind campus that’s just sitting there behind the water tower right now and made each of them a facet of homelessness, you have a checkmate move. It’s like a Chinese checkerboard, but no one even has to get to the other side this time. You just set up the pieces and leave them there. And then let Walt come in and play around on the playground. That’s all you have to do. And give me some supporting acts. And fall back, and have a nice life, and relax. Stop panicking. Then me, Hank, and another reporter can give you a more detailed story about this person’s life to say, “you know what? They were scared. He was just angry or scared. He did all the work on all these houses? How do you feel about that. Oh well, that’s such and such. Hire him.” You know? And these things is what I’m doing because, it’s like, the homeless don’t have that voice. I’m grateful that the creator put currents in me to speak out. And I was scared to talk. I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want to talk about it because I was already a target from the police brutality benefit I did. I was a target just from being in the criminal mindset and doing things of that nature before. But, there is no buts, now that I’ve arrived, and this is only a small part of my comprehensive factory plan, Hank, since homeless speaks to at-risk youth, at risk youth speaks to the felon community. So, like, I want to help out the homelessness thing that’s starting once this thing gets going, then we get a halfway back program, which is why I’m working with NJ Reentry Corp now, and then the youth thing, where I’ll be teaching chess and spoken word in school. Then I can retire and have a decent amount of Fiat cash coming from the nonprofit sector. And we’ll be good. And then just [laughs] quarterly, do a publication.
You haven’t even touched on some things.
Sorry. I get caught up.
It’s okay. You haven’t even touched on the fact that you were a little late today.
Sorry.
That’s a question. Because you were in a cab.
I had a car at one point.
You had a car? The transportation issue is something that pops up all the time.
Metropolis.
So, here you are, no matter where you are staying, you have to find a way to get from point A to point B, if it’s a job, we’re talking about the train, you have to be on the train at a certain time. You have to think about this. So, for you, and for others, what do you think is the role of transportation in all of this?
Per se, in New Brunswick? It’s a metropolis so there will be the Hub City trolley which comes by the train station. There will be the Dash bus if you want to go out to toward the Somerset, New York and that area. There’s a Somerset looking trolley thing that’s a couple dollars. The trolley is like a dollar cab. There’s the coach bus and then the Rutgers bus is the main transportation. And that’s in confliction now because forty thousand students compared to thirty thousand students is here. And they notice the homeless are freeloading the bus all the time so they sort of cracked down on that but they can’t really because it’s a public university. And that’s it. And the cabs is five dollars everywhere, here in New Brunswick.
In terms of jobs, of jobs available, a lot of those aren’t actually available in the city itself, right? You go out to a warehouse zone…[unclear].
Well, that’s how you get played out. There are also disconnections on the temp agency. The temp agency will have an independent contractor drive in and you have to pay that guy five dollars a day or fifty to sixty dollars sometimes a week. [unclear] so now they’re already pulling out your check and it’s a menial job, so they’re pulling out your check, you’re paying this guy, and then you get paid. So, it’s a lose-lose situation.
How much did you pay to come here today?
I paid nine dollars. So, round trip is about 20 bucks. Yeah, 18 dollars.
And you said you’re coming from South Brunswick.
No. I’m coming from Edison Train Station. I live near there, near Piscataway Vo-Tech, Livingston Campus. I live there. Near Road One or whatever it’s called, that old national guard building. I’m right in front of there. I live in the blue buildings over there, on Kilmer.
Oh, so you’re in somewhere. You’re not homeless anymore. You sort of left me with the impression that you were.
No, no. So, for three years I’ve been housed at Kilmer Home.
01:20:00
When I was walking around with that case manager, I was alluding to the case manager helping me the last time. I slept here. I left here. I went back to the streets. I went back to the crazy ex-girlfriend and that didn’t work out and I was outreaching to an outreach worker, and the outreach worker got me a list and I went into Kilmer Homes, around 2015 sometime, and I’ve been there for the past three years holding that down. And, if not, it’s a Section Eight type thing so I’m not paying anything. Which is crazy. I don’t know. I just give them my taxes and everything. But like I said, they know I’m being supported by a church and other faith groups and I’m doing this work in hopes that I can get a salary from it. I don’t care if it’s a big salary, little salary, whatever it can be. But something that’s a living wage, because, like I said, I have a child and I plan on going back to school and when I go back to school and finishing school, I want to get some kind of physical therapy going for me, because I like the health, I like the health stuff, so that will give me some cash. Yeah.
Section Eight helps you put a roof over your head, which provides you some level of stability.
Yes, but it can be-- and I always have that fear of being pulled from it, I really do, because it just is what it is. I’m just used to packing a bag, on the run, keeping that bag ready to go, and just leaving. But, now, with this place, I’ve been here for three years and they tell you, like the landlord will tell you, “Oh, we are trying to get the Section Eight people out,” so you have to go through inspections every year, make sure your house is the same as it did when you moved in. You can’t smoke cigarettes [laughs] Of course I don’t. And, all these things, you know? It’s just staying up to par. But, as a person that’s went from homelessness to hood rich, right? We’ll say hood rich, working class poor and I have a roof now. I tell you this, Frank, when I first moved in there, I cried. I seen it raining outside, and I was inside? I cried. I seen it snowing outside and I had my heat on? I cried. I actually did a post like two years ago and I said, “Wow, it’s such a blessing to turn your heat down when it’s too hot or to turn your cool down when it’s too warm. That means like, it means a lot.” But now that I’m past that whole trauma, I’m to the point where I’m like, “Hmmm, this is where I am?” and then I fell back a little bit, to be honest, because of the fact that, okay, I had the car. I was working at the moving company, before they were garnishing me. I was working at the company. I was given a car, used the car, fixed the car a little bit [unclear], the car just shut down, I’m not buying a whole new car so it was a good car, for two-and-a-half years I had the car, so from moving at a pace of fluency, because having a car is a whole nother level of being affluent, of economy, right? It’s a whole ‘nother level. So, now that I have to go through all these subchannels of borrowing this person’s car or asking this person for a ride, it’s slowed down how I make money. Because I can do little moving jobs. I can do little paint jobs. I can do clean ups and things like that. So, that’s what I’ve been doing. Under the table, I’ve been doing plenty of big yards in Highland Park and stuff. But then that market slowly gets smaller. Because there’s competition. There’s other people coming here, like the refugee settlement program. [unclear] But it gives me more of a single point of focus on the work that I’m doing here because I know this is my purpose and I’m to that point where it’s almost pulling a salary, so with a little more effort on that I feel like it would go, but being realistically I would love to figure out how to get on the speaking circuit. I really want to get on the speaking circuit. To talk about this. We can talk about re-entry, we could talk about homelessness, we could talk about [water pollution?] We could talk about anything.
We talked about re-entry.
Yes. And I didn’t do that much time, but it’s the fact that I understand they system and I have an inside perspective and an outside perspective.
You have some skills, some life skills, having been in the suburban community, so when you did come out, maybe there was more for you.
Yep.
So, it makes you, you were in a better position, I guess than a lot of people.
Yeah. I had, I had techniques. I had different techniques where I can… [pause]... I, it’s hard to say, I can tell you a story. What I’ve seen comparatively looking at an urban person and a person coming from the suburb. A person coming from the suburb, god bless him, he just died, he had an addiction, a heroin addiction, he passed on, his name was John. A guy named John or whatever passed. When he came here though he went right into landscaping [unclear] and then from landscaping he got some masonry work. His habit slowed him, but yet his skills were very good so he could work and work and work, work and make money. When it was cold he’d be in a hotel all the time doing his numbers. However, his addiction-- they say it’s not addiction until negative consequences take hold-- so the negative consequence that took hold was that he lost custody of his child, became homeless. Then his habit got worse and he got into fights and altercations around the streets and then he started to hang out with the couples who were all into that and mixed it with synthetic weed and the next thing you know synthetic weed and heroin and whatever new stuff is in there, fentanyl, with all that, didn’t mix with his system and he died. Right? But the urban reality, fresh out of prison, fresh out the shelter, look around, for the same white guy, the same person, the same form of the habit, and because I know where the connections are of the weed, where the drugs are, I’m going to take him to it. And then I’ll make money off of this person, comparatively to, if he’s smart he may do a deflection of three to six months working at a temp agency and then he gets distraught because they are taking all of his money from him for transportation. But now he made an investment, like three hundred dollars. A three hundred dollar investment is all he needed to hop back on board. So, then he fronts. Every morning he puts his boots on and a book bag and packs a lunch and walks down the street like he’s going to his job. And just stands at French Street but has no intention of going to work. You see what I’m saying? And waits. And that same John comes around the corner. And the same Shirley. And Shaniqua, who needs her wake up bag. And Thomas and whoever the heck are coming, and he’s just there like, “Oh, yeah, come with me to get a coffee at the bodega.” A nod to the hand, boom, and it’s done. And guess what? He just made that three hundred in twenty-five minutes. And he’s still, and then he’s going to go put that, the three hundred away, and maybe he found it cheaper this time, a better connect for two hundred. And he still has some hundred and change left. You see what I’m saying? And then he adds another drug because he has some extra dollars and now he’s flipping and what he’s not looking at is the prosecutor office street light. That prosecutor office street light got that camera in there watching him the whole entire time. And they know he’s coming back to the shelter at four o’clock. And the shelter people have to contact the detectives at the window, so as soon as he came, as he went and laid down, got out of the shower, as soon as he went around the corner, the lady from the shelter is like, “He’s here.” He comes outside. He’s done. He wants to go smoke a cigarette, and then five cops come down the Rutgers police thing [makes siren noise]. He gets locked up, they put him upside the room and then they put the light on and then they show Thomas, that one guy Thomas, with his hat down laughing, but they can’t see it because they got him behind the window and they’re looking at, interviewing Thomas and Thomas been told on him, like two months ago. But they were waiting to get enough evidence on Thomas, uh, uh, on the random guy we’re talking about.
And that’s a repetitive thing you see in New Brunswick because Superior Court is there [laughs], all these beautiful lawyers are there, so they’re making a killing off the prison industrial complex. And modern day slavery. And that’s how they win, you know? Let’s not even go into all the other collusion that we could go into at the moment. But that’s part of it. And, then, if you want to get into a deeper scale of that level, you have Dominicans that own bars and places, you have another sublevel of the Puerto Rican community that has different connections with all three bars and stuff like that. Then you have the blacks, which are the sacrificial lambs, stuck on the blocks, literally. On the corner of the block, but each block outside [unclear]... the homeless, and since the beginning of time we go, African Royalty, Arabic, and then the Dominicans. And the sacrifice is, here, you take my product, I’m not getting arrested for my product. You will get arrested for my product because you are breaking it down into micro levels and then trying to sell it for a decent amount. By the time you do that all, I just gave a whole three hundred kilos away to the world. Good luck with that. It’s good stuff though. And they’re doing fine, for like three months and then the prosecutor office thing again happens or they already have someone on the inside. Because mind you, every Friday night, they might pull up on the person and get a check or some cash. And they turn their head and walk away. There are only two types of people in the world-- in New Brunswick-- you either fight the police or you work with the police and that’s a universal mindset in all the city, and that’s just a fact. I could give you another testimony from the second highest ranking Blood in Brooklyn, New York right now, you know? But then, any family guy now who just wants to see their daughter grow up. You see what I’m saying? So, when you get to the reality thing, the influence is poverty, the influence is circumstance, or the influence could be personal, but it’s a mixture, and if you look in New Brunswick, it’s not a poor area. It’s daytime population speaks to millions of dollars and when the population goes away those dollars revisit the community, but the deeper inside of it, and they may get a call, “Oh hey, what’s up. How you doing? I’ll meet you over here.” Let me know. And they come through and they’re gone. And they come through and they’re gone. And the second generation come through and they’re gone. Like, late night in New Brunswick, like, let’s say predominantly three o’clock until the sun comes up or two thirty until the sun comes up is late night in New Brunswick, a shift for customers. On that shift, it’s like you’re… you ever see that zombie movie, The Walking Dead?
Yeah.
It’s like The Walking Dead. Because you see all the crazy things at night. You see Highland Park late night. You see a whole bunch of craziness out here you never thought would be, you would see. So, that reality is very valid because it’s a repercussion of the affluence of the town. The menial jobs affect the affluency so a menial job would be breaking down some microchips or some cocaine and selling it back to someone who wants to use it. And any time a population doesn’t want to use it, the second generation is going to fall back, the third and fourth generations are going to fall back. And your child in college will definitely want to use it between Thursday and Saturday so the community that does not exist on the city map, between Leigh Avenue, no, I’m sorry, the area between Livingston and Commercial is the only one that exists on the map, all the rest [unclear] is making money off of all these people and that’s why you’ll see it every night at two o’clock in the morning. Every person in New Brunswick standing at Giovanelli’s with their best dressed outfit on like they’re coming out to go to the movies and it has nothing to do with their best dressed outfit. It’s how they got their best dressed outfit that matters. Because you have a continuous market. And that’s why you have a one way that says don’t go this way, you have all these, don’t make left turns on George Street and it’s ridiculous. Instead of, “Ooh, don’t touch this bag,” come together, spend some time together, even just talking in a circle. If we spent some time together, enough time together, there could be a revolution. But pointing at the problem, saying there is a problem, is not going to fix the problem. And even DEVCO, no New Brunswick Tomorrow, they have an annual review, and I went back a couple years, I went back to like early nineties and a guy came from Newark, a big time city planner and they brought him around to the bad areas of New Brunswick and it says, what he quoted, he was like, “Oh, these bad areas that you have in New Brunswick are very good areas in Newark so I don’t see what the problem is.” He said something along those lines. And I get that. And comparatively when I spend time homeless in New York or I spend time homeless in Lakewood or I spend time homeless in Tom’s River, it’s a whole ‘nother world, each one is different, you know? Yeah, the same necessities come. How am I going to feed myself, and house myself, and stay clean? Those are universal, you know, so it’s just, I don’t know… I got [unclear] in that..
01:34: 51
Those things are universal, right? But those universals can be criminalized?
Absolutely.
And, you need for these things, food, whatever, that’s not always easy ways of getting it from the street.
There’s really not. I could be like… yeah. All right, for instance, Lakewood, you have US Route Nine and the car dealership. Someone could come out the woods with something that could cut metal, slip under a truck, and get a catalytic converter, roll that thing up in a blanket, throw it in a book bag and run back to wherever it is they came from, and then in the morning get rid of that thing like it never ever happened. Because of that we don’t know why the person did that. It could be crack cocaine. It could be a legal fine. There are some many, a myriad of reasons why, but what I’m saying is that, but, yeah, you are sort of forced to do things you don’t want to do. But when there is locations to go to, when there is safe havens to go to, or when there is a computer to go to, or where there’s just like, I don’t know, like an oasis spot, like in Jersey City there is a space you can go and just be like bam, in the forest in the middle of the city you can just sit there and be like, “Wow, that’s pretty cool.” There’s no, like, pause buttons in the streets. It’s you constantly move, move, move, move, move, move and then you’re forced to move. Like, if I’m staying at a train station at five thirty, NTRAN is going to come, or the regular police are going to come, “Get up, get up, get up, shake the gate.” Shake the gate, get up, get up, get up, so it’s an automatic response for some people, as soon as they hear a maintenance person’s key [snaps] they pop off. Like I had it so well, when I was in the street, that I could sense the sun before it would come. Like I would just pop up. I knew the sun was coming. Or you hear birds. The birds would chirp before the sun comes up. You know? You hear the bird and you’re like [snaps] I’m up, let’s go. And you’re remembering that, if you leave any trace of where you were, you’ve compromised yourself, so you have to be like, “Oh, can’t leave a pillow, that thing has to be folded perfectly, one shot, gone.” And then you’re stash spot. You look around, stash your stuff. For me, there’s probably still stuff of mine in the Douglas library under the drop ceilings in the bathroom. You know, I might go find a couple dollars in there. Actually I might go check that out [laughs]. You know, but it’s just, you learn to become extra resourceful from beyond your normal limits because you have no choice but to and when it comes to criminalization, it’s not that you want-- you’re tired, man. You are, like I can’t move right now, like I’m sitting down on this bench and it’s comfortable. Like you don’t know how long it took me to get to this bench. Like, they just told me I couldn’t sit in front of Barnes and Noble. They just told me. They just removed the chairs in front of Starbucks, right here, and we just got the chairs in front of the Starbucks on George Street back after five years, and now they removed them, they’re all locked up on the side of Barnes and Noble. Because of one woman who would not take a shower and defecated on herself and smelled like what the hell. And I couldn’t borrow [unclear] so there was nothing I could do, so what do you want me to do? And I take full responsibility for these things sometimes and it hurts because I know everybody intimately.
Right.
So, that’s why I’m thankful that the government wised up to give me a more, a better position of power to help all these people and not have to go through their politics. Because now we’ve come to the point where we don’t even rely upon the same system that’s there. We’ve shattered it, completely shattered it, and like torched it because it’s a waste of time and time is everything. To a homeless person. So why wait on a waiting period when you have a direct service and engagement in the moment and all I need to do is get the green light from you to say go ahead. You feel me? So, I’m just saying is the remedy to everything, there’s a remedy to everything, even as you are going through the midst of your traumas, there’s a remedy to that if you can sort of grieve a little bit, or chat with someone who may be better off, you know like the old school saying that millionaires don’t hang out with millionaires? They hang out with billionaires so you have to keep leveling up, like in a relationship. You had a bad girlfriend, on this level? You want to go for the next level. Or whatever. It’s certain things personally. I’m not saying you have to follow this, I’m not a life coach or anything, but I’ve had several, but uh, oh [laughs], you gotta get this story, so hold on.
01:39:56
So, remember when I was homeless, I was staying at a creative space on Bayard Street and I was also staying on the twenty-second floor of [unclear]. My brother-in-law, who I mentioned, built that, Shamrock construction built that space, so I’m staying in my brother’s house. I’m staying at the View, I’m on the twenty-second floor, my friend gave me the pad to buzz in and then you also get another thing to go the the open lounge area. The open lounge has it though, so I go from being homeless to having my own office space on Bayard Street. Macro computer, space, a little space outside, where people draw, I have a Keurig. Then I go to another luxury apartment. I have cable, shower. And the lounge area has multiple TVs, a pool table, big island, and then another room around the corner with a gym, so you couldn’t tell me anything. And I had the hotspot with the iPad. I was fine. Unfortunately, a lot of amphetamines and tropics and the fact that he was masking a Bipolar disorder got him out of there but his parents were very affluent and saved him and got him, and we are friends to this day. But it was a nice lovely time for me because it brought together, it was right after I did the play at George Street Playhouse, Our Town Now and we went into the creative space around the corner from there. But I still had the creative arts bug in me...it connects to the story because that’s how I met the crazy girl who I lived with in the woods. That’s something for the time capsule in 2025 [laughs].
Yeah, man. It’s just the fact that I’ve met so many beautiful people, different conversations. I listened, tried to honor my teachers the best I could, and it took a few years but eventually I was able to apply the honoring of my teachers. And by teachers I mean, Mr. Mason at Elijah’s Promise, Yvette, who was like an aunt to me, who kept me focused, Pam, uh, the gentlemen at the shelter, all the guys at the shelter who worked there, um, the clergy of Tabernacle Church, [unclear], this woman saved me life, like, I slept there too. They would see me out in the cold and they’d be like, “No, son, it’s too cold, you can sleep in the pastor’s office.” They adopted me. People has given me opportunities and I did not spoil them, I did not spoil every opportunity people gave me. And when I did spoil those opportunities it was just like the rude, street version of me poking out at that time. A lot of my discontentment, if I can be straightforward with you, what I’m not saying, a lot of my discontentment is because I care so much about my daughter because she was all I had until I found my birth parents.
Yeah, you alluded to that several times.
Yeah. But my daughter’s situation. I’m not going to go into it.
We’re running out of time.
I just met my father after 28 years. And when I met him it was dope, but before I met him, I met my mom, so I was I was going through a dicey situation, I was cheating on the mother of my child with her best friend, she called DYFS. It caused a bad thing, but a good thing at the same time. I called them. They said my mother’s name. Is my mother still there? Is she registered? Her name was on the registry, I called her, she called back, I met my mom. Then, a miracle happened. I got a call from DYFS and they said, “Your brother is on leave and he wants to know if he can see you.” I met my brother. I didn’t know I had another brother, so both brothers came to see me. And then that same church mother I went to a Christmas dinner with around that year and I called my mother, she’s in Jersey City, so I’m like, “Hey, can I bring you a plate of food?” And she gives me the phone and is like, “Here, talk to your dad’s sister.” Dad’s sister is like, “Hey, nephew, here’s your dad’s number, call him. I told him you were staying on your friend’s couch and he’s not having that,” so I’m like, “Okay.”
This is your birth father?
Yes. This is my birth father. I call my father, “He’s like, son, he talks like,” You ever hear of that movie, Sixteen Blocks with Mos Def and Willie? No? Mos Def talks with an accent like a heroin popper [proceeds to demonstrate]. My father talks very nasally like, “Hey, what’s up? What’s up?” [makes nasal sounds] He sent me money straight away, I was on a Greyhound bus, spent thirteen hours. Spent thirteen hours on a Greyhound bus to see my father in South Carolina. It didn’t work out though so don’t get souped up, no happy ending. However, I did identify with Clay the African American dude who was dope and my father got real envious and my father, check this out, my father was trying to marry me to his wife’s daughter who just got a divorce so she would technically be my sister in law or something. I don’t get it. He’s married to his mom, so it’s not by blood or anything. But her daughter is divorced and I’m his first born son. But she can’t have kids so he wants us to hook up. It’s weird, It’s weird. In a double wide trailer in the south. I was like I gotta go, so I say peace out to Clay and I come back to homelessness. I was staying on Robertson Street. And that’s how that goes, for meeting my parents, but I was still in communication with my mother for a while and then from that my mom traumatized my sister and she didn’t want to meet us and now that I met my sister again, my sister is now good friends with my daughter. My sister is like twenty four, twenty three and she’s chilling with my daughter who is like ten, so that’s great. Because now my daughter has someone she can look to and identify with the same genomes or whatnot. And it’s cool because it’s going to be serious, with my daughter growing up. And that’s a lot of it [laughs].
I hope I didn’t jump around too much.
No. That’s cool. I can come back.
Okay. Because I can catch myself.
So, if I need anything else I will be in touch.
But the dynamics were poverty and things.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were just trying to let you tell the story you wanted to tell, so every story is going to be different.
I tried to draw the picture that I was pulling income while I was in the midst of these things, here and there. I was hustling, moving, culinary stuff, volunteering stuff. A little bit of stuff kept me afloat.
Surviving.
Yes. [Laughs].