So where do you live?

It's the question i keep getting asked over and over again, especially in Los Angeles, especially when meeting new people.  "So where do you live?"

For a while once I came back from Spain, it was easy.  My answer was that I was staying with my aunt in Seattle for a bit.  Then I found an aquaponics farm in Los Angeles who had a guy who was working to automate it and could use some help.  I packed up my car and drove down and started helping out at the farm and learning about the flow of things.  The farm owner was talking about getting me some hours working at the restaurant he ran, that never ended up happening though.

So I moved into a closet of a Mexican family who lived in South Los Angeles thinking that if I lived there I would be more likely to find an truly abandoned building that I could take over and start working on my vision of growing food year round for basically free and living for free while not taking away anything from anyone, instead i would be adding to the system, creating, literally growing in an area where nothing was.

I lived there for almost a year while I learned about computer coding amongst other things.  During this time I was driving around a lot as I had intimate companions all over LA.  I got so tired of driving back to South LA just to sleep and then turn around and go right back to where I just was last night that I decided to "hack" the traffic.  I started doing research on an SUV in which the seats lay down completely flat so that wherever I was, I wouldn't be forced to drive 30-45 min just to sleep.  So I found a perfect fit.  I found a 2000 Suburban with a rebuilt engine, transmission and fuel pump so I bought it for $2500.  It looks like a family car and is new enough that it doesn't look old, if that makes sense.  People wouldn't expect anyone to be sleeping in it and I could keep a low profile.  I took out the 3rd row seats and wrapped them in plastic (still never got around to selling it on craigslist).  It was great timing too.

About a month after I bought my truck/suv/vehicle/car, whatever you want to call it, I came home to my closet in South LA after having been gone for about a month and found a can of bug spray next to my closet sleeping space.  The father was set up in the closet at this point while the grandmother was sleeping in the living room, so I went to sleep in the son's room since he was gone.  It was hot so I was lying there sweating, waiting to cool down and fall asleep I notice something crawling on me.  I jumped up, turned on the light and grabbed this insect.  It looked like a tick, but I knew better so I googled bed bugs quickly, saw that they drink blood, and squeezed it until it exploded in a blood bomb.  My worst fears were confirmed and I quickly grabbed my backpack and ran into the shower.  I figured I had only been lying there for 15 minutes so I assumed I wasn't infested yet, but I wasn't taking any chances.  I stripped off my clothes, jumped in the shower, scrubbed myself down furiously twice, then took out some gym clothes that I happened to have in my bag from earlier that day.  I then ran to the the Suburban, took off all of those clothes, took my only my laptop from my backpack and then jumped naked into my truck.

I haven't slept a night there since.  My greatest fear was to spread bed bugs to people I loved and cared about, and thankfully it seems to be that my extreme measures paid off as I haver never felt or seen anything crawling on my body since that night.

That was several months ago now.  Since then, I started becoming a lot more sensitive to the question, "so where do you live?"  I would tell people I still lived in South LA, even though I never slept there.  I was surprised how often people would ask it.

I noticed I had shame.  I felt, and still feel homeless because I am not sleeping at night in a traditional house.  Instead I had made this 2000 Suburban my micro-home as I like to call it.  I could have purchased an RV as my LA traffic hack, but I didn't want to stand out or get placed into the same social group as the people who live in an RV in Venice, CA.  They have a reputation as being dirty and not pleasant.
I was/am also afraid of being grouped in with the homeless.  If I wasn't sleeping in an apartment or a room in a house, then I didn't live somewhere, thus I wasn't home-ed, I was/am homeless.

So what do I do?  Recently I have been spending a lot of time up in Sherman Oaks at an intimate companion's apartment, but that isn't the case anymore.  But when people ask I've been telling them that I am up in Sherman Oaks anyways.  I haven't wanted to tell them the truth because I am afraid of making it awkward or being shunned or worse, being offered a handout of a place to stay for a couple of days or something like that.  I don't like feeling dependent or reliant on others.

I want to tell you about how I went up to Fremont, CA to enroll in a computer programming school which would have lasted 3-5 years that had dorms, so what's the point in renting a place if I'm going to be up there in a dorm for several years?  That didn't pan out though, and then I had plans to move up north to Portland in six months, so again, what's point in renting a place if i'm going to be leaving in 6 months?  Why not just take that $500-700 bucks for a room and save it for a downpayment on some property that I can build a tiny home on?  I imagine that a conversation originating from, "so where do you live," wouldn't make it this far though.  I imagine it would end with an awkward look after I answer either that I'm sleeping in my car or I'm homeless right now.

I also want to tell you that I don't live in my car.  Like this fellow alternative home person, I live my life on the dance floor, in the woods, underneath waterfalls, and in the beds of lovers, I just happen to sleep in my car.

While I feel comfortable breaking the stigma of things like gonorrhea, I seem to still have a lot of anxiety about breaking the stigma of sleeping in my car/being homeless/choosing something different than rent.  So if you have some thoughts around this area of my life, I could use some encouragement and stigma problem solving.

Jesus this was a messy feeling post to write.  Cleaning out the emotional sludge is healthy I suppose though.