MATT

PHOTO BY RANDY BACON

MATT’S STORY

They call me “spider face” because I’ve got a spider tattooed on my face. I ended up here on the streets ‘cause of poor decisions. I don’t mind working. I’ve worked most of my life. I raised kids for ten years, I did all that stuff. Right stuff. Right now, I just wanna, you know, create art and enjoy myself doing what I want to do; but apparently you need to have money to survive in the world which I think is ridiculous. And, you know, we’re not lazy people just because we’re out here on the streets.

I think the hardest thing about bein’ on the streets is the social stigma of it. I come from a somewhat well-to-do family, you know, all successful. Worked their entire lives to get what they got. I don’t even talk to my kids because I don’t want them embarrassed that, you know, I live in a tent out by the woods. That and the way people treat you is different from everybody else. I still don’t like flying a sign or begging for money. I’d rather dig through your garbage and take your stuff than ask for your money.

Hope? Nah. Faith is what you need. Hope is somebody crossing their fingers and wiping sweat from their brow. You know, hoping their pony comes in first. Faith is saying, “I don’t even need to watch the race, I know my horse is going to win”. I just kinda take it one day at a time. While so many folks are in their homes at night, sleeping in their beds, we’re out there on the streets living their dreams, you know? That’s what we’re doing. I hate it when I wake up early in the morning and we’re under a bridge, we’re freezing somewhere or we’re in an abandoned building. See when I was a teenager, I never really thought about my future. My guidance counselors, teachers, always told me “prepare for the future, prepare for the future”. You know, here it is snowing today and I haven’t even started getting winter clothes until now, that’s how bad I am.

We’re good people. We are, and we try to do the right thing, but it’s a wicked world out there. There’s a lot of wickedness under every rock you look at. Some of the homeless people are probably some of the morally upright people that I’ve ever met in my life, to be honest with you. I can count on some of them anyways. I don’t always plan on being homeless. I mean, I’m not going to be this way forever. It’s a hard hole to crawl out of, man, it’s…something’s got to change, you know? Some of the better places that we were at were camps or abandoned building and squats where it’s ran by us homeless people and you’re almost, like, a community and we come together and help each other out. It’s bad out there though...I borrowed a red bicycle one day and I left it just inches from my camp and no longer than eight minutes since I’d left it and it was already gone. Our tent keeps getting broken into and there’s nothing there, it’s just material goods, you know, nothing I really care about. But when you’re homeless, you’ve got nowhere to put your cool stuff like my music or books or whatever where no one’s going to steal. But, I’ll end this on a lighter note, you know what homeless sex is like? It’s intense in tents. Get it? Intense? That’s good.

(In memory of Matt, who passed away unexpectedly in December 2018.)