Oh the Places You'll Sleep

At RIT, bedrooms tunnel under every building... if you're an easy sleeper and aren't too picky, and if you can get in. Of course, once you breach the barriers of the post-ten-o'clock lockdown, getting to the tunnels is easy. Finding safe harbor is not- at least not before 1am, before the 'corner' store closes.

If I stayed out late, and missed curfew, I never really spent much longer than an hour or so out in the freezing cold, watching for students to return to the dorm hall, so long as it wasn't too late; sometimes, I'd have to stay in the car. When they came, I'd have my bookbag over my shoulder and I brisked to the door to meet with them. "Hold the door!" And they usually complied. "Thanks, I didn't want to dig through this bag for my keys."

Some nights, I'd go straight to a dark and dusty crevice (a skinny little alley between the wall and staircase is a great choice- totally unnoticeable unless you're looking). Some nights, I'd get in with larger crowds into the corner store andsample the wares, collecting dinner and breakfast. Crowds are always better, because they're all looking at each other, and not at me. Some nights, I'd stay with him, and we already know how that goes, but at least I'd get a hot shower.

Actually, it's not too hard to get a shower. Just wait for students outside the key-accessed elevator, and "Hold the elevator, please!" Up to the 3rd floor, Computer Science House, for a quick one in the morning (or if I'm staying with him, I can take one at night. I much prefer night. Relaxes me). Or up to the 4th floor, Photo House, for minimal spotting, if I didn't want him to catch me around.

In the wall/stairs alley, I felt safest- well, not so much as safety goes, but mostly invisible. I could sleep easily knowing I'd most likely not be seen. My favourite place to sleep was further down the tunnels, under, or sometimes on, a big, huge, heating pipe. So warm. Sometimes, if I passed an open utility room, I'd sneak in there, and disappear into the darkest spot, surrounded by pipes and tubes, and wires, and be warm all night. But rooms are always occupied by someone. And eventually, someone'd come by, and I'd wake up and bolt. Never got the opportunity to actually run from someone. Never got caught. Too paranoid, I guess. Always on my best guard, even when I slept.

Will Fuck For Food

I never held up a sign about working for food, but I did, just for a day, open up my violin case and fiddled around on it. I busked, if you can even call it that. I made eight dollars. I should point out, though, that I cannot actually play the violin. Sure, I can belt out strong, solid notes without screeching like so many amateurs do, but I couldn't take requests. I couldn't play full tunes. The sign I had propped against my case read "need money for lessons".

When it got too cold to feel the chilling pain in my fingers, I called it a day. I packed up my money and hit a diner for a light breakfast and coffee. It didn't really feel good to pay my bill in small change, and I had no idea if busking is even legal in this city, so I decided, as my waitress rolled her eyes at me, wishing she hadn't just clipped her fingernails so she could easily pick up the small change, that I wouldn't do it again. Then I spent the rest on gas so I could keep running my car in the morning and night for heat during the cold, cold winter.

Busking for money is many steps above just begging. You are sharing your talent, and actually working some for your money. But you NEED talent to do it, and I had none, so I got my food the hard way. The horrible way.

The way I got my food from here-on turned my stomach half the time. Not just due to the health issues of picking day-old food from the trash (I have had some raw experiences with bulk foods, some I scraped the mold off without the desired result, and some that were frozen before they hit the dumpster, and, being winter, remained frozen in the dumpster, but had an expiration date for a reason), but because I had to beg my boyfriend and his friends. My boyfriend hated when I begged for him not to throw away the other half of his sandwich, or whatever remains his friends picked off their food. When he needed sex, he'd make me stay with him for a week at a time, even though I needed to go out and find work, find money, find food, or whatever. He made me stay, and he made me pay, but he never fed me. He took me out to lots of food-related gatherings, but would never get me any food. So I had to beg for it. Sometimes he let me have a bite, and sometimes he'd throw it away on sheer principal of punishing me for stooping so low.

At night, back in the dorms, I'd pretend to need to go to the bathroom, and would instead sneak into the commonplace kitchen to dig through the trash for the food I knew had been thrown away earlier. Warm mayonnaise on a slimy tomato slice will never taste good no matter how hungry you are, but at least my stomach stopped growling from hunger. Later, it'd growl for other reasons, but at least not hunger.