Sleet is blowing around washing everything out so it all looks like the grainy film of a 70s documentary. It’s 2 o’clock and I’m just walking in the door to start my shift, and I haven’t even taken my coat off when I see an older Chinese lady crying outside the door. I ask her what’s wrong and she says she has just traveled 700 miles to look for her daughter who, she says, is a drug addict. (more…)
Jason is volunteering by manning the elevator. He’s a young guy, works as a bouncer, and is in a pretty good mood after a meeting with the volunteer legal advice students.
“He says he thinks he can keep me from going back to prison.”
I say that’s good, he’ll want to stay away from there.
“I kind of want to go back,” he says.
“Why?”
“All the drugs and fighting. All you do is fight and do drugs. There’s no rules.”
It’s the first cold day of the year so there are more people in the shelter, bringing their contraband with them too. Different pockets of the shelter smell different. The bottom of the stairs smells like Listerine. The bathroom smells like pot. Intox is full and their combined body odour smells like vomit. Or maybe someone vomited. Hard to tell.
I walk on the floor and the morning guy is standing with his hands on his hips and nods at a man on the floor in a green cap. He sighs. The man’s ass is all wet. It looks like he might have wet himself although he doesn’t stink, so he might have just sat in something. He’s rolling around in a bit of pain and keeps talking to himself, and crying, and stuttering. Other guys in Intox keep yelling at him to shut the hell up.
“The police just brought this guy in. I think he’s got some sort of multiple personality disorder or some shit. He keeps switching mid sentence between talking normal and this weeping shit. Well, he’s all yours.” (more…)
