Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Choosers, Not Beggars

NARRATOR (Reporter, Lu Olkowski):

It wasn't that Gregory and Daniel decided to become homeless, so they?d finally get enough free time to write. They slid into homelessness gradually.

Gregory was making good money as a computer tech for a Wall Street firm. But he was drinking way too much and finally his wife walked out. He found himself living alone in an apartment in New Jersey. His best friend Daniel, meanwhile, was between jobs and divorced.

So Gregory offered his couch to Daniel, and for a long while things were all right. Daniel would write some in the day, Gregory worked nights. Until Gregory lost his job. And he'd never been unemployed before, not really, not like Daniel. He began missing rent payments, and couldn?t see a way to catch up. And he was freaking out. And at this point he could?ve gotten another job or gone to his family for money. But he did nothing. And then, it was the day before they were going to get evicted. Here?s Gregory.

Gregory: Like, dude, we?re about to really hit the street, you know. And uhm, Mr. Cool as a Cucumber here, was just relaxed. He wasn?t stressed about anything.

Daniel felt this way because he'd lived on streets before.

Gregory: And he says, shh, that?s survivable. The first time it didn?t really key in because you don?t think you can survive the streets. When someone says homeless, you don?t think you can do it. I?m like saying to him, where do you use the bathroom?
Daniel: I remember that.
Gregory: Where do you take a shower? How do you get clean? Where do you get new clothes? I had a million questions and he carefully answered every last one of them. This is what you?ll do, this is what you?ll do, this is what you?ll do. So that, when the last day came, just before the country sheriffs came to lock me out, we left, grabbed what clothes I had on my back in a bag, and we headed to Port Authority.

Up until he lost his apartment, the Port Authority bus station in New York was just a transfer station on Gregory's route to and from work. But on that night in May 2006, it became shelter.

A few nights sleeping in the Port Authority turned into weeks, but somehow because they had each other, being homeless in New York City didn?t seem as daunting as it might?ve?it was kind of an adventure. Gregory and Daniel treated it like a game, spending the last of Gregory?s money on going to the movies and bars. They wanted to shed the baggage and stress of their old lives. No fulltime jobs, no wives, no hassle? They wanted to live a little, re-evaluate things.

And it was during this time that Gregory and Daniel forged a plan. An experiment. They?d use homelessness to finally get serious about their writing. Here?s Daniel.

Daniel: We wanted to eliminate the distraction and maximize the time we spend in pursing this. We are devoting all of our energy to it. This is our life. This is our career. This is our 9 to 5. Our particular talent is poetry. Open mic. Spoken word.

And so Gregory and Daniel without jobs, without homes, got to work. They had a routine. If they were writing something together, like their novel or screenplay, they?d work at the New York Public Library. Otherwise they?d split up during the day, but meet up every morning for breakfast and every night before bed, just to check in on one another. They?d stay on each other to be productive. Daniel is more likely to wander the city, hoping to get an idea for a poem. Gregory has a laptop, so he spends most days at a midtown Starbucks--where he uses free wifi to write his blog.

And a month after they went on the streets, they hit the poetry circuit. Two months in, their schedule was packed enough to include 3 different readings a week: Saturday's at Stark on [ambi up] West 43rd St, Sunday's at Smith?s Bar in Times Square, or at ABC-NoRio on the Lower East Side. Monday's downtown at the Nightingale. Onstage, Gregory became Hobo Bob, Daniel was Obsidian, they were the homeless poets--that was their schtick on the poetry circuit.

(applause) Next up, please welcome our wonderful homeless poet, Hobo Bob. (applause) (Hobo Bob laugh)

And this is where I first encountered them, over a year ago, in 2007. It was Obsidian who knew the places they could perform... and Obsidian does most of the emceeing when they're onstage together. He's the outgoing one, the one who works the room at intermission. Gregory's more thoughtful, introspective.

And at the beginning it was Obsidian ? you know, Daniel - who showed Gregory how to live on the street: how to keep warm on a cool night by stuffing their clothes with crumpled up newspaper? where there was a storefront in midtown with planters that hid them from view, so they could sleep without anyone bugging them? also, how to stock up on free necessities. Here?s Daniel.

Daniel: Go to McDonald?s get a handful of them, put them in your bag or your pocket. You need napkins.
Lu: Why do you need so many napkins?
Gregory: They?re amazing. (laugh) They do everything.
Daniel: You find so many uses of just a napkin.
Gregory: You?re in a public toilet, can?t shut the door. Some of those stalls, like swinging doors, the locks are broken so you need to use it and the door keeps running open. You take a couple of napkins and you just wedge them inside the door.

Daniel also taught Gregory the importance of socks.

Daniel: Socks. Socks, your feet go first. When you?re on the street, you keep your feet in your shoe all the time. It doesn?t get any air. And once it smells like hell like that, it contaminates your shoe. Now your shoe stinks. You can hold up a bank with them. You notice, if you smell an odor around a homeless person, the odor you?re smelling is their feet. Always got to constantly make sure you have a pair of sock on your feet, a pair of sock in your bag.

They get fresh socks at the Bowery Mission, which also provides new clothes and showers for the homeless. Every Tuesday, Gregory and Daniel go there, throw away the clothes they?ve been wearing for a week, and each gets a whole new outfit. It matters to them that they look good. They?re clean-shaven with proper haircuts, no grime under their nails, dark chinos and button down shirts. In other words, they pass. You wouldn?t know they were homeless unless they told you.

Which is not true for lots of the homeless people they see around town... guys they?ve privately nicknamed Adolf, Scurvy, Coat, Buzzard, Frank & Beans, the Marlboro Man. They classify the bags homeless people carry, from large to small, into a Class A, B, C or D Star Fleet. Gregory has a solid Class D Star Cruiser: a sensible, black, wheely suitcase with a matching computer bag. The longer you?re on the street, the bigger your star ship tends to get. And the Class A Star Destroyer is one of those giant canvas postal carts overflowing with stuff, with more stuff tied to the sides and on poles.

Daniel: There are 3 types of homeless people. There?s homeless people who are just homeless and they?re just trying to make the best they can. And some of them you can?t even tell they?re homeless unless you follow them around.
Gregory: That?s right.
Daniel: They change their clothes, they upkeep themselves, you see them in the library reading a book or something. That?s one. That?s us. Then there?s a skeksie. They?ll be very dirty,
Gregory: Dressed in all kinds of clothes. Sometimes many layers and layers of clothes.
Daniel: They wear many coats in the wintertime, I?m sorry in the summertime. You don?t want to smell them when they open up those coats. And they even talk differently. Their language (laugh) has devolved. They don?t speak in words anymore. They speak more in sounds, more like GGRRRGRRSAWDS (laugh)
Gregory: Honest to God, they don?t even speak English anymore.
Daniel: He?s talking skeksie, he?s talking skeksie.
Gregory: He?s on his way? and then there?s the last one, recently classified.
Daniel: Skells. Skellsies. Skellsie is the living dead. It?s the undead. A person who they are gone, mentally gone. And you just see them sitting on the floor with their feet out maybe and they?re really filthy and they?re scratching themselves. And they?re just talking to themselves loud and looking into nowhere. They?re just gone. That?s it. That?s the last level. Skell is a terminology that police use for homeless people. They call them skels, which is short for skeletons. So whenever they go on the microphone they say, we have a skel here, they?re referring to a homeless person. they refer to all homeless people as skells, they don?t see a difference.

Maybe the most remarkable thing about Gregory and Daniel is how upbeat they were about all this. It?s hard to imagine being so happy living on the street. But when I first met them a year ago, they'd been on the street for a year already, and they were almost always like this.

Though Gregory said there was one thing he definitely did not like about living on the street.

Gregory: No one told me that being homeless meant celibacy. That?s the biggest thing. I didn?t think about it. I didn?t think about it at all. Ain?t that a blip, but you know, Obsidian picked-up some. Ha, haaaa. It?s the magic of Obsidian. Yeah he had two girlfriends since he was homeless. (pause) Two. (pause) It?s the Obsidian suave. Suave. Charisma. You know, he?s handsome, he?s young. He?s got it going on. He?s not afraid to say it. But I?m more rugged looking. More pie-faced. More outta shape. If there?s two of us standing together, women are going to gravitate to him and I?m going to be the one going to get the drinks.

[music]

They squeaked by with a little money from occasional odd jobs... Gregory wrote reviews of porno films. He didn't get paid, but he got to keep the DVDs, which he sold for $2 a piece to video stores. Obsidian would take a day here and there doing small construction jobs. Gregory's mom sent him $100 every month.

And they started to make some money from poetry. When they were featured together at the East Orange Public Library in New Jersey, they got a hundred dollars each.

As for food, they?re eating well, gaining weight even.

Daniel: There?s no such thing as a hungry homeless person.
Gregory: In this city? That?s a joke.
Daniel: There are too many places to eat.
Gregory: Anyone who has a sign that says, says oh, I?m hungry I haven?t eaten in three days, is lying. It?s a scam.
Daniel: It?s a scam. The city is littered with soup kitchens, littered. And the quality of the food is good. They have good quality food. Fresh vegetables. Incredible. Most of them are the churches. If it weren?t for the churches, the homeless people would starve to death.
Gregory: Right, the federal programs suck.
Daniel: Suck. Even the quality of the food is sucks at the federal programs. And they give you so little of it. They churches however, on the other hand, the people go out of their way to cook good for you, serve you
Gregory: They want you there, they treat you differently.
Daniel: They perform music for you.
Gregory: Oh, breakfast there is wonderful, it?s always something great.
Daniel: Corned beef hash, beef stew?
Gregory: Fish. I mean, salmon, fresh salmon. Fresh white fish. Oh, man, lamb. Steak. Beef. Go around for more. Go around as many times as you want. Knock yourself out.
Daniel: You can take a bag of food on your way out.

[music]

Lu: Are you the person this food is meant for? Like you could have made a living, you?re competent.
Gregory: Is it meant for us? I mean, do all homeless people have to be disabled? Do all homeless people have to be crazy?
Daniel: It?s for the hungry. There are people who have jobs that eat there, too.
Lu: But do you think, do you think people would want to be donating to you?
Gregory: Yeah like we?re donating to these guys experiment? Would they donate if they knew it was coming to us? No. Nah.

Though Gregory and Daniel are the rare homeless people who got into homelessness as a lifestyle choice, there's not such a clear line dividing them from some of the more hardcore cases at the soup kitchens. After all it was alcohol that got Gregory fired from his last job and brought him to the point that homelessness became an option.
Gregory: I was making 60 grand a year, 60 grand, not working hard. If I wanted to push it I could push it to 70. They want you to do over time on Wall Street. Wall Street judges you by your overtime. So yeah, I was raking it in. And I was spending it just as fast on alcohol. I would get up at 8 at night, take a shower, have a pint of Jack Daniel?s on me when I got into my car and drove to work. Finish that pint by the time I got out of Port Authority. Stop, get another pint. Go into work. Don?t want to drink the pint, cause don?t want to blast through it, so I put the pint in the drawer go to the Dakota Roadhouse and drink shots all night. Eight hours later come back grab my pint, get off work and go to another bar, Smith?s, and drink all day--until I got tired. Shots.

Counterintuitively, he does LESS drinking now that he?s homeless. He doesn't have the money to keep up his rigorous Jack Daniel?s routine. And Gregory and Daniel don?t beg, it?s a rule. Begging is skeksie. Here?s Gregory.

Gregory: The most benefit for me of being homeless, kept me from drinking, kept me from smoking.

And that?s not the only self-improvement ?perk? homelessness gave him?

Gregory: Therapy. Therapy. The state gives it to you. You must be nuts if you?re on the street. So the state has?
Lu: Oh, so you say I?m homeless can I have therapy and they?ll give it to you?
Gregory: It?s more like uh, you?re homeless, we?ll give you therapy? (laugh)

All of this is paid by Medicaid. Which also pays for his eyeglasses. And his prescriptions. Once he started treatment Gregory learned that the voices he hears in his head sometimes, loud, insistent voices ... which he assumed came from drinking so much ... were signs that he?s bipolar and schizophrenic. And now he gets meds to keep that under control. All free.

So there were benefits to being on the street--including for their poetry. After a few months, Gregory and Daniel decided to start their own open-mic night, [sound up on applause from poetry reading] called the Times Square Shout Out, at one of Gregory's old drinking haunts on Eighth Avenue. They co-hosted, and it was popular enough that they started to dream of being discovered. A lot of their poetry has to do with life on the streets, or the lives they left behind. Here's Obsidian.

Daniel: This one?s entitled, ?Where?s Daniel?? Of course, you know my real name is Daniel. Where's Daniel At? In alleyways and sleazy bar backs. On cheapened soup lines with hands in pockets against the wind. Where's Daniel At? [under]
Daniel - Obsidian - comes onstage with his poetry on scraps of newspaper and napkins. But Gregory - Hobo Bob - is the one with the computer, and he comes on stage with all the poems printed out in crisp sheets, protected in plastic.

Gregory: This one is ?I am Hobo Bob.? I?m HoboBob. And they call me that because I own nothing. Insolvent, collateral-less, without liquidity Me? Ha-Ha, I laugh. They say Bloomberg owns Gracie Mansion, But I don?t see his ass out there, When I sleep on his lawn. [under]

Neither of these guys will be the next poet laureate, but at their readings and other people's too, they really stood out. They were popular. And not just because they were homeless. A lot of the readers at these amateur open-mics are, frankly, pretty boring. But Gregory and Daniel are natural performers who play to the crowd? And the crowds love them.

Daniel: The first one is entitled, ?A Few of My (cough) Favorite Things.?
Gregory: Waking up achy, And out in the open. Guard dogs are barking Before words are spoken. Wrought iron benches, That causes suff-ring.
Daniel & Gregory: These are a few of my favorite things.
Daniel: Taking a shower, With four dozen others. Moving around, In a stench that can smother. Finding that you, Are the source of the stink!
Daniel & Gregory: These are a few of my favorite things. When the bottle?s dry, And the smokes are gone, And I?m feeling low? [under]

Then, about a year after they hit the street, they suffered their first big setback - the bar where they hosted the Shout Out got tired of it, and cancelled the show. And their dream of being discovered suddenly seemed a little less realistic.

And being on the street was getting old. Here?s Daniel.

Daniel: You know, it?s getting to be tiring. (laugh) At first, it started off, it was kind of simple, but then as you continue to be out there, it wears on you, actually. It wears on you psychologically, it wears on you physically.
Gregory: Emotionally. (very off mike)
Daniel: Now were at the point where it?s tiring and we?re working our way to get out of it. But the interesting thing about it, once you go out on the streets, it?s not so easy to extract yourself. It?s easy to get in, but it?s not easy to get out. It?s like roach motel.

And it was Daniel - Obsidian - the one who?d lived on the street before - who bolted first. He bailed for his mom?s place in South Carolina, leaving Gregory by himself ... I caught up with Gregory then ... this is August of last year. He looked spent ... and needed a haircut ... and fresh clothes.

Gregory: Yeah, I?m in skek mode. Yeah, I?m in skek mode.

Skek mode--one step down the homeless ladder.
Gregory: Oh, man, it?s been a rough one with Obsidian leaving. Yeah. We never really had a chance to sit down and talk about it, because I don?t really talk about a lot of things, but he packed up and had to go. I can understand, it?s a tough life. It?s not easy. I could tell as we were going along, he was complaining about every little thing. There was more and more discussion about sleeping in a bed, ?oh, man, crawling into a bed there?s nothing like it. You know you need your eight hours of sleep and it has to be contiguous. It can?t be broken sleep, you have no one waking you up.? You know, dadadadada dadadada. Okay, you know we know this. You?re preaching to the choir here. (laugh) He would go back and forth like that. And then he said you know my mother, she said she could get the internet for me. And she can do this for me and do that for me and I can go down there and get a job. Then plans were being drawn.

When Daniel had been around, everything seemed hopeful. They were a team ? and somehow that made the difference. And when Daniel left, Gregory felt abandoned. He was hurt.

And finally, in November of 2007--alone--after a year and a half on the street, Gregory found permanent shelter at a halfway house in the East Village, called the Bowery Residents? Committee, with the help of his one of his doctors. He got his own bunk?and now he wouldn?t shut up about the comforts of a warm bed. About being able to look out the window at people trudging through the cold, while he watches the morning news and eats Cheerios.

BRC has been around since 1971 and screens and monitors the people staying with them. There are rules to living there. Residents have to help with chores. There are regular community meetings to attend, mandated curfew and regular drug and alcohol testing. Any violation of the rules risks getting kicked out.

Which seemed fine with Gregory - even welcome.

And when Daniel got bored in South Carolina and moved back to New York, he started taking construction jobs, hoping to work much more regularly, so he could finally get off the street and into an SRO, a single room occupancy hotel.

And so Gregory and Daniel's experiment - to use homelessness as a way to dedicate more time to their poetry - is over. And just last week I asked Daniel and Gregory if it worked. Here's Daniel.

Daniel: Not the way we wanted. There's your plan and there's the world. Like I said at the beginning, we wanted to take this open mic venue beyond Russell Simmons or Def Poetry Jam and uh,

Gregory: We thought by now we?d be sought by television, driving around in fancy cars, being millionaires. that was success for us. We didn?t know better. You?re going to make a living off of being a poet? I don?t think so. We were like okay, hard smack of reality there.

Lu: Being homeless, was it worth it?

Gregory: That?s a good question. Being homeless was it worth it? Being homeless was it worth it? Being homeless I would say, making the choice to spend that time doing something which is writing poetry and getting into the poetry circuit, that was definitely worth the choice. We got uh, we got, I guess you could say, the joy of being poets, you know. Read out poetry in front of a lot of people. Be heard by a lot of people, that?s an adrenaline rush. And we did so well, that the experiment worked.

[music]

Lu: If you look back to three years ago when you were making money, you had a read job, real money like 70 grand and you have skills, right, does it surprise you that now like 3 years later, you are dependent on other people to help you find housing and a job, things that like you did for 40 years on your own?

Gregory: Three years ago, looking in, I would never believe that like I would be in social services or have a committee looking for an apartment for me, because I could do all that myself. But I wasn?t happy. I wasn?t I wasn?t genuinely happy. I was going through the motions of working a job and I didn?t feel fulfilled. I?m homeless. I?m in the circuit. I?m writing poetry. This is a different life, but to me a far better life than going back to working in computers and networking and all of that. I wouldn?t like ot go back to that lifestyle. And if it takes going through social services and all that, to avoid that lifestyle, I would choose no other way.

[music]

But in the last few months, something else has changed for Gregory. Having Daniel back from South Carolina, seeing Daniel drink and stay out late ... was a catalyst, he says ... it made him question whether he should stick with a life of curfews and breathalyzers and drug testing.

And two weeks ago, talking to Gregory, I learned that hanging with Daniel has had an effect. He's started drinking. Secretly. And planning to drink a lot more.
Gregory: Oh, I know I'm going to slip back into my old habits. That?s a given. That?s what I?m waiting for. That?s the party after the war. No I?m totally waiting for that day when I can close the door and lock it and I don?t have anyone saying, ?Come here for a minute; I want you to blow into this tube.? And I?m going to go out and buy a quart sized, or family sized. I?ll make it the family sized, which is a little bit bigger, of Jack Daniels, and just sneak it upstairs, and just pound on that thing for hours and hours and hours and hours.

[music]

Gregory: I'm going to an alcohol therapist, too. She gives me insight into why I drink and why I shouldn?t drink anymore. And I tell her that basically I want a healthy relationship with alcohol, if that?s possible. I want to be able to drink sociably like everyone else. And she?s led me to believe that I can?t, I can no longer drink like everyone else. I don?t care. (laugh) and it?s not hat I don?t care, I really do care, but I can?t care.

[music]

This really stunned me. Just a couple months ago, he was talking to me about the possibility of enrolling in college.

I think it's easy to assume that what you or I would want for Gregory, is what he would want for himself. Sobriety. A full time job. But Gregory has had full time jobs and doesn't want them any more ... and he doesn't want to be sober either.

His new dream is to have it all ... a roof over his head like he has now -- a job but only part time so he has lots of freedom to write -- and booze.

And Daniel's dream is pretty much the same - though without such a serious commitment to drinking.

And because Daniel and Gregory have each other, they make each other believe these dreams are possible. That's the great thing about their friendship ... and ... maybe ... the worst thing.

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