One of the men that played a huge part in this period of time was Red. He was receiving SSI for Mental Illness and he worked hard for that check. He was on a lot of meds - big serious meds - Haladol, Lithium etc... He was also brilliant. Self studying Micro biology - auditing UC Berkeley classes in it.
He loved me, I knew that. He made me feel cherished and protected and taken care of - in a time when I didn't feel that anyone should or could ever care about me. Certainly a time when I didn't feel capable of caring enough about anyone else.
He and I had a couple of places that we camped. One was in north Berkeley on a vacant lot filled with trees. We had a shelter built with a real bed - shelves for my books. It stayed dry mostly in the rain. It was a home of sorts for the two of us.
When I was with Red, I rarely used. Mostly we went down to the park for breakfast, I hung out playing with whatever children were there or reading a book. I looked for clean clothes at the free box and we ate dinner at the Berkeley Emergency Food project. We then went back to our hillside and slept.
Once in a while, I would take off for a few days to do what I did. Red didn't care for it, but was always glad to see me when I got back. We seldom argued about it, and I didn't feel that he held it against me.
He could play the guitar like no one else I have ever met. Just sit down and play anything you asked him to. If he didn't know the song, he could figure it out just from listening to someone sing it. Even me, and I can't sing for anything. I do love to sing, though. He could play and sing in such a way that I felt like I was singing along and not just being annoying.
He taught me some dust bowl and labor organizing songs and we would sit on the sidewalk in this one area with great acoustics and just sing. Ocasionally people would give us money - but we weren't busking - just trying out songs with each other.
When an offer came from a friend of mine to live in her house and she would help me change my life - Red pushed me to do it, said that I needed to make a change in my life - I was not meant to live on the streets and that he was happy that it could happen.
That situation didn't last very long, but when I came back to the streets, there was a difference and I started doing something different.
There are lots of other things I remember about Red, but those are for another day.
