As if we weren’t involved in activities dangerous enough to almost get killed already, my room mate Claire and I decide to take a brand new trip on the all-night Red Line trains to see how hard it is for homeless people to get any rest.
We find out once again: sleeping on the train is very difficult because of the drama.
One train we were on two nights ago saw a CTA operator bent on getting the riff raff off the train and down the road (or into jail). Random losers and “buttheads” abounded on the train…
Here is the story of how a train full of exhausted homeless people did not get to sleep, once again…
As we ride the train, one small group of young people gets on and they are singing, “Squares, squares, lough, lough, lough” (rhymes with now) and the train stops immediately.
[As any good Chicagoan knows, “squares” is train-talk for cigarettes and “lough” means weed. People start at one end of the train and walk through the cars, going through the doors (illegal) to sell cigarettes (illegal) and weed (illegal) and sometimes booze (illegal) and other items, such as stolen products from stores, including rolling papers, lighters, candy, soda pop, jewelry, and beer (all illegal)].
The operator stops the train because she does not want all of this going on. In fact, she announces, “Try to sell any of that stuff on my train and you will go to jail!”
This team of square-and-lough sellers yells some things at the driver like “Darn you! We will do as we freely wish!” And they issue warnings to her like “We will smack you on the track anew… hug you with a black-blue!” (To say I am paraphrasing here is a great understatement… what one of my professors at Korthwestern calls “employing euphemisms to derail the naughty-sounding prisms!” Again, paraphrasing.)
Soon, people are playing with the doors—opening them means the train has to stop so people do not roll out onto the tracks and get chopped up by the wheels of train cars that weigh about 1,200 tons each. People can be smashed, squeezed, bludgeoned, drawn, quartered, slivered, fileted, crunched, strangled, stabbed, or smacked by the train.
It does not really matter.
You will be “dead as f*ck” if you fall out the door of the train. This phrase was used recently by a CTA employee who warned people about pulling the ball down that opens the doors.
The train comes to an abrupt halt. The operator gets off, and goes to lay down the law.
When she comes back, she makes the announcement that CPD will be called if this nonsense goes on, “on her train.” CPD stands for “Chicago Police Department” and these are the folks you do not want called on you.
The train moves forward, and once again we are listening to people who are playing their music loudly and screaming into their phones…
during which time of course it is almost impossible for people to get any rest.
At the next stop, more people enter, do their song and dance about squares and lough, operator making the threat, and train moving forward.
Soon, the lights start going on and off on the car (we are on the first or “head car” as CTA people call it, the luxury, standard, safest, cleanest, car for “people going to work” and not just lounging or wasting time or smelling homeless or making trouble or smoking, you get the idea). Of course, the rest of the train is a nightmare.
The head car seems to be safest of all because the guy driving the train is a few feet away.
We have ridden on some of the other cars (with backup from my brother and his boyfriend who are 6’8” and 6’4” respect.). The experiences provide a good contrast with the head car times. When we have had our backup, by the way, we have stationed them at the other end of the car(s) we visit so people do not know they are our backup.
I am wearing my sunglasses and my bad toupe’ so I look like a random young bisexual guy on crack and Claire looks like a tramp. I mean on the nights we travel on the train. She does not look like a tramp the other nights. She thinks my clarification is terribly funny stuff.
The reader should understand that even with security guards hanging out in groups and laughing and screaming as loudly as they can (in small groups together where they can protect each other especially from homeless people who are trying to sleep and cannot because of the insanely loud security people) on the other cars all is “up for grabs.” There are people fighting, f*cking, arguing, cooking meth, drinking, stealing other people’s backpacks as they sleep, s*cking d*ck, making out, casting lots for the clothes Jesus left on the train, threatening to kill people, critiquing the shade of other people’s skin, chasing people with knives, and of course smoking.
In any car where there is not active security or peace or police forces (or whatever you want to call whichever group) people are smoking like fiends.
They roll their own cigarettes (or joints) or they trade smokes for booze or for sex or for potato chips. They smoke blunts, they smoke cigars, and they smoke pot out of a pipe.
Since we are in the head car, we will be spared all of the smoke.
Or so we think. A guy sitting across from us drinking his Sprite suddenly takes a cigarette out of his jacket, lights it, and starts smoking it. Because there are people standing around the doorway, the operator may not be able to see who is doing the smoking. After he smokes the cigarette for a while, he puts it out on the bottom of his shoe and puts it back into his jacket pocket.
The operator opens the door and yells, “Whoever is smoking on this train needs to put the cigarette out right now… there is NO smoking on CTA property.”
Later, the nights go off completely, the operator gets off the train and screams into her walkie talkie, “They are using a switch somewhere but I don’t know where!” She goes off, looking for the people playing with the light switches in the dark.
We sit there, wondering just how safe we are.
After a while, police officers start showing up…
and the lights come back on. There are a lot of police officers pouring past the car.
A lot.
We sit there, wondering what is next. Eventually, the police come back by the car, many young people in tow, including people under arrest, people arguing, people being thrown out of the station, and people being detained for questioning. There are so many police officers and so many young people walking past we cannot tell after a while who is doing what and who is going where.
Through all of this, there is so much screaming and swearing and chaos it is virtually impossible for any of the people who are just seeking some shelter to get any rest. It is something like a war zone. The noise is deafening and the confusion is overwhelming.
I start crying and Claire tells me to be a man.
Although the homeless should be allowed a break – just a couple hours to sleep and recover from the hassles and exhaustion of the day – they have to put up with all the drama of all the criminals destroying the train as a safe and decent place “just to be” for a few hours.
The homeless once again do not get to sleep.
As always, the homeless get thrown together with all of the drug pushers, people selling stolen goods from stores, people hiding from police, and people doing pretty much anything they feel like doing. BTW – we get these descriptions from the people themselves.
While there are some “out of control” people who are homeless, we admit, there are mostly people who just want to sleep – homeless people who work and who are tired, homeless people who got evicted last week and have no place to go, homeless people who do not want to go to the godless warzones called “shelter,” and homeless people who have just been thrown out of the house by parents who do not like them.
There are gay homeless, new-to-Chicago-from-Iowa homeless, newly arrived from Venezuela homeless, exhausted as zombies homeless…
hungry as zombies homeless, lesbian homeless, mildly attracted to zombies homeless, struggling to make it homeless, not-wanting-to-smell-like-zombies homeless, and desperate to get back to Seattle homeless.
None of them are drunk. None sell drugs. None want to be homeless.
It is these people who get swept into all the random b*llshit that is life in the big city.
Growing up in Milwaukee, I thought I knew what gritty meant. I thought I knew about tough people.
That stuff means nothing here. Chicago has gone out of control. This is the most violent place you could possibly find in the world. It is a warzone. There are people with knives, with guns, with heroin.
People fight in this city like this is the last fight of their life. They will fight to the death. They will fight “all out” because they feel nothing will happen to them.
It usually does not.
Fighting, bullying, threatening, strong arming, and attacks are only some of the b*llshit homeless people have to endure in Chicago—whether on a corner or on a train car.
…Chicago has gone out of control. This is the most violent place you could possibly find in the world. It is a warzone…
In addition to all of the random nonsense the homeless have to go through, they have to deal with all of the people selling squares, turning off the lights on a train, and keeping people awake all night long.
Wearing a security shirt—or brandishing a knife—has the same effect on a tired person who needs to rest. It cancels the possibility of sleep.
And what is so unfair about all of this is, that the people threatening you with their knife, making a dog bark in your face, showing off their security badge as they laugh with their coworkers about “parties where people are f*cking in the crib,” and messing around with the train controls, are all going to go home somewhere.
They get to sleep.
It is ironic. It is sickening. It is maddening. It is disgusting. Most of all, it is unfair.