i've had the pleasure of sleeping in some questionable locations.
after i moved from hungary, i immediately became remarkably difficult to keep track of.
i don't actually know how that happened. i think it started with sleeping on someone's couch because i didn't want to ask for help from somebody else, then somebody's floor because i felt bad about the couch, then somebody's car because i missed the last train, and blah blah blah. i was naive and too young, somehow convinced that this was a perfectly reasonable way to solve problems. arguably it worked. depends how low your standards are.
anyway. i've been looking through old negatives recently and i realized a weird amount of them start the same way. "this is where i slept." so i figured i may as well put them somewhere. plus i felt like writing about it since you all have been starved of my stupid stories.
big sur.
i was fourteen, maybe fifteen. definitely the youngest. by enough years that people kept asking if i was alright every few hours, which got old pretty fast because i clearly wasn't going anywhere. i remember i also considered it slightly insulting because i was obviously doing a fantastic job, thriving even.
this was somewhere off the road in big sur.
december, because apparently sleeping next to the ocean in winter sounded like a brilliant plan to a group of people who collectively made terrible decisions. it was freezing. i remember how everything felt damp. YUCK.
sleeping bags stopped doing their job around midnight. the dogs figured out before we did that the solution was just sleeping directly on top of people.
for a brief moment i thought i'd died. i woke up with two under the blanket and one using my legs as a pillow. then i realized i could smell wet dog. which ruled heaven out pretty quickly. still. could've been worse.
i still think it was one of the better nights.
the ocean was right there. cliff right there too. probably an important detail in hindsight.
i don't remember anybody talking about how stupid sleeping that close to the edge was. i remember somebody arguing for fifteen minutes that the truck was leaning because the earth was curved.
honestly i was more interested in getting a photo before everyone woke up and ruined it, or before jack stopped smoking on the rock. i had to get him in. it was too perfect.
this group was good to me back then.
i don't say that lightly.
they fed me, and dragged me around california because apparently "everybody deserved to see places like this at least once." i'd end up in the back of mr jack's truck, or squeezed into the corner of the van, and we'd just keep driving. i saw forests, beaches, cliffs, little towns i'd never remember the names of. i don't think they realized how much of the world they opened up for me.
fresno trains
this definitely wasn't my first train.
i'd already spent enough nights sleeping in freight cars by then that i had preferences. this one was perfect for me, empty cars, nothing smelt suspiciously chemically, and the floors were sticky so you wouldn't slip and slide everywhere.
that's todd looking out the window.
poor guy was only in his early twenties and somehow looked forty six. we never let him forget it. i don't know if it was the hairline, the permanent exhausted expression, or the fact he dressed terribly. probably all three.
he absolutely hated the jokes. which obviously meant we doubled down.
we were trying to get somewhere north. where exactly changed every couple of hours depending on who you asked. todd had this incredible ability to explain a route with complete confidence despite being wrong most of the time. somehow we'd still end up where we needed to be. i never questioned it, but still, i never question many things.
he also had this completely genuine belief that one day he'd become president of the united states. not in an ironic way either. he'd say it with a completely straight face while we were literally sleeping inside freight trains. there are photos later that trip of him carrying this enormous american flag around like he'd already won the election. ridiculously proud of himself. honestly i think he believed it for a while. he was very innocent like that. i don't think he'd ever done anything particularly irresponsible before meeting us.
can't fault the confidence though.
holly joined us later on that trip. she was the opposite of me. i travelled like a mess. she always had gear for everything. proper backpack, organised pockets, spare batteries, rope, first aid stuff. one of those tiny chalk bags hanging off her waist all the time. i'm still not actually sure if she climbed or if todd climbed and she just inherited half his equipment at some point. either way somebody was always covered in chalk.
todd's still one of the few people i've met who could make sitting in a metal box outside fresno feel like we'd accidentally booked a holiday.
the train, the landscape, all of that was nice enough, but it's funny what sticks. i couldn't tell you exactly where we stopped half the time. i can tell you todd looked forty six until the day i met him. oh yeah, never gets old.
communist workhouse, odorheiu secuiesc, romania.
ah yes. back to my europe days.
this one's in romania.
i'd drift back and forth between hungary and romania a fair bit back then because transport was cheap, nobody really questioned you, and i had absolutely nowhere i urgently needed to be anymore.
the building used to be a communist workhouse, or at least that's what everyone called it. huge concrete thing that'd been left to rot after the revolution, when the money dried up and everyone who could leave did. people had stripped most of what was worth stealing years before i got there. all that was left was dust, broken windows, old tiled walls, and lots of empty bedroom choices. ooh la la.
of course i picked the basement. it somehow had a window. don't ask me how communist architecture works because i couldn't tell you.
that mess on the floor is mine, by the way.
i wasn't exactly in a position to stay anywhere people knew to look. that's probably the easiest way to explain it without accidentally writing three thousand words about someone who doesn't deserve three thousand words.
i'd packed fast, left faster. didn't pack properly. didn't say goodbye properly either. most of what i owned ended up spread across this room because little me apparently believed living out of a backpack meant unpacking the entire thing every single night.
looking back, i had absolutely no respect for shared spaces. in my defence, i don't think i even registered this as one. it was already abandoned, already falling apart. i figured one more pile of blankets wasn't exactly ruining the place.
it's weird seeing this photo because i remember where everything was just by glancing at this picture. camera next to my head. shoes tucked underneath the tarp because i thought that made them harder to steal. backpack close enough to grab if somebody came in.
i don't actually remember sleeping much here. mostly i remember listening for footsteps.
bouncy castle. somewhere in california.
this probably looks like the least believable photo on here. the story behind it is much more believable.
remember jack? same idiots from the big sur cliff. they were weirdly good at birthdays.
which was surprising enough on its own because most people couldn't tell you how old i was, including me half the time.
none of us had much money. actually, that's generous. none of us had any money. so birthdays usually meant finding something stupid to do instead of buying anything.
one year i woke up and there was a bouncy castle sitting in the yard.
inflated.
i asked where they'd found it.
jack looked me dead in the face and said, "found" was a strong word.
i tend to accept certain information when it gets to a point. the point was reached in that moment. i decided that was enough information.
it was supposed to be for the afternoon. that's what normal people would've done. jump around for a few hours, pack it away, move on.
obviously little v begged to keep it. obviously. they kept it for me.
if we had somewhere to plug the blower in, we'd inflate it. didn't matter where we were. somebody's backyard. empty lots. campsites. random patches of grass. there were nights we'd be too tired to even put tents up, but somehow we'd still commit to hauling this ridiculous inflatable castle out of the truck because sleeping on plastic was apparently preferable to sleeping on dirt.
do you have any idea how insane it is to transport a folded bouncy castle? i'll never stop going on about this. that thing weighed a ton.
every time we packed up camp it had to be folded, rolled, lifted, shoved into the truck, pulled back out again somewhere else, then inflated all over again. plus the blower, extension leads, and whatever awful little generator we were abusing that week. it took up an absurd amount of space. nobody ever complained.
at the time there was stuff going on. i'm not getting into it. some stories don't improve with details. what matters is that i wasn't exactly having a great time of things.
i never noticed it then because i was stupid and mostly concerned with whatever disaster was directly in front of me, but recently it occurred to me that nobody would've gone through that much effort for a stupid inflatable castle if it was actually about the castle.
they kept bringing it because it made me laugh. that's embarrassingly obvious in hindsight.
there are photos of grown adults carrying this giant rolled-up plastic monstrosity through the middle of nowhere just so we'd have somewhere stupid to sleep later.
actually, there are a ridiculous amount of photos of us in that thing because everybody looked five years old the second they climbed inside. didn't matter how tough they acted the rest of the week. throw a twenty-something into an inflatable castle and suddenly they're attempting backflips and yelling, "watch this."
i think in one of these photos jack had just tackled somebody before it was taken. you can see everyone pretending to sit normally for about three seconds before somebody inevitably got launched across the thing again.
it's one of the only objects i remember travelling with us for months.
i remember laughing so hard my stomach hurt.
which, considering the year i was having, was probably the point.
graveyards
this is ben.
one of the only photos of him in existence, as far as i'm concerned.
ben hated cameras.
i mean genuinely hated them. every time i pointed mine in his direction he'd either cover his face, walk off, or threaten my lens. after i took this one he sat straight up and smacked my camera clean out of my hands.
i didn't talk to him for the rest of the day.
i think he secretly liked having his photo taken. he'd just never admit it.
or maybe he was running from the cops. or an ex. or the government.
anyways.
ben had this incredible ability to treat every place like a perfect place to have a nap.
park bench? sure. beach? absolutely. middle of a cemetery? winner winner.
i remember asking him if this was disrespectful. he opened one eye, looked around for a second, shrugged, and said, "i don't think they're using it."
not a bad argument.
we'd been walking for hours. i don't remember where we were actually trying to get because, as usual, the destination kept changing depending on who we'd bumped into that day. ben eventually announced he was "done with the heat," dropped his backpack, used it as a pillow, and laid down between all these graves.
it was a very professional position.
i sat there eating tomatoes while he slept. that's them all over the ground beside him. he'd bought a giant punnet because they were on special, then immediately decided he didn't actually want tomatoes anymore.
i took exactly one photo.
there wasn't time for a second.
ben was already awake and halfway through threatening my poor innocent camera.
which is why this remains one of the rare exclusive sightings of the elusive ben.
thank you, graveyard. you were very comfy.
V, xx.
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