December 23, 1995: On a wooden basement staircase, in an empty house, with no heat, with my dog. My parents lost the house. All our stuff had been moved out. Our nervous dog wouldn’t settle. I couldn’t leave him. That was the last night I slept in the house where I grew up.
December 1998: On a basement floor near Ottawa. At least it was carpeted. Hammered after some party near a college. In the night, some angel draped a blanket over me. Best feeling of my life to that point. Some guy’s sister was kind to us.
May 2009: Coober Pedy, Australia. Slept in a hostel that was in a mine. Slept underground in a room with bunk beds and no windows. It was weird. Felt like a bomb shelter.
December 2011: Wadi Rum, Jordan. Slept outside under the stars on a sleeping mat on a rock of biblical proportion. The guy in the tent next to ours was snoring. Loudly. My partner couldn’t take it. We dragged our mattresses out onto a rock 300 m from camp. I reasoned — scorpions were less likely to find us. Coulda been wrong. Still here to tell the tale.
I’ve slept in some weird places.
Bathtub full of vinegar and water after I got a bad sunburn.
In a server room, multiple times, not amazing but the blinking lights are kinda fun to look at at it’s basically like a very loud white noise machine. Also it’s nice and cool.
I was homeless in Brussels once. Someone stole my backpack with my passport in it, and just like that I was stateless. It was over a weekend, and the embassy to my home country was closed and wouldn’t open until Monday.
No food, no money, no water, I had nothing to do. I walked all over that city, really got to see every interesting corner of it. It’s like 5 different countries smushed into one, and you can see french/german/british influence almost everywhere. There’s an overpass that cuts right through it at one point, occupying nothing underneath and that’s where the migrants gather on Saturday mornings to host their wares in this long unyielding impromptu market.
I slept in their parks, talked with their police (who didn’t believe my story), and even struck up a conversation with a random Canadian I met at the train station, who fitted the stereotype to a T, and gave me money so I could get by another day, asking for nothing in return.
When Monday rolled around, I took a nice leisurely stroll to the embassy and got an emergency visa, ready for the long bus trip home, and genuinely sadly bid farewell to that beautiful crazy mess of a city. It shares a special place in my heart, bureaucracy be damned.