6:00 a.m. I woke up at my girlfriend’s apartment. She is still sick with RSV. I have mild symptoms like headache, and I just feel physically drained.
7:30 a.m. I leave my girlfriend’s apartment and I drive to a parking lot in Danvers where I swap out my truck for my little car. The Little car is really good on gas, I only usually drive the truck if I need it or on Sundays to visit my mom and my friend Ed because to keep vehicles healthy you have to drive them. I know the little car will not pass inspection this year due to an engine light, so I’ll be driving a little car with an outdated inspection sticker. Although next year the little car will be inspectable because it’ll be over 15 years old and pass a lot of the regulations on inspection.
9:00 a.m. I park my car at the entrance of Michael’s campsite. I hike into the woods a little bit past the middle school to the camps location. I walk into a shitshow. There’s only one completely functional tent right next to mine, a new tent where I had helped Michael set up his new tent a few days previous. My A-frame is completely gone on my tent, and somebody had slashed huge gashes into my tent. My tent is ransacked, and a lot of my supplies are missing including my air mattress and some of my blankets. I’m furious about this. I began to call into the tents that seem like they might have people in them. The individual that Michael had invited to the camp appears out of the tent next to mine, this individual seems to me to be a man, but they identify as transgender. Then two other individuals appear out of another tent with a tarp on it that had been slashed up. It’s a man and his girlfriend. I asked him what happened. This trio tells me that Michael had been drinking and went berserk, he was talking about killing himself and trying to cut himself with the ax that he had gotten from the man at the hardware store. They said that Michael had left the camp with a backpack, and then came back the next day and slashed all the tents. This was very concerning to me, and I knew that I was only getting one side of the story. There wasn’t much else that I could do, so I bid these people farewell and I went on my way to think about the situation.
10:00 a.m. I drove over to the abandoned building down the street from Michaels Camp that belongs to the council of aging. I spend some time thinking and I write some notes down. I decided to walk over to Steve’s market to get something to eat. This new development solidified my resolve to camp alone going forward. I grab a sausage egg and cheese biscuit and a spinach pastry from Steve’s Market. The individuals I had recently talked to who seemed to have taken over Mike’s camp, were at the flagposts. I engage in conversation with them and ask more questions about what happened to Mike. The trio alluded more to there being an altercation, and there was mention of Mike getting hurt. The whole story seems fishy to me, and it seems as if there was a homeless campsite takeover. I feel really bad for Michael, I had known when he had invited the transgender individual to the camp that it was probably a bad idea. This individual seemed like a very controlling and tough-minded person who in my opinion could not be trusted. Michael’s kind-hearted and trusting nature had gotten the best of him once again it seems.
11:15 a.m. I was sitting in my car writing down notes. I get a call from the human resource person at my new job working with homeless people. I will literally be a homeless homeless outreach worker. The human resource person wants me to come fill out some paperwork. They tell me that I need my social security or birth certificate as well. I don’t have that information so I drive over to my mother’s house, send pictures of my birth certificate and social security card to the human resource worker. And then I drive to the undisclosed location of my new work to fill out all the hiring paperwork. The human resources worker is a really kind-hearted person that has worked for the company for many years. It’s actually a pleasant experience getting all this paperwork in.
2:00 p.m. Since I’m in the area I stop by the shelter that I will be connected to while I do my outreach work. I visited my friend who offered me the job. While I’m at the shelter I get to meet my other homeless coordinator coworker. It’s good to make connections, and I look forward to helping the people that are living in the street get the resources they need to improve their lives. I hang out for a while and talk to the people in the shelter, eat some food, and talk to my friend who is now my boss.
3:30 p.m. I got a call from my girlfriend. She tells me that one of the apartments has accepted her application. This is good news because she needs to take care of a place like pronto. Shortly after I talk to my girlfriend I head out back towards the North shore to visit a friend of mine for a little bit.6:00 p.m. It’s dark, I start my drive to the location of my camp that is in the woods. I begin to have suspicions about what happened at Michaels camp. I wonder to myself if there might have been a fight and Michael had gotten severely injured or even killed. This really bothers me. It’s dark out and there’s not much I can do. I also don’t feel well and I really want to get some rest. I park my car and I hike out to my tent. While I’m sitting in my tent I get a text from my friend Nick who is also homeless in Salem. I’ve been talking to him earlier about the situation with Mike, and he had been talking to other homeless people around town about the situation. Nick and I have a conversation on the phone, Nick tells me some more information about what had transpired at Michael’s camp. What we pieced together was it seemed like Michael got into a fight on Saturday night with the new tenants at his campsite. The next day, Sunday, Michael was walking around with some bruises and things. Michael was telling people in Salem that he was beat up at his campsite. It seems that either Sunday or Monday Michael went back to the campsite and slashed all the tents, and crushed some of the tents too, wreaking havoc. And then disappeared into thin air. Nick and I made plans to go and check the woods around Michael’s camp to make sure that he was not lying in the woods injured or even worse.
9:00 p.m. after thinking, and scrolling around on my phones, oh and talking to my girlfriend. I shut my devices off. It’s definitely a cold night. Probably around 25°Fahrenheit. I turn in for the night and have a good sleep for myself besides being woken up a few times by the biting cold.