Sometimes I feel like I’m the only “normal” person in this homeless shelter. Of course, anyone who isn’t crazy, drunk, high, or institutionalized probably spends as little of their time here as possible and keeps their head down, too. Empty food containers, pop cans and other random discarded detritus covers the floor of the lobby. Yellow ear-wax stained Q-tips, empty food wrappers, used hygiene products, filthy clothes and stained white towels surround the floors around the half empty trash cans in the bathrooms. Empty plastic dime bags sit on the ground, used up and forgotten like their contents, their owners off in search of another high.

Paint peels off the walls, highlighted by random stains of human waste and dried spit bubbles. There are holes and cracks in the ceilings. Signs announce that any personal items left on top of lockers or on ledges will be discarded, and since there aren’t any garbage cans in the dorms, people simply toss whatever trash they have on the floor knowing that it’ll be picked up for them by the cleaning staff the next day. If a locker is abandoned, its next user will generally just dump its contents on the floor below and fill it with their own belongings. The trash piles can get rather large.

Occasionally a quarter sized cockroach will emerge from the gap between the locker door and its housing, having found or searching for the crumbs of food someone has stashed away despite the practically unenforceable “no outside food or drink” policy. I make sure to double or triple bag my few possessions to prevent my stuff from being infested, but dealing with the noisy trash bags makes a fair amount of noise and can piss people off.

Most of the unwashed patrons lay on one of the two neatly folded white sheets that are left daily on the six inch tall 70’s style puke green mattresses and fall asleep in their clothes & boots or shoes, tossing the second sheet and prickly grey blanket to the floor next to them. During cold weather alerts the putrid smell of 6-12 grown men’s unwashed feet and body odour can get overpowering, but you surprisingly get used to it. The worst smell by far is certainly shit.

Enter the man I dubbed “Surly”. His black and grey beard is large and disheveled and his oversize clothes hang from his thin and wiry frame. Sitting in his top bunk opposite mine, he sits back eating bread that he butters with a dirty knife over the plastic cutting board that sits on his lap. Any attempts I make to engage him in simple or polite conversation is met with a one word response, a grunt, or silence. The most I ever hear him say is an angry demand to see the bed ticket of any newcomer to the dorm who looks suspicious or suspect.

Surly has the habit of going to his locker at 1am to fold and unfold and organize his empty plastic bags that incessantly crackle in the time warp of frustrated sleeplessness that makes seconds feel like minutes and minutes feel like hours. I try to be diplomatic and get along with everyone, but after asking him to do his stuff later and being met with blatant hostility, I lose my cool and have the first confrontation of my stay.

I tell him that it’s well after “lights out” and to cut it the fuck out, but he insists he has perform his maddeningly annoying activity now and tells me that I’m stupid. With exhaustion exacerbating my woefully inadequate supply of patience and with a bruised ego from having an arguably abject moron insult my intelligence, I tell him that I hope that he’s been getting enough calcium because if I have to endure another night of losing precious little sleep because of his compulsion that he might end up with some broken bones and fractures in the places that his body interrupts the flight plan of my fists.

He roars toward my bunk with surprising speed and agility, fists raised upon arms in an aggressive posture with fiery eyes of firm determination. I’m not a fighter – especially against a senior citizen, but my position on the bunk above him and my relative youth and health clearly give me the tactical advantage, assuaging any fears I may have and I back down. I really didn’t expect him to step. I can’t help but stare and admire his courage and resolve, and just sit there looking at him, still ready to move if he attempts to climb or jump if he decides to attack.

Coincidentally the staff enter the room for a bed check and notice the scene unfolding. I figure this is not the time to adhere to the “no snitching” rule and the other occupants of our dorm will be willing to overlook my faux pas in favour of peace and quiet and when they ask what’s going on I tell them what happened. The female worker tells him that it’s time to sleep and he has to do whatever he was doing after the wake up call, warning him that she’ll return shortly to ensure that he complies. Her and I share a brief eye roll and smile as I nod to her in thanks, then pull my scratchy blanket over my head and drift off to sleep.

The next day comes and goes uneventfully and I’m awoken from my sleep at 3 or 4 in the morning by the twinge of a full bladder and climb down from my bunk as quietly as I possibly can to head over to the bathroom. If homelessness steals simple creature comforts you take for granted, having an actual urinal a few steps from your bed is a small convenience that you can appreciate. On my way out I notice Surly in his underwear, revealing the folds of his saggy wrinkled skin hanging from his bony legs. He’s laying his jeans over the heater under the window that faces the street and often provides us with entertainment from the daily fights, crazies, drug deals gone awry or the flashing lights of emergency vehicles. I figure he didn’t manage to wake up in time as I had, and chuckle to myself – thinking that it couldn’t have happened to a better guy as I relieve myself and crawl back into my bunk and fall back to sleep.

The days can often melt into each other. Despite of or because of the structure and routine, time has a way of becoming more of an abstract concept as you wait in queues for food, a pair of socks, your bed ticket or a door to be unlocked. For the most part they’re orderly and uneventful. People just accept it out of resignation or boredom or a combination of the two. I arrive back to the dorm a while after the doors are opened, so there’s no line and I breeze up the stairs towards the dorm. When I enter, I’m hit by a wall of the most overpowering stench of the most disgustingly vile and sickly shit I’ve ever smelt. My throat wretches and I cover my face as I walk in. I do a quick check of my bed area to make sure that Surly hasn’t left me any little “presents”, quickly change into my evening clothes and double time it into the “fresh” air of the hallway and out to the street.

I return a few hours later, and the smell is just as bad. A couple of brave souls have managed to withstand the hovering shit cloud and roam around the room with their noses held out, trying to find the source of the offending turds. Could it be a cat or a rat? Everyone is completely frustrated, and a guy who’d been trying to nap angrily groan-sighs and bolts out of the room, his tolerance spent. Our search ends futilely, and I suddenly remember Surly’s underwear moment from the morning before and immediately come to the conclusion that the rank smell must be coming from him, uncharacteristically motionless under the blanket on his bunk. “It’s gotta be coming from him, there’s no other explanation, we’ve looked everywhere.” I say.

Three sharp knocks hit the door and a female voice announces “Staaaaaaaaafffff!” as it opens and a cute girl wearing plastic gloves walks in and approaches Surly’s bunk, clanging something against the metal frame and reciting the typical word used to rouse those men who are usually in a sleep so deep that it takes quite a lot of effort to rouse them back to consciousness, if possible. “Sirrrrrr……” The oft used but completely meaningless and generic term that someone decided should be used to address both respected superiors and fast food customers alike is repeated several times. “Sirrrrrrrr… Based on the previous issue you had and multiple complaints we’ve had you’re going to have to take a shower now.” There’s no response.

She continues to try and wake Surly as I start to wonder if the guy’s dead. She eventually shakes him out of his slumber enough for him to open his eyes and make a feeble attempt to sit up that ultimately fails as his head plops back on his pillow. She pulls the blanket off of him that somehow makes the stench intensify and the source is now obvious to all, a massive congealed mass of dark brown/black congealed shit is spilling out the bottom of his jeans and clinging to his ankle. “Sirrrrrrrrrrr….. Do you need an ambulance?” She asks repeatedly as we all look to each other and back to him and a guy below tells her “It’s an act of humanity, come on..” You can see her face twist as she weighs her options.

“He was lucid this morning, and he’s not a druggie.” I tell her as I look at the man who I’d just a couple days ago considered strong beyond his appearance, respect gained for his tenacity despite his apparent fragility. I consider my personal feelings and try to reconcile the shame and pity I felt for him with my disdain and annoyance. It’s a graphic reminder of how quickly things can change, in an instant the course of a life inexorably altered beyond correction.

I ponder my own health and mortality in the face of my sympathy for someone whom I’ve developed a contemptuous dislike for yet the understanding that no one really deserves such an indignity and discomfort as he was obviously suffering. I can’t help but wonder what traumas and tribulations have lead Surly to become so surly, and think that he must have gone through some serious shit (ha!) that would cause him to react so quickly and decisively to the perceived threat I caused him so recently.

She clicks the button of her walkie-talkie and requests an ambulance as she holds the half bar of soap that she had carried in for him with her to her nose in a feeble attempt to block the worsening stink. One of the guys in the room promptly seizes the opportunity to flirt with her, asking her name and where she was from and I can’t help but laugh at the audacity and timing of his bold advances while still admiring her thighs in the form fitting pants that highlight the contours of her body. It’s not very often that an attractive woman is alone in the sausage fest of the dorms, but it’s impossible to ignore the context of the current situation of the severely ill and soiled man who can’t even form a coherent sentence just a few feet away from all of us as he brashly tries to woo her in an awkward but confident manner.

Two fat paramedics eventually walk in the room with a young 20-something female paramedic student in tow. “Of course he’s in the top bunk.” The fatter one laments as he and his colleagues pull masks over their faces. “OK, come on, get up!” The medic sharply bellows. I get the feeling that he doesn’t realize just how bad the guy’s condition really is, considering his gruff (literal) bedside manner. Just another piece of shit covered in shit, to him, I guess.

They eventually get him to sit up, and he screams out in pain as he tries to move. “My leg!!” He cries out, in obviously serious pain. The medic’s demeanour softens a bit and after about ten minutes they’re able to get him down to the floor and standing with assistance. “We need to get you in the shower, we can’t have you contaminating the ambulance.” The medic tells him as the staff member arranges to get the guy a set of clothes that’ll fit him after he’s been cleaned up.

My next reaction is disgust on the guy’s behalf that he’d have to enter the shower stalls barefoot, and horror that even with my feet protected by my $2 flip flops, I might have to use the same stall they’re going to use to clean up up with unknowingly. I guess it couldn’t be much worse than the other things that go on in there. The 10 foot long by 5 foot wide stalls that house a shower and small bench and double hook are the only enclosed spaces other than toilets. They’re a popular destination for sexually frustrated hobos to masturbate loudly, no fucks given – amongst other things that require a reprieve from the ever watchful eyes and cameras that are typically omnipresent.

“Now I feel bad for the guy, really..” I say to the room after he’s brought out “…But am I the only one who’s glad he’s gone?” As everyone erupts in laughter at my black humour. I punch out a few “shitty situation” puns morbidly, then head out to have a smoke. On my way out the door I see the stretcher covered with at least 8 blankets. It took them over an hour to get him cleaned up, and we never saw him again. It was three weeks before someone dumped out the contents of his locker that he guarded so strongly. Pens, pencils, papers, tins of food and neatly organized plastic bags, utensils, and his trademark cutting board. Those possessions were his world. It was all he had, and he never does come to collect or defend them.

I still wonder what happened to him, but can’t escape the conclusion that as he never returned that he very well may no longer be with us. I still hope for his sake that he somehow managed to find his way to somewhere better equipped to care for him, still I fear that if the worst may have happened that he died alone, with no one to comfort him or mourn his passing. Someone who loved or knew him before he was Surly. Then again, I guess we all die alone.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget him.