I met an interesting fellow today while sitting at the dentist office. He looked really young and clean cut. He was dressed very trendy and had salon styled hair. I would have never thought he could have ever been homeless. He was from Atlanta and had just moved down here for a job at the hospital. His name was Dave. He was getting his teeth cleaned.
I was reading an issue of PC gamer. I love that my dentist carries this in his waiting room. He must have a subscription as the latest copy is always in there. I have been debating on asking him if he games. It is probably his son though.
The guy sitting next to me asked me…..
“Do you play computer games?”
“Yeah, when I can afford to buy them I do. I play Battlefield: Vietnam most days and am currently tied up in The Temple of Elemental Evil.”
“Which game is that?” he asked.
“Dungeons and Dragons. I played the pen and paper version years ago and this is a translation of a classic D&D campaign module. It is neat to play such a faithfully transcribed version of that module.” I replied.
“Ah, I see, I think I have heard of it. I play lots of unreal tournament 2004 online. I like the assault mode games.” He told me.
I have been waiting to pick this up but the $50 price tag is too steep for me. I will wait a few more months and hope the price comes down as it usually does.
“I think I was the only homeless guy in America that could game online with high speed internet.” I said as I chuckled.
“You were homeless?” He asked.
“Yeah, for a several months and my folks got me an apartment after we did some reconciliation.” I replied.
I went on to talk for a bit about what happened to me. I didn’t mention my mental illness. I just told him I had lived in a tent during this past winter. I didn’t go into any real detail.
It turned out that he had been homeless for a short time as well. He said he couch surfed with different friends. He was gay and his parents were fundamentalist baptists and they threw him out of the house when he came out of the closet. They couldn’t come to terms that their son was gay. I was shocked. This sounded exactly like Crystal’s story minus any head injuries.
I told him about Crystal’s being_homeless blog and wrote down the internet address. I couldn’t remember it exactly but told him to search google for livejournal and being_homeless. I thought he would enjoy reading about someone who had similar circumstances and who went through hell because of it.
It can be a small world sometimes. By this time, they had called my name and I had to go back to the torture room as I affectionately call it. Luckily today was not so bad.
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