Those who know Fred Johns or are regular readers of his weekly webzine (www.somethingcool.ca) know that Fred is, at best or at kindest evaluation, a little weird. I shared how it was I found myself filming a soiled batch of paper towels. I now share Fred’s words on this matter.Personally I am sure that, or at least I maintain, that finding myself in those circumstances is all Fred’s fault and that I am just a sweet, innocent, NORMAL bystander sucked into the twilight zone by Fred’s presence.
It was a fairly interesting set of circumstances that led James Breckenridge to be in a situation where he would be filming a patch of paper towels soiled with human waste, and yet there he was anyway. It wasn’t the first batch of makeshift toilet paper he had ever seen; what made this particular batch stand out from all the others was the fact that he had a video camera in his hand instead of paper towel himself.
It’s no secret that James Breckenridge used to be homeless. He even wrote a blog about it. But for all the posts he wrote and for all the discussions on the subject he had, nothing could quite compare with the experience of staring down at the spot where another human had wiped their ass in an open clearing just behind a popular Italian restaurant in downtown Abbotsford. No words were needed to describe both the injustice and despair that the soiled towels represented – the crap on them did that well enough on its own.
James openly admitted to being forced to do a similar thing once or twice himself. “I’ve been pretty lucky,” he said, standing a few feet from the dirtied towels. “That’s mostly due to good planning – I was always sure to be in the library or something once during the day so I could use the washroom facilities. But, I’ll admit it, there were times I had to find a bush or the dark side of a building so I could urinate and do my business.”
James isn’t embarrassed to discuss this topic, nor particularly uncomfortable, which puts him in the minority. Most people aren’t too interested in talking about how the homeless defecate, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still have to. It’s a taboo topic, one not openly discussed. Conversations about food and shelter tend to take precedence, but this doesn’t erase the physical needs of people without homes and proper washroom facilities. Homeless people are still people and as such, need to urinate and defecate like everyone else.
In Abbotsford, that’s particularly challenging. The majority of businesses in the downtown area have signs with the words “Washrooms for Customer Use Only” clearly inscribed on them. The library at Jubilee Park requires a key for entry. And there are an odd number of local gas stations that have washrooms that are suspiciously “out of order”.
Why such concern? It seems some of the local homeless seem to do nasty things while using the restrooms. “They tend to try and flush needles and stuff down the toilets,” a librarian at the Jubilee Park library said. “They mess the place up and leave it for us to clean. And it’s not safe for our workers to have to go in their and pick up needles and things. That’s why we require people to use a key.”
It’s a no-brainer too that local restaurant owners are uneasy about homeless people coming around and scaring their precious clientele. “It’s pretty simple actually,” one restaurant owner (who requested that his name and his restaurant be left out of this article) said. “People don’t come here to see homeless people. They come to eat in a friendly, fun and safe environment. They don’t want to be bothered by people who drink and use drugs so we don’t allow those kinds of people to use our washrooms.”
All fine and good for the customers, but what about the people that really need to pee, or, in safespeak, do a #2? “If you’re homeless in this town and you look it, you can try and use the public washrooms in the library,” Breckenridge said, recalling his own experiences as a homeless person. “Otherwise, you’re like the bears on those TV commercials, shitting in the woods.”
There is no shortage of working toilets along Abbotsford’s main business corridor, but few of them are ever in use. This is what irks Breckenridge so much, especially in a town with so many Christians who frequent the numerous local churches. “The Christians in this town appear to think that sleeping and shitting in the woods is perfectly acceptable for those homeless animals,” he said. “Now how Christian is that?”
Washroom facilities do exist at the local Salvation Army and people do not require a key to use the bathrooms at the Clearbrook library, way the other end of town. But the only other place in the main downtown district that would allow anyone to use their bathrooms was a tiny little comic store one street off the main drag.
“Why wouldn’t I let someone use the bathroom?” the owner of the store asked me when I told him his decision to open his bathrooms to the public was a bit of a rare one. “When you gotta go, you gotta go, right?”
Part of the reason he is so kindly is because there’s really nothing of value in his store where the bathrooms are located. “I have some .50 cent comics back there,” the owner said, “so if someone makes off with a couple of those, they’re almost doing me a favour.”
Most businesses, this owner said, do have valuable stuff near the washrooms, like merchandise and money, which is an added incentive to keep the homeless people out. “But it’s pretty safe here and I know as well as anyone what it feels like to have to go but having nowhere to do so. So I guess this is my way of showing a little community spirit.”
Now if only the rest of the community would get on board. There does seem to be a logical solution to this problem that would appease both the business owners and the homeless – public washrooms in parks. Even port-a-potties would do, wouldn’t they?
The librarian at the Jubilee Park location says that was already tried. “They had a port-a-potty in the park,” she recalled. “But then they burned it down. So now they have nothing.” She shrugged. “Whose fault is that?”
Whose fault, indeed. It’s a tough scene to imagine: it’s cold, probably dark and a homeless person finds him or herself alone with nowhere to take a crap. They have managed to scrounge up a clump of paper towel which is all they have to wipe their ass with. It’s hard to fathom the indignity a person must feel when they lower their ripped and torn pants and are forced to defecate, exposed to the world, with no privacy, the same way a coyote or a dog must.
“Thus it is that the homeless are forced to either hold it in indefinitely or urinate and defecate outdoors like animals,” Breckenridge said. “Perhaps, with even less dignity than animals considering there are businesses out there whose sole function is to clean up after people’s dogs.”
Who takes care of the human crap? Likely the homeless themselves, who are too embarrassed to leave it for someone else to find. Save for this one homeless person, who left the batch of soiled paper towels, perhaps for someone to find. And someone did find them – a journalist with a video camera and a former homeless man. As this odd pair stands above the dirty mattress the homeless person slept on and peers over at the nearby soiled towels, an idea forms. The former homeless man trudges off into the thick brush but returns a few moments later, with an item procured from a local convenience store.
“I think I’ll leave a little present,” James Breckenridge says, placing a roll of toilet paper atop the mattress. “For next time,” he says.