The Shelter was keeping me busy at least three days a week. one doing day shifts which was cleaning, getting food prepped for the night shift, making calls to get permission for the kids to stay there. after 72 hours you had to have a legal guardian give permission for them to stay there over night. i was always surprised when parents would just say "yeah" and hang up--not even asking how the kidwas...ok, healthy, alive...some parents would get pissed and say NO, send them home! it was such an across the board responces that usually let me know why the kid had ran away. i did two over nights a week along with another staff person and a 9--12 to give support to the over night people. it did not really take long for me to get way into the job. to work there you had to. some nights would be nuts with 30 kids and a few rappers and a skin head or two, husslers and kids tripping...it was a great effort to keep things calm with out being a 'big brother'and bitchy. some nights only a few kids would be there. that's when you got to really know the kids one on one. the could drop the street mask and be real not worring about the tough skin to protect them from the street.
a punk couple had been there for a couple of nights. they clung to each other from the time they got htere to the time they went to their separate bed areas. they had ran away from smaller town in Organ. i had done the intake for the guy...and checked in with him as we did with each kid every night in the office one to one. at nine the door bell started ringing with the kids ready to come in and eat....rest and just relax. i was cooking in the little kitchen and was saying hello and talking to them as they started pilling in. i was the punk girl come in and she looked less than happy. then the boy came in..."HI" he said to me. in a mood different than his usual stoic attatude. "HI" i said "how are you?"..he tood there with a big smile and said, " I sucked my first dick today...i loved it!". me and the other councilor just locked eyes. " i looked over at the guy and said "oh, did you ?" "yeah...im gonna suck a few more tomorrow". ok...i thought i had to deal with this at once. the poor girl friend was setting on the couch with big tears rolling down her face.
"why don't you and i go talk." i told him. and we went into the council room.
"what's up? and why are you making J---- cry?"
"i met thi guy today, and he took me out to eat and he gave me a little money and we had sex and i loved it"
"well, do you feel that givves you the right to hurt someone who loves you?"
"I don't want to hurt her but i feel like i am gay and i want to live that way".
"you may be able to do that and not hurt your long time girl friend both. just think of how happy you would be if she was not so hurt. I want you to be what you are but hurting another person is only going to hold you back....much less having sex for money. go slow with this and think for a second how to move forward. "
he was a good kid. just got away from a little town and wanted to be himself...if that was gay or whatever. i just wanted him to be safe and not mean to his poor hut girlfriend. we kept talking each night and he made peace with the x girl friend and they seem to settle into a sort of best friend thing. years later i ran into this guy in a bar and he thanked me for helping him come out..i ran into lots of the formor kids during my years after working at the helter and they all were thankful for what the shelter had done for them. of course some of the kid hated me...skin heads who came in and were trying to be bullies to gay or Mexican or black kids...i had to remember they were runaways too and had problems that needed attention. but i had to make it clear this was a place for everybody and no one was was going to feel otherwise....even if it meant kicking them out to prove that. i had a few mean big kid tell me they were going to kick my ass if they ever saw me out of the shelter....which scared me to death. Lucky, though, it never happened.
SDH
once when the Dicks were playing, i think in Houston, we played in the back of wha once had been a Revolutionary Communist Party bookstore. I have no idea how that happened. the guy who put on the show told me i could have a book...which was stored ther but he gave me a copy of a cartoon book. about a woman who was a fighter in the war of resistance against Japan that the Chinee had fought. she was super brave and loved Chairman Mao. Her name was Sister Double Happiness....i guess like a nun...yoou know...sister mary lovejesus?? so after my many other ideas had been shot down for naming our band i remembered the book and said why not use that as the name--Sister Double Happiness?? we all liked it, although long we could use SDH. that was the name and i heard my old pal Mikey from Austin and the bass player of the great Offenders had moved to SF. i was thinking how great of a bass player he was and how we needed one and....
i found Mikey and asked him to please come at least practice with us. he was happy and wanted to play something different than hardcore for a while. well, he played a couple of the songs and wow...we had our band at lat...SDH was hppening. we had written most of our first album's songs by our first show. SDH, the song, was our first tune when we did that first show at the Chatterbox in Valencia. what a club? small but it had the feeling of a real gritty rock and roll place. the sound we looked for was fitting the club at the moment. honest and nasty blues-punk songs we loved to play. a song Freight Train was about the ever increasing nightmare killer AIDS. it was cool because two writers for gay news papers were at the show. Don Baird and Adam Block. they both wrote great reviews of the show for their different news paper. Poodle Dog was our last song and it had started. SDH. i couldn't have been happier.
but i was still feeling a bit of a longing for a spiritual path. I felt something coming, though.
things were good.