14th--11/29/11--Intake, Boston Public Health Commission Shelter in Boston

November 29, 2011 The recorder shows that I started the recording at 9:41 p.m. last night, according to its clock. The word processing program isn't obviously accessible on this computer.  I'm sure it's there, but I don't see it. While I was trying to work on the other laptop, it shut itself off....I guess it does that sometimes.  As it was doing whatever it was doing, I saw something on the screen that said "TOSHIBA--LEADING INNOVATION." What is wrong with people who want to molest children?  What is WRONG with them?  Why don't they realize that they're doing something bad, something that hurts other human beings for no reason?  If they do realize that, why don't they care about it? It had been more than a week since I'd last been at Intake.  There are still Caution cones in the parking lot and next to the cages.  There's even one of those plaquard Caution fences; a few feet wide and a few feet tall, moveable, like a sidewalk sign except that it's an orange and white striped thing.  There's one of those in the parking lot, attached to the wall of the building next to it with yellow Caution tape. As I've said before, all of that is encouragement for me to be abused by staff and guests, It was too late to get a bed, which I knew would happen.  I was fine with that; I haven't minded sleeping on a floor mat in the cafeteria the other times that I've done that. I brought my mat out to a corner of the room, to try to put it at least partway under one of the tables that had been pushed off to the side.  They leave the flourescent lights on all night in the cafeteria, so being partly under a table makes it easier to sleep. There was a woman on the next mat over who started loudly, repetitively coughing the second she saw that I was bringing my mat over to near where she was.  She didn't cough except when I was there.  She kept it going while I put the sheets on my mat (which had an unfortunately identifiable stain on the side that I decided to turn to the floor).  I wasn't feeling anything but that I was tired and didn't want to deal with more harassment last night.  I skipped all the prelimnaries and went to "Could you please stop that?" and then, when she didn't, "Stop that!" She was a white woman, probably in her 50's, much the worse for wear.  She started hissing at me right away, and lying, "I'm just coughing!  I can't help it!" and verbally abusing me. A police car went by outside the building, with its sirens going in a signal I've heard before when police are not necessarily going after anything but are informing people of their presence.  I looked at the woman and said "Did you hear those sirens?  That worked for me." Her eyes got big for a second, and then she said "Are you sick in the head?" She'd raised her voice right away.  A black, female staffperson who was probably in her 40's was behind the counter, and said "Don't fight, ladies," or something like that. The homeless woman started complaining to the staffperson, telling the same lies, saying, about me "She got mad because I'm coughing....etc.," and the staffperson told her, about me "Ignore her." I picked up my mat and went to one of the only other tables in the room that was still set up as a table.  It was closer to the table next to it than I woiuld have liked.  I tried to put my mat as much under it as I could.  There was a very overweight, black woman, probably in her early 30's, sitting in a chair at the next table, and there was an empty chair in front of her with a styrofoam glass in front of it.  I asked her if someone was sitting in that chair; she said "Yes," with a mean look on her face. I didn't want to crowd anyone, but I did want to be able to put the mat down and go to sleep.  The TV is also on for much of the night, in that room; if things weren't bad there, and if the overall situation weren't going on, it could be almost fun to sleep in the cafeteria instead of the dorm.  As things are... I had wanted to try to work things out with the women sitting at the next table; I left my mat there and walked away for a minute.  When I got back, a white woman was sitting in the chair that had been empty.  I don't remember what she looked like; I want to say she was maybe 50 pounds lighter than the black woman, and about 100 pounds heavier than I am.  They both started to nag at me, telling me I couldn't put my mat where it was.  All that needed to be done was move the next table over some, but the fact is that I've been getting bullied, and that's all they wanted to do. The black woman started kicking my mat with her foot.  I said "Don't kick my bed."   She looked right at me while she kicked it some more. I went into the dorm and told the black, female staffperson, who's probably in her 40's, what was going on."  She said "You're all over 18; I don't konw what I could do about it."  She asked me if I wanted the police detail from the first floor to go up to the cafeteria.  I didn't know if she was threatening me or offering to help me, so I tried to get her to just deal with what was happening.  She told me to tell the woman who had been kicking my mat to stop, but mostly she tried to avoid all of it. I went back out into the cafeteria, where the women who'd been bullying me had kept talking to each other about it in my absence.  I couldn't even get the words "She told me to tell you to stop" across to them above their voices, so I went to the first floor. Since I'd last been on the first floor, someone had put a Wet Floor sign in the middle of the completely dry floor.  I picked up the sign, said, "That's enough," and put it on a chair behind an empty staff desk.  A black, female staffperson who's probably in her 40's started to yell at me, and I went right past her up the ramp to the next room where a tall, black police officer who's probably in his 40's was sitting.  I said to him "If I ask you to help me, is there any chance that you will?"  He said "That depends on what's going on." I started to tell him about the coughing, and he said "I can't stop people from coughing."  I went on to try to describe what had happened, and a tall, black man who's probably in his 40's walked out of the open door of the office behind the police officer and told me he'd go upstairs with me.  He's a supervisor there.  I followed him through the first floor, and up the stairs, saying "I can't believe the Wet Floor sign was there...is anybody actually going to try to pretend that nothing's going on, and that I'm crazy for thinking that there is?"  He kept walking without saying much. I followed him up the stairs.  Since he wasn't in conversation with me, or looking at me, it wasn't difficult to take my recorder out of my pocket and turn it on so that I could record whatever happened next. We went into the cafeteria.  It ended up that he went into the dorm and asked the staffperson there to try to find me a bed.  The staffperson asked if anyone in the dorm would be willing to sleep in the cafeteria instead of the dorm.  A white woman who was probably in her 40's volunteered to do that, and I got a bed for the night. The recording shows what happened when the supervisor and I went back into the cafeteria.  There's no way that he didn't hear all of those women saying "CHEESE," not only when one of them lied and said about me "She got mad because we were talking about cheese," but also them yelling it at me as I followed the supervisor into the dorm. It's true that the black woman who had kicked my mat had ALSO started talking about cheese, but I was already mad by the time she started doing that. It's good that the supervisor got me a bed, but he didn't put a stop to any of the bullying, even though it happened right in front of him.  As for the Wet Floor sign and the other harassing objects in and around the shelter; none of the bullying is going to stop until those things are gone. Copyright L. Kochman, November 30, 2011 @ 10:23 p.m.