If I ever go homeless (and let’s face it, the odds are good) I would just pretend like I was camping. There really aren’t that many differences between campers and homeless people. If you go out into the woods and someone is sleeping in a tent, do you really know whether or not they have a home to go back to? I would venture to say “non.” You’d probably think I would say “no,” but I’m feeling French today.
95% of all homeless people have, at one time or another, owned their own business, worked for an internet start-up, or put all their money on the Buffalo Bills. When you have a job, as insurance they should offer you a tent and a lantern (pork and beans optional). If you get fired or go bankrupt, you just take everything you have, which hopefully is not a family, and stroll on into the forest where you work for your new boss: Mother Nature. Peeing in rivers and wiping your ass with jagged pieces of tin; ah, the sporting life. You’ll have so much fun you’ll forget that you’re homeless and hungry and dying.
So you don’t like the forest you say? Oh, sorry, that must’ve just been one of the many, many voices in my head, but regardless, let’s assume you don’t. Well, then you could set up your tent on the street, perhaps outside of an antique shop, for that woody smell. If anyone asks what you’re doing, simply say, “I’m communing with nature and getting in touch with an ontological inner self I have longed to discover.” Then get back to cooking thrown out fish heads in your bonfire of toilet paper and oily rags. Setting up camp in the city could be challenging, though, in that you would have to work much harder to keep your camp site clean. I had a friend who set up downtown and always had to go around with a garbage bag to get all the soda cans, cigarette butts, and dollars bills people threw at him. Sometimes, everyone is just inconsiderate of a man’s home.
So don’t let the camper fool you: he’s a bum. Who would voluntarily go into the middle of the forest? Because it’s fun? Come on people, we have cable and internet porn, we’re all set until the v-chip gets implanted in our brains. Just remember, though, if you have to go somewhere, home is where the park is.