The thing is fear. Not repulsion or pity or outrage or sorrow — though they are all there — but fear. Not exactly fear of the other poor bastards in the Christ Missionaries dorm who, in a fit of incandescent desperation, might throttle me in my bed or — as I saw one man do to another stunned stranger — kneel at the edge of a bunk and confess incomprehensible sins, matted beard and broken teeth inches away from the other's face No, it is the fear that somehow I will never escape this place that I will be caught up in some nightmarish misunderstanding, protesting that I don't belong here... and that maybe I will belong in a way that was never supposed to happen but (with each new version I hear of the myriad ways one can arrive here) becomes less out of the question.

Chapel at Christ Missionaries. I see only what looks like a tool shed or garage, maybe that's it.

Photo by Joe Klein

Irrational and shameful — fear that being homeless is contagious.

Tonight I am in what is, really, a men’s flophouse in East San Diego. It is called Christ Missionaries and takes up the shabby Huffman-built apartment at 5061 Auburn Street. Other than a couple of Bibles in the day room off the kitchen and a dusty framed print of Jesus and his followers over one couch, there is no evidence of any religious theme to the place. No services (in the 12 hours I spent there); no hint of a missionary, other than the buckets emblazoned with crucifixes that are issued to the crews.

"Yeah," I tell Ricky, "I stayed there." He’s talking about the San Diego Rescue Mission Life Ministries at 11th and J Street. "Couldn't get any sleep there.''

Photo by Joe Klein

The crews consist of up to a dozen men dispatched for 12 hours a day to collect contributions in front of Vons or Sav-On. A confederation of beggars. While the buckets read “Christ Missionaries" and evoke an image of clerics with beatific expressions or a crusty-but-benevolent-regular-Joe priest from the Bronx with a tough-love attitude, no one like that is in evidence here on Auburn Street.

As I approached St. Vincent de Paul, I passed huddled groups of men and women smoking rock cocaine in doorways.

Photo by Joe Klein

A muscular black man in his 60s I'll call Ricky sits across from me. Ricky is viewing one of two television sets in the small living room. He is watching a sitcom called Get A Life, laughing at regular intervals.

San Diego Rescue Mission church service. "And all that singin’ and preachin’ at the Miseries... just for a meal and a cot.”

Photo by Joe Klein

“You ever stay at the Miseries?" Ricky asks. His hair a close-cropped, grey-wire brush, his hands like anvils. He has lived here on and off for five years. Recently he did six months at Donovan for a parole violation.

Lunch at St. Vincent's. The day before, I had seen roast chicken, string beans, wild rice, cake, and Jell-o.

Photo by Joe Klein

“That’s what we call it, Life Miseries, ’cuz it just like being in jail. See. it's really called Life Ministries...." He looks at the phlegmatic Chicano cook, maybe 50 years old, who smiles (weary, knowing) as he slices garlic bread. The cook doesn't offer his name, but I think of him as Peter Lorre.

Photo by Joe Klein

"Yeah," I tell Ricky, "I stayed there." He’s talking about the San Diego Rescue Mission Life Ministries at 11th and J Street. "Couldn't get any sleep there.''

"Oh no, man. You can’t get any sleep in there.” Ricky shakes his head, a dark turret on massive shoulders. “That place is just like the joint. They comin' in all the time with flashlights, callin' out people's names all night long."

Photo by Joe Klein

Now, sitting across town in a so-called mission that is hardly more inviting than the Miseries, my eyelids are drooping. We are waiting for the begging crews to get back so we can eat and I can be assigned a bed.

Photo by Joe Klein

Ricky laughs, a wet, gravelly sound, and talks about “them little pajamas they give you over at the Miseries. And that curfew, man. You gotta go to bed at nine o'clock. That’s crazy. Here you can pretty much go to bed when you want to. And all that singin’ and preachin’ at the Miseries... just for a meal and a cot.”

Two and a half hours sitting here for the same thing. The time: 10 p.m. I am not allowed to take a bunk or eat anything until the crews have returned. When they do. I will be the last to be served and assigned a bed. I am the newest arrival. Also, I am told I will have to wash the dishes for the house.

The first crew gets back, and the Chicano Peter Lorre starts serving up spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread onto plastic dishes. A gallon of grape punch and another of lemon-lime are set on the kitchen table. It is the size of an average kitchen table in any furnished two-room apartment. It is covered with a faded pink-and-white cloth. Silverware and paper napkins are stacked. The men form a single line, four men at a time. The rest remain seated watching television because there is not enough room for everyone to both stand and move.

Some of the men have brought back six-packs of Millers and are out on the patio smoking and drinking. This is the first shelter I've been in where alcohol is in plain evidence on the premises without serious repercussions, namely eviction.

In fact, Christ Missionaries, associated with Emmanuel House Church, is quite the exception in a number of ways; A larger percentage of the men here are black than at either St. Vincent’s or the Miseries, where the populations seem democratically varied. The lack of any religious or spiritual program or personnel, other than that implied in the name. They say there is a chapel out back, but I see only what looks like a tool shed or garage, maybe that's it. Finally, the so-called work program.

The bucket brigade, the crews, will stand at the entrances of, say, Vons, with whom, I was told, Christ Missionaries has "an arrangement" (Vons denies any such arrangement) from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. They are picked up and dropped off in Christ Missionaries panel trucks. In exchange for a bed and meals, I am told, one must have $40.00 in the bucket at the end of the 12-hour stretch.

Ricky tells me it is quite easy to make the $40. especially now, just before Christmas. Of the 40, you can keep $9.00 and a percentage of anything over $40.

“What's to keep a guy from collecting money all day and just taking a walk with the bucket, buying some drugs or booze, a bus ticket, whatever?"

"Nothing,” Ricky shrugs. “Happens all the time. They're only hurtin’ themselves, though, in the long run."

And what if you don’t make the quota? Say it isn’t Christmas, people just aren't feeling generous?

“Well, you are given an opportunity to make up the amount the next day or the day after that. Sometimes privileges are suspended, like television, desserts, or beer drinking on the patio."

“So," I muse out loud, “say you're out there a few days, say it’s tax time or something, and you’re just not bringing down the $40.00, or say, even $31.00. You end up in the hole to Christ Missionaries?"

Ricky laughs but doesn't answer. It appears entirely possible that this outfit could have a small army of indentured servants, which leads to the question; Where does the money go?

This facility houses 40 men. Peter (The Cook) Lorre has mentioned two other affiliated places in Mexico that house even more.

They have, our cook tells me, a full house tonight here at Auburn Street, and most nights. I believe him because every homeless shelter in America’s Finest City seems to be booked up any night of the week you care to name. Okay. 40 guys at $40.00 a pop. That’s $1600 a day for this place alone But let’s be conservative, cut it to an even $1000. That’s six large a week, 2400 a month — easily $30,000 a year from the buckets. Does it go into beds, blankets, paint, spaghetti, salad, clothes? Taxes? I look around ... Naaaaah. But what do I know? I’m not here to audit anybody ...or ask questions.

SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL/JOAN KROC CENTER

Being homeless is a full-time job. After a week of showing up at 6:30 a.m. down at J Street for a bed at the Miseries and failing each time, I got through on St. Vincent’s Info Hotline after five tries and 20 minutes of recorded messages in English and Spanish about everything from child or elder abuse to family counseling. I told the operator my age, that yes I had a photo ID and a social security card, and she told me to call back in half an hour. I did and it took another ten minutes to get through to anyone. Sorry, full up tonight, but my name was on a list for the following night. I just had to show up at St. Vinnie’s at 1:30 the next day for an interview.

I had a telephone. If I were actually homeless on a street corner, unless I had a pocketful of quarters, I would have been shit out of luck with the Info Hotline. In the book A Street Is Not a Home, by San Diego Municipal Court Judge Robert Coates, he says, of St. Vincent’s case management procedure:

• Case management is the method used by the center to help its clients. Homeless people don't just wander up to the door ot the center and gam entrance Instead they are referred to the center by other agencies about the city — the County Welfare Department, the courts, or church agencies. Appointments are made, and the homeless person (hopefully of a rather organized sort, possessing both watch and calendar) appears at the center's front desk.

Of the hundreds of homeless I saw and spoke with, a few had watches, but I saw no calendars — much less evidence of a wall or desk on which to put one.

The next day I took the bus downtown dressed in the clothes I usually wear on Saturday afternoons — a flannel shirt with no elbows, a pair of Levi's ripped through at the knees (not fashion, they had come by their condition honestly), a pair of old gym sneakers, and an L.A. Angels baseball cap. I also carried a plastic bag with a T-shirt, a toothbrush, a stripped paperback copy of Alexander Trocchi’s Cain's Book, and a buck knife in a leather sheath.

At Broadway and 12th: a vacant lot where a handful of ragged men and at least one woman had built lean-tos out of cardboard. The ammonia smell of urine mingled with bus exhaust and was something I could touch. Have touched and flinched. The woman made a noise like an owl, “Ooooo, oooohh," as one of the men scratched her back. Shopping carts were filled with filthy clothing, blankets, and the random accruement of the psycho-socially dysfunctional.

The people in that lot were too far OUT THERE for shelters — and possibly afraid of them.

As I approached St. Vincent de Paul and the Joan Kroc Center, I passed huddled groups of men and women smoking rock cocaine in doorways, their laughter like gunfire their faces masks of mania. Approaching 15th and Imperial, it was almost as if I were attending a rock concert. Hordes of shabby humanity were converging on the area from all directions. There were at least 1000 people milling around the square block surrounding what has been called the Taj Mahal of homeless shelters. The three-story, $11.6 million. neo-Spanish structure looks out over the San Diego Transit yard, a square-block parking lot for city buses.

In the waiting room, 2:00 pm., at St. Vinnie's. A woman next to me, around 40, said, "I've got an appointment with an eye doctor in El Cajon at two."

She didn’t look at me or at anything else, as far as I could tell. Her eyes were crossed, looking inward and seeing something confusing. She did not appear to have been homeless for long. She was clean, had some decent canvas carry-bags.

"You can go ahead of me,” I said. "I’ve got nothing else to do.” Children were playing in a small day-care alcove across from us. A few people slept on the couches and chairs in the reception area. Each of us had appointments. The front desk was busy with questions and telephones, clipboards, and ID badges being given out to residents. A red dot on your badge indicates that no member of the press may approach you for questions; a green badge indicates that you will permit this. But I was not here officially, as a media representative. I decided to take a tag with a red button; but since I was only in for the night, this option was not offered.

The woman next to me said her name was, say, Sarah. She was from Chicago, and we talked about that city. She was intelligent and cultured and said one of her favorite memories of Chicago was seeing all the panels of Monet’s water lilies at the art institute. "I'll miss never seeing them again." When I pointed out to her that she might yet go back and see them someday, she said, "No, I mean I’m losing my eyesight. I’m blind in my right eye. and I have about six months left before my left eye is completely blind. It’s already going. I can't even see you very well."

She smiled, no self-pity in her voice Her expression reminded me of some line of Steinbeck’s about "a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize,” but I couldn’t remember the rest of it.

During Sarah’s interview, I eavesdropped on her saying that her homelessness was a result of her divorce; her joblessness, same story; her husband was her boss, owned the company she worked for. Friends, family? She’d rather not say.

The interviewer asked me my age; I told him. What did I do for a living? Housepainter, bartender, worked on boats from time to time. "You look like a construction worker,” The blond, sympathetic kid of 25 or so grinned.

"Well... I’ve done it, yeah." It occurred to me that I was not so much playing a role as a certain version of myself that was all too plausible in my own mind. Any one of a hundred left turns could have brought me here — fried more brain cells in the '60s... fallen farther into a bottle than I do when that seems like the only sane thing to do... stuck with that country band in Wyoming... never learned how to type... a hundred things. I didn’t feel fraudulent at all, and the young volunteer certainly had no problem believing I was homeless.

I was issued what looks like an ATM card.

The card is a key, not unlike one you would get a few blocks away at the Omni Hotel. Room 220 on the second floor. No baggage this trip, thanks.

Both single men and families reside on the second floor on a night-by-night basis — though in different rooms — until their situations can be more thoroughly... disposed. I wasn’t prepared for the number of children upstairs. Fingerprints at knee level along the walls are a permanent part of the paint job. Rug rats everywhere playing crash cars in strollers and wheelchairs.

Scanning the room briefly, I claimed a top bunk with my plastic bag and left. I’d have enough time later to take in the details.

I was told to be back by seven or eight that night. It was now 3 p.m.

Bused back to where I live. Called friends and family, just to make sure I had some. Didn’t say what I was doing. They'd all be too quick to misunderstand, think I’d finally gone down for the count and offer to lend me money.

Looked for that Steinbeck quote. Couldn’t find it. Back on the bus. Rain. An unnecessarily dramatic touch to accompany my evening. The walk from Broadway to Imperial, past the incinerated figures of crack smokers in the dark, tossing garbage cans, shoving each other, cacklingroaringjibberring with nightlicense.

The dorm room was empty except for three bunk beds, a small desk, and flimsy plastic chair by the window. On the desk was a piece of lined paper folded open. In pencil someone has printed with an awkward hand a list that reads:

LIVEING COMFORTABLY MARRIED WITH CHILDREN ATTAIN A REASONABLE CLOTHING ATIRE OUN MY OUN CAR HAVE A JOB HOME

The rain clattered on the terra cotta roofing. Bus yard across the street empty rainslick neonstain redblue. Smell of carne asada from taco joint around the corner. Inside, here: overhead bulbs provided greasy lighting. Someone wrapped a newspaper around one ceiling light fixture to dim the glare. I took a top bunk. Removed my hat and sneakers, otherwise stretched out fully clothed. No pillow. I stole one from the bunk below. Read Cain's Book, story about a junkie in the late '50s living in a houseboat on the Hudson in New York. Why did I bring this book?

Hit the lights, 8 p.m. first roommate filed in. Coughing, hawking up phlegm. After stripping to his briefs, he lay on the bottom bunk across the room, covered himself with the sheet, and masturbated. He didn’t know anyone else was there. Clutched around his groin a thin, green, very old Army blanket like the one I’d wrapped and used for a second pillow. Half hour later, another guy arrived and started talking to the first one.

"I almost killed my best friend, man. Where’s my fuckin' pillow?"

I handed it down. "You take this?” he asked me.

"Yeah, nobody was here and I..." The first guy noticed me and looked up, probably wondering if I saw him jerk off. He had one of those haircuts with a pattern cut into the Afro stubble above his ears.

Second guy took the pillow, said to me, “Hey, don’t worry about it." In the streetlight reflection I saw him: very small, with a goatee and a Chicago Bulls jacket. He ignored me and told his story. I had no idea if he knew the other man in the room or not.

"I was stayin’ at my wife’s sister’s apartment on 54th Street, and we were there with my kid, he’s three. We were gonna pay her SDG&E just to stay there for a couple o' weeks while she was in L.A., and we had this money order made out for the thing, the bill. I put it in a sock and tied it up behind the toilet tank, like in The Godfather, where Al Pacino gets the gun? Well, in the morning it was NOT THERE. I’d been drinking some King, and so I figured my wife — I’m not gonna call her ‘the bitch’ 'cause of where we are — but I figured she’d had her dealer, which is this friend of mine, over to the place. So in the morning I go find him. He’s at the liquor store at 25th, and I tell him I gotta talk to him right away. He come and I lock the door when he gets in. I hit him in the knee with this pipe, and I say, ‘Where is the fuckin’ money?’ or something. And he says, ‘What?’ and I say, 'Don’t do me like this,’ and I’m swinging the fuckin’ pipe. .."

The first guy who came in, quiet until now, said, "Shut up, Robbie. C’mon, man. Tryin’ to sleep."

“ 'Scuse me, 'scuse me." He lowered his voice and talked to me now. "I didn’t hit him again, but I asked him, The money order, man? I don’t’ have that money order, and I gotta go to the street.’ He say, ‘What?’ and I realize he don’t know what I’m talkin’ about. So the wife comes home and says to me, ‘What are you doin’, you fool? Lonnel’ — my son — ‘mighta got to that sock. You look in the toilet? It been backed up for two days.'"

"Well... ” and he stepped onto the lower bunk to speak into my face. He thought for a moment. "You want the pillow back?"

"No, that’s okay."

"Good, I need a pillow. Some people sleep, they don’t need 'em. I need a pillow. Anyway, she says my boy — he’s three — Lonnel, he found the sock and he put it in the toilet probably. The thing was disintegrated, useless when we pulled it out of the crapper. My wife’s sister come back and says to me, ‘Get out!’ "

He introduced himself as Robbie. He sat on the bottom bunk, carefully removed his clothes, folded them. He placed the clothes in one of the drawers I hadn’t noticed before at the bottom of the bunk bed.

The man named Robbie, after his unsolicited story, stretched out and began to snore in a few minutes. The first guy coughed and sniffled. I thought about diseases and a woman I love neither wisely nor well in La Jolla.

Over the next few hours, I drifted in and out of sleep, and the door opened and closed with an electronic nasal snick several times. Two more men came in; the first of them was also sick. He coughed, didn’t breathe easily. The lights went on and off a few times. Shadows and light: mumbles. Someone farted, followed by a throaty, "Heh, heh..."

A voice out of a shallow sleep said something about a bicycle. I dreamed about an industrial penal colony where I am a prisoner. Several times I was awakened by a pervasive, sharp smell that was nothing like anything I had smelled before. I convinced myself it was some chemical solvent used across the street for cleaning the engines of city buses. Some kind of acid.

Guy in the top bunk across the room from me thrashed in his sleep, hit his head on the wall, sat up, and punched the wall. "FUCK!"

Bunkmate under him punched the springs over his head, "Hey, be cool!”

"Yeah, yeah, yeah....”

The smell, I was sure, was some kind of insecticide or rat poison that was laid on too heavily. I brought my sheet up over my face and turned my head to the open window.

Sometime during the night, the door opened and the light went on yet again. A member of the staff, a thin black man wearing glasses and holding a clipboard, called out everyone’s name, including mine. We answered him, and one man asked back, "Well, what’s your name then, man?"

"Walter," the staffer replied and pulled the masking-taped newspaper down from the light fixture, bathing the room in harsh sick/yellow light. Walter left, closing the door behind him, the light still on. The man closest to the wall switch, the one who had asked the staffer’s name, got up and turned off the light. "Well, fuck you too, Walter,” he said.

It was near dawn and the rain had stopped. I’d been awake for several hours before I realized the astringent, evil odor, like toxic waste from Mars, was neither industrial acid nor roach poison but came from the shoes and feet of the man beneath me.

Breakfast in the basketball court/mess hall consisted of coffee, canned orange juice, muffins, cold cereal, and milk. A long-haired, blond man sitting across from me said that the food here is usually hot and much better. I was willing to believe him; the day before, I had seen roast chicken, string beans, wild rice, cake, and Jell-o being served to what must have been 1000 people.

After breakfast I went to the front desk, turned in my tag. and collected my buck knife from the uniformed men in the security booth. All three of them were seated before television monitors and barely looked up. I signed for the knife, and the security cop distractedly asked if I’d be coming back that night.

"No,” I told him, "I’ve got a job and an apartment."

He looked up at me "Well, good for you. then. Good for you. You stay outta here if you can."

"You can bet on it."

CHRIST MISSIONARIES

In the living room at Christ Missionaries on Auburn Street, most of the crews are back. Everyone is eating spaghetti and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. It seems to be a ritual; everyone knows the characters, and there are a few comments on what a badass someone named "Q” is in the show. Few of the men speak to each other, except obliquely, by way of what’s happening to the crew of the Enterprise. No one says grace or even "Thanks for the grub Yay, God!” It’s hard to see in what way this is a mission.

The sense of humiliation is implicit, inescapable, and puzzling. Economy of eye contact dictates the mood. A communion of regret, failure, cheap savvy, and silent protocol fill the room, along with body odor. We’re damned lucky to be here at all. We’re smarter than the guys who die on the street; OD’ed, frozen, given up. But there was a trade-off somewhere. Something to do with dignity, self-respect, and their opposites: shame and self-loathing. We are all guilty of some unspeakable failure.

Most of the clothing on these men is a notch or two more presentable than what I've seen on the men in the other shelters. It is much better than on those living in the street.

One man has brought in a flaking, worn pair of snakeskin cowboy boots he said he found and wants to give them to one of the guys still out on a crew, stuck in "a broke-down panel truck somewhere." Many are wearing baseball caps (Chicago White Sox caps seem to be popular, as well as Bulls jackets and sweatshirts). These men are less filthy than many I’ve seen, but few have washed before dinner in the cramped apartment bathroom.

SAN DIEGO RESCUE MISSION, LIFE MINISTRIES

Nearly a month earlier, I had gotten into the men’s work dorm at the Miseries, the oldest facility in the city. I qualified to stay there for 28 days because I could verify employment — another Catch-22 aspect of finding shelter, like the necessity for picture ID, social security card, wristwatch, and calendar. I was told to arrive no later than seven for the evening service. No one would be admitted after that time.

At seven sharp I was sitting in the huge church with a nearly full house. Again, mostly men, but I counted at least ten women. I faced a stage with an American flag, a white grand piano, a lectern with microphone, and a dais covered with a pink tablecloth that supported a floral arrangement. We listened to canned religious music: "I must have Jesus, I cannot bear this burden alone."

A man to my right was singing along loudly, out of key, but obviously enjoying the effects his voice could produce. He added rococo trills and fillips to the melody, creating the effect of a tone-deaf Vegas lounge singer covering gospel songs. Behind me were three men who knew each other and laughed easily among themselves as they waited for the service to begin. When I turned around to look at them, all three were wearing flak jackets with insignia patches. One of them was reading a large paperback, Lonesome Dove, and describing a scene to his companions.

"This guy’s got an arrow through his leg, and he gives this doc $20.00 to buy whiskey and have the whore downstairs play the piano while he gets the arrow pulled out. I’ve been reading this goddammed book for a year, and I’ve still got 65 pages to go."

A young black woman with a purple wig, green construction worker’s hard hat, aviator’s sunglasses, and a briefcase, marched up and down the center aisle of the chapel, swaying her hips in a hallucinogenic parody of sexuality, garnering looks of astonishment, laughter, and a few catcalls. At the closing bars of "Blessed Assurance," she seated herself in the rear of the room.

At that point, a clean-scrubbed family of overweight parents and children alike were led to the front of the room. They were guests from some neighboring church whose name I missed when the greyhaired man who took the podium introduced them (but not himself). He instructed a few staffers in the back to pass out the Living Praise Hymnal.

The veterans behind me started in on the guest family seated now behind the elderly preacher at the mike. "Look at those porkers. Nobody’s missed a meal in that family.” He must have seen me laugh; he poked me in the back and said, "I bet not one of them ever had less than four scoops on their Baskin-Robbins."

He pointed out one of the boys in the family, easily 50 pounds overweight, with a black T-shirt bearing the words COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE. His two friends were laughing with us; he went on. "They didn’t tell us there’d be whale watching tonight." Encouraged by our laughter, he added, "They’ll be needing a Jenny Craig Christmas, sure."

The preacher lead the congregation in "The Old Rugged Cross."

• So I'll cherish the old rugged cross
• Till my trophies at last I lay down
• I will cling to the old rugged cross
• and exchange it someday for a crown

The guy behind me was making up his own words. "So I’ll kiss and hump my ole hoss... and bang all the fillies m town... ” (something, something ...), ending perfectly in melody and phrasing with the last line: "And the skies are not cloudy all day."

We were led through "Amazing Grace," "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," "At the Cross Where I First Saw the Light" (which sounded a lot like an English pub song), and "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder," during which the girl in the purple wig and green hard hat took another strut up and down the runway with exaggerated hip movements.

Finally, the preacher invited the guest family with the dietary or glandular difficulties to rise and join him at the microphone for a rendition of "I Need Thee Every Hour.” They seemed to take an extra beat or two getting out of their chairs. The guy behind me: "C’mon, fat people, get up, you can do it!"

The song was met with applause, more for its simple, moving lyrics, I supposed, than the vocal skills of the guest singers.

A man came in late and seated himself next to me. He seemed to be in his early 20s, with short blond hair and a paleness that seemed to give off its own light in the bright room. He carried a stained green bedroll and a burlap sack tied with yellow nylon cord. His cowboy boots had been worn at the heels to perfect 45-degree angles; but his black leather jacket, covered with shiny studs, was brand new and worth, I figured, at least $200. He coughed, sniffled, grimaced. His nose ran profusely as he slept for the next hour and a half.

After the musical portion of the evening's program, another preacher was introduced, yet another guest from some neighboring franchise. His name sounded like the Reverend Jim Bob Luke but probably wasn’t. He bounded onto the stage with cheerful energy, in cowboy boots, muted plaid pants, a brown western sports jacket, and with a warm, humble smile. His hair was grey and thinning, combed over a bald spot, and he sported long mutton-chop sideburns. He paced the podium and rhythmically intoned the name of Jesus Christ in an improvised prayer. The thrust of the invocation was that Jesus was soon to enter the room and everyone's hearts.

"Sounds like he’s bringm' on Willie Nelson,” the guy behind me said.

Before long, the Reverend Jim Bob Luke was pleading with the crowd to answer one question honestly and in front of everyone in the room. "Wouldn't you like to meet Jesus Christ?"

The class clown in the flak jacket poked me in the back. "C’mon. Raise your hand. See what he's gonna do.”

"Why don't you?" I asked him "Lightning would strike this place, sure." I could see the name Bradley on his flak jacket.

"All right" I raised my hand, and the Reverend Jim Bob urged me and the others who had raised our hands to stand. I could see I was one of ten people who had responded. He had us walk to the front of the room, I turned back to look at Bradley (if that's who hewas) and rolled my eyes to say. Oh. man, what is this?' Bradley sat smiling with his arms folded and urged me to the front with a stubbled chin.

"C'mon, step forward. That's right. Now I want you to kneel here with me with your hand on your neighbor's shoulder. That's it.” I was now on one knee in front of several hundred people. My right hand was on the shoulder of a girl with tight, wiry hair and several layers of sweatshirts. Her face had been ravaged by acne once upon a time.

We were all to pray for the person on whom wed placed our right hands. Jim Bob helped us; "Oh. Lord, whatever this person's troubles might be. hear my prayer, lift their sorrows and burdens. ..”

After that we were supposed to join hands with the people on either side. The guy on my left was somebody I’d seen downtown for months, a young kid with raveled sneakers who talked to himself and seemed to have a terminal case of bronchitis and sinus maladies. He wiped his nose with the hand he extended to me. I took it and it was wet with snot. Jim Bob suggested we make up our own prayer in silence for the person we touched with our left hands.

My prayer was a fervent one that this kid had no life-threatening illness or permanently debilitating affliction that could in any way be... contagious. And I wish him all the best and good luck and I hope he finds a job or whatever he needs to. Amen.

"Now all of you have expressed an interest in meeting Jesus Christ.

I want to accommodate you. You all follow brother Childress there into that room to my right. I promise you solemnly, you will not miss your evening meal."

We filed into the indicated room, which was barely large enough to seat all of us. Obviously, they weren't expecting a big crowd to meet Jesus, and anyone who had stayed in the Miseries before probably knew exactly why.

For the next hour. Reverend Childress (not his real name), a thin, soft-spoken black man. described Jesus (someone just like every one of us in this very room) and told us all what we must do every day of our lives to reacquamt ourselves with him. Jesus, he meant. An elderly man in front of me began to weep, and Childress handed him a box of Kleenex. The old guy kept interrupting Childress with irrelevant comments about adultery and alcohol until finally the Rev took his Kleenex away and said. "If you're going to keep interrupting me. I'm going to have to ask you to leave.” “I’ll shut up. I'll shut up. I'm sorry.”

No sooner did Childress begin again about vigilance and strength and Satan throwing obstacles in our path every day. when I interrupted him. “Could I have that Kleenex?” He handed it to me with a look that would wither the Prince of Lies himself.

"Here you are. May I continue?” "Sure.” I took the Kleenex, wishing it were sandpaper as I ran it over the dried snot on my hand.

After a full 90 minutes of singing and preaching, we were allowed into the mostly empty cafeteria/mess hall. The food that was left included cold, dried pizza rolls of some kind and tea that was neither hot nor cold. We had ten minutes to eat and get to the showers.

You turn in your clothes to a man behind a counter who puts them in a mesh bag on a hanger. He then hands you a piece of paper with a claim number along with a small plastic cup full of shampoo. He indicates a canvas cart filled with rubber shower thongs and another next to it full of "blues." the flannel pajamas everyone sleeps in at the Miseries.

After the mandatory shower (the water was hot. the pressure strong), we had a few minutes before lights-out to smoke at the doorway or out in the yard. It was a little too cold out m the yard in our blues, so most of us hung in the doorway

A frail young man in a wheelchair propelled himself down the ramp to the shower area and positioned himself next to a garbage can, where he leaned his head over and proceeded to puke watery, grey vomit in what seemed to be practiced arcs. "Hey, is that guy okay?” someone asked, a rhetorical question if there ever was one. One of the staffers wheeled the sick man into a special room for handicapped homeless About ten beds.

A man next to me. in his late 40s maybe, was having trouble getting his pajama top over his left arm that was swollen to the size of a rolled San Diego phone book. The fingers on that hand looked like bursting black sausages. "You got a cigarette?” he asked me. I gave him mine. He thanked me and accepted it. His chest was a network of gouges and canyons, newly healed scars.

"What happened?" I couldn’t resist asking.

“Got stabbed. Eighteen fuckin’ times. Just six weeks ago or so."

"Lucky to be alive. Eighteen times?"

"Eighteen times, man. I am hard to kill. You stab me, you shoot me, you better do it overkill. I just don’t die easy. I learned that in the Marine Corps. I got shot and fragged and burned and fell out of a fuckin’ helicopter about 40 miles to the ground, and I just didn’t fucking die."

He drew on the cigarette and looked at me with genuine puzzlement, like he was asking me to explain this weird talent, curse, or miracle.

"Who stabbed you?"

"Nobody you know."

"Anybody you know?"

"Yeah. I know him. He lives on the street. He just went bugshit one night. I don't know what brought it on exactly. But yeah, I know him, and he made a mistake in not killin’ me. You know what I'm sayin’? You try to kill me, you gotta go that extra mile, make an extra effort "

The bell sounded for lights out, and the lights dimmed once, like intermission at a theater. He got up and walked slowly into the dorm area ahead of me. down the ramp and into the basement. Over his shoulder he said, "If I knew it was going to be this hard checkin’ out of this life, I don’t know that I would have checked in."

The men’s work dorm at the Miseries holds some 80 bunk beds. Each bed has a small, thin pillow in a clean, thin case; a flimsy, laundered sheet; and an almost equally useless Army blanket. Windows along the south wall look out on the downtown skyscrapers and hotels. Seaport Village, the Coronado Bridge. Christmas lights, traffic. America’s Finest City, host to nearly 10,000 homeless, to say nothing of more than twice as many illegal migrants.

The nightsounds started up. Coughing, mumbling, flatulence, creaking of bunks, rhythmic gasping, grunts, sighs, soft curses, "sheeeit... " ... weeping....

After an hour or so, the garbled dreamtalk of shadowmen.

Drifting off, in and out of sleep. I saw these bunks, this dorm, extending from the Del Mar Fairgrounds to the Wild Animal Park, to the roller coaster at Mission Beach, to the Coronado Yacht Club, back to Sea World, the zoo, and the Hotel Del. Shadowmen: a hundred spawned in the '80s for every junk bond S&L leveraged yuppie who made the big pop. All of our shadows come home to roost with nowhere to go.

As Ricky says, you can’t get no sleep at the Miseries. The place is a cacophony of nightmares — theirs, mine, yours.

CHRIST MISSIONARIES

The last night, the last place. The begging crews have all returned except for one, still broken down somewhere in a panel truck. Peter Lorre tells me I can go get a bunk. I won’t have to wash the dishes for 40 guys since the last crew still isn't in. It is nearly midnight.

Men are still drinking beer out on the patio, and a boom box stutters rap music into the night. No heat in the dorm/converted apartment bedroom. No pillow, but a pillowcase. I roll my jacket into a ball and stuff it into the pocket of white linen. The bed sheets have pictures of musical instruments like electric guitars and saxophones and keyboards. The bathroom has no sink, and there isn’t even sheet rock on the walls. Where does the bucket money go?

Nearly 2 a m. Men still on the patio, voices and music louder than before. The stranded work crew has finally made it back. I have decided that rap music is to blame for everything that is wrong with the 1990s. The logic is that of exhaustion but begins to take on real clarity as the door swings open and the last of the crews fall into bed noisily, beerily. The boom box is suddenly cut off.

One man. a silhouette in the stark lighting that reveals the beams in the walls and the shapes of the six bunk beds and sleeping men, throws his arms wide. “Good news." he says, "Bush just announced the recession is over and it's just a public relations problem!"

“Shut up!”

“Turn off the light!" Someone throws an item of clothing at the messenger.

“Well, I thought you'd wanna know."

While several of the late-comers undress and take turns peeing in the john. I take out a scrap of paper from my shirt pocket and read it in the harsh glare of the overhead light. It is the quote from Steinbeck I finally tracked down:

• There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success... in the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.