Well... that sucked

NSFW  Here's the nice, mellow, heartwarming song that popped into my head last night.

So... I'm currently Winston-Salem's Premiere Homeless Sharpie Artist.  That's the title I've claimed.  I really want to eliminate the "homeless" part as soon as possible.  I came to Winston nearly 2 months ago with $10 in my pocket and some art supplies, and not much more.  I've been homeless, and living in a tent while I work to promote and sell my artwork so I can make a decent living again.  All in all, things have been going well.  I have three drawings going up for sale on a wall of a local shop (details soon), and I've met many other people who like what I do.  Since my large drawings take about 25 hours to do, I need to charge quite a bit when I sell them.

Because of that, I spent yesterday doing a smaller drawing that I can make copies of and sell real cheap.  After that, I dodged the afternoon thunderstorms as best I could, and wound up heading into my campsite a little after dark, which I normally try to avoid.  Walking through the dark in an area known for copperheads isn't the smartest idea.  I stumbled up to my tent, drained the water that collected on the edges outside, fought with the zipper, and crawled inside.  I immediately noticed someone, or something, had gone through my stuff.  Not good.

As I moved around and checked things out, I noticed a 3 foot long gash in the side of the tent.  Obviously, that could let water, bugs, snakes, bears, aardvarks, and anything else in.  OK, we don't have aardvarks here, but you get the idea.  A little more looking around, and it was obvious that the damage was the work of a person or two. Adults, not kids like the last time.  My educated guess was that someone was trying to get me to move somewhere else.  Obviously, they don't know my history.  You can only terrorize someone who's afraid.  I've been attacked, harassed, and fucked with so many times, in so many ways, over so many years, that I'm just not intimidated anymore. 

So I pushed my garbage bag full of dirty clothes in front of the hole, blocking the bottom part of it, and went to sleep, hoping nothing bad crawled in.  This morning I patched up the hole with shipping tape.  Not pretty, but it'll do.  It was, quite obviously, a knife that cut the tent.  Lame.  Even crazier, on my walk out of the woods, there were three blue rubber gloves along the trail, all inside out.  Not sure why three.  There was probably another one somewhere.  OK, let's all think REALLY hard for a minute.  Who would mess with a homeless person's campsite and wear rubber gloves because they're worried about leaving finger prints?  Hmmmmmmm....  You probably had the same thought I had.

Just another day as a homeless guy working my butt off to make a living from my art and writing.  Today's another day, and I'm going off to keep working, doing the stuff I'm good at. 

6pm, same day- It later occurred to me that the gloves were probably used to go through my stuff, and had nothing to do with fingerprints.  I keep stuff in trash bags to keep everything from getting wet in the rain.  With the humidity here, things get pretty musty in the bags, and my dirty clothes are downright nasty.