Jake’s Life

Last night I’m driving down the street and this song comes on. The person I’m on the phone with flips to the station and laughs at me, then says a few other things. I’m not sure what it is about it (most of the words do nothing for me) but the song is pretty great. ***enter urban translation matrix*** “Off da hizzie.”

Speaking of off da hizzie, this song has become pretty much my theme song for the hating I’ve recently experienced.Peace yo.

Lots of time being covered here. Bear with me.

After being released from the hospital the next morning was when I first began to feel truly homeless. I had nobody to turn to for a place to live, I had not been to school in a few days, and was overall flabbergasted at what I should be doing. I went from a super-secret youth housing facility to a downtown emergency youth shelter. If you don’t know how these work here’s the skinny: They are usually open at only certain times (for example, 7pm to 7am). You arrive during a certain time, your belongings are searched for weapons, drugs, and porn, and for the first few hours you are allowed to eat provided food, take a shower, watch TV, and then bedtime rolls around and you’re sentenced to sleep. Staff wakes you up at a certain time, and you leave by a certain time. You were not allowed to store anything at the shelter.

Since I was still enrolled in school I filled the huge gap of time during the day by trying to go back and get things back on track. I tried to keep what happened from people at school but they found out anyway, like they usually do somehow, and I got a combination of sympathy and ridicule from students. I hated both sentiments and usually everything in between too. The only four people I really confided in were my CDC (Chemical Dependency Counselor, from the outpatient treatment for being found drunk at school), her secretary, my school nurse, and a school security officer. Most of the time when I was supposed to be in class I was either ditching and at the CDC office, the school’s nurse’s office, or the security office. I hated being around other students, I couldn’t focus in class, and my teachers were wearing on my nerves with their chipper attitudes. The CDC and her secretary took it upon themselves to look at long-term residential centers for me, and while low-end, found the best nearby my high school. They went to see it, took photos, and showed me during my next session with them. (Just to give you a clue about these groups, it was held at a hospital but mandated by the school, and was in a group format with others from my school. The youth ranged in “addictions” from alcohol, marijuana, to heroin and meth.) I figured that anything was better than the shelter so I went for it.

This facility held about thirty youth, with a floor for boys and a floor for girls, with 24-hour staff and volunteer coverage. There were structured chore lists, house arrest, “rent” (one third of your monthly gross income from work, which was required), counselors, and other activities. I hated this place. At this time I was in high school, working part time for a well-known GLBTQ youth advocacy program, and part time at Taco Bell. My first job took me around the country one Summer, speaking at different functions (ACLU, Center for Disease Control, various high schools and colleges, etc.) and left my shared room and belongings unsupervised in the home. I usually came home to find condoms and lube all over my bed (not lube packets, just flat out lube), the clothing rifled through and destroyed, and one time while in an after school photography class I had my leased camera equipment stolen (which was supposed to be locked in a staff storage room but they never got around to doing this). I was usually on house arrest every time it was my turn to clean the bathrooms because when people saw I was cleaning it they would do some effed up stuff to them before I cleaned them, and sometimes after to make it look like I didn’t. I would usually flat out refuse to do it and stay on house arrest for the next week rather than clean someone’s shitty ass marks from the walls and piss out of the clogged up sink.

Taco Bell, now that brings up a lot of memories, mostly bad. After working at Taco Bell for a few months the manager and her partner invited me to dinner one Thanksgiving. The staff at the shelter said that I could go, but since I was on house arrest I had to be back by nine that night. I was back before then and went to sleep to wake up the next day to them telling me that I had to leave. They said that I never checked back in the night before when I arrived and must have snuck in sometime during the night. They were arranging me transportation to the emergency shelter I was in before here when I called my manager and told her what was going on. She said that after the night before at dinner that she and her partner had talked about adding a new person to their household and asked if I wanted to come live with them, helping to save until I was eighteen and giving me a much better living environment. I went for it, obviously.

I moved in with her, her partner, and their two kids (one was 8 years old, the other was 2 years old). Before I get into the rest of the story I have to explain that I was a much different person back then. Considering what I went through I was at a low, emotionally and socially. Anyone who knows me know knows that what I’m about to explain would never happen to me now. Over the next few months things were great: I had a new home with welcoming “parents,” two new “brothers,” and a job. This was the most stable position I had been in for a while. I was with them for well over a year, from when I was almost seventeen to after I was eighteen. The first six months saw me working more and more shifts at Taco Bell, mostly doubles each day so that she could “spend time with [her] family.” I didn’t have adequate ID to open a bank account according to her so my paychecks got signed over to her and were put in a separate account, saving until I was eighteen and taking out enough to support me.

My doubles turned into triples, and off the clock so as to not flag anything in payroll with minor labor laws. She was either always sick and needed me to stay, graveyard wouldn’t show up and she couldn’t come in because the kids were sick, or the fact that I “owed” her for “rescuing” me. One night while we both were working there was a gang-related shooting in the parking lot involving an employee. She made a big deal out of seeing who she thought was the shooter and was afraid to come in for a few days. From that shift until the time I actually left the store was almost four days. No kidding. I slept in the back while graveyard worked, and all off the clock.

The first time I got to look down the barrel of a gun was here too. The fourth night I was there it was just after bar rush, the night crew wouldn’t come in because they were scared, and I was working alone. I was still 17 at the time. A man came in (I remember him to this day…black male, 6’2’’, 180, black baseball cap, and this horrid gold Adidas running suit) and told me that it was a robbery and to give him the money. I had been at the store for four days, the last 16 hours alone, was tired, smelled, and didn’t care. I laughed, tapped in a new order and asked what he really wanted. He took a handgun out of his waist band (one that I now know to be a Glock…good gun), stepped back, put it a few inches away from my face and told me to give him the money. I put my hands up and told him that my keys were in my right pocket and I needed to get them. After I got them I put them in the till, hit the panic button next to it, and removed the drawer setting it on the counter. He took every last cent.

While the police were there and I was being interviewed she called…and called and called and called. I finally picked up the phone and got bitched out so I hung up on her. This was a considerable amount of balls I had grown as before I could never stand up to her. Whenever I said or did something that was “wrong” she paraded the kids in front of me and demanded I tell them my mistake and why I made it (usually something to the effect of “I don’t care about either of you or your mothers, and I am not grateful for the help they’ve given me”).

A few months after the robbery her boss kept coming down on her about labor laws, wanted to know why I was the only person on, being underage, in the middle of the night. Soon after all of this heat a few deposits ended up missing. She was in charge of dropping them off at the bank although sometimes I did on the way to the bus stop on the way home. This time it was all her, and she prepared a written statement to the company saying that she dropped them off. All of a sudden she said that she found the deposit slips in my bedroom and decided to come forward. The company saw through the lie and fired her, pressing criminal charges along with it. At this point I was already 18 and went to her for the money out of my account to move out, and was told that there was no separate account and there was no money. I found some friends to move in with and left without any of my stuff.

…is now a closed blog! Not only that, but there’s no way to contact him and ask for access. Well, one less blog on the blogroll!

There. Now you!

My only goal for this month’s visitor traffic was to beat last month’s. Even though I’m right down tot he wire here, and I know that I haven’t been browsing around and commenting much lately, I’m only 33 hits away from it. I hate to micro-manage, but shit people come on!

For those of you who use Wordpress I found a great plugin called FireStats that lets you view your visitor stats right from your Wordpress backend. It covers the total page views, views today, visits, visits today, top ten of referrers (thanks Troystopher for being my number one this month btw), recent visitors’ IPs, search terms (why does Google tell people about my blog when they’re looking for A Boy’s Life…in Utah?!), popular pages, countries, OS, and a detailed hits table. It won’t break down daily, weekly, or monthly detailed stats like virtually all web host backends do, but it’s nice to have nonetheless.

These few tricks don’t take much time off of your site’s total loading time, and they don’t take much time to start using either. Many people who surf the web with high-speed connections and fast computers won’t notice much of a difference, but if you’re anything like me and load ten pages at a time in different Firefox tabs or check your favorite blogs from your mobile device it can make a big difference.

Check your loading times

Go to Self SEO and check how fast your site loads. This should be both your first and your last steps in giving your blog a check up or after applying a new template or design.

Add a slash

When linking to other sites (or even putting your link somewhere like a comment field) add a slash to the end of it. For example, type http://www.jakeslife.net/ instead of just http://www.jakeslife.net. When you don’t add the slash the web server has to figure out which directory to dump you in, but when you do you get that extra second.

Optimize your images

I’m definitely bad about this. Often in Windows Live Writer I add the image and set the size, but do very little beyond that. Unless you’re showing off photography or some high-res imaging go into Photoshop (or your favorite image editor, I use Paint.net) and scale it down. Web Resizer is a free online service that allows you to optimize images for your blog to reduce size and increase loading times.

Check dead links

Dead-Links.com asks for your web site’s URL and shows you all of the links which are now dead, both on your own server space and external links. While it doesn’t do much for loading time it sure as hell helps with frustration in the long run.

Check other browsers

Using BrowserShots.org (site seems to be down right now, but there are similar services available) you can check to see how your site looks in other browsers. Sure it’s great if you use a tricked out Windows XP Pro box with Firefox after you’ve modified it for your needs, but what about the new users who just bought a notebook and are still stuck with IE? How about those who check your posts on vacation from their parents’ old first generation iMac? How will it look to them?

Make a mobile version

If not for me, then for everyone else out there who gets bored at work, the bus stop, Starbucks, stuck in traffic, or waiting at the doctor’s office for their appointment. Most blogging engines have a plugin (or their own extension naming) to help render your blog on mobile devices, whether it is a Java based browser on a standard cell phone or a Smartphone or Pocket PC running Pocket Internet Explorer or Opera Mobile. Go a step further and make sure that they can add comments from their device. Their hits and comments only help you in the long run. If you use Wordpress check out WP-PDA.

What other ways do you give your blog a check up?

Most of my readers have either commented on or e-mailed me about the disparaging comments being left on my blog lately. Like everyone else in the world I have people who don’t like me. It’s a fact that everyone has to deal with. A few of the people who don’t like me choose to use fifth grade school yard tactics against me, but generally those who I don’t get along with usually at least act like adults.

If you haven’t already noticed, the comments here and here were left by someone at work. I think it’s a bit funny that while he hates me so much, and doles out his threats and anger at me, that his most recent visit at 0129 this morning, according to my access logs on my server, show that he has read several of my posts tonight, not counting all of his other visits. Wow. That’s a lot of interest, and I’m flattered.

Moving right along, part four of the coming out posts is a day or so away…running behind because I’ve been working a lot lately.

Regarding the comment on my previous post, don’t worry. I have CTU’s finest, Jack Bauer, on the case. Chloe’s at CTU running a reverse IP lookup, checking the uplink, download stuff, and aligning the DOD satellites to see if they picked up anything on thermal imaging. Tac teams are also on the way, but something tells me Jack will have things cleared up before they get there.

Okay, not really though. When I get notification e-mails from my Wordpress installation it includes some nice information about the poster of the comments.

I did however run a simple IP lookup and found this:

I know of one person who works at Fred Hutch, who also happens to know someone I work with. It appears this is part of the issues that people are not able to let go of, and if I am right, this is the same person who has sent me threatening text messages, shown up at my job to “intimidate”me, and overall not been able to let last year be last year. I think it’s almost sad how people misunderstand the internet because his company’s client’s name is now all over that post. And I think it’s downright funny that he bashed me being gay because he’s gay himself.

And before anyone asks, no I won’t be taking the comment down. I believe this is the best post for that sort of comment. One major reason I am relaying my coming out story for readers to see is to help people understand me. Sure, people walk around and think that they already know me. They say I’m young, inexperienced, emotional, or not trusting enough but the truth is that they have no clue who I am. I think I can safely say that I have been through things that, compared to other my age (and even older) would have quit if they faced them. I made it though, and I will continue to do so.

I’m sitting here waiting for my grandmother to get done at the dentist’s office and figured I would take the opportunity to make a post. Here it is!

My trip to Seattle was great. Not only did it get me out of my element and help me focus on other things besides what had been happening over the past year it also really opened my eyes to the whole gay thing. I met a lot of people who were like me, in that respect, and it felt good. When I got back to California, I wasn’t doing so well. I was starting the Tenth Grade at a high school that I completely hated in the sticks of California. I wasn’t able to be myself and I wasn’t making friends at all. Besides my grandmother, I was all alone.

Nearer to the time that school was about to start my grandmother arranged with my uncle for me to move to Seattle and live with him. This really helped get me out of the funk of my placement, but I was still almost a year later broken up about my mother. If my own mother couldn’t love me, then who could?

The first few months of living with my uncle were great. He worked nights in the medical field, and many nights that he was off or called in sick he was out. It didn’t take me long to figure out where he was those nights (mostly hitting up bath houses and similar places), and he was an avid marijuana smoker. I mean avid. After twenty years of using it every day, he almost couldn’t function without it. The morning, all throughout the day, and falling asleep with it. It always gave me a huge headache, and it was a “get used to it” type situation.

By now I had already started at a high school in Seattle and made a few friends, probably not good ones given my recent history and the inherent attraction to other people with effed up lives. One morning when we all got to school it was closed due to a power outage and created two hours before it was expected to open. Of course what did we do? We went to someone’s house and drank, then being the fifteen year old we were thought we could pass at school and went back. This got me entered into a teenage treatment program and caused issues at home, namely with me confronting my uncle on his drug use.

Can anyone guess what comes next? Yeah, he packs my bags for me and gives me a deadline to get out of his home.

The night I was supposed to leave I still wasn’t able to find anywhere to live. I was a gay youth drop-in center (which is a whole different story…if you think the early twenties gay community is bad, the teenage one is worse in how it treats its own). Being the fat, ugly one I was even a source of humor for these people. It was almost closing time and a few of the youth here knew of my issue with finding a home. They also knew that I was on medication for ulcers. They went into my backpack, flushed all of my pills, then reported to staff that I told them I took them all and was trying to kill myself.

That night was spent in a hospital having my stomach pumped and being questioned by all sorts of people. My uncle was called, and being the nice guy he is, brought my belongings to the hospital and left them there. So here I was, back at square one. The next day once I showed that no, I wasn’t trying to kill myself (they found no pills in my stomach when they pumped it), and that with all that I’ve been through I’m confident that I could handle more, they released me to a homeless shelter for youth.

End part three.