When someone homeless is sleeping in your house

He was soundly asleep on our couch. My husband, Mac, initially had all the lights possible off, but I eventually had to cook. We live in a loft. There isn't much segmenting. My cooking made noises and smells certainly. Mac and I ultimately had a rather intense, not argumentative, but important to us both, conversation while I finished cooking. Mac showered shortly after and went out to meet some friends. Mac closed the door slowly, creating noise still the same. Our one cat, Garnet, who has taken a liking to Tony since his arrival, jumped on and off him at least a half dozen times while he slept ever so desperately. He didn't awaken from the sofa for some 14 hours.

I only met Tony at a club a couple Saturdays ago because we honestly had chatted on an online site and both were in Hollywood at the same time so I told him to come by. It is one of these sites I seem to spend a deal of time on, accomplishing nothing, but do entertain myself perusing when I am sick of looking at Instagram feeds, Facebook posts and the news. I could tell it was challenging honesty that he told me he was currently homeless when I simply asked "what part of town are you in?"  We didn't chat all that long, but he seemed like a genuinely good guy. He explained he owned a franchise that went bad, something about losing $70,000 or more, and never saw his life ending up here. I did notice that he only had an all but destroyed passport as ID. He explained that he had a state ID and replacement social security card that he got recently but they were stolen with his possessions in another backpack. When I was leaving to go home in Downtown LA, he wanted to go back to Downtown, so I offered to have him come along in my Lyft. We parted and I gave him $5 to get something for breakfast and he was genuinely grateful, calling me "sweet", and I said I would text him later after I talked to my husband and perhaps he could come by and do things like shower and we could throw him a meal and he could charge his phone (a huge issue in LA that SHOULD NOT BE) and even do laundry or whatever. A few hours later I tried, no reply. I thought "his loss" and didn't think about it much again. It was next weekend that he texted me from a new phone number explaining he was "having problems" with the other number and that he got a replacement phone and then it broke. It is unrealistic to think he would have his "house in order" given his circumstances and no roof over his head or even a place to store what little he had left of his own. He was at the main library, which is blocks from our home, evidently using an other than Google number for communication with no phone at the moment. Unfortunately, the library isn't open 24/7.

I met him in the parking garage of our building. Normally I would have him just come to the front entrance and have security call me, but his stating that he had not showered in quite some time and having just encountered a rather memorable repugnant odor from a homeless man who was charging his phone at the elevator of our building just a couple days earlier (even though the garage is to be kept secured) made me to decide to sneak him in back rather than have him sign in through security with his ragged passport. As it turned out, he wasn't "so bad" but definitely in need of freshening up. No matter what, I didn't want security checking that all but destroyed passport, whether TSA accepted it for him to fly or not (he told me at some point he was able to use it for a flight). He took a shower as his first load of laundry was being cleaned. In the week or so since I met him he had been mostly sleeping at the library and on the steps of churches and he let me know that even at churches they kick you off the steps. I thought he had some friend he was staying with but I guess that wasn't the case, but he did say he got his things that were there back from him. Looking at his possessions laid out on my bathroom floor, he had virtually nothing. Almost all his clothing was already in one load in my apartment front-loading washer. What was to be part of a second load really was only the clothing he was wearing when he arrived. He didn't have a jacket. He was out of toothpaste and without a toothbrush. I immediately gave him a toothbrush and toothpaste, tossed him a bag we already had for charity and said take any and all and I said I'd review jackets when my husband returned home. Mac returned home, and Tony laid down on the couch and Mac turned on The Walking Dead which was my quick excuse to leave and go to the club we belong to nearby and chill in a jacuzzi and sauna for a while. By the time I returned only about 30 or 40 minutes later, Tony was already fast asleep.

Tony left the next afternoon having eaten some eggs I made, leftover pork roast from dinner the night before, a ton of Swedish fish, along with I lost count of how many pieces of his own bread (we offered ours) and peanut butter (also his) and jelly (ours until it ran out). He also made a can of ravioli or something similar he had with him and some chicken salad which he was not particularly happy with at the end. In short, he ate a lot, noting he takes advantage of the opportunity when it presents itself as he sometimes goes a couple days at a time without eating. He left with a new backpack from us that we had been given from the Las Vegas Convention Bureau as it was larger than his and his current one remains here for him to store things. We provided him with a jacket, some other clothes and a bunch of excess toiletries, albeit not all of them new but certainly reasonably usable. Shampoo, body spray and such of ours to him does not have to be in a sealed new bottle. He left things here. I am not sure what is here, what he took. We left open when he would next be by again. I had suggested sometime last weekend. It's Tuesday as I conclude this and while we have heard from him, he has not been here. So, it's up to him. Trying to help is one thing; inviting a problem is stupidity.