Aaron

When Aaron, 56, tells the story of his life, he identifies certain pivotal moments by describing the people in his life, and how they either created a dangerous environment, or how they allowed him to explore new and creative possibilities. He doesn’t linger on the negative; instead he talks about the nurturing people in his life. Those stories Aaron fills out with colorful details.

A second generation San Diegan, Aaron grew up in Pacific Beach. Both his parents were junkies, he said, but his father got sober before Aaron was born. He told Aaron he didn’t like seeing Aaron’s mother using drugs when she was pregnant. He got sober, hoping to persuade her to do the same. But it didn’t work. When Aaron was about a year old, his mother started taking him with her to drug deals. “Her rationale was, ‘Who’s going to shoot the lady with the baby?’ That was her mentality,” Aaron said.

According to Aaron, at that time his father had a criminal record and looked like Charles Manson minus the swastika tattoos. “He was a scary looking guy,” Aaron said. “But the judge awarded him custody back in 1981-82. So when I think about that — what must have really been going on for him to get full custody, you know? It was a big deal back then, because they usually only give custody to the mother.”

His father had a job doing building maintenance at a methadone clinic, “which is basically where I grew up,” Aaron said. “I mean I grew up sleeping on the director’s couch, and they all looked after me.” He remembers one woman, Lupe, who had been a nun and left the convent to become a nurse and drug counselor. Lupe would be his de facto baby sitter for years. It was thanks to Lupe, who let him play with her high heels, that Aaron discovered he was gay. His father eventually worked his way up to being a drug counselor after the director saw how effectively he communicated with clients at the clinic. That was how his father met Kathy, the director at another clinic, and who had three kids of her own. The two started dating. Aaron was excited to have step-siblings. “We became an incidental family,” he said. His father and stepmother had a mutual mission of getting people sober.

“So that’s how I grew up, in a methadone clinic around a bunch of junkies and drug addicts. Both of my parents had been users and then counselors.” Aaron started high school at La Jolla High. But once he realized he “wasn’t a jock, a surfer, a super nerd, or like, super cholo, I knew I was going to get beat up, which I did.” He is thankful his parents enrolled him at SDSCPA, a creative and performing arts school. The integration of kids from all ages into classes not age but by preferred creative outlet, was a game changer for Aaron. He felt his classmates emerged more socially capable than “regular” kids. It opened his mind to think outside the confines of social norms, and gave him permission to be a gay artist.

In fact, his goals after high school were to either be a drag Olympic swimmer, or to be an opera singing airline pilot. When he was 18 he started taking flying lessons. As in all pivotal moments of his life, the flight instructor became one of his best friends. The two ended up flying across country together in a Piper Warrior, making six or seven refueling stops along the way. But ultimately, when Aaron discovered he could make three times more money driving a commercial vehicle on the ground, he switched tracks. He drove tour buses all through his 20s and 30s, seeing the country, till he decided he had had enough of the road. He moved to Idaho and pursued his love of photography at a ski resort. The work was extremely fulfilling until the off-season. He eventually did what all young ski bums did - he moved on in order to survive. He moved back to San Diego and worked as a waiter at the Corvette Diner in Pt. Loma. It was then he got a sense that he might end up on the street. “So my dad was really sick, and he passed away from Hep C,” Aaron said. That was in March of 2011. “When he passed I just fell off the deep end and me and my roommate Joe lost our place.” Aaron said the final straw with their landlord was when Joe forgot to turn off the water as he refilled his 600 gallon aquarium. The water overflowed, seeping down into the two floors below their apartment.

Aaron couch surfed for a while. Depressed over losing his father, Aaron started dabbling in crystal meth. “I did everything I could to fend it off,” he said. “I mean I was very familiar with the folks at CMH (county mental health).” He said he would watch how the counselors there dealt with people having severe psychiatric stress. It was an education in how to deal with those folks himself, out on the street. He became the go to person for homeless junkies looking to just unload their emotions. He started studying, reading everything, watching body language, noticing subtle shifts in people’s voices. His awareness was the key to keeping him safe.

At first he stayed in Hillcrest, near the Center and the post office. he felt like he was falling through the cracks and reached out to shelters. “But if you didn’t fit a certain demographic, … you were pretty much denied,” he said. “Because I was too white, and I was too young. I wasn’t sick enough.” He didn’t want to go to a recovery program because he felt like there wasn’t possibly anything they could say that he hadn’t heard his whole life growing up. He was making decent money recycling cans and reselling things that people had thrown away. So remaining outdoors was easier than dealing with the politics of a recovery program at the time.

When the pandemic generated a whole new industry of delivery services, he started driving for Postmates and living out of his car. Until the car broke down. Even though he is mechanically-inclined, constantly repairing the car was a no-win situation. After six months of that, he was back on the street again. Hi arthritis flared up now that he was sleeping on concrete again. He couldn’t convince a nurse to refill his morphine prescription. Because he was living on the street she was afraid he was just going to sell the pills. His arthritis got worse.

A friend of his recommended he talk with the case manager who had helped him, which he did. In April of 2021 he got into a motel with a voucher. But there were no wrap-around services offered. They would renew his voucher, but he couldn’t get a bus pass, so he could visit a doctor. Aaron still can’t understand the disconnect in the system. “I spent months asking for services like a bus pass or job counseling, and all they ever said was ‘well at least you had shelter over your head. Aren’t you grateful for that?’ I was, but they could have really helped me back on my feet while I was there. It was radio silence.”

When his voucher ran out he was back on the street in October 2021. He could barely walk. He admitted himself to the emergency room and spent six days there. They planned to surgery, but wanted him stabilized in a living space, so they put him in an independent living facility that “had zero ADA compliance, it was horrible.” After dealing with a schizophrenic roommate who wanted to be his best friend, and having to climb up into the bathroom, he decided he was safer on the street. One of his first nights back out, he got moved four times in the pouring rain by police. He finally reached out to someone at the Housing Commission who connected him with an outreach worker at PATH. The outreach worker gave him a sleeping bag and said he didn’t have a bed that night, but he would the next day. Aaron was able to get a bed in a shared, open space, but at least he was off the street. In March he was able to move into a ground floor studio apartment of his own with a kitchen and a bathroom. He is waiting for an appointment to finally get that hip surgery. He has a wheelchair and a walker for getting around. He dreams of getting a new camera so he can start taking pictures again.

Aaron said the city needs to cut the red tape if they want to get people into housing. That’s what deters people like him. Being turned away from one place after another because he doesn’t fit a demographic, or having to spend weeks waiting for a response can’t work when all your belongings are on your back and you don’t have an address, he said, adding that people making decisions about homeless programs go home at night and go to bed. He suggests hiring the people living in the park to do clean up, and fill other city positions. He said policy makers suffer from a lack of urgency to fix the problem. “The money is there, and they use it to form more committees instead of putting people indoors and to work. We call ourselves America’s Finest City? Our skid row is worse than LA’s skid row right now.”