The Homeless Orgy in My Car

In 2002 Christina and I lived in San Francisco. It was a decent neighborhood, but in San Francisco, even the decent neighborhoods are chock full with homeless people. So, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when some of them decided to have an orgy in my car. I mean, homeless people gotta have orgies too right?

It was just before dawn. I had a meeting to Petaluma that morning and I was trying to get an early start on the drive. The apartment we were renting didn't have a garage, but I was able to score an uncommonly sweet parking spot on the street directly across from our place.

Still blurry-eyed, and half asleep I walked toward my car. As I got closer, I could see that my bright orange sleeping bag, which had been in the trunk from a camping trip the previous week, was unfurled in the driver's seat. I was trying to figure out why it was in my front seat, and I was very focused on it as I approached the car. So focused on the bag, in fact, that until I was about a foot away from the car, I failed to see that a woman's face was pressed up against the passenger side window. Dead asleep.

She was a youngish black woman with unkept hair. Only her head was sticking out of my sleeping bag, so I couldn't really get a good look at her. But her mouth was hanging open and her teeth were all fangled and gross.

After the initial shock of seeing a strange face where I really hadn't expected to see a face at all, I knocked on the window right about where her cheek was pressing against the glass. She startled awake and shot me a look of half surprise, half embarassment. I'll admit that I was a little pissed until I saw that she was embarrassed. Then I felt kind of bad for her.

She slid into the passenger seat as I opened the driver's side door. She wiggled out of my sleeping bag and  was gathering up a surprising amount of her personal belongings into a bag — one of which was a pair of underwear, which totally ooged me out. I began to wonder how many days she had been sleeping in my car, since I really only used my car once a week or so when I lived there.

As she pulled herself out of the passenger side door, I stuck my head in the driver's side and was nearly overpowered by the smell of homelessness. I could see that the back seat had been pulled down to create an open area behind the front seats, which made me wonder why she was sleeping in the front seat instead of in the back. But I didn't ponder on that too long before I noticed that food had been smeared on my leather seats and a cigarette had been put out on the center console. Not cool. Whatever compassion I had for this girl evaporated at that point.

She was still gathering her things from the floor of the passenger seat, when I said to her, "You know, I understand that you have no home and that you need to sleep somewhere, and apparently I left my car unlocked, but vandalizing my car is just total bullshit. What's up with the cigarette burns and all this food smeared everywhere?" Now, if I could go back in time, I think I would have just kept my mouth shut because what she said to me next will haunt me for the rest of my life. She said "Hey man. That wasn't me. Those two dudes did that."

"Two dudes? What two dudes!?!?" I said. She then explained to me that she had been walking by late the  night before and saw two guys sitting in the driver and passenger seat, listening to music. She said that they were cute and she stopped to talk to them. One thing led to another and they invited her to get in the car with them. They put the back seat down and they all "did a bunch of stuff" in the back and then they all fell asleep. She was surprised that they weren't in the car with her when I woke her up. Apparently that look of embarassment that she had flashed me was actually a look of 'Oh my gosh, I can't believe I totally had sex with those two guys, and they left and didn't wake me up, and now I'm staring at the owner of this vehicle', which I totally should have recognized because... well... we'll just leave it at that.

Anyway, I suppressed my gag reflex, focused on happy thoughts and drove my car to the meeting. After which, I drove straight to the car wash and bought the most thorough cleaning package that they offered.

It would be awesome if the story ended here, but unfortunately, it does not. Weeks later, I was driving the car, and I noticed a bad smell. I didn't think much of it because there are all kinds of bad smells in the city, and many ways of tracking them into your car.

A week after that I drove the car again and noticed that the smell was getting worse. Kind of a rotten fruity smell. I must have been in a  hurry or something because I didn't investigate at that time either.

The next week, Christina was in my car and said it smelled like yeast. It did, and badly. And it occurred to  me that in my haste to put the whole homeless orgy in my car thing behind me, I had tossed the sleeping bag in my trunk and decided to deal with it at a later date, when I could maybe stomach it a little better.

I opened the trunk and it was clear that it was the source of the smell. I drug the sleeping bag out and opened it. Inside was a half-eated yogurt, a liquified cantaloupe, some catchup packets and bunch of other unrecognizable rotten stuff. I was disgusted, but not nearly as disgusted as the man behind the desk at he dry cleaners seemed when he asked me why I needed it cleaned. He tried telling me that they don't dry-clean sleeping bags because they use dangerous chemicals that can get trapped in the bag. But when I explained to him that some homeless people had sex in the bag and then left some food in it that rotted in my hot car for a month or so, we both decided that it would be best to either burn it or dry clean the shit out of that thing. And since it was a very expensive sleeping bag with a lot of life left in it, I decided on the later. Needless to say, at Christina's request, that's not a sleeping bag that we use for family camping trips.

But wait, there's more! About a month later we were driving the car and I was saying to Christina that I really liked the mix CD that she had put in the changer, but that it didn't seem like the kind of music that she usually listened to. She told me that she hadn't put any CDs in the car and she had never heard the music before. And after a couple minutes of silence, I think we both realized that it was music that the homeless people had left behind — the music that they lady had mentioned the "two dudes" were listening to when she walked by. Apparently we have similar taste in music. Huh. At least I got a free CD out of the deal.



Footnote: You may be asking yourself, "How did they play music without the key?" As it turns out, I had taken my car in for service a few weeks before the orgy and I had given the valet key to the shop. They had put the valet key in the glove box and not told me. When I picked the car up, I used the key on my keychain and forgot all about the valet key. I guess I should be happy that they only used it to listen to music.