Currency Matrix -The Homeless Millionaire - A Help Guide to Relationships (eBook)

A Homeless Millionaire

In October 2004, I became homeless due to my pursuit to become a backup singer for Sade, and an actor for the big screen which landed me from a beach-house on Venice beach to homeless, and living on the streets in just after seven days. Los Angeles sold me the dream but it delivered a nightmare, it promises success but takes lives. During these treacherous moments, I was soon on the streets, and ended up on skid row. I didn’t even know I was on skid row; it was just hot as hell, and I passed out sleeping on my back with my head propped up on my jacket, and suitcase after a long wait for a hot meal which came in a rectangular box; it’s something like you would see on a field trip from school with cardboard boxed lunches. It had an apple, chips, celery, carrots, sandwich, two cookies and a bottle of water. The sun was beating down on my face. Around 5pm, I felt a shoe tapping my right hip “hey man, what side you from?” I slowly opened my slumbery eyes, and with a raspy voice “I’m from Tennessee.” “Oh man, you on the wrong side.” A question-mark hits my face “what side I need to be on?” “Man, you on skid-row, do you know what that is?” I didn’t have an answer. “What brought you to L.A.?” “I’m a singer and I came to do film.” “Man, you on the wrong side, you need to go to the Salvation army near the ocean in Santa Monica, that’s next to Venice.” “How do I get there?” The stranger begins to tell me how to take the bus. That day, I walked all the way from skid row down town, to the Salvation Army in Santa Monica.

This book provides guidance in dealing with becoming broken down and homeless. It will provide you with insight on how to deal with various relationships throughout your struggles in life. I will share with you one of my many adventures on how I met a homeless millionaire who shared with me how to become wealthy and prosperous, even when things don’t seem to look favorable. I will confess a great secret. In 2019, I lived homeless four days out of the week on the streets of Los Angeles, but you wouldn’t know that by simply looking at me. I consider myself clever and extremely successful. I mean, I have what every man would dream of, a beautiful home, a wonderful family, and I have the hottest acquaintance a man would ever dream of when it comes to girlfriends or anything on an intimate level. My current job outside of working with advanced artificial machines, and writing and producing books and literature, is that I spend a majority of my time assisting the homeless and disabled, yet I am homeless in Los Angeles two days out of the week since the COVID 19 pandemic. I want to share with you my story of how a person can overcome incredible odds and find and locate happiness and success. After arriving in Los Angeles for the first time in June of 2004, I became homeless that day, and remained like that for five months. After spending a few days on skid row, I ended up at the Salvation Army on 4th Street in Santa Monica California. The social worker for the homeless seen great potential in me, and had suggested that I be exposed to the Venice area, and advised me to go to a temporary shelter while he try and find me a better suited shelter which could assist me in my pursuit of happiness. For me, getting to know things and learning the streets wasn’t hard, and I have my mom to thank for that. Growing up in the projects also aided, but it was the survival skills I picked up from life during living in Hammond Indiana which landed me near Chicago and the Great Lakes, where I was influenced by the Naval forces, and the Department of Defense. I had already been used to living on my own from the past since graduating from high school, but I wasn’t truly homeless in any of those instances, until my event in Los Angeles.

I met a lot of very interesting people along the way, but one guy stands out from everyone, and his name is Juan, at least that’s the name I’ve given him for this book. The shelter was an open area with only a thin partition separating the men from the women, and it was over crowded. For the most part the place was clean, but many residences were complaining about bedbugs. I had never seen any, and had only heard the expression “don’t let the bedbugs bite when you sleep at night” so I had no true idea that they were real at all. In my case, I had not been bitten by any bugs at all, but many swore up and down that it was happening, and they generated groups to start a protest against the shelter for them to have the place cleaned with the beds sterilized. On my fourth day at the shelter, a slender dark Hispanic guy came in and sat at the table where I and several others were having lunch “you’re new.” He spoke, I nodded yes, and then he looked me up and down “my name is Juan” and he gave me this really fancy long last name. He didn’t shake my hand, but I could tell he was welcoming me to the shelter. Juan seemed like a guy who was respected by the others, they got quite when he spoke. Everyone but this one older blonde lady whom claimed to have been living there for two years had stated that Juan was there before she was. He told me later on that he had been there for three years, but had been living in shelters for seven and a half years. I figured he was gay, not by the way he dressed or walked, but by the way he looked at me, studying me like I was an Alien from another world; it was intense. After lunch, we had some free time, I don’t remember if I was watching tv, but this guy Juan found himself again sitting next to me, and began educating me on the Salvation Army. A lot of people had a lot to say, so I just kept silent and listened, absorbing anything I could learn and gather while I was ‘on the ground’ in recon mode, getting all the intel on the land, and the streets and anything for survival.

Juan had a lot to tell me, it was just random stuff, and at one point I told him I came to be an actor and pursued my career as a singer. Juan was about 5’9, slender build with the body of a cyclist with long wavy dark black hair, his eyes and face and wavy hair kind of reminded me of a very young version of an actor named Ricardo Montalban who played Mr. Roarke on a show called ‘Fantasy Island’. I was feeling a bit uncomfortable because of his dark brown darting eyes and thick eyebrows, and I just couldn’t get why this guy would be having such a big interest in me. There was a lot of us newcomers, and I didn’t think I stood out, but for him, I did, and he told me a lot of stuff he noticed about me. He said he could tell I was acting material, and that I wasn’t the homeless kind, that I would go places, and most likely move up in Los Angeles. He noticed my shoes and the way I tucked in my shirts, and how I wore my clothes. To him, I stood out and was not the typical type which would end up in the shelter. For me, Juan looked typical, he wore worn down dark blue Jeans that night with a white-collar shirt with brown palm trees printed on it, but he had on old penny loafers and no socks, he didn’t smell but he just looked like anyone else that would be at the shelter. That next morning at breakfast, Juan again sat next to me and so did the older blonde lady who clearly seemed to me to be a bit outspoken-dramatic-protagonist leader of some movement; I just wasn’t sure what. She was the loudest out of the veterans of that place. Juan sat next to me and he was eating an apple. Out of the blue while the other lady was ranting on to us all at the tables about how they need to get off their ass, and get rid of the bedbugs, and that she’s going to protest against the shelter. Juan darts at me. “What do you know about me?” I look at him, like what are you talking about? He begins again “look at me, my clothes, what can you tell?” I’m not sure what to say, and wasn’t going to say anything, but I start to speak and he interrupts me “yesterday I wore dark Jeans, and a Hawaiian shirt with a white tank top underneath. My shirt wasn’t tucked in, but my tank top was, and I had on penny loafers with no socks.” He names the brand of shirt, shoes, pants and went into detail of why he wasn’t wearing socks, and how on this night, that he’s wearing flip flops, a lighter pair of jeans and a brown collar shirt. He asks me to feel the material “silk, that’s silk.” And he names the product. “It’s old but not raggedy. I am no bum. My clothes are old but not bummy.” I’m thinking in my mind, that this guy’s surely gay for certain and I have caught his eye, but I play along because after all, he’s providing me a lot of knowledge of how to get around, how long the Shelter was there, and all kinds of history about Santa Monica and the surrounding areas that I had not learned about yet.

This night is movie night, and it’s a really special event for the people there. Juan asks me if I’m going to watch the movie “yes” and he says he has some running to do, that he needs to get some things, but will be back later to join me. Later on, that Saturday night, I don’t see Juan, but I still watch two movies while eating microwave popcorn with a bunch of people I don’t know. While I was there, I met a lot of people, and found a connection with a girl named April who had met me from that Monday, but I had to come back on Tuesday because they couldn’t accommodate for me. We talked all the way until Friday night. She’s very attractive, and is wearing a blue and white bandana. We spend all week talking. We both have something in common, she’s a singer who wants to be an actor and so do I.

April tells me how it’s extremely hard to make it in Los Angeles, and how she’s had auditions and gigs, but ended up returning back to the shelter....