A Summer Living in a Van and Drawing '08

I lived in a van for a summer and took Drawing 1. This is a story of a privileged kid trying out being unhoused. I was working full-time as a sysadmin at an Ivy League school and taking classes full-time there as well. Yes, that meant I slept very little and had no "free time", whatever that is. One spring I was moving out of an apt I had rented with some friends for the school year and I had another apt set up for fall, but hadn't set up anything for the summer. I packed my bed into my parent’s unmarked white utility van and when it fit perfectly — I decided just not to move my bed out and live in the van for the summer. I had a place to shower at work, I decorated the inside of the van, and it became home. My parents lived 45 minutes away so I had a fallback if it didn't work out. I had a place to shower. I had a job. Herein lies the privileged part of the experiment — I was not doing this out of necessity.

In fact, because I had no home I spent every evening in the studio drawing — focusing completing on learning how to draw. I grew up in an artists family, both of my parents are artists, and as a teenager I did some woodcarving, but drawing was something I always envied and wanted to learn. Living in the van allowed me to devote myself to drawing, when I wasn’t at my job at least.

at this time I was deep into drawing boxes

I had found a great parking spot pretty near work, in a corner under some trees. However, I underestimated was how much people freak out if you are doing something even slightly outside of their concept of normal. Within a week a construction worker called Safety and Security and reported a suspicious van. He was driving a jacked-up muffler-less pickup truck with a rifle in the back. 6am one morning, I was jolted awake by the loudest banging noise I've ever heard. It felt like someone was punching me in the heart. A security guard was knocking on the sides of the van trying to see if someone was inside. I was too groggy/freaked just to stay put behind my curtains and tinted windows, I got out. He told me someone had called in a “terrorist living in a van”, that one can't just sleep on college property, recorded my license plate, and said they would be watching me.

the ephemeral charcoal style resonated with my life

I can't describe the lack of feeling of safety that not having a locked door and a wall (something thick that muffles knocking) gives. I tried parking on the streets discretely but couldn’t sleep because I kept waiting for the cops to come knocking. I started parking a few miles away at a Walmart — what a weird experience that was. RV's would come in and set up in a circle in the middle of the lot (I stayed on the outskirts). Every night around 2am some locals would come by and drive in circles around the RVers and throw bottles at them while yelling and squealing tires. No peace there. I started parking at the local truck stop, no locals there, but now I had to worry about a sleepy truck driver backing into me in the middle of the night. Breakfast at the 24hr diner there was delicious though.

I started reading some forums about van living and found an article about how people who are forced to live in a car or van temporarily often find themselves pushed further into the fringes. I was doing this by choice, but I could imagine someone who thought they could just live out of their car for a few weeks until their first paycheck from their new job could cover first/last/security deposit in a new city, only to be constantly hassled to move and then fired when someone at work found out. The numbers were troubling — 80% of people who temporarily attempt to live out of their cars end up actually unhoused, jobless, and carless.

Eventually, some people renting an apt nearby had a free parking spot and let me park there. I didn't necessarily feel lonely, I was busy and had stuff to do. But I felt something was off, people thought I was troubled, or in trouble, or that something was wrong. I found myself avoiding social contact. I would wake up early and sneak into work to take a shower before other people came in so they wouldn't notice, even though my boss knew I was living in a van and didn't care. I wasn't going to lose my job if anybody found out, but I felt shame.

When it came time to move out of the van, it was with mixed feelings. It was getting colder at night and I would sleep better in a building, but I had gotten used to it. Now whenever I borrow my parent’s van to move something I feel nostalgic for that time when it was my home.

What I learned was that society does not take kindly to seemingly slight deviations from normal. The movie Wendy and Lucy came out a bit later and reminded me of that outward push that society initiates on people who appear as outliers. It might make sense for the health of the system, but I was taken aback by how tight the tolerances are. The human species, just like the environment and non-human animals, needs diversity. We thrive best when folks are different, bringing a variety of experiences, approaches, and genetics to the group.

pastel cubofuturist interpretation of St. Joseph, the Carpenter, c.1640 Georges de la Tour

I was surprised by how strong the outward intolerant push was to what seemed a minor deviation. I was surprised at how narrow a band normalcy seems to be. Sure, I expected people to be weirded out, but what I didn't expect was for how alienating that felt. Actually, what I didn't expect was that something that was a harmless deviation would generate not a pulling in reaction but a pushing out force. It wasn't, "are you ok? can we help?", or, "what's your story?", it was "wtf, get out of here". It just made me think about all those times that we all/I avoid or get weirded out by people that are different. And how that very action of being weirded out can make them weirder.

Somehow I misplaced my entire portfolio of drawings. No idea where they went. The best part of the summer was that I learned that I could, in fact, draw. With the help of the one of the best profs at Dartmouth, Esme Thompson. She may have made students cry with her crits, but we all could draw by the end. There were many more adventures had with that van, but that is a story for another day.

* The above originally appeared in a thread on Hacker News discussing van living.