Lizzie never tells anybody, but I am not ashamed to say
it. We were homeless for a while. We lived in our car, the car we no longer
have, in fact it was while we were homeless from 2003-2005 that we lost the
car. Because we got too many parking
tickets. When we were living in our car
on the streets of L.A. the only thing the county ever did for us was give us
parking tickets.
 |
| Homeless lady from CofA 11 |
Because I kept losing track of what day it was. So I’d park on a street-cleaning side of the
street thinking, boy all those other people are really stupid, why aren't they
just parking here, then come back and find a parking ticket. When you enter a
period of homelessness, it's amazing how quickly the brain stops functioning.
December 2003 our credit cards ran out, so we could no
longer stay in places like the Hollywood Star Motel on Sunset, and had to start
parking and living on the street in our car. Then I'd scrounge together some cash and we'd go back to a motel for a few weeks, then move back into the parked car. After several months of that kind of chaos, we finally ended up in a
shelter, but first thing they required was that I apply for Welfare. It was silly because as soon as I had a home where I could plug in my equipment somewhere, I would be back to work, as I had the same profession then as I do
now, transcribing for TV shows. I'd even lugged a desktop computer, portable TV, and DVD player into motel rooms a few times so I could keep doing freelance jobs.. Sometimes I'd sign over checks from Disney Studios to pay
for a week in a hotel. At one point while we were homeless I even parked outside Paramount Studios to work the overnight shift at the Dr. Phil Show while my daughter slept in the back seat of our locked car a few blocks off Melrose. Lizzie
was fifteen at this time and you’d have to get her point of view of this period
of our lives by asking her. Like I said she
doesn't tell her current friends about it.
While we were homeless, I was so proud of my daughter that she
did not take up the motel guys on their offer to trick her out, no matter how
badly we needed money. I did something right
raising Lizzie, we stayed together through this whole period. One reason there was no help for us
was that in the homeless population in L.A., almost all social services for teenagers are separate
from their parents. There are not many homeless
families with teenagers, usually by that age in that situation the kids have
hit the streets on their own.
We were part of a new wave of homelessness in 2003 to 2005, as always, I was just a little bit ahead of my time
We were middle class people who lost our home through a
fluke, really, a slip in the cracks as apartment buildings in the West Hollywood area were looking for ways to get tenants to move out so they could move in new
tenants who paid higher rents. I tried
to write a story about the whole experience in 2005 as “What happened to Lizzie and Kay when
Hollywood Highland Mall went up,” but that title is way too wordy. . .
Here is what happened with Charlie Sheen.
The Lighthouse Christian homeless mission on Sunset
Boulevard insisted that I go apply for welfare instead of putting an internet connection
in the room I rented from them for five hundred a month and getting back to my
job.
So I ended up in this county program where in order to get our $600 a month I had to apply for five jobs a week and document
that I’d gone there in person, no phone calls or applying online, You had
to write down the name of the person to whom you spoke in person about a job at
each company.
Problem is there were no jobs the summer of 2004 in L.A. The process was all a charade. Most the others in our Monday morning seminars
at the welfare office nodded, telling the instructor, of course I'll go apply
for five jobs in person. Then they filled
in fake names and addresses on the form and went back to the ghetto to smoke
crack.
Not me. I'm Kay
Ebeling, one time JO3 in the U.S. Naval Air Reserves, I'm Kay Ebeling former
public affairs officer at NASA. I'm the fifty-something homeless lady who wears a blazer
to the welfare job-hunt seminars, rumpled and ill fitting as it is.
The car died during that fake job search.
In that L.A. summer heat I drove from the Sixth Street
downtown welfare office all over the west side, to Beverly Hills and Culver
City.
I had no money for auto maintenance, and I wanted to just leave
the car parked, but the welfare worker said they would follow up to make sure I’d applied in person
for five jobs a week, and I believed them. I know now I should
have just used the train and buses, but back then I was like most working people in
L.A. and had never even tried to use Metro, had just heard from
everyone that it was impossible to get anywhere in L.A. on public transit (which it turns out is not true). The car died from being driven around in heat
and traffic with low levels of fluids and lubricants.
One incident from this time I will never forget is my encounter with Charlie Sheen.
Because I've worked in the industry most my
time in L.A., I went where I was familiar, to do my five applications in person,
at film studios and talent agencies and production companies. As if they hire people who walk in off the
street, right, but it was all a charade, and it filled my day.
The day I ran into Charlie Sheen I’d decided to take my
resume in person to blah-blah-blah production company. I was on Robertson Boulevard when I got
stuck in traffic outside a chi-chi restaurant where really nice cars were
stacked up as valets interacted with their drivers.
Just as I pulled slowly past a massive double parked SUV, I looked
over at the driver and he looked at me.
It was Charlie Sheen. He saw me, this bony bedraggled female steering a 1995 Ford Taurus covered with
dirt and dents, I think at that time I had the right rear fender attached with
duct tape so Charlie Sheen saw that too.
The dirt had been on that car for so long that the sun had beaten it in,
so the paint job had a granular look and feel. My
skin also had a granular look and feel.
Charlie Sheen’s expression was one I'll never
forget. He was smiling as he exited his
car and handed keys to the valet, then his eyes met mine as I inched by. Horror.
Repugnance shock. Ugh. UGH!!! That's what
his face said. I was probably the most
horrible looking thing Charlie Sheen had ever seen in his life.
Traffic finally moved forward and I got to the next corner
and drove a few blocks to a place where I knew there was free street parking. I arranged my graying wisps of
hair, covered the stain on my blouse with a scarf, and walked on Robertson to the production company
building. I went up the elevator to the corporate entrance and the receptionist refused
to take my resume saying, “You have to apply
online.” I said, “Can I get
your name?” and wrote it on my welfare form. Then went back to the shelter and parked the Taurus on the street. Next time I tried to drive that car, the
steering wheel would not turn and the wheels would not go forward. It was a ton of steel stuck in its place. So I left it where it was and got more parking
tickets. When it came time to renew the
car’s registration, the cost for parking tickets had increased with interest to several thousand
dollars that I’d have to pay to keep the car legal.
So I sold the 95 Taurus for three hundred dollars to the Mexican
guy who did maintenance at the homeless shelter.
Since that time, Charlie Sheen showed himself to be a crazed sex addict with a bottomless appetite for mind-altering substances and I've often wondered if he too is a pedophile priest victim. His dad is Very Catholic. Charlie does share character traits with many pedophile priest victims, sexual dysfunction and an alarming appetite for self-destructive substances. Someday I'd love to ask Charlie Sheen if a priest got to him when he was a kid, and also ask if he remembers the most horrible looking female he ever saw in his life, me, driving by him that day.
Life goes on
-Kay Ebeling
Around 5 PM today the call went out over social media. By 7 PM about a hundred people showed up in downtown Lancaster to demonstrate and march, calling for Justice for Trayvon Martin. I could tell something was developing from my apartment nearby and when I heard the name "Trayvon" being shouted, I grabbed my camera and ran out the door to get images. Here is video, and photos from the event.
