"Respect and Courtesy Are Expected of Everyone"

May 17, 2014

A lot of people seem to think that they know THE TRUTH about me.

Total strangers seem to think that they know that one, more, or all of the following about me are TRUE:

--I am a slut.

--I am crazy.

--I am a gold digger.

--There are naked videos of me that I wanted to be filmed of me or that I deserved to have filmed of me even if I didn't want them to be filmed.

--I am a liar.

--I am a criminal who was never punished enough for my many crimes.


That is a partial list of the things that all sorts of people seem to think that they know are indisputably true of me.

With all of the people who seem to think that they know "THE TRUTH" about me, it is incredible how many of those people don't seem to know how to pronounce my name.

THE TRUTH is that my name is pronounced LEEna COKEman. 

--I am no relation to anyone who manufactures Lee clothing.

--I am no relation to anyone who manufactures Coca-Cola.

--I do not have a drug problem, nor have I ever had one.

--I am not a man, nor have I ever been one.

I have had decades of practice being patient with people getting my name wrong.  Either they write it right and say it wrong, or they say it right and write it wrong, or minutes pass on the phone while they ask me to spell it several times, after which they have to read it aloud a few times before they get it.

I don't tend to get upset about that process.  I have an unusual name, which I hated for a while when I was a child, before I realized it is unique and beautiful.  My name will be beautiful forever, even after the last vestiges of my youthful beauty have vanished, even when whatever is left of me is wheeled from wherever I happen to be when I die.

The lottery for beds is called at the Pine Street Inn every afternoon.  The names of the people who have gotten beds are announced over the loudspeaker. 

In addition to the Wet Floor signs that never seem to get put away, and other types of emotional abuse inflicted by several of the staff and guests on me and other guests, there seem to be some staff members who take pleasure in mispronouncing my name over the loudspeaker. 

I left the Vermont State Hospital, after being kept there for 4 months, and went to a Vermont homeless shelter at the end of March, 2011.  I stayed at that shelter until the middle of the summer of 2011, when I went to Boston.  I was homeless in Boston from then until March of 2013.  During that time, I frequently stayed at the Pine Street Inn.  I have also stayed at the Pine Street Inn almost every night that I have been homeless since February of 2014.

I wasn't angry, at first, when one of the staff at the Pine Street Inn incorrectly pronounced my name a few weeks ago.  Many staffpeople had continued to pronounce my name wrong every week.  I went to the front desk and said, jokingly, "That's not my name!"  I was then subjected to verbal abuse from the staffperson who had mispronounced my name, who berated me for caring about how my name is said.

On another afternoon soon after that, another staffperson pronounced my name "Ho-ho-ho-man," while laughing, over the loudspeaker.

I finally spoke to a supervisor about what seemed to be the ongoing and deliberate mispronunciations of my name.  The supervisor said that the problem would stop.

Today, my name was pronounced "COCKman" by the person calling the names for the lottery.  When I went to the front desk, the staffperson who had verbally abused me for caring about how my name is pronounced was sitting across from the front desk, conspicuously wiping her nose while she waited for me to get my ticket from the staffperson who pronounced my name wrong this afternoon.

Because the calling of the names for the bed lottery lets everyone who is there for an emergency bed know whether or not she has gotten a bed for the night, everyone in the lobby has to be quiet and listen carefully while the names are called.  There are staff at the Pine Street Inn who seem to be mispronouncing my name as a deliberate attempt to humiliate me in front of the rest of the staff and a hundred, homeless women.

There is a list of rules printed in large letters on a sign that is on the wall at the front desk.

The first and largest rule is:

"Respect and Courtesy Are Expected of Everyone"

It is no secret to homeless people that homeless people are expected to be respectful and courteous to the staff of homeless shelters, no matter how disrespectful and discourteous staff ever are to them.


Copyright L. Kochman, May 17, 2014 @ 5:16 p.m.