Mykel Garner wears a monkey costume to sell Street Roots at his post at Case Study Coffee on Southwest 10th Avenue near the Central Library.
“The monkey is around my waist here, and my legs are his legs,” he said. “So I tell people, instead of the monkey on my back, I’m on his back.”
Mykel has come a long way. Now, he needs help with the next steps.
The story of his life is harrowing. When he was just 4, his mother was murdered in front of him. When he was 8, his grandmother dropped him off at Child Protective Services and never came back. He was in and out of several different group homes until he was 15, when he ran away for good.
Then, drag racing in Yosemite National Park, he crashed his Chevy truck. He was airlifted to San Francisco, where he was in the hospital for months.
“I broke my back in four places,” he said. “I have titanium all up and down my back.
“When I got out of the hospital, I tried to be a man, but I didn’t have any good influences. My life just started going in the wrong directions, and I guess the streets were the only thing that accepted me.”
Mykel worked a lot of jobs, in construction mostly, “building houses from the ground up.” But life on the streets took its toll.
“I have complications due to my back. There’s things sticking out and protruding out. I’ve been shot three different times, stabbed, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“My body can’t take it any more, physical work like that.”
Mykel has been in a shelter for a couple of years, and he’s clean and sober.
“I’m a really good person, from what I used to be and what I’ve turned into. I’m proud of myself. I’ve come a long way.”
But he’s frustrated with his health. In recent months, he’s been in and out of the hospital for cellulitis in his legs. He thinks he’s having a reaction to something in his room, and he’d like help with solving that. He’s worked “on the books” all his life, but he’s having trouble getting his disability checks now that he can no longer work.
“I don’t know the right parameters, the right things to go through,” he said. “I’ll do all the work. I’m just not getting pointed in the right direction to do what I need to do.”
Street Roots has helped him a lot. He joined other Street Roots vendors at a Portland City budget forum to advocate for Street Response. He also read a poem he wrote, about his mother, at a recent Street Roots poetry event at the Central Library.
He’s been a writer all his life.
“I’ve got maybe 30 notebooks I’ve written in my time on the streets, the trials and tribulations,” he said.
He’d also like to go to college.
“I want to be a homeless outreach worker. Something with helping people, maybe help them get the answers that I’m having so much trouble getting,” he said.
“When I was out there, if I could have had somebody visit my tent, somebody believe in me, that would have helped me out a lot.”
Mykel is working on these next steps. Meanwhile, he’s grateful for people who reach out, talk to him when he’s at his post at Case Study Coffee at Southwest Yamhill Street and 10th Avenue, stop and say hi and buy a paper.
“I can be such a kind, loving person,” he said. “Now I need some people to show me how to be a good human. I want to be able to fit in somewhere.”