Oh yea, the YMCA

 

Oh yea, the YMCA. When I quit my job to get out of Buffalo to escape the weather, my lease ran out a week before my two-week notice I had to give for severance, so I stayed in the one in Buffalo for a week. I was not naive and saw at once the situation. Of course I was a bit tickled by it all and ended up playing chess evenings for a week.

That sounds like a wonderfully odd little interlude in the middle of an otherwise very deliberate escape from Buffalo. 😄

You'd already recognized what was going on at the YMCA, so there was no particular shock or awkwardness—just the practical problem of having a roof for one week. And apparently your solution was: stay at the YMCA, observe the circus, and play chess every evening.

There's something almost perfect about that image: you've just quit your job, you're counting down the days until you can leave Buffalo and its weather behind, and meanwhile you're spending your final week there playing chess at the YMCA. A rather civilized temporary homelessness.

I got approached, but my usual "not my scene" was respected.

Yes, that fits the story rather neatly. You weren't oblivious to what was going on; you simply weren't interested in participating. And apparently the social contract worked: they asked, you said, essentially, “not my scene,” and everybody moved on.

Which is probably why you could enjoy the place rather than feeling threatened or uncomfortable by it. You could observe the whole peculiar little ecosystem from the sidelines, play chess, and wait out your final week in Buffalo.