LA was another terrible bump in my life that put to the test my greatest convictions.
I would get to know the marginalized and rejected, the addicts and the hustlers, the pimps and the prostitutes, the mentally ill and the most marginalized and forgotten people of all: The homeless of America.
Who are they really? What is their story? How did they end up the way they did? Like a journalist on a mission from Seymour Hersh, I sought to find answers to these unasked questions, to make the most of my deteriorating situation.
My story? A lawsuit I took my life away. A lawsuit I had no choice but to be involved in. The poor classes have no rudder in life and aren’t given any real tips when dealing with lawsuits and entertainment lawyers and crooked judges. Class warfare.
I made every mistake in the book that I was never given because when I looked outside my tenement growing up, I didn’t see a picket fence or afront yard with purposeful plants made from loving responsible hands.
I didn’t inherit the book of life and so I never stood a chance dealing with demons in Armani suits. I honestly thought I did. I thought I was smart enough. I was wrong.
Without the experience you are dead on arrival.
So the floor fell away beneath me and I ended up crushed and alone in sunny Southern California.
LA was another terrible bump in my life that put to the test my greatest convictions. I completely lost my mind. I can still hear the hammering of the pickaxe to wall, the pickaxe in my blistered hands, when I realize I am utterly and absolutely alone, hacking away in the distant mines of Mercury. You can’t hear a whisper of life anywhere around you and you keep tunneling because that’s what keeps you alive.
I also realize I’ve never truly been alone before. The fear of loneliness was something I always teased and scoffed at with disdain. Now it had me by the throat and I couldn’t fight it off. I always claimed to be stronger, but loneliness won that day. And it wouldn’t be the last win.
In high school I laughed at those whom rather be with someone bad than alone. Now I understood the fear, but it wasn’t emotional abandonment (that would come later), it was about being alive. I couldn’t look after myself. No Ichy Thump. I am listed as ‘dependent’ on the forms. No true identity of my own. An expired visa, an expired life. Who am I? Does Jackie Chan know? Who am I? Does anyone know?
I’m someone with nowhere to go. I’m someone who is headed nowhere. Where am I? In the Mines of Mercury, forgotten and alone, where the only sound is the pickaxe slamming against the wall. I don’t ever want to feel like I did that day, but I would again.
I didn’t know what was going on, but I suspected it was brutal bad. My girl Jessica wasn’t texting as much. Sometimes days would pass and I was crushed with panicked worry. Something had happened her. Something terrible.
I remember not sleeping for a week for the very first time. In Vegas I had only gone four days. I was raw and exposed. My mind begged me to shut down, but i couldn’t on the streets, nowhere safe to sleep. Cops and robbers on high alert. Not sure who to be afraid of more. In Hollywood you can only be a teenager to find a shelter to sleep. Everywhere else was too far to go, no money to get there, dire times. I walked so much. I walked til my right foot ripped open and bled without me knowing it.
In Vegas, I had my shoes on for a week without taking them off. New woes. I finally found out why my shoes suddenly smelled like the Red Death. I had been bleeding after continuously ripping away at my foot. I tried to take them off and air them out at a casino but the attendant gave me the eye and followed me in the bathroom. What is wrong with casino employees? They remind me of self important windbags from back in Florida. I tried to be fast but his wingtips were outside the stall.
“Excuse me, is everything alright? There are people waiting.”
“I’m fine thank you.” I cry out in the bathroom stall. “Just a minute.”
“You have two minutes. Then I’m going to have to call security.”
I was barely able to dry my feet. I frantically put the shoes on and exited the stall when I noticed he left to answer someone’s question. I sneaked by him and walked at a brisk pace. Mission Impossible theme was playing. Everyone seemed to eye me suspiciously.
By the front of the casino I broke into a run and saw that the enterprising casino employee had followed me with a couple of faceless security. I ran as fast as I could and changed my shirt as soon as I was out of sight. APB in progress. Looking for a Hispanic male, age 32, in dire need with no options left. But I dodged them, thank God.
That night I sat on a bench pelted mercilessly by freezing desert winds. Not the last time that would happen. I sang the songs I wrote one after another to keep my mind off of it, as cruisers passed by, feeling too sorry for me to haul me to jail. I shook with cold and my voice sounded like a speedfreak singing, but I got through that terrible night.
LA was definitely better than that, even though it had its own horror shows. Like this one:
What happens when you stop sleeping? A depression bigger than a hurricane slams your psyche, a desolation so intense that you break down in front of strangers. The bleeding foot needs tending, but I still don’t know what it is yet. A week in Los Angeles. I talk to Jessica but not much. I’m afraid all the time. I spend the night at bus stops until the coffee shops open early. I still hadn’t figured out my survival routine in LA yet.
A public library, the stench of feet and that sour smell of spoiled milk. It’s the homeless, the dejected, the transients, all trying to pass the time in relative comfort, with the cops staring them down. Don’t go to sleep! I’m in a Freddie Krueger waking nightmare. Why can’t they let me sleep?
Something special happens to your self-worth when you start to smell, and when the people avoid you because of it: what a terrific sorrow! When even the fucking bums are wondering… what’s that smell? Can you feel any lower? Only in your coffin, six feet deep…
So you start to cry when you find out you’re the worst smelling of the homeless Brady Bunch. Library employees are scoping out where it’s coming from. I see people in the periphery pointing at me holding their noses. The staff are spraying an air freshener and pump up the AC. It gets chilly. I cry harder. What did I do? What did I do? Monsters roam free every day, but here I am in the smell of my failure and spilled blood pooling in my socks. I tried to do the right thing my entire life when others laughed at the idea and never did. So, why am I here? Why is this happening? The sorrow perforated my heart and my mind was collapsing. I’m not sure what happened after that. I suddenly looked around and the whole library was there, many faces in concern and fear. I thought the cops were gonna take me away to a sanatorium, but they look… sad. LA is a miserably sad city and we’re all under the bridge in some way.
That LA public library felt my grief that day. I wept like they were laying my parents into the dirt. Some kind stranger told the cops to back off but I can’t remember the face. Was it a man? A woman? A kid? The mysterious stranger is trying to convince the cops to let me sleep or at least let me go. I look around. Pitying eyes. Even the bums are uncomfortable. So I stumble out, and the cops make no attempt to stop me. They felt too sorry for the poor kid in way over his head, abandoned in the mines of Mercury with a smoking ship that’s beyond fixing.
The brain plays tricks on you when you don’t sleep. Dreams and real life collide and confusion is the only currency. You fall asleep wide awake and the two realities turn you into a zombie that can’t quite wake up.
What just happened? Oh my God, I caused perhaps the biggest scene in my life but it’s so hard to recall. Flashes of memory is enough to know it happened. I walk blinded by the LA sun in Hollywood, still wondering.
Then, I sleep as I walk and in my dreams I follow a long procession of people, other zombies like me. Whether we’re headed to salvation or the slaughterhouse is a complete mystery but it’s the only way to go. The scene is reminiscent of totalitarianism: sharp edges, dark colors, dark neon, and we are all wearing the same thing, walking with the same stare devoid of emotions.
“Stop following us!”
“Huh?”
I suddenly come to and a teenage couple is looking at me. The girl is afraid and the boy is madder than hell. It took them quite some time to build the courage to tell the weird kid to stop following them.
“I didn’t, I wasn’t – I mean – I’m sorry…”
They storm off and I look around. How long have I been following them without realizing it? Poor kids. I felt terrible.
Santa Monica Boulevard. How did I get here? I was always fascinated by the splintered mind as a teenager. Now I had the inside scoop and it was more terrifying than I ever imagined.
So was LA really better? I like to think so. Still I was cursed at, spit on, tripped on one occasion (unsuccessfully), threatened and nearly killed. But I was never afraid of people’s violence. Is dying really so bad when your life is like mine? I was afraid of my own self, of my own broken mind and hemorrhaging heart. I was afraid of what had happened to Jessica. She deserved a better life but karma doesn’t work in this world the way it’s supposed to. Can anger explode a star? Mine could. Are natural disasters just cosmic beings invoking disaster because they’re so despondent at how the universe works? Then death is only right! Then the end of the Universe is only right! To hell with this dimension!
By the time Jessica finally came, I had hell down to a routine. I hung out at the library all day til close, then went to the soup kitchen in Hollywood to have my only meal, then walked for 2 miles to the Mall on Hollywood Boulevard to take my second daily dump.
Two years later, I’m back in LA and I notice how much more homeless there are, and the entry level employees have had enough. I’m including the supervisors too. The dead-end dive jive. It seemed like everybody was poor and getting poorer and more pissed off by the minute. I noticed familiar faces, ones that made a pain for me and Jessica years back. Still in the same job? No creativity, only in relationships. Gotta keep that fire burning, ya know? Oh well. If it gets you horny and it’s consensual then go with God, just let me be.
Anyway, this waitress made hell for me the second time. I developed the habit of going to Dennys to avoid the unusually cold weather that had me paralyzed in chill. There was this one nice security guard from Ghana, who spoke English with a very thick accent who let me hang out. Nice man, warm and compassionate. He took a shine to me and told me to try to stay awake so the Dennys managers leave me alone, no easy task.
I sat in the Dennys waiting area – perhaps in the same diner Quentin Tarantino pitched the script of True Romance – and pretended to wait for Jessica, who I knew after a few times that she wasn’t coming.
One time that damn waitress told me I had to leave or she’ll call the cops. It was 2 in the morning. No one was there. But she hated me the minute she laid eyes on me. Some lesbians hated the very sight. I think it was unwanted attraction. I am very androgynous and can easily pass for a provocative woman if I dressed the part.
After having a loud fight with her girlfriend in the back who also worked there, (I found this out later) she came out and said:
“I’m sorry you have to go.”
The weather outside was 39 degrees and I didn’t have a jacket, but off I went. Once again I focused on music so I wouldn’t freeze. Every muscle in my body was tense from the unrelenting cold. I just jammed on my ipod to whole albums, doing a shivering dance at the bus stop to kill away time and hopefully live to see the sunrise and warmth again.
In the terrible beginning, I walked all the way from the Greyhound station near downtown to Hollywood, getting lost many times. My feet were about to rot away. I’m not sure what I was thinking. Oh yeah, now I remember: I’m going to need that $2.50. So in a way, I knew it was going to be rough, but I just waltzed in there.
The bad things were awful, like worrying about what happened to Jessica. Car accident? Fire? With her I had hope for a future. Without… what would happen to me? I would be completely stranded in the mines of Mercury. And then… I would have to turn that pickaxe on myself.
But the good things… potential. This one distinct time – I’ll never forget – I walked with my tight jeans, and wallet chain proudly, even though I was homeless for days, backpack and all, and I saw the rich goons on the sidewalk with their arm candy, getting out of their Maseratis. I kept my stride, locking eyes with any girl I could, something I never did before. Two gorgeous bombshells in tight shimmery dresses stood near one of the clubs and one of them looked in my direction. I watched her nudge her friend to check out the emo rocker kid from another lifetime, now replaced by hipsters.
I walked by and smiled as they smiled back.
How is it that those women look at me that way, but I could never get a lay from a common hoodrat? I wondered that walking by. They were completely mesmerized and never stopped looking to the point others began to look. I was so proud and so annoyed. What can I do in that situation? Sure, I can rock the sheets but I’m Thomas O’Malley, the alley cat, no home in sight. It wasn’t something I could hide with no cash in my pocket. I couldn’t take another disappointed look of someone when they realized I had nowhere to go. So I just kept walking, back to the Starbucks that closes at midnight on Hollywood and Vine with my old cup I pretended to buy so the entry level staff wouldn’t give me dirty looks.
The everyday life of the homeless of America. I’m chronicling how it really is here, how many forgotten poor are roaming the streets. They are not all drug addicts. They are not all hustlers. Most are people screwed over by the maw of unregulated capitalism, by the movers of the world that care more for profit than keeping bees from going extinct. The EPA is O-U-T. And mother nature is fighting back with raging fires, more earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, you name it. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a stock market report.
I read somewhere that during the 1890’s, an enterprising journalist took pictures of people living in New York in absolute squalor; horrific images; people piled on top of each other on cardboard boxes, children eating trash, babies frozen blue with cold. He pulled together the biggest richest families of New York at the time, put them all in a room, and surprised them by showing them the world they had neglected for Operas and snuff boxes.
Some wept at the images. Others got angry. Some even – I suspect the Morgan family – sat in stony silence and sighed because they knew this was going to cost them.
That was when the super rich of New York took a giant bite of the shit sandwich; the sandwich the rest of us eat three times a day our entire lives.
And it made America better.
DanCarvalloSays 