“What the fuck . . . I need a place to stay. I need an awesome guy. I found him!!! Let me sublet and shit. I’m a good guy. Come hit up my tellie. You my man . . .”
— Nikes Left Behind Man, A Butterfly Story
1 I met the beautiful black boy on Venice Beach. He wanted me to meet his mother. It was 1973. I was 15 and a throwaway. He was maybe 15 or 16? We took the bus up Pico towards the city, me at the window seat, and he leaning in, smiling, joyful. I can’t wait for my Mom to see you. His voice lilting as if coaxing a wild kitten. She is going to love you. Just wait. Don’t worry. We’re almost there. He can hardly sit still. He is sparking with the vision of his mother laying eyes on me for the first time. The ride is taking longer than I expected. One bus stop after another then another. Downtown there and gone its tall buildings swapped out for corner liquor stores, thrift and bargain stores, beauty parlors. And along palm treed cross streets are neighborhoods with front porch bungalows, dandelion lawns, flower beds. You’ll like her. She’ll love you. Don’t worry. We’re almost there. And I settle into the daydream. I hoped for my own room though I could sleep anywhere. I’d go back to school. I’d pay rent, of course.
When one is hungry the sun and wind and sand sifts through the body. Pebbles and small shells, too, if they are thrown at just the right angle through the chest. So to create tensile strength I became a on’nazamurai, fasting. I’d sit on the beach in a painful lotus position beyond the tongue of the wet sand, listening to the surf, the seagulls and the bongo drums on the breakwater—I will never hear a mixed sound like this anywhere else. Or ever again. And, while the sun and wind and sand and sound was sifting through me, the beautiful black boy came along and sat and we conversed—this conversation remains uncharted. I can’t remember what he looks like so I try to bring him back with one detail—his eyes. I imagine brown dollops set on high cheekbones. I try on the brown irises several times then green then blue then go back to brown but he never fully materializes. He remains the smiling presence of a boy.
The eyes I can never unsee belong to Hazel—milky brown, piss-yellow, red-rimmed. She lived in the $25 room next to my $50 room in a flat of one room apartments above an antique store. I paid with my part-time job at Burger King. We talk in the hall. I made the mistake of letting her into my room only once. And her room is impossible to enter—her bed takes up the entire space. She is proud of her head scarves lined up along her bedstead—she bangs on my door to show me the new ones. She talks, talks, talks, words racing, stumbling, slurring, she is angry at her son—he never visits. Don’t care—he nothing anyway. He say all I want is his money. And I imagine a tall, put together man in a suit and tie having made it out alive, now safe. Why he say that? He know me. His Momma needs to see her baby. He thinks he’s something but he nothing. But listen—you a good girl. I know your need. You can have my housekeeping job. The old man across the hall’ll pay you 25 every time. And he’ll give me 25 every time you do. I set you up with an appointment. He’ll see you as soon as possible. I’m doing you right. Easy money for us. Nothing to his apartment. Two rooms. Kitchen. And dusting. See? Easy. And he nothing anyway.
The zen of not writing lives in their eyes—sometimes.
To be read in this order:
— (2) Every American City Ramada on Stark [[ X marks the spot! You are here. ]]
— (3) Every American City Ramada on Stark [[ upcoming ]]