I was walking down Santa Monica, just passed Virgil. I was sick, sweaty, and fed up. I had managed to circumnavigate the metro la area in about 2 hours, by achy foot and sneaking onto to the redline… looking for babies who had disappeared again. I walk past the Kawano’s building, home sweet home, no longer now.

I see the bus stop, tired and aggravated that the situation is seemingly futile I pause, guess ill take the #2 back to goddamn skid row for the umpteenth time today…and that’s when….her name was jenny, smeared mascara, not dark enough to be a chola, stained black sweatshirt pubescent chubby cheeks, not a day over 16, tells me she is 18, shifty eyes when she says it…she looks at me, sizing me up…”you look like you don’t give a Fuck”.

To which I promptly replied…”I don’t”

she smiled a goofy grin, the kind where you are estatic cuz you may have found someone who speaks your language or may be even crazier than u…

she says…”u do drugs huh?”

Me-”Yeah, why you got any?” my heart lifts for a second.

Jenny… “No, I mean not now, I do crystal..”

I mentally roll my eyes, what is it these days with the kids and their meth fixations….why can’t everyone do chiva? I ask her what makes her think I don’t give a fuck… tell me its the way I walk reminds her of her mom, she says I seem real tough, you know, like I been around and shit…i laugh so hard my spleen nearly bursts…this study in the romance of street life…uh I guess it starting to show or something….i take a liking to her for her brutal, ignorant honesty…we hang out for the rest of the day….

she taught me how to walk like a prostitute…its all in the hips ju know, she said I got to shake my ass if we are to get a ride from some asshole cumbucket(I look down at my pathetically weak body, I think dude…she’s not serious)… I told her how she should run her business, she was not charging her johns nearly enough, or so I thought, cuz I just know so much about the “life”(not)(from my economics 101 course, uh supply and demand, right?, useless, baseless info from my days as collegiate, but to her I sounded like some fucking know-it all entrepreneurial business impresario and shit). I was visiting her life for that day…just couldn’t stay… even though I promised her she could come to my building and shower and swim in my pool and that we could drive around in my car and listen to power 106….she made me walk to east la, sick, sicker, getting sicker, across that fucking bridge which connects downtown with east la…she leaves me on the stoop of a public school, where she sleeps she says, ill be safe here she says…tells me ill be right back, and we can get a motel room and all the drugs and baked apple pies from McDonald’s that you can eat girl…it’s going to be so much fun!!!! She says. I’m barely cognizant at this point, I say sure, sure, sure whatever… I’m thinking bitch go work and bring me back my goddamn drugs…I fall asleep…wake up 40 minutes later state of bodily emergency, no money, no drugs, unfamiliar surroundings….she never came back. Bitch got a better deal. Theatre of the absurd. Good thing I speak Spanish or I’d been really fucked eh…