Interlude...

Im older.. I'd been declared emancipated at 15 maybe 16....it was a while back...

I'd bounced from LA to Sacramento to Phoenix to LA... Memphis, New Orleans and I dunno where.. I wandered all through the south...  there were Riots in New Orleans and Baton Rouge half the world was burning... I saw swamps and boyous, it was some scary shit KKK ..... When I was in Mississippi I slept close to a country road and a car load of black folks stopped to look at me... they thought I was dead... seems bodies got dumped there a lot....

Random shit..spanish moss...  incomprehensible accents... segregation... and people ignoring it..

Funny.... I could buy beer at 16.... but I was white (still am mostly) so maybe the store keeper couldnt tell my age... I bought 2 cigatettes.. a Jax beer a slice of balogna and two pieces of bread... a black kid about 10 was staring at me all slack jawed.... hed been eyeing the cookies.. and I had 5c left so I asked him if hed like one..my treat... He got his cookie an bolted...

It prolly saved my life.... he went and got his daddy... who walked with me through town...

Baton Rouge was buning.... shooting and rioting every where ... except that little bubble...

I think I was the first white person that kid had ever seen.... I wonder how that worked for him?

The old South wasn't for me... I wasn't raised to hate for no reason....

Time passed..and I got back to LA..

Downtown LA... Skid Row hotels.. the Clark, the Barclay, Alexandria.... The Bradbury....door frames busted and repaired dozens of times from being kicked in... no baths in the rooms.... one toilet, one shower per floor.. The old Greydog terminal around the corner....on 6th street..and you could get killed just because...

I worked in the garment district as a warehouseman.... I was 16 and my girlfriend was in her mid 20's...  it was.. rough..screaming, stabbings, shootings, robberys... all you needed to get took off was to not pay attention... Back inna day..it was all about heroin.. junkies nodding off.. pee smellin winos.. and the saddest shit you can think of.. we lived on the stroll...prostitutes doing bidness in alleys...

My girlfriend was scared all the time... I was a baby but, not really.. even then there was that vibe... funny how that as a man of years, Im more approachable.... and a hundered times more dangerous...

That life wasnt for me..... Hotels and concrete, rough an tough 24/7, random...everything desperation, crime and junkies having to face down whatever whenever...and make it stay down... not being able to just walk down the street without getting jammed up by the police.... cause your young white and they don't know what you know....

I gots my papers.. yess suh Im sho nuff 16... but the great state of Arizona says I'm an adult... Yes suh it is binding in L.A..... arrest me or step off... I live here..I work there.. Yeah I know where I am..

Did I axe you for anything? Help? Protection? Have I done a crime? OOOOOhhhh I'll be on my way thank you ever so much.... My arms? Ohh, you think Im a junkie... Have a peep.. that it? We done?

Eventually the woman and I parted company... the pressures of living hard she could handle...  but once we started having it good..... she couldnt deal....

And off I went again.....looking.. trying to find where my life needed to be... I was 18..