Since first coming into town, the 7-11 by the corner of our apartment building is the farthest I’ve dared to venture in this city. Yet being alone in that stuffy apartment, with Andrew out doing God-knows-what to God-knows-who, I felt an uncharacteristic urge to explore the very city in which Andrew finds to be such a paradise. And honestly, while making my way down Hollywood Blvd, I just can’t understand what he and so many others see in this dump.
Hollywood Blvd, a place that should be built from dreams is nothing short of a nightmare. Outside the countless stars on the concrete representing those long forgotten all I see around me is endless hordes of dirtied young homeless kids, leather-skinned veterans stained by a tortured and failed life, and a wide assortment of various of other types that belong (to me) in a county jail holding cell rather than out on the streets. This entire city is surrounded by ghosts.
This place is a jungle. A shithole. And yet these very streets in which I’m walking manage to lure thousands of young-people just like Andrew only to eat them up and spit them out. This isn’t the light at the end of the tunnel like so many see it as. But rather quite the contrary – this city, so clear to me now, is nothing more than a representation of how every single life can manage to go wrong.
At the end of every few blocks I can see swarms of girls all dressed the same desperately waiting to get into a nightclub that from the outside looks no different than the one on the other block. I can’t help but to wonder, seeing these seemingly soulless girls dressed in miserable excuses for proper clothing and wonder: is this the type of girl Andrew wishes me to be?
Is that what he wants? A body rather than a soul?
A silicone implant rather than a heart?
A shot of botox rather than a genuine smile?
A ninety-minute pre-packaged Hollywood Romantic-comedy rather than good old fashioned heart-pumping and stomach-twisting love?
For someone I once believed to be so genuine, pure, and real… it seems with each clicking minute off the clock I’m losing him to the synthetic – a popcorn and celluloid world where nothing is three dimensional or tangible – but rather a series of illusions destined to fade away into the darkness once the projector runs out of the allotted time.
I pass a major street called Highland and see a circus of various street performers dressed as their favorite icons of old, seducing unsuspecting tourists into a five dollar a pop photo op. More ghosts. More illusions. One deviation from the truth after another. At least the tourists go home after their brief tryst into darkness in this city of lost angels. I on the other hand am stuck here.
Stuck until I’m able to let go.
Stuck until I finally give up.
Shaking, lost, and frightened I turn around and make way back to our apartment. Picking up my pace, I want out of this circus as soon as humanly possible.
I pass a old homeless man whose legs cut off at the knees. At this late hour, for no reason in particular (surely not to panhandle) he laboriously slaves away at the stars on Hollywood Blvd – carefully wiping away the dirt and grime that have been tracked over his beloved walk of fame. And although I’d like to say I couldn’t understand this man and his strange habit for the life of me, the sad fact is I feel his plight maybe more than I’d like to admit.
Here’s this man – down on one of the dirtiest concretes in any American city – cut off at the knees from some tragedy of the past – and homeless with all the time in the world, he spends every waking hour cleaning up and polishing the one thing that gives his life purpose… the one thing that gives it meaning… the one thing (although it may only be something real and true in the privacy of his dreams) that completes him – no matter how many people coldly walk past him. No matter how many deviates spit on the stars as they march forth – or flick cigarette butts or throw up or deface his stars in any other way – he keeps on cleaning on hands and knees asking nothing from no one.
Fighting the urge to cry for this man I accelerate my pace even more – wanting nothing more than to rid myself of these images and to flee off these god awful streets and find refuge in the one corner of this city of madness I can consider home.
I pass another night club called Geisha House (I think) and again can’t help but to remark on the seemingly endless swarm of generic fake bodied women freezing while waiting impatiently to be admitted pass a small vinyl rope that for some reason holds so much power. Each girl I pass has a look about them that suggests (as hard it is for me to make this judgment) they’ve no soul. Hard as it may be to put into words, in each of these girls I find something intangible lacking… it’s a sparkle that should be around the pupils that I just can’t find in any of them. It’s that little twinkle that shines whenever one is having fun, whenever one is enjoying themselves. With each of these girls – these perfectly tanned and shaped zombies – I see no joy, no love, no life. I wonder at first what the point is for these girls? Could their misery be remedied through admittance into the club? Or will admittance serve as a drug to the girls – a quick fix to provide a few seconds of joy only to be replaced by another want, need, and desire?
For girls like this, does happiness lay behind those ropes? Or once behind those ropes and inside yet another (in I’m sure a line of many) nightclub does another desire come before them? Another drink? Another man? Another way to the top?
Funny but sad at the same time, something as simple as a girl waiting to enter a night club is a complete fucking enigma to me, a thought process and moral set I could never assimilate to or understand – yet a man cut off at the knees, slaving away at unforgiving city streets because of his love I understand completely.
My empathy for this legless hobo rather than the girls is quite simple – although he may not be as pretty as the girls or attractive to the eyes for any manner – at least he has a pulse. At least I can say with confidence that he’s human. That he lives.
Unable to understand the girls I see swarming every corner of the street I wonder if they’re just a certain breed of girl – of human – that is bred all over the world, and they come here to Los Angeles when good and ready to the only place they can call home…
Or like me, were they once just regular girls. Girls with dreams. Girls with passion. Girls with loves…
… and it wasn’t until this damned city injected its fangs into them that their hearts stopped beating?
