Lacking Forgiveness

I walk onto campus against the flow of students and cars exiting the parking lot. I’m teaching tonight and Gayle, the woman I teach with is sick. So, it’s only me and I don’t want to be late. A cold wind is blowing. Shaking the palm trees and bushes, as the streetlights cast elongated shadows across the sidewalk. I walk quickly with my head down, leather jacket zipped, and a scarf around my neck. It’s sort of eerie. Reminding me of late fall or Halloween, but it’s only a full moon night in March.

There’s a young woman in a wheelchair stopped on a pathway by the arts building. When she checks her phone it illuminates her face and I notice she’s pretty. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen her. But it is the first time I’ve looked at her this close. She’s almost always here when I’m on my way to class, usually running past her because I’m late. No matter the weather she patiently waits, obviously for someone to come and get her. Seeing her pulls at my heart, because my sister uses a wheelchair, she has cerebral palsy, and when we were young I was the one that picked her up after school or other places she needed rides from. And having been an irresponsible drug addict and a total mess, I imagine the times my sister waited for me. Waiting on a cold night alone somewhere in the dark. And then the image goes haywire, into a horror film of what possibly happens to women in our society alone in dark places and a wave of shame and guilt washes over me. I can no longer look at the woman in the wheelchair. I turn my head and walk faster, my insides twisting.

It’s two in the morning and I’m lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, a low level of depression is coming on and I’m trying not to go with it. As I close my eyes wishing sleep would overtake me, I drop into an ancient memory – I’m standing in a bank, my gun pointed at the teller as she fills a bag with money. She’s terrified and almost crying. I tell her to hurry up, and nervously glance over my shoulder. I’m so loaded on heroin I feel nothing for this woman. But as an observer, now, many years later, I’m detached from my then self and I see the fear I’m instilling. In a rush of emotions my eyes jolt back open, I sit up gasping for air, my heart pounding.

It was something that was said. A slight, a put down, nasty words, in reality I can’t even remember what it was. But either I said it or it was said to me, and I remember. I remember how it cut to the bone, and there was no way to take it back.

Such celebrations of guilt and shame are a mainstay of my psyche. I remember and relive horrific past events and basically torture myself with regret. I’m suddenly aware of how others felt, when before I was numb to their feelings.

I was telling my girlfriend Jennifer about the woman in the wheelchair and she asked, “Have you ever forgiven yourself?” And she might as well have inquired if I’d won the lottery for just how far removed that is from my reality. I’ve forgiven everyone in my life for all the bad shit ever done on to me. But, to forgive myself, seems impossible.

Although I work hard to try and not do more damage. I still hurt people. I still say stupid shit. I’m still me.

I’m not referring to the really lame stuff like the other day when sending Jennifer a explicit text regarding black panties and the curve of her hip reflecting in the mirror and I inadvertently, due to not wearing my reading glasses, sent it to the last person who’d texted me instead – a good friend that didn’t need to read my heartfelt yearnings of amour. That kind of shit is awkward, but funny and really, who cares? But, what I do mean is more like when I hurt people’s feelings even though I’ve told them the truth and they chose not to believe it, and then yeah, shit happens and I’m the bad guy, stuck with feeling blame. Or worse, I have a conscience, and I care about other people. I care to the point where it’s way past sympathy and empathy. I care to where it’s close to killing me.

I come out of a coffee shop and there’s a bag lady passed out in a pool of piss and vomit and it fucking hurts to see this. I read the newspaper and some yahoo has gunned down a bunch of folks because he lost his job. A psycho’s torching cars and homes in Hollywood, a crazed veteran stabbing homeless men in San Diego, a deranged mentally ill mom drowns her baby, a cop brutally kills her ex-lover’s wife, and a GI in Afghanistan assassinates over a dozen civilians, many of them woman and children. It wears me down. I might not understand them. I might not like them, care for them, or want the best for them. But I know what it’s like to be trapped in a situation. I know what it’s like to be insane.

Class is over. The campus is deserted. I walk back out retracing the way I came in. The woman in the wheelchair is long gone. And I stare at the spot where she was. I wonder if she waited long. And then it hits me, how the hell do I know anyone was late picking her up? Why do I make up these scenarios? Why do I try to find a common thread of pain that just might not be true?

My car is off campus, parked under a streetlight. As I near I notice the shadow from a huge dent in the fender someone left after they pulled a hit and run and bashed my car. This happened last Sunday when it was parked in the parking lot of my building. Hitting my car couldn’t have been easy. It would’ve taken a lot of effort to drive into it. The driver had to cross the entire parking lot just to hit my car. And so now I’m thinking someone hates me. Someone did this on purpose and wants to hurt me. Fuck with me. Fuck with my car.

Yet, how do I know this? And why do I assume this instead of accepting it as a random accident that no one meant to do?

Traffic is light. I cross the street. The full moon is bright in the night sky. I think, “I forgive them, I forgive them, I forgive them…”

But who the fuck is ever going to forgive me.
 
 
 

Nighttime Observations on Hollywood Boulevard

He takes the coins and runs them through his fingers into the cup between his legs. Each one thuds when it hits the bottom. As the cup fills there’s a metallic splash every time another coin drops. “Dollar please, just one dollar. Come on people. I have needs too.” He’s sprawled on the sidewalk, his backpack and plastic bags stuffed behind him. He’s been panhandling for hours. Got enough for what he needs. But he wants more.

A woman stands waiting for the light. Dressed for the clubs, she has close to nothing on. She holds her small purse against her chest and eyes him with suspicion.

“Spare dollar?” he asks.

“Don’t you receive government benefits?” says the woman, edging as far away from his out-stretched legs as she can without being in the street.

“Lady, I get nothing.”

“You’re in the wrong line of work.”

“This is just seasonal.”

The light changes, traffic stops.

She’s strutting her Jimmy Choo Eros pumps. Her long legs toned and tanned. Her black Manoush mini barely covering her coochie, but that’s how she wants it. That way all the guys be eyeing her. Because, you know, like her shoes Eros means love. And she’s all about that shit. As long as the guy has money and isn’t too big a douche. Because, you know, she’s not cheap. She’s not easy. She hits the gym everyday. Tanning booth twice a week. Shopping is her passion. Sure, she’s a Hollywood cliché. Could give a fuck. Bitch, my Kay Unger tank top cost more than your entire Forever 21 wardrobe.

Line at the Supper Club is long and around the block. Skeezers, skanks, and wannabes. But that don’t faze her. She walks with purpose, toe to heel, a runway pose, lean down, show cleavage.

Security pulls back the velvet rope.

A dork thinks he sees his chance, tries to walk in with her.

“Excuse me,” She says.

“Damn, them is some long ass legs.”

He’s got his “One Love” Bob Marley t-shirt on under his sharkskin sport coat. Electric blue hipster peg leg jeans, slightly sagging, held up by the regulation studded belt. Red Converse slipped on his feet. The finishing touch, a porkpie hat. He couldn’t decide retro, or urban, or wanting to look like he be jerkin, only that’d make him more a wigger than he actually is. But hell, he didn’t know which club he be hitting. Had to dress down somewhere middle of the road, and shit.

Now security was looking him over. Def not gonna let him in.

If only that long legged bitch had been cool.

Last week he taken out his cornrows, and cut his hair. Motherfuckers been giving him a hard time, like forever, and besides, he saw a photo of that fat old rock star Axel Rose from Guns N’ Roses. Bastard had blonde ass cornrows – what the fuck happened there? Since when did rockers do that shit?

Man, fuck this. Take it down to Boardner’s, get my dirty martini on.

He does what he thinks to be a cool stroll crossing the street. Pictures a crew of bad-ass gangsters on the prison yard, checking his gait, giving him the thumbs up. Más respect, baby, más respect.

Up the block under the marquee of an old theater, now some kind of strange Latino Christian ministry, right there next to Skooby’s hotdogs, he sees a small crowd gather around an old man. A hot chick, she’s maybe eighteen, is making a fuss over the old coot. When dude hits the cement with his knees, she leans toward him. Her round ass pushing out her tight dress, as she bends down.

Like to hit that. But hell, there’s plenty bitches tonight. And he keeps walking.

She reaches out to her Popi. He’s trying to stand back up. A soft moan, crying. The siren is getting closer. Her heartbeat skips as he collapses. The women around them wail. “¡Mi Dios, it is not his time!” She kneels, holding his hand in hers. Feeling claustrophobic as more people come out of the building, a large crowd now by the entrance, Popi in the middle. “¡Él necesita a un doctor!” Half an hour ago he’d said he wasn’t feeling well. She’d asked if he wanted to go home. He loosened his tie and said no. She called the ambulance after he passed out the first time. Two men had brought him outside to get air. “Te amo, te amo.” Popi opens his eyes. Her profile against the full moon is the last thing he sees.

The ambulance skids to a stop at the curb. The woman, pushing a shopping cart dressed in torn filthy clothes, watches the paramedics run to the man laid flat out on his back. A beautiful young girl clutching his hand cries and the woman pushes her cart through the crowd, coming out the other side. She’s seen people die. She sees dead people almost every day. And that man, bless his soul, is dead. Poor girl should just get up and walk back in that church and pray for his eternal salvation. But really that’s not going to do anything. Shit. She’d been praying all her life, and look at her now. When a world lets this happen to a woman, a woman like me, there is no hope, there is no god. You grow old, society forgets you, and one day everything is gone.

At her feet, the Walk of Fame stars. She steps on Guy Lombardo, then around Gene Autry and over Al Jolson. But she doesn’t care. She’s too preoccupied. She has to find a place for the night. Some place safe. Lit up, yet out of the wind.

A man walks toward her. Dressed in black, leather jacket, blonde hair. She always notices him, walking the streets by himself, taking pictures, checking everyone out. He’s got his phone out, pointing it upward towards the moon in the sky. She glances at him, he doesn’t appear to see her. But he does.

He’s been cooped up in the apartment writing all day, staring at the computer for hours. His eyes can’t focus any more, and when that happens he pulls on his boots and coat, grabs his bag and goes for a walk. There’s always something happening. There’s always life on the Boulevard: street people, tourists, locals, cops, gangbangers, crazies, and freaks. He gets his exercise and breathes some air. Clears his head and thinks.

An old homeless woman pushing a shopping cart turns into an alley. The stench of her clothes and unwashed body linger in the air. An ambulance slowly drives away turning off its flashing red lights. There’s a young woman crying, as another woman, consoling and gentle, leads her by the arm to a waiting car. A buzzing noise, the accumulated conversations from the crowd in front of the club across the street, weaves through the steady hum of the passing cars.

He’s thinking about getting something to eat when he notices a man passed out, lying on the sidewalk. His backpack and bags are against the wall. In his hand an overturned plastic cup, a small pile of spilled coins beside him.

A cop steps out of a black and white patrol car. He walks over to the passed out man, his partner follows baton in hand. “Hey buddy, you can’t sleep here.”

He turns away from the police, back the way he’d came. Thinking a taco, falafel, maybe Chinese food. Above him the full moon is so bright it actually casts shadows.

Depressed For The Holidays

It’s a sunny warmish morning with blue skies and puffy cumulous clouds heading inland from the sea. Not exactly typical for Los Angeles in December, but after yesterday’s crazy Santa Ana winds the calm weather is a welcomed relief. As I head outside a woman walks by with her dog, pushing their way through piles of leaves covering the sidewalk. The streets, so full of fallen palm fronds, cars have to slow down and maneuver around them. I walk back to the building’s parking lot to check my convertible, make sure it wasn’t harpooned by some of last night’s flying debris. The winds had gotten so bad after midnight it sounded as if someone was pounding on my apartment’s walls. The large bushes by the front windows were crashing against the glass with such a fury I was worried they’d break through.

But thankfully everything’s all right, there’s no damage to my car. So I make my way up the street to walk the three blocks to get coffee. I pass neighbors out front of their houses raking leaves and uprighting overturned trashcans. A city truck is parked with its emergency light blinking, as two men chainsaw a small tree that’d been snapped in half and laying across the sidewalk.

With last night’s events playing through my mind and this sunny morning softening the edge off it, I’m so removed from any sense of the impending holidays that I’m momentarily taken back when I notice the Scientologists setting up their yearly Santa’s Village on Hollywood Blvd., which when you think about it is wrong on so many levels.

Strange, but they do it every year, and when they’re all done families will line up, the kids sitting on Santa’s lap for a donation. Do these people ever think where that money is going? How absurd it is that the Scientologists celebrate Christmas – they claim we’re infested by the spirits of frozen aliens that were destroyed by hydrogen bombs dropped on them by the evil galactic ruler Xenu 75 million years ago, and then those spirits were taken to…. Ahhh, yeah whatever, at least that’s what their deceased leader L. Ron Hubbard said. So maybe Santa’s an alien? Maybe he’s a Scientologist? Juliette Lewis is. I may never be able to watch Natural Born Killers again.

But really, who cares what the Scientologists do? It maybe another beautiful Southern California morning but the world is falling apart. Literally at the seams, as earthquakes happen in regions that have never had them, drought as well as flooding is rampant, and major corporations are destroying whatever is left, desperately trying to suck the last ounce of profit out of the ground before it all dries up. And as if all that wasn’t enough, governments everywhere are imploding from corruption, mismanagement, and incompetence.

Fortunately, it appears that people have had enough. Occupy Wall Street and all the other similar movements are putting a face and voice to the dissatisfaction, standing up to corporate greed and the raping of America’s constitution. Some workers are fighting back against arrogant government and private sector attempts to return them all to the non-union oppression of pre-industrial revolution. And all across the globe people are marching in the streets expressing frustration over political mangling of their rights, representation, and economies.

Yet, it isn’t all rosy and cheerfully positive, as meanwhile shoppers stand in line all night outside Wal-Mart so that they can attack one another with pepper spray in the hopes of beating back the other desperate hordes and obtaining cheap sale items for Black Friday. Obama’s installing a “prolonged detention” law into the “new” Patriot Act and erecting legal shenanigans that supposedly fall under “the rule of law” to justify it. Now anyone deemed a threat can be locked up indefinitely without a trial. And if the Occupy movement has done nothing else, it has at least proved positive evidence that our once courageous news organizations are clearly under government’s thumb, and in the pocket of the rich.

Bombarded by all this and the consequent responding thoughts I get a tad depressed, and a bit grumpy. Leaving the apartment to get some fresh air and stop stressing was my intention, as well as to get some caffeine flowing through the system.

Latte in hand, I sit in my local coffee shop, across the street from the Scientologists, and open today’s LA Times. There’s absolutely nothing about the imminent police assault of Occupy LA, nor is there even mention of Obama’s speech of three days ago. It’s as if none of that’s even happening and instead there’s Pamela Anderson interviewed down the street at the Hollywood post office for her commemorative “PETA Vegetarian” stamp. Under a picture of her smiling, holding an enlarged reproduction of the stamp, and conveniently framing her ample breasts, it reads: “She wore a smoky blue-gray sleeveless dress that reached mid-thigh and revealed cleavage and lacy, peach bra.” I’m thinking, “This is news?”

Across the store at the counter for the half and half and sugar a homeless woman silently waves her hands over her paper cup and moves in almost a dance, reminding me of some form of Tai Chi. Only she’s more spastic and a bit trance like, no doubt the electrodes in her brain burned out from too much meth, or years of alcohol. When she turns I glimpse a pushcart full of her tattered belongings shoved up and hidden in the corner.

“Ma’am?” says the young kid that works behind the counter. “You can’t be here all day. Other people need the condiments.”

She stops weaving and stares at him. I put down my paper and watch. The kid looks tired, and a slightly angry. The homeless woman hesitates, it appears she’s deciding how to react. I feel for her, but I’ve seen her around. She’s crazy as fuck, and usually is screaming incoherently in the street.

“Callin’ the police,” says the kid.

But he’s not reaching for the phone. And she knows it. And then I’m thinking this probably happens everyday between them.

“I need money,” says the woman.

“Get a job,” snorts the kid, a look of contempt spreading across his face.

“Want a new dress,” she says and then starts dancing again, weaving in and out to an unknown beat that’s decidedly opposite to the horrid in-store pop music being played. “Like to live in a house, have a cat, eat strawberries.”

The kid stops wiping the counter and stares at her, this time without malice. He looks sad, and slightly pained. “How bout a refill before you leave?”

I go back to reading my newspaper. Pamela is still there, and for some reason I start on the article again. “One woman in a ragged black T-shirt and shorts wedged her way into the crowd of cameras, burning cigarette in hand, and asked Anderson if she could possibly spare a dollar or any change. ‘You look beautiful,’ she said, when Anderson apologized for not having anything on her.”

It’s pathetic being depressed for the holidays. It’s like every cliché that’s ever been written. And really what the hell do I have to be depressed about? I’m not homeless, mentally deranged, stuck working a shit job, or brainwashed in a religious cult. I’ve a chemical imbalance that slips into gear every once in a while, but I know the difference between sadness, stress, and depression.

The world is falling apart. The economy is going to hell. It’s all going to get worse, before it gets better – if it ever does.

“Think I’ve had enough,” says the homeless woman.