Innocents on the Lamb

    Visions of Los Angeles from a distance just didn’t stack up to what I encountered when I stepped back out my door. Downtown with its single skyscraper loomed in the distance while the rest of it was lay flat, a large expanse that had been carved out of the landscape into a predetermined gridwork, somehow struggling to deal with the odd shape of land nearer the rising hills that surrounded it. Movies had colored my perceptions, as had Disneyland, a mecca for white people everywhere when in reality there were more brown, yellow and black faces here than white, living their lives the way poor and working people did elsewhere, struggling to get through the day and the backbreaking labor they had to endure just to feed and clothe themselves. But even the white people who lived here were from here but had come from other places with the same foolish vision I had, looking for something here that like an onion once stripped of all its layers, didn’t exist. I called a cab...

    So, I settled in to the apartment, for the first time in my life, having a space that was completely my own. But if felt like a prison. The only company I had were the roaches and I wanted them dead. Back in Philadelphia I had purchased battery operated portable TV, which I had hoped to use to relieve the boredom of the bus trip, which turned out to be useless in the constantly shifting frequencies. Here, it became my only companion, giving me the company of classic old movies and the constant rant of local advertisers such as Ralph Williams, the car czar of Los Angeles, whose face dominated the night time like a vampire. The TV burned out within two days, isolating me further, and force me to head back downtown to replace it – after several days foraging the local bodega for food (canned tamales) and roach powder in my constant conflict to keep them contained. After my experience at the hotel, I knew I could not trust the lock on the apartment door to keep out...