i walked ’round Los Angeles for a week when i was a kid…got out there on a $99 one-way bus ticket bought downtown at a moment’s notice…always an escape clause…

remember seeing all these guys sleeping ’round the station when we pulled-in…few bucks in my pocket…not much…looking in the darkness at vagabonds…and vacancies…truths and dares…people plotting…

the night air was cool…not cold like back east…just cool…pregnant Mexican girls wrapped-in colorful blankets sat there on sidewalks…waiting for their men to return from 3rd shift jobs way out in some Cali-town…

and i was real jealous…’cause those guys had someone waiting for them…someone with a brown-bag of food…a thermos of coffee…lips to kiss…

so…walked-’round some more…past pawn-shops…fancy hotels with swimming-pools lit blue in the night…movie theaters…adult bookstores…GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS…neon signs flashed…

saw squad-cars passing black guys strutting to syncopations…young white chicks smacking gum and talking shit…Korean store owners sweeping-up debris left-over from a day mis-spent…torn pornagraphic pictures…candy bar wrappers…cigarette boxes…condoms discarded…another American town…

never saw the Pacific…