(December 20, 2001)
Listen to Walking Down Winston (Recorded November 12, 2005.)
Walking down Winston St. one night, Moses with the limp and the smoker’s cough saved my ass. Started walking next to me and introduced me to this six-four big motherfucker. Moses leaned over and whispered that the guy was gonna jack me, and Moses escorted me, we all three walked past Indian Alley to Main St., where there were cars and lights; toward the Canadian building where I lived.
Even that wasn’t totally safe; a guy got stabbed in the Mexican restaurant in my building one time. I know ’cause he staggered out down the block to die; left a trail of blood in front of my door, but Main St. was better than Winston St. in the dark near Indian Alley; so called because that’s where the Native Americans shoot up, and it turns out the homeless are just as segregated as the rest of us.
There’s people grew up with me in the Valley never been to East LA; never been to Crenshaw; never been south of the 10 except to go to the airport even if they live their whole lives in LA; in my part of Skid Row it’s all black, all black; the whites live over by the 110 freeway in the alleys and under the overpasses and behind the lots where I used to park to work when I didn’t live downtown and the blacks have skid row except for the little part of it the Indians have, and there are lines you don’t cross that I had to learn.
I’m not ghetto; I’m a white boy from Tarzana. I’ve never felt a target on my chest like Fifth St.; even in the Guatemalan highlands where I’m the only one over five feet tall, never felt a target like walking down Fifth at night past the Frontier hotel. Only did that once; never again; I’ve got friends who won’t even walk there in daylight. I’ll go out of my way to Sixth because it’s safer there, you still have to walk past the guys who spend all their time in front of the Bluebird Market; but I got to know them, and some of them looked out for me.
The Bluebird’s closed now but when it was open you could walk into a little cage like 10 by 3 feet wide and you’d point to whatever you wanted and they’d hand it to you through the bars and survival was simple; you just gotta mad-dog folks; look’em in the eye like you got no fear even when the fist of it’s twisting your guts into knots; Mike taught me that.
The first thing he ever said to me was “I guard the cars. Somebody fucks with your car, what body part you want left on the hood?” This shit is non-fiction; Mike wrote that line, not me; gutter poet with penetrating eyes; Mike could speak standard English when he wanted but he hardly ever wanted.
When I first moved downtown I understood like one thing in three that he said; just smiled and nodded the rest of the time; made noises at appropriate pauses like being in France (I don’t speak French)and the longer I knew him the more I learned and my speech got colored with his rhythms unconsciously when we spoke; didn’t realize it at first and it faded afterwards; couldn’t do it now if you paid me. I know the words but the rhythm, the rhythm, the rhythm, that’s what’s important; like listening to Swedish and Russian without speaking either: it’s the rhythm that sets them apart. There’s a whole rhythm to living downtown, and for a while I had it down.