Travels with Lizbeth

by Lars Eighner

  But in Los Angeles I had an ulterior motive. I meant to remain in California, and my attempt to rent a mailbox the year before had taught me the importance of getting my local documents in order. The voter’s registration I could get without money. When I had the money, I got a California ID at the Department of Motor Vehicles. I had tags with our Hollywood address made for Lizbeth, and I applied for a library card.

  People who have seen only the boulevards and the avenues of Hollywood may not realize that many of the smaller streets between have a very residential character, with lawns and gardens. Much of Hollywood is impoverished, but like other poor areas in Los Angeles, the slums do not look like the slums of Eastern cities. Large old houses and even small cottages are subdivided and subdivided again into apartments. But they look like houses and they are invariably brightly painted. Sometimes a second or even a third house has been installed on a lot, but there is still room for some grass and shrubs.

  I took Lizbeth on as many errands as I could. We often took a zigzag course to explore the side streets as we went. We encountered a number of dead ends. In many places the Hollywood Freeway has cut streets off. The studios still maintain several compounds in the area, and the most ordinary-looking street will sometimes come to an end at one of their gates. We made slow progress because Lizbeth found everything smellworthy. She loved to smell Hollywood more than any other place we have been.

  Dawn in Los Angeles is brisk, even well into the summer, and we always especially enjoyed the morning walk, for the cool air would bring back a bit of her puppyhood friskiness. Hollywood is at its best in the early hours of the morning. A street-corner musician gave Lizbeth the name Proud Midnight, and indeed she did prance proudly as we walked.

  I had spent but a few homeless days in Hollywood, and those I had spent camped in the fire zone. While I was at Carl’s, I observed the condition of the homeless in the area.

  What I noticed first was the Dumpsters. The down jacket Jack Frost had given me had finally come to the end of its useful life, and quite a bit past it by the standards of less desperate people. I bundled the jacket with the trash I had accumulated on my journey from Austin and went down the backstairs to the Dumpster. It was locked. When I inquired upstairs, I was shown its key, which was kept on a large ring on a nail in the roomers’ kitchen.

  In Austin I had encountered only two or three locked Dumpsters. I had assumed they were meant to keep scavengers like me out of them. Surely that was the reason the Dumpster at the plasma center was locked: to prevent anyone from coming to grief with the used venipuncture sets. In the guise of The Unknown Scrounger—for I had worn a paper bag over my head when I delivered the canned goods I found to the drop point in Sue’s—I had written The Austin Grackle concerning scattered medical waste and the failure of some labs to red-bag their biologically contaminated garbage. One of the columnists at The Grackle had then run an item on the subject. Whether the plasma center had used a locked Dumpster before the item ran, I do not know. But I was all in favor of medical waste being deposited out of reach of can scroungers and divers who might not realize the nature of the material until it was too late.

  A Dumpster at a pizza shop in Austin was locked, I thought, out of pure meanness.

  As a survey of the alley behind Carl’s place made clear, L.A. Dumpsters are locked to prevent unauthorized dumping. The alley was often so full of trash and garbage that vehicles could pass only with difficulty.

  In Los Angeles, jobbers get together and rent large storefronts that are then divided into stalls. This is what is meant by flea market in Los Angeles. Evidently only a few of these businesses provided themselves with trash service, and those who did had to lock their Dumpsters in order to have the use of them. Occasionally what I supposed was a city crew came with a large truck and cleared the alley, but the alley would revert to its previous condition within a few hours.

  I planned never to have to scavenge again. But that almost all of the Dumpsters were locked was yet another reason for me to think scavenging would be impractical in L.A.

  Across the alley from Carl’s place was a small parking lot. There a group of homeless men had established a camp. In the central plaza of L.A. I had seen groups of homeless families, almost all of whom were black. The homeless people I observed in Santa Monica were mostly young and white and equipped with good backpacks and other nice gear. But this camp in a seedier part of Hollywood consisted only of men. I was told they were mostly Central Americans and mostly illegals. Many of them were young and able-bodied and went in the morning to the informal labor market that formed around a paint store, a block west on the boulevard.

  They had no shelter in the parking lot. The camp consisted only of some flattened cardboard boxes they sat or lay on and, sometimes, a discarded mattress or sofa. The number of men in camp varied from five to fifteen. They exposed themselves to urinate whenever they felt the need, but so, in this neighborhood, did other men who seemed not to be homeless. That they defecated in the alley at night I would discover in the morning, for Lizbeth would point out the evidence. How they ate, I do not know. They drank and always had a bottle of wine to pass around, but on the whole I would say, for their numbers, they drank much less than the drinking groups I had observed in Austin. Weekdays, during business hours, the young men were gone from the camp. I believe they did work or did seek work regularly.

  Although on one morning I found the boulevard blocked because the Immigration and Naturalization Service was conducting a raid on the informal labor market, and although the owners of the parking lot often had the furnishings and cardboard removed, I did not see any official interference with the group. Gangs came at night to spray-paint the walls around the parking lot, and painters came in the morning to paint over the graffiti, but neither the gangs nor the painters seemed to bother the homeless camp.

  SIXTEEN

  In the Bamboo

  Carl was a short, rotund, ruddy man, perhaps in his fifties. He had operated a bathhouse in Hollywood that had catered to the leather crowd until it was razed by fire. Although I did not know it while I was his guest, Carl had been quite an activist in the early days of the gay movement of Los Angeles. He had a crusty and sarcastic facade, but he was in fact a generous and kindhearted man whose interest in helping me, and others who came to his door, derived of nothing more than a desire to see gay people do well.

  Jack Walden was a tall, lean man with a gray crewcut, who was in his mid-forties. He was illustrating and writing for a number of gay magazines, and he hoped to gain from me some pointers on writing. In that, I failed him while I was in Hollywood. I thought his career was sufficiently advanced that he would not appreciate my most thoroughgoing criticism. Yet that was exactly what he wanted, and after I left I gave it to him by correspondence.

  The rooming house was rather like a dormitory, for the shower was one way down the hall and the toilet and lavatory were the other way. There was much towel-clad traffic in the hall, although Jack preferred to go nude. A gay dormitory in Hollywood may sound like a sexual shooting gallery, but for me it was more like a monastery. I found myself missing the little convivial encounters in the rest room of Pease Park.

  Jack advanced me the price of a manual typewriter I found in a Hollywood thrift shop. I was very fond of it, and all the more because it still bore property tags from United Artists and MGM. I became, for me, terrifically prolific. Some weeks I turned out four or five short stories, and they all sold, although in most cases I would not realize payment for six or eight months.

  On the other hand, as I became acquainted with the rent structure of Los Angeles, I discovered that even if I maintained such productivity for six or eight months, at which time I might have a steady income, I could not afford even the smallest apartment of my own. Indeed, I could not afford to pay what Carl’s paying roomers were supposed to be paying, and they all assured me there were no cheaper accommodations to be had in all of Los Angeles. Nonetheless I tried to establish every sort of connect
ion with California and Los Angeles that I could. To build some ties to the community, and because it was an interest of mine anyway, I began to go to Plummer Park in West Hollywood on Wednesday nights to attend meetings of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.

  At first I looked around these meetings for people who had the emaciated look that Daniel had and that from news photos I expected to see in people with AIDS. It seemed to me very peculiar that no one in ACT UP would have AIDS. Moreover, some of the educational presentations suggested that the problems of AIDS in the 1990s would be increasingly the problems of managing a chronic, rather than a terminal, disorder. I began to imagine that ACT UP was composed of healthy do-gooders who had a wildly optimistic view of medicine’s ability to manage AIDS.

  I attended a meeting at which the expense of AZT, the principal antiviral drug then in use against AIDS, was the subject of much discussion. Many of the people present revealed that they wanted the drug for themselves. But at just this time AZT was first being prescribed for people infected with HIV who had not developed AIDS. I supposed that in addition to the healthy optimistic do-gooders, ACT UP had also some members who had the latent virus.

  Only at the last did I come to know that many of the young men at the meetings, who looked healthier than I had looked on the best day of my life, had full-blown AIDS, as it is called, and some of them had been hospitalized and near death many times. The talk of learning to manage AIDS as a chronic disorder was not altogether wishful thinking, and the evidence was sitting in the chairs around mine.

  * * *

  ONE DAY, QUITE out of the blue, Tim arrived at Carl’s place.

  When I had seen Tim at Billy’s as I recovered from phlebitis, Tim had seemed like a new person, entirely calm and reasonable. Moreover his supposed attraction to me had manifested itself more consistently. Billy, though he professed to have no romantic or physical interest in either Tim or me, threw a temper-tantrum whenever he found we had got naked in his living room.

  After I recovered I had visited Tim in jail several times and found him the picture of equanimity. When I talked with Tim in jail we had discussed—idly I thought—many possibilities, among them that we might find an apartment to share when he was released or that we might travel to California together. When he was released from jail Tim learned from Billy that I had gone to California. Tim concluded that I meant for him to join me in California. As I was finding no romantic or sexual prospects in Hollywood, I might have thought to send for Tim if I had secured an independent situation. But at the time his arrival was the last thing I expected. I had not even sent him my address, but he had browbeat Billy to reveal it.

  When I had visited him in jail Tim had told me he was receiving a rather strong antipsychotic drug, which he agreed to take to demonstrate to the authorities that he was cooperative and that he ought to be released sooner, rather than later. In spite of my experience in mental health, I failed to think that Tim might be getting the medication because he needed it or that the positive changes in his behavior might be due to the medication. I was not to escape the consequences of this bit of stupidity.

  The first night he was in Hollywood, Tim slept with me. He rolled a condom onto me as if he were filled with delighted anticipation. Yet shortly after I penetrated him, although he obviously remained physically aroused, he changed his mind. This was the old Tim.

  However sick Tim got, he retained the ability to be perfectly charming and ingratiating when it was to his advantage. By the time I woke in the morning, Tim had made a place for himself in his own right at Carl’s, in Carl’s bed. Tim then told me, in the way that the soap opera villain explains his wicked plans to his intended victims, that in establishing a beachhead for him in Hollywood I had served my purpose, that if I remained at Carl’s I would be in his way, and that he proposed to drive me out.

  His abrupt and extreme changes of mood had returned. Sometimes he would come to my room saying he wished to make up and offering me sexual services that I did not always have the wisdom or fortitude to refuse. Other times he came nude into the TV room, lay on one of the sofas, and began masturbating, only to accuse me of making him uncomfortable by staring.

  He would tell another roomer that I was sexually obsessed with that roomer, and then he would return to me to say that the other roomer was tired of receiving my longing glances. As in any dormitory situation, from time to time money or other valuable objects would be missed by one or another of the tenants. When that happened Tim would let slip that he had seen something like whatever was missing in my possession, but then he would assert that of course I was above suspicion.

  By playing both ends against the middle, Tim managed to create a lot of disharmony at Carl’s place while creating the impression that I was the culprit. I was made very uncomfortable, and even some who could see what Tim was up to could not always avoid being taken in by one or another of his stories. At the same time, Tim seemed sincerely to believe that I was persecuting him, and two or three times got worked up enough that he physically attacked me.

  I do not know whether Tim would have succeeded in his plan of dislodging me. Carl’s landlord appeared one day, discovered Lizbeth, and then there was no question of our remaining where we were. Several of Carl’s lodgers, who had experience in the system, told me that because I’d been careful to document my residence in California I was now eligible for emergency housing. This would not be a cot in a homeless shelter, but a room in a decent, if not luxurious, hotel. Of course I would have to get rid of Lizbeth. This was no solution, because I could have stayed at Carl’s at least awhile longer if I were willing to get rid of Lizbeth.

  After the Fourth of July, I got one of Carl’s boarders to take me to the library to return some books, and then to a ramp on I-10.

  * * *

  WE HAD MANY short rides and in a couple of days we reached a rest stop east of Riverside. There we were picked up by a young man in a red Volkswagen beetle. He asked me to assure him that I was not a serial killer before he let me in the car. He seemed very serious in making this inquiry and was much relieved when I told him I was not a serial killer. Shawn’s story was that he was going to pick up his son from his ex-wife’s home in Phoenix, and then they were going to have a vacation together that would include a visit to the Six Flags amusement park near Dallas. I cannot account for the similarity of stories and various other similarities among several people who gave me rides, but I can only say that it is not a trick of memory, but is confirmed by my few contemporary notes and letters that survive.

  The Volkswagen did well until we reached Phoenix. Then the battery could not hold, or could not get a charge. We pushed the Volkswagen to several service stations in north Phoenix, but as the hour was late, no one on duty could do any more for us than to give us a jump. A jump would start the engine and then we could go a few blocks before the car was dead again.

  Shawn said he wanted to conserve his money for his vacation, but clearly he would have to get the car fixed. He said he would get some bids in the morning, have the car fixed, pick up his son, and then the three of us would proceed to Texas. Several parts of this story did not quite add up. For one, as we had approached Phoenix, Shawn had revealed that he did not know precisely where his ex-wife and his son were. If he were going to Dallas, his most direct route it seemed to me, for again I did not have a map, would take me far out of my way. And then there was that wherever we stopped for a jump in Phoenix, Shawn asked about the availability of speed.

  For once the lessons of experience were not lost on me, and Lizbeth and I jumped ship.

  We were in north Phoenix, by the Flagstaff Highway, all of the next day, and the next night we walked through town. Once we were at a suitable ramp on I-10, it was yet another day and night before we got a ride out of Phoenix. We were picked up by two gentlemen in a pickup who took us to a rest stop I had not known existed, between Phoenix and Tucson. I had scarcely filled our water bottles and smoked a cigarette before two other gentlemen offer
ed me and another hitchhiker a ride in their pickup.

  This ride was supposed to go to Tucson, but we were put out somewhere considerably short of Tucson. The other hitchhiker walked on. But Lizbeth and I stayed the night where we were. I could detect no signs of civilization around this ramp and all the next morning we saw only three cars. But late in the afternoon a man whose station wagon was filled with tubs of crushed aluminum cans gave us a ride to the fancy truck stop south of Tucson.

  There I met a boy of fifteen or sixteen years who had a hand-held citizens band radio. He said he was using the radio to hitchhike around the country and this was his summer vacation. Yet he had absolutely no gear and I suspected he was a local who did his traveling in fantasy. He assured me he would soon find a ride for me with his radio. Nothing came of this, except that I learned from the boy’s radio what name the truckers gave to the camp followers at the truck stops, which was “lot lizards.” This struck me as immensely amusing at the time, and for several days I would break out giggling whenever I thought of it.

  Lizbeth and I had a ride with a businessman in a very nice new car the following morning. We were let out across the highway from a new development whose architecture was so advanced that I can only describe it as otherworldly. Moreover, the development was waterscaped, evidently with wastewater, so extensively that Venice might seem arid by comparison. Finding potable water in this place, however, proved challenging, for the shopping center and the service stations and the motel had been planned to be all of a piece, and the plan left no room for such accidents as unattended water taps.