San Diego Reader

People Buy You Booze

D. is dressed as if he is off to the ComicCon or a Clockwork Orange theme party: boots laced up to his knees, raggedy black and red clothes, an old leather jacket with metal studs, a bowler hat with bright burgundy-dyed hair sticking out, eyeliner, and some other makeup. When I mention A Clockwork Orange, he says, “Huh?” I don’t know if he is feigning ignorance or has never seen or heard of the movie that his “look” comes from.

I know that D., as I talk to him, is sizing me up, trying to figure out if I am telling him the truth or playing him, trying to decide if he can physically overcome me and rob me, or beat me up for the hell of it. More than once he tells me how much he loves utilizing his “shitkicker boots” to break ribs and smash faces in. I have a feeling it’s all boast — he wants me to think he’s a badass, that he’s tough and knows how to survive on the streets.

He is scared.

D. says he’s 16 and he’s been on the street for two years, finding his way to San Diego from Tempe, Arizona. “I tried L.A. and Orange County for a while,” he says, but he did not care for the “scene” there. “Cardiff, P.B., O.B., they’re cool,” he says. “I like to be by the water.”

“What do you mean by ‘scene’?” I ask.

He juggles three rocks as he speaks, hoping to catch some attention, maybe some money from the people who walk by us on the boardwalk. “Too many peeps,” he says, “too much competition. Too much violence. Hate.”

“What violence?”

He gives me this look: he’s not going to talk about that; he doesn’t want to, doesn’t care to — what does it have to do with him?

D. has plenty to say about all the “domestic tranquility,” as he calls it, in Tempe, Arizona. “Since I was eight or nine, I used to share a drink with my mom,” he says. “Maybe before, I don’t know. But the first time I got really drunk, it was on Bailey’s. I threw up. I must have had half the bottle. It was sweet shit; I liked it. I never liked beer or red wine; that’s what I tried before, and even tequila. I like tequila now but not then. I ralphed on the Bailey’s and my mom’s boyfriend, what’s-his-name, he just laughed about it. My mom wiped my mouth with a towel — we were in the bathroom, I’d just lost my junk in the toilet — and she said something like, ‘Hey, sleep on your belly, okay, so you won’t choke if it happens again.’ So she sent me to my room and made sure I was on my stomach. I didn’t ralph again, but I woke up with this shitty bad hangover. I can’t smell Bailey’s or anything like it without getting this sick feeling. Beer, tequila, that’s my drink if I drink.”

“How do you get booze?”

“Easy. Dudes always have it. People buy it for you. That’s why I like hanging at the beaches. People aren’t so uptight, not even the cops. It’s not like in the city, or even up in L.A. Things are more mellow here.”

“Does your mother know where you are?”

“I write to her…sometimes.”

“Does she ask you to come back?”

“Not really, I don’t know.” D. seems uncomfortable. “Sometimes she sends a couple $20 bills in the mail. I think I missed some of her letters because of my moving around. Like, last letter she wrote, ‘Why haven’t you answered me about…’ such-and-such, this, whatever, she must have asked me something and she’s mad I didn’t answer, but I didn’t get any letter. Either she didn’t send it and thinks she did, because she’s a drunk, you know, or the letter didn’t reach me.”

“Do you ever call her?”

“It’s long distance. Why waste the money? I called once. Some guy answered. Don’t know who. Didn’t recognize the voice. So I hung up. Some new boyfriend. She switches boyfriends every four months. Every ten minutes!” He finishes his juggling. “Every ten, a new gentleman.”

“How long was she with your father?”

“Couple years. She was 20 when I was born. And a drunk.”

“Do you speak with your father?”

“Not really.” He looks at some people down the block. “Used to. I told him about getting wasted on Bailey’s, and he wasn’t happy about that, but he was, like, ‘That’s your mother for you.’ ”

“You couldn’t go stay with your father?”

“Do I wanna? He’s been in jail a lot. He’s better. No more crazy-making trouble. But he got married and then he moved to Seattle because the chick he married, her family is loaded, I guess. As a wedding present her mom and dad bought them a house, any house they wanted in any city, so they decided to live in Seattle and that’s what they did. Some luck. I wish I can marry a chick like that; like, her mom and dad will buy us a house, but I wouldn’t pick Seattle. I’d pick San Diego, Solana Beach, or Oceanside. Or Montana, out in the wilderness and stuff. I’ve heard about Montana. I’d like to check it out.

“I was going to check out Seattle once,” he says, “maybe even drop in on the bio-dad. But I never made it up that far. Only got as far as L.A., and then I went back down this way.”

I ask him about street families, made of homeless and runaway kids; these “families” have become a part of many urban myths and extend from city to city across the country. I want to know if there are such families in San Diego.

D. acts as though he doesn’t know what I mean. I can tell he doesn’t want to bother with the question. “I’ve heard about families,” he says. “Plenty in L.A. There were some in Arizona, and I know of some in, like, Nevada and such, but I don’t know of any families. I’ve never been in one.”

He says he’s in a program, “a group home thing,” but he doesn’t elaborate and I don’t want to push it. He’s acting as if he wants to go; he doesn’t want to talk to me. His eyes go cold and hard.

“What’s your story?” he asks.

“I ran away from home when I was 15,” I say. “I hung around Hollywood and Venice Beach.”

He nods. Have I impressed him?

I don’t tell him that I didn’t run away because of a bad family; I ran away because I was a young neophyte writer who was reading Jack Kerouac and Jack London and listening to the Doors, so I thought running away and wandering the streets would give me material to write about.

“Did you hook?” D. asks.

“No,” I say. “Did some good Dumpster diving.”

He laughs. “Yeah.”

“Tell me about what you want to do, say, when you’re 20. Twenty-five.”

“Be in a band.” He says he can play the drums and the keyboards; he’s played on them but doesn’t own any. “I suck!” In punk rock terms, that means he’s good.

He looks at some people down the block again. A group of kids, dressed as colorfully as he, are coming this way.

“I gotta go,” he says.

“It’s okay,” I tell him.

“Not okay for you. They shouldn’t see you talking to me, and I wouldn’t try to talk to them if I were you. They might hurt you.”

“They” were the kids coming this way. Are they a gang, I wonder, gatekeepers of information? Will “they” find it strange that D. is talking to a regular, older person like me? I am amused, but also touched in a way, that he is concerned about my safety. I am also curious about just how dangerous “the dangerous streets” are.

The approaching kids disperse; I guess I will not find out.

Before I can ask D. about it, he walks away, juggling the three rocks.

No One Declares Himself Old School

Finding street kids and runaways in San Diego was easy; there are certain areas they converge on in Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, downtown, and in East County, such as El Cajon and Lemon Grove, or in North County, in Oceanside and Carlsbad. Getting them to speak to me proved trickier. Approaching them at their hangouts with the news that I was researching an article caused nervous and angry laughter, skepticism, and distrust. My press badge did not impress them and made them even more cautious since it had been issued by the San Diego Police Department. They thought I was a pervert looking for a young trick, or a cop, or maybe I was a parent trying to find his runaway child. If I bought them food (pizza, burritos, hot dogs), however, they would warm up and talk to me; or I had to “make a donation” for their time. Seventy-five percent of those I sought out for interviews flat-out refused me, politely or with contempt, spitting on the sidewalk or eyeing me as if they were ready to hit me with their fists or their skateboards, which does eventually happen.

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