“HERE’S SOME MUSIC FOR YA!” the guy yelled from his SUV. It was some sort of born-in-the-USA-sounding song. Hard, patriotic, electric guitar-driven rock. Mid-thirties white guy was the last in the line of traffic down Main St. in Santa Monica, headed toward Venice. Probably going about 15 miles an hour, maybe got to 20 before traffic piled up.

“THANKS!” I yelled back, pedaling furiously. I wanted to see if I could pass him and the line of cars we were quickly approaching.

The man sped up to keep astride and he laughed and shouted,

“YOU’RE CRAZY!”

“I LIKE A CHALLENGE!” I shouted back. I knew he’d have to slow down as he caught up to the line of traffic and that I could cruise right on through the cars, thereby winning my personal race against traffic.

Possibly excited by my competitive nature (and fabulous cycling skills), the man added:

“GO ON A DATE WITH ME!”

“NO!” I yelled back, merrily, as he slammed on his breaks to avoid rear-ending a car.

“Will that be all?”

“Yup! Just this fizzy water,” I replied.

“What’s that? Us old guys, we can’t hear too good.” He was wirey and spry with a thatch of unruly white hair on his head, but he didn’t lok much older than 60, which, to me, is young-grandpa-age, not officially-old-man age.

“YES. JUST THIS.” I gestured to the overpriced plastic bottle in my hand and eye-balled the goodies arranged lovingly around the register. “DO YOU TAKE CREDIT CARD?”

“Sure!” He looked lonesome. There was no one else here, not even another employee. 

The older gent rang out my purchase of soda water at this generic airport store then added,

“You young people, ya talk so fast and ya mumble. Just can’t hear it.”

“SORRY ABOUT THAT! “

“It’s okay. Thanks, and have a nice day!”

“YOU, TOO!”

at Manhattan Beach Pier

“Hey—”

I kept walking.

“You got—”

I kept walking.

“—a cigarette?”

I kept walking, but I turned my head.

“No, I don’t, actually,” I said sincerely and smiled. Then I kept walking.

The homeless-looking older white guy followed me a few steps.

“Thanks!” He sincerely replied, surprised I’d responded.

“What’s your name?”

I turned my head back to him.

“Elizabeth.” I kept walking.

“I’m James!”

I kept walking.

“You’re really pretty!”

I kept walking.

There’s a freaking amazing game out (which I have on my iPhone) called Ridiculous Fishing. It has a heck of a background, so I suggest that, in addition to getting it, you check out their story.

Ridiculous Fishing is addictive and its concept is, well, ridiculous. It has incredible music and fantastic nostalgic 8-bit art, as well, so while a friend and I were waiting for cheap eats at a crappy strip-mall food-court, I decided to get him hooked on it. I whipped out my phone and showed him how to play, giving him the backstory and explaining the goal and tactics, pointing out the music. You know, just being a silly kid again, but with the only slightly more discerning taste and vocabulary of a nerdy adult.

What I didn’t notice was that an older black man with long dreads was watching this over my shoulder (me being a tad over five feet and him being a tad over six feet, this wasn’t hard to do). He must have been way into it (and so must I have been to not have noticed his involvement) because, as I got a great score, he scared the shit out of me, exclaiming,

“You GO, girl!”

“This is good song!” the man exclaimed in an accent I couldn’t place. Slavic? Arabic? The older gentleman was bobbing to the beat of the music in this shabby convenience store as he debated silently about which coffee to pour: decaf with its brown plastic handle, regular in orange, or extra strong, also in orange. After he went with regular, I grabbed the extra strong and started to tune into my surroundings. We kept a respectable distance, being respectable strangers hemmed in between coffee accouterments, a freezer of ice cream, and a rack of tabloids.

The man was in mangy jeans and a dingy white and some dark color striped button-down, both of which had seen better days. I could not tell if he was sloppy, in a rough trade, or maybe homeless. At the most, he looked as if he didn’t give a damn about his appearance. Strike two for me: still couldn’t read anything about him other than that he seemed in good spirits and was happy to get coffee. (This made me realize that it was actually very relieving to not jump to any conclusions about the man, as it meant I paid more attention and assumed nothing—which also made me realize how much I do tend to assume about people based on appearance).

“Brown sugar?”

“There’s brown sugar here?” I asked, as I shuffled politely around him to get creamer.

“Yes!” He gestured to sugar in the raw. “Is brown sugar.”

“I didn’t know that,” I confessed. He was still keeping the beat, occasionally closing his eyes as if to savor something.

“You like this song?”

“Rihanna?” I paused. Well, “yeah,” I lied, then added, “did you know that this beat came from a free sample in a software program?”

“Oh!” Then he shuffled out the door, keeping time to the ‘ella in Umbrella.

I got to the bus stop a bit early and thought I might actually sit on a bench (rather than stand) and do a little readin’ or writin’ or phone perusin.’ I took a risk in approaching the bench when I saw that three out of four potential seats were taken by filthy degenerates. Well. They were filthy, anyway. I couldn’t really claim to know their moral fiber until after this beautiful experiences.

I passed one of ‘em and he lurched at me and yelled,

“Dáme pupusas!”

So I just kept walking but I also very quietly let out a grunt of disappointment. Here we go again. Harassed by the weirdoes. Excellent. But, really? Pupusas? I’m the whitest girl around. I don’t HAVE pupusas. Why would I have pupusas? Ask me for a BLT. That’d make more sense. Besides, if I HAD pupusas, I’d totally be EATING them. Moron.

I walked about twenty feet away to stand and wait with my back to a closed Korean restaurant called King-something, though it wasn’t very regal. It’s a glass front that has been painted black from the inside. Classy. Totally unassuming and definitely not very indicative of whatever they do or serve. Next door there is a crazy store for kids’ junk and it’s packed full of strollers, cribs, toys. It’s sickening in concept, cost, and clutter.

Anyhow, the dude stumbled toward me and yelled in my face again.

“Gib me sonthing!” He was drunk as a skunk. And smells like one.

Before he got too close, and without acknowledging his presence, I continued to look at my phone and wandered down the sidewalk.

He started harassing a group of young women and one of these totally bad-ass, don’t-take-no-guff ladies got in his face, and yelled,

“You NEED to get OUT of here! You need to GO!” And she shoos him away. The ladies formed a wall between him and the sidewalk, blocking him from most us waiting for the bus.

He mumbled and stumbled away.

I’m at page 700-something in this big ol’ book that is actually three books bound into one. It’s fairly dense reading, with each book telling about a few intertwined lives of mid-century Canadian academics and historians. Sounds dry, the way I describe it.

Anyhow, on the bus, I sit down next to a man who is probably homeless. He doesn’t smell and his ski-jacket is in good shape, but his hair is dreaded and matted, his hat has seen better days, and his eyes seem yellowed. He has smooth skin on his cheeks but weather-beaten lips.

The man glances at my book and asks,

“Watcha readin?”

I fumble at the ripped pages that are the cover, which was ripped off long before I bought the thing at a yard sale for a dollar. The cover is now one of those first pages that tells you reviews—it’s a review of the third book, that’s how many pages have disappeared. I show him the spine of the book. The Cornish Trilogy: The Rebel Angels, What’s Bred in the Bone, and The Lyre of Orpheus. The man sounds out “Cornish trilogy,” and asks if it’s good.

“It’s my dad’s favorite,” I saw, somewhat weakly. What a… removed sort of book to talk to a homeless man about.

I got back to reading but take stock of the folks around me. I notices some dry, jangling sounds. The girl to my left is a big, black woman with beautiful skin and huge shell earrings that keep her ears noisy company. She’s rigorously scouring and “liking” things on Instagram on an iPhone that she holds furtively close to her face. Or maybe she is far-sighted.

The homeless man has been leaning on my right shoulder more and more, swaying with every push and pull of the bus—we’re behind the according and sitting in a row with our backs to the window, so we sway sideways instead of back and forth.

As I continue reading, the man shifts so that he’s now leaning—and now quite noticeably—on the young man farther to the right. I catch this out of the corner of my eye and when I turn to glance at the fellow unintentionally offering his shoulder, we meet eyes and smile quietly.

The girl and boy sitting with us depart at the UCLA stop and the homeless man disembarks somewhere after the 405. He bids me a farewell and I reply with a “have a good one.” He starts mumbling something like,

“Already had a BAD one, you know? And…” he starts to speak gibberish while he grabs his giant garbage bag of recyclables. Sounds like mostly plastic, which makes sense, as he hefts it easily. At his stop, there’s already a shopping cart waiting for him.