6th and H: A Night in San Bernardino

As the sun set, the streets came alive with a menagerie of hustlers, pimps, tricks, beggars and street kids. All after either money or drugs. Without any of their own they turned to others for their prize.

Clearly an out of towner, I met the wanted, vulnerable profile. Young, white and well-dressed leading many to the conclusion that I had money to spend. During my short ventures outside, they descended upon me, asking for money, cigarettes and offering up their various services.

I was reluctant to leave the false reprieve of my fifty-dollar-a-night motel room, but I had to have what I had come for. I’d start in the motel parking lot, and if necessary cross the street to the gas station. Outside the air was heavy with a dry and toxic grit. This grit consisted of fumes from the cars and trucks traveling along the two interstates that divided the city into four quadrants. As well as the desert sand, that was carried by the winds. Trash blew freely through the streets.

Lawlessness hit you like a New York winter does immediately upon opening the door. Cars buzzed by with music blaring, past idling police cars that contained officers who were afraid of the streets they were sent to patrol. Women strolled by shifting their weight from side to side, clad in mini-skirts, fishnets and high heels, hollering at passing cars and potential Johns. A thirty-something Mexican man spotted me, and began to make his approach. He wore an eerie smile, a brazen and exaggerated one. One you wouldn't expect from someone's whose teeth weren't exactly well maintained. And then I saw it, the very thing that had brought us all to this God forsaken Southern Californian slum, a red grape-sized balloon clenched between his front teeth.

I nodded at him, and pulled out two crumpled twenties. He spat two balloons into his palm, passed them to me, and was gone. I heard the yelps of police cars in the distance, and considered putting the balloons in my mouth but decided against it. Instead they went into my pocket, where the twenties used to be.