Welcome to Los Angeles

Noel and I bid Carnal Carrie adieu and headed back for the Las Vegas Greyhound station. It was three in the morning and, still, the heat radiated off the pavement from the hot Vegas sun.

After bathing as best we could in the bus depot’s restrooms, not an easy task, we boarded the 4:14 Greyhound headed for the city of angels, Los Angeles.

Interstate 15 can be a lonely stretch of road at four in the morning. I watched the moonlit desert pass by while Noel snuggled up against me, her warm breath tickling the hairs on my arm.

At seven o’clock, we stopped in Barstow for a short twenty minute layover in the parking lot of a Jack-In-The-Box. Noel dined on some sort of egg and sausage sandwich and I just sipped some coffee.

We hit the edge of the sprawling city of Los Angeles around 9:15, but it took us nearly two and a half hours to drive the last thirty-five miles from Ontario to downtown L.A., our first experience with the bliss that is the Los Angeles freeway system.

The sun hung high in the sky surrounded by a brownish haze when we stepped off the bus in downtown L.A. The unmistakable stench of urine carried through the air from the city of cardboard boxes that stood nearby. Some sat outside of their boxes playing cards. One man sat watching ‘Oprah’ on a small battery powered black and white TV, while his friend puffed on a crack pipe. Never before had I seen so many homeless people all in one place.

Noel tugged on my arm. “Come on, there’s a cab. Let’s catch it while we can!”

I grabbed our stuff and swung it into the back seat of the Yellow Cab.

“Where ya heading?” asked the cabbie in an accent I couldn’t place.

“Hollywood.”

The cabbie swung the yellow Chevrolet out into traffic and on to the 101 freeway where it took us an hour and ten minutes to drive eight miles.

Los Angeles is like no other place I’ve seen before. Street after street of low slung buildings crammed into tiny lots extend for as far as the eye can see. The air clings to the ground like a parasite, it’s sooty claws leaving a fine black lace on everything it touches.

The cabbie dropped us at Hollywood and Vine as Noel and I asked. By the time Noel and I had walked half a block down Hollywood Boulevard, we realized that Hollywood is not exactly a glamorous place much like Divine is not exactly a woman.