My job description was to watch homeless men buy magnums and cobras for seventy cents apiece. You could say that it was a wretched piece of work, and perhaps it was. The shop was located in the descript part of Los Angeles that housed almost all the homeless population of the city, nay the county. They came from as far as Orange County to partake the cheap liquor and the free food that was offered by various charities and a church nearby.
All I had to do was make sure that they did not steal any beer cans. Easy job you would say, but for an under six feet diminutive student, working illegally to make ends meet, to confront black males, half a foot taller or more, and not to mention always ready for a fight; It might be city of angels for some but for me it was my daily pilgrimage to Bosnia.
One day, this beautiful blonde woman walked into the store. She was Russian and spoke with a heavy accented ‘r’s and the lower ‘t’s. Bereft of human company besides the customers I yelled at, and those who yelled back to me, I approached her and tried to ask her out.
‘I am a whore, my friend,’ she told me. ‘You are a sincere hard working boy. I see you every day, from across the street, where I turn tricks’, she further added.
‘You deserve better than a whore.’ She finished and hopped into the next car that signaled her.
And it took society’s one of the most debased people to show me the light that day, and she was right, ‘I deserve better.’