An Anonymous Short Story

My friend Cory sees the poopers.
My other friend Alicia seeks the naked dudes.
I see the criers.

I moved to LA on my way to San Diego. I was coming from college in Wyoming – going to graduate school in San Diego, and on the way there I stopped and lived in Los Angeles for two months. My friend Cory had assured me that everything would be cool staying with him. My friend Cory was full of shit. He hadn’t found a place to live by the time I got to town, and we ended up crashing at his friend Alicia’s apartment.

Moving to LA, poor LA mind you, after a childhood in rural Oregon and then college at a small liberal arts school in Wyoming was like one big white guy moment after another. My driving was dopey white guy. My walk from the parking lot to the grocery store was amazingly white guy. It was like ill-fitting Dockers would rain from the sky. I mean, it was like there was elevator music following me at all times – that, or a tuba and a drum machine.  And my attempts to order food down the street at the Mexican restaurant surely would have won the white guy Oscar.

Alicia was Cory’s best friend from Phoenix – they had grown up together. We all lived together in an apartment off of La Brea. Alicia was a trip. She was a really put together lady in terms of hair and clothes, but I’m pretty sure that she had been living on a diet of chardonnay and over the counter allergy medication for several years. Happily.

The house I grew up in was one of those big Oregon ramblers – kind of Victorian but with a stark prairie feel.  Sometimes when I see pictures of houses on the Texas plains, it reminds me of our house; a front yard with no sidewalk, a big flat spare porch sitting in front of a big square box. Some fearful children playing in the dirt. We had all of the little rooms and closets designated for this or that – sewing room; upstairs cellar, downstairs cellar, basement, furnace room, laundry room, woodshop. Lots of rooms to get lost in. Lots of rooms to go hide in.

In LA, we had Alicia’s apartment. Alicia slept on her couch because one night she heard someone’s cell phone go off right outside her bedroom window. Freaked her out. She wouldn’t open the windows for nothing – and she was one of those rare and disgusting creatures that still smoked in her own home. Cory would mostly sleep over at his girlfriend’s house, and I would sleep in Alicia’s bed. On the off chance she needed the bed, or if Cory needed to sleep over, I had a twin mattress I would throw on the floor or in another room.

The bedrooms in my family home were all upstairs and each off of a too-narrow hallway. Walking up the stairs was an infrequent affair for anyone but my mother – we typically just went up there when it was time to go to bed. My father didn’t think it was good to hang out in one’s bedroom. Now that I’m older I can see how weird that was, but at the time I thought it was just another one of his opportunities to be an asshole. Like not letting us drink soda or put our elbows on the table. I think our rooms represented something to him about control. Like we were going to have some freedom in our rooms that he couldn’t take away.

One afternoon the three of us we’re running down the block to get some Mexican food. It wasn’t even 4 blocks but of course we drove. Walking in our neighborhood – walking in LA- was just too unpleasant and fraught with peril. I was in the passenger seat and Alicia was driving, Cory was sitting in the back. When he yelled, it had a tinge of true horror. “Jesus Christ, that guy is taking a shit!” I turned to look but I couldn’t see where he was talking about. Upon reflection, I don’t know why I chased the image at all. It was pretty clear from the small amount of walking that I did that people would openly defecate on the sidewalks and around corners. It’s something that really tells you “Hey, I’m in LA”. Some people would say the LA experience is spotting Shaq at a deli or Andy Griffith at a drug store, but it’s really about seeing someone so desperate and so resentful that they’ve taken to pooping in the street.

We later realized that that was the 2nd person Cory had seen doing that – he had a guy in his eyeline at the observatory park that had done the same thing. Just dropped trow and squatted down amongst the squirrels and grass and garbage. Cory said he was surprised that the guy didn’t wave and ask for a paper; that’s how nonchalant he was. Alicia said that so far she had seen at least five different guys in some serious state of undress, and that there was some kind of connection or pattern. Cory saw the poopers, she said, and she saw the naked people. “Every time we’ve been together in some duo or combination, one of us had seen something that the other has not.”
“It’s like we have a gravity or a super power that reveals to us and only us the poopers and the nakeds of the world!”
“Wait, what does Doug see?”

My dad had strict rules for where we could be in the house – basically we needed to be where he knew where we were. An unaccounted for child led to an intensity and rage that we all learned to avoid from an early age. We had a way of communicating with each other and our parents that always included some kind of account of our whereabouts and an account of ourselves. Thinking back on it, it got pretty ridiculous.
“Tammy, I’m going to the kitchen to bring a glass of water back to the TV room because I haven’t had a glass of water since recess and it’s important to drink plenty of water.” That was when I was 8. And, I might add, admitting that I hadn’t had water since recess was a daring thing to do, since it meant I was including information that could be used to prove a default in my choices or my character.

“What does Doug see?”
I had recently gotten a bullshit job at the collection office of a Burbank hospital. That meant I had to take the 101 freeway every morning, which also meant that I questioned my reason for living every day between 7:40 and 8:30 am. Just that morning I had turned to face the car next to me stopped in traffic to see a woman weeping – unmistakably. Her shoulders shook and she had her face dropped down.

I had seen another woman crying at the rest area when had I stopped on my way from Wyoming to LA.

Several years ago I accidentally wandered into the girls bathroom at my high school and came face to face with Jennifer Hanes crying at one of the sinks. 

One night, after way too many days of chardonnay and allergy meds, Alicia accidentally forgot that she was too afraid to sleep in her own bed, and had appeared at my side tears streaming down her face, talking about the boss she was sleeping with.

When I worked at the grocery store in my hometown, I had turned a corner to continue facing items on the baby food aisle to find a woman standing there, staring at the diapers, and crying.

And, of course, week after week, no matter how my father had set things up otherwise, I stumbled upon my mother crying in some corner of the house.

I kept my super power to myself.
I always have. A few years ago I started to think it was penance – for everytime I saw my mother cry and said nothing; did nothing. My inaction is forgivable, I was a kid in constant terror of my father, and never felt any ability to do anything but construct my life in a way to avoid his rages – his beatings. But what isn’t forgivable is the callousness I let grow there. I could have been brave enough to feel something for my mother; to understand that she was in the same boat I was; and most importantly, to signal to her that I would never do that to another person – to another woman. But instead I would stumble out of whichever place I found her crying. Pretending I didn’t see her. Frightened by the fact that I had been some place where I didn’t belong. Angry that she could get me in trouble.

But now, when my super power – my punishment – kicks in, I do things differently.

I find the woman in the diaper aisle a coupon.
I ask Jennifer Hanes what’s wrong.
I offer the woman at the rest area some help.
And for the woman on that LA freeway, I don’t turn away. Instead I say “I see you. I see you and I care.”