meeting the neighbors.

Since the first of the year I've resided in my current apartment near the intersection of Beverly and Normandie officially in the Wilshire Center district of LA, although it's ambiguous enough an area to sometimes be labeled East Hollywood, Silverlake, Westlake, Little Armenia or Koreatown, the last of which was what we called it for the longest time, even though it's the furthest away of those options. Since I moved in in January, eight other people have lived here at one time or another. The apartment is conveniently close to just about everywhere in LA-proper worth going to (in my opinion), only ten minutes or less from Silverlake, Echo Park, Downtown, Los Feliz, Hollywood, Skid Row and Museum Row. The neighborhood is mostly Spanish-speaking, although it's "gentrifying" poco a poco. When I was hunting for subletters, every girl who looked at the apartment said they didn't feel safe walking on the street. I don't see what the problem is, although sometimes it smells like rotting flesh out there—we think there was something dead in a piece of furniture. The street is often lined with used cabinets, tvs and mattresses, usually in usable condition, sometimes enough that we take it in. It also sometimes smells like liquorice outside, since the driveway is lined with five square yards of anise or fennel, right next to a useless dirt alley of nothing. I personally don't think it's ever going to become "nice" in this area—not in the next decade—and I prefer that it doesn't.

In the past two weeks I've met two neighbors from outside our building. The first is Melody, who lives just down our street a ways, who originally met Tod when he was drunkenly waltzing down Vermont Avenue with a huge bottle of bourbon and then collapsed curbside all in her view. The next day he told us he had been walked home by a straight couple, and that he must have given them his number, since he got texted to see if he was alright. A week later there was a rapping at the door, and Alex and I let in this bulbous late-30s woman with a pony tail through a baseball cap carrying a six-pack of Budweiser who soon identified herself as Melody. She sat down and offered us beers, although she later admitted she didn't like beer, and was gladly offered some of Alex's Charles Shaw. She told us how she and her friend spotted Tod as he collapsed on the ground. They came up to help him. Melody told him, "Well, you've had enough to drink," and upon hearing that, Tod nodded and threw the half-filled bottle at the street. Melody told us she was really sad to see all that Wild Turkey go to waste. Her friend that was with her on that fateful night was not gay, although Tod hit on him, and he whined the whole time as he carried Tod home. She said she hung out in our living room for a little bit, which was weird to me, and she spent that whole time trying to get Tod to sit down, but he insisted on standing up.

She said Tod drunkenly told her she looked like a lesbian, which turned out to be true, and then we talked about the L-Word with her. She's lived in this neighborhood her whole life. According to her, although most of LA has changed drastically in her life span, this neighborhood hasn't changed much at all. She said there have been two murders here in the past two months. She said there need to be nicer restaurants if it's really going to gentrify around here. She has two kids and lives in the house she grew up in with her sister. She told us about her ex-husband, a prison guard whom she met while she was incarcerated, and they married soon after she was released. Her ex-husband turned out to be gay, too, which she figured out one day coming across a closet full of costumes, nudie mags and dildos. And if that wasn't enough confirmation, she set up a motion-sensitive spy camera in the living room and caught him with lots of various men. She told him she'd show his jail guard coworkers the tape to embarrass him if he didn't get as far away from her and her children as possible. What I don't understand from the story is: Weren't the dildos enough proof? And second, why was she so harsh on him for being gay when she was, too? She invited us to come over and have another drink with her sometime soon.

Last night I was sitting at the computer around two in the morning when I heard tires skid, then cars crash, then another, then another. Then, as I was running to the balcony to see, I heard one of them trying to restart its engine, and then finally doing so, but not sounding so good. And when I finally got to my balcony's edge, I saw an old 70s-style car turning onto a side street in a hurry, while a man on foot chased after it. I went down to investigate as firetrucks arrived. Already gathered and watching were a young white woman, a tall middle-aged black man and a Hispanic lady of the same age, his wife. They all knew each other and live in the building back-to-back with my building. The white lady went back to bed, and I spoke to the Hispanic lady while her husband was investigating more in depth. Her name is Angelica and has lived most of her life in LA, although the first five years were in El Salvador. She and her family have been in this neighborhood for seven years and have bore witness to the slow gentrification process taking place. She and her husband made a point to meet everyone living on their street, although it took a while. She said a month ago there was a man shot and killed at one in the afternoon on the corner of Beverly and Normandie, and a local vigilante group was responsible for the killing. I said I sometimes think I hear gunfire but am probably paranoid. She said, "if you think it is, it probably is." She also seemed a bit jealous that I've felt two earthquakes in the past two months, which I blame on the way my room hangs off the end of our building over the parking lot, supported on tenuous beams that will probably snap and bring me to my doom. The guy driving that hot old car that caused the crashes, he must have been really drunk. First he hit a parked car, then a moving pick-up truck, but hard enough that whoever was in it had to be put on a stretcher with a neck-brace.

Speaking of car accidents, the tunnel pile-up inferno thirty miles north of here on I-5 has given me an excuse to avoid class tomorrow, although I could probably find a way there if I was desperate. It doesn't surprise me at all that thirty big rigs collided in that mountain pass, considering how I play roulette with death every day on the way up there as those trucks completely disregard all us vehicular shorties. What does surprise me is that the news coverage doesn't mention the nasty downpour that happened on Friday night, the likes of which haven't happened out here since February. I can't help but be delighted that the ensuing traffic chaos might draw attention to the nonsense of having twenty-two wheelers on the same turf as private passenger vehicles. In Albuquerque growing up, it was commonplace in the evening news to hear, "family killed when a semi ran them off the road." Why can't we put all the goods back on train tracks?