summer jobs.

After Appalachia, I went back to New Mexico for a few days, then to Kansas with my father. He and I were supposed to drive together from Albuquerque to Wichita on the two-lane semi-truck-ridden US-54 along towering silos and cow-pungent farms. At the Kansas border it becomes “the yellow brick road,” a little joke left over from the days when US highways dominated and interstates were a Futurist fantasy. We used to take this route all the time when I was a kid, detouring once or twice to Dodge City or the world’s largest hand-dug well. This time we were eighty miles east of ABQ near Moriarty when my father’s car broke down, and I walked across steppe-style shrubbery for two miles looking for a cell-phone signal. We waited two hours for a tow truck, eventually got back to the house just long enough to turn the computer on and buy plane tickets online, then headed to the airport, stopping in Old Town for margaritas and a nicely-timed thundershower. The old stucco smelling strongly when the water dripped on to it, my last thoughts brought me back to previous times I had experienced it as I abandoned my homeland once again. Approaching Denver, a storm cell idled over the runway; the pilot flew us in circles around the airport waiting for it to move. We missed our flight to Wichita and were told we had to stay the night in Denver. We got reservations at a dumpy Marriott, but when we arrived, they somehow forgot us so then put us in the fancy Marriott next door for the same price. I swam laps in the hot tub, designed to look like the corner of the pool separated by a little tiled wall.

The next day we flew to Kansas finally and spent three long days of gabbing in the cobwebby “Cross Wind Conference Center” for the family reunion. At previous reunions I’d leave covered in chiggers and starving because of the oppressively bland food. Once I had hardly eaten the entire weekend, and when we finally left and went to a steak house, I ate twelve ounces of beef and completely lost my sense of balance and had to lie across the chairs in the “please wait to be seated” area. This time we played ping-pong a lot, and I also invented a game I liked to call Free Paddle which I played with my niece, nephew and two teenage cousins from Truth or Consequences. The idea is to hit the ping-pong ball with a paddle, but without the paddle touching your hand. Cousin Czesia and I got really good at it, doing a back and forth twice before our paddle stashes ran dry and everyone else in the room had close calls. (See the more exciting June 28, 2006 entry about the last reunion.) Before and after the reunion, we stayed with my Aunt Esther who thinks her washer is constantly saying “BarackObamaBarackObamaBarackObama.”

The money I earned from my church organ assisting disappeared to rent, food and gasoline the moment I stepped off the plane in LA. So instead of writing or arting or whatever I do, I had to find several temporary jobs: For the first one, Alex and I took a class on logic and were paid to grade the teachers. Each evening we’d pull up to a Beverly Hills hotel, abandon my too-beat-up car for the valet, and nod to the doorman confidently as we speedwalked in. We’d seat ourselves at tables covered in scrap paper, tiny pencils and workbooks in a convention room-turned-classroom of faux-students from Craigslist. We had a new teacher every hour and had to grade them each on scales from 1 to 5 for their clarity, class involvement, things like that. Alex and I gave pretty much the same grades to each one, except mine were always a point nicer. Sometimes my indecision would lead me to write “3.5” or “4.5” and then Alex would look over at me and hiss. One student, a forty year-old man in an oversized t-shirt, would raise his hand every time he could find a reason to, even though he understood everything and this class wasn’t real. During the breaks between teachers he would overzealously explain neighborhoods of New York to some girl half his age who was about to start school there. Alex and I would listen to him from afar but not say anything to him or each other. By the last day I was cruising through the workbook with my newfound understanding, figuring out all the answers and not listening to the teachmasters. My head was getting so big, I considered taking the LSAT for weeks after that.

The day after my last logic day I began my first day canvassing for a shelter for homeless teenagers. The first day as a rule is unpaid, an observation day meaning you silently watch an experienced canvasser give “the rap”—a spiel about homelessness that we would have to recite word-for-word at every front door. But I got to observe Cassity Treat, and she didn’t mind if I got a few words of the rap wrong. She was a Mormon girl from Red Bluff, California, the town where Colleen Stan was forced to live in a wooden box under the bed of a married couple for seven years and come out at night to be their sex toy. Cassity and I bonded over this topic on the drive down to an unusually patriotic neighborhood of Long Beach, if patriotic means having a giant flagpole installed in the center of your lawn with the stars and stripes so big you can barely see the house. Cassity canvassed six days a week the whole summer and also waitressed at a bar in a hotel near the Hollywood and Highland mall in the evenings. She wore a wholesome outfit: a dress with a jacket over it. When we approached one house with loud music and guys yelling, she promptly removed her jacket, baring her shoulders and cleavage and tiny waste. A wise tactic: three dudes with beers lined up at the door and each handed her a twenty. They invited us to come back later, and Cassity seemed serious about it until we left them.

Also observing Cassity was a girl whose name tag read “Felicia” although she asked us to call her “Iyah” Upon sitting down next to me on the carride there, she asked if I “really wanted to go through with this.” “Of course,” I said, wondering why else I would commit myself to a full day of observation. Later, after we got to Long Beach, I asked if she has back pain what with all that chest weight she’s carrying, and then we talked about my booty and became friends. Cassity had us alternate observing at each door, the other staying out of view so it wouldn’t seem like we’re swarming the house. Iyah didn’t follow this rule though and would pace back and forth up the driveway while our listening residents got shifty-eyed. When Iyah observed, on several occasions she interrupted Cassity’s rant to sound off on her feelings about homelessness and why it’s an important issue. After these sound offs, when I’d join Cassity at the next door, she’d look frustrated about it as we waited for someone to answer. Eventually Iyah wandered away, texting on her cell phone, and we stopped alternating for a time. When we caught up to her, she said to her phone buddy, “gotta go, my boss is here.”

I was never informed that I needed to pack a sack lunch, so Cassity was nice enough to stop at a nearby Trader Joe’s. I jumped out of her car and promised to be quick, rushing past housewives in their afternoon grocery store lethargy to grab myself a tuna sandwich on pretzel bread. In record time I was outside again, then Cassity called to me from the entrance saying she had lost Iyah in the store. I wondered if Iyah had secretly gotten her phone buddy to pick her up. Fifteen minutes passed by and then Iyah re-emerged with a giant sack of nuts. “Want any?” she asked Cassity as we drove back to the lawns and American flags. Cassity got very few donations that day, the majority of which came from the party dudes. We never did go back to that party, I thought about it as we scaled the 405 in Cassidy's car as the sun set. And I never saw Iyah again.

After that, I was on my own. “Hi, I’m Stephen. I’m with the Los Angeles Homeless Service Coalition. We’re fighting to eradicate homelessness in Los Angeles. Our coalition is a non-profit tax exempt charity formed as a union between Democracy for Change and the Los Angeles Youth Network. ... Did you know 80,000 homeless people sleep on the streets of LA every night? The homeless populations of San Francisco, Chicago and New York combined are only two-thirds the size of the homeless population of LA.” I couldn’t resort to Cassity’s sex appeal tactic; instead, I seemed like a bumbling fool with a memorized speech. I had to come up with a strategy. If I didn’t meet the weekly quota, I’d get $50 for the eight hours of daily psychological ruin: 120 small gates a day with barking dogs waiting behind them, doorbells disturbing dining families, old cranky-voiced men grunting behind their peepholes, doors slamming toward me one after another. I figured out my advantage: older women thought I was cute and could see that I was tired and thirsty, several of them offering to refill my water bottle every day. I had to play this up, reciting the facts about homeless teenagers as though I was one of them, looking into their eyes like I was waiting to be rejected and pushed back out onto the streets. I became everyone’s homeless son that they needed to bring back into their lives. On several occasions they said to me, “This is for you, really. I just want to help you out.”

I met one lady who didn’t want to help the homeless, said that they should go get a job, that she sees them every day on her way to work in Downtown LA and has no sympathy for them. She had just pulled up on her driveway as I stood waiting on the sidewalk. I said 10,000 of the city’s homeless are children and 20% of the homeless are women. “Did you hear that?” she questioned one of three rowdy children. “Go do your homework right now or you’ll end up like them.” And then she gave me five bucks. I met a woman who asked me what my religious beliefs were. When I was finished explaining moral relativism and a Buddhist compassion for everything, she looked like she was about to cry. “What’s wrong?” I looked into her eyes. “Well, I just hope you’ll make it to heaven,” she sniffled. I met an old man who had an inch-deep finger-shaped hole in his bald head. The design of his house was unornamented and fifties-ish. He built it himself. He was in the Korean War. He argued a lot of my statistics but ultimately donated ninety bucks. I met a lady who invited me in to her apartment for pizza. She works as an escrow, and we talked about how lots of houses are boarded up, even in her neighborhood. Her apartment was really messy and had lots of pink princessy plastic toys for her daughter. She told me her car was a junker, but that her son just bought a brand new guzzling truck to impress the ladies, paid for with money he earned working as a restaurant server. At one door I talked to a reverend, and he let me have an orange from his tree that I’d been eying.

I quit canvassing after my fear of trespassing worsened. The day after my last day there, I began another summer job: a test study requiring me to cover my penis in a gel every night for a week. It’s basically an HIVacide for women to prevent from getting the disease during sex. But since men sometimes enter women, they had to check that it wouldn't cause men rashes, which I didn't get. But I did get three hundred dollars. And the lady who managed me was so nice. She’d weigh me and take my height just for fun, and then I’d weigh her and we'd talk about her last boyfriend. The best part was on the last day when I had to fill out a questionnaire. “How appealing did the gel look as it came out of the tube? Very appealing Somewhat appealing Not appealing at all Unsure.” “How did you like the way the gel felt in your hand as you spread it on your penis? A lot Somewhat Not at all Unsure.” “How appealing did it look to have the gel spread all over your penis? Very appealing Somewhat appealing Not appealing at all Unsure.”