Life As I Play It

The tenderloin area of San Francisco is not a nice place to be, and for this, you don’t often hear about it unless you’ve experienced it, or you’re being warned to stay away.

It’s not a large area; a triangular-shaped piece of land that runs behind Market street to Leavenworth. It’s the dirtiest type of ghetto; not even the grime is fresh. An inescapable, sour odor is present throughout the entire district, like week-old garbage. Last week’s newspaper tumbles aimlessly down the road, caught in a California breeze. A man who has been homeless long enough to resemble the building he lays against slowly reaches for the paper, buying himself a few minutes of amusement. I feel no pity for him; I’ve been hustling here for a long time. If you’re homeless and starving in the City, then you’re doing something wrong.

Or you don’t want to get caught by the wrong people.

Adult stores are adjacent to dingy, pay-by-the-hour motels. I always imagined this made it easy for the prostitutes to make money. People would leave the adult stores looking for a quick fix, the prostitutes who looked the best and charged the least didn’t have far to take their customers. Yet, four blocks up the road, there’s a large, gated park that comes to life with the sounds of excited, happy children. If you focus on the children, you’re won’t see the crack-addicted single mothers who come here looking for a fix. Nor will you see the toothless homeless men who act as middlemen for the crackheads.

But if you focus on the children, and the four-story Virgin Megastore down the block at the corner of Powell Street, this can almost be a happy place. If you know everyone, you’re fine. I used to come up here once a month, pick up my monthly allotment of food stamps, and unload them just as quickly. Sometimes I would enforce for the homeless, collecting outstanding debts.

Ironically, across the street from an adult bookstore and equally adult movie theater is a police station. It may as well not even be there.

It’s morning, thirteen years ago. I’m staying at one of these hourly motels, courtesy of the City. I attend school once a week and work nights as a security officer at the local Carl’s Jr. (referred to as Hardees in the Midwest). This morning, I’ve been up all night; as the sun rises, I want is sleep. At this point, my parents and I are not on speaking terms.

These are Busterwolf’s humble beginnings; I’m untested, inexperienced, and only my associations with the right people keep the killers from coming after me. Although Daune, my friend and mentor, often tells me; I will be tested soon enough. At this point, I’m foolish enough to look forward to it.

I enter the Aranda motel. The Iranian immigrant who knows just enough English to collect rent nods, grunting as I pass the bulletproof glass he lives behind. This place has been robbed four times and three people have been killed in the very spot he stands. I don’t blame him, but secretly, I wonder if the glass is enough.

The elevator is one of those ancient ones, where you have to jerk open the heavy iron accordion-gate and then watch your surroundings as the elevator struggles to raise you, shaking and shuddering every step of the way. I take the stairs. It’s only three floors. I need the cardio.

I use the common bathroom at the end of the hall (these rooms don’t have bathrooms) and then ignore my loud, angry neighbors as I make my way to my room. Sleep comes quickly, but two hours later, I’m roused just as suddenly.

What happens next, I will never forget.
A girl is screaming. Not the playful, happy screaming that comes from being with ones friends or even the uncomfortable scream that comes only when one is unsure what else to do. No, this is a scream for help, echoing from the depths of her soul, without the slightest hint of playfulness. This girl is screaming for her life.

Instantaneously awake (you learn not to sleep hard in unfamiliar surroundings) I go to the window right of my bed and hoist it up. There is a young girl barreling around the corner, from the right. I remember thinking that she was way too young for me to think she was so pretty. She could’ve been Native American; tan with long black hair that went to about her elbows. She was dressed in tight pink pants, and it was hampering her ability to run. Still, that wasn’t stopping her from trying. She was fading fast; screaming and the too-tight pants were taking their toll. That’s the youngest hooker I’ve ever seen.

A gaudy pink Cadillac that could’ve been stolen from Prince’s lot also barrels audibly around the corner. It cuts her off, tearing up its underside as it plows its way onto the sidewalk and ramming into the dilapidated chain-link fence. A-Pimp-Named-Slickback’s dark side, looking like an extra from a seventies blaxploitation film, angrily gets out of the car even as the girl presses up against the fence, her hands raised with her elbows tucked to her ribs. The scream has become a squeal. I can’t understand what the pimp is saying, but I’m sure it’s about money. I can’t stop watching.

He grabs her by the hair, leaning in close, shaking firmly; he owns her. I can’t hear it, but I can read the body language. Her face is shining, she’s crying so hard. With her face raised to the sun, I finally see how young she is; can’t be older than twelve. What is this guy doing with her?

My arm hurts and I don’t know why. I realize that I’m clenching a fist, squeezing so tightly that my muscles are strained. Fuck this, I’m going down there—

He pulls something from his pocket, something black and reflective. He steps away from her, presses it to her head, and with a deafening boom the entire city can hear, something wet blows out of the back of the girls head, and she falls limp to the ground.

It’s as though I took a punch; I fall back to the floor and land hard, and I know I’m saying ohGodohGodohGod over and over again, but I can’t stop myself. I don’t know what I’m thinking, nor feeling. I’ve never seen anyone murdered before. She’s dead. She was there screaming just a minute ago and now she’s dead, it was a gun, he had a gun and he killed her—

I don’t know how long I sat there. When I returned to the window, she hadn’t moved. I was hoping she would. But she just lay there as if sleeping, feet outstretched onto the sidewalk, palms up,  head listed to the side, the chain link fence now a deep red.

Hours later, the Tenderloin has come to life. People walk past her as though she’s not even there. It’s not the first dead girl they’ve seen. It won’t be the last.

When I compose myself, I’m able to go down and look. I can’t take my eyes from her, and she would’ve been beautiful had she reached adulthood. I wonder if I should’ve done something. Could I have done anything? I thought I could. I know now that I couldn’t have.

I’m sorry.

Daune is the only person I tell this to. He advises me to keep my mouth shut. First rule of the street; mind your own business.

The tenderloin area of San Francisco is not a nice place to be, and for this, you don’t often hear about it unless you’ve experienced it, or you’re being warned to stay away.

Or you don’t want to get caught by the wrong people.

(c) Avery K. Tingle for Modern Magic Enterprises LTD and Nomadic Productions LLC

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San Francisco, California

Fourteen Years Ago

If you catch the last train running to Colma and exit Civic Center, you may find yourself directly in front of a 24-hour Carl’s Jr. You may call it Hardees. I called it home.

There is a waist- high, gray concrete, u-shaped border that surrounds the staircase leading to and from the underground station. You could almost feel the unsettled energy as you stepped onto the red brick pavement between the train station and the restaurant, some fifteen feet to your left. By day, hundreds of tourists pass through. By night, the residents made it a battleground. It was my first.

This night, as always, the restaurant is not so busy. The truly homeless seek reprieve from the streets by hustling up enough to buy a meager burger, hoping they can sleep all night. The security guard, a robust, soulful man named Daune (pronounced Dau-Nay, but you can call him D) Paul Colvin III, usually doesn’t care about the homeless sleeping as long as they don’t stink.

As always, Daune’s post, to the immediate left of the store’s entrance, is surrounded by the usual crowd.

There’s Terry, who would be in his forties now. He was struck by a bus in his youth and lost partial use of his left side. He also had the common sense knocked out of him, you’d think, because it wasn’t uncommon to see him suck the toes of random women–before he took them home. Tall, lanky, black, eternally hilarious and relentlessly loyal, he was the mainstay of the group. His mother insisted he get out of the house each night, and he’d end up here to shoot the breeze. There were worse places to go.

Terry was also the best scrapper I’d ever seen. He could throw that left like it meant nothing. Once, during a sparring session, he knocked me straight to the ground. It was the last time I ever underestimated someone because of a physical disability. Other than myself, Terry was the butt of everyone’s jokes, but he could give it right back.

There was Chad, who, for some reason, I always likened to Guile in the Street Fighter series. Save for the hair, they could’ve been brothers, and Chad could take some monster shots. Come to think of it, when he fought, he very rarely took a step back. He never had a use for kicks, but had supreme use of his fists and no end to the amount of punishment he could take. He was my first real boxing influence.

There was Lee…and Lee, well, Lee was a trip. He was a high school teacher. He was bisexual and thought we all didn’t know (Funny story there). He was black-white, in excellent shape, very easy with the ladies and could shoot his legs to Heaven. He took me as kind of a little brother and sharpened the tae kwon do I already had. He was always smiling.

Christian was a wannabe goth, but he was one of the most decent people I’d ever met. He could only fight, but when he was angry. Then again, when he was angry, I saw him get this eerie, toothy grin that would’ve made the Joker shudder. Half-asian, six feet tall and always dressed in black. Christian didn’t fight as much as he inflicted pain on people.

Emalio, a young hustler who had endured a horrible childhood. He was quiet, shy, and the smallest of us. If you brought harm to him, you had to answer to D. You didn’t want to answer to D.

And me?
I had known the group about four months. I was the rookie, the untested one. I could fight, but these guys were on a whole other level, who happily kicked my ass repeatedly. D would randomly reach out and slap me. Didn’t matter where I was in proximity to him. He always a polite little smack upside the head. When I learned to block, it didn’t make a difference. D was an aikido expert. He taught me well.

So this night, things are a different. It’s Thanksgiving.
This night, we’ve all compiled our money and created one big pot to order a bunch of food. D went out of his way to inform me that my homelessness did not make me exempt. If I wanted to eat, I had to contribute. Luckily, the bang-on-the-change-machine scam had worked well that day, and I had fifteen bucks to my name.

We ordered KFC, Pizza,chinese food from right across the street, BBQ from across town, and enough stuff to where we had to unite two tables. Something for everyone.

Naturally, I was the first to reach for all of the food (slap). D ordered us all to take hands, lower our heads, and pray.
This shocked me; D was muslim, I was Christian, Chad was agnostic, and I wasn’t even sure what some of the others were. I asked D who we were supposed to pray to.
He looks me in my face and says; “Does it matter?”

I remember how good I felt when I heard that. I didn’t understand until I had seen more of the world.
We prayed. We prayed to who we believed in.
And then we ate.

(c) Avery K. Tingle for Modern Magic Enterprises LTD and Nomadic Productions LLC

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I spent a few minutes trying to sort through the madness of my life. I spent about ten minutes warming up, and this is what I came to.

My life is, and always has been, about faith. But I have yet to find the words to accurately convey what it means to me, yet I can provide examples.

If I may elaborate, please?

Faith is falling out of the running for a job—and then interviewing for it that following week.

Faith is living homelessly for more than five years and living to tell about it.

Faith is maintaining your residence and way of life despite a lack of income.

Faith is victory after exhaustion.

This is the most trying time of my life, and I’m not talking about the lesson plan I keep twittering on about. I’m still amazed that my children’s family (on their mother’s side) were the ones who alerted me about my children. Once my staunchest adversaries and now they’re the ones who’re instrumental in me being able to maintain contact with my kids? That is faith.

Still, the questions mount, and these are questions beyond whether or not I can do it; if it was that simple, there’d be no question.

There’s the thorny legal process. My ex-wife abandoned our children, leaving them with her family so she could be with her drug-addicted boyfriend. I don’t have much better on my side; I still left them. But…I’ve gotten myself together, somewhat. I mean, I live alone, I’m self-sufficient, I have a trickling revenue stream even though I’m out of work, and my oldest son seems excited about seeing me again. Will my ability to support them count for anything in a system notorious for awarding custody to the mother regardless of the father’s status?

I’m not just saying that. I’ve seen it firsthand.

What if I have to remain in California in order to keep my kids? This is the only way I’d have to concede the issue. I can’t afford to live in California, much less support two children.

I don’t want to live in California, either. It took me more than a decade to say that (and I would do it for my kids if left with no choice, and I had the means), but there’s nothing for me there. I grew up in San Francisco, and that feels great to say, but Missouri is home, and God willing, I’ll spend the bulk of my years in St. Louis.

Moments like this, when doubt creeps into my mind, I get that feeling at the pit of my stomach, and the comforting thought that I’ve had since I was a child; it’ll all be okay.

Funny thing; it always is.

And so I fight on, working towards the inevitable exhaustion, for the first time unsure as to whether or not I can achieve my goal. I know that I have a gift for pulling things together, and I do not quit.
Faith, like always, is what will turn raw willpower into reality.

So at last I find the words. What is faith?

Faith is the knowledge of knowing that things will work out without knowing exactly how.

Faith is the will to fight on.

The source of my faith is, and always will be, God and His Son, but what you use is entirely up to you.

(c) Avery K. Tingle for Modern Magic Enterprises LTD and Nomadic Productions LLC

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