Read Online The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott - Free Book Online
Authors: Stephen Elliott
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thing in the world like East LA.”
We arrived with no money, our clothes torn and caked in mud. It had taken less than a week but we hadn’t left with much. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of trucks in the stop near the interchange on the edge of downtown. Men stood in open trailers on piles of carpets, the air wavy with gasoline and radio bustle. They hoisted barbells next to their trucks and blew smoke from the windows. Nearby we found skid row where the homeless slept against the buildings or lined up for the soup kitchen. There was vomit all over the sidewalks. The women looked as though they would snap if you touched them. The buildings were boarded and abandoned or had sheets of metal pulled down their fronts. It was like a glimpse of our future. The homeless we knew in Chicago were like us, just kids with bad parents waiting for their situations to change. But near the Los Angeles Mission there were thousands of homeless people who were older and crazy and deathlike. They seemed to make up the entire city.
We left Los Angeles, hitchhiking north with a German tourist to Las Vegas where we were arrested. A couple days later I was sent back on a Trailways bus. The whole trip took eight days. Justin was let out of the juvenile hall two weeks after I was and when he got to Chicago he was taken into custody on an outstanding warrant for home invasion. His parents refused to pick him up and he was made a ward of the court. Two months later the state took custody of me as well.
Justin didn’t tell me what had happened until eight years later, at a party in the apartment where I was living with new friends I had met in college. My college friends didn’t like Justin; they thought he was a mooch. That night in Los Angeles eight years earlier, we had returned to the truck stop. A driver let us into his cab and we smoked hash with him. I remember how dark and shiny the driver’s skin was, red and yellow sores weeping on his cheek. Or maybe my memory has altered his appearance so I see him with the swollen face of a demon. He made some calls over the radio, checking to see if any drivers wanted to take in a couple of young hikers. Of course, no one responded, and he had other plans. While I slept behind the seats he molested Justin and in the morning he stole our things, which was really just some poetry and a couple of shirts.
I was telling my favorite story, the one about hitchhiking to California with my best friend, and Justin interrupted me and said, “Steve, I was molested.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked. “Why didn’t you scream?”
I meet a woman in Culver City. She’s short and curvy with thick, bleached hair and lives in a complex at the intersection of two six-lane roads. The cars speed past like on a highway. I don’t see how anybody could ever get across. Outside her apartment are lots filled with half-constructed buildings but nobody’s working on them. Los Angeles is a place where things take a long time to happen.
It’s eleven in the morning and before anything she wants to take her dog for a walk. There are no pedestrians on the bright white sidewalks and her dog takes a crap on the unfinished driveway in front of her neighbor’s garage. She looks around, gripping a fistful of plastic bags.
“I’m not picking that up,” she says.
I drive with her and her boyfriend through the hills of the 405, past the Getty, into the Valley. Everything is hot and flat, the grass is brown and weeds sprout from the walk. We stop in a 7-Eleven next to a gas station and load up on Red Vines and bottled water before turning into a nondescript alley and parking behind a low, windowless building with a thick iron door.
This used to be public storage. The entry is lit with low-wattage fluorescent bulbs. A woman sits at an old computer playing solitaire without acknowledging us. The house madam sits on a black couch near the entrance and we talk for a while before the four of us head into the
We arrived with no money, our clothes torn and caked in mud. It had taken less than a week but we hadn’t left with much. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of trucks in the stop near the interchange on the edge of downtown. Men stood in open trailers on piles of carpets, the air wavy with gasoline and radio bustle. They hoisted barbells next to their trucks and blew smoke from the windows. Nearby we found skid row where the homeless slept against the buildings or lined up for the soup kitchen. There was vomit all over the sidewalks. The women looked as though they would snap if you touched them. The buildings were boarded and abandoned or had sheets of metal pulled down their fronts. It was like a glimpse of our future. The homeless we knew in Chicago were like us, just kids with bad parents waiting for their situations to change. But near the Los Angeles Mission there were thousands of homeless people who were older and crazy and deathlike. They seemed to make up the entire city.
We left Los Angeles, hitchhiking north with a German tourist to Las Vegas where we were arrested. A couple days later I was sent back on a Trailways bus. The whole trip took eight days. Justin was let out of the juvenile hall two weeks after I was and when he got to Chicago he was taken into custody on an outstanding warrant for home invasion. His parents refused to pick him up and he was made a ward of the court. Two months later the state took custody of me as well.
Justin didn’t tell me what had happened until eight years later, at a party in the apartment where I was living with new friends I had met in college. My college friends didn’t like Justin; they thought he was a mooch. That night in Los Angeles eight years earlier, we had returned to the truck stop. A driver let us into his cab and we smoked hash with him. I remember how dark and shiny the driver’s skin was, red and yellow sores weeping on his cheek. Or maybe my memory has altered his appearance so I see him with the swollen face of a demon. He made some calls over the radio, checking to see if any drivers wanted to take in a couple of young hikers. Of course, no one responded, and he had other plans. While I slept behind the seats he molested Justin and in the morning he stole our things, which was really just some poetry and a couple of shirts.
I was telling my favorite story, the one about hitchhiking to California with my best friend, and Justin interrupted me and said, “Steve, I was molested.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked. “Why didn’t you scream?”
I meet a woman in Culver City. She’s short and curvy with thick, bleached hair and lives in a complex at the intersection of two six-lane roads. The cars speed past like on a highway. I don’t see how anybody could ever get across. Outside her apartment are lots filled with half-constructed buildings but nobody’s working on them. Los Angeles is a place where things take a long time to happen.
It’s eleven in the morning and before anything she wants to take her dog for a walk. There are no pedestrians on the bright white sidewalks and her dog takes a crap on the unfinished driveway in front of her neighbor’s garage. She looks around, gripping a fistful of plastic bags.
“I’m not picking that up,” she says.
I drive with her and her boyfriend through the hills of the 405, past the Getty, into the Valley. Everything is hot and flat, the grass is brown and weeds sprout from the walk. We stop in a 7-Eleven next to a gas station and load up on Red Vines and bottled water before turning into a nondescript alley and parking behind a low, windowless building with a thick iron door.
This used to be public storage. The entry is lit with low-wattage fluorescent bulbs. A woman sits at an old computer playing solitaire without acknowledging us. The house madam sits on a black couch near the entrance and we talk for a while before the four of us head into the
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