rex

Yesterday i made a friend. We met as i was walking down pacific, having just embarrassed myself by becoming attached to a bench via my oversize multicoloured cardigan while also trying to lose a strange ginger boy who may or may not have been following me.

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I walked past a shop, and crouched by the window was a girl with a huge rucksack and interesting clothes. Her cardboard sign said something along the lines of 'spread the love' and she looked about my age. For some reason i made a beeline for her and thrust five bucks into her hand. I asked her what was going on and she didn't really give a straight answer so i opened my bag and took two cigarettes out. We smoked. We immediately got on well. She described herself as a 'street kid;' her wide set blue eyes and laid back smile momentarily selling me the idea that being a street kid could be fun. Momentarily. I could tell that she wasn't quite there (and later learned that she wasn't, for a number of reasons). We walked to SubRosa, the local activist centre and chatted over dollar coffee and looked at a couple of zines. Rex grew up in New York city. She got kicked out of school and spent a little while in a very small Christian reform school. Her and her boyfriend had slept rough at some point. She told me a story about how they once got caught with a few wraps of heroin and sent to jail for the night. 'Have you tried dope?' She whispers to me while packing a bowl with the remains of some spliff she found. 'No' I answer. 'Good,' she says. I watch her fill her pipe with weed and offer it liberally to a couple of skinheads eating bananas and realise that by dope she meant smack. She mishears my question and answers that she first started taking heroin at 12 or 14. I ask her why she takes it and she says 'because it makes me so happy.' I ask her how often she takes it and she replies 'whenever i can.'

This bizarre, lost girl had hitchhiked all the way from New York to California. I wonder now, what was the rush to get to cali because it had only taken her three weeks and now all she was doing was hopping from town to town meeting other 'street kids.' I could tell by her somewhat healthy appearance that she couldn't have (yet) been completely consumed by the drugs, and her ability to travel alone with no money proved some sort of coherence. She'd succeeded to run away from whatever she was running away from. I couldn't however, tell if any of this was true but instinct told me that most of it must have been because she never said anything in a way that wanted a reaction from me. She spent the five dollars i gave her on cigarettes for both of us.

Somewhere along the way she'd met a guy who claimed to be an NBA player. He'd given her a ride and as much oxycodone www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxycodone as she could take. As they drove along he'd started vomiting onto himself, dehydrated from all the opiates. Before multitasking his driving and his purging, he'd promised Rex a job with 'plants' at his place, with a roof and 10k salary.

We walked to the beach. Rex wanted beer. We passed a couple of street kids and chatted to them. There was a girl making a mermaid's purse bracelet, and a guy holding an acoustic guitar. The guy looked as if he was playing a game of 'lets be homeless' because he was really clean and upright. The girl looked similar, except her shoes were missing, revealing muddy toes.

Rex and i sat by the boardwalk in the golden sand, drinking beer and talking. I told her about my home in London, and my university in Brighton. I told her anecdotes about my friends and about my year as a vegan. I told her about my far away parents and asked her about hers. They'd didn't speak to her anymore and neither did her brother or sister. We did cartwheels and dipped our toes in the pacific ocean, our cheeks and noses reddened by the afternoon sun. We walked along the boardwalk, watching holidaymakers queue for rides and eat overpriced pizza. Rex asked me if i'd tasted deep fried Oreos or funnel cake. Only the latter, i replied. Rex stopped passers by and asked them for change/cigarettes/food. Nobody gave her anything because she is a homeless person and they are on their vacations. Somewhere along the way Rex and i got separated as we walked together. The fat noisy crowd seemed to swallow us up- i got spat out a few yards ahead of her. I looked back and saw her asking a guy for a cigarette, and further back a security guard closing in on them. I slowed my pace and walked alongside Rex and the security guard, who i guessed was escorting her off the boardwalk for begging. I looked down at the empty golden sand and impulsively jumped down to walk along it for a few moments. When i climbed back up, Rex was nowhere to be found.