Sore Thumb

That evening, all the streetlamps were wearing halos. Sirens bleated in the cooling air, as the fumes of the city were drawn upwards by incoming coastal breezes. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to walking the dog that night, because it was a restless dusk and also because earlier that day my neighbor from across the alley, Hector, had reminded me that my white-ness made me stick out like a sore thumb. He wasn’t bullshitting me-- he told me straight up, yo. Tatted up and crucifixed, Hector had been to prison. He knew what was what.

I knew what was what as well, it would’ve been hard not to know how badly I stuck out amongst the other residents of Gardenia Street, made up of barely-above poverty line Cambodians, African-Americans, and Mexicans. Yet when he said it, it had made it real—I had been lying low, flying under the radar, but now I had been singled out and made vulnerable. However, Hector was not the type to feel vunerable. He had outlined a plan in which we both got paintball guns and shot at the crackheads from our windows. My thoughts on the subject involved me donning a Kevlar body suit, motorcycle helmet, and a metal pipe in order to really lay the hurt on, but his idea seemed more practical.

Hector had told me to be helpful-- he was an earnest guy, and I liked him. He knew a lot about what went on in the alley. Apparently some crackheads had been smoking rock outside our apartment windows a few nights ago. That wasn’t too surprising, as the alley itself was decorated with abandoned mattresses and derelict couches, liberally colored with spray paint, with weeds and mosquito-larvae spawning pools thrown in for feng-shui. Virtually invisible from any street, it ended abruptly outside my apartment, halfway down the block, and was unlit, so the cops never rolled through. It was a junkie’s dream home, minus all the crack.

All this flickered in the back of my mind while Stella, my six month old boxer, gazed at me with desperately pleading eyes, meaning that she was due evacuate her bowels any second now, making some sort of action on my part unavoidable. I briefly considered how many drug deals I had accidentally witnessed, how many stolen stereos I had seen, out there on the street where there was one long parade of cars with their emergency lights on. The sideways glances I always received from the rest of the street residents unnerved me—were they sizing me up for a later mugging or simply trying to determine if I was an undercover cop or a narc? I understood that I wasn’t welcome here, I had broken the code, was living outside my designated area. Not that it wasn’t a family neighborhood, far from it, children played everywhere in the evening, an impromptu soccer game on the narrow sidewalk where a broken recliner and a discarded car seat formed the goal, and the broken glass that sprung up like flowers were the stationary defenders, to be avoided at all costs.

As much as I would’ve loved to stay indoors, relatively safe, there were other factors to be considered, and I found myself walking the dog out to the sidewalk so I did not have to clean up shit and piss from my floor that night.

I decided against bringing anything except my keys and a steak knife—just the essentials. This was it: I was ready to face my neighborhood, ready to walk my dog. Then, as I was heading out of the complex, over the dirty terra cotta tiles, I happened to glance at my neighbor and his friend relaxing in their den, the open door filling in for an air conditioner. They are a hardworking Mexican family, just like everybody else in the building-- overworked, poor, and certainly distrustful of me (until I got a dog, of course). It was a completely normal scene, except that my neighbor and his friend were both dressed as birthday clowns, full makeup, wigs, and all. Stella’s ears perked, and from the street, a car with its emergency blinkers on was bumping what seemed to be a Spanish version of Avril Lavigne’s hit single from six years back, “Complicated” while a shady character quickly loaded three duffle bags into a dying hatchback.

It wasn’t a question of fitting in here. It wasn’t even about being safe, or unnoticeable. My presence here was strange, but it didn’t matter one goddamned bit to this street. I was only slightly more noticeable than the rusting bicycle frame I was standing next to, just a walking curiosity that broke up the visual monotony. This is just how it is, how it was, and no amount of Kevlar bodysuits or paintball guns was going to change it. With nothing else to do, I laughed quietly and waited for the dog to take a dump.