Okay, on Mondays, every single week, the truncated street block I live on makes those lucky enought to have secured a parking space, overnight, move for street sweeping. If your butt is not in the driver's seat with the engine growling, by nine a.m., the parking ticket lady--and it is always a woman officer that they send on Mondays--has already whipped out her pad and is writing a sixty dollar fine. No kidding. You've got to stay away, too. If you get back anytime before eleven a.m., she's usually cruising the block, like a shark waiting for minnows. Twice, I pulled up to the curb, my watch alarm informing me it was two minutes before eleven, my brain rejoicing that I was the first car, back, and could actually unload groceries in front of my building, when, pulling up, immediately behind me: ticket master! Luckily, I hadn't shut the motor off. I zoomed away, barely avoiding a speeding ticket, and drove exactly three minutes into the smog. When I got back, there was only one, compact- sized parking space left on the entire street. (It's like someone pulls the plug in a bathtub and all the water rushes into the drain hole. Cars just fill up and get sucked into the empty spots.) Somehow, by holding my breath and doing the back and forth side step with my truck, I barely managed. But, I was safe, at least long enough to unload two grocery bags and my backpack.
I know that I should be thankful to the Universe that I can still afford two bags of groceries for the week. I AM grateful. Seriously so. I am also grateful that my truck is in enough working order that I can make it to my choice of grocery stores. My budget is something that they teach you to manage in High School...so small that there is room exactly for the same items each week. Since my tiny "loft" is little more than a glorified 1920's rennovated hotel room with a bathroom, there is no kitchen and no real cooking challenges. Lots of take- out, in the old days of employment. Not so much these days. So, fruits, salads, soups, nuts and cereal, yogurt and the Glorified CoffeeMaker are my mainstays. Which, in the long run, can be its own blessing. Cleaner diet, better health, right? When one doesn't have health insurance any longer, these things begin to count in altogether new ways. So two bags of mostly fruits and veggies, plus coffee and creamer and breakfast cereal and soymilk and I'm set for the week. (Oh, of course toiletries...lest we forget those expenses...)
However, three Mondays a month, I take breakfast on the road, before going grocery shopping or doing any other errands between nine and eleven. But one Monday a month, I actually either have breakfast with friends or take myself to a sit- down -diner . I order pancakes or eggs and pretend I'm a grown up and this is the routine of a person with a job to attend, later on. (Who I am kidding, actually, is only myself. But, hey, it's Hollywood. Lots of single people at diners, hiding out in the want ads and entertainment columns. ) I've begun to enjoy a quiet breakfast by myself, those solitary Mondays. I admit, if I don't have a paper to read, I have a small, black notebook, filled with the latest writing I'm mapping out, or the occasional sketch for a new painting. Waiters seem to accept that I'm legit. (Or maybe they are all laughing into my omelette in the back...hmm....)But on the other three Mondays, it's breakfast ala Nissan. It's far from nutritious, but surprisingly delicious, sometimes...even if it is a bit like juggling practice.
My only complaint, really, is that lately, when I pull into the grocery store parking lot, (or any parking lot, for that matter) to scarf my fastfood and coffee I've been accosted. Even in the parking lot of the drive thrus ! This came as more than a minor shock the first few times: I mean, there I am, blurry eyed, uncaffeinated, in hoody and jeans, hair spiky and no make up, dark glasses firmly in place as I focus on the mac-something breakfast fastfood in my hand --suddenly-- there's a knock on the window, just two inches from my face! The first time, I dropped a country-fried burrito full of hot sauce onto my crotch and was so busy trying to wipe it up before it soaked through my levis, that I ignored the repeated banging on the window. The Homeless guy gave me the finger, shrugged, and took off. The second time, the window was wisely down, and I was sipping coffee from a papercup.
Believe me, they do not want breakfast...at least not my breakfast. "Hey, you got a dollar?" was the first request. This from a neatly pressed teen that was around sixteen and had perfect teeth. Looked like the kids I used to counsel at the Foster Care Agency. "Sorry, " I half lie, "I just spent it on coffee." He accepts it, gives me a grimace that is half a threat and half snide comment on my economic status, and moves on to a car parked in the next aisle of the lot--another single woman--struggling with her keys. I watch as he works the lot for over half an hour. Usually avoiding all the males and cars with kids. Then, finishing my coffee, I get out and do my grocery shopping. I'm not hungry anymore. The next week, it's a middle-aged man, grizzled looking, pushing two--two--full-loaded carts he has pinched from Trader Joe's. The nearest TJs is about two miles away, so, he's had these babies for a while. I have my keys already in the ignition but he gets me before I can set down the coffee on the dash. " Hey Lady, can you buy me breakfast? I see you got yours--" Yeah. I do. And all my "spare cash" has been sunk into it on that particular morning. I begin to explain. Before I can get a sentence out of my white, liberal mouth, he's already moving to the next car, across the lot of Burger King. He doesn't want my story and he knows I probably don't want his. These are desperate times.
I feel my face burning . I feel like crying. I only want a quiet breakfast; killing time before I get to go back to my monkish life. A forced exile to public parking lots--places that used to feel somewhat safe, if one minded one's business--if one kept inside one's own car. No place else outside that one could sit in peace and munch a breakfast roll. Hot tears to salt my hash browns? Why? Menopause? No. Embarrassment? Maybe. Guilt. Of course.
I've been brought up to give to the poor--since Catholic School. I've always done just that. Especially the less fortunate or merely unemployed around me. At work. In school. In the neighborhood. Always doling out money in drips and not so small drabs,when I had it. Even lending co-workers a couple hundred dollars, if they fell on emergency times-- never asking and usually not getting--it back. I shouldn't feel guilty,not now, when I'm barely scraping by. But I do. Sitting in my twenty- year- old- truck, scarfing cheap, poisonous fastfood that tastes decidedly delicious, about to sink fifty dollars into two bags of groceries and toiletries, on the edge of the Miracle Mile; knowing, after these morning forays with the Homeless, the Fakers, the Manipulators, the Crazies, the Truly Needy, the Buddahs, I will fight to find a parking place on my own street in a couple hours, and be able to return to my own space. At least for now.
I am speakless....
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