Dating : When Poverty is the Only Adult Life You’ve Known

At the time, my delivery earnings were my entire savings until the first of each month. After that, they always vanished. All the nickels, dimes and dollars swept away into the river. In my early thirties, I knocked on doors like salesmen when I arrived to East L.A. I tried to break in, but it devoured me. It ate my cash like execution meals before the switch was thrown.

First, I was a catering driver with a failing kitchen. They paid me in sunsets. I drove the PCH with coffee and steaming platters of scrambled eggs. On weekdays, I’d load up the company van, punch the accelerator and make it to Malibu. I laid out the breakfast while crew members stirred their coffee and developed shot sequences until nightfall.

While they worked, I used my laptop to scroll for job leads so I could buy groceries for the weekend. Sometimes, the models spoke to me. I didn’t have the nerve or credit line to get their numbers in return. When the shooting wrapped, I packed up the lunch remains and secured them back it inside the hollow van. My objective was to return to Mid-City, to make it back in time without falling asleep at the wheel.

Driving back to base, I sipped coffee and listened to country music from the radio within the dashboard. I nibbled on leftovers as my chest tightened. I watched the sun fall to the ocean and heard the dishes rattling like they were attempting a prison break.

That summer, my therapist called to ask me if I knew what I wanted to gain from life. She had been referred to me by the school in Texas. It was the same one that laid me off before I hit the road for California.