Six a.m. I throw up in the toilet for twenty minutes. Then I go back to sleep.

Eight a.m. Go to the bathroom. Look in the mirror. Now I know how the Elephant Man must’ve felt, waking up his whole life to the gross realization that not matter how bad you want to feel good, your very reflection is going to toss it all right back at you. Like a cream pie with some grinning circus clown’s cum all over it.

I hop the Metro with a picture of Genesis on the side. The bus is filled with Mexicans. Destination: Beverly Hills. Land of palm trees and sports cars, houses with white pillars and omnipotent driveways. Objective: to work all day for a woman named ma’am – a woman who hasn’t seen the sun rise since she dropped out of high school. After eating her yogurt and drinking her morning laté, she’ll take a walk down Wilshire where the shops resemble the ones on Fifth Avenue. Then she’ll look in the windows to see what’s in style and if she’s in style and how much style will cost her if she isn’t. When her husband gets home, she’ll change (again) and then they’ll go to that fancy, upscale restaurant where the food tastes like road kill – just for a cocktail and just so that they can say they were there and so that people can see that they were.

I work at a photo shop called The Photo Shop. I took the job because I like pictures. Other people’s pictures. Every so often we get a picture of a sunrise or something meaningful, but most of the time it’s a picture of a college freshman holding up a beer bottle. Or some guy’s cock.

I pass a raggedy homeless man dressed in a filthy black trenchcoat, talking on a cell phone. Old Chinese man with one arm is opening two rusty metal gates to his shop. Big letters LIQUOR in the window. I’m watching him struggle with the Masterlock when a transvestite wearing blue lipstick and platform shoes shoves into me and stands behind the Chinese guy, waiting for the gates to open. I look at the transvestite’s back and it’s covered with purple lesions along with a dark green tat that reads I SURVIVE.

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