The other night, returning to Old Van Nuys from a TV wrap party in Hollywood, where my bloodlines accorded me love and respect not often shown to those who don’t have representation, I crossed Laurel Canyon in the cool evening air close to Midnight. I must admit I was flying fast in my Saab, up the uncrowded streets, fueled by Chopin’s mazurkas, the open windows and two pints of Becks.

At Riverside and Laurel Canyon, I stopped at the red light next to the MTA shelter. I recognized a boy, sitting on the bench smoking. He bags my groceries on those sometime occasions when I buy food at Gelsons. He is not really a boy, but rather a slight, blond, blemished man who was waiting at the bus stop, still wearing his black apron and his name tag.

So I pulled up and asked him if he needed a ride.

He had been waiting there, he told me, after a long day, hoping that his ride would pull up and he could snooze the two miles up to Van Owen. He would disembark at that northern terminus, and walk another two miles alongside empty, dark and gang scrawled industrial buildings and dingy bodegas. He probably wouldn’t pass another walking person on the way home.

So late, that even the planes were asleep at Burbank Airport.

He got into my car. And told me that he came down from rainy and small town Oregon because he heard that there were jobs in Los Angeles, or so his sister, now relocated here, told him. He was not an actor, or model, or aspiring financial planner. Just a grocery store clerk with a short, blond haircut and a sweet air of wonderment.

We pulled up to his “residence” and it was not an apartment or house, but a cheap motel. He said, “It’s only $180 a week and I hope I can get a promotion so I can move out. But now it’s all I can afford….” He got out and thanked me and walked into the iron gated, flourescent lit lobby.

I had to pity him, because nobody should come to Los Angeles to make an honest living. I had just come from a gathering where pimp is the hero. Among my family and friends, all the people I admire(d) are slick liars, con men and conniving bullshitters. The ones who are helpless lived by the rules and led an ethical life.

Some people who will tell a story, not because it’s true, but only if it serves their interests. Sometimes the interests serve me as well, and then we can call ourselves a “family”. How nice….

I know I’m not supposed to write these things, or think them, or say them out loud, but anyone who doesn’t have an angle, or a connection, or an ambition to trick someone into buying something, doesn’t belong in L.A. Maybe, like “The Sopranos” the only way to have a supportive family or friends is to buy into a criminal syndicate of thought or enterprise……But those who don’t… walk alone into the lonely night.

As that innocent and undirected boy walked into that motel, I thought to myself, “There goes me….”