Vox Rox #2: Downtown

WORDS OF VOCEPHUS


Now, I’m a pretty regular visitor to the down town area of San Diego, given I usually only make it out there on a weekend night. But one fateful Wednesday I dared venture downtown, expecting things to be dead or mellow at worst. What I encountered that night was something completely the opposite. I went down there with some cohorts of mine, including the WOV's own Raphael The Contradiction, with the intent of doing some night time photography, and to have a few laughs. Right off the bat, when we arrive and meet the two others in our party, two imp-like children approach us from the Planet Hollywood, and ask us “Are you guys drunk?” We were not, and the idea of two small children, no older than ten wandering the streets of downtown unaccompanied by adults, and asking us a question like that---well, something seemed amiss. We asked them where their parents were, and according to them, they were right inside the Planet Hollywood meeting with Christina Agulera. Right off, I believed them to be running a scam; consummate snowball artists, and I wouldn't believe otherwise. I even confronted them about this, and asked if their partents were going to sneak up behind us and mug us. Needless to say, I had my hand on my wallet during the entire encounter. They denied any ill intent, and looked at my entourage and I as if we had just stepped off the bus from Mars. So we leave the children, who continued to play around outside the Planet Hollywood sans parents, to hopefully get on with the evenings festivities.

Okay, all is well from here on out, right? Not so. Before we can get any further, outside of the same Planet Hollywood, a woman approaches us, and begins talking to us. I will try to relate the encounter as best as I remember it.

“Hello y’all, I was wondering if you could help me out,” She wants money. “I’m from out of town, from Texas, and I had an interview at (some hospital) around here.” Oh, she wants directions. No problem. But she goes on...

“Anyway, I’m a cellist, I play the cello, and I was watching a friend of mine perform in Balboa Park.” Huh? Okay, she still wants directions, but to somewhere different.

“So while I was sitting there, I was bitten by a small brown spider, and I ended up in the hospital for three weeks.” Alright, now I don’t know where the story is going at this point. She continues.

“And when I went in, I was a lot heavier, the spider bite almost killed me, and I lost over 100 pounds.” Okay, weight loss testimonial. Great. What do you want?

“So I just got out of the hospital, and I’m trying to get to the Greyhound bus station.” Okay, directions it is after all.

“And I get there, and it turns out I’m exactly nine dollars and twenty five cents short to make the bus back to Texas.” So she did want money. Fantastic. So some of the kids in my group give her some money, I imagine mostly because they were as baffled as I was by the meandering story. I gave her nothing. Mostly because I had no money on me, but even if I had, she would have received nothing from me. Hey, you have to pick your battles...and there would be more to choose from this night.

So now on to the photography, or so we hope. We’re walking along the surprisingly bustling streets of down town, and this guy walks by us repeating ‘doses, doses, doses, doses…’ Oooookay. Don’t get me wrong, I love down town, but I thought the weekends were crazy…at least it’s mostly the club people running around, the real psychos apparently are free to wander the streets during the week. So we do a little rooftop photography from a nearby hotel, and head back down to drop off one of our party who had to leave early. We should have known better, but he was meeting his ride back at the Planet Hollywood, and so that’s where we had to go. No sooner do we round the corner, when a bum approaches us, trying to sell us some Clive Barker book-on-tape set, and I told him "I don’t read". Then, rather indignantly, he tells me that these are books on tape, to which I only respond, "Oh"’ He mockingly repeats my ‘oh’, you know, like I’m some kind of idiot, and not just someone who happens not to want his obviously stolen or found Clive Barker book-on-tape set. I was going to then go on about how I don’t have a tape player, but I thought, ‘why bother?’ So then he says to me, and to my counterpart Raphael, “You talk to much. Thanks for nothing.” The nerve! But he walked off, and we said our goodbyes to the two departing from our group. But a second later, he comes back and says “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude,” and shakes Raphael’s hand, and gives me props, and I said "Yeah, don’t worry about it," but before he leaves again, he says "But you know what? You do talk too much." What the hell!?! Raphael was quite miffed, as was I, and he commented, “Well, I get to go home to my nice warm bed, and he gets to sleep on the fucking cold ground tonight.” Sounds mean at first, but this was one damned nasty bum. And I wouldn’t have bought that stupid book-on-tape even if I did have money. Besides, we had already given our handout for the night.

Back we head, into the merciless depths of the city, in search of more photo opportunities. Wouldn’t you know it, we run into the Doses guy again, and this time he’s saying ‘doses, doses, doses, LSD, doses…’ We think he might have been selling the stuff, but who knows. He certainly needed a dose of something himself. But we were not to be dissuaded, on with the fun! We head to another hotel rooftop for some cityscape shots, and some interesting posing in one of the meeting rooms. We soon decide to depart, for time was running out on our parking validations. On the way to the parking garage, a group of homeless looking teenagers sitting on the ground beckoned to us. One of them spoke, "Excuse me, but can we get some change so we can buy some alcohol and get drunk and pas out and stay warm tonight?" I loved his honesty, and assured him, had I any money, he would have been the only one to recieve it that night.

We make it back to the parking garage entrance, but before we can get inside, two obviously intoxicated fellows run up to us from across the street yelling at us. They come up to the girls and Raphael and I, holding up two fingers right in front of our mouths. At first, I thought they were trying to indicate that they would like to bum a cigarette, cos that’s sort of what the little hand motion they were giving looked like, and both girls were having a smoke. But then the one guy gets to me, puts his hand up to my face and says, “Smell my finger!”

“No, thank you,” I say. But he is persistent.

“Smell my finger, dude. It smells like fresh pussy!”

“Okay, I believe you, but I really don’t want to smell your finger.” Talk about disconcerting, it was really time to leave at this point. So they start to head off, and I turn to the others in the group and start to say something, when the Finger Guy turns around and says “You talkin’ shit about me?” Here we go. After explaining that we were not talking shit about anybody, props were exchanged to show that everything was indeed cool. I kept my hand in my pocket, however, cos I was not about to touch his damn hand. Luckily, we made it back to the cars with no further incident, and retreated to a Denny’s for thorough examination of the evenings events. And this is my story of one Wednesday night spent downtown San Diego.

Just another reminder, that life will often present you with scenes much funnier than any you could ever write.

~You can't please all the people all of the time...hence the need for different time zones.
Vocephus


The views expressed in this article may not be the veiws of the author. If you were offended or have any complaints about the content, please do not hesitate to cry me a river. A small baby seal was harmed in the making of this article.