So here I was. Left with nothing, stranded in the Mission. They had allowed
me to stash my belongings at their apartment, but I still took a bag of some
of my nicer clothes so that I could at least change every now and then. The
fact remained, however, I had nowhere to go. I�m not sure of when
everything started to happen, but I�m fairly certain that it was rather
quickly. The first thing I remember happening is meeting a girl from
Colorado. She was really friendly. I had just gotten a box of peanut brittle
from a girl I met at the hostel, and I was at a crosswalk waiting to cross. I
don�t know why, but I offered the girl standing next to me some of my
peanut brittle, and then we started talking. I ended up going with her to
Trader Joe�s and back. On the way back, we got some flyers for a rally being
held at Civic Center. It was a huge demonstration advocating the usage of
medical marijuana. I ended up going by myself and getting really high.
There was music, entertainment, and free weed. The event came to an end
some time in the evening, leaving me high as hell and once again with
nowhere to go. I vaguely remember someone buying me coffee and food so
I could sit at the little 24-hour caf� all night, though I only lasted till about
three or four in the morning. I think that was the first night I slept at Ferry
Park down by Embarcadero. The next day, I was walking down Market and I
saw someone I had seen at the demonstration the night before. She was
panhandling in front of an elevator to the underground station, so I stopped
and started talking to her. Her name was Jenna. We ended up hanging out
for a while, and that�s when I met her friend DJ. DJ was dead-set on making
me tougher. He was convinced that this was the only way you could make it
in this city or anywhere else. For a while I thought his argument might hold
some validity, but soon I realized that this guy really had no idea what he
was talking about. I'll get to that later, though.

DJ was really cool at first. Jenna felt that her panhandling endeavor would
falter with the added presence of two guys, so DJ and I headed off to just
walk around and hang out. We talked about music, places we'd been, things
we'd done; the usual. We took a break up at the corner of Sixth and Market
and we started getting some shit from some guy who told us we "shouldn't
be hanging out here" because it could be "dangerous". DJ simply held his
ground and told the guy we weren't going anywhere because this is where
we felt like sitting. The guy gave us twenty bucks and headed off. I was
thoroughly confused. In light of this event, however, I began to give more
consideration to DJ's attitude and wondered if maybe he had a point.
Now that we had some cash by some freak accident, DJ decided it was time
to start boozin'. He bought us both a forty and we headed over to the park
in front of City Hall and started drinking. We ended up talking to a street
couple using the monikers "Lunchbox" and "Yo-Yo". I can't for the life of me remember their real names or if I even got them. Lunchbox was in to tattoos and tattoo art. He and DJ got along really well and started talking about running a kind of tattoo business. DJ would front him the money for the equipment and he would get free tattoos in exchange. DJ would act as a kind of walking advertisement for Lunchbox and get him customers. Lunchbox drew a mug of beer with clovers surrounding it to demonstrate DJ's Irish heritage and told him that could be his first tattoo. It was really a good idea, but only on paper. Yo-Yo was a heroin overdose victim. She "died" when she overdosed, but the paramedics were able to revive her, but not unscathed. She now suffers from severe short-term memory loss. She must have introduced herself to me about ten times during the course of time we spent hanging out. She was a total sweetheart, too. She and I spent most of the time just talking about random stupid shit that I can't recall for the life of me. I had this red hoodie at the time that I had gotten from the guys whose apartment I was staying at before. It had thumbholes sewn into the sleeve
cuffs. This fascinated Yo-Yo to no end. I ended up giving it to her in
exchange for the black hoodie she had. I like black better; it makes me
look less fat. A few hours later, Lunchbox and Yo-Yo left, so DJ and I hung
out at the park till dark. I really don't remember too much about the
conversation we had. I remember him explaining to me how he had just
made a connection with someone that could serve him a purpose later on.
He thought, anyway. I don't mean to talk badly about DJ, really, but over
the course of our friendship, I began to realize that he wasn't really the
kind of person I wanted to be like, or really even hang around. He
eventually disappeared altogether. No one really knows what happened to
him. I am grateful to him, though, because he really helped me out a lot
when we would hang out. Cigarettes, food, money. Anything he could,
really. It wasn't like he was very well-off himself, but he was very
generous. I would later find this to be a gross contradiction to some of the
things he said and did. I still don't really understand him.