Chapter 20
Ididn’t pick Skid Row because it was edgy.
I picked it because it was real. It existed with no pretense.
It was the opposite of the curated chaos of Burning Man or the fake rebellion of storm chasing.
Skid Row just offered pain. It was what hitting rock bottom looked like in all its raw and exposed truth, existing like an open nerve that the world tried its best to ignore.
I wandered there at dusk; the air was thick with the smell of piss, grease, and something sweet and rotting. People stumbled past me like ghosts in the dark, their eyes hollowed out from years of being unseen. Just like me, but they’d ended up on a different path than I had.
I wasn’t scared as I stood there. I wanted to be. I wanted to feel—something—anything that would be more powerful than the numbness pressed against my ribs.
At the last second I decided to go shirtless.
Maybe if I bared my skin to the chaos, it would also bare my soul.
I pressed record knowing that the video would start with me framed on the screen in just jeans and quite literally nothing else but the shirt not on my back.
No bag, no wallet. Just my body, a camera rigged on my chest, and a death wish.
The stench of life being lived on the street continued to assault me the further in that I went.
Walking through Skid Row was like stepping into a world that time had abandoned.
The sidewalk beneath my sneakers felt sticky in some spots and gritty in others.
It was littered with the flattened remains of cigarette butts, bottle caps, broken plastic forks, needles, and paper cups long since collapsed in on themselves.
The sour tang of ammonia hung heavy in the air, layered over the dull, acrid scent of burnt rubber and something sickly potent—like rotting fruit, or maybe vomit that had baked in the sun and then cooled under urine-soaked blankets.
Every few steps brought a new smell—feces, blood, garbage, weed, fried food, body odor—all woven together into a nauseating perfume that no one else around me seemed to notice anymore.
I didn’t judge them; at one point I had been them.
I didn’t really know what had propelled me to do better for myself, not that what I had was so much above this, but the fact was I had done enough for myself to have indoor plumbing and a place to sleep at night.
Uncharacteristically, I was actually proud of my younger self for doing what I had to do so as to not make living on the street a permanent arrangement.
I may be suicidal, but I wasn’t stupid and I certainly wasn’t lazy.
I had built a life for myself despite the fact that the world had handed me nothing, and had kept its heel on my neck so that I was constantly gasping for air.
The noise around me was constant, but not loud; it wasn’t at a volume that made me want to plug my ears, it was just a consistent undertone of sound that never stopped.
A woman shouted scripture while standing on a crate under a street lamp.
A man argued with someone I couldn’t see.
When I rounded the corner, I realized it was someone he couldn’t see either.
The tinny jangle of a shopping cart loaded with aluminum cans and other recyclables.
Muted coughs. A baby crying. A distant siren that nobody flinched at.
The community here knew the sirens weren’t for them; society had long since abandoned those that lived on the streets.
The buildings around me were like skeletons—stripped down, graffitied, faded by the sun and beaten by rain, wearing the grime of age.
Some had bars on the windows, others had no windows at all.
Most had boarded-up doors or broken padlocks clinging to a door handle like an afterthought.
One wall had the remnants of the words, “GOD IS WATCHING” spray-painted on it in angry red, but the letters were partially worn away, so it just read “GOD IS WAT.” I didn’t know if I should pretend it meant “waiting” or “wasted.” It could honestly be both.
People lined the sidewalks in tents and makeshift shelters built from tarps, cardboard, and fading hope.
Some sat on overturned buckets, hunched over, staring at the ground.
Some talked to themselves, or to the sky.
Some just stared—at nothing at all; it almost looked like their eyes saw right through me.
One man was cradling a small dog, gently feeding it a McChicken with hands so dirty it turned my stomach.
A woman nearby painted her fingernails with a grimy bottle of nail polish while singing “My Heart Will Go On” in an off-key but confident tone.
Her toes were turning blue from the chilly night air.
Or maybe it was bruises, I couldn’t tell.
Everything around me looked so temporary, so fragile—like these people’s entire lives could all blow away with the next gust of wind.
There was a heaviness in the air that felt like grief.
Not simply sadness, but the kind of grief that settled into your bones.
The grief that came from being forgotten.
The grief that grew from being passed over by life.
The grief of knowing that no one was coming to save you.
And yet, weirdly—impossibly—there were also sounds of laughter.
Two men were playing cards on a flattened pizza box.
A little further down, a boy no older than seventeen sat cross-legged with a makeshift chessboard in front of him.
His pieces were made from different color bottle caps that he’d attached together to represent pawns and kings.
He played both sides, each one taking his focus and attention, playing with a strange kind of dignity, as if the outcome mattered.
A girl with pink dreads danced to music only she could hear.
Nobody told her to stop. In a fucked-up way there was a semblance of respect down here.
Someone nearby was grilling something that smelled almost edible.
Life, or at least the illusion of it, kept ticking by.
They hadn’t given up, not yet like I had.
The guilt of my current predicament being self-imposed burned in the back of my throat like a sudden bout of acid reflux after finishing off an entire family sized container of jalapeno chicken poppers.
I walked through the controlled chaos like a ghost. No one stopped me. No one looked twice. Maybe I appeared like I belonged. Maybe they were too numb to care. Or maybe they could sense that I wasn’t there to be saved either.
Somewhere deep in one of the alleys, a man stepped out from behind a dumpster.
He was maybe my age, or maybe fifty, it was hard to tell.
He looked wired—eyes darting everywhere, jaw clenched, hands buried in the folds of a tattered hoodie.
He said something I didn’t catch. I kept walking.
He began to walk faster, muttering quickly under his breath.
I could hear him growing closer, and I found that I had slowed down on purpose, defying my body’s natural urge to put as much space between him and I as possible.
Despite my better judgment, I turned just as I saw him pull out a knife.
It was small and from what I could tell, the handle was rusted.
The blade was jagged and dull like it had been sharpened on concrete.
The thrill of someone finally being ready to fuck with me had me stop walking all together.
For the first time in a long time—I hoped.
“Give me your money,” he demanded, his tone low and gravely. Like maybe these were his first words of the day. His demand was futile though, as I had nothing on me.
“I don’t have any,” I told him as I realized that he was the first person I had spoken to in so long other than Carter. Oh, the irony.
“I’ll stab you if you don’t give it to me.” He was slurring, likely on a substance that was rapidly wearing off, and he already knew that he had to find the funds for his next hit.
“Do it,” I said, my voice even. I spread my arms like I was welcoming it. “Right here.”
He looked shocked and he stumbled with it, putting space between us. I closed in on him. This time I was the one pursuing him. Turned tables and all that.
“C’mon my guy, don’t offer a man a good time and then back out.” I pounded on the center of my sternum, right above the camera. “Fucking do it. Give me a good one.”
He hesitated. Stared. And then I said the thing that I think scared him more than if I had pulled out my own weapon.
“I won’t fight you.”
The words were barely out of my mouth when he fully backed up.
I heard him mutter something about me being crazy and then he disappeared into the dark.
I stood there for a long time, the knife-shaped silence vibrated in my ears.
My heart thudded, loud and thick. I wanted it to stop.
I wanted the world to cave in. I wanted to laugh at him for calling me crazy.
But I didn’t. Instead, I told the universe to fuck off.
My words reverberated through the space and one of the women in the crowd behind me yelled back, “Yeah, fuck you too!”
I walked back to my shitty motel. My pulse wouldn’t settle.
My skin tingled from the lingering adrenaline and the cold nip of the air.
Was I growing pathetic as I begged others to get done what I couldn’t do myself?
Did it make me a pussy that I kept imploring the universe to make a choice for me that I pretended to have already made?
Because tonight I could solidly say that death hadn’t just dodged me, it had laughed in my face.
Back in the room I showered before I emailed over the footage.
I needed to wash the shame and the grime off me before I could face the video.
It was another failed mission, but at least I knew the camera’s angles were clear and crisp.
I definitely had another viral episode in my hands.
I didn’t know when that started to matter, but it had.
Carter’s email came back quickly.
I replied.
Then, while I waited for him to work his magic, I watched the video back again.
It was weird watching my own face as I stared down that blade like it was nothing.
It could have been everything. If he had just done it.
But he hadn’t. Instead of wondering if I had finally crossed a line of desperation, I focused on uploading Carter’s version of the video and then deleting the raw footage off my GoPro, making room for my next adventure.
As soon as the video was posted, the comments rolled in.
“The way this guy stared down that blade, I wish he’d look at me like that. Oof. Chills”
“This man has zero fear. Icon.”
“I knew he had that body under his hoodies. Gd babe.”
“I’m concerned. But also… respectfully that was (fire emoji).”
“Someone needs to get this man a modeling contract and a therapist stat.”
“Did he just ask to be stabbed?”
Nobody saw it for what it was.
A man trying to die and being denied once again.
My audience cared more about my hint of abs than my absence of a will to live. More about the angles and the drama than the obvious ache in my soul. But, hey, the video was on track to break a million views in four hours. So, I had achieved something… I guessed.