[For HIV/AIDS Outreach: Part One, please see my entry at Echo Park.]

As I haul out my Thomas Guide just now to locate exactly where we were when we made out first stop, I see the heel-to-toe bird’s-foot marks indicating train yards close to a deceptively broad, pale blue swath indicating the Los Angeles River. The clean whiteness of the page, however, and the crisp greenness of those lines which document the streets’ ways belie the dirty desolation and littered dead-endedness of the community we met there. One by one, our clients spotted the parked van from way off down the track, from way off behind an overflowing dumpster, from way off beneath a cardboard lean-to. One by one, they limped or shuffled over, several pushing noisy and cluttered grocery carts before them like some kind of combo ambulatory device and yapping pet.

We watched the slow gathering. Ralph flashed me a smile, taking a moment of the vigil to point his head towards the street sign. “I was particularly moved to find people at this location,” he urged knowingly. I read, “Via Santa Clarita.” Of course, Santa Clarita. Clare of Assisi, the friend of Francis who, following him in his vows of poverty, chastity, and service to the poor, founded the order of sisters that complemented Francis’ band of brothers. Standing there at what amounted to a dusty, grimy hearth of rails and planks, in that one, lone moment along my personal progression from dust to dust, I felt myself to be one fleet, connecting link along a comprehensive history of dust and of grimy sanctity. Then Fannie arrived, then Burl, then Willie and others—thirteen in all—interrupting my reverie.

Ralph had already explained to me in general the various profiles of his clientele. Along a markedly narrow continuum gauging health of this marginalized population, Ralph sees as healthiest those who pool outer and inner resources and form communities, however loosely structured, such as the one we were visiting. There are other folks, of course, who go it alone, utterly isolated in their isolation. In any case, transiency is imposed if not elected, as the City makes occasional sweeps, tearing down the unsightly complexes of cardboard and tarp and shooing the inhabitants off to reshuffle, reconfigure, and reassemble at some other set of tracks or under a different freeway bridge until discovered again and made to move. Most of the folks whom Ralph attends are crack addicts. Some inject heroin. Many are panhandlers. Many are sex workers. Who could be more at risk of exposure to the virus, more in a position to spread it?

It was my job to hand each person a flyer, either in Spanish or English. José greeted folks by name when he could, poured punch, and offered condoms. Edgar was newer to the team, but took pains to register each name in his brain as he handed out sack lunches. Fannie took a lunch and a cup, but refused condoms. “I’m masturbating!” she trumpeted, pausing to savor any possible hint of shock on our faces. We all tried our best to make our chuckles sound seasoned and worldly and comfortable. Ralph suggested that, indeed, abstinence was the surest way not to contract the virus. “I just get myself off, then roll over and sleep,” Fannie continued. “Yep, this sister,” she nodded in reference to a raised middle finger, “ain’t infecting nobody.”

Mindy did accept condoms from José, but teased him, insisting, “Now say just what Ralph says.” Her joke was lost on me, but José apparently would not comply, and offered instead, “This one is lubricated, this one is not,” with a bashful smile. I later learned that Ralph, whose entire demeanor admittedly screams “Prude!” (or even Padre!), elects to announce on select occasions, “The lubricated rubber is for fucking and the mint-flavored, non-lubricated one is for blow jobs,” savoring in his turn any amount of shock and amusement he may have produced. Since José would not play along, Mindy extended the joke by feigning ignorance of condom usage. She walked away announcing she would wear them on her nose. Chuy then asked for socks and Ralph apologized, explaining that at the moment he only had calcetines for Chuy’s one pelvic region extremity—Chuy looked down just below his waist where Ralph was pointing—and none for his two lower ones. Chuy got a kick out of that and walked off crumpling and pocketing the perforated string of the little square foil packs like so many church bazaar lottery tickets.

Ralph has been at this for years and is well-known from camp to camp. At each location, I watched as he tried his best to balance his time between making meaningful connection with each person, registering on a form a name or alias for each client served, checking the precise service dispensed to each (this to satisfy the numbers-counters back at the office), and retrieving from his brain any bit of old business he might have been holding onto for a period of perhaps several weeks or months since he had last encountered some one of his transient friends: an undelivered test result; a request for accompaniment to a drug rehab program or to a blood test; an invitation to a hot, cheap meal at his favorite Main Street lunch counter; a previously-expressed need for a garment, a blanket, a bus token. On the streets, it is enough if he can successfully manage selected micro-moments within the expanse of chaos, and manage them mostly, again, in just connecting. “Your life has value to us, so protect your cuerpecito,” he would urge; the endearing, diminutive form of cuerpo (body) slipping ingenuously past any cognitive censors which might have insisted on more distance.

It was time to move on.

[For HIV/AIDS Outreach: Part Three, please see my entry at Downtown.]