The Graveyard Shift

Work starts at 11, but I save my cigarette break for midnight, the witching hour of the Loin on a Saturday night. My smoking buddy is Robb, roused from his usual position on the lobby couch hunched over (or slumped over) his laptop. Most nights he carries a makeshift plastic mug full of tepid coffee. The "mug" is one of those disposable covers you get when you buy a tower of rewritable CDs. At dawn it is washed and his newly-burned sitcoms and mixes are slid into it, when the wee hour observations of 666 Ellis are through.

666 Ellis is a low-income housing unit across from my business. Most of its tenants are unstable: they are refugees from the Reagan era policies towards mental-health funding that has made our hood that much more exciting. Tonight its great grey façade is quiet. The night before we saw twenty transactions, eleven slavering johns, three pimps a prancing, five hookers selling, two defecations and one ambulance call. I work in customer service, catering mostly to jetlagged backpackers and semi-homeless seniors. The details of my job aren't important; like the real estate cliché, for me it's all about location, location, location.

The night security guy for 666 walks out from behind the gated courtyard. We exchange our blasé evening wave. We've been working the same shift for three months and we've only had one conversation. Since then it's been confined to mutual head shaking across the divide of Ellis as we watch the antics of pimps, crack-hos and the trannies that hate them. Robb tells me the security guy was doing the same shift six months ago, when Robb moved into the neighborhood. Together they witnessed a brawl between two transvestite prostitutes. One went to glass the other, hitting a bottle against the curb. The bottle rebounded, hit her on the head and shattered. Robb has been a devotee of the after-midnight observations ever since. I'm still waiting for a story like that, one good enough to tell me I've arrived. Almost two o'clock and not a single straggling drunk. The emaciated hooker that haunts the corner opposite is examining her nails. Robb has curled fetally on the red couch, one arm around his laptop like a lover's.

I'm about to wake Robb for a smoke when two distraught middle-aged Americans wander in, accompanied by singing duo of homeless men who are trying to carry their luggage. I kick the bums out after the second chorus of "Proud Mary," and try to placate the wide-eyed couple. One sadistic website tells our guests to get off at the Powell Street BART Station and walk down Ellis. Ellis (think shopping carts and soup kitchen lines) is not the true black heart of the Tenderloin, but perhaps its border. Anyway, it's no place for someone wearing the entire Eddie Bauer catalogue.

"So," I say, as Robb stifles a case of the giggles, "Do you have a reservation?"

The man gives a watery smile, but his wife has lost her apprehension and gained some umbrage. She braces her whole round body like she might spit at me. "WHY don't you TELL people what this neighborhood is LIKE?"

I recognize her voice. It's the same control-freak who called me from Union Square, the one I gave directions to walk down O' Farrell Street. She's obviously not that great of a listener.

"Sorry ma'am," I say, because I'm a pussy, then, "It doesn't seem too bad out tonight."

"Are you CRAZY?!" She draws her breath to back her subjective up with some objective, and I'm reminded of how cobras seem to expand their body when they're about to strike. I interrupt.

"Um, I live here. I like this neighborhood. It's actually pretty safe. There's cheap food, good bars, almost no yuppies, a minimum of hipsters and never a dull moment. When you wake up in the morning you'll like it too. I promise."

She is unconvinced, and continues her litany even as her husband goes through the necessary motions of checking in. I'm running their credit card when she drops the "R bomb."

"Well I never thought I was racist until I walked down that street--"

I've handled this one before, and a raised eyebrow at the right moment can work wonders.

She stops, flustered. She knows she's said something wrong, and everything she's heard about Californian PC fascists is about to come crashing down on her Middle American ass. Will the NAACP task force suddenly burst into the foyer and frog march her to a holding cell lined with photos of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King? I'm annoyed with her, but I'm also tired and nicotine-deprived. I lower the eyebrow and hand them their keys, but not without a parting shot.

"I wouldn't stress about the black crackheads," I say, "They're pretty harmless. It's the white speed freaks you have to watch out for. Enjoy your stay." I signal Robb and we go outside, light up. With the first inhale I realize that I'm tired, yes, I'm very tired. I wonder how many puffs I'll get out of this cigarette before someone asks me for shorts. Robb is delivering caffeinated one-liners in a way that tells me he doesn't care if I'm listening or not. My thoughts are on the middle-aged couple and what my parents would make of the neighborhood. I think back wistfully to when I worked in the Marina. Drunk yuppies are worse than crackheads in a lot of respects, but I never had any complaints from my guests then. And I'm starting to get fed up a little too. Maybe everything I said to the tourists was right, but is it really worth it?

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spy a young girl in bad stockings twitching her head in a jones-like manner in front of a notorious hotel. She is trying to attract the attention, or just attracting the attention, of several men who've materialized across the street.

All of a sudden my favorite transsexual prostitute appears at my elbow. She's thirty but looks forty, buff, dark and gossipy as hell.

"You see that girl?" she says, waving her long fingernails in my face, "That girl is only sev-ehn-teen years old honey!"

"Yeah?" I say. Robb is trying to roll a cigarette, his eyes going from the tranny's fake boobs to his fingers to the young girl, who now, it appears, has a real john.

"THAT girl!" yells my buddy in sequins, "Let me tell YOU I have been working this street for SIX YEARS and that girl doesn't know WHAT she's doing!"

I nod, then turn to look at the girl. Her competition turns to look too.

The young girl and a skeezed-out looking guy are headed towards the alley. The tranny hobbles after them on her heels.

"Oh no you DON'T! Oh no you DON'T!"

I get the feeling that this routine has been going on for a while, because the sev-ehn-teen year old looks back at her with a scowl.

I suddenly feel invigorated, the way I feel when I see grass or a dandelion growing out of a sidewalk, the calm way nature replaces sterilization despite defeat after defeat. A little elbow grease could turn the T.L. into a tourist's paradise, but what would be the point?

The young prostitute-to-be is almost to the alley when the tranny grabs her john and shoves him to the ground, huffing and puffing. The night guy for 666 Ellis and I exchange our most poignant glance ever.

The girl turns around and screams,"Bitch! Stop mother-fucking cock-blocking me!"

Robb and I turn to one another and grin. He doesn't really need to ask what my verdict is.