Down and Out in Beverly Hills
I have previously written on homelessness. I will expound a little further on the subject in this chapter.
The last place I live in with my ex-wife was three houses down from PCH. Surfers would go by in the morning, either walking or on bicycles. It was a little expensive, so we had an English girl as a roommate. I went from that to walking around with all my belongings on my back in a very short period of time. I initially was bewildered as hell. Like Virgil’s Beatrice, I met a woman that showed me the ropes.
I really don’t know much about this woman. I’m not really sure why she was homeless. She had no substance abuse problems, was relatively easy on the eyes, and was smart. She had a mischievous side, but not to the point of criminality. I’m sure that wasn’t the problem.
After my divorce there were people that were looking for me. I legally changed my name a couple times to make their chore a little more difficult and to prove a point. I go on a bus-tripping/hitchhiking odyssey from Mexico City, (I was going to go to Guatemala, then realized I didn’t have a passport), to British Columbia. I’m really trying to get lost. I purposely stayed away from my ex-wife and child because I knew they would be used as weapons against me. I eventually failed in my attempt to shield them. Though they were not hurt physically, it was implied that if I mentioned certain things… Then I met some Hollywood people.
Like many people when they are young, I wanted to be famous. I specifically wanted to be a famous writer. When the opportunity for fame, in another area, presented itself to me, I carefully weighed the pros and cons. I realized that I would ultimately become a prisoner and often indebted to people I didn’t particularly like. Besides, at that point in my life it would have killed me. I turned it down.
The people in Hollywood knew me as Skip P Johnson. It was a joke. The “p” stood for nothing. So, even though I’ve yet to really do anything at this point, I’m kinda famous by osmosis and I don’t really like it. There’s a lot that went on during this period. Some of it involved screenplays.
Between the shenanigans I saw in the finance industry, the insights I received from “The Industry” and the subsequent figuring out of the Charles Manson thing, I had this OMG! Epiphany. It is at that point that I quit paying any serious attention to the mainstream media. That was decades ago. I still don’t pay much attention to it.
I quit partying after my divorce and even stopped smoking after a year. I eventually ended up in Santa Barbara, where I got really healthy. That’s an entirely different chapter.
© John Bielecki 2024
