BREAKFAST WITH TRAVIS BICKLE

I walked down Hollywood boulevard the other day, from Vine all the way past Highland.

I moved to Los Angeles when I was 19. But before that, when I was 13 I ran away from home and came out to Orange County. I often describe this portion of my life as "Breakfast with Travis Bickle."

One of the reasons I disliked the movie Pretty Woman so much was that it was almost verbatim the daydream I had when I ran away. I was going to be walking down Hollywood boulevard and Richard Gere was going to see me and fall in love with me and whisk me away to his castle in the sky, or Beverly Hills. (And my fantasy was Richard Gere exactly, because of his role in American Gigilo.)

But the reality is much more Robert deNiro in Taxi Driver. And Jodie Foster is well represented in reality, with Julie Roberts the fantasy that keeps her enchanted and trapped. (One thing I struggle with is releasing my inner Iris -Foster's character- and her influence over my life.)

But even the Jodie Foster's don't inhabit Hollywood boulevard. You can buy a street girl's wardrobe on HollyStarFucker Boulevard, but you won't find the street girl herself for another mile or so down Highland, at Santa Monica.

Hollywood Boulevard is comatose. Gentrification has created a strange dead zone from Vine to Las Palmas. The paraphenalia and the wig and stripper shoe and slutty lingerie boutiques are neglected and deserted. Half the sidewalks are covered in construction scaffolding. The greasy pizza places are disappearing.

So were all the squats in abandoned derelict buildings, and the ignored spaces that street people inhabit. Even the new condos and Frederick's new location weren't enough. I was nostalgic for the sleazy enterprises that used to feed off the tourists and the commuter gatherings waiting at the bus stops.

(So, perhaps the subway may have something to do with the change?)

Highland was hopping with tourists that had come all the way to California to sit at a Starbucks and shop at a Skecher's. I was torn between pride that finally Hollywood Boulevard was getting some attention and renovation, and the feeling that soon we would be living in a world so homogenized you would not be able to tell one city from the next.

I passed several ghosts, including a little girl from the mid-west 29 years ago. And, at the corner of Las Palmas, not too far from the Scientologists, I saw a greatly aged Travis Bickle, pausing to light a cigarette.

He nodded at me absently when we made eye contact, and then seeing me truly, stared surprised, that our paths should ever cross again.

I wanted to tell him that he was not a saviour, and that he did not rescue me. He was going to snap in the middle of someone's scenario, and that mine had just been the best for him. A scenario where he was a vigilante hero, instead of a psychopathic assasin.

I wanted him to know that I knew. That I was on to him.

But instead I stopped and said hi, and asked him to meet me at Denny's for breakfast one morning soon. We both knew that we would never see each other again, but it was the right way to end things, to pretend that we would.

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TOODLE ON!!!