(3 of 7)
Three weeks on the streets and Beavis is slipping fast. On a Wednesday, another homeless teenager rapes Rainbow, who is one-month pregnant with Beavis' child. On Thursday Rainbow breaks up with Beavis. On Friday she takes two hits of acid. That evening she miscarries in an abandoned building. By Saturday Beavis is self-destructing again. "I did acid for the first time, plus a ton of orange juice and some vitamins because I really wanted to fry and have my eyes and hearing be more powerful. Then I huffed on rubber cement for three hours."
The next day Beavis put a knife to the throat of the boy who raped Rainbow. "I couldn't do it," he says. "I couldn't slit his throat." So the boy pulled out a can of Mace and sprayed Beavis in the face. He blindly stumbled out into the night, hands tearing at his face, eyes and lungs burning.
Mornings are quiet; like all teenagers, homeless youths sleep in whenever possible. Then they wander to youth centers like My Friend's Place in Los Angeles, which offers food, showers, friendship and counseling. "You've got to look beyond the drugs and the prostitution and see that these are just kids, kids who should be taking driver's ed right now or worrying about which corsage to wear," says executive director Steve LePore. Behind him, several , youths in worn clothing lie on the floor asleep.
Afternoons are spent panhandling the tourists, especially around Mann's Chinese Theater and the Walk of Fame. When night falls, the tourists disappear and the city becomes hell's Disneyland. Hollywood Boulevard is popular for hanging out, usually at the corner of Cherokee, while Sunset Strip features straight prostitution and Santa Monica Boulevard specializes in the gay sex trade. Abandoned buildings serve as "squats," the makeshift homes inhabited by as many as several dozen youths. Entombed by the thick plywood nailed to the windows and doors, the youths live with drugs, rats and human waste.
Green (her street name) is tripping again. The 16-year-old girl took two hits of acid at 3:30 p.m., and now, two hours later, she can't stop laughing. She sits on the floor of a barren room in a Hollywood squat, giggling and staring at the flicker of a small candle. Her boyfriend, Troll, a 23-year-old from Dallas who has been homeless since he was 17, lies on the floor asleep. They met during a food fight at a local youth center. "I need a beer," she says. "Does anybody have some beer?"
Green stepped off a Greyhound bus from Houston in June with $100, some clothes and a camera. Another homeless youth quickly stripped her of her money and camera, and now she survives on food from the youth shelters, money from tourists and whatever Troll can offer.
She might be running from her parents, or she might just be running from herself. She won't really say which, referring in broad strokes to a middle- class background, private schools, piano and trumpet lessons. At 13 she modeled for a local hair salon. "I had such beautiful long blond hair," she says. Now her hair is cut short and tinged with purple dye. She wears a small silver ring in her nose, combat boots and a white T shirt on which she has written with a marker a message to the tourists she panhandles: I'd rather hear "no" than nothing at all.