Editors note: Black Text is Jed Bookout; Blue Text is Joseph Silva; Red Text is Joshua Lalone

On the streets of LA, I’m sitting and having a conversation with my friend and photographer Joe when a tall yet scrawny white man in a puffy jacket and green Nike sneakers walks up to us. Joe smiles and shakes his hand. He doesn’t smile back. I introduce myself, and he repeats the action from before: he shakes my hand and doesn’t smile back. Joe introduces me as a journalist that’s “ here to tell [his] story ,” a descriptor I don’t necessarily agree with, and the man nods along before turning to speak to me.

“ My name is Josh ,” he said I’m a former Marine and I’m addicted to heroin."

Over the course of our conversation, I discover that Joshua Lalone is homeless. Almost every question I ask him has a circular answer initially.

Where did you grow up? New York, which is where I discovered heroin.

Why did you come to California? It’s easier to find heroin here.

What are your plans for today? Get enough money for heroin.

Heroin. Heroin, heroin, heroin.

As someone who is also a recovering addict, though for a different substance, I immediately knew that it was going to be really difficult to get through to Josh on a level beyond heroin, a substance I will never trybut have seen far too many people die from.

Our first exchanges were admittedly a little awkward; I don’t know much about Marine life and, despite any experience I have as a journalist, I’m very bad at striking up a conversation simply for the sake of it. It’s so much easier to ask people about something you know HAS happened as opposed to digging for information you know nothing about.Joe intervenes and manages to get through to Josh on a different level that I didn’t even think about before.

If your Marine brothers could see you now, what would they say?

“That I’m a dirtbag.”

“And what are dirtbags?”

“Marines that do things unbefitting of the Marines.” Their conversation shifted into how and why Josh is even on the streets when the VA could potentially help him. What Josh tells us doesn’t even register with Joe, who has his own VA experiences, but rocks my world: the VA could provide him with a prescription for something that helps with heroin withdrawals, making it easier to quit, but the waiting process every time is around three weeks or more.

“I can’t go one day without heroin. How the fuck are you gonna expect me to go three weeks?”

I met Josh Lalone, from outside of Buffalo, NY, in October 2019 on the corner of 7th and Hope Street, holding a hand written sign that said, “homeless veteran,” as well as a VA medical card.

Josh told me he was a Marine and he lived on the street at 5th and Grand next to the L.A. public library. I would see Josh here and there on 7th street and we’d talk about the Marines and Navy and I would grab us lunch and tell him about the VA benefits that get veterans off the streets of L.A.

Josh would tell me that his paperwork is in and he was just waiting on the process of the VA reviewing his claim. We met on Christmas to grab pancakes but everywhere was crowded so we went over to Fatburger and I got Josh a Fatburger and a coke. We talked about being deployed on Christmas away from your family.

I blinked my eyes and Josh had already eaten that hamburger. He rarely eats in the middle of the day because he is a heroin addict, which he let me know on Christmas. Christmas is especially hard on Josh because he lost a friend while deployed in Iraq and he thinks about the time they spent deployed, and how they will never share this memory again.

Lately he's been a little worried about the Covid19 panic, saying no one down on Skid Row has tested positive and that the national guard is going to be deployed down.

A month later

I’d been thinking about Josh a lot for the past ten days.

In the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak, all the plans I had in life got thrown out the window. Originally, this was going to be a project that sought to examine both the strengths and failings of a system meant to help unhoused veterans, an examination of how a toxic combination of bureaucracy, politics, and societal restraints can hurt the most vulnerable in our society.

But after everything changed, after we all went home, I couldn’t stop thinking about Josh. Today, I texted Joe to let him know that, since I still worked around the public as a pizza delivery driver, I wanted to see what he thought we should do.

“No one on Skid Row has popped positive for Covid-19,” “Josh says they are immune to it. It’s a rich people thing.”

That’s not how the virus works, though, I told him. He told me that he and a friend were still going down to Skid Row to photograph and research the homeless. I explained to Joe that at this time, I was going to have to work remotely. I was concerned aboutwhether Joe was taking the proper precautions, but trusted he would do the right thing.

“Godspeed ,” he said. “Text or call or video with Josh. He was in good spirits and asked about you [and if you saw] your grandma and all.”

I thought back to the time Josh and I met. Our conversation stopped and started a few times back on February 9 before I truly realized some of the common ground I shared with Josh: his grandma is 84 years old; my grandma is 84 years old.

Josh’s grandma has been experiencing health problems for the better part of a decade that Josh hasn’t been around for. Not too long ago, she collapsed and ended up bed-ridden. Nobody was sure if she would make it, but Josh knew he had to focus (“like I used to before heroin”) on a way to get to see her, maybe one last time.

He panhandled enough money for a one-way plane ride to Buffalo and a bus ticket back to Los Angeles. He cleaned himself up and hung out for a week to see her. Over the course of Josh’s visit, her situation improved. Josh returned to Los Angeles on a bus, describing his heroin withdrawals on a three day bus ride as the worst experience of his life.

Over the course of our conversation, Josh had nothing but good things to say about his grandma. By his own admission, she’s one of the only people left in the world that gives a shit about him.

I know this is supposed to be an interview, and by nature, interviews are one-sided. But I broke kayfabe for a moment to tell Josh he should call his grandma more. Itold him how shitty I’d been feeling about not talking to my grandma, and that I didn’t want to tell a stranger and a grown man what to do, but I also wagered that he probably felt the same.

There’s nothing better than talking to someone you love that loves you back.

The whole time I talked to Josh about this, his sad, kind eyes were looking right into mine and he nodded along, nodded along, until he looked away and just said, “Okay. I will.”

“But what about you?” he pivoted. “How’s your grandma?” I was thrown off a bit. I’m not used to being asked questions back when I’m interviewing people, but I’d already broken the boundaries of the interview anyway.

“She’s not the best,” I said. “Her eyesight’s gone to shit and she always sounds really tired whenI call her. But when I tell her it’s me, she tries her best to hide how messed up everything is.

”Josh smiled. “I’m gonna call my grandma for sure,” he said. “I promise.”

I see Josh on the regular, out front of target on Figueroa and we just shoot the shit, sea stories and about the hustle to get the money so he can get his medicine, his heroin fix, so he will not get sick.

We spend the nights texting back and forth about politics, getting his own apartment and getting back on his feet. He is now staying on 6th and Towne in a tent next to a homeless Air Force veteran, Ben, and his wife.

I been to his tent several times and we talk about the living situation, being the only white boy on the block and keeping to himself and letting folks know that he ain't no punk.

Joe sends me a huge block of text that Josh had sent him about how he had to buy a gun to protect himself.

Some guy tried to take a piss behind Josh’s tent and Josh told him not to. So the guy later broke into his tent and tried to rob him. Josh caught him in the act and made him put everything back.

“If I see him again I’m going to smash his bitch ass on sight, and I will make it a point to put him in the hospital,” Josh wrote. “I’ll show him firsthand what happens when you fuck with a Marine!”

“Tell Josh I’m sorry I haven’t reached out to him,” I texted Joe. “I’m going to find the time to talk to him as soon as I figure out what time looks like for me.”

“Tell him that I said thank you very much for helping me to get closer to my grandma although I am over 3,000 miles away from her,” he wrote. “I’m really grateful for the conversation we had and the opportunity to meet with him! I mean every word of that, seriously!”

“Tell him that I said thank you very much for helping me to get closer to my grandma although I am over 3,000 miles away from her,” he wrote. “I’m really grateful for the conversation we had and the opportunity to meet with him! I mean every word of that, seriously!”

Finally got around to texting Josh a few weeks after. Life’s chaotic, and for the past month, the isolation has amplified my personal failures in ways I didn’t foresee.

But I still have a job, still have a roof over my head, and I’m still in school. Considering how bad things have gotten in such a short amount of time for friends of mine that used to be able to say the same, it had me more concerned than I already was for not just Josh, but any of the unhoused folks I’ve gotten to talk to while covering this beat. So I decided to reach out again.

“Hey Josh, it’s Jed,” I texted. “How are you doing?”

" I just got off the phone with my grandmother! Josh immediately replied. He gave me details on how she was doing, how she was staying inside and having Josh’s cousin use her EBT card to go get groceries for her, but apparently, his cousin has a history of stealing and selling her EBT cards to get drugs and alcohol. He expanded by telling me a story of a time he fucked her over on New Year’s Eve 2018, a story that goes on for another full page and a half of scrolling on my phone. Towards the end, he asks me if I’ve been in contact with my grandma and apologizes" “for writing a book, but I text the same way that I speak and I always say what’s on my mind and it usually ends up being a very long text. Joseph calls my texts “essays”!”

In the middle of the text, Josh tells me he’s been talking to his grandma a lot ever since him and I talked, and that he’s considering talking to her about his heroin addiction, but he still can’t work up the nerve to do so, especially since one of his brothers checked into rehab recently.

"Maybe I’ll tell her in about 6 months or possibly I’ll be clean and I won’t have to tell her,” he said.

I ask Josh a lot of questions about how he’s been doing since we last saw each other. Some of the questions he answers directly; some of them he avoids altogether. When I ask him what he’s been up to, he tells me that he’s currently awaiting housing but then pivots to telling me that his biggest concern right now is that he panhandled recently and got a $20 bill that he lost.

“I can’t be mad about it though because all it’s going to do is stress me out,” he said, “and I already have enough things to be stressed out about.”

When I ask him specifically on what he means that he’s waiting for housing, he sends me another long text about how shitty it is to lose a $20 bill. It’s here that Josh reveals to me that he actually has over $800 saved that he’s gradually been sending to his ex-girlfriend for her to hold onto for him. I tell him that I’m not being assumptive of a stranger, but I want to make sure his money’s safe with her.

“I was with her for 7 years,” he said, “She works every single day...she wants me to have housing just as badly as I do. I guess that it’s a risk that I was willing to take, but I take risks every single day and for my risk assessment I figured that her spending my money was a low risk because she works and doesn’t have any addiction like I do. She doesn’t even smoke!”

In the middle of this same text, Josh immediately pivots to telling me that his tent neighbor is talking about robbing someone tonight and how if they try to rob him, “they’ll never walk again.” This is just how the conversation keeps going: I ask a question, Josh gives me a hugely detailed answer and occasionally veers off into a tangent about something he’s been dealing with. I ask him to expand, and he either does at length or changes the subject.

When I ask him for the first time how everything is for him because of the coronavirus, he changes the subject by talking about the guys that may or may not rob him.

" “I just tore open an aluminum can so that I can use that as a knife! Everything and anything is a weapon when you are a Marine!”

Eventually, I let Josh know I’m going to bed for the night because I slept like shit the night before and I hope he stays safe, but I hope to continue talking in the morning.

I wake up to a text Josh sent in response to my good night text about how he’s been sleeping like shit, too.

"Between the nightmares and the neighbors running their generator from 10pm to 4am,” he said. “Everything that I go through everyday and the long hours that I do it for is extremely draining to me mentally.”

“Is the generator something you have to deal with often?” I ask.

"Nah, it’s something new,” he said. "I try to do heroin before I go to sleep because it actually helps me to sleep better so I don’t have dreams as much.”

“Is it bad for you to have dreams?”

" “Yeah, I don’t have dreams, I have horrible nightmares of different" kinds of variations,” he said. “Sometimes they will be combat like dreams, sometimes they will be about me running from people or situations, sometimes they will be about situations that start off normal and pleasant and then suddenly an altercation of one sort or another will arise and the whole dream will become a nightmare. The worst dreams are the ones which are combat related, but the weird thing is that they are not all taking place in a combat type of environment. They can take place anywhere and I think that is the part that scares me the most because of the reality of the situation.”

Before I get a chance to respond,

“Have you heard anything about the National Guard being stationed in downtown Los Angeles?”

I tell him that I don’t, but based off of what I’ve read and what Joe told me, I assume he’s asking because of the coronavirus. So I ask him again what it’s like down there.

“It seems normal, other than almost all the downtown businesses being closed,” he tells me. But in his next text, “I don’t like that everything is closed down. I think that people are taking it way too seriously, but I guess that it’s because this is a new situation and people are just scared!”

We talk for a bit about how it’s for the best that people are taking it seriously, and Josh tells me that he’s been seeing way more police on the streets but way less arrests, at least in his community. Even though Josh doesn’t seem too worried about it, it’s a far cry from when he told Joe it was just a “rich people disease.”

“Someone told me yesterday the Coronavirus is coming down here next week,” he tells me. “I don’t know why he said that or thinks that but it was really weird of him to say.”

When I first met Josh, we had spent a few hours just talking to him about his life then, his life now, and the uncertainty surrounding his future.

Josh is 34, but doesn’t think he’s going to live to see 84 like his grandma. He doesn’t even want to live to see 60, and is certain he’ll be gone long before then. In another life, Josh was a diesel mechanic, an airline attendant, the owner of a brand new Subaru, and a Marine. He is capable, kind, and intelligent, well aware that there are technically “easier” paths for him to take.

He tells us numerous times throughout the conversation that he’s abandoned all sense of pride and humility; he also tells us he has far too much pride to ever reach out to his relatives. He claims his grandma doesn’t know about his addiction, and that every time he sees her or speaks to her, he stops using, cleans himself up, and tells her how great life in California is. Joe points out that moms and grandmas “always know.” I notice that this makes Josh’s already vulnerable eyes water as he smiles and says “yeah, you’re right.”

Josh’s hands are shaking as he smokes a cigarette and tells us that he can’t eat until he gets his fix. So we follow Josh to his usual spot in front of The Pantry to watch him in action and get a few more photographs.

For the last twenty minutes we’re with him, Josh stands with his sign and dozens of people walk by him without giving him a second thought. Where he stands is less than five feet away from a crosswalk; countless men and women stop here, mere feet away from Josh, before crossing. One family runs out from The Pantry and gives their leftovers to Josh. He politely thanks them.

Before we leave, Joe pulls out a $2 bill and tells Josh he’s going to give it to him,

“but you can’t spend it.”

“You know I’m going to spend it.”

“But it’s good luck. The next time I see you, you need to have that bill.” Josh smiles and jokes that he’ll just "go to the bank and get a new one for next time." Joe and I take a picture of Josh holding his specific bill; the capacity for homeless Vets to recover, to pick themselves back up, seems to be a massive driver in Joe’s life. The idea of telling an unhoused person NOT to spend money they’ve just been given may seem callous; but that’s not what Joe means, and Josh sees this. The $2 bill represents the possibility of change.

But personally? I don’t care if Josh spends that particular $2 bill. There is nothing special about that particular $2 bill. I don’t know if Josh will find a $2 bill in panhandling again, just as I don’t know if Josh will ever get clean, or see/talk to his grandma again, or find housing even temporarily.

What I do know is that he’s more than just another face people pass by every morning on the streets of LA.

He’s a Marine.

He’s an addict.

He’s a diesel repairman.

He lives in a tent.

He’s from New York, but he lives in California.

He’s a person, and he’s alive.

After the rest of this piece was written, Joe and I texted a few days later and I asked him if he had any notes on the writing. He had a couple of fact checks to throw in, but his only major note was to make sure to mention that he -knows- Josh isn’t going to spend the $2.

“Why?”

“He told me... once a Marine, always a Marine.”

“I finally spent that $2 bill yesterday,” Josh texted Joe. “I tried to hold off on spending it because I was supposed to see you next week but I used it to get something to eat.” “How’s your grandma doing, Josh?”

“I talked to her today,” he wrote. “I literally try to make sure I give her a call at least every other day. She’s doing good, she bounced back from her stroke but she is having a lot of trouble with her asthma. The only thing that I really worry about with her is her asthma and if she gets the Coronavirus. I don’t want to think about that, though. I don’t want to lose my grandmother! I don’t know how that will affect me because of my PTSD. I know that I will have a huge downfall if something happens to her.” I think about the last time I spoke to my grandma, just minutes before texting Josh. Something got worse for her, almost overnight, it seemed. She’s seeing people that aren’t there now. People with the faces of dead loved ones, or relatives in other parts of the world. She describes them as malevolent figures who want her to die. She described to me a figure resembling my mother, giving birth to an infant that in moments aged into a five year old, then a twelve year old, and then into my sister, plotting the death of my grandma before aging into her fifties. It’s here that my grandma describes a transformation from someone resembling my sister, to a shadow figure, back into my mother, who begins the entire birth and rebirth process again.

She’s lost her voice from screaming at them. The woman I’m speaking to doesn’t sound anything like my grandma. She tells me that it feels like war all the time in her head, the way my grandpa used to talk about it to her.

Abruptly, she hangs up on me.

“I hope your grandma holds out,” I text Josh the next morning. “How are you doing, though?”

“I honestly don’t know how I managed to get through another day,” he wrote. “But I’ll tell you one thing. I barely squeezed by and I managed to stay well for another! Tomorrow is going to be another challenging day but I’ll keep doing what I do and I’m sure everything is going to work out for me. Hope you had a good day and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Josh’s last text to me. For as crazy as my day had been, it’s nothing compared to the never-ending rise & grind he and others have to go through. For Josh, not much has changed in the wake of the coronavirus in regards to how he survives. Less people on the streets is less money, and less money means less chances for him to feed himself or get a fix for a drug he probably won’t be quitting anytime soon.

I’m struck by his empathy. Every day, he asks me how I’m doing or recants, in detail, how Joe is doing. He tells me about his grandma, and how worried sick he is. He tells me about the ex that’s holding onto his money and how proud he is of her.

Every now and then, he thanks me for talking to him. He doesn’t need to. He’s not just another subject for a story. Josh is my friend, and I’m worried sick about him. I have a feeling he’s holding up the absolute best he can, but he’s still addicted to heroin, and what he and other veterans have described to me lately is a bureaucratic nightmare of a waiting period to receive housing from the VA. As of Josh and I’s last correspondence on April 14, he had been waiting for over a month on word regarding housing. The coronavirus outbreak has made the bureaucracy monster feed slower.

But I think a lot about a conversation we had a week after he lost that $20 bill. Josh told me that he never found the bill, but he did end up finding $127 in a wallet on the streets. The texts he sent me had never been so happy. His tent had been leaking and that money enabled him to buy a new tent, a better phone, and some food. He sent the rest to his ex to hold onto for him.

"Today is the best Monday that I have had in a long time,” he told me. “Now I know that my luck is still going strong!"

I think a lot about how excited Josh was just to be able to do this for himself. I think a lot about how worried he is for his grandma, how worried I am for mine, and how the most helpless either of us feel is when we think about our grandmas.

“I hope you’re doing well today,” I text Josh.

I don’t need to wait for the answer to know that somehow, everything will be okay.