On a warm summer afternoon David and I were doing the typically mundane task of unloading groceries from our car. A little black hatchback car erratically pulled up to the stop sign at the intersection catty corner to our house. I didn’t really pay much attention at first but soon heard a commotion coming from inside the vehicle. Suddenly, a fairly average looking man jumped out of the car and roughly pulled a woman out behind him. This instantly caught my attention. I was halted dead in my tracks by the words the man was yelling.

“I’m the pimp! You’re the ho! Give me my money bitch or I’m going to hurt you.”

The fight continued along these lines for several more minutes. Then there was something that I didn’t quite understand about being from East Los Angeles verses West Los Angeles. This man, the pimp, was apparently from West Los Angeles and because of this fact the woman was lucky. If he had been from East LA she would be dead, but, because he is from West LA, he is more compassionate. The woman did not appear to be intimidated by this information. On the contrary, she seemed angry and defiant. She mentioned seeking employment opportunities with a pimp who “hadn’t lost his mother (insert the mother of all expletives here)-ing mind.”

A neighbor’s sprinkler was watering his lawn, I could hear the sound of children’s voices playing in a yard up the street and in the distance I faintly heard an ice cream truck rattling it’s bell and playing “Pop Goes The Weasel.” In the middle of our tranquil summer setting was this absurd exchange straight out of a really bad made-for-tv movie. I stood in the yard, transfixed, mouth agape.

The pimp saw me standing in the middle of my yard staring at them. He pushed the woman back into the car, drove around the corner, parked and pulled the woman back out of the car to yell at her again. By this time David walked up to me and asked what was going on. After I told him he ran inside and dialed 911.

David waited on hold for 10 minutes before he reached an operator. The 911 operator said they couldn’t do anything since we didn’t have the car’s license plate number. She instructed us to get a license plate number the next time this occurred. David requested that a squad car be sent to our location anyway. By the time David hung up the phone with the police the pimp and ho had resolved their dispute and driven away. They were long gone by the time the police drove through our area 45 minutes later.