I was going to Venice. I was going to Venice to see a model whose real name I do not know. The freeway ended and whimpered into houses and bungalows, and into neon vacant lots decorated with cellophane, and amber beer bottles, and the light glistened in a million diamonds on the gutter's broken glass.
There was a homeless woman at the corner of Venice and Lincoln. She held a sign that said, "I can't lie, I need a beer." Her clothes were tattered and dirty. Her hair was matted and unkempt. There were what looked like blood stains on her wrists and ankles. 
At the light, I rolled down the window and she looked at me, a slight spark of interest crossing her features. She wasn't bad looking. I heard a dog barking incessantly.Once I was driving through the south and I picked up a woman hitchhiker. And I knew this hitchhiker was Jesus. It's not that I'm religious or anything but a person knows when they are in a car with Jesus. Besides, she said she was Jesus. I picked her up on a two lane road with green fields on either side and strips of locust trees on the horizon.
Every now and then we'd pass a wooden house with a sagging front porch and rusted lawn chairs and an abandoned washing machine or a trailer with a broken TV antenna and fiberglass awnings.She said she wanted to go home.
So when I saw the church up ahead I pulled off of the two lane and drove up the hill on the washboard dirt track that lead to the church.
And she said, "Where are we going?"
"I'm taking you home," I said.
"But this isn't my home."I replied, "Of course it is, it's a church. This is where you live, when you get inside you'll see."
"No, this isn't where I live," she repeated.
"But you'll see, when we go inside," I said.
And I told her that inside she would smell the incense, and that there would be a picture of her on the cross and that there would be holy water for baptisms, and hymnals.
We got out of the car. From the hill where the little church stood we could see a paper mill in the distance. It's smokestacks emitted an ochre smoke and we could smell the bitter egg-sulfur smell. In the distance there was a medical center where teams of doctors wearing blue surgical scrubs and paper booties performed surgeries. The doors of the church were open and we went inside. "This is not where I live," she said. The dust of the wooden pews and floor smelled dry and musty.
I sneezed. Jesus laughed.
"I told you this isn't where I live."
We got back in the car and continued in the direction of the medical center. Later, I dropped her off in front of a barber shop in a town with one traffic light, a feed store, a couple of dry goods stores, and a cemetery. The barber pole revolved mundanely between two chrome finials.
"Is this where you live?" I asked. She didn't answer.
She just said, "Thanks."
"Don't mention it," I said.
Then I got back to Venice and found myself at the traffic light with the homeless woman. And I gave the woman a crumpled 5 dollar bill.
And the radio man was laughing because he fucks a model too.