by Earl Somers

The child was sexually abused at age 5 in that 'house' located somewhere in the Tenderloin. Somehow, he managed to escape and ended up on the waterfront among San Francisco's homeless street people. Right from the start, the child was told to 'buzz off' by the very same people with whom he gradually learned to subsist and be independent. He soon became known as young Buzzoff. He was destined to be flushed down the sewer of life until he met the Professor, an ex-convict, who himself had been convicted of raping one of his female students years before.

The author's working experience as a U.S. Customs agent patrolling the waterfront brought him in contact with society's disenfranchised street people, most of whom eschewed any attempt to have their lives regulated by the authorities. Buzzoff could have been one of many he encountered up and down the Embarcadero. For the most part, strange as it seems, they were content to cadge just enough 'coin of the realm' to subsist another day. Of course, there existed a certain element who needed their 'fix' in order to remain in a state of somnambulism, enabling them to escape from reality, forgetting the reasons why they had sunk to such depths in the first place.

There were those who received small stipends from social security, and VA, which enabled them to pay rent in run-down hotels and boarding houses, usually in the Tenderloin. Still others slept in alleys, door-fronts or benches covered with newspapers and cardboard.

And, some never made it to see the dawn of the next day.