A real down to earth guy..

Have you ever met someone before they became famous, and now they are really famous?
Pavlov Pascale
Pavlov Pascale, Lived on the streets of NYC as a teenager
Updated Dec 20, 2018 · Upvoted by Jeremi Shearon, Assistant Manager at Casey's General Stores (2017-present)
Yes, when I was seventeen in New York City, my mother threw me out of our apartment. She double-locked the door, put the chain on and turned on her sound machine at night so she didn’t have to hear me ring the doorbell. The first time she did this to me, I headed downtown to hang out with the friend I’d been with before returning home. This was before cell phones and it was too bitterly cold that night to try calling people from a public pay phone.

I mentioned to the guy I’d been hanging out with, whose name was Steve, that my mother had thrown me out. Steve told me he knew a guy who lived on Venierio Street on the Lower East Side (we were hanging out at the NYU dorms at the time) who let anyone in need of a place sleep on his floor.

“The guy’s name is Esai, and he has to interview you first,” Steve informed me.

He trotted me over to Esai’s run-down tenement apartment, which housed a claw foot bathtub in its tiny kitchen. Esai was only two years older than me but surprisingly mature. He interviewed me in his shabby living room, he sitting on one tattered sofa chair and me on another. A commotion was taking place in his bedroom, where a bunch of people were hanging out, waiting to spend the night.

“Why can’t you stay in your home?” Esai asked me sternly, muscled arms protruding from rolled-up sleeves.

“Because my mother won’t let me,” I lamely explained, fidgeting with the sofa chair stuffing.

Esai consented to let me sleep on his floor, along with about twenty other people. His roommate, Burt, had his room to himself and allowed no vagrants. I stayed at Esai’s place on and off throughout that winter prior to college, as my mother tossed me out of our apartment at random, arbitrary moments of her choosing. At night, Esai would collect a dollar from each of us and make food runs. I had respect for him. He was so tolerant, even as his other ‘guests’ blacked out the teeth on his head shot photos for fun.

You see, Esai wanted to be an actor. And toward the end of that bitterly cold winter, he landed his first major role starring opposite Sean Penn in Bad Boys, a film about life in a juvenile detention center. Following that, he landed a lead role in La Bamba. He was on NYPD Blue for a long time and has had many other roles besides. He’s an example of someone who came from ‘nothing’ and made it big. Good for him!

I still remember Esai Morales calling me ‘poor, little rich girl’ as I played with pencils on his apartment floor. I came and went as I pleased but always knew I had a place to stay in the event that I needed one.