Brave Page 5

  It was raining hard that night and we all sought shelter under a church’s porch. My bed for my first night as a homeless teen was the cold, wet dirt. It was the oozing mud that woke me up, seeping into my ears. My hearing was distorted, but I could make out some high-pitched screams that didn’t make sense. I could vaguely see in the dim light that Slam was on top of Chloe. I didn’t see Mr. Mayonnaise. To this day I don’t know if it was consensual. I hope it was.

  Once again, I think I was left alone because I looked like a boy. I remember feeling saved because I didn’t have breasts yet. I slid out of there inch by inch, losing my socks in the process. My ears were killing me, and my vision was starting to double. Barefoot and covered in wet mud, the only thing I could think to do was deposit myself back at the hospital, so that’s what I did. I collapsed at a nurse’s feet crying about punks and possible rape.

  No one believed me. No one would listen. I’ve never lost the wondering and guilt about Chloe. It is something that drives me to correct injustice.

  Everyone was very relieved to see me back, but two weeks and many educational drug movies later, I left again. My roommate gave me some shoes, a couple of sizes too big but better than nothing. I got three other patients to open an alarmed door so I could leave in the elevator.

  This time I escaped for good. My life as a runaway had begun.

  Being a runaway in Oregon is deeply unpleasant. There’s the cold rain, always the rain. Wet jeans clinging to my legs, never fully being dry. And the hunger. I was starving all the time.

  There were times when I was a runaway that I woke up after having these weird blackouts. Once I came to while standing on an overpass, woken up because my shoulder bag and backpack had gotten hit off my shoulder and were flying down the road. There were times during difficult moments when I would disappear from my body. While my physical self was left to deal with the repercussions of what was happening, my mind was in another place, gone. That was my method of protection, floating up above, watching everything happen as if through a camera lens. It was not unlike the kind of trances I would go into later while acting, but that wasn’t on my agenda just yet.

  I had no contact with my family at this point. I was just out there. No one was looking for me. I wasn’t offended by the not looking, I was just on my own.

  It’s funny, on the street you just kind of fall in with other kids like you. The discarded. The uncared for. The lost. One night in front of a Circle K minimart I met a ghostly Nancy Spungen–looking young woman with a mane of fried white-blond hair. She told me her name was Tina and she was a stripper. I had seen a classic film about the burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, so I was pretty sure I knew what being a stripper entailed. But when I asked Tina if she could spin her tassels for me, I was rewarded with a blank stare. She took me to her place, a small box of an apartment with mattresses on the floor and cheap stucco popcorn ceilings. I am not a fan of popcorn ceilings, but I had to make an exception in this case. Kindly, Tina said I could stay for a while. Christmas was coming, and even though I probably wouldn’t eat that day, I did want a roof over my head.

  After a week, Tina told me I had to put in some money for the heating bill. Aww, damn. What to do? Aha! I decided I was going to rob my mother’s house. I made my way back down south to Santa Clara, hitchhiking through small green town after small green town. I finally made it to the house. I waited until I was sure no one was home and crawled in through the cat flap, as I’d done every other time I was locked out.

  The house smelled like Christmas. Fuckers.

  I picked through the presents, irrationally offended that none were for me. In the movies, the tearstained mom would be on the national news, pleading for her runaway daughter’s return. In reality, there was no sign I’d existed. Merry Christmas to me.

  I loaded up the wrapped presents satchel style and shimmied out the cat flap. I thumbed a ride in a Datsun 280Z with a guy who looked like Weird Al Yankovic. He dropped me at Pawn-N-Such. I charmed the owner into buying some of my brother’s Nintendo games. I got $27, enough for Tina’s heating bill.

  I was punk as fuck. I’ve always loved adventures, tiny and large, and this was definitely an adventure.

  Tina didn’t like me at her apartment while she was out, so at night I would go prowling. Usually I’d try my luck sneaking into gay underground warehouse parties where I became somewhat of a mascot. I would usually do the one hit of acid that I’d manage to procure, or later one line of speed because that was more readily available in the club, and I’d dance until I got kicked out. I would go up on the boxes and just dance like a little machine. That’s where I could really lose myself. On the dance floor was where I could channel my fear, stress, everything. I could turn into a kind of dance robot and just move. Sometimes the guys gave me poppers and giggled when I fell over on the floor.

  I still favored boys’ clothes, and managed from what I could get at Goodwill to put together a Charlie Chaplin–esque outfit: trousers that were a little too short and a bowler-type hat. I took my makeup very seriously. My staples courtesy of Tina were a red Wet n Wild lip pencil, Revlon “Love That Red” lipstick, and Coty white rice powder, which came in a beautiful round box with gold designs that looked like it hadn’t changed since the 1950s. I ended up looking like, I don’t know, maybe a cross between a geisha and Charlie Chaplin. Some nights I did full checkerboard makeup on my entire face. It would take three to four hours to do a full face of perfect checkers, the black with eyeliner, the white with a stick of pure white Wet n Wild concealer. Sometimes I did spiderwebs on half my face with my eyeliner.

  I brought it.

  One day I decided to put some acting skills to use. I went to the police station and said I was a runaway, that home was Pocatello, Idaho. I don’t know why I picked Pocatello. I think I’d always thought it was a funny name. I told the police that my mother had changed her phone number and I couldn’t get ahold of anybody I knew. If they could just buy my ticket to Pocatello, I could find my way. Then I turned on the tears. They didn’t know what to do with me. The cops just wanted me to get out of there. They got me a bus ticket. Very kind of them.

  There wasn’t much to see in Pocatello, so after a couple of days I went to the police there, did the same thing, and they bought me a bus ticket to North Bend, Oregon. North Bend is right on the ocean. I remember being out there on acid, sitting on a log and looking at the ocean. The next thing I knew, the tide had come in. The water got as high as my chest, at the height of winter, before I realized I was practically submerged. The problem with acid is sometimes you lose track of things, like, say, the sea level. I was so cold, my jeans soaked through. Sand went up inside of me. I didn’t get dry for, I think, about four days, my clothes stiff and crunchy with sand.

  Next I used my acting powers to get me to Las Vegas because I remembered that my friend Lara had moved there. Lara was staying with Bjarney from Norway, who was always trying to get me drunk. After about five days, Lara got in a fight with him and skipped town, leaving me alone with him. He took me to play “blackyak.” He pronounced the j as a y. I got away from him, too.

  Pretty soon, I tired of my little game sobbing to the police for bus tickets and crisscrossing the West Coast, although I initially thought it was all very adventurous and adult. I did whatever I wanted, which suited me. But it got to the point where it wasn’t so much fun anymore. Being hungry grinds you down. Being cold grinds you down. Shoving down terror and being brave all the time takes a lot of energy. I make it all sound like a madcap adventure, and it kind of was. Until it got old. I woke up one day and realized it was Christmas morning. I hadn’t had food in two days. I was over it. At the end of my thirteenth year, I placed a collect call to my aunt Rory in Seattle. I told her I couldn’t do it anymore. I was tired, tired of being hungry, being cold. She did the kind thing and took me in—she certainly could have said no. She sent me a ticket and soon I was in Seattle, Washington.

  BRUTALITY

  My aunt lived in a handso
me two-story Craftsman home with her husband, Dean, and her newborn son, Austin. The only people who showed me any kindness during this period of my life were my uncle Dean and Rory for taking me in. Dean was an honorable man from Indiana. He was handsome with green eyes, always a step away from laughter, totally in love with his wife. Dean never looked at me like I was a freak, he never put me down, and he smiled like he meant it. No one else smiled at me, but to be fair, I wasn’t smiling much, either. I kind of came in off the streets with a perma-scowl.

  My aunt Rory was undoubtedly going through a lot at this time as she’d just had a baby. I really resented that baby. I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. He had so many material gifts and so much attention showered on him that it made how I grew up look so lacking. This baby was safe. It made me deeply uncomfortable because I didn’t know what to do with these feelings. I was ashamed to be jealous of a baby, but I had never been in a situation where there was extreme care of a child, where attention was paid and love was shown. I craved that kind of love, but if it had been shown, I literally would not have known what to do with it.

  My aunt made a big show out of spraying Lysol every time I touched anything. It was humiliating, one more humiliation to add to the long list. To be fair, I had come in off the streets with crabs in my pubic hair and ringworm on my neck, so I suppose Lysol was a good idea. The ringworm looked like someone took a cigarette butt and pushed it deep into my neck, a perfectly cylindrical shape. The crabs I discovered one day while on the toilet. I picked at a little brown dot in my pubic hair and it moved. It had little arms and legs. Holy shit. I almost passed out. When I was taken to the doctor for my neck, he promptly told my aunt about the crabs. So much for confidentiality.

  I suppose if crabs and ringworm were the worst I came away with from my stint on the streets, then I wasn’t doing so badly. I’d managed to avoid or outwit the predators—the trolls, as we called them on the streets—and not get molested, assaulted, raped, killed. I’d done okay for myself.

  One day, about a month after I’d come in from the streets, my aunt told me that my father was moving to Seattle. My stomach clenched. I immediately felt a deep sense of dread. The last time I’d seen him was after he’d moved to Montreal. He was growing more and more unstable. I knew his arrival would spell trouble, and I was right.

  I figured he had done something bad to my now ex-stepmom. Why else would he have left with nothing but the shirt on his back, his art supplies piled into a car, hauling across the country like a bat out of hell? Why else would he have deserted my two half sisters? I knew he must be guilty of something major. As he got closer to Seattle, I felt the coming storm.

  My dad and I moved into a not-so-charming apartment he called the Cave. It was on the first floor, a dark, dark place with low ceilings, ugly parquet floors, and bad vibes. It must have really depressed my dad, because he’d lived in beautiful houses previously. The building manager lived above us in a hoarder’s paradise.

  Our apartment was clean, but it was devoid of any kindness, which matched what was going on inside the walls. At this point, my father was deep in a rage he had had against women all his life, but now it had a clear focus: me. He would go off on me, and all women, calling me a “feminazi.” He sounded like your average schizophrenic on the street, arguing with some nonexistent entity about women, except I existed corporeally.

  I have been dealing with men’s hatred of me simply because I am a woman for my entire life, and it all started with my dad. We were born enemies based on gender. His excuse for his rage, for every failure, was women. All women were to blame. Therefore, I was to blame. I came to hate him as he hated me. The worst part was remembering what a magical being he had been when I was little. This monster in his place was the worst kind of betrayal. There are few photos of me that exist during this period, because my father said I was too ugly to photograph. After my years in Oregon, I was used to being called ugly. I would roll my eyes when he said that, but it still stung.

  We had no silverware at the Cave, or at least I didn’t. I was told I wasn’t worth buying silverware for. So I stole utensils from restaurants. I didn’t have a bed because I was told I wasn’t worth buying a bed for. My bedroom was the closet, where I slept on three pink square seat cushions taken from my aunt’s house. I wasn’t worth a lot in these days, apparently.

  My father often said things like “I can’t imagine anybody would ever want to be your friend” or “I can’t imagine anybody liking you.” He called me a whore almost daily to the point where I’d finish his sentences. I’d verbally mimic him as he went along.

  I knew he was wrong. I knew it was bullshit. The thing is, it still sticks. It gets through your walls of defense no matter how high you build them. It grinds you down, hearing this sort of stuff, day after day, being told you’re worthless or ugly.

  Being a free-spirited, strong-willed, independent young woman (to put it mildly), with a manic-depressive, woman-hating father was exhausting (to put it mildly).

  At least I could slide the closet door shut and be peaceful in the dark. Except I was not at peace. I never knew when he would come home, enraged by God knows what, spittle flying out of his mouth, wild dark eyes that refused to see me as anything other than everything he hated—a representation of all women.

  One night the closet door got thrown open. A shaft of light blinded me, but I knew it was my father standing there. He let out a yell and grabbed me by my neck. He dragged me out of the closet and onto the floor. I managed to choke out that I was going to call the cops. He said, “I’ll staple your tongue to the floor.” I’ll never forget the hatred in his eyes, but it wasn’t even me he was seeing, it was all women. I knew this, but it didn’t make it easier.

  Once I tried to tell my aunt what he was doing, but she got mad at me and told me he was the best father she knew. That effectively shut me up. I was stuck with him and I couldn’t see a way out. I used to sit in my bedroom/closet and write by flashlight on a yellow legal pad. I would write one thing, over and over, something I called “The Death Monologue.” It was a catalog, essentially, of my father’s sins and wrongs. My plan was to stand over my father while he lay in the dark on his bed and read it out loud. After delivering my blistering, operatic condemnation, I would then kill him with a meat mallet. Smooth on one side, spiky on the other, with a nice heft to the wooden handle. I was going to beat him to death.

  Ironically, the perfectionism that had been ingrained in me by the cult that he’d forced me into probably saved me from spending my life in jail for murder, because I could never get my monologue quite right: each day I had to update the list of his asshole-isms, so the list was never finished. Well, that and the fact I knew my father at this time wasn’t worth jail.

  One weekend he went out of town. I thought it would be a great idea to have a party, since I didn’t know anybody in Seattle and I wanted to make friends. I made flyers with the Cave’s address and papered the main drag. Friday at 9:00 p.m. came, and with it a knock on the door. I opened it to see about twenty random weirdos.

  In my head, I think I had been expecting a Breakfast at Tiffany’s party-scene crowd; what I got was Seattle street kids and some creepy adults. The doorbell rang again, now there were twenty more people. Oh shit, it was 9:05 p.m. and it was already getting out of hand. I was starting to regret the whole idea when the police showed up.

  Busted. The officers came in, made fun of the generic beer, and broke up the party. I decided to pretend I was just a partygoer myself and walk out with a casual “Good night, Officers.” The next thing I knew, I was picked up by my throat and slammed against the wall of the apartment building, a cop’s nightstick buckling my knees while he held me up by my hair and smashed the back of my head into the brick wall. My eyes rolled backward and noticed the landlord staring down at me from the balcony above. She was smiling. What a horrible woman. Who could do this to a child? I was maybe five feet tall and barely past my fourteenth birthday.

  The
cop who beat me looked to be in his fifties, with a handlebar gray mustache and matching slate-colored hair, pasty white skin, and mean blue eyes. My head was cracked open and bleeding, my vision blurred. I was handcuffed and thrown roughly into the back of a cop car.

  I was charged with assault on a police officer. The report alleged I had walked up to him and kicked him in the shins. I think besides the cracked head, this made me the angriest. You couldn’t give me a better story? So lame. So insulting. I would never assault a police officer by kicking him in the shins. I was just being polite.

  When my father came back from his trip, it was World War III between us. Sure, I was guilty of throwing a party like every other stupid teenager in the world, but in no way should I have been beaten by a fifty-year-old male police officer. But to my father I was guilty of everything and more.

  When it came time for my sentencing, I was taken in front of six grim-faced men on a high bench. I pleaded my case, but it did no good; they each took a turn pronouncing me guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. I was infuriated by the fact that no one would listen to me, by the harsh reality of my powerlessness. They sentenced me to work at a mental institution. The mental institution was outpatient, which meant it was a dangerous situation for a young girl. They either didn’t know or didn’t care. I was treated like trash and thrown away. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. But I’ll tell you what, if that same situation had happened to a fourteen-year-old GOC, she’d probably get a worse sentencing. My head took a long time to heal, but my spirit remained unbent.

  I started my sentence grudgingly. I mostly did filing, and sometimes they made me mop the bathrooms. When I took my break, a man who lived in the apartment opposite would jerk off out of his open window while staring at me, wiping his semen into shapes on the glass. I later found out this apartment housed a lot of the outpatients. In the end, they didn’t seem that much more disgusting than the supposedly sane men who would follow me around on the streets of Seattle.