Some things I learned from Larry were important. Having grown up sheltered and well-protected, I knew very little about the adult world. Larry knew a lot.
Larry knew how to ride a motorcycle without crashing, and how to get off the bike without burning a leg. Larry knew when police were important for safety, and when they might arrest us. Larry knew how to find drugs and still pay the rent, and to carry but never use his credit card. He knew how to be a loyal friend, a die-hard biker and a consummate performer on stage.
While I tried to self-destruct, Larry made sure I didn’t implode. Sometimes, even now, I realize that I owe him my life.
But I knew from the moment I met Larry that he wasn’t smart – or at least, not as smart as I’d have liked. Larry was street smart – a street genius, even. But after college, I understood that I wouldn’t be enjoying a lot of intellectually stimulating conversation.
I did not know until late in 1987, however, that Larry was a complete moron who believed his own lies in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary. “Evidence” did not concern Larry.
Firmly convinced that really stupid things were true, Larry also believed he was the smartest person in any room. And his conviction about his intelligence was enough to make other people believe it, too.
He was nothing if not confident.
Larry believed he was right even when his declarations made no sense at all. He invented his own world view. He believed that his theories were truths, and then he sought out people to agree with his proclamations.
Larry believed, for example, that hot dogs weren’t made of meat, so he wouldn’t eat them. Andy Capp’s Hot Fries, however, were “made with real fuckin’ cheddar!” and therefore healthy.
Larry believed that the government was watching him – and everyone – through street lights, even in Pitcairn. He was quite serious. Sometimes we had to run from one lamp post to the next for “safety,” our heads down.
Larry believed that the Japanese had infiltrated every American company except GE and Harley Davidson. Anything new or different was labeled “Jap shit,” then mentally – and often physically – discarded.
For me, though, the most ludicrous was Larry’s explanation about why he smoked cigarettes.
“I was addicted to cigarettes since I was fuckin’ born,” Larry said, a cigarette hanging from his lips. “My mother smoked cigarettes when she was pregnant with me so I’ve been addicted since the womb.” He shook his index finger once, sternly, for emphasis. “And that’s a fact!”
Larry adamantly spouted “facts.” When he stated a “fact,” it could never be denied.
I didn’t say a word in disagreement; my youth and my gender meant to Larry that I knew literally nothing.
I didn’t mention the likely possibility that Larry hadn’t been breast-fed on tobacco juice, or given chewing tobacco as a toddler. He probably wasn’t smoking Winstons in elementary school. The first 12 years of Larry’s life didn’t play any part in his theory of addiction.
But this “fact” was the final straw. In spite of my constant inebriation, I awoke to my reality that day. I finally recognized that Larry was, in many ways, the most moronic person I’d ever known.
This made me think about my parents’ ideas – the ones I’d shunned since moving in with Larry. My parents suddenly seemed smarter somehow.
And that started me thinking about leaving Larry for good. I just couldn’t fathom how to leave Larry and still be a drunk.
Since seeing the Camaro in its dark home under the bridge way back in the fall of ’86, I’d been in love with that car. I knew it wasn’t in great shape with its rotting floor boards and faulty heat, but I loved it.
When Larry’s brother, Danny, found a SHIT HAPPENS bumper sticker for us, the car was finally perfect.
While I never loved the Camaro quite as much as I loved our old Ford pickup truck, and I never paid a dime toward the purchase of either vehicle, I always assumed that Camaro was mine.
But one day, I discovered: it wasn’t.
Larry said he had a surprise for me. “It’s outside!” he said. “C’mon!”
I walked outside. I saw nothing.
“The fuckin’ car!” he squealed. “Look at the fuckin’ car!”
I didn’t know what car he was talking about. I didn’t see our car anywhere.
And then, suddenly, I did.
It was white. My beautiful black Camaro was now an ugly, colorless white. I hated it. “It’s fuckin’ white!” I yelled. “Why is it white?!”
“It’s fuckin’ beautiful!” Larry said, ignoring my distaste. “The guys in the shop fixed it up!”
“I hate it,” I said. “Can you paint it black again?”
“Nope.” Larry shrugged and went inside. I followed him.
What else could I do?
A week went by, then two. Then Larry came home with our ugly white car … changed again.
This time, there were bright red stripes running all the way from the hood on the front of the car, over the top, and down to the spoiler in the back of the car.
BRIGHT. RED. STRIPES.
Larry never asked me before painting the car, which made it even worse for me. I was never a fan of change, but I really loved our PLAIN BLACK car.
“What did you do!” I shrieked. “You made it worse!”
“They’re racing stripes!” Larry said, as though we were both suddenly huge NASCAR fans.
I hated the stripes. I hated the red. I hated the white underneath. And I now officially hated the car.
Larry absolutely ignored my displeasure. “It’s fuckin’ great!” he said. “We’ve got a race car now!” He put his big arm around me and squeezed, believing I would like it more if he told me how much he liked it.
I did not.
“Can we get the truck back?” I asked meekly.
“Fuck no!” Larry said. “That truck was a piece of shit! This car runs great, and now it looks great, too.”
He laughed as though I’d been joking, shook his head in disbelief, and headed inside, leaving me outside with the ugliest Camaro I’d ever seen.
I considered jumping on the car, denting it, ruining the already ruined vehicle. But I couldn’t think of any way to actually get what I wanted.
And when I didn’t get what I wanted, Larry simply ignored me. He just laughed at me and walked away.
In Larry’s world, there was no reason to ask me for my opinion about things like painting the car and/or adding racing stripes. Really it was his car, his apartment, his life – and I was just along for the ride.
So I gave up and walked inside, too. It’s impossible to complain when no one cares about your opinion. From then on, we had a white car with red racing stripes. I never said another word about it.
The longer I stayed with Larry, the longer I continued to drink, the harder I sunk into a despair that was unlike anything I have experienced since. Every day was a waste of time, a pit of agony in a world that didn’t suit me.
This poem, scrawled inside a magazine I don’t recognize, describes how I felt every single day.
Today I have 32 years clean and sober.
If I didn’t, I would still feel the way I did in 1987. Or I would be dead, which is far more likely.
Kitty was a wonderful distraction from my isolation … for a very short time.
At first, she was adorable and sweet and the most wonderful experience in my life. Having my own kitten excited me beyond anything I’d experienced in eons, and I couldn’t get enough of her. I carried her around and held her in my lap; I balanced her on my elbow and I bounced her on my knee. I played with her during every available minute of the day, dragging a feather-filled string across the carpet and watching her pounce, loving every second of it.
It became obvious very quickly, though, that Kitty was not a toy.
We used the cardboard box from underneath a case of Miller Lite for Kitty’s litter box, and shredded newspaper for litter until she was older. She was box-trained immediately.
I was blacking out for hours at a time, so I missed much of Kitty’s upbringing. I would wake up with scratches up and down both arms, since Kitty did not know enough to play gently.
When she was old enough, we had her spayed and declawed, because that’s what Larry said we had to do. “We don’t want her fuckin’ scratching up the furniture!” he said.
No, we don’t want that, I thought.
I cared so very, very little about the furniture, but we had the vet remove her front claws. The lack of deep scratches on my arms was much appreciated, and it wasn’t until years later that I realized what I’d done to my poor cat, removing her natural defenses and causing her to be unable to climb when she needed to escape predators.
If I had it to do over again, I would never declaw my cat. In 1987, though, I just did whatever Larry said.
Kitty drank milk for a long time; Larry said all kittens drank milk. Eventually we transferred her to canned food but she always had milk as a treat.
As she got older, Kitty got bored with wandering around in the living room and started mewing on the window sills, begging to be let out.
“She needs to hunt!” Larry said, and he opened the window so she could come and go as she pleased.
Couldn’t she get hurt out there? I thought, imagining the cars whizzing by on Main Street, and every other street in Pitcairn. But she wanted out, so we let her out. Somehow she didn’t get run over.
Kitty would climb out onto the roof and sit for hours. Eventually she started jumping from our roof to the roof next door. After that, she was just gone – and we’d leave the window open, so she could return at her leisure.
Once – only once – Kitty watched as we spread lines of cocaine on the table – then she pounced. I picked her up and threw her across the room, screaming obscenities, and spent months searching our ratty, disgusting carpet for specks of white powder. I ate a lot of cigarette ash during my search.
Sometimes we’d leave for a whole weekend, leaving her a pile of dry cat food and enough water for her to bathe in. She survived every weekend. Looking back, I think about how lonely she must have been.
If I had it to do over again, I would do a lot more research before getting a cat. Well, if I hadn’t been so drunk. Instead I just did what Larry said. I loved Kitty, but I was completely clueless.
It took no time before Kitty became a responsibility and I went back to being irresponsible.
I was starting to understand that I was utterly alone in the world. It didn’t occur to me to leave Larry; he was my key to staying drunk 24/7. And my job – where everyone was young and fun – only enhanced my feelings of isolation.
The more isolated I felt, the more I longed for something to call my own.
“I want a dog,” I told Larry. “Let’s just hide it from the landlord.”
Larry didn’t look up from working on his motorcycle. “Get a fuckin’ cat,” he said.
“I don’t want a fucking cat,” I said. I knew nothing about cats.
Larry said, “You’ll like having a cat. Cats are like dogs, but you can leave them alone for the weekend.”
This seemed sensible. We often “needed” to leave our pet alone.
“Okay, let’s get a cat,” I said.
My friend Micki, from college, invited me to see her kittens. We drove to their place in Ohio, which was teeming with cats.
Micki showed me a box of little fur balls. “Which one do you want?” she asked.
Every single one of them was adorable, but only one of them was literally climbing up my arm and mewing. “I want this one!” I said.
“Oh, she’s the runt,” Micki said. “Are you sure you want the runt? Sometimes they get sick.”
“Yes!” I said. “I want this one.”
The kitten was three different shades of gray, with little white paws and bright blue eyes. I was already in love. She could have been chronically ill and I still would have chosen her.
The kitten climbed right up my arm and onto the car’s headrest. Apparently kittens rode on headrests when they traveled in cars. Who knew?
As we were leaving Micki asked, “What are you gonna name her?”
I had no idea.
Larry and I spent the two-hour drive back from Ohio discussing cat names.
We considered Tonya, Madonna, and Wynonna. We considered Diana for Princess Di, who was delightfully alive at the time.
I liked girls’ names that ended with “a.”
I considered calling the cat Petunia. “After the skunk in Bambi!” I said. (The Bambi skunk’s name is actually Flower. A petunia is a flower, but “Petunia” ends in “a.”)
The kitten – who had not stopped mewing since we got her – seemed to mew louder.
“I’m not fucking calling her Petunia,” Larry said. Larry preferred using the “f” word as an adverb.
“Oh! Olivia!” I screeched with delight. “After Olivia Newton-John!”
“We’ll call her Olivia then,” Larry said.
We drove for awhile, the kitten loud, mewing atop my seat. It hadn’t occurred to us to feed her.
Larry laughed that she was singing along to the radio. When the song ended, the DJ mentioned Michael Dukakis, who was running for president.
“Oh my god,” I said. “How did I not fucking think of this!?“
Lighting a cigarette Larry said, “What?”
“Michael Dukakis’ wife!” I nearly screamed. “Her name is Kitty! And it’s a girl’s name!” I laughed.
Larry smacked the steering wheel. “I’ll be god-fuckin’-damned,” he said.
I pulled the kitten from the headrest and tried to snuggle her; she scratched me with all four paws. “We have to call her Kitty!”
“Perfect!” Larry smiled and turned up the music.
We finally decided to call the cat “Kitty,” the least original name on the planet. I called this decision “brilliant” and told the Dukakis story to anyone who would listen.
We got her home and I was overjoyed. I thought that I had gotten a puppy who stayed indoors.
Therapists have often noted that I tell my stories rather robotically, that I report facts and details as though I am explaining what happened to someone else.
It’s possible that I do so because I am slightly autistic. It’s also possible that I do so because I know it helps to talk about it, but it’s too painful to get emotionally involved in the painful parts of my tale.
There’s a mental health issue called dissociative disorder that the Mayo Clinic describes, in a general way, as “a loss of connection between thoughts, memories, feelings, surroundings, behavior and identity…. Dissociative disorders usually arise as a reaction to shocking, distressing or painful events and help push away difficult memories.”
I had never heard of such a thing in 1987. But when I found something to be unacceptable, which was often, I simply chose to turn myself off.
I didn’t know this was a “disorder.” I thought I had a kind of superpower that allowed me to survive anything simply by flicking a switch in my brain. With the button on “off,” I didn’t need to be there mentally, even when I was physically present.
I don’t know when I started using this “off” button in my head.
Maybe it was when Mindy Ford beat me senseless after school in the sixth grade. Maybe it was the time David Parks stabbed me between the legs with a sharpened pencil during what was otherwise an innocent game of Truth or Dare. Maybe it wasn’t until after high school, when I needed an off button to survive distasteful sex with strangers.
I can’t be sure when or how it started. I only know that the longer I drank, the more often I needed to turn myself off.
I would be fully functioning – albeit drunk out of my mind – and sitting at a bar. Then some guy would put his paw on my leg. Click! Off-switch engaged. The smile stayed on my mouth, but it left my eyes. My leg didn’t flinch but my body stiffened imperceptibly. The conversation continued in whatever manner it had been before. But I was gone.
I’d like to say I went somewhere good.
But I imagine it’s more like when a deer is standing happily on a highway and a car is bearing down on it as the car roars closer and closer …. I went wherever that deer goes.
There was no panic, no sense of impending doom, no recognition that I’d even turned myself off. I just randomly chose not to participate in life anymore. Sometimes it lasted until the guy took his paw off my leg. Sometimes it lasted until I left the bar. And sometimes it lasted until the guy took me home in the morning.
It lasted however long I needed it to last.
This was different than a blackout. Blackouts were the merciful result of my brain shutting itself off for more biological reasons.
But my off button was merciful in another way. I wouldn’t have said it was a disorder. I would have said it was an emotional survival technique.
I used this technique for years and years and years.
If need be, even today, I can still turn myself off at any time. Except nowadays, I know what it is.
And now I wonder: does “disorder” mean I have to fix it? After all, it’s been useful for a very long time.
Sitting on the side of the road in the dark, I started to panic. I was as far out in the country as I knew how to go, and I was beyond lost.
Briefly, angrily, I prayed.
I decided I should try to sleep. Things would be better in daylight, I presumed, so I pushed the seat back and tried to take a nap.
I passed out almost instantly. I may have slept for three minutes or three hours; I have no idea. I awoke to sounds – a crunching or howling or snapping or wailing … sounds that faded in and out … in the distance, in the back of my brain, right next to the car….
I snapped awake. Had I been dreaming? Hallucinating? All I heard were crickets.
The sky was turning blue. I sat for a moment, shivering a little, watching the sky brighten. I recognized pre-dawn from the many, many times I’d seen it before after long, hazy nights.
I lit a cigarette and turned on the car. Still empty.
With no clue, I started to drive again. I noticed things I hadn’t before: a humming sound in the engine, a burning rubber smell that could have been psychosomatic, gaping holes in the floorboards beneath my feet.
Those holes had always been there, but I imagined myself stepping through the holes and touching the highway, my leg wrenching beneath me and pulling me to certain death as my bare foot touched the ground below.
I considered shoving my foot through anyway. Not yet, I thought. I’m not giving up yet.
Just as that thought settled into my brain, I rounded a bend and saw it. A thousand yards ahead sat a gas station, lights brightly glowing like a beacon in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Probably Pennsylvania.
I pulled in, stopped by the gas pump and went inside, nearly in tears with relief.
I threw my one dollar and change onto the counter.
The guy stared at me as I stood there, bedraggled and teary, and broke.
“It’s all I have, I don’t know where I am, I’m completely lost and I’ve been driving for hours and I can’t find my boyfriend. I thought I was in Ohio but then I wasn’t where I thought I was and now I’m here and my car is totally out of gas and I’m out of cigarettes and I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do even if I get gas because I don’t know how to get home. But I have to get gas and this is all the money I have in the world, I just don’t know if it’s enough to get me home because I don’t know where I am.”
The guy behind the counter regarded me, wide-eyed, as I blathered.
Without warning, then, a man holding a cup of coffee reached around me and put a five-dollar bill on the counter.
“Get her some gas,” said the world’s kindest stranger.
I hadn’t even seen him walk in. “Really?! Thank you so much! Thank you!”
“No problem,” he said. I did not have the audacity to also buy cigarettes. I put everything I had into the tank.
As I pumped life-saving gas my savior asked, “Where’s home?”
“Pitcairn,” I said.
“Where’s Pitcairn?”
“Um … near Pittsburgh?”
“Get back on this road,” he said, pointing left. “Head east. You’ll get there.”
“Thank you so much,” I said again. “I’ll try.”
He hopped in his car and drove away.
I followed the road east and improbably, eventually, I arrived.
Larry – who came home the next day – never even knew I was gone.
One day after our bar-burger lunches Larry suddenly said, “Let’s go!”
“Where?”
“Camping, remember? I told you yesterday.”
“But I’m happy here,” I said. Blackouts be damned; I would have remembered if we were going camping.
“Suit yourself,” Larry said, and he left.
“He won’t leave without me,” I told the bartender, even as Larry’s bike revved outside. “He knows I love camping.”
I took another sip of my beer, waiting for Larry to come back inside, but he did not. Instead, his bike revved up and roared away.
I chugged the rest of my beer and went outside in time to see Larry’s bike rounding the corner and leaving town.
“Fuck!” I said. I stomped and fumed, but the Harley roar dimmed until I could no longer hear it.
I had three dollars in my pocket, so I walked across the street to the gas station. “Virginia Slim Menthol Light 120s,” I said to the guy behind the counter, putting down my $1.25. “And do you have any fucking idea where someone might go camping around here?”
The cashier raised his eyebrows then slid the cigarettes across the counter. “Nope,” he said.
I stormed out. I’ll fuckin’ find him, I thought. I went home, grabbed four beers and a two-liter of Diet Coke out of the refrigerator, and hopped in the car. I shoved my AC/DC 8-track into the player, blaring Highway To Hell at full volume.
I wasn’t as drunk as I wanted to be, but I was not as sober as I should have been. The tires squealed as I peeled out, furious at being left behind, with no idea where I was going.
I made a left at Main Street – the way Larry’s bike had gone when I’d last seen him – and started driving into the country, hoping to stumble upon a campground. Furious and chain-smoking, scream-singing the angriest songs I could find, I drove and drove. I drove out of Pitcairn and out of its nearby suburbs. I drove until I didn’t see houses anymore.
I started to calm down when I realized I was amongst the trees and fields and nature that I so adored. I started to enjoy the drive, the music, and my mission to find Larry, though I had no idea which way to go.
Sometimes I aimed for the sun – as it set. I followed roads with alluring tree canopies. As it got darker … and darker … and darker, I kept driving. I didn’t see a single sign for camping anywhere.
I drove through the night until I saw a sign that said “MOUNT UNION” with a little arrow. I couldn’t believe my good fortune! I’ve driven further than I thought! I thought. I might as well go see my college!
Newly elated, I followed the arrow toward Mount Union. I drove and drove, but didn’t see anything familiar. After many miles, I finally drove right into Mount Union … which, apparently, is not only a college in Ohio. Mount Union is also a very small borough in Pennsylvania.
Dejected, I drove through the Pennsylvania countryside. In the dark, I could see nothing.
Then, quite suddenly, I noticed that the Camaro’s gas gauge was dangerously, precariously close to the letter E.
I had absolutely no idea where I might be, or where a gas station might be, or how I might find one in the dead of night.
So I simply pulled over onto the side of the road, as lost as a lost person can be, and lit a cigarette.
On the morning we were leaving Sturgis, there was some hubbub outside of the world’s worst port-o-johns. Larry didn’t come back to our “camping” spot for a long time.
“What’s going on?” I asked when he finally returned.
“Somebody got shot,” he said.
“Who?”
Larry shook his head. “No idea,” he said, and lit his cigarette. “But he’s dead.”
Good thing we’re leaving, I thought. I don’t want to get shot. We were on the bike only minutes later. Ronnie was in his truck, following us.
We stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank before making the several-day-long trek home. As usual, we wouldn’t be taking the highways because we couldn’t afford the tolls.
Larry was paying for the gas when a guy with a huge camera walked up to me. I was sitting on the back of the bike, waiting for him and not smoking, so as to avoid causing the gas pump to explode.
“Can I take your picture?” the guy asked.
“Sure,” I said. Just as I started to lift my shirt to give a tit-shot to the giant camera, Larry appeared out of nowhere.
“Not this time,” Larry said, gently moving my hand back to my lap. He stepped back.
I was wearing the SHIT HAPPENS t-shirt I’d acquired from the horrific experience of topless begging. I hadn’t bathed, showered, brushed my teeth or brushed my hair in a week. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want a picture of me.
But the guy took a photo of me just sitting there on the back of Larry’s bike.
“Thanks!” he said, with a big smile, and walked away.
“Never give a tit shot to a guy with a camera like that,” Larry said. “You don’t know where it’ll end up.”
I couldn’t have cared less where it would end up. “Okay,” I said, as though guys with giant cameras constantly took my pictures.
Larry and I rode a couple hundred miles before I tired of sitting on the back of the bike. I switched at a rest area so I could ride the rest of the way home with Ronnie in his truck. We chatted and listened to music and I went barefoot and drank beer and had a blast. The truck was so much more comfortable than the motorcycle!
After Sturgis and two full years with Larry, I was tiring of biker life.
Months later, Larry came home from the gas station where he’d picked up the latest copy of In The Wind magazine. In The Wind was an offshoot publication of Easy Rider, the biker magazine devoted to Harleys and American biker lifestyle.
The magazines weren’t exactly journalistic pieces. Easy Rider magazines were chock full of caption-less photos, which meant bikers loved “reading” them. Half-naked chicks and pimped out Harleys could be browsed at their leisure.
Larry bought all the biker magazines.
It was late fall when Larry walked in and said, “Lookee what I found!” He tossed a magazine down in front of me with a used coffee stirrer sticking out of the top like a bookmark.
I was bored.
“Open it!” Larry said excitedly. “Open to where it’s marked!”
I opened it. On the right, there were several photos of amputees – a guy with no leg, a guy with no arm…. On the left, there were photos of people wearing SHIT HAPPENS shirts and stickers.
And in one corner was the photo of me, taken at that Sturgis gas station after seven days without a shower.
It was the proudest moment of my biker life. I was finally published.
In addition to huge, non-stop musical performances on an enormous stage in the campground, pop-up events happened everywhere. This included the ever-popular hot dog pull where chicks were beaten in the face by strung-up hot dogs, beauty contests which were obviously popularity contests for women with very large breasts, wet t-shirt contests, and vendors selling pasties and sex toys.
I gave tit-shots every few minutes without giving it a second thought.
Biker life was full of fun for women who wanted to be objectified and/or humiliated. In spite of my blasé attitude and overwhelming alcoholism, I had enough self-respect to avoid these events like the plague … except for one.
There was a guy with a microphone standing on a box announcing, “Ladies, get a free SHIT HAPPENS t-shirt right here!”
There is honestly very little in the world that makes me as happy as a free t-shirt. And “Shit Happens” was the latest, greatest bumper sticker craze; I loved the hopelessness and humor embodied in that phrase.
Oh, how I wanted that shirt!
I tugged at Larry and squealed. “Can I get one?”
“Sure, Baby,” Larry said. As we headed toward the guy with the mic, we noticed that he wasn’t alone. There were dozens of men in a circle nearby, and a half-naked woman dancing around in the middle of that circle, wiggling for all she was worth. When we arrived at the circle, the guy said, “The lady gets a t-shirt!” and all the guys hooted and hollered.
I did not understand. So I watched. Another woman ripped off her shirt and danced around with a hat in her hands. Guys shoved money into the hat. Within two minutes: “The lady gets a t-shirt!” More hooting and hollering.
“I don’t want to dance,” I said to Larry.
“You don’t have to fuckin’ dance,” he said. “You just gotta get money.”
I watched more carefully with the third woman, who took off her shirt and walked around with the hat. Her boobs hung down to her stomach, bouncing as she walked. Whenever she got close to a man, he shoved money into her hat. Minutes later: free shirt, hooting/hollering.
“Okay,” I said. “I can do that.”
So I did. I got the hat from the guy and tossed my black t-shirt onto the ground.
“As soon as you get ten dollars, you get a shirt!” the guy announced. “Go!”
I stood topless and frozen in the middle of a circle that suddenly seemed ominous. I had no idea what to do with myself.
I was naked, exposed, and not nearly drunk enough for this.
I walked around the circle believing I was strutting, holding out the hat, hoping someone would have pity on me. “I want a free t-shirt,” I murmured. “Will you help me get a shirt?”
I was not a performer. I did not smile. I had tiny breasts and felt incredibly shy in spite of the booze.
I walked and held out the hat but no one gave me money. Guys took one look at me begging like a homeless person, and shook their heads. One guy turned and walked away, dissing the whole event.
Eventually someone gave me a dollar. Another guy threw in some change. After what seemed like an hour but was probably less than ten minutes, the guy with the mic said, “Here’s your shirt, young lady!”
No one hooted or hollered. It was just finally over.
“Thank you,” I said, nearly in tears.
I pulled the SHIT HAPPENS shirt over my naked breasts and didn’t take it off for days.
