“I have nothing to offer
anyone except my own confusion.”
Kerouac
This happened a long time
ago...
In this blog I've written
about Traci, the runaway from Zanesville, OH that come into our crew
that hung out in Slater Park around 1982. God, so long ago now. At
15, she was eased out of her house when her mother remarried and both
Mom and the new beau, decided they didn't want the baggage of a young
teen around them. Traci was ignored and abandoned while the couple
had a year long honeymoon, taking off to Chicago, parting and
otherwise enjoying the idea of being a “childless couple” by
choice. It went on to the point where Traci finally lit off on I-70
east to New York City.
“They didn't want me
around anymore.” was the repeated phrase she would tell me often
enough.
She hadn't made it to NYC
when I had met her. She'd hitchhike her way east and be picked up by
truckers and what not and be deposited at their destinations, none of
which was anything like a Big City. As I got to know her and the
teenage runaway lifestyle, it was “Gas, Ass or Grass: No One Rides
for Free” that got her her rides. She was ditched in Pawtucket by
some guy she met in Foxboro who just got rid of her once he was done.
She had ended up in Foxboro after a trucker ditched her at a Greasy
Spoon restaurant. She was still trying to make it to NYC, where she
believed she could make a fun life there. In her young teen head, NYC
(specifically Greenwich Village) would fix everything, if she could
only get there.
“I want to be an
artist...and the best artists are in Greenwich Village.” she told
me.
Traci was one of those girls
who never grew past five foot two. When I had met her, she was lucky
enough to have been born rather pretty, albeit too short for model
status. She had shoulder length sandy blonde hair with a shaved
patch, straight back from her left ear for a few inches. That was a
short lived hairstyle for girls who aped the 80's punk style. Add to
that feather earnings that hung down, tight ass jeans, Pony sneakers
and a green/black flannel shirt that accentuated her breasts. To my
18 year old boy's mind, she was hot, although teenage runaway dirty.
A boho dirty if you will. She had one strange aspect
about her though, her eyes didn't track right. I'm sure you've seen
people where one eye tracks you fine but the other is just ever so
slightly off. I paid little attention to it then but years later when
I was working for the deaf I had told this very same story to one guy
who was stone cold deaf and he perked up. He signed, “That's
strabismus...girls who have that are fucked up in the head beyond
belief, and they put out like hell too.” I took that as gospel and
the only reason why I did was that the deaf population can read body
language like a book. I have found them to be right more often than
not. But I didn't know that in 1982.
When she first met us, she
worked rather quickly at determining which boy could offer her a
place to stay, shower and wash her soiled clothing. I couldn't take
strays home as there was no way my Mom nor brother would allow that.
Damn! Jack, who's parents didn't give a damn what he did, nor who he
brought home, managed to get her to stay with him. His home was a
sort of bus station for the occasional down and out brother, sister,
cousin, friend or whatnot. They'd stay there for a while then zip
onto somewhere else.
She worked us boys with her
skills at flirtation, which looking back on it all, was pretty
advanced for a 16 year old. She managed to get free food, free
lodgings and some newer clothing from us just by giving the boys the
right amount of attention. “Hmm..you're cute...I might
fuck you if things go well.” The mere hope of getting into her
pants, was enough for us teens to bend over backwards for her. Like I
said, she was good. But then again, she apparently had to learn these
skills well as she hoofed it across all these miles. She had learned
all about female sexual power quick.
One day, by the pond in
Slater Park, I was talking to her about Zanesville, as I never had
really traveled before. She had told me her favorite spot there was
a bluff overlooking a muddy colored river that ran north to south
there. I had told her that a favorite place of mine, where I could
get away from everybody, either to fish, catnap or just stare into
space was a hilly area near the Central Pond that was way in the back
of Slater Park, where the Seekonk/Rehoboth woods really began. She
perked up and wanted to see it.
Traci never went anywhere
w/o her backpack. She treated it like I treat my wallet, you never
leave it anywhere and I suppose she couldn't, her entire life was in
there. She picked it up and off we went.
Once we got to the
escarpment overlooking the pond, she began to unwind, talk more
deeply about who she was. All I heard were stories of a lost soul
type of girl, who never did have any anchor of any kind. No family
stability, no stability in school, not even any real order in her
head. As we talked further, out came dreams and fantasies about what
she wanted her life to be. As she talked, the look on her face
changed due to her own delving into that deep water of forgetfulness.
You go down so deep the truth of your own life disappears. Years
later I learned that this was called “dissociation.” We all do
it, it's called daydreaming, but some of us take that and make a full
length movie out of it, she did. As she spoke of what/where she
wanted to be, she in her own mind, actually “went there” and it
shone all over her face.
I suppose she thought me
trustworthy, or at least no threat at all, or perhaps on her own
wavelength when she asked me if I wanted to read her poetry, see her
drawings. She trusted me enough then to let me see a bit closer. She
dug into her backpack and took out a sketchbook and a beat up five
subject notebook for me to read.
I now know, when a girl
hands you her own written poems, you're in.
What I read was a mess. A
mess in syntax and structure and of subject matter. Poems to me are
rhymed or just free versed. I think she had no idea she was doing
free verse, let alone if she even know what it was. Many of the
poems were all about her loneliness, her inability to find the right
way, to even live life successfully. A “I Don't Know Who I Am or
What I Want Out of Life” was the jist of many of them. Her inner
life was of confusion and one of escape. Add to that the teen girl
fantasy, a princess fantasy, of finding that guy who would solve all
her problems just with love kind of poems.
“What do you think?” she
asks.
Of course, I couldn't tell
her what I really thought. I white lied a comment that could be taken
for what it was. “Traci...this stuff is really frantic.” I said.
And it was.
“Ain't it though? I just
let my mind run wild when I write!” she said.
I flipped through her
sketchbook and to my surprise, she really could draw. The pictures
were all charcoal drawings, fantastical, mostly of girls in some
DreamLand-scape. Below is an approximation of what she drew.
“You really can draw...I
can't...never could. You probably could do something in art.” I
told her. She was truly pleased with my view.
For a while, we didn't talk,
just lay on that grass, looking around when she said.
“Ronnie, you're really
nice..kind...I haven't met a lot of kind guys at all...” I had no
answer to that, just perhaps a “thanks.” She had sized me up and
told me her verdict of me.
I wasn't expecting the next
statement though.
“You want to fuck me
though, don't you?” she said.
Being 18..my only answer to
that was an emotional, sort of drawn out, almost plaintive, with a
rising intonation...”Yeaaaahhh..” I was starting to like her
more and more..but not just in a sexual way and I suppose she could
tell too.
She broke off eye contact
with me, looked in her lap when she says: “Ronnie, you don't want
to know me, not really...you don't know my past...” She had an
awful estimation of herself, apparently. I later could only guess she
wasn't too happy with all she had done in the past months to “make
it” all the way out here being a runaway. Though with her being
spaced out 24/7, her desperate attempts to forget the “now,” she
turned and was completely with it, completely engaged for a few
minutes when she told me, warned me about who she was. She had to
have some moments of lucidity I guess...to make it this far.
I was let down by her saying
this, but it was true from her heart I now know. Here she was, with
perhaps some morals left, perhaps some heart...protecting me from
herself. “You don't want to know me...”
Then in keeping with ability
to fly into fantasy, she gets up, starts twisting around in a sort
of dance saying, “See! I can dance like that redwing!” Being 18,
seeing how a female can just smoothly turn and twist w/o so much of
an effort, was hypnotic. “Yeah..tons of redwings here..they're all
over this pond!” was all I could say.
**
Then one day she was gone.
She had left us, just poof...and that was it. Our little group hadn't
figured out who she had met to move on but she had met someone,
perhaps another trucker, or some car she had hopped into and off she
went, perhaps to Greenwich Village...perhaps Stonington, CT...ever
closer to NYC.
She'd be 46 now..or dead, I
have no clue.
It's funny how you meet some
people, even just for a short time, and you don't forget about them.
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