Out of the fire September 22, 1985

 

Do you smell fire? Or a rat? Or more complications than I care to think about?

Two weeks ago, Suzanne called, clinging to the telephone like a teenager, sounding just a bit disappointed when I told her I was involved with someone.

This week, Louise contacted me on the heals of the welfare department’s barking for me to give them bread.

Louise and welfare seem to be dance partners, coming up with new steps every so often.

This time she’s come up with a new angle and sincerely sounds scared.

She’s been scared before. Like the time she was kidnapped in Colorado and raped at gunpoint, or the time she got left in the middle of Portland by her second husband with no job, no home and no money, and our nine-year-old daughter to take care of.

Somehow, she’s managed to get through those things and more, if not unscathed, then not drastically scarred. Her ability to recreate herself has always impressed me. She even managed to recover from the legal black mail when the cops forced her to testify against the bar owners in 82, threatening to put her in jail for prostitution if she didn’t.

Somehow, in all these instances, from her days in porno to the most recent days with trying to quit the trade, she managed to escape with her life.

Our brief marriage – including that time prior to that, when we lived in LA, Portland, New York then Portland again largely involved going some place else she thought the grass would be greener and we could live a better life, which never worked out in the end.

But these days, she’s struck with the thought of dying and that scares me. A lump on a breast is enough to terrify any woman.

But the tomato analogy still sticks with me, how she doesn’t want to lose them before harvest. I can almost hear her asking, “Why me? What did I do to deserve this?”

Then, I can imagine her coming up with a list of sins dating back to when she still lived with her adopted parents.

There is genuine sadness in her life as she holds out small dreams, such as living in a log cabin in the woods. She constantly struggles with friends and acquaintances, who betray her.

Last year this time, she was still stranded in a camp ground after her boyfriend abandoned her, and when she finally found a place to live, a fire gutted it and she wound up living for months in a fire house, living as she put it “like a 60s hobo.”

Most recently she broke up with her latest lover, the longest-term relationship she has had in years.

Since then, she has apparently been living in that trailer. The post office clerk told me Louise intended to move back to Moscow or somewhere near Black Lake or one of the many other small towns in Norther Pennsylvania – as if she decided where to live by throwing a dart at a map.

But she’s determined to give up “the life” and that’s the reason she says she needs welfare. She has to have money to live on and would rather collect welfare than to keep on doing what she’d been doing.

For that I’m proud of her.

 

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