Chapter 12 #2
The next morning, I woke up in my tent, though I didn’t remember returning.
I was told that Eli had found me unconscious in an alley several streets over from where I was supposed to be.
Everything hurt. I was so banged up that I could barely stand up and a sharp pain stabbed through my ribs if I breathed too deeply.
But I’d survived, and Smith had even made good on his promise to pay me for the night. I hoped that would be the end of it.
It wasn’t. A few weeks later, Smith was bored and he came back. Eventually, he was a regular “customer” of mine. The only customer I couldn’t deny even if I wanted to.
It was a vicious cycle. The more often he visited me, the more drugs I needed to keep the pain at bay. The more drugs he supplied me, the more I owed him, so the more he visited me.
Over and over, like the cycle of season. Never ending.
Then came the day, shortly after Eli’s new boyfriend had managed to get him and I into an apartment as part of a special deal with a man who had built a youth center and also ran an apartment building for people needing a place to stay.
I’d stayed in that apartment with Eli for only two days before the night Smith didn’t have any more oxycocet or benzos so he gave me some cocaine.
Before that night, I hadn’t wanted the heavy duty drugs, but after months of his abuse, I finally gave in and tried it, wanting the pain to go away for just a little while.
I mean, it was mostly free and all I had to do was submit to his lust-driven moments, right?
So what if he tossed me around a bit, left a few bruises, or shared me with others from time to time.
At least I had money for food for Eli and myself.
One day, after one such rough session with the cop and a few friends, I’d apparently stumbled back to the tent city in my dazed and drugged state, forgetting completely that I actually had an apartment to go to where Eli was waiting for me.
I’d ended up crashing in a tent with another transgender prostitute, Nadine. She and I had met on one of the corners where Smith had dropped me off one night, telling me to go “meet some friends” and he’d see me in the morning.
A cop had, effectively, become my pimp.
Apparently, he owned Nadine as well, so he told her to “show me the ropes”, although I already knew way too much about prostitution.
It turned out, this side of town offered a little more to clients than I’d previously engaged in, so I’d been in for a shock the first time I was chained up and beaten, strangled, and then roughly raped as part of my new life as one of Smith’s girls.
The cocaine Smith provided came in handy when it came to those kinds of nights.
Eventually, I got so lost in the nightly routine of getting high and then serving Smith’s “friends”, that I forgot to care about what else was passing me by out there.
I forgot to think about Eli and what he was doing.
Forgot I was supposed to be living with him, safe in an apartment and looking for a real job instead of working the streets every night.
One night blurred into the next, and I hardly noticed the pain anymore.
The little white powder was a blessing I began to happily accept when it was handed to me.
Anyway, after a particularly rough night and the dawn of a very chilly day, Nadine and I were collecting newspapers from the trash in order to prepare the tent for winter.
The newspapers added extra insulation from the cold, especially when spread over the ground.
I never bothered to read what was on them, the news of the world was irrelevant to me, but that day I let my gaze skim over the front page.
It spoke of events I barely understood, but one thing caught my attention.
The date in the corner was very small compared to the headline, but I stared at it as if it were screaming at me.
Seeing the current date, it hit me that I couldn’t remember how long I’d been living on the streets.
Had it been a year?
Probably. I’d experienced homelessness through all the seasons by then but beyond that I couldn’t say exactly how long it had been. The days all blurred together into one long string of pain and survival.
Sitting in the tent, holding that newspaper, I could suddenly see my whole future stretching out before me.
There were people in the tent city who’d been homeless practically their whole lives.
They were a part of the city streets, no different than the dust and refuse that collected in the corners of alleyways, and they were the lucky ones.
They survived. There were many who lost their lives to the streets every year.
If nothing changed those were the two possible futures that awaited me. The streets became my permanent home, or something would eventually catch up with me, and my life would be cut short.
Shortly after this revelation, fate delivered me my first blessing.
I was scheduled to meet Smith again for another “exchange” but this time he didn’t show up.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I enjoyed a night free of pain and didn’t even dip into my stash of powder.
It was the closest thing I’d ever had to a vacation, but I assumed it wouldn’t last.
However, the next night Smith still didn’t show. And the next. And the next. I never learned what happened to him. If his cruelty had finally caught up to him, or if he was just busy and had temporarily forgotten about me. Either way, I finally had a chance to be free of him.
I couldn’t risk waiting around for him to show up again. Selling what few items we had, Nadine and I gathered every penny to our name and bought one-way bus tickets to the farthest city we could afford.
Baton Rouge.
Nadine apparently had a friend there who had made it out of this life and was willing to put us up until we could get on our feet.
I knew nothing about the place, and nothing waited for me there, but it had to be better than what I was leaving behind.
My only regret was that I didn’t tell Eli I was leaving.
I wanted to, but if Smith came looking for me then Eli would be in danger.
He’d already done so much for me, I couldn’t repay his kindness by painting a target on his back.
It was safer for both of us if he knew nothing about my plans or where I was going.
My new life in a new city was… much like my old one. Nadine’s “friend” ended up more like an enemy, someone else who was looking to take advantage and pimp us out. I hightailed it out of there after the first night. I had no clue what happened to Nadine after that.
Without a penny to my name, I couldn’t afford a downpayment on even the cheapest apartment, so homelessness was once again my only option. We’d had to sell the tent to afford the bus ticket, so my first week in Baton Rouge was spent sheltering under an old bridge as I got to know the city.
Luckily, it was warmer there, so at least the nights didn’t get as cold.
Another silver lining was that I could no longer afford to supply my drug habit and sobriety was forced on me by necessity.
Things got a little better over time. Using the skills I’d learned on the streets of Maryland, I managed to keep myself fed and eventually managed to find a more permanent shelter in an empty warehouse with a group of other wayward souls.
A forgotten shipping container became my new home.
I’d learned my lesson with that cop, Smith, and didn’t risk turning tricks for money anymore.
Instead, I spent my days hitting every food bank and soup kitchen in the city and running odd errands for anyone I could in order to make some cash.
It wasn’t a thriving life, but it was enough to keep me alive and didn’t hurt too much.
That was really all I could ask for. I even managed to acquire a few small luxuries, such as some clothing that I didn’t completely hate, and an old, battered copy of Peter Pan.
I remembered my mother reading me this book when I was little.
As a child, I’d been delighted by all the magic and the ability to fly through the skies at will.
Looking back at it with the eyes of an adult, I realized my mother probably favored the story because she liked the idea of children that never grew up.
I didn’t know how to feel about that, but the book was still a fond memory, and I didn’t have many of those.
So, I clung to it, nonetheless, flipping through its pages by distant firelight before going to sleep each night.
When Eli took me under his wing, the first thing he taught me was how to survive, but the second thing he taught me was the need for safety.
We lived dangerous lives outside the safety regulations of polite society.
If we didn’t regulate ourselves, then we risked being the cause of our own destruction.
For example, Eli insisted that I should never start a fire unless I was prepared to stay awake and watch it the whole time, and that water should always be kept nearby just in case.
If I did need to sleep, and it was too cold to put out the fire, then I needed to pair up with someone so we could take turns watching the flames.
Unfortunately, none of the other lost people living in that Baton Rouge factory had someone like Eli to teach them this.
They weren’t as careful as the residents of the tent city we’d left behind.
Most people just kept to themselves despite living under the same industrial roof, and they didn’t appreciate being told what to do.