I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I came to California to live with my Dad. At 16 I'd only met him once before, briefly at the age of seven or eight. A few ground rules were established at my arrival. #1 You're going to get a job #2 You're going to finish school #3 You're going to go down to Planned Parenthood to get on the Pill #4 If you're going to be out late, phone home #5 If you want drugs, get them from me and not off the street. I remember the initial feeling of exhilaration with my new found freedom from the oppressive lifestyle I'd left in Montana. I was thrilled to be able to smoke cigarettes or pot and drink. Not being one to really enjoy pot or the taste of alcohol, cigarettes were my source of joy and newfound independence.

We lived in a shitty trailer in a bleak and depressing trailer park on Mission at the top of the hill in Daly City. It was constanly foggy and windy, even in summer. The motel next door housed prostitution and drugs. The crazy people that lived in the trailer park would never cease to intrigue or disgust me. One woman who was referred to as the Statue of Liberty would walk around chanting, and would pause at all the entrances to the trailer park with her bic lighter held high while she cast spells to protect us. There was old Charlie, who always shivered, that would take pictures of 12 year old girls in his trailer. Hal, the used car salesman, sold me my very first car that I would eventually sleep in, an Olds Cutlass. Slim was the butcher at Brentwoods Supermarket, right next door. Hal, Slim and Cliff the chef, were my dad's most steadfast drinking buddies. Once, a man who lived in a van there, put on rollerskates and a diaper, high on LSD, rolled out onto Mission boulevard, getting killed instantly by a car. Another time, I'd gotten off work to find cops and and ambulance, my drunk dad on a megaphone across the lot, jeering the situation. The situation was this: a older bearded crazy guy had had his mother in his trailer for years, an invalid. No one even knew about her. We also didn't know the smell eminating from his foil-wrapped windowed trailer was from her decaying body. He had been sharing her bed.

I worked at Jack in the Box down the street day #2 in the state of California. I would walk home past the supermarket, steal a fruit pie or two and ask for a job every day for about a month. Finally the supervisor told me to go downtown, sign on with the union and he'd hire me. I got on at the union and got a pretty good paying job there at Brentwoods. I went to school across the street. Inner city school was terrifying for me. I was very different. I got into fights. I couldn't use the restrooms because there were guys in there getting high. The boys' room had cops in them, so they went into the girls' room instead.

I was asleep in my nightgown one school night when a guy who had done business with my dad came looking for him at the trailer. I told him I didn't know where my dad was. He showed me his gun and insisted I come with him to go find my dad. Luckily, we did just that. We drove around to a few bars and found my dad. I was abandoned at the bar. I was still in my nightgown. I had no money. No shoes. I remember working my way through the alcoholics in the bar in my nightgown to ask the bartender for a ride home. He called for a cab. The look of shame and pity on his and everyone elses' face was almost more than I could physically bear. Alcoholics and toothless losers were feeling sorry for me.

Now my dad is 24 years older than the first day I met him. Incredibly he continues his crazy lifestyle. Today I met with Dad and his VA social worker in an attempt to make arrangements for his autistic 16 year old son who was born addicted to heroin, in the event that my father dies. It occurred to me today for the very first time that the shame and pity I had witnessed on that night 24 years earlier, was not for me. I realize now that I was merely a reflection, a reflection of self pity and hatred for the animals that they had become. I also realize that it may not appear on the outside, but inside I'm still that 16 year old girl, vulnerable and standing in my nightgown in a bar amidst a sea of people who are too far gone to see its awkward elegance.

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