17 (interrupted)

I stood, at 17, in the basement of my parents home, looking at the yellow backpack hanging on the wall, deciding. Deciding whether to walk away and never come back to this place, or to leave a world in which only nature had ever treated me kindly.

I started hitchhiking at 16. Looking for escape. Going to bars where I would get drunk and take any and all drugs I could find. What I could find was never much, it was a shit town full of small people. A man who picked me up hitchhiking some weeks before that day made me an offer. He lived in Asbury Park, New Jersey, a couple of hours north of where I lived and offered me a place to stay if I wanted it. He was about 35, and I was dubious, but anything was better than what I had.

So I packed and left. I had a little money, very little, about 200 dollars. Not saved from babysitting, which I tried and failed when I was 14. Not from my brief stint busing tables at Rustler Steak House, which I managed to get through a second cousin and was fired from after a month. On the day of my interview for that job, my mother could not be bothered to drive me, maybe she had a legitimate reason, I don't remember, but I walked the 3 or 4 miles to the restaurant. I was offered a ride by a 25 year old man in a Camaro just before I got to the place. He told me he would wait for me to finish the interview. I was dubious, but I had nothing better in my life and needed something, so I went with him. After smoking a joint and some very aggressive struggling and refusals parked in a field, he drove me home and asked to see me again. I had no great desire to hold on to my virginity, I actually wanted to lose it as soon as possible, but I was not attracted to him. But he had a car and an endless supply of pot (he was a dealer), so I went out with him. Not to mention the fact that he was the only one expressing any interest in me. Though I was attractive, I was strange, and in a great deal of pain. It was a small town, with no art and little intelligence, and little tolerance for deviation.