Victim

December 19th, 1994. Around 5 p.m. Flagstaff, Arizona.

I have lost the mustard yellow suede jacket from that time. Maybe I gave it away and then asked for it back. Maybe I still have it packed in a box in storage. Maybe it’s lost.

It had a Dino pin on the lapel. Platinum. About an inch and a half tall. I have always loved the Flintstones. Barney and Dino in particular.

The jacket was used. Vintage before vintage was vintage. I don’t remember where I bought it. Did I buy it long before it happened? Just before? On the brink of during?

I remember that it barely covered my bum. It had slouching pockets from past hands. It was a bit tight across the chest and shoulders when I did the buttons up. Even when I was very slim, I was still well endowed, both a blessing and a curse. I used to wear it unbuttoned most of the time so as not to appear frumpy. It was ridiculous that I would even have considered that.

Has anyone seen my mustard yellow suede jacket?

I had checkered leggings. They were second-hand, too. Black and white. Some retro petroleum fabric that Gen-Xers like myself made Retro. I wore them so regularly that the knees were baggy, and there was a little hole on one knee with a small vertical run. I wore them almost all the time anyway.

I always wore very colourful socks. Maybe stitched with another Flintstones character or one from Peanuts. Probably Snoopy or Woodstock. I would tuck the checkered leggings into my very colourful socks and then pull on my electric blue Doc Martens. Yes, I think I wore my Docs then, but I have no pictures from that time to prove it.

Every part of my ensemble was light-hearted except for my shirt. I have always had challenges with shirts. The boobs blessing/curse again. It was a plain black T-shirt. Not fitted. A crew neck that is always a no-no when you have breasts larger than a B-Cup. The shirt hung like a block.

Like the jacket, the T-shirt just covered my bum. I don’t think it hung lower than the jacket. Although I remember wishing it did. I remember wishing a lot of things about that T-shirt as I fussed with it daily in front of the mirror. Sometimes it would take me quite a while to get outside and do the sightseeing I had come there to do and have the adventures that awaited my curious mind. I was chained to the mirror, scolding myself for not packing a skirt, pulling the T-shirt tight around my waist from behind, and wishing I had a clip to keep it there. Maybe the unsexy shirt was a way of concealing my sexuality, the always-violatable young womanhood. And yet, even though the T-shirt was far from fetching, I still felt exposed. Whatever the pathology, it didn’t matter. I was in danger despite any inadvertent attempt to be invisible.

The motel was a very scary place. So much so that the memory of the motel cancels out the fact that I may have gone to some prehistoric cave houses along the way. Red cliffs. A bus tour. But I’m not sure. If I did, the experience is like a fading dream, a blur caught in mid-maybe. Lying on the well-used bed, looking up at the cracked ceiling, I could feel the thousands of sordid things that had happened there. The springs squeaked when I got up to prove it. My body knew there was danger twenty-four hours before it began. Flagstaff, Arizona. Route 66.

I was born in 1966, and I remember trying to console myself with this connection even though Route 66 kind of scared me too. “Get your kicks on Route 66.” I always wondered what the kicks were. I knew they were supposed to be fun, but the whole idea seemed ominous to me. Like all the women Jim Morrison had had sex with or something. Or the first time I read Henry Miller. Or even A Catcher in the Rye. I hadn’t read On the Road yet, but I bet Dean Moriarty got some of his kicks on Route 66 too.

Knowing what I know now, it was absolute madness that I was there alone. I was immersing myself in handgun central USA, in a hotbed of gender violence, in the birthplace of slasher B-movies. But I didn’t know any of this. Despite this pang of awareness in the scary motel room, I was entirely oblivious. I prided myself in being an adventurer, living life to the fullest, learning, experiencing, writing, thinking, being a free spirit. Like men could. I had no idea that women are not allowed to do this. I was perfect prey.