Backwash

Threads
Off the rack and on the town.

The 800 block of Massachusetts in Lawrence, 11:40 p.m. Thursday

In the spotlight of a street lamp, four women lounge on a wooden bench, barricaded by camping gear and three mangy dogs. Passing bargoers ignore them.

Following some Beat-inspired dream, they’ve been stumbling in and out of Lawrence, where there are plenty of parent-financed college kids to panhandle. “Street fashion is composed of rugged, durable clothing meant to be worn for a long period of time,” notes the Pitch‘s fashion expert, a straight guy named Bud. “In short, you can sit, puke, spill and sleep in your clothes.”

The girls identify themselves as Popeye, Desiree, Soup of the Day and Sweets. Popeye has a pixie cut and wears a white thermal shirt, cargo pants and a leather flapper hat. Desiree has blocky glasses and short hair with a dreadlock rattail. Her well-pierced ears resemble bass clefs. She’s wearing a faded Dale Earnhardt cut-off T-shirt. Soup is seated on a bench in baggy overalls; Sweets, wearing a cowboy hat, jeans and a tie-dyed shirt, climbs on top of her to make out.

Popeye and Sweets are sisters from Kansas City, but they don’t generally travel together. The other girls are from out-of-state. Sometimes they work part time as “gamers” at the Renaissance Festival in Bonner Springs. They’ve found Lawrence to be wanderer-friendly — with one exception: “Frat boys throw pennies, which can hurt,” Desiree says.

Bud asks them to name their most important accessories.

“Clean underwear — freshly washed, even if they are [washed] in the sink,” Popeye says. Desiree digs in her pocket and pulls out a small bottle filled with red liquid and onion chunks. “I just carry hot sauce,” she says. It masks the flavor of spoiled food. Then Popeye points out her new boots. She says she saved money from field work to buy the $60 pair about a week ago. She never buys footwear at thrift stores, she says. The boots are cheap but cause blisters. Desiree agrees. Can’t skimp on boots. She got hers for $30 at Wal-Mart.

One of the girls sparks a half-finished cigarette butt. Popeye fishes a bag of loose tobacco from her cargos and rolls her own. She’s changed her mind, she says, about her most important accessory. She pulls out a brass padlock tied to a tan handkerchief. Soup reveals her lock, on a blue handkerchief.

“This is a smiley, so you can grab it if someone fucks with you,” Soup says. It’s called a smiley because it widens your smile by breaking out teeth, Desiree explains. “If someone is trying to rape me or kill me, you better believe I’ll break their teeth with that shit,” she adds. Then Desiree produces a 3-inch folding Gerber knife, also purchased at Wal-Mart.

They watch a drunk, disheveled guy in a Chiefs jersey stagger down the street, ranting. He stops inches from Bud, slurring the traditional gonna-kick-you-ass mumbo-jumbo.

“Whose dick do I have to suck to get you out of here?” Popeye shouts.

“I don’t see your sunflower boy doing nothing,” Chiefs Guy screams at Bud.

Soup grins. “That’s why you have smileys,” she says.

Net Prophet
Notes from KC’s blogosphere.

There’s a young girl that works at QuikTrip by my house. I see her all the time since stopping there for snacks and caffeine is part of my daily routine. She’s pregnant, and what most people would consider trashy, but very nice and takes a second to joke with me about my OU check card. I stopped in tonight to grab some stuff before working the night shift, and she had been beaten. Her eye was black, the entire side of her face was bruised, and her eye was bloody. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her what happened, but I can only guess the answer would be something like “I fell down the stairs.” She seems like the type to be an enabler. It’s sad to see a girl who’s going to be “mommy” in a few months beat up, presumably by some asshole guy. I think she tried to tell me in her own way. I asked if she was stuck working the night shift like me, and she said “thankfully, no … my baby doesn’t much like it when I work nights, ya know?” Empathy, as I’ve said many times, is both my gift and my curse. Hours later, I’m still so bothered by the whole thing that it’s hard to concentrate.
From “Blogstar,” the online diary of Adam Brown