Brave. Rose McGowan

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      Since the acid had rendered me mute, I had to marshal the strength to speak. I managed to summon just two words: “Fuck” . . . “you.” It was like a silent bomb went off. I had never cursed at my mother. Major miscalculation.

      By this point, there was another man in the picture, my new stepdad, Steve. He was a mean dry drunk. I remember him telling me that mosquitos never bit him because he had mean blood. He was not at all into us, my mother’s children. We could all tell he didn’t want us to exist. But we did, so there was a problem.

      He was not kind to my younger brothers. Brutal. He didn’t like me, either, because I could see him for what he was, and I was always trying to alert my mother. Steve saw his opportunity to get me out of his hair, and he jumped at it. He started in that I was a drug addict, had all the earmarks of a drug addict, because I liked to wear all black and listen to the Doors. One hit of acid. One. Hit. I’m fairly sure it requires more to be an addict.

Two weeks later my mother deposited me in a drug rehab program where I was locked up, at age thirteen, my shoes taken from me to prevent my escape. I told the doctors that I had never taken drugs in my life beyond the one hit of LSD, and they told me I was in denial. Hats off to them: there was no way out of this one. My home for the foreseeable future was the top floor of Sacred Heart hospital, in miserable Eugene.

      The time I spent in rehab was both entertaining and monotonous. They taught us about drugs for about four hours a day: what the street names were, what the street value was, where you could get it, what its effects were. Everything you ever wanted to know about drugs but were afraid to ask, straight from the authorities. What the fuck? Did they want repeat customers?

      I was by far the youngest person there and soon became the ringleader. One time in the dining room I snorted Sweet’N Low sugar substitute to prove how tough I was and to piss off the nurses. I had never snorted anything, but I saw it in one of the hospital’s educational films. That was maybe the most painful thing I’ve ever shoved up my nose, so the joke was on me. I can honestly say that sugar substitute is a real chemical. You probably shouldn’t ingest it and certainly not snort it. The drain was vile. It tasted like rat poison. I managed to keep a poker face and refused to cry like I wanted to do. Making it seem like nothing was probably the best acting I’ve done to date. The nurses were very unhappy, but I got a cheer from my fellow rehabbers.

There was family therapy one day a week and that was a joke. Everyone in your family had to tell you about how they were affected by your drug use. It didn’t really work because I had only done one hit of acid. Mostly my brothers and sisters looked confused. My sister Daisy told me to just say I was a drug addict, that it would go easier on me. Once again, if I admitted to something that wasn’t true, it would pacify those in power. If I admitted I was a drug addict, they’d let me out sooner. I thought about it, but no, once again, I refused to betray myself to make my life or other’s lives easier.

      I was furious to be stuck somewhere and under tight control. The amount of time I was supposed to be in there was dependent on my good behavior. But I knew myself, and I knew my attitude was not going to improve. I was the unit’s problem child because I was, quite literally, a child. From what I could see, my behavior was never going to get better. The only way out was to escape. So I did. I had become friendly with our floor’s janitor. He did not care at all when I slipped past him into the stairwell and even waved good-bye.

      I made it out to the street and just ran. No small feat considering I was only wearing the hospital sock booties with the little gripper pads on the bottom.

I wandered for a few blocks until I came to a coffee shop. I met a girl in the bathroom while piercing my nose with a needle, as one does. She helped me push it all the way through. Her name was Chloe. On the street you meet people and they become your instant best friends. Chloe introduced me to two older punk rockers named Slam and Mayonnaise, total street rat degenerates, both in their late twenties. One had dark hair with big spikes, the other blond with big spikes. There were lots of teen vagrants in downtown Eugene. I was hoping it wouldn’t be my future.

      It was raining hard that night and we all sought shelter under a church’s porch. My bed for my first night as a homeless teen was the cold, wet dirt. It was the oozing mud that woke me up, seeping into my ears. My hearing was distorted, but I could make out some high-pitched screams that didn’t make sense. I could vaguely see in the dim light that Slam was on top of Chloe. I didn’t see Mr. Mayonnaise. To this day I don’t know if it was consensual. I hope it was.

      Once again, I think I was left alone because I looked like a boy. I remember feeling saved because I didn’t have breasts yet. I slid out of there inch by inch, losing my socks in the process. My ears were killing me, and my vision was starting to double. Barefoot and covered in wet mud, the only thing I could think to do was deposit myself back at the hospital, so that’s what I did. I collapsed at a nurse’s feet crying about punks and possible rape.

      No one believed me. No one would listen. I’ve never lost the wondering and guilt about Chloe. It is something that drives me to correct injustice.

Everyone was very relieved to see me back, but two weeks and many educational drug movies later, I left again. My roommate gave me some shoes, a couple of sizes too big but better than nothing. I got three other patients to open an alarmed door so I could leave in the elevator.

      This time I escaped for good. My life as a runaway had begun.

      Being a runaway in Oregon is deeply unpleasant. There’s the cold rain, always the rain. Wet jeans clinging to my legs, never fully being dry. And the hunger. I was starving all the time.

      There were times when I was a runaway that I woke up after having these weird blackouts. Once I came to while standing on an overpass, woken up because my shoulder bag and backpack had gotten hit off my shoulder and were flying down the road. There were times during difficult moments when I would disappear from my body. While my physical self was left to deal with the repercussions of what was happening, my mind was in another place, gone. That was my method of protection, floating up above, watching everything happen as if through a camera lens. It was not unlike the kind of trances I would go into later while acting, but that wasn’t on my agenda just yet.

      I had no contact with my family at this point. I was just out there. No one was looking for me. I wasn’t offended by the not looking, I was just on my own.

It’s funny, on the street you just kind of fall in with other kids like you. The discarded. The uncared for. The lost. One night in front of a Circle K minimart I met a ghostly Nancy Spungen–looking young woman with a mane of fried white-blond hair. She told me her name was Tina and she was a stripper. I had seen a classic film about the burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, so I was pretty sure I knew what being a stripper entailed. But when I asked Tina if she could spin her tassels for me, I was rewarded with a blank stare. She took me to her place, a small box of an apartment with mattresses on the floor and cheap stucco popcorn ceilings. I am not a fan of popcorn ceilings, but I had to make an exception in this case. Kindly, Tina said I could stay for a while. Christmas was coming, and even though I probably wouldn’t eat that day, I did want a roof over my head.

      After a week, Tina told me I had to put in some money for the heating bill. Aww, damn. What to do? Aha! I decided I was going to rob my mother’s house. I made my way back down south to Santa Clara, hitchhiking through small green town after small green town. I finally made it to the house. I waited until I was sure no one was home and crawled in through the cat flap, as I’d done every other time I was locked out.

      The house smelled like Christmas. Fuckers.

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