R.I.P. Karrie

• Laptop Working Right Now
• Karrie Gone To Rest

I received an e-mail from one of the daughters of my old girlfriend, Karrie, which she had sent on my sister's birthday of June 17th, informing me that, on June 5th, at 7:35 AM, Karrie passed away.

She was 39 years old. 16 years younger than me.

That would make 10 years since we slept in each other's arms, on the front porch of a business that sold wooden furniture, in Saint Augustine, Florida, her having 29 to my 45 years, at that time.

Little did I know that I was then five years older than she would ever get to be.

I had been thinking a lot about Karrie for some reason. The day that I decided to add a picture of her to the "Yesterday, When I Was Young," video I had made, was the day she passed.

Her sister told me that she had liver problems "from all that drinking," but that she had still been unable to quit.

She was dry at the time she approached me in front of the library about 4 years ago. I was still drinking then, though, and had offered her my bottle of brandy, which she refused. At that point, our conversation ground to a halt. Our life together had revolved so much around getting drunk, that I really had no concept of how to make her happy, other than passing her a bottle.

I still held out some hope that she might wind up living with me in my apartment; she is one of the few people I would have considered adding to my lease; but this is just one more thing to cross off the list of things that will ever happen; like me jamming with Prince and David Bowie, I guess.

She then wound up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the company of some guy named Mark, who, I was informed, was abusing her.

A well meaning lady named Faith Carillo sent me an e-mail from there, having found this blog by Googling her name, and having read about how happy we had once been together,("It was so nice to see a picture of her smiling.") and seeing how I had added an invitation to Karrie to contact me through the comment section, from wherever she was, if she had ever decided to try to find me and remembered that I had this blog.

Karrie's daughter Stephanie, who gave me the news, saying that she was sorry to have to do it this way (through the blog, I guess) want's to hear as much about her as I can tell her.

Karrie had told me at one point that she owned a house (trailer) in Tennessee, but that certain family members had gotten some kind of power of attorney over her in order to commandeer her disability checks, and that they had basically kicked Karrie out of her own house. She was afraid to go back there, for some reason.

She said that whomever the father of her children was, who had first impregnated her at the age of 14, and to whom Karrie had given 4 children, all girls, was now turning his attention to the oldest of them, who had reached that magic age of 14, and that she, Karrie, had given them up for adoption in order the protect them from him.

Karrie loved to keep herself and her environment clean. The happiest I ever saw her was one night in Saint Augustine, after we had found a hose in a little alley between two houses and were able to take showers using it, each one of us holding it over the other's head while keeping a lookout for anyone who might come along.

"We smell good!," she had said while laying her head on my chest.

Before I could say anything, she was already snoring away; so clean that she could "sleep at night."

I miss the life we might have had together -both of us off the booze, living in my apartment which she would have kept spotless, armed with her bleach bottle and her Lysol and her foot scrubbing pads.

I sometimes felt like I should have gone to Chatanooga, to smack Mark in the head, and take her back here with me. But, Faith Carillo, I think, was worried that it would threaten my 2 years of sobriety to get back with her, since I guess Karrie resumed drinking there, in spite of her having liver problems.

In a way, I never got to know her sober self. After she had gotten out of jail after 43 days in Saint Augustine, I figured we might be able to have a meaningful conversation. She surprised me when she walked up and said "Hi," in a soft voice. There was a calmness about her. But then she had immediately asked me if I had any money so she could get some beer. After I had declined to give her any of the 12 dollars which is all I had, she went out and flew a sign, and then came back a few hours later, back to her "normal" self.

My mother in Massachusetts seemed to develop a warm spot for Karrie. When the latter was in jail and wasn't sure how to contact me, she would send her letters to my mom to forward to me. My mom got to like her from reading her letters, which she would transcribe to me in e-mails, to save time and postage.
She once sent me a letter when I was in Ocala, Florida and included a money order made out to Karrie, with her jail "number" on it, and everything. I had been busking at the off ramps to the Interstate and sending Karrie as much as I could.

Karrie is the second of my ex-girlfriends to have died. Angela Washington passed away at the age of 29 in Jacksonville, Florida. She is the third one to have shown up in New Orleans. I have a 14,000 word story in which Angela is a central character, on my old hard drive, which I just have to find a way to access. It involves murder and intrigue...

Xanna, a lady I lived with for about a year in Charlottesville, Virginia (2001-2002) I have seen here. Most recently, about a month ago, she was flying a sign on Carrolton Street. Bobby and I had gone by her on our way back from The Guitar Center, after Bobby had bought the Epiphone guitar for me.
Xanna had given me a guitar for my birthday, in October of 2001.

She was a work-aholic, putting in 70 hours per week as a delivery driver for Pizza Hut, and owned a house in the rural town of Rochelle, Virginia, about 30 miles outside of Charlottesville. She was afraid to stay alone in the house, preferring to sleep in her car, which she parked about a half mile away from it.

Like Karrie, Xanna had been physically abused by the guy she had been with before me.

He sat in her house drinking Crown Royal and playing video games, while Xanna worked all those hours to keep him in cigarettes and whiskey, the way she related it.

When she had finally had enough, it took an act of congress to get him to leave, which he did, but not before beating her and sodomizing her while his car idled in the driveway full of his stuff, ready to go.

After Xanna and I had broken up (she went bat-shit crazy after having stopped some kind of hormone therapy she was on to control her moods, but which made it impossible for her to get pregnant, because she wanted to get pregnant and give me a son or daughter) she was back with the sodomite within a couple weeks.

I am curious, and might ride my bike over to where she was flying the sign, just to ask her what the hell happened; like, to the car and the house and the job...
I am pretty sure that one of my "short stories" in the sidebar was either the ghost story about her house (where stuff really did move around by itself and where the footfalls of what sounded like a young girl wearing tap dancing shoes could be heard, and where a sound activated tape recorder that Xanna had placed in our bedroom in order to catch me cheating on her, wound up having the voice of what sounded like a little girl in tap dancing shoes on it) or the story of my having been arrested and held for 4 months on the charge of "suspicion," by the Charlottesville police.

For Sale: Trombone mouthpiece, $23

I am afraid that Xanna continued to be bat-shit crazy, was committed, probably lost everything -the job, the car, the house (or maybe Tom, the woman beater had done her like Karrie's family did her, and is now living in the house and driving the car, with Xanna being afraid to go back there) and had come to New Orleans to get a fresh start -a holding a sign on Carrolton Street type of fresh start.

Xanna was a sweet girl before she started to imagine that there was another woman living in the same house as us, who was my lover as soon as she went off to deliver pizza. The ghost, moving stuff around and hiding things, like Xanna's wallet, which she found wedged between a couple towels in a stack of them on a shelf in the hallway, but only after she had replaced her license and all her credit cards, didn't help matters.

By the time my father died in March of 2003, I was ready to leave Xanna and go back into the woods to live. If my family remembers her at all it is as the mysteriously quiet skinny lady, who had spent the bulk of our funereal visit to Massachusetts sleeping in her Mustang. I'm sure they could sense that all was not well between us, but hadn't wanted to pry.

Some of these stories I might elaborate on, maybe on some night when I'm not flat broke and have to go out to busk or have nothing tomorrow.

The little girl on the cassette had said "Is she gone?," and "When can I see you?" in between the sounds of a window sliding open, with the sound of rain falling outside increasing in volume thereafter, and the sound of the bed springs creaking and myself talking to Mercury, one of her cats, at another point.