Tricia Cady

trish finds things. expensive things. they just pop up everywhere when trish walks by. fender strat with amp peeks out of dumpster when trish walks thru alley. she nonchalantly regards it, picks it off the pile of trash, and later finds it to be in perfect working condition. designer clothing shoes and jewelry show up this way, too, as does furniture and practically anything else one might think of.
trish takes them all home with her, wherever she may be living at the time.
she collects a cuckoo check from the state, too. $900 every month.
she is angry, sad, frustrated. she rails at how those around her--those who are addicted and living on the streets, those who sell themselves to johns, those whose artistic talent is unused, intelligence forgotten—how they waste themselves, fritter away their gifts, settle for less, abuse their bodies.
trish is talented and smart, too. she paints striking pictures with paints she found, on canvasses that presented themselves to her on trash day. nice, blank canvasses, just showing up for trish to find. brushes, too. but that’s trish.
she lives in a violent love/hate relationship with the world around her, its people, its places. trish loves people. she tries to care for people on the streets of boston and allston, where she lives, clothing them in clean outfits, giving instruments to the musical, paper to the artistic, beads to the crafty. she dresses up the women in the pretty garments she finds, tells them they are beautiful. she feeds them, too, and gives people cigarettes and a few bucks to go to the packie if she sees them stemming. she hates to see anybody asking for money on the street. she can’t stand to see a person fishing in trash cans for food.
trish hates to see people hurting themselves and others. she hates to watch them degrade themselves and waste their brains and bodies. it makes her so angry to watch a person hurt themselves wantonly, when there are those who care for them in this world, that she could practically kill them. she hates people, because they hurt her through themselves and waste the gifts she gives them. the musical pawn her instruments for drugs, or they get stolen. the crafty and artistic draw up lovely little signs to assist in their panhandling. the ladies take their new outfits and turn tricks, and everyone sees trish and expects money and a cigarette. she can’t stand any of them, wants to scream at them all.
trish is pretty too. she is tall with long hair. she has a sense of style and big hazel eyes. she used to be very thin. now she has big boobs, though. she is forty. she does coke. she doesn’t really drink alcohol much. coffee is more her thing. neither does trish like reefer—tobacco is her smoke of choice. she walks about the city, wandering aimlessly, finding things and meeting people all night long sometimes. she hates boston, always talks about leaving town. she’s been talking about it for a decade at least—once even bought a bus ticket to florida, but then didn’t use it. that is the way trish is. she still rails about how she didn’t go, how she totally regrets staying here, in this hellhole, with her lousy, good-for-nothing boyfriend. he gets the treatment too.
trish is both sweet and ferocious; a force of nature, like a tornado; not to be toyed with. her inner workings are mysterious yet predictable. she is powered by her mental centrifical force, her emotional turmoil. she has two opposite poles, like the earth, which she is gravitationally centered around, emotionally. trish is forever caught between love and hate, sweetness and loathing, creation and destruction, past and future, circling unstoppably from one to the other and back, unable to break free. she smashes her paintings, burns her furniture, throws away her clothing. she beats up her boyfriend and verbally lambastes her beneficiaries. she sells herself to a no-account sleazebag john named donald for cocaine and hates his lousy guts. she pulls and twists her hair, frays it at the ends, cuts it unevenly. she gives away her coke and then wants it back too late. trish buys herself food and then doesn’t eat it. she ends up living on cheap snack cakes and free meals. trish finds things that she loves everyday, and always gives them away. anything she keeps, eventually she will violently destroy.
trish knows that somewhere in her mind is a memory of childhood molestation; she has been searching for it for years to no avail. where is it hidden? was it ever there at all? she combs her childhood, hashing and rehashing her every remembered experience, looking desperately for the one thing she cannot seem to find. can you look for something when you don’t really know what it is?