Wednesday, December 15, 2010

What Happened To Tracey?


Today, I spent most of it walking around downtown in sneakers I have had for too long that actually hurt my feet. I was tempted to give them away to a lady I saw with no shoes. I realized my car was far away and although it would have been charitable, the gesture would be unwise to walk for blocks in my socks in the cold. I'll come back another day prepared with extra clothes and my sneakers to give away.
There is something hypnotic and intoxicating about Downtown Los Angeles as if Charles Bukowski was singing in my ear, "hang out, get dirty, see and smell the real people. The ugly and the beautiful." Many times when I walk around downtown, I look up and take in the splendor of the old buildings and their early 20th Century architecture. And sometimes I gaze in the huge windows in the lofts that use to be hotels that look like one could fall easily to one's death if one leaned on the ledge. I was looking into one window and commenting as such when a person told me a heart breaking story of a girl named Tracey who lived in the Rosslyn Lofts. Tracey was a 24 year old who had an addiction to drugs and to abusive men. I was told she had did stints in porn and that her boyfriend would try to dominate her by taking/breaking her phone etc. About 3 weeks ago, Tracey was found dead in her bathtub by her boyfriend said a source. The source said he (the boyfriend) could have made it look like an over dose. The boyfriend was questioned by the police and let go. I asked him if there was any press about it. Was it in the Downtown newspapers, the insider said no but the Coroner's blue tape was still on Tracey's door which broke my source's heart. Did Tracey die of an overdose? Was she murdered? Did she want out of the world of addiction and mental illness, we may never know. But the next time you look at the big windows opened in the old buildings downtown, think of Tracey a 24 year old girl from New Jersey who was a long way from home.

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