Ceanne

Ceanne and I clashed almost immediately. She was very boisterous and deliberate in everything she did, this included being pissed-off.

Our up-set had been at the coffee counter at the local club, I really don't remember why we raised our voices at each other; I'd never seen or met her before and although, finding her attractive, I remember walking away from the counter with my coffee and thinking

"God, what a BITCH!"

Her feelings for me at the moment were probably somewhere in the same ballpark.

Yet fate seemingly has a sense of humor at times and a mere two hours later Ceanne was riding beside me in my 1976 Chevy step-side and we were going someplace, I don't remember where now or how we went from being instant rivals to friends but somehow we did. Maybe there was a mutual attraction or something primordial in both of us that deemed the other as a good catch. Maybe we were just wild and liked a challenge in the opposite sex.

Ceanne was half Puerto Rican and half Irish with big beautiful eyes and long dark hair that was a natural blue if she turned the right way in the sun-light. She was 28 and I was 24 years of age in 1988. We were both young and reckless kids looking to steal any fun in life that we could, which we did over the summer that year.

She struggled with Heroin periodically and as a result walked the streets of Anchorage at times to support her habit. I never gave her any money and her addiction broke my heart on numerous occasions as it still does to this very day, many years later.

Dropping her off at her house that evening, one thing soon led to another and before either of us was really cognizant of what was happening, we found ourselves rolling on the floor with our tongues in each other's mouths, she was damn fine at kissing and didn't have any problem with me reaching under her shirt either.

During the course of that summer I discovered that Ceanne was one of the few women that I've known in my life that I could be completely open and venerable to. She wasn't a saint by any means, but she was genuine and in a way quite naïve. We shared from the heart with each other and, if not in-love, then damn close to it.

I told her secrets and revealed my insecurities to her, she did likewise and I think we enlightened each other in ways that were healthy for both of us.

I had a new Harley Davidson Sportster that summer which really turned her on. One sunny Saturday Ceanne and I started towards Wasilla and ended up making-out in a nostalgic antique wagon, outfitted with high side-boards, that was parked as a display in front of a supermarket across the street from the McDonalds in Palmer Alaska. Why we didn't get arrested, I have no idea. We later joked that the wagon was so old it's a wonder we didn't fall through the bottom floor boards, naked, in front of horrified weekend shoppers.

I enjoyed having Ceanne on my arm in public and I think she was proud, to show me off, as well. She was the proverbial biker chick, rough, tough and loyal as hell. A friend of mine later made the comment that

"If I were a bank-manager, Ceanne would dress to the nines and play the part of the dutiful corporate wife, perfectly. If I were a bank-robber, she would stay with me in a gunfight until the last bullet was fired."

My friend's words described the lady perfectly.

I think Ceanne wanted to be a wife and a mother. I think she wanted to be a "lady" in the eyes of the world with a little cul-de-sac house and white-picket fence. I think she wanted to be a mom in a mini-van with a schedule filled with soccer practice and PTA meetings taped to the refrigerator door. She had a lot of faults and a lot of baggage but she had a lot of class and a lot of heart too.

Yet addiction often destroys what would otherwise have been beautiful and I eventually had to move-on for my own sanity. It hurt and I guess it still does, 30 years later, now that she's gone.

I don't know if I was ever in-love with Ceanne but I know that she touched my heart and changed my life forever. I have one remaining photograph of her and whenever I hear Bob Seger's "Night Moves" I think of a girl I once knew as Ceanne.

Godspeed my love