Whatever else you can say about Grib, she’s not nuts. Harry Valentine, who doesn’t hide his dislike for her, told her that she would never be able to do “hard nudity” at the Alturas campus, where there’s snow on the ground five months out of the year. Which was true -- sleeping outside on a subfreezing night would kill anyone, even those weather-toughened Alturas girls. Grib replied, “Yes, but I’m not there, I’m here.” In sunny SoCal, where it is indeed possible to sleep outside all year. Another time, when we came into class from a windy, heavy rain. More a pain for us guys with our wet clothes than for the girls, for whom it’s just basically a shower. Lisette plopped her wet butt into the plastic seat and I settled down next to her. Grib sat down alone in front of us and Lisette said to me, “rough weather out there”. Grib, not turning around, said, “Once you sleep on concrete everything else is easy”. I rolled my eyes again but I have to admit it’s -- Grib has made herself able to handle anything. There is a weird logic to her habits which is not the thinking of a crazy person.
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There is (was?) an artist named Frederick S. Fudala, somewhere in upstate New York, who (a long time ago) was on deviantart and created this drawing which I “embedded” into “‘Tami Smithers Was Here’” on the writingsofleviticus site. It’s called “Druuna’s Ascent”, a tribute to the graphic novel character created by Paolo Serpieri. As I recall Mr. Fudala’s original comment was: “I picture Druuna, having been stripped by a gang of thugs, escaping by scaling this cliff, only to find herself thrust into yet another peril which she will have to deal with while naked.” It fits in with Tami’s plight in general, and in particular her scaling the cliff to get away from teenage toughs at the end of Part 29 of “‘Tami Smithers Was Here’”. Fred, I’ve been trying to find you for years, please contact me!
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