What happened to Gypsy?

When I met Gypsy she was explaining her black eye and split lip to a friend at Third and Ash Streets downtown. “You should have seen the other guy,” she said, literally. Apparently Gypsy learned to take down someone twice her size when she was just 12. The man everyone calls The Elephant is more than twice her size, however. Yet when he tried to rape her the night before by slamming her head against the wall then the pavement to neutralize her into submission, he underestimated her fighting skills. He was unsuccessful in the sexual assault, though Gypsy has visible physical scars from the attack. In her defense she pepper sprayed him, stabbed him, nearly bit his lip off, poked him in the eye, and kicked him in the face four times before he let her go. She made sure she stayed awake and didn’t have a concussion.

As she waited in line to get some food that morning, someone who said they were a case worker said he would like to help get her admitted to the tent city in the O Lot but she needed to get medical attention first. He didn’t leave her any contact information on how to accomplish either a medical visit or reach out when that was done.

She got her plate of food, then sat down near her belongings on the curb. She knew she’d have that black eye for a while and would be explaining it repeatedly. But everyone seemed to know her assailant. He has a history of exposing himself and being aggressive.

I asked her why she thought men feel entitled to attack a woman who has clearly stated she is not interested in him. She said she has thought a lot about that. Gypsy tries to counsel young women who she sees just arriving on the streets, giving them advise on who to trust and what to be aware of. She feels part of the fault lies with people of her generation, including women, for not teaching young men to respect all women as they were growing up. Young men saw older men (of her generation) getting away with being disrespectful to women in their romantic relationships and not being good fathers or husbands. So they mimicked that behavior. Men these days “know how to treat a ‘trick bitch’ but we forgot to tell them how to treat a lady or a woman or a queen,” she said. “And they don’t know what to do when they run across one.”

She added that she herself “hold four crowns. My Irish one, my Native American one, my Romanian gypsy one and Hoodoo Voodoo gypsy one” from the four different lineages passed down from her parents.

Gypsy contends that her father worked as an enforcer for a mob boss in Las Vegas. Rather than see Gypsy sold into the sex trade, the boss taught her the business. She was required to be part of the system. So she grew up riding horses and motorcycles, playing dice and cards with old men. “Those old men are the men that made Vegas,” she said. “That’s who my dad worked for. … And I worked my ass off to learn anything they asked me to learn” including how to kill someone with her bare hands, she added.

She has a method of tent etiquette that keeps her belongings safe. She has a front porch area in front of her tent, but keeps the space inside her tent personal and private. Her belongings are neatly organized and zipped up inside, but she keeps other people out on the porch. Besides the threat of theft, they might have lice, she said, and then she’d be dealing with an infestation. If someone claims they lost something and needs to go into her tent to try and find it, she has them dump out their own bags first to see if it was “misplaced” there first. She said she’s never had to dump more than one of the person’s bags before they mysteriously discovered the supposed lost item amongst their own belongings. “It works like a charm.”

As for now she’ll keep moving her campsite, as per usual, and sleep with both eyes open.