Recollections of My Nonexistence

by Rebecca Solnit

The fourth photograph for the street I lived on was from June 18, 1958, of a house a block and a half away, and it bore this caption: “Curious passersby peer down an alley, alongside 438 Lyon Street, where the body of Dana Lewis, 22, nude except for a black bra, was found today. Police, after a preliminary examination, said bruises on the victim’s throat indicated that she might have been garroted by a length of rope.” It’s clear her death is a spectacle for the newspaper as well, which describes her in titillating terms, while the passersby are described as curious rather than distressed by the sight of a corpse. She was also known as Connie Sublette, and it turns out her death got a lot of attention in the papers at the time. Mostly, the accounts blamed her for it, because she was a sexually active young bohemian who drank. SEAMAN DESCRIBES CASUAL SLAYING, said one headline, with the tag PLAYGIRL VICTIM. SLAYING CLOSES SORDID LIFE OF PLAYGIRL said another, in which sordid seems to mean that she had sex, adventures, and sorrows, and playgirl means she deserved it.