When I was fifteen, I left my parents’ Colonial in suburban Minneapolis and leased an apartment on the sketchy side of St Paul.

There were many factors, but they all sifted down to one thing: I didn’t belong. My high school was deluxe, full of letter jackets, Farrah Fawcett haircuts, and “gifted” programmes that greased the bobsled into prestigious colleges. It was liberal-minded, too: stoners, jocks, nerds and theatre kids all mixed.

You’d think that with all these options, I’d have been able to find a group. But no. Everything I said was out of step. Occasionally, I was beaten. But mostly I was just ignored, a weird girl with large glasses who floated through the halls like a ghost.

My parents and sister were happy, social people who had barbecues and pool parties with the other families in our cul-de-sac while I hid in my basement bedroom and read. I was sent to a pricey psychoanalyst in the city; he told me I had family-of-origin issues and the only way to save my life was to escape.

So in 1982, I packed some things and my hoarded savings and hitched a ride east. Back then, crossing the river was like going through a magic portal. St Paul was nowhere; it was back in time. No one I knew from my far western suburb ever went there. In fewer than 30 miles, I disappeared.

Minneapolis was all glass and steel, skyways, malls, and columned estates around the lakes. St Paul was dark brick, river rat cottages and crumbling churches with a single bell. There were shoe repair kiosks and corner barbers. I lived on the second floor of a mustard-coloured walk-up with iffy heat next to an auto body shop.

Downstairs, two women shared a place whose door opened hourly to men from the neighbourhood – regulars, whose faces I came to recognise. Upstairs was a long-haired guy who came down offering to sell me weed. When I declined he winked, picked up my boom box and slouched out my door. I was mad but also a little thrilled.

I took a bus to the Sheraton on the highway and filled out an application saying I was nineteen. This was back when no one checked or asked for a driver’s licence, which was good because I wasn’t old enough to drive. I was hired as a waitress, starting at 5.30 the following morning, to work breakfast and lunch.

But I quickly learned that dinner service was where the money was. And the action: people in sequinned clothes and pinkie rings, drinking gimlets and eating prime rib. I saw this fanciness begin as I put on my ski pants to wait for the bus – and I wanted it. I signed up to sub. The next week someone got sick and I was in, working a triple shift in my stained uniform, mucking up drinks orders because I didn’t know tequila from gin.

After living in Iowa, New England, the Pacific Northwest and Arkansas, I moved back to St Paul

Marc the night manager yelled at me and I cried in the break room. When I snitched a piece of bread the chef’s wife – why was she there? I have no idea – yelled at me too. Later Marc found me hungry, snotty, and too tired to cash out. His collar was open, bow tie hanging from its clip. He stuffed my tips in my pocket and offered to drive me home.

“You live here?” he asked when we arrived. “Alone?”

I nodded, lingering in his car because it was warm.

“I’ll watch you to the door.” That’s how Marc became my first real friend.

He switched me to his shift and the career waiters – Craig, Paul, Don and Len – taught me how to tell the drinks apart by their garnishes. After hours they took me to the Blue Horse, a swanky late-night spot where you could have a Caesar salad made tableside. I was given one Scotch on the rocks a night and told to make it last. When I finally confessed I was sixteen (just turned), Marc cried – he was a bit drunk – and said he hated me for lying to him.

I waited to be fired. Instead, Marc told my landlord he’d rented illegally to a child and installed me in an apartment above his and Craig’s. Don fixed my hair and Len gave me some plants. We went to Town House, where lights swept the room in waves of glitter and shirtless men moved to a constant beat. Sylvester, The Weather Girls, Prince – because in Minnesota Dirty Mind was everywhere. Paul – who didn’t much like me – danced with his head thrown back, hips in white jeans rippling like beads.

Those guys knew a fellow outsider by scent, and they took care of me – even Paul – until they started to die. Marc was first. He went gaunt and his sleek Burt Reynolds moustache got patchy. Everyone said it was the speed, Marc just needed to take it easy. Then Craig got sick.

In January 2020, after living in Iowa, New England, the Pacific Northwest and Arkansas, I moved back to St Paul with my second husband. We bought a miniature house – 970 square feet – in a quiet old neighbourhood, because we planned to travel most of the year.

It was two miles to my old apartment building, but instead of the auto body place next door there was a gourmet pizza shop, and a yoga studio across the street. The Sheraton had been razed and replaced by a Super Target. Town House was now a “soccer bar” and the Blue Horse long gone. Whole Foods occupied a city block.

I found Don on Facebook and we met for coffee at a grungy spot. We’d last seen each other in ’83 at a protest downtown. Some doctor at the NIH had said the virus could spread casually and people were leaving their hairdressers, refusing to have their meals served by men. Don talked about how he’d become a sex worker, because what else was available? But he was done with all that. Don laughed and pointed to himself, a portly silver-haired man. He was married now, going on ten years; his husband was a nurse.

Eight weeks later, Covid hit. The school down the street from us shuttered, yellow tape around the playground. Every business closed down, except Target and Whole Foods. We played cards in our tiny house. Then summer, George Floyd, the protests (which we joined) and the riots (which we did not, but sympathised with). Everything shut down this time. Curfew was enforced by the National Guard.

One summer night we walked the dog at 18.50 and got a text from our neighbours reminding us to be inside in ten minutes. We don’t want to see you get reported, they added kindly. We wouldn’t do it, but others on the block will.

The cafe where I’d met Don reopened and I went in, relieved to be somewhere other than our tiny house. The owner poured my latte into a paper cup and when I moved towards a table, he said, “I shouldn’t have to risk my life to make a living. I’d appreciate it if you’d leave.”

My mother called (we’d reconciled decades ago, mostly because she stuck by me, as mothers do). “Come back!” she said, as if I’d left their house just days before. “We don’t have that nonsense going on out here.”

Shortly afterwards, my husband and I woke at 2am to seven police officers and two K-9s in our backyard. Flashlights crossed. Someone was rustling in our compost bin. We flipped on the light and heard a voice through a bullhorn. “Get down, lock your windows and stay inside!”

Through fall and winter, the school down the street stayed silent, yellow tape gone but the playground empty just the same. I wrote to our mayor, our governor, our board of ed. I went on social media and talked about my autistic son who had died, partly of loneliness and isolation – how I was terrified it was happening to other kids and we had to open up the schools.

Just like in tenth grade, everything I said was badly out of step. Notes came in from New York, severing my writing contracts, and from Boston and Seattle, ending friendships. Probably 35 total. Then Don messaged me on Facebook.

“My husband has told me about people like you,” he said. “Trumpers. After everything we went through, you really don’t care if we die of this.”

I tried to respond, but he’d unfriended me. Later, my mother called to ask if I’d like to meet her out west for lunch.

Ann Bauer is a novelist and essayist living in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is currently working on a television series