A Long Hard Look

I'm tall, a little over six feet, and now that I'm not shooting meth I'm roughly 230 pounds. My right arm is inked from my shoulder  to my knuckles. I have tattoos on my left fingers and my forearm and one on my neck, all total I have 25 tattoos.

I wear baggy clothes and flatbill hats, and I listen to punk rock and rap. My drug and alcohol counselor told me that because of my size and the way I look people see me as intimidating. Also that I have a blunt straightforward personality that adds to that overall impression.

I grew up going back and forth between my ma's house in Kansas and my dad's house in Montebello until I was 15 and I moved first to north Carolina and then Wisconsin with my cousin and my grandma.

I didn't do well in school, I mean I'm not stupid, I just have a problem with authority. I was expelled from school In Colorado my sophomore year and again in Wisconsin my junior year, both times for fighting, the second time was with the school liaison officer.

After that I got my education on the streets and in the bars from my cousin and the motorcycle club we joined. I knew how to weigh out an eight ball before I learned to read a tape measure.

Even now I struggle with criminal thinking, being a hustled is engrained in my personal identity. Its who I am, these days I just try and ignore it as much as possible.

I've been in and out of juvenile detention centers and county jails since I was fourteen, for crimes I committed as well as ones I didn't. Its kind of a family tradition, the majority of males in my family have been locked up for one reason or another, my dad's older brother even died in prison. I was raised by convicts, gangsters, and addicts, a longtime family friend once told me I never had much of a shot at a normal life.

Not that he tried to hard to give me proper guidance, by the time I was twenty one I was selling meth for him and living in his grow house with my uncle and a couple other tweaks.

Looking back over the last twenty some years I can honestly say I've lived a pretty interesting and exciting life but that most of the time I'm glad those days are behind me.