Fun or Fear...

May 13th 1979, I graduated from the Houston Texas Juvenile Detention Center For Outstanding Youth. I enjoyed my time spent and thanked all those who helped make my stay pleasurable. I thanked many as I went; Tomas F. from El Paso was first. He and I shared some laughs one night after he and his cousin stabbed me in the lower abdomen with Bic pens. I later repaid the good prank by showing him the benefits of severe head trauma delivered with a metal chair leg. Gene M. from Arkansas got my attention when I had my back to him in the work yard. After spending 4 ½ months in ICU with severe injuries to both of my feet, I turned a negative into a positive and gave him a hug that he would never forget; breaking both arms in more than one place and dislocating his shoulders, tearing his labrum so thoroughly that he could never raise his hands above his waist. The guard whom I grew to be most fond of sexually assaulted two of my girlfriends after drugging them with Rohypnol. I found fingernail clippers simple and effective when pulling the inside of a cheek apart.

My studies from the Center gave me a new outlook and an improved sense of citizenship. But that waned after a week and I was outa my mind again. I flew across the city in a stolen green Ford something, being chased by two of Houston’s worst. They had guns too, and radios, and a helicopter. This was livin’! This was rock and roll; heroin, German Shepherds, older men with large automatic weapons and harder drugs, women, an empty house in Sugarland filled with blow, a tattoo on a rabbit, swamp-jump blues, Tuaca, a ’71 Nova, and envelopes of Franklins -more than I knew what to do with…this was my life…If only…if only I could add more to this adventure. Maybe I could get laid or stabbed by the end of the day? Why not, so much seemed possible at that moment. I really had no way of knowing….I was 17 and in America.

Driving to Beaumont, San Marcos weekly standing on streets in Austin, knifed in Galveston, driving, more pain, lunging head first into a big bucket of fear, I did some of my best thinking, and committed to some of my best actions; I made it worse.