Turning 22. I didn’t really get anything when I actually turned 22, but the first dividend payment I got was early April for $7,000. I knew with this $7,000 I needed to leave. I didn’t know where I was going to go, but I knew I needed to get out of the Bay area and out of the situation I was living in. With my new mentality and some money, I found no better place to go than Louisville, I knew people there. I didn’t know anywhere else, so I went to Louisville, stayed with the Don and his family and also reconnected with the sailor man. I explained to the sailor man what my vision was. I told him my theology and we recruited two other people. It was the four of us. We were just buddies to hangout with and tried to make money any way we could. During that time, I wrote, give or take, 140 different quotes in a week with the intention to provide different ways for people to make money.
We were making tee shirts. This was around Thunder Over Louisville and the parade, For the Kentucky Derby, there was going to be a lot of people. We made a lot of tee shirts. We started a car detail business. That was going pretty well. In the beginning, the four of us had great ideas and it was working well. I got a little apartment. We called it the Honeycomb Hideout.Our car detail business was in front of the Dons house oh, he also allowed us to use his pressure washer in the beginning he did not think anything of it he thought it was a joke and we were not going to make any money. After a couple of days when he saw we were generating a healthy profit he wanted to take his cut which destroyed the business.
we didn’t have any other legal ways of making money and alcoholism is a fast way to go broke. $7,000 was a lot until it wasn’t, if that makes sense. We’re having a good time. Again, I hadn’t learned the lesson of being patient and don’t spend money on frivolous things like alcohol and buying everybody food when you’re not making any money. I did not learn that lesson. You would have thought I would have learned the lesson, but I didn’t, so I ended up going broke relatively fast. At this point in time, I had met another girl. She was from Louisville. She was not a girl I wanted a future with. It was just convenient at the time. I knew I was going broke and I did not want to be broke in Louisville.
I fly back to California and I talk to moms and I’m like, “Moms, I’m broke. I know I wasn’t supposed to come back, but I’m broke. I’ll give you some money when I have the chance.” I had literally no money, but enough. I wasn’t stupid. I had enough to get home to mom’s house, so I could eat until the end of June, which was the next payment. My girlfriend was like, “Come back to Louisville.” I was like, “No. If I go back to Louisville, I will be broke and I will have nowhere to stay. I won’t have any money for five weeks.” She’s like, “Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it at all. I’m not going to kick you out.” I was like, “All right.” I hopped on an airplane and basically spent the last amount of money I had. I had maybe $50 to my name at the airport and she gets cold feet. I’m in Louisville. It’s midnight. I don’t even have enough money to really get anywhere, plus nobody knows I’m in town, this is before iPhones and technology. I was stranded at the airport.
Finally, she came and picked me up, I’m already stressing out, I’m like, man this is not a good situation. I’m regretting every minute of my decision. We get to her house and everything is hunky dory for a day or two. She has three kids, all boys. It’s me, her three boys and her. The first, Like I said, for the first couple of days, everything was cool until I found out she has a boyfriend, now I’m in an interesting situation. I don’t have a phone, so this posed a problem. I finally reached my people, It wasn’t as simple as today. Today it seems like, “Why didn’t you just pick up the phone and make a phone call and call them?” We didn’t have cell phones. Not everyone had cellphones at the time. Today it’s like, “Oh, it’s just easy. You can pinpoint where you are, you call an Uber and you’re ready to go.” At that point in time, technology wasn’t there, so it wasn’t as easy as that.
I’m stranded at her house. I don’t know where I am. I’m not stupid, I was not going to get into a fight with somebody in their environment. That doesn’t make a bit of sense. I don’t know where I am. This is where he lives. The odds are against me. I stayed upstairs with the kids and then the next morning, my people came and got me and brought me to the hood. I’m like, “Fuck.” I have no money and I’m stuck in the hood. You’d think like, “All right, why didn’t you just go to the end of the street and go fuck with your people?” that wasn’t an option. I was homeless with nothing to eat. If you remember years before and I was traveling from California to Kentucky, The Don’s family, I went in one time, I was starving. I went in the fridge, three weeks before everyone thought I was broke, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but now everyone thought I was broke and now it was a problem. I was stealing food.
Now I was a thief. Not only was I homeless and everyone was making fun of me, I was a thief. Years later, all was forgotten, but at that point in time, they all just turned their backs on me, but at the time it was different because I developed friendships with different people. During that time, I had one book with me and it was “the 48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene. while homeless, I was reading probably one of the best books I could have ever read. I look back on that time and it was almost one of the most pivotal points in my life because while most people would be crying about being with no food, no money, no nothing, I had been in this situation before, if you had read the story to this point. I had already been in this situation, so I wasn’t as stressed out as maybe everybody else. Sleep outside? Hey, okay. I did that for days upon days. Being starving, well we did that. My buddy from Cascade showed me how to survive being starving. I had a lot of people.
The new crowd of people taught me, maybe they weren’t the healthiest of people, but they also showed me the inner city loops of where to eat. We learned on this day you can eat a lot of food over here. They give you free food here. Over on this day, they give you free food here. I started to understand the system of where to go get free food and how to survive. There was an abandoned house, so I was sleeping in an abandoned house until sailorman decided to break all the windows and cause a ruckus, so that was no longer an option. I started sleeping outside, I made two phone calls at this time. The first phone call was to my sister, my eldest sister. The one that I used to live with then they had the baby. I told her, “Look, I’m in a bind and I need some help. I’ll pay you back once I get some money.” It’s obvious I’d pay her back because she gets the same amount of money as I did.
She knew my word was good. What she said was, “Wait. I need to ask my husband.” I took that as, you’re my sister and I’m asking you for help, but I’m not important enough in your life for you to just say yes? You have to ask permission from somebody else? When she said that, that moment right there ruined our relationship forever. Our relationship was never… To this day, it’s never been close from that moment. I felt like she betrayed me and she turned her back on me. Now, she came back and she said, “Yeah, me and my husband decided that’s okay.” I was like, “You know what? I got myself into this and I’ll get myself out of it. I don’t need your help.” I felt like she betrayed me, so I told myself I don’t need you anymore. Since that point in time, I haven’t really had a relationship at all with her.
The second person, I called a different buddy from Cascade. If you remember back in the story when I first got out of programs, I stayed at his mom’s house and she let me use the car so I called him. The first thing he said was, “Go to a hotel.” He’s like, “I don’t care which hotel. Go to one of those weekly hotels and then call me and how long do you need? Okay, I got you. Don’t even worry about it.” I said, “I’ll pay you.” He’s like, “Erik, go.” I said, “All right. All right. I’ll call you right back.” I thought about it for a second and that confidence, knowing I’m okay, it gave me the ability to accept my situation. I wasn’t desperate anymore, if that makes sense. Yes, I was homeless. I had no money. Everything was shitty, but I wasn’t desperate. I knew that at any given moment, I could change my life, so I chose not to. I called him back, and I said, “You know what man? I appreciate your offer, but I’m not going to take it. I got myself into this and I’ll be fine and I’ll get myself out of this.” I did not accept the offer. He was like, “All right.”
Now, I’m in Louisville homeless and like I said, I was sleeping outside. A friend said it was too dangerous to sleep outside, I wasn’t going around begging for help. I was perfectly fine. Anything that I needed was a little bit of food here and there, but they were showing me how to do that, so were people starting to take care of me? Yes, because I didn’t ask for help. I was going to figure this out by myself. Plus, I was reading the 48 Laws of Power, so when your mind’s completely grasped on a topic, then it was fine. One of the people, I was taken under the wing by a few different people. I told you they showed me the ropes. Well, besides the food because he basically said in Louisville there is no way you can go hungry or go without a drink. Me and, we’ll call him OG, me and OG, I did my reading everything. We’d wake up, he’d go to work or whatever and then some time throughout the day, we would do our rounds and we’d start walking to each of the liquor stores in each liquor store, people would be passing around bottles of liquor, so by the end of it you’re good. You’re drunk and someone might have extra food, some extra chicken wings or something. Offer. “You want a chicken wing?” I’m like, “All right,” and eat it up.
It made life not as bad as it really was. The only part that was bad was when you would sleep or when you’re not around people, like when you’re alone. If you can wear yourself out or drink yourself, get yourself to the point where you’re just going to pass out, then you’re passed out and the loneliness and everything doesn’t stick because when you’re alone, you’re sleeping and then when you wake back up, it’s a new day. It’s a new day to figure out, to strategize. It’s a new day to go hangout with your buddies or whatever. It’s a new day to occupy your time, to where you’re not lonely. During some of those interactions with the people in the liquor stores, I was thinking heavily about going back to North Carolina and search out my biological family for personal reasons. I had nowhere really to go. I didn’t have any family. Yeah, my black family in California. I loved them, but hell no. I didn’t want to live in that situation. I wanted out of that situation. It was not a healthy environment for me. My eldest sister and I’s relationship deteriorated because of what I just explained.
My relationship with my little sister, me leaving California when I did, my aunt felt like I betrayed her, but she didn’t quite understand the environment that I was living in, that I had to get out of that environment by any means possible. At that point in time, I didn’t have a home. I was a wanderer. I knew by the end of June I’d get, I think it was $20,000. I knew for five weeks all I had to do was survive. I think it was four and a half weeks and I had talked to the bank. The money was sitting there. She could have at any given time, the bank could have released it to me. It was mine. It’s just sitting there, but she said, “Nope.” I was like, “Look Ms. Bank Lady, please can I have a little bit?” She’s like, “Okay. I’m going to give you $3,000. Now, don’t ask me for any more money.”
I took the $3,000, I gave everyone who helped me a celebration BBQ. It’s weird, when I was broke with all these people, I was on their level and they respected me, but then the second I had money, then they changed. Being stingy with the food. “Well, I helped him more than you did. I’m entitled to more than you.” I was trying to thank all of them for helping me survive, but crabs in a bucket.
Now, the next adventure. I flew right back to California. I had nowhere else to go. My cousin, the one that I was telling you that the two of us had grown a bond together, he picked me up from the airport. I wasn’t going to mom’s house. I had a little bit of money. I was like, “Man, I’m fucking with you.” Literally, I went to work with him. Everyday, because he had a driving job, so everyday he went to work, I went to work with him. We’d ride around together all day. That was basically what we did. Then, on the weekends we’d party around the area. Now, my drinking was terrible at this time. I started drinking and I ended the day drinking. It was drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking. My mouth would be… I didn’t drink water. I drank beer or I didn’t drink orange juice. I drank a mixed drink. Alcoholism. Partly because I had been spending the last five weeks in a liquor hall everyday, so my alcoholism, my tolerance level was sky high.
I didn’t put two and two together until right now, why my alcoholism was worse. Yeah, because I had just been around a whole bunch of raging alcoholics. Get back to California, me and my cousin, we were talking. Let’s go to Vegas. He’s like, “You ain’t going to go.” I was like, “Man, let’s do it.” We were like, “Fuck it. We’ll go.” We went to Vegas and his wife was pregnant at the time. I knew his wife. I mean, I had babysat for his wife when his wife had to go to work, if you remember the story. Pay attention. We had our own relationship. Just as a friendship. We knew each other comfortably enough all three of us to go to Vegas and share a room. We’re hanging out in Vegas. We’re having a good time. The nights were really cheap if you go to Vegas before an event, rooms are manageable. We went during the week and rooms were $50, maybe $75 a night. That weekend, they went up to $300 a night. $75 was a deal.
We’re at the MGM Grand having a good time. I was like, “You know what? If you guys can stay an extra day, I got one more night.” They were like, “All right. Fuck it.” Everyone was having a good time. My cousin would be playing black jack. I tried to play with him one time then he cussed me out because I didn’t, “play by the rules,” right. I was like, “Well fuck you. I’ll be over here with your wife putting pennies in the slots, getting free drinks.” The whole gambling thing, I didn’t know you had to play by rules when you’re playing black jack, so gambling like that never was really exciting to me. Yeah, I gamble, but not really. I don’t take it seriously. It’s just a game of change and I know in the end I’ll lose. I had my fun playing the slots and just getting free drinks. Like I said, I was an alcoholic, so it was a paradise. I truly do love Vegas. Well, the last night, because like I said, we stayed an extra night, my cousin and I was like, “Yeah, we’ll go out.”
We ended up going to Studio 54. Before the night closes, he’s talking to somebody and I’m by his side and then this girl comes up and the two of us start talking. I had no idea the conversation was going to turn into something, but I was like, “Shit, I got some weed. You want to smoke?” She was like, “Yep.” All three of us went back to the room; me, my cousin and the girl I just met. His wife is asleep, we go to the bathroom and we smoke and we start talking. She starts telling me that she lives in Prague. I was like, “No way, man.” We just started talking. We talked the entire night. We didn’t do anything sexual. We didn’t do anything. We just talked and made a plan to meet in Prague in a few weeks. I was like, “I’m going to go see my sister in North Carolina, but after that, I’ll fly from North Carolina to Prague.”
She was like, “I’m with my family,” she was on vacation seeing her family. She was a DJ, so I think she had to get more DJ equipment or had a couple gigs or whatever, then she would be heading back to Prague. I was like, “Perfect.” First thing in the morning, she’s gone. We say goodbyes. Of course, we have each other’s phone numbers and then she’s gone. We go back to California. I’m planning my trip to North Carolina. We didn’t go into any of this throughout this story, but I wanted to talk to my nanny from when I was growing up. “What? You had a nanny? What part of the story was this?” Yeah. Well, my sisters don’t like when I say we had a nanny, but she was at the house a lot of the time. She helped my mom do everything. She did the laundry. She babysat me when I was a little kid. When my mom and dad went on vacation, I’d stay at her house. I would say that was more or less like my nanny. She was black, which was even better. “Did you grow up around all white people?” No, my nanny was black. No, I grew up around a black person. My nanny and her family. I called her and I was like, “You know what, nanny?” She has a name, but I’m not going to mention it. “By any chance do you know the Hardys?” I gave my biological mom’s name, She said, “The name sounds familiar. I’ll look into it for you.” Now, we planned this for a couple weeks and she said nothing. We got the time when I was going and I told my sister okay. I planned to see my sister the next day. My cousin drops me off at the airport. I arrived in Asheville, I had not been to Asheville for years. I was coming from the Bay Area, California where we have three international airports to Asheville where everybody was white. That was the first thing I noticed. I’m like, where the fuck am I?
I was like, I was born here? I’m going down the escalator to go get my stuff because I remember the airport from when I was little and I noticed a black lady and a black guy. I grab my bags, get my camera ready and I’m like, man where’s my nanny? The same black lady and the same black guy come up to me and they’re like, “Hey. How are you doing?” Now, I had just been on an airplane all day from California and I am in a culture shock of seeing trees and listening to bugs. I am not in the mood to talk to anybody. When these two people came up to me, I’m thinking they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses or something like that, trying to sell me something, so I’m as rude as possible. I’m like, what? They’re like, “I hear you’re out here looking for somebody.”
Now, I’m really thinking they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses and I’m like, “Nobody that you would know. What are you doing? Leave me the fuck alone.” Then, they’re like, “I hear you know Sister Avery.” I was like, oh shit. “Well, yeah.” That’s my nanny. They’re like, “We’re them. I’m your mom and this is your brother.” At that point in time, it’s right when the camera starts recording because I’m getting ready for my nanny to come. I’m like, “What?” They’re like, “Yeah. I’m the person you’re looking for. I’m your mom and this is your brother.”
20 years old. I think I turned 20 in Tacoma, with my sister, things were calming down. my excitement of Korea wasn’t happening anymore, Kentucky was out of the question. Life started to stabilize compared to what it had been since my mom had died. I was living with my sister, building a life, living with my sister, was different. She had a kid so it was transitioning to the point where living with her would no longer be an option. They ended up moving houses, they started a family. Before they had a family, it was like the three of us were family. But then when they actually had their family it transformed into something different.
I started spending a little bit of time in Tacoma but then I started going back to the Bay area. It’s cold in Tacoma opposed to the Bay area. I got used to living there in California. at mom’s house, and detailing cars. At this point in time, the trips to the Mexican restaurants weren’t as prominent. Remember, I was no longer in that department. What the boss had always explained, hit and miss. When I was in Korea, which is right before I turned 20 by a couple months, the other business started to have a couple hiccups. They never caught anything coming in because like the boss always said, “never let anybody know when you’re coming.” Then they obviously know when you’re leaving but never let anyone know when you’re coming. With that theory, we ended up getting hit for $300,000 by car. Then we also got hit for $80,000 in the airport. That shut down the easier money. After that summer, when I was 19, it was never that large again. The boss still made ends meet. That was something he knew what he was doing but I never made another trip to Louisville under that operation.
During this time, things were different. My artist was part of that family (moms family), This year we decided to take some of the money we earned through our Distribution Company ( California to Louisville) and convert it to Legal money through the music industry. A different cousin of mine, who just got out of the penitentiary, and I built a bond together, during this period of time because both of us had a diligent work ethic to accomplish goals. It also helped that both of us were institutionalized. The two of us would (This is old school. Nowadays it’s so much easier.) days on end, burn the CD and then print the label and put it on the CD. We were going to the studio for recording sessions at night (I’m not sure why this is but it seems like the music industry loves the work at midnight). I’d be detailing cars during the day and going to different studios and driving people around at night. My schedule was pretty busy.
There was a lot of fire at the beginning of the summer for this project. But towards the end of the summer, funding ran out, when people expect that they’re going to make their money fast but, when it doesn’t happen that way, then they aren’t quite as interested as before. My experience in dealing with other artists is that they are very difficult. It’s not about managing the music, it’s about managing the artist. The problem sometimes is artists think they’re already somebody when they’re not. They kind of expect royal treatment when they’re not royal yet. When you have an investor that’s running out of money because it was dirty money. It’s like, let’s turn this into fast money. But that’s not the business he was really trying to do, he was focused on other things. He had a family, and had just bought a house. His focus was somewhere else. Then the artist was more prima donna. The two people that were doing all the work (My cousin and I) had nothing invested.
My cousin and I were doing all the leg work, going here, being here, promoting, doing this, doing that. It was the two of us that were doing everything but we didn’t have any money. We weren’t the artists. When the money ran out and the artist was too hard to deal with, the fire dissipated. At the same time, we built a bond, spending so much time together talking about business and the future. That’s what we were both interested in. I understood him more than anyone else I guess because he was also institutionalized. From me going through all my programs, my mentality was kind of different than most. Him, being in and out of jail, his mentality was different than most. But then when we talked, obviously our experiences were completely different but I understood him and he understood me, if that makes sense. We developed a bond that I didn’t have with anyone else. During this time (or even now), it was the beginning of Medical Marijuana in California. During that time, like I said, the boss was in the music thing but we were doing other things, too. While I’m ripping and running, I was also going to Unc’s house because we had a setup there where we were growing marijuana.
I was detailing cars, I was doing the music thing and Learning the process of cultivating marijuana. The Bay area is a large area, I was mostly in the South and East Bay. The Fremont area, The peninsula (like Menlo Park area) and then San Jose. If you remember, by this time I’d already burned the bridge in Sausalito. Now, I was doing a lot and I was learning a lot however I didn’t have very much money. You might be like, “Well, what happened with all the money from all the trips?” Well, I never got paid for any of the trips to Louisville or any of the trips to Korea. I guess I did it for goodwill and experience. I never made a dollar. I made money to eat but I was never compensated for what I did. That’s that. I was stuck in this environment. I was broke, I had no money. Like I was saying, Tacoma wasn’t as much of an option as it had been before. At least not living with my sister. Then that posed a different problem. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, I was stuck.
I maintained at moms house. There was always food to eat, there was always half of a couch. There was an army of us. There weren’t enough beds. Wherever you could lay your head down, that is where you slept. Around the middle of the summer. Moms got a loan to redo her house. In my mind I’m like, “Mom, you should take that same money and invest in Google” because this is when Google IPO’d. This time, this summer. I remember it was in the newspaper. Whenever Google IPO’d, this is the time I’m talking about. They IPO’d at like, $140 or something because she had gotten $140,000. I was like, “Mom, if you bought 1,000 shares of these, I bet you, you’d make more money.” Of course, if you look at it, she would have. It would have been a great investment. She’s no longer with us, it wouldn’t have been the best investment for her. With the whole army of us, when I mean an army, there’s probably seven of us. There’s too many different names and I’m not going to name anyone. There was cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin. There’s a whole bunch of cousins. Seven of us lived in Mom’s house on a daily basis (kids under 23). Then not mentioning aunts. There was; cousin, cousin and aunt, aunt, aunt. Mom decided that she was going to remodel the house. We had nowhere to go. One of the uncles had a one bedroom apartment on the border of Palo Alto and East Palo Alto. We packed up everything and all of us together moved over to the one bedroom apartment, which was more of a projects-style, they were all apartments. It was different. There was always a lot more going on, different people than just family. Before we were in a neighborhood, now we were in apartments. When I was there I met another like minded person who was Samoan, he wasn’t black. He was the neighbor of one of my cousins. It was fun talking to him. We could escape from the ghetto mentality, crime, drugs and guns were a norm.
Talking with him, we could expand our brains. He, like me, wanted to leave. He ended up moving to Australia, having a family he got out. It’s not just me who got out. There’s other people that got out of East Palo Alto and made something of themselves. During this time, the cousin that was downstairs in the other apartment, both of us had the same last name. It was easier to be like, “Yeah, that’s my brother.” Our last names were the same. He wasn’t related to me but I was adopted into the family, well I adopted the family. Within that family he was more like my brother. He was a man of the streets. Throughout the years, even starting when I was 18, his mindset and mine were similar, we both liked money. We both wanted to have money. But we went about trying to obtain money in very different ways. Hanging out with him for the day was torture for me and vice versa reading books and taking the intellectual approach was absolutely foreign to him. Hanging out with him would mean that we’re out from sunup, literally sunup in the morning until sundown with as much dope(crack) as we could find.
With a Mouthful of spitters, (a little dope, you put it in your mouth or in your butt crack). From the beginning of the day until the end of the day, we were outside and we were running from police, we were hopping fences, stealing bikes, riding around. It was just too much. He would make some money but for all the energy, it wasn’t enough for me there was competition. It’s a lifestyle that wasn’t a lifestyle for me. If you remember, years ago I had been talking about my white buddy from Idaho, that was the life for him. He absolutely loved it. He enjoyed it. I don’t want to tell that story. But he was built for that lifestyle, he enjoyed it. It was different for him. It was exciting. For me, it was an annoyance. I didn’t enjoy it. That wasn’t the life for me. I was more like the boss and let’s go behind closed doors. Not my style. But it was his. It was educational. He introduced me to a foreign lifestyle. Sunup to sundown, selling dope. When I was in Washington, I’d ended up meeting a friend from Cascade, if you remember me telling you about the two brothers. One of the brothers was in Seattle. I went and kicked it with them. Through him, I ended up meeting this other person. Up there, kind of the same thing. It was a completely different instance of selling drugs but it was the same kind of speed that my brother down in California had. To show you how fast life can go, that first night up in Seattle, everything from the beginning, we started with nothing and ended up with $200 a piece in our pocket. We were in a DFR, which is a dope fiend rental. We were flying down the road going to, I don’t know where we were going but we ended up close to the Seattle airport, got pulled over and that was the last I’d ever seen or heard of that person. He reminded me of my cousin, or my brother, because he was moving fast, it was fun, it was exciting but it’s also a fast life and it can end even faster.
At this point in time, I was babysitting the little kids. when I wasn’t working, if I wasn’t out with my brother, then I was usually at home in the little apartment with Moms. There were always little kids. The family is big so it would always rejuvenate and process kids. I babysat, I got used to being around little kids because they were my shadows. I’d take them to the store and babysit them throughout the day and grow relationships with them. I ended up meeting a girl. It was my brother’s friend that he met, but she took a liking to me. Then lo and behold, I saw it as a way out of the ghetto because she had her own apartment. I had gotten a real job, I was working at the Halloween store. I enjoyed it, honestly. It was fun. She invited me to her apartment. Instead of going home to the hood, I would take the bus and go to her house. I forgot where it was, I think it was Redwood City, or I’d take the train up to her house.
The two of us, this was more around Halloween because it was October. We had developed a decent relationship. Then I ended up moving back up to Tacoma, Washington. It was the last time with my sister. My girlfriend was like, “Yeah, I’m going to move there, too.” We got an apartment together. She brought a friend. At this point in time, I didn’t know she had a habit, a crystal meth habit. When she got to tacoma, we were so in love but the relationship turned sour fast. It didn’t help that I told her I was falling for her friend. My girlfriend would lay in bed all day and literally do nothing. Then her friend would talk with me and walk with me and do all this stuff. I became friends with her friend. With that information, she hightailed it to Spokane. We were in Tacoma, she went to Spokane because her friend’s mom lived there, and they got a job. If you remember my white buddy from Idaho.
I called him because he was in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, which is next door to Spokane. I told him, I was like, “Man, life is not working for me right now. It don’t matter, I don’t even care.” He was like, “Man, me too. I’m going to get it however. I’m not going to stop until I’m either dead or in jail.” We both had this bad mentality, absolutely horrendous mentality. He was like, “Man, I’m making some good money out here. I flipped a couple pounds of weed and now I’m up to eight ounces of coke.” I was like, “For real? Well, I’m going to come out there and help you.” I think we might have been at four ounces. I left the apartment, subleased it to someone else, which I was not supposed to do but I subleased it to somebody else and I was on my way to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho to sell cocaine. That was fun. That was fun until we got too big. We got big, fast.
Our motto was, “We’re 24/7 for real.” I don’t sleep very much. When he would sleep, I was up. I’m talking about within three weeks we had made like, $30,000. Straight cash profit. It happened really fast. I turned 21 there. We had a good little time. But the problem was, he was extremely greedy. I helped you with all this shit, now you want to give me fucking pennies on the fucking dollar. You know what I’m saying? It would have been all right but then you want me to pay for everything. I’m getting paid pennies on the dollar and then, to make it worse, you’re making me pay half for everything. What little money I’m making, I’ve got to give it right back to you. I was basically working like a slave. There were 2 black people in the entire city. There’s probably 15 but I remember 2 or 3. There was a stabbing one day. Of course, it was a black person. With there only being 3 black people, I’m talking this entire time we’re selling coke I never got stopped, no one paid attention to me, nothing.
I’m walking around like it’s nothing. I had coke all over me, little baggies, we’re ready to go. What I would do, I think this is how we blew up as fast as we did. I would make the knot so small and then cut it to where there’s no way that you could save the bag. You were going to do all that coke when you bought from us. Unless you had somewhere to put it, the second you got into the bag, it’s either going to go all over the place or you’re going to sit there and you’re going to have one hell of a party. Then in about an hour you’re calling for some more because you’re amped up. We made money fast. My alcoholism was not helping because when I’d get drunk I’d get friendly and then have fun. I experimented with the coke on one occasion. My partner was out of town and I was with one of his friends. He was buying all night from me and he kept offering. I was like, “All right, whatever.” Then my friend came back. I will never forget this because he yelled and screamed at me. He said, “Look man, there’s two sides to this. There’s not three. Either you are a junkie or you sell it. There’s no in between.”
When he said that, he shamed me. He shamed me. I was like, “Whatever, it’s not that big a deal.” But when he literally told me, “Uh huh, either you’re going to be a drug addict or you’re not. You’re going to look at it as money or you can look at it as pleasure. One or the other. There is no in between.” With that mentality, I remember it right now, it obviously affected me in a major way. It clicked. But what happened after the stabbing was I got stopped by the police. I had never been stopped by the police. For me, it was time to go. If I was being paid correctly, maybe I wouldn’t have done what I did. However I was getting ripped off. I had no incentive to be loyal. I paid him back, there’s a video of me paying him back. I took some money. I didn’t take all of it. I should have taken all of it because in the end, the police ended up taking it all. I took some, I took a good amount of it. I wrote him a letter and I disappeared on him.
One of my aunts from California was in Seattle. I hightailed it to Seattle. I had a lovely day in Seattle, we might have spent $200 but I took them all around Seattle, we took pictures, we had a good time. Then I called the boss. With all my money, basically … With the apartment I had in Tacoma, I went and picked up my buddy from Cascade, you’ve heard about him a couple times, the one from Sausalito. We hung out. In my mind, at that time, I had more money than God. I spent it. Brought him up, we ended up getting kicked out of the apartment, they took it back from me. I had to get the people that were living there out of the apartment. Then it was just the two of us. He helped me clean up the apartment for a week. Then I sent him down on the bus and then later I went down on a bus. I wasn’t going to fly, too much stuff.
At this time, my girlfriend that I was in love with, had moved back to the Bay area as well. We had rekindled, I spent a couple nights at her house and then went back home to Mom’s. I told the boss I had a little bit of money. He was like, “Man, let me get some. Then I’m going to go to Kentucky and we’re going to make some money.” Being naïve and stupid, I gave him my lifeline, that would have kept me above the zero line for a little bit. I gave it all to him. I got nothing. He made some money, yes. But did I see anything of my return? No. I was right back, square one, no money, nothing.
I was barely getting any money from detailing cars. I was getting enough to survive. Then I’m going up to my old lady’s house trying to escape the ghetto. By this time, the fun and excitement was over. It was misery, all the way. We had moved back into the new house and with moving back in the new house, it was family but there was nothing positive about being in that situation. I got a job at the mall because I needed more money. There wasn’t any money. When we were going to Kentucky, money was fine and there was more opportunity but then when all that money dried up and it was gone, there was no opportunity. Even the detailing of the cars kind of dried up a little bit. I could do that but it wasn’t enough money. I was getting older and I had a girlfriend. I needed more money.
Now I had to think, I forgot one major thing. Also during this time, me and my girlfriend had broken up. This was right before I got the job. For two months I was like, “I’m going to the Marines. I’m gone.” For two months. when I was supposed to ship out they pulled me and said, “You pissed hot, you’re not allowed to go.” Which means I had marijuana in my system. They gave me two months. I talked to the bank. Now the Marine recruiting station was close to my girlfriend’s house, her family’s house. I told the bank, “I need this apartment right here.” It wasn’t an apartment, it was an extended stay Motel 6. For two months it was lovely. I wasn’t stressed about money because they gave me a little allowance. My job was to go to the Marine station every day. Everything was on plan the first month. The two of us were getting closer. I literally had to run by her house to the Marine station. I thought they were getting better.
But they didn’t. I ended up not going to the Marines because I ended up smoking again. After the two months I was done. I was right back at Mom’s house but I got a job. During that Christmas, it was right before Christmas break for the Christmas vacation. I had known her for a little bit over a year now. During the Christmas break, to go to work I had to pass by her mom’s shop in Palo Alto, I became really close with her mom. Every day I would stop, on my way home or on my way to work, depending on my shift, I would stop in, say hello, and talk to her mom. If you do that all the time, you develop a relationship. I became really close with her family. At this point in time, our relationship was deteriorating horribly but my relationship with her family was increasing. Now I wasn’t just my girlfriend’s boyfriend. I was a friend of her brother, I was a friend of her sister, I was a friend of her mom, her dad was starting to accept me. I was more of a family member. There were a couple of times I spent the night at her family’s house when she wasn’t even at home. Remember, she had habits. The habits were bringing her further and further away from her family. But then I was getting closer and closer. I was trying my hardest to combat the habit she had. I was becoming more consumed in her life. Now, I knew since the day I turned 18, when I turned 22 my life was going to change. My birthday was in two months. At 22, I would start receiving dividends. The dividends, remember the $300,000? Remember that? There was another trust my mom had given to us, my sisters and I. At age 22, that entire fund would be broken into thirds and each of us would now be receiving the dividends. It wasn’t a lot but I went from being broke to making $50 to $100,000 a year. It changed everything.
But it wasn’t like, “Here’s $100,000.” It was, “Here’s $5,000 for three months or Here’s $20,000 for three months” . It had to do with my family’s company at that point in time I had no idea. The actual dividends from stock were barely enough to live on. The family company was very sporadic, giving large amounts some months then small amounts other months, it was difficult to gauge. This change was coming in a few months. Everybody knew this, “Oh man! I forgot during this time, the Christmas before I turned 22 a lot happened that made life unbearable. My girlfriend was on drugs. My heart was crushed, she chose the drug over me. Unc, who had been my mentor since 18, was really sick. He escaped from the hospital and he said, “If I’m going to die, I’m going to die at home.” He escapes from the hospital and they set up a deathbed at home.
Now it was just me and the boys and Mom at the house. They called me inside, I was outside working on some kind of plan, some mastermind reading a book because, like I said, I was always stuck at the house. They called me in and they’re like, “Something’s wrong with him, something’s wrong with him.” I looked at him. He reached for my hand so I grabbed his hand. He was rubbing my thumb. Then the rubbing stopped and he died. That was extremely difficult for me. I had no outlet. I had seen my dad dead, if you remember. I was with my mom when she died, if you remember. But now this is a third significant person in my life. This is the first time I was actually holding someone’s hand when they died. The other one, my mom was more structured, if that makes sense. We were in the hospital, at least. This was in the house, there were no doctors. That night was miserable. Every time I closed my eyes it was a repeating scene my mom, my dad, Unc, my mom, my dad, Unc, my mom, my dad, Unc. their faces just flashing over and over every time I closed my eyes.
I guess emotionally it really affected me even more because before he died, I had an ally. He was older and he always had time to talk. Even a day or two days before he died, he barely could talk, walk or do any of that but he would want to go outside and talk to me and smoke a Black n’ Mild and a cigarette. Everyone was mad as could be with me that I would let him do it but he was going to die anyway. At least let him die in happiness. Death, I was already used to it. I was a veteran of death. I could handle it better. I treated him like it was every other day. Everyone else was like, “Oh you’re going to die” and all this other stuff, real sad and everything. For me it was just like any other day. Now I know you’re going to die. Tell me as much as you can before you die so I can be an extra sponge and get all the lessons that maybe I didn’t get before. That was my approach.
Now, if you’re noticing, everything was changing. Everything. I was growing up, the fun wasn’t there, the money wasn’t there and I was becoming more and more isolated. Around this time, I started coming up with this phrase called fuck you, make money. I would be reading … I had literally been screwed over and over and over and over and over and over by every person in every interaction I had been with. The first person I fell in love with, this girl, she cheated on me and fell in love with a drug and the drug was always more important than I was. The one decent thing I thought I had in my life turned out to be sour. At this point in time, my mind switched to like, “Okay I’m going to focus on me, more or less, and try to find people that want to make money.” I knew I was going to get money coming in. It was the attitude of fuck you, make money. If you’re not trying to make money with me, then fuck you, make money.
During this time my uncle, my mom’s brother, my white uncle, helped me get a job. It was working as a personal trainer. That was a cool job. It would have been a great opportunity. One of my little sisters from that family was becoming a ninth grader. Part of the place I was working at, they would go to the school of my little sister, once or twice a week and do workouts with the students. This allowed me to build a relationship with my little sister, which at the time, was amazing. It was great. We grew really close. Through her, I got back into the family. Not all the way but at least I was starting to have dinner at home. I was being invited over, But I don’t think my family quite understood what situation I was living in and how dire it was.
It’s very difficult for people to be empathetic. If you’re living in a mansion, it’s difficult for you to even imagine a different life. If you remember my counselor, from Cascade, my “motherly figure”. We had planned a time for her to come and see me. I thought she was coming to the Bay area anyway, but she was coming to the Bay area mostly to see me. When I turned 22 I ran as fast as I could away from the East Palo Alto area. I couldn’t get away fast enough.
All right, recap a little bit of the last chapter. My buddy from Cascade, brought me to Sausalito, California with his dad. Sausalito was amazing. It’s on the bay. I woke up every morning, listening to seagulls. And looking at a beautiful view every morning. It was relaxing, calming. I had to go back down to the a in Palo Alto, and I met the person who helped me move from Spokane, Washington with all my stuff (remember my store) he gave me a job detailing cars. We will call him the “boss”. I’m going on weekdays, taking the bus and then staying with the boss. And then on the weekends, I’m back to Sausalito. I was eventually given a company truck to drive. It just made everything easier and it made sure that I was going to be at work on time. If I wasn’t given the truck, the bus would take three hours, while the truck was a 45 minute drive.
At this time, everything’s going well. I’m learning how to detail cars, which is a great skill to have. I’m also learning Perma Touch (how to take scratches out of the paint). At this time, I also met Unc. We’ll just call him Unc. He was an older person. He was part of my new family. If you remember, the grandmother told me how much she was sorry that her family helped me go broke that I always had a roof over my head. She had a massive family. While I’m detailing cars, slowly but surely, I was being introduced, (I’d already known a lot of the family, just from being the easy mark) to the older crowd, the different crowd, not people my age. The older and wiser members of the family.
Before I went broke, unk tried to talk to me, but I was young, dumb and knew everything. The one thing he used to say was, “Does it hurt yet?” I’d look at him like, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Does it hurt?, you’re running into that wall? You just don’t know it. I’m just asking you if it hurts.” I would laugh at him like, “Yeah, whatever, old man.” When I went broke, and worked next to him he was like, “So does it hurt?” And I had to tell him, “Yeah, it does.” He said, “I tried to warn you.”
I started being more susceptible to what he was saying in his life lessons. I had nobody else. When I went broke, all the crowd that was around me forgot about me. It was really just moms, Unc, and the boss. The boss would send us together on jobs, unk and I. To detail a car, it takes two and a half hours. So, if we have two or three cars, we’re out there all day just the two of us. He was way older than me. He had kids 10 years older than I was. So, he was more like grandpa than unc, but we call him Unc. Unk would always call me Ace which was the same nickname my grandfather called me growing up.
He slowed me down. He taught me different things. He gave me a different perspective. the one thing he used to always say, “I hate people.” He’s like, “People are just stuupid.” It made a lot of sense.
Okay, today, we talk about only 10%. Why do 10%, Or, 2%, make 98% of the money? Or why does 10% of the world have 90% of the wealth and 90% of the world has 10% wealth. it’s like what Unc would say, “People are stupid.” He said, “I don’t like people.” What he was saying is 90% of the people in our lives are stupid and in the way. A very powerful life lesson.
I had no money, no one wanted to be around me.
Everyone made fun of me when I was around. Did I have a place to stay? Yes. Did I have a job? Yes. Was I being taught by the older people? Yes. But the younger crowd made fun of me. They never invited me to go anywhere. I’d be stuck at the house during the week and just talking to the older people.
There’s a song by Tupac. he says, “While other suckers were guessin’, I was gangsta sexin’.” I remember that song. And I was like, “You know what, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to just hang around all the older people and read books.”
When I was at my friend’s house in Sausalito, his dad owned a bookstore. While I was there, we used to have reading competitions. we weren’t allowed to highlight any of the books. His dad ordered the books for us, we’d read the books, and then give them back for him to sell as long as we didn’t squish them and fold pages, we could read as many books as we wanted. I read books about intellectual property, I wanted to understand what it was. Everything was beginning to normalize and I was settling into my routine. At this point in time, I was splitting houses. Half the time I’d be in Sausalito and the other half I would be in East Palo Alto. If you want to better understand the contrast between my two lives simply Google both cities and do a little research.
Once a week, there was basketball. The boss loved basketball. So, we’d always go.
This one week, there was a different looking person. He was way more yellow than we were, and the way he presented himself was very different. You could tell he was not from around here, “one of those”. He had braids, gold teeth, his skin tone was yellow and the way he played basketball was different.
I had no idea who he was when we’re playing. So, it didn’t mean anything. I realized later, he ended up at mom’s house,we started talking, he was from Louisville, Kentucky. I think he was in his early 30s. I was 19, not that much older than me, but a world of differences separated us. I had no idea what we were doing or who this person was, but the two of us were rolling a blunt or something like that, talking about the different marijuana prices from California to Kentucky. This is basically international trade, but it’s national trade. You buy low, sell high, the problem was getting it from point A to point B. Well, little did I know, that’s kind of what he was out there for. We were talking about marijuana, those numbers were astronomical to me at the time because I was broke.
I noticed this person, we’ll call him “the don”. wasn’t leaving. So, little by little, things started to reveal themselves of what he was actually in California for. Over the next couple of days, we stopped detailing cars as much and we bought a car, a little 4-door Cavalier. And it became my car ( everything was in my name; title, tag, and insurance). I was the young dumb one. I thought I was getting a car. I really thought I was getting a car. I was wondering why I didn’t actually get the car? A few days later, me, the boss and the don hopped in my car and we’re on our way to the Kentucky Derby.
While we were detailing cars, we tended to go to Mexican restaurants, bring in a shoe box, when nobody was there, sit down, have a beer And wait for the boss and a Mexican to finish having a meeting. Then we’d have another shoe box, And we’d leave. The majority of the time, I was the driver. We were detailing cars, don’t get me wrong, I did learn that skill. But the other half of the time I was driving all over the Bay Area, stopping at an assortment of Mexican restaurants picking up and dropping off, picking up and dropping off I was driving so the boss could count money, counting money and shuttling packages all day long.Those hours were ridiculous, (That’s part of the reason I still wake up so early) we had to be out of the house at about 5:30 and we wouldn’t get back until late at night. Those days were jam packed days. I’m not going to say that they were easy days because the Bay Area is huge.Sometimes, we’d be in the South Bay, then Sunnyvale, then we’d have to drive all the way to Pittsburgh, and then have to drive all the way to Fremont to damn near to South San Francisco, to Belmont. If you don’t know the Bay Area, then this makes absolutely no sense to you. I’m going to quit right there. We were driving all around the bay all day, picking up, dropping off, picking up, dropping off, detailing a car, pickup, drop off, detail a car, detail a car, pickup, drop off, it was an all-day thing.
So, when the three of us set out, I think it was either the early May or the end of April. You have to look at the Kentucky Derby. It was all based on the Kentucky Derby. At that point in time, we knew there was going to be lots of money. It was a great time to start on a new enterprise.
At this point in time, I knew what I was getting myself into, but not really. I didn’t know the scale of what I was getting myself into. I was more or less asked to drive and I was like, “Fuck it, let’s do it.” So, again, I wasn’t stupid, but I wasn’t smart either.
This first trip is where I was named Black Mex. like I said I was a driver. I drove most of the way. The only time they drove is when I needed a quick break and then I got back in the driver’s seat. We went through every type of weather you could imagine, it was terrible.
We hit rain, obviously. We hit sleet, We had a tornado warning, We had to redirect. We ended up going through Colorado. Wyoming was shut down, between Laramie and Cheyenne, it was too dangerous. It took forever. It was ridiculous. Mind you, we’re going I-80. So, we were going from California and to Louisville, Kentucky. If you look at the map, it’s going right through the mainland of America. It was crazy. we were only allowed to stop to use the restroom. weren’t trying to stop until we were running out of gas. The gas and restroom break were mostly the same. You try to coordinate them together because your mission is to get there as fast as possible.
I got the name Blackmex, during this drive the Don and I had hours together. The two of us would talk a lot I would be driving the entire time we would be talking, he would offer to drive but I was always like, “Nah, don’t worry about it. I got it.” So, he’s like, “Man, you are black but you work like a Mexican”, man. “You’re the blaxican. Nah, you’re the Black Mexican. I’m going to call you Black Mex.” We got to Louisville, compared to California, Louisville was more like the Wild Wild West. There were people flying down the road in their cars passing police, there was land and open lots everywhere. The way people walked and talked, I could barely understand them. It felt like I was in a different country. I could barely understand what anyone was talking about. I had to be like, “What did you say?” about three or four times just to grasp their accents. All of them had gold teeth in their mouth. Their cars were different. Everything was more shiny and just big, compared to California especially with the boss. The boss was always trying to be under the radar. Well, in Louisville, everyone was trying to be above the radar. So, it was a completely different world for me.
One of the people was from California as well. My family and this family in Kentucky had been in business years ago. My friend, we’ll call him Sailorman. Sailorman was from California, it was Sailorman’s dad, who originally orchestrated the family connections.
For the Sailorman, California had become too dangerous for him. Everyone of his friends had been murdered. His crew robbed someone, and then the person started to hunt them down one by one. He was the last one standing. His California family sent him to Kentucky, to save his life.
So, when I got to Cali park, this is how I met Sailorman. It is around May, so it was probably about 70 degrees fahrenheit. No need for a big parka in the middle of the day, he was a little drunk guy. He was explaining to me why he had the parka on. He was going around robbing people. Great friend, right?
We clicked, we were close to age. I was 19, he was 21 we were both from the same place in California. So, we had something to talk about. I could understand what he was saying. The two of us became inseparable. His family ended up calling us butt cheeks because we were always together.
When we arrived, we were treated like royalty. I was a respected member of the group at 19 (in way over my head). We were unorganized, Everything was starting. We stayed at the don’s mom’s house. He had his own section of the house. When it was time to return to California, another person from California appeared. We’ll call him, “celly cell.” When celly cell arrived it was the first time we met we didn’t know anything about each other. But we were on the same side to watch each other’s back because we were together in foreign a land. The business we were in wasn’t the safest businesses, if you have ever watched an episode of First 48 you know Louisville’s not the safest city.
Celly cell comes and the boss says, “It’s time to go.” So, instead of the boss hopping in the car with us, it was just me and celly cell. The two of us were from very different backgrounds, let’s just say two of us could not get along, not at all. However, the boss seemed to always put us together.
So, when we got back to California, my life was transitioning. I stayed less time at my friend’s house in Sausalito, because I had a job and I’m not in the Bay Area. I’m in Louisville for a week to two weeks at a time, I think that summer I made five complete trips.
The first trip, I didn’t know anything about Louisville. The second trip, I felt comfortable, and became a complete lunatic the alcohol consumption in Louisville compared to California was completely different. In California, drinking was frowned upon. I was the only one who drank. But in Louisville, I was one of many. Everybody drank. I mean, literally in the summertime, the place I was at, smells like fried chicken, but it’s not. It’s the mash fermenting from all the liquor distilleries. You can almost get drunk on the fumes. It makes a lot of sense why Louisville is dangerous, everyone’s drunk all the time, at least in the area I was.
If you remember from the store in Spokane, we were driving all this stuff down to California from Idaho. I wrecked one suburban, but the other suburban was still alive.
I was driving with a different cousin from California to Kentucky in the “other suburban”. We had one of those huge balloons. The package was already pre-wrapped so we didn’t inspect the product before we drove it across the country. If I recall correctly it was a few hundred pounds of Mexican brick marijuana. The Mexican Connection had no need for it so they gave it to us for basically free.
It made a lot of sense why they didn’t want it when we got to Louisville, we looked at it, and it was the lowest quality of Mexican brick weed. It was worse than the weed they had in Louisville. It was nearly impossible to do anything with a wasted trip. But now the suburban was my designated car, until it was taken from me. Why did the car get taken from you?
Well, Sailorman and I weren’t always the most responsible. Remember how I met him? He didn’t seem like the most logical choice to become best friends with, But both of us were plumb idiots.
I shocked him, here’s somebody riding around trying to rob people. And I shocked him. We were downtown, looking for a strip club. We’re already drunk. I had a two-shot derringer. I wanted a derringer with me at all times. I wanted the power of a gun.
These two white boys called us niggers. I drew down on those motherfuckers as fast as I could and I’m like, “What the fuck did you call me?” With the gun in their face walking closer towards them. “What the fuck did you call me?” I wanted to shoot them. I’m drunk. I was little over a year out of Mexico, I went broke, all my hatred and frustration was in control of my actions, I had no fear. I was ready to shoot, but Sailorman calmed me down. After that day, Sailorman realized he was not the only crazy one of the group. I was just as crazy as he was, our relationship was headed for disaster.
The craziest thing was after he told the story, his job became to babysit me. So, here is the lunatic whose job is to literally babysit the baby, which was me. Within a few days, we had a couple police interactions. We met a couple of girls. We picked them up and gave them a ride somewhere. I’m telling you the story because I learned something.
We dropped them off and they’re like, “What’s your job?” We’re like, “We detail cars.” We were drunk and looking pretty. We didn’t look like people working for a living, detailing cars, all the stuff for detailing cars was in the back. But we were obviously not detailing cars.
Right after we drop them off the police pull us over. we literally dropped them off, hit the corner, and we’re pulled over. Don’t forget, I have the gun in my pocket, the cop does an illegal search real quick. Thank god, I’m going to say, thank you very much, Snoop Dog. Thank you so much, Snoop. at the time, Snoop had his own clothing line. His clothes had really deep pockets the normal pocket is probably let’s say six inches, Snoop’s pockets were like a foot. When the cop patted my legs, he literally padded inches above the gun. He barely missed the patting down the gun. In Louisville at the time, a gun that was loaded, was a mandatory seven years. I’m saying thank you, Snoop, thank you so much for making these pants that were too big. They were the most impractical pants that you could ever wear. But this one moment in time, wearing those pants saved my ass seven years. Really!
I’m trying to sit down on the curb, Sailorman and I were both from California, so, we start vibing off each other. We are talking to each other about the gun in front of the cop, the cop had no idea what we’re talking about because we’re talking about car detail stuff. I was worried,the gun would fall out when I stood up from the curb. I was like, “Okay, so when I stand up, you have to distract the cop in case it falls out of my pocket and makes a noise.” The cop searched the car and found nothing so he had to let us go. we go right back to the hood. Everybody already knew what happened. That was strike one with the suburban.
Strike two, we see those same girls a couple of days days later, this time, I’m drunk. I get into with somebody and I’m like, “Nigga, I’ll go to my fucking car. I’ll go get my pistol Nigga, I ain’t scared of you, nigga.” some stupid shit. I go to the suburban and get the gun. When I go get the gun, everyone scatters. Sailorman is like, “nigga, Let’s go.” Before we could make it back to the hood, we see the police now we’re drunk. We have the whole front bench full of Remy Martin, Hypnotic, and Hennessy. Drinking and driving, didn’t matter. But we were coherent enough to realize that we needed to get this car parked and get this gun off of us as fast as possible. Because now, the fucking police, they’re coming for us. Someone called that I had a gun and they were coming.
this is what happened. It was a race, they have alleys. we could see where the police were. we’re flying through the alleys talking about where to fucking park, and how we’re going to dispose of the gun. We decided where to park and by the grace of God we got there, The police turned right behind us and blue lights. Woo-woo.
I got into the parking spot and the police jumped out the car like, “Hands out. Hands out of the car.” So, I throw my hands out so he doesn’t just start shooting. Sailorman had to get rid of the gun. So, he takes off. He throws the gun into some bushes and dives to the ground before the police could shoot him, because the police had their guns drawn and chasing him. They roughed him up a little bit for running and finally put him in the back of the car. You could hear the police searching through the bushes looking for the gun. They knew there was a gun. They’re looking hard for the gun. They’re looking through the bushes, going through the suburban. Everything. The lady was like, “chief, should we get them for drunk driving?” “No. That’s not what we’re here for.” By the end of it, both interactions with the police, I got two tickets. One ticket had my first name and sailorman’s last name and the second one they never filed. However, what I learned was this lovely thing called set “me a free”. Kentucky at a time, if you snitch on somebody else and it becomes a case, then it will reduce your time a favor for a favor.
Those two girls kept calling the police on us trying to get us in trouble. They figured we either had dope or a gun on us. If they caught us and got in trouble, then one of their cases probably could have been loosened or whatever. That was a very valuable lesson to learn how people act and am glad I didn’t get in any trouble.The boss found out about all of this and took the suburban from me, obviously. He said, “You’re just not responsible. I’m taking this shit from you.” I no longer had the suburban anymore. So, it makes sense because you hear about this from and he’s probably looking at me like, “You’re an idiot. What are you doing?” And then they also got mad at Sailorman because he’s supposed to be babysitting me and making sure that Erik doesn’t do anything stupid. And here I am as dumb as can be.
Needless to say, I got taken off the detail. At this time, my eldest sister had just been married, and opened the door for me to go to Tacoma Washington. So, I went to Tacoma.
Bless their hearts, they had just gotten married. my sister, born again Christian. (They are all into it, man. They are singing and clapping and all that kind of good stuff.) and me who just came from a very grimy environment of drugs, guns, money, prostitutes, crime, the underworld. I’m blasting music, drinking 40s, behaving the same way I was a couple months prior in California or Kentucky. They accepted me for a little bit, we had our talks, they had to explain to me how I was not in the same environment anymore. So, listening to the music as loud as possible and drinking 40s in front of the house was not what they wanted in their neighborhood.
I changed, I wasn’t quite as rough on the edges, I guess you could say. But then I also had a new mission, after I was taken off the Louisville detail, I was back and forth between Tacoma and California, depending on where I was needed at the time. A new idea came up. Now, at the time, there were these, I think they’re still around, but at the time they were really popular. They’re called Mitchell & Ness throwback jerseys. These jerseys can run you like $200 to $300 a jersey.
The boss had told me about an opportunity to go to South Korea to find these jerseys. It was more or less like who had the courage to hop on an airplane and go to a country that they’ve never been to before and look for jerseys. Well, I had the courage and I had a passport.
Come fall, I was going to Korea. First trip, I was sent. I didn’t speak any Korean, I still don’t. However, I lived with Koreans. If you remember from middle school, I was in a dorm with a whole bunch of ESL( English as a second language) Asian students. So, I understood their culture a little bit. But being in their country was completely different, it was a cultural shock.
We didn’t have iPhones. The BlackBerry was a new technology. I didn’t know where I was going, not at all. I’m just saying, I had a pocket full of money and told the jerseys are in this country. Find them.
I get to Seoul, Seoul is a big city. I literally try to find these jerseys, I go to every bloody mall in Seoul and I look around, I’m looking and I’m looking and I’m looking for them. I had to go back to the hotel to their business center, send an email to the boss’ phone, and wait for a response, to tell him, “Man, I can’t find these jerseys. I have gone to every single mall. Where am I supposed to go?”
There was someone else in Korea as well. It was our competition. I didn’t know this until after I was in Korea. The boss tells me “hold on, man. Let me talk to my people.” So, he comes back and Mind you, we’re not talking. This is all through email. You could tell he had an attitude. He’s like, “Man, you’re in the wrong fucking city. This motherfucker finally told me what city you’re supposed to go to.” Damn time was running out. I was only in Korea for a couple nights.
The city I was supposed to go to was three hours away. I found a taxi, Go to the city when I got there. Candy land, What? It was a counterfeit paradise, everything you can imagine was right.
You want some Gucci? Hey, go over there. You wanted some Rolexes, go over there. The tag heuers, everything. You want some diamonds, you want some Louis Vuitton. Anything that you can possibly imagine. Some Jordans, don’t worry about it. It’s everything that you can possibly imagine was there. Everything. Imagine it? Yeah, it’s there. Imagine something different, yes, it was there.
How expensive was it? It wasn’t. The Mitchell & Ness jerseys were $200+ in America. I’m spending $10 per. The first time they boxed everything for me, I was supposed to ship everything. The mission was to find everything, get it packed and shipped. After that the mission was complete.
I got my jerseys boxed and headed back to Seoul, the main city. There’s a small problem, It was freezing in my room and I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. I was like, “You know what? Mission successful. I’m going to go and get drunk. Because if I’m drunk, I’ll just pass out and I won’t even notice it’s cold.” I was celebrating. I didn’t bring my passport and get to the airport money, I had no credit card, no bank account, nothing. This was all the money I had. But I did screw up and bring the shipping money with me, the money I was supposed to spend to ship the packages. That was with me.
I went to a bar, in Korea, they had these girls at each bar that were there for one reason, to “entertain you”, talk, smile, flirt, all that good stuff. Well, all that was great, I was having a ball, until I don’t remember. They also tell you to be very careful because they might slip something in your drink. All I remember is waking up and not having anything. I had just enough money to pay for the drink. They calculated it perfectly. I was so discombobulated, I didn’t know what fucking happened. long story short, I was broke. I could pay for the drinks, but all my shipping money was gone. So, “mission successful” was now “mission failure”. I get back to the hotel room. I’m too out of it to care at that moment.
Now I had a problem. I had all the merchandise. How is it going to get it to America? my solution was to bring the boxes with me. Now, I told the boss what happened. And of course, I had to hear noise, the ba-ba-ba, you’re irresponsible. Blah, blah, blah.
God works in funny and mysterious ways. Remember the competition? Well, they did the original plan. They sent their package through the mail. customs seized their package. So, they ended up getting robbed, while I made a mistake and was robbed. I however made it through customs. (So, the lovely thing about international waters, mind you, I’m 19, and on Singapore Air, is they gave free drinks, and didn’t ID me.
Remember, I had an alcohol problem. And this is an 11 to 16 hour flight. By the time I arrived in San Francisco I was sloppy drunk. Here I am stumbling around with these two big boxes, I had 50 or 60 jerseys and a couple of microfiber blankets. I’m going through customs with these boxes. I was buying quality stuff, the tags were still on the clothes. Customs were more concerned about how drunk I was, and had someone to pick me up then the merchandise. So, yeah, they were talking to me about the merchandise. But more talking to me about, “Are you sure you have someone to come pick you?” “Yeah. Fine. Okay.” I was trashed and could barely stand up.
I make it through customs. No problem. Mission successful. Someone picked me up, we’re happy, happy go lucky, celebrating because I got through. That first trip, I learned about duty free. At the time, I hadn’t seen everything, I looked, and I was like, “My god. There’s so many cognacs I’ve never heard of.”
I bought one of the bottles, I had everyone try it “wow”, it was completely different from Hennessy, and better. After the first trip, I went up to Tacoma to my sister’s house.
By this time, I was not drinking 40s. I was more a reformed person. Much more quiet, I learned more about the computer. I went and started Googling, or I don’t know, might have been Yahooing at the time. I started sending emails to every cognac company I could find, lo and behold, one sent me something. They sent me a little starter packet, their beers mixed with cognac, and three or four different sample bottles of their best cognac from France.
I ended up making three trips. Trip number two was nothing exciting. I knew where I was going I think the second time I ended up buying the jerseys for even cheaper. I knew what I was doing. Second time through customs, did they stop me? Of course, they did.
Customs are not smartest people sometimes. They looked at the price tag and asked (because you can only bring so much money into the United States without declaring it). And I was like, “Oh, that’s Korean money.” Even though it has USD next to it and they’re like, “Oh, really?” So, I was like, “Yeah, man, this is like $5-$10.” Again, the internet wasn’t what it is today. I don’t think that same excuse would work today because he could go on his phone and look and be like, “Yeah, you’re full of shit.” But then, iPhones were not in existence yet. So, life was a little easier to deceive people. Got through. No hiccups.The third time, the boss went with me. I was going to go a fourth time. However, I lost my passport.
I stayed in Tacoma with my sister for a few months and got a job at Labor Ready. Labor Ready was an ideal job for me because anytime I was in town, I always had a job. It was work today get paid today. I really enjoyed working for Labor Ready in Tacoma Washington. Most of the jobs were on the port and they all paid relatively well. The only issue was you had to be at the Labor Ready office at 5:30 in the morning. My sister lived 45 minutes away so I had to wake up extremely early to walk and be on time.
My last trip to Korea was December and my birthday is in February. I was at my sister’s for a consistent few months before turning 20.
After going to Northern Idaho, and being in a holding house (the escort’s house).I was there for three weeks. This time around, being escorted was a little different because I was just escorted by the family that I was living at, so it’s a little easier.
A quick recap, I get kicked out of Cascade for being too influential on the other students. I get sent back up to northern Idaho, the middle of nowhere, to a holding house, while my family decides what they want to do with me. During this time, through different conversations with my family, I was told that I was a master manipulator, that I was able to manipulate programs, and everything else, which is absolutely ridiculous because we’re paying thousands of dollars a week for these programs, how am I able to manipulate them? If I was, hey, I’m pretty good, right? That’s a lot of power to be able to tell a 17-year-old at that time that he manipulated an entire program.
So, we’re down to Mexico. Now, you have to understand one thing. When your family thinks this of you, they tend to tell the places that you’re going. So, I might be walking into the abyss. But every place I went to had a file on me, does that make sense? So, every time I went to a shrink, all the notes and everything, they say it’s confidential, but it’s not. They just pass it along to whatever adult feels that they’ll be able to read it.
Now, at 37, looking back. I’m like, “That’s the most ridiculous thing in the world,” because I’m the same age of some of the counselors. They’re not equipped to know what’s best for people, Unless there are the most successful people in every field, in every part of their life, then most people aren’t equipped to tell people what to do, or how to feel, or anything in their lives because most of the time, they can’t even tie their own shoes, how are they going to teach you how to tie yours.
Especially when they have all the psychoanalysis on you, they have all this ammo against you that’s almost impossible for you to fight because they have secrets, I guess, you could say that. They’re like the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, because they have secret files on you that you don’t even know about. How do I know this? Towards the end of the story, the psychiatrist told me.
Going down to Mexico was different, we had to leave America. I was escorted by the family I was living with. I knew this family, I was living with them for three weeks. By the end of the three weeks, in a weird way I was going to miss them. If it’s never happened to you, then it’s completely foreign. But I understand the relationship that a captive and the capturer have, there is a bond you end up growing, building with somebody, whether you want it to happen or not, your body becomes kind of in sync with this other person. Then, when you leave that situation, there’s a part of you that’s left there.
Mexico, we were in Bahía de Kino, Sonora, Mexico. We were in hell, but in paradise at the same time. And it was literally, I mean, the temperatures alone was hell. It was like 120 degrees every single day in the summertime. And you’re like, “There’s no way.” And I’m like, “Yeah, there’s a way because we’re in the Sonoran Desert, the desert was behind us, and the water was in front of us.” It was super hot. I’ve never been so hot in my life, and I’m somebody who loves the heat. There were four program houses. I don’t remember the names of them. You had two houses on the water, and then you had two houses that were not on the water.
When I first arrived, I was at a house that wasn’t on the water. It was more or less a compound, bars on the windows, and everything was locked. As much as I would like to paint a picture as we were trapped in a jail. We were, but it was uniform in the neighborhood or in the environment I was in. So, it wasn’t like we were the sore thumb, all the houses had bars on windows and all the houses had broken glass on top of their fences. It was a small pueblo, It was tiny. We were in New Kino. There was Old Kino, which was more Mexicans, more like the poor part. And then New Kino, which was mostly American transplants, and old people.
When I first got there, the transition was really easy for me for a few factors. One, my best friend from Cascade, his little brother was at Positive Impact with me. How random is that? I’m in this very small environment, I went from one program with one brother, and then to the next program with the other brother. So, that was great, because then I felt like I already had a friend, and he was more my little brother. It was more like I had a little brother.
Then, another person from the program. That I knew we actually lived in the same dorm together at Cascade. He was down there as well. that just opened it up even more. We weren’t friends or anything before, but we knew each other. We played basketball together. Just seeing a familiar face is always nice.
One of the counselors from Cascade was also in Mexico (She actually ran my Truth and Youth workshop). When I went to Mexico, the transition was really easy and simple staff already knew who I was. Then to top that, they moved me into the same house as my friend’s little brother. No, I don’t remember what time of day I got there. This program was an all boys program; it was a much more intense program. Much more structured. Let’s say, structured.
CEDU was the most structured, and most abusive, mentally and to your body. But Mexico, you had many different challenges to deal with than any other. Now, being hot is an understatement. A lot of people think and look at me and like, “Yeah, he likes it ridiculously hot.” With food, years later, that small amount of time I was at Aspen affected my eating for life with eating (yums, if you remember). Being in Mexico, and being exposed to that type of heat has changed me for life as well.
So, when I mean hot, there was no air conditioning when you were trying to sleep. It was so hot, no fans, no, nothing. It’s just dead hotness. Truly just dead hotness. I love the heat, but it would take you forever to go to sleep because it was so hot. No blankets, no covers, and you’d literally have a puddle of sweat in your belly button. That’s how hot it was. When you took a shower, right? You would be sweating while you were in the shower, that’s how hot it was. And we’re right by the ocean, it was really humid. It was hot as could be because of the desert. So, it was dry as could be. But then, it was also as humid as it could be because you also have the sea of Cortez.
it was an environment I’ve never been in before. And I don’t know if I’ve ever really want to be back and live there, in the wintertime, it was almost like freezing. So, it was extremes to say the least. What differentiated Mexico from the other programs? The other programs were structured, but this was a different type of structure.
In Mexico, it was following a book called, the Positive Peer Culture. there’s rankings like the military, that’s the best way to explain it. you know how in the military, there’s the general, then there’s the major, then there’s the lieutenant, then there’s the private, right? So, in this program, you had the psychiatrist which is the white American, then you had the head Mexican, which was the milieu manager. Then, you had the Mexican staff. And then, you had the resident leader, and then you had the room leader, So, each person had their specific job. The chain of command was in control.
So, when I first arrived, if you remember me telling you, one of the staff knew who I was? So, within three weeks of me being there, this was a step program. it was the Positive Peer Culture that was structured like this. The resident leader was in-charge of all his entire house. If you had 12 people, then the resident leader was in-charge of all 12 people, but they would have help, which were the room leaders, they were in-charge of particular rooms. So, if the staff had a problem, they would follow the proper chain of command.
they would go to the resident leader, then the resident leader wouldn’t go to the individual themselves either. The resident leader would go to the room leader, and the room leader would then take care of the problem, the reason why you would do it that way is, just you don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.
So, it’s easy to explain the first house I was in, three weeks in, they made me in-charge of the house. I was brand new. I wasn’t allowed to do anything. But the house was in trouble, there was no leadership. The counselor from Cascade knew who I was, she was like, “Well, I know Erik has a strong character.” So, viola, I barely knew the program, and now, I’m in-charge of my program. I’m in-charge of everything. When it came to my house, there was the staff, then there was me. Maybe, you could say my family wasn’t all the way off when they said, I had manipulated the entire program (CEDU), because three weeks into this program, I’m in-charge of everything.
This is a step program, you’re step zero if you’re on punishment. They basically say it’s an N.O, which is a new opportunity. Then, you had step one, step two, and then step three. The resident leader was usually assigned to a step three. For me to be assigned The Resident leader as a step one, when there were people in my house that were above me, was unheard of.
What is a step? Wow I forgot, let me explain the reward punishment system, like a new opportunity, what is a new opportunity? How do you get a new opportunity? So, the reward punishment system. Each day, remember, it’s a Positive Peer Culture, the life that we were living was a direct representation of our peer culture.
If we were behind, it was a direct representation of us, because the staff was there to guide, not to lead, not to do anything. It was in-charge of the resident leader in my first house, the first house, because each house is different, because you have a different ecosystem.
In the first house, I became the resident leader of the top and my best friend from the other program, his brother became the resident leader of the bottom half. Of 24 different guys, I’m literally in-charge of all of them, because my little brother, he’s like my little brother. But he was really extra emotional compared to me. So, every week we’d have resident leader meetings from all the houses, and we talked to the staff, like the main staff, and they stressed their concerns and we’d stress our concerns just like a meeting. And each week, our house damn near came in the best because on the emotional level, like the therapy part of everything, my little brother was key.
Sometimes, the downstairs group would run over and they’re having a special emotional session, or whatever it was. The staff loved that. That was great. But then, you also had my house, which was upstairs, and it was more robotic.
Maybe I wasn’t the most emotionally supportive person, but I was the more stringent, the more punctual person. When you put those two personalities together, it created the perfect house. It helped all four houses would get together, and compete on the weekends playing basketball. My house upstairs and downstairs, also had the best athletes. So, we’d win in basically everything. We were the best emotional, the most punctual, and we’re also the best athletes. So, our house was the model house.
Each day, remember, it was all peers. during the meetings, we would discuss things, the staff was there to guide and to monitor, but not to nitpick our daily routine, if that makes sense. Everything I’ve talked about thus far sounds really easy. And it’s like, “well, what was the catch” The rules! The rules were very stringent.
Now, you didn’t have much leeway. And again, as it’s a positive peer culture, it’s all run by each other (the students). At the end of the day, everyone voted whether you were a red star, a green star, or a yellow star. If you’re in a good environment, then everyone is going to give each other green stars. Like,” we are amazing, guys. Don’t worry, we’re amazing”. There’s a reward system.
every Saturday night, all the green stars got like the equivalent to $5, to be able to buy sodas and snacks. And then the yellow star, maybe $2, and the red star wasn’t allowed to watch the movies and got nothing. You added all your stars for the week, if your number was above a certain number, you were rewarded. But then if you didn’t, then you were punished.
The reward was, you got to sit in a room, watch a movie and eat snacks. The punishment was, while everyone else is having fun, you’re shit out of luck outside reflecting on your attitude. So, there was an incentive for everyone to get green stars. Unless there’s a person that was acting up, then there’s, I guess, bullying going to be. If people don’t like you, or if you’re being a pain in the ass, then everyone just votes you as a yellow or a red, and then we could exclude you from doing certain things.
The program also had incentives for us not to get our green stars, because if everyone’s always getting the green stars, then that raises the question, right? So, it was a weird situation, kind of like a popularity contest, but not at all because you’d also have step ceremonies, conducted by the counselor but also by the positive peer culture.
Everyone in your group voted for you, and it had to be unanimous. So, if you weren’t doing what you’re supposed to be doing, or if you pissed off Billy Bob over here, then there’s going to be an issue. But how did we deal with being in so small confinements the entire time and be graded on the day? Throughout the day, we were in structure, structure, structure, structure, structure.
We would have therapy, we would have school, we would exercise, we would go to the beach. Eating, you have to speak Spanish the entire time. If someone is caught not speaking Spanish, then that could cause you to not get a green star. If staff heard you, and even if everyone said, “Oh, you’re green star,” but staff is like, “I heard you not speaking Spanish.” Well, then, that could drop you to a yellow star for the day.
When you’re cleaning it’s all in Spanish, everybody has their assigned job to do, on behalf of cleaning the compound. there’s things that we had to do throughout the day. there was the counseling and the N.A( Narcotics Anonymous). If the N.A people came and you were disruptive in the group, then that would be a check against you. So, if you had too many checks against you, staff could override and it didn’t matter what the peers said. If staff was watching, then staff has their own ways of being able to do things.
Conflict resolution. There’s no way in a group of people conflict will not arise, what we would do is, let’s say, Joe and John over there get into an argument and we see it. we all have to circle up. And the conflict resolution is the first thing that you always have to do is find how are you at fault? Like, wait what? It had nothing to do with you.
It did, because if you had done something different, then maybe it would never have happened.
Each person became trained to think how they were responsible for every action that happened in the group, in the family, in the environment. If they were fighting over there, I could have been like, ” This morning, I saw John got a letter from his family, I noticed when he was done with the letter, he wasn’t in a very good mood. What I should have done is, I should have went up to him and asked him if he was all right, because that could have been a chain effect, that would have stopped the conflict.”
when you’re in it, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s like, “Why are they teaching us to do this? This is ridiculous.” But now, it’s like, “Okay, I understand why they had us do that.” forces us to become aware and responsible, because what, 20 years later, I’m thinking back on it and I’m like, “Oh, that was actually pretty useful,” most people, in today’s society, are trained to avoid responsibility, opposed to how I was trained to find responsibility in everything.
It didn’t matter. I could have been in the bathroom and something could have happened. Somehow, I had to figure out how I’m responsible for what happened, and we’re not leaving the group until there’s a sincere example from every last one of us how we could have been more aware and stopped the conflict before it started. That was conflict resolution.
w=What we also had while we were in Mexico, is “check yourself”. Each person was their own police officer. If your shirt was untucked, there was a list of rules. I don’t remember, this was 20 years ago, give me a break. I don’t know what I did with the pamphlet with all the rules, it was 20 years ago. But there were a lot of different rules.
Each one of the rules, if someone saw you break one, the first thing they will do is say, “check yourself”. And they’d point to what you needed to change. Oh, no, first is a nonverbal. So, you just kind of point it out. The second one was a verbal, “check yourself”. The third you’d go “here at Kino Bay, we accept all confrontations with a thanks for a thumbs up, and a thanks for reminder.”
If someone’s like, “check yourself,” and I changed whatever it needs to be, then I’d have to look back at him, give him eye contact and say, “Thanks for the reminder,” with a thumbs up. if I didn’t do it this way, then he could move up the line. So, the third one would be, here at Kino Bay, we accept all confrontations with thanks and a thumbs up and a thanks for reminder.
Now, if I do not go back and say, “I’m sorry, thanks for that reminder,” with a thumbs up, or if I’m sarcastic, that he can call peer support. It does not matter, It has absolutely no matter what it was about. A person could start a sequence on you for absolutely nothing, no matter. The peer would come over, doesn’t know what’s going on, it doesn’t matter. the peer comes over and says, “Here at Kino Bay, we accept all confrontations, with the thumbs up, and a thanks for the reminder.”
If the person does not, take out all sarcasm, (do not laugh) and be sincere and put their thumbs up and look at the person and say, “Thanks for the reminder.” Then, you can automatically call staff support. Staff support means you’re going to jail (solutions room). You obviously are not listening and you’re not being thankful for the reminder. So, they’re going to take you to jail.
Staff comes to get you, they put you in the solution’s room. They take your belts, they take your shoes, they take (if you have glasses) your glasses, anything in your pockets, and you have to sit in the solution’s room, to think about what you did. The staff is automatically going to put you in the solution’s room. No questions asked. Staff support was called, solution’s room. But then later, after you were put in the solution’s room, staff will come back and figure out what was going on.
Once staff figures out what’s going on, then staff is in control of the situation. They can pick how long you’re going to be in the solution’s room, which is a room, like an empty room with just walls around you. You could be in there for an hour, you can be there five minutes. I think the longest someone was in there was 27 days, there’s other ways you can end up in the solution’s room. Here’s a perfect example.
Now, this is my buddy. Now, he was a little difficult. So, he’s kind of like a baby brother. I was a resident leader and he was new. He was “out there”, wild. Very difficult to control and did not care about any kind of punishments. So, he was very difficult to control.
I spent a lot of time with this person, “man, you’re kind of ruining everything, you got to calm down, man. You got to calm down. You got to do things this way, man. We can’t do it like that. You know what I’m saying? I understand, that’s what you want to do but we can’t do that, alright.”
One time, it’s a Saturday, he got a red week. So, he won’t get any snacks and he was not going to be watching the movie. He was going to be stuck outside with staff. I leave, because I’m responsible to go get snacks with the staff, that’s why usually it was a step three. But at step one, I was trusted to go to the store, which was cool because every weekend I got out, and got to go to see the store, got to go see real people.
Depending on the staff, it was cool, we could stay out a little longer, there was Pollo Loco. We go get a little chicken or something. But we had to be fast, we’re not supposed to be gone very long. We’re just going to the store to grab snacks. So, when I came back, my buddy had picked up a metal rod and started chasing staff with it trying to hit them. It was damn near an emergency.
He waited until I was gone. I had to thank him for that. But then he started, it’s not as easy to try to tackle somebody, when he’s swinging a metal rod back and forth. Like, “Come on, come on,” trying to hit you.
Eventually, they got him to calm down, and they took the rod from him. He was in the solution’s room when I came back. That would be one way to get into the solution’s room. Another way to be in a solution’s room is, let’s say you had a difficult session in therapy with your family, and you need some time to calm down. Here’s another example.
My buddy, now, sometimes, people have anger issues, and I understand it. I never understood how you could get this angry. But he had a session with his family, and he was not in a safe place. So, he took all of his stuff off. Because in a solution’s room, you could also yell, scream, cuss, it doesn’t matter. You’re in jail. They give you the freedom to do whatever you want, as long as you’re in the solutions room, and you’re not being dangerous to yourself or others, because they take all your sharp stuff away from you, all your glasses, your belt, you can’t hurt yourself. You’re literally in your boxers, and that’s it.
He put himself in the solutions room, and he went crazy on the wall. For like, 20 minutes, I mean, he broke both of his hands because he was hitting the wall so hard, he was so angry. That would be another reason what the solution’s room was used for, to calm yourself down.
I’ve gotten so pissed off where I’d end up dropping my step. I forgot what my counselor said, he pissed me off I told him, “I don’t give a fuck about none of this shit.” I walked over to the steps board and erased my number and I put myself back down then put myself in the solution’s room and said, “What are you going to do? You can’t threaten me if I have no fear of losing it.”
They gave me my step back, mind you. You can’t dangle things in front of people’s faces. You can only do that if you know you have something over them. And I guess that’s what the Buddha is talking about. Without desire, there is no suffering. If someone’s trying to put something above you. If you no longer desire that, then you will no longer suffer, and that person no longer has power over you. I learned a bunch of weird stuff when I was there.
At my first house, for exercise, you got to be in shape. They would wake us up, load us in the van, drive us into the middle of the desert and then drive off and say, “Run to breakfast if you’re too late. Then, you’ll miss breakfast, there’s a time schedule. And then they’d drive off and meet us back at the house.
Now for me, it was not challenging. It was hot but I wasn’t fat and I could run. But to a few other people, that was literally murder. It was really difficult for them.
Daily schedule. After breakfast, we’d always have some type of therapy, whether it’s a counselor coming in and giving us some presentation on whatever they specialised in. Or it was N.A “Hello, my name is Erik and I’m an addict.” We had N.A three times a week.
As long as you were not a new opportunity. New opportunity, you’re not in the solution’s room, but you’re walking around with no belt, no glasses, no shoes, no, nothing. You’re basically walking around holding your pants up and walking around barefoot. You’re looking like a complete bum around the house because they won’t give you anything and you’re not allowed to do anything.
The beach was not considered exercise. The beach was the beach. Every morning, depending if you were in trouble, you go to the beach. We’d go swim for half an hour, or an hour, just be kids, the staff didn’t care, they enjoyed going to the beach as well.
One of the Mexicans, he was as cool as could be. We all loved him because we’d all stay at the beach a little longer with him because he’d get in the water with us. He’s swimming with us and before you know it, the other staff is coming out and telling us we got to go. He wasn’t very much older than us either, so, while I was 17, I think he might have been like 25.
So, in the morning, we go swimming. Then after, we’d have more therapy or whatever it was. And then we have PT, which we literally turn the TV on and watch Russell Simmons. We had to do everything exactly as we saw Russell Simmons do it. To this day, if you put Russell Simmons on, I bet you I could … It doesn’t matter which one, right? You know, the little guy with the afro and little ABA shorts? I probably know each of them. I know the songs. No problem. I can turn them on right now. Matter of fact, that’s what I’m going to do today, just to remember, remind myself.The whole time, the staff was behind us, they couldn’t get enough of it. It was kind of their entertainment, watching and laughing at us.
Then, in the afternoon, after we’re done doing all the therapy and everything, we go back to the beach, go swim for a little bit, come home, do whatever, and then go to bed.
in the first house. Everything just sounds like, “Man, Erik, that’s great. That’s summer camp.” I’m not going to say it was the worst place in the world. I had been to much worse places. Just some of the things here. Some of the things that happened when I was there were much worse than anywhere else. One of my friends, he ended up getting a hole in his stomach. every meal, he would throw up. they thought he was bulimic he was being punished because he was throwing up. It took them five months before they finally took him to a specialist and it turns out he had a hole in his stomach. Another friend of mine got so sick they had to take him to the hospital and hook him up to IV because of bacteria.
I got so sick that one night I was praying to God just to kill me because my stomach was hurting so bad and they refused to do anything for me. The next day, I woke up with a black tongue. I’ve never seen that before. All of it was black. And I’m trying to explain to the staff. The staff sees it, they don’t care. And they basically forced me to work in a 120-degree weather painting. And I’m trying to explain to them, “I’m sick, man, I’m sick. I don’t feel good.” It doesn’t matter.
It was fun, but also not at all, I was running the house really well. I was running the house so well that the staff. This is what my counselor and staff did. They realized that when they put me in the leadership role, and now I’m supposed to be there for therapy and they put me in something that I’m good at.
This is what they said, “You’ve taken care of the group and now we want the group to take care of you.” they took all my power, They took all my motivation, everything. And then this is what they told me, I could do nothing. I’m like, “Wait, what?”
Yes. The group had to take care of me. If I wanted to go to bed, I literally was supposed to be a baby. I could do whatever I wanted. If I wanted to do nothing for today, I didn’t have to. If I wanted to go to bed or go take a nap, I could. If I wanted to have one of my friends read me a story, I could. I could do anything I wanted and that was the death of me.
Because I was doing great, the house is doing great. Everything was fine and then you took it from me and then you instilled laziness in me. So now, I can’t do anything. Someone else is the resident leader. If I see something wrong, I’m not allowed to say anything.
My world went down fast, that’s when I was talking about, I dropped my step, when they took everything from me, it destroyed my world.
When you’re in that leadership position, it’s a very lonely position, because you’re making decisions for other people. Not all the time are those decisions something that someone wants from you. But in the end, they’ll probably thank you, but they don’t see it’s the best thing for them.
When you’re making those decisions, it can be very lonely because you don’t always make friends, you always have to make a tough decision. Or if a staff member is yelling at me, then shit rolls downhill. I have to relay the message to everyone and that’s not always the easiest thing to do. Or to tell someone that you’re not good at something? And like, “No, you’re going to do this. No, you’re going to do this.”
When they took my power away from me, they took everything, they took everything from me. My motivation just kind of stopped and I became disruptive, I guess. I don’t remember too much, but dropping my step. You get 15 minutes a week for your family to call.
Around the same time, when they’re taking away my leadership, the family issues and everything were not going as well. I have a huge family, I have aunts, uncles, sisters. Everyone supposedly wanted to talk to me. My time would be at none, I’d be excited. you only have 15 minutes, And you knew if they didn’t call, then you had to wait until next week.
what started happening is, I’d be in class, and I’d be waiting on Sunday, and I’d be in a good mood, and then they’d forget. No one would call. And then, a week later, they’d call and they, “I’m so sorry. Blah, blah, blah.” Give me some excuse and then it just got to the point to where I’m pretty sure I was just an inconvenience for all 20 members of my family because 15 minutes on the weekend was too much to ask because they just stopped calling. They just didn’t call anymore.
One of the staff, she told me, she was our NA counselor. she saw it had been affecting me a lot, she told me the truth. She was like, “Erik, you don’t need to be here. The only reason that you’re here is because no one in your family wants you.” she wasn’t being mean, she was being honest. She’s like, “There’s nothing wrong with you. Just the only thing that’s wrong with you is that nobody in your family wants you.”
that was really hard to hear as a 17-year-old, but it was true. There was a staff member that was from my hometown (Asheville, NC), she had a phone book. I knew my biological family’s name. But, she refused. Well, she tried to barter with me. She tried to make a deal with me that she would give me my biological family’s information if I did something for her. So long story short, fuck you. You’re not going to leverage something against me. I’m not weak. I’m sorry. Not going to happen. So, I never got my biological family’s information and she obviously didn’t get what she wanted from me. Because no, you’re not going to negotiate with me on something like that. I just kind of looked at her like she was fucked up. You know, you have my biological family’s information at your disposal, but you refuse to give it to me.Whatever. Maybe it wasn’t her decision. Maybe it was my family’s decision and said that “No, he’s still a kid. So, no way we can’t give it to him.” I don’t know. I’m just a kid, right?
all that added up, they decided to move me houses. this time, I was on the beach. It was beautiful. I was very spoiled. We had a private beach every morning, we’d watch the sunrise over the water, there is this island and you could see the sunrise. It’d be pink every morning.
I got spoiled. So, was I in the greatest program? No, but I was in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.
At the new house, it was a different world, different kids, different structure. Instead of there being two houses it was all one house
It was a really different environment, some of the downstairs students were in my new house so they had known me as being the leader of the upstairs, they were already comfortable with me, if that makes sense. So, they weren’t part of my group, but we were in the same house so they were comfortable with me.
If you remember, I started a year behind because I repeated sixth grade moving in California. Then, when they sent me to CEDU, I was basically a sophomore in high school with a year and a half worth of credit. I ended up graduating high school in two and a half years.
when I was in Mexico, the way they had us study was completely different than I had ever done school before. It taught me a different way of learning. When teachers were teaching me “ blah, blah, blah”, up there, talking and talking; slow and boring, I couldn’t learn. It was super boring for me, my attention span would dissipate.
In Mexico, four days a week, it was mandatory for four hours of complete silence “here’s a book, here’s your packet, get to work”. It put me in a situation where there was nothing else to do. I wasn’t allowed to talk. I wasn’t allowed to be distracted. I could twiddle my thumbs, but that’s just as boring as actually doing work. That’s actually more boring than doing the work. When you’re working, at least you’re doing something.
I was just going through these classes extremely fast, extremely fast. If you think about it, I ended up graduating six months before I was supposed to if I had never repeated sixth grade.
I ended up with a 3.3 or 3.4, something like that. I got accepted into the University of Seton Hall from only doing two and a half years of high school. When I was in Mexico, they told me about this test, I had to take a test. I had no idea what it was. They might have told me it’s SAT, but I’m like, “What is that? I didn’t know what the SAT was.” Like, “Why do you even want me to take this thing?” They’re like, “Erik, you have to.” I’m like, “For what?” I was oblivious to any of it. Technically I was only a sophomore in high school but since I was completing classes as fast as I was I was about to graduate so I had to take the SATs.
one morning they forced us to take this test or they forced me to take this test and they never really told me what it was about. But I guess for being black, I did pretty well. I mean, which is super racist that I say that and it’s way fucking terrible standards that just because I’m black and the score that I got, I’m higher up black person, which is, just as racist as it can be, basically, “you’re black and you’re supposed to be stupid, but you scored high on the black scale.” I ended up getting accepted into University of Seton Hall. That goes on to the next chapter. But back to Mexico.
When they transferred me to oceanography, it was beautiful. It was literally oceanography. Life was a little different. Within weeks, they put me as resident leader. But this milieu manager (head Mexican) was a complete 180 to the other milieu manager, the other Mexican at my first house.
The first house, he was laid back and he let me be in control of the house. This new manager, he was a micromanager. He would never let me do anything. It was my responsibility to do this. But then, everything that I wanted to do, he was a micromanager. I wasn’t allowed to do anything. Which to him, he was used to the old resident leader, he and the old resident leader had established a relationship and it worked well for them.
Well, you put in a new person, and it did not work very well, it got to the point where we were on a camping trip. I had had enough. I could not stand being resident leader at this house. He was difficult to deal with and was happening and I basically said, “I don’t care. I give it up. I’m not the resident leader anymore.” I gave it up. I didn’t want it anymore. It was the most miserable job under him.
At the other house, it was a lovely job. Under this new milieu manager, it was the worst job, and I did not want it. So, I gave it up. Me and the milieu manager, we didn’t like each other at all. I ended up getting my wisdom teeth pulled when I was in Mexico. First off, when they tell you do not talk and don’t open your mouth, there’s a reason why they tell you that.
They’re telling you that to keep the pressure on your teeth, The message was not relayed to me on why to keep the cotton swab in my mouth and don’t open my mouth. They did not tell me that there’s going to be excruciating pain. So, they gave me some ibuprofen. It was an hour drive back to the house, but we decided to go to the mall, I was numb as could be so it didn’t hurt. It was fine. Well, when we got back in the car, the numbing juice wore off. And I don’t think I have been in that much pain. It was excruciating. And it’s an hour back to the house. The doctor is like, “If he’s in excruciating pain, give him this other pill.”
Well, the drivers were not able to give me medicine. They were just the drivers, So, when we got back to the house, I’m back with the milieu manager, remember we didn’t get along very well. He sees I’m basically crying, in so much pain. It is hurting and the drivers are like, “Give him this. He needs this.” the milieu manager is like, “No, let him suffer.”
I wanted to kill him. there’s nothing I could do. I go to bed basically crying myself to sleep. That’s how much it hurt at 5:00 in the morning, when everyone else had to wake up, there he was waking me up. Now, all the other kids were like, “Man, this is bullshit, dude. Everyone else got to be on bed rest. Why is he fucking forcing you to wake up when he sees you’re in pain?” It didn’t matter. I got up, I had to do it. I had to tell the other kids that, you know, whatever. Let’s do it.
Remember the staff that know me from Cascade? She wanted me to implement forums at Positive Impact. There was one other person in this house now, the other kid from Cascade. We were living in the same house now. She looked at me to start it and she told me, all the students are having problems with the main Mexican staff, the same person I was having problems with.
She was like, “Start it and get it going. give the other students the okay so they can start.” They used me as the guinea pig. I said, “Okay, no problem.” I knew what a forum was, I practiced with the best forum manipulators at Cascade. I knew how to fuck with people’s emotions I was trained well.
So, during that little forum, I did exactly what I was told to do. We ended up making him cry, he felt like a complete failure because, once I railed into him, then every other student followed suit, I gave them the okay. By this point, I’m 17, almost 18 years old, I’m not really small anymore. I’m basically the same size, if not bigger than I am now.
I also had a younger, deeper, more aggressive voice, more energy behind it, I wasn’t as calm as I am now. I did what I was told to do. And by me doing that, everyone was able to just do it. He wasn’t used to it or prepared. So, he started crying (Remember the story about Cascade I warned how dangerous a forum could be) after he really was on a vendetta to destroy me. In the end he destroyed me.
`:
As my 18th birthday was approaching fast I wanted to give back to my friends and brothers in the program, I wanted to write a workshop one of those 24 hour workshops. One that I actually enjoyed the brothers, it was a bonding experience when I was at Cascade. With the other kid from Cascade who is going to help me on this Grand Venture, we came to the conclusion with the staff from Cascade as well, that we could implement a couple of different things from different workshops into our main workshop.
Well, there was a staff member I liked., I’m 17, I think she was like 21. So it wasn’t unnormal. She wasn’t very much older than I was. Well, I wrote her a letter. That one particular letter I didn’t send, there’s only one person, who knew about the letter, and it was my best friend. He was my bunkmate.
Well, he went on a trip with his family. And when he came back, they basically manipulated him to just tell on himself. So, he told on himself, for things like snorting pills or something. They basically said, “Redeem yourself, snitch on somebody else.” I don’t blame him because he was a kid, he didn’t know what he was doing. He told them about the letter. (Do not forget the lesson we learned from Cascade “I choose to hurt you”) .
So, did I send the letter? No, I just wrote the letter. I had the letter, I was going to give the letter to her, but I didn’t. The letter disappeared. I didn’t know where it went. I ended up writing another one that I didn’t tell him about, and I gave it to her anyways. So, did they stop anything? No. But did I get caught for writing a letter? Yes. Because he snitched me out.
The morning we’re about to go for this workshop that I was literally trying to give to all my brothers in the program. the main American who knew me from Cascade, she came busting in the door. And is like, “It’s all off. It’s all off. Erik, in the office now.”
I’m going to the office, milieu manager, and all the staff is there. They’re yelling and screaming at me showing me. They’re telling me about the letter and all this other kind of shit. Basically making it seem like I’m a terrible person and telling me, “Pack your shit, you’re out. You’re kicked out.”
Later that day, I had to pack all my stuff and was not allowed to say goodbye, talk to anybody. And they shipped me back to northern Idaho. Like that day, like I was gone. Before I left, let me explain because I was turning 18 in February, and I got kicked out February 17th. So, I got kicked out two weeks before my birthday. So, I was going to be leaving in a couple of weeks anyways. When I was 18, they could have waited two weeks, but it doesn’t matter. One of the main psychiatrists, right, not a counselor but an actual shrink doctor, he had said some things to me before I left. He took me to the side and he was like, “Erik, I want to explain something to you.” And he started talking about my files. And he was like, “Erik, let me show you this.”
So, he’s going over everything and he’s like, “You have these types of tendencies,” I mean, he’s explaining everything to me, literally turning me into a monster. Because of the testing I took, he was like, “Your family, after testing you took, you are,” this is the example he used. He said that you could do something really bad and have no remorse for it.
He used this example, “you could set their house on fire, burn them alive, and then not second guess it and have no remorse for it.” He was basically telling me my family was scared shitless of me, maybe they are, maybe they are not. I’m not sure, that’s what I got out of it. With that information he gave me, I’ve had to be very careful. I try one, not to be in a situation where I get really, really, really mad. And then, two, the older I get, I do understand it, because I’ve gone through a lot and certain things just don’t affect me, at all, I don’t care.
I don’t have any emotion or feelings behind certain things. And I think that’s what he was getting at. And that’s what he was trying to get across to me is that I don’t have the emotional makeup that would make a normal person normal. Call it, PTSD or whatever, from both my parents, watching them die. But he was basically saying that, be careful, because you have this in you that you have the capability of doing something extremely horrible and not feel any remorse behind it.
Kicked out and sent right back up to northern Idaho I was still 17. Little did I know what was about to happen. My entire life up to this point, I had never really dealt with money. I had been in boarding schools since I was 12, since my parents died.
My family gave me the opportunity. They’re like, “Erik, you can come live in the city that we live in but you’re not allowed home.” Maybe I should have chosen one of those solutions, but I didn’t. I don’t remember, I was 17 I’m 37 now, but I’m guessing that I might have told my family I knew what I was doing. And they said, “Okay, you’re on your own.”
I haven’t had much contact with any of them. In the next section, leaving Mexico and becoming an adult, 18 to 22 because at age 22, I met my biological family. At age 22, was 11 years after my mom died.
In the next section of this story, we will be discussing what happened when I got out of Mexico, I didn’t have any family or anyone.
Just left Mexico, and got escorted back up to Northern Idaho. Two weeks before my 18th birthday, before I became an adult. I was still a minor and was not able to choose where the next destination was going to be. Things started to change when I turned 18. Now, when I was 17, everything was basically the same, I had known these people if you remember before Mexico, I was living with them for three weeks, they also had another kid living with them at the same time.
The first couple of weeks, he (the other kid) was going to high school in the little town. Before I turned 18, the two of us hung out. We were the same age and he introduced me to the people around town. He enjoyed the same kind of things I did like smoking some weed, playing basketball and hanging out. I made some new friends and then I turned 18.
Without any knowledge of me, I got a couple phone calls. Well, I had to sign some paperwork while in Mexico, but there were no numbers on any of the paperwork. Everyone kept it a secret, everything in my life has been a secret nobody tells me anything. Remember I was kicked out of Mexico two weeks before my birthday, in order for paperwork to go through about a month before my birthday, I had to start signing paperwork. So one of my uncles, remember, the one in control of my money, he kept sending me papers to sign. I turned 18 and two very large things happened, over $300,000 was now in my name.
The other major thing is I got a phone call. I got a phone call from Chicago from a bank. And they told me that I had another, $300,000, and sent me the trust paperwork. I read it, I understood it. I could comprehend it, but I didn’t quite grasp what it meant. There was a clause I didn’t quite get, it said, “How has he been able to show he’s responsible with the money that he has?” There’s a reason why I say that and explain why in just a second. So as an 18 year old, who has, never seen money before because I went to boarding schools and institutions at 12. To give an example of how foreign the regular World was, the first trip I took to California, my friend’s mom let me use her car. I almost ran out of gas because I couldn’t figure out how to pump gas at the station, I was at the gas station watching other people to learn and understand the process of pumping gas.
Like every other normal kid, I knew Christmas gifts and I knew the concept of money, but I did not know how hard it was to obtain money. I didn’t understand the working class. I had been in programs, food was provided for me, shelter was provided for me. I didn’t know I was paying for it, I found out when I turned 18 years old. Everything I’ve just explained to you, I paid for. So I got to pay for Cascade, I paid for CEDU, I paid for this, I paid for that. I got mental handicaps a little bit right now and hey, I paid for it.
You can imagine I was not the happiest camper. I don’t think any of you guys would be very happy either if you found out that all the misery you just went through, you paid for it. So I was not happy, but I was free. And I just had a lot of money, but I didn’t know it was a lot of money and I wasn’t really aware of my surroundings. I had no idea that $300,000 was a lot of money to people who had no money.
I met one of their sons (the family I was living with). We were the same age, I was 18, he might’ve been 19. We became friends because the person I was living with was still in school. What was I going to do for eight hours while he was at school, and I had a pocket full of money? First car that I bought was a 2001 Yukon, that was the everyday car. Then I went to Montana and decided that I wanted a Camaro. So I bought a Camaro, 1967 Camaro drop top. Beautiful, wish I had it, bought it for $15,000 and it’s worth $60,000 now. So it was one of the best investments I ever made if I would have kept it and I didn’t sell it for free.
18 happened really fast. It turned out miserable, but let’s start the rollercoaster. At this point in time, I had a Camaro and a Yukon. I was bored and saw a Mustang drop top. The Camaro kept stalling on me. So I decided a logical thing to do was buy a Mustang, during this time, not very many people were reeling me in. The family I was at, they told me, yeah do you want to talk to this person, invest in stocks, but I never made it that far. I found this lovely thing called alcohol. Before I went to programs in ninth grade, like I said, I had maybe drank a couple of times. Now I had a pocket full of money. I wanted to invest, I wanted to become rich and famous.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t want to live in Northern Idaho. I met another friend of their son, who was 21. So he was our designated alcohol buyer. when I was in programs in magazines, there were alcohol commercials, what are they doing? They’re partying, they’re having a good time. To me, if I wanted to have a good time, then let’s go get some Captain Morgan’s or let’s go, I heard it in the songs since I was little, let’s go get some Hennessy or let’s go get some gin and juice. I didn’t know any better and I just started drinking and drinking and drinking.
I ended up meeting somebody, it seems like everyone’s from California when you’re on the West coast, at least they’ve lived in California at one point in time. So yes, the son of the family I was living with, he was from California, but he was more like a do boy. I can’t say a negative thing about him. We just went our separate ways, after the story you might understand why. He was a perfect assistant for my craziness.
If we needed to make phone calls, he’d be on the phone making the phone calls. If we needed to get airplane tickets, he got the airplane tickets. The friend I made had more of a hustler’s mentality. He was selling some weed. He was always trying to make some money. The swagger that he had was completely different. You have a do boy that’s like, yes, yes, yes. And then you got my other friend, which was, “Man, come on man, let’s make some money together, let’s make this money.” So with the two of them together, I had the perfect match for disaster. Everything was going great, it really was.
Again, I didn’t know what I was doing. So any idea sounded like an amazing idea. Now, this one buddy, I was introduced to, he had an idea of opening up a store. The idea was amazing, if I didn’t spend as much money on trying to get it started,with a whole bunch of rubbish. if it was managed better, it would still be open to this day, 20 years later. The idea of the store was the embodiment of hip hop. We had the clothes, we had the vinyl. We had an in-store DJ section, so you could practice your DJing skills in the store.we also had an in-store studio. It wasn’t the greatest studio, but it was a recording booth. So you could record. We also had a mobile DJ. We sold vinyl, we sold clothes, like I said, and DJing paraphernalia. So the idea was fantastic. If then was the world today, we’d have so many different avenues to generate revenue, especially with the internet. But at that point in time in 2002, I didn’t know what I was doing. Having all the gizmos and gadgets was more important than making money. I had a lot of fun and I felt really important when I was flying around or driving around buying by the end of it, we had two Suburbans.
We hadn’t even opened yet, but we had two different Suburbans for mobile deejaying. Why? We had both of them done. Again, why? I was spending money left and right. What made it worse is that I wanted to live in California. If I had just stayed in the Northwest, Idaho, Spokane area, things might’ve been a little different, but I didn’t want to live there. I wanted to live in California because in my mind I was rich, and no one told me I wasn’t. I thought the money was going to last forever. No one in my family, absolutely not a single person in my family gave me shit for advice. So I was kind of like, “18 years old, got money, let’s go.”
So I moved to California and rented an apartment and I moved the three of us, me the son of the people I was living with and my buddy, we had an apartment in California and then I decided to open a store in Washington, so if you can grasp that concept. all of us were back and forth, back and forth. I have driven from California to Northern Idaho numerous times in this short time span, it was ridiculous. of course with my cars, I had to have everything. The screens were new and fashionable. They came out of your dash.
We’d watch movies during the 12 hour drive (We had a lot of close encounters of having accidents but never had an accident, which is amazing since whoever was driving the car would also be watching the movie). So we wake up in the morning, by the end of the day, we’re in California. Or if we wanted to fly, we had that like clockwork. We knew exactly when to leave the house to make it to the Oakland airport. We knew exactly coming down from Idaho at the Spokane airport. The weed was cheaper in idaho. So we figured out how to bring the weed from Idaho to California through the airplane. We had practiced so many times and we knew every flight like clockwork, man. It was so easy just in sandwich bags.
We had the art down, we’re bringing a quarter pound a piece. Two friends walking through the airport casually with a half a pound of weed on us. Nowadays there’s no way in the world I would do that. I would be scared shitless, but 18 I didn’t think, it was normal. What are we going to smoke? Obviously we got to bring the weed. It didn’t dawn just to buy it when you’re down there, but it was more expensive. And the flavors in Northern Idaho, they had better flavors. In California, a shift happened. It was like this; the son moved back up North to help me with the store. And my buddy, he stayed in California.
So let’s paint the dynamics. Before I got sent to programs, the high school I was playing football for and taken off the team for academic probation, there were a couple other black kids. Remember? I said all the other minorities were able to drop physics, but I wasn’t. There was this one rich white kid that also went to the school we had known each other from playing basketball tournaments, when I was younger and going to camps. When I got out of programs, he was the one person I knew, we were from the same side of the freeway, which was the rich part (Atherton C.A).
Now the other black person was from the other side of the freeway, which was the more violent, the more street part (East Palo Alto). When I got out and went to California, I met my buddy from the same side of the freeway, this is before I even met my friends in Idaho. Sorry about that flash back I have to explain, how did I know these people in California. Well, two days one the white side and my wealthy friend had been in arguments with his family. He wasn’t staying at home. a different friend I knew from the programs. The neighborhood’s really small, it’s all just really, really rich families and their kids. All the kids went to three or four different public high schools or private high schools. It was huge, but just because people had huge estates, but the wealth was very concentrated. So I was able to stay at my friend’s mom’s house, even though my friend wasn’t there. She gave me a car to drive (a brand new Cadillac Escalade) and my friend, the rich friend, stayed with me for a couple of days until his father convinced him to come home. Then he was escorted and he was gone. Now I didn’t really know anybody. Well, my rich friend reintroduced me to a couple of the black students I went to school with. I had known their names but not much more, when I turned 18.
But when I came back with my friends from Idaho, he was the only person that I knew (The kid from East Palo Alto). So I gravitated to him. I was a very easy mark, very easy. The program’s did not equip us to deal with normal everyday people for the past 2 years. I was always in trouble for deceiving people or telling lies. Now when I was in the real world deception and lies were a common thing. In Northern Idaho, it was a very tiny area, slow, you could maximize the amount of money you can spend really fast. I already had the cars, I was already flashy. The next thing was maybe a house, that’s why I wanted out of that area, it wasn’t big enough for me. California was large enough, but when I moved to California, I met a lot of people that weren’t financially responsible. I was a very easy target to swindle because I didn’t have any family.
Did I have family that lived across the freeway? Did I have a lot of people that at any moment they could have just been like, yes, we’re coming to get you and save you. Yes, but in their eyes, they had already saved me and now I was on my own. Mind you, I had been accepted into the University Of Seton Hall. The goal was to stay in Idaho at that family’s house until I went to the university. My family had paid this family $20,000 for the family in Idaho to mentor me until school started.
Moving down to California, everything really went faster. So I had a store in the Spokane Washington mall, which was $2,000 a month. And God knows how much money I put into the two Suburbans, the signs, the inventory, the music booth, the computers, (everyone had to have a computer). I had to have three because of new technology, the studio equipment or the DJ equipment, we’re talking about the radio advertisement. I was literally thinking the first day, I’m a billionaire. It didn’t quite grasp how much a million dollars was at the time or how hard it would be to get it.
I was on the news as a young entrepreneur which just led into my ego even more, instead of someone being like, do you even know what you’re doing? Looking back, I was an idiot, iwas just spending money. But at the time, I was a young inspiring man. That was just ahead of my time because I thought differently, but I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, that was the attitude in Northern Idaho,
In California, I was the kid that had a lot of money. And I was now on the more of the urban street side of the world, opposed to where I was from. This is part of the reason I had no concept for money. The friend that I was telling you about, who was escorted, the neighborhood we grew up in, was one of the richest zip codes in the world.
Around any of those kids, there is no concept of money, money does not exist. I grew up in an environment where money doesn’t exist, money only exists if you don’t have it. But when you’re in the world of the 1%, money has no value, it doesn’t exist. They can buy whatever they want, it doesn’t matter. Seven miles on the other side of the freeway, there is no money, at the public school, these kids would mix. At the private schools, they would go and find black and other minorities to make it seem like they’re a diverse school. Even though it’s like 90% white and a couple minorities.
forgot about that all. So for example I had a bowl, like a bowl of weed at the house. Around my rich friends, they take what they want to roll a blunt, pack a bowl or whatever. And they’re not trying to steal it because they have their own, they have their own money, they don’t need mine. However, the other side, they had no money. So when they see a bowl of weed, and they know they can’t afford any, it just makes common sense that they’re going to hoard yours and steal from you as much as they can. When they go home, they can’t buy any, the rich kids, they can go home and they can buy it. But when you mix a rich kid with poor kids, then the rich kids is like, “Yeah, I’m going to just steal too.”
And then that’s what happens with rich kids. They adapt to the mentality of the poor kid. And then they become really grimy and steal. But if you have no concept of desperation, and have abundance. You have no need for stealing. You already have everything, there’s no point. I don’t know if that makes any sense. So what would happen is, in Idaho, my business partner sold weed. So literally we’d have a bowl of weed anywhere we went, it was just a bowl for him to drop an ounce in the bowl would have been nothing. We just shared. But then in California, when I was reintroduced to the minority kid I went to highschool with, his family was not a family of abundance. They were a family of desperation. They would take everything or convince me to spend more money than I needed to,YOLO attitude. That’s what happened, towards the end, it got grimy on both ends (Idaho and California) greed always sets in. If a person feels like they can take advantage of you and you don’t know, at first, they feel bad about it. But then towards the end, it becomes so common that when you find out about it, they get mad at you about it.
The Grand Opening of my store (Lyrical Graffiti), the people from California, the Bay Area, my entourage all the rappers on TV had an entourage. I thought I was a big shot, so I had to have an entourage. I didn’t know that they were robbing me blind the whole time. (Remember we had a recording booth inside the store, at that time in history everyone aspired to make their riches through the music industry, I was no different. My entourage from California included my recording artist) So I had my entourage from California, then I had my Idaho entourage. The grand opening was probably the worst, at that point in time, day of my life.
like, wow, everything you’ve been through and that’s the worst day? Yeah, I would have to say so. I was going broke, I was expecting we were going to make like $20,000. That’s why I was spending so much I was like, “Man, it’s all going to come back, don’t worry.” I had my “rap” artist and was giving him money to do nothing because he didn’t make it anywhere. This is before TikTok and Facebook.
Remember I had a DJ station in the store as well, I wanted to have a record label, Mobil DJing I wanted to do and be a part of everything. My artist was milking me dry. He was overcharging me to go to the studio (in California), I wasn’t there, I was back and forth. Remember I would be four days in California, three days in Idaho or four days in Idaho, three days in California. It is really easy to put on a front for a couple of days when you know the person’s leaving. Anytime I was in town in either direction, everyone would just blow smoke at my ass and treat me like I was king. Then when I was gone, they’d go back to doing whatever it was they were doing before. They were living a careless life they didn’t have to pay for anything. When I was there, there was more responsibility, but when I was gone it was let’s just use him for everything he got. No comradery, no loyalty, no friendship, just let’s use him for everything he has. they really had no reason to care. They didn’t know who I was and they were broke, so I was their paycheck for a while.
The first day of the store, that first night I rented the penthouse, and the second nicest room in the nicest hotel in Spokane Washington, I did it big, I probably spent $30,000 that day on stupidness. On the first day we made like $1000. So it wasn’t even remotely close to be able to help me.
I had overextended, I went broke. I had overextended on our first day thinking we’re going to at least make like $10,000. I didn’t have any money, my beautiful 67 Camaro, I had to sell for $3,500 just to finish paying for the first night. So I was broke. So that first night besides the fact I went broke, there were police called, there was a gun drawn, it was the biggest nightmare that possibly I could think of. And then the next morning I wake up and I’m completely broke.
It’s all kind of fuzzy what happened next. I ended up back in California and made a deal with the devil when you go broke, everything’s your fault. It didn’t not matter that everyone was living a fancy life on my money.
So what to do? There wasn’t much I could do. This was around August/September, school was supposed to start, My family asked, “Well, why didn’t you go to school?” Arrogant and stupid, I kind of yelled back, I was in a horrible situation, and they’re worrying me about school, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I know now 20 years later the bank could have sent me to Orange, New Jersey and helped me into school. Communication has never been strong in my family, but particularly at that time it was non-existent.
My birthday’s in February, August is six months and I was broke by August. So six months I had blown through $300,000. With absolutely nothing to show for it but numerous bad decisions and consequences, so what happened?
My black family (Same family who helped me spend all my money) they were “my family” now. They were going to help me get my stuff. One member of my new family had an entrepreneurial mind, so he financed the trip to retrieve all the belongings from my store. By this time my white buddy was transporting drugs from California to Idaho. He was more than willing to tag along and help drive one of my vehicles from my store in Spokane back to California.
One of my Suburbans was already in California, so we were bringing the more expensive suburban and a U-Haul full of stuff. Most of all the fixtures from the store fit in the U-Haul, the plan was to bring all the vital merchandise in the Suburban. I wanted to have all the expensive things with me because this was my lifeline, this was all I had left. Now my buddy had been working since early in the morning. Remember it is a 12 to 16 hour drive. One person has to sleep while the other one’s driving just to regenerate it’s a long drive by yourself.
So we had been talking, having a good old time and it was time for me to sleep, We pulled over and I told him it was his time to drive, he looked at me with a stunned look and said I can’t drive. We debated for a brief moment and agreed he would drive for about an hour so I could close my eyes and rest. I couldn’t have been asleep for very long, but he also fell asleep at the wheel. We were right outside of Bend, Oregon they have lava rock on the side of the freeway. The freeway is higher than the side, the highway is up off the ground a little bit. So when we hit the bank, we flipped and we rolled about three times. I woke up during that, of course I was not wearing my seatbelt. So I woke up being tossed all over the car, all over the front seat. I didn’t know what was happening, if I had known, I probably would not be alive today. The only thing that saved me is I was asleep and I was a ragdoll.
Not a single muscle in my body moved. I was woken up by me tossing all over the place. It happened so fast I didn’t know what was going on. I wasn’t completely coherent. When I woke up, my head was on the seat. I was where your feet go. The side was crunched all the way down. This is why I’m saying if I was wearing my seatbelt and flinched I would have been crushed. How we both ended up without dying, God was with us that night. There’s nothing that you can say to convince me otherwise. We both had bangs and scratches, but we were both able to walk away from that accident without a single person knowing what happened.
the U-Haul in front of us, told me the story they got to watch live the way he explained it, He said, “Man, I knew for a fact, there’s no way you guys lived that.” So he drove back to see if we were alive, and there I am, screaming, “Help,” I couldn’t get out of the car, it was crushed.
we left everything, we weren’t waiting for the police. Once they realized we weren’t dead, we climbed into the U-Haul and were gone. All my money, I could have sold the Suburban, I could’ve sold everything, all the expensive stuff was in the suburban. All my money gone, don’t forget, I had to pay the people that were helping me move.
Down to California, we dropped my buddy off Then finalize the business of moving my stuff from Washington to California, in the end I was just as broke before I got my stuff as I was after I got my stuff. I was dropped off at my apartment. It was sad two weeks prior, I had an apartment full of people. Now I was broke and alone. One of my friends from Cascade, he was on crystal meth bad, but he came and stayed with me for a little bit. He was a unique character to say the least when he was high on crystal. But thank God he was around. I would not have been able to survive if it wasn’t for him. He showed me how to survive, how to steal to eat. We would get sandwiches then walk around the grocery store, eat our sandwich and talk, that would be our lunch as long as we looked like we were shopping. They never asked if we paid for the sandwich.
The Safeway became our food cabinet, whenever we were hungry, we’d go to Safeway and figure out how to steal food to eat. What you realize is alcohol like beer has yeast in it and it fills your stomach up. So when I was in survival mode I was getting drunk. It sounds counter productive but getting drunk and smoking. Not weed, because it makes you extra hungry, but smoking a black and mild suppresses your hunger a little bit, smoking a cigarette and then also drinking, it fills you up. So my diet became really unhealthy if it wasn’t already unhealthy by this time my partying had really gotten out of control too.
There had been more than one occasion where I would throw up. You could take a cup and catch my throw up and drink it because it was straight vodka. For a while after I couldn’t drink orange juice I had drank so much vodka & orange juice, even regular orange juice tasted like vodka. I was drinking and I was drunk every single day. My alcoholism didn’t stop then either, it just went from hard alcohol to beer, more like malt liquor to fill my stomach up.
“My rapper” crew and I went down to Los Angeles For a meeting with a larger record label. My crew had tried to leverage a more profitable deal for themselves by using my name and that I was rich, when I first met the executive from Los Angeles, he still thought I was rich, I told him I was broke, but you’d be amazed how one’s imagination will not listen to reason. LA is full of shysters. Through meetings he had with my group he found out I had another trust in my name, with this information his focus changed from the group to trying to secure a deal with me.
When you don’t have a single person you can trust it’s very easy for people to take advantage of you. After all the vultures took what they could for me I was left with a 1984 Chevrolet Corvette that was barely running. Back at my apartment with my friend from Cascade we decided to go on a drive to discuss our future. while we were on this drive we were pulled over. By the grace of God they did not find the Satchel I had on me which was full of bagged up weed. But they did however give my friend from Cascade a ticket and a summons to court. When the police officers were going to search the car he stood up out of the passenger seat and his crack pipe fell out of his lap and shattered on the ground alerting the police causing him to obtain a criminal case. When we got back to the house we decided going to L.A was the best decision, so we packed up the small Corvette and headed down to L.A. The executive from Los Angeles assured me that all I needed to do was get to LA with him and everything would be fine.
He was like, “Man, just come down. I got you.” So we drove down with the last little bit of money that I had. It was maybe like $500 and we took this piece of shit Corvette, neither one of us have a license and we drive down to LA. My buddy had a sister in L.A so that was his backup. The first night we sleep, two grown people sleep in a Corvette together, which is extremely small. His feet were in my face and my feet were in his face. We also had luggage with us. After we arrived in La I realized the situation with just as bad as it was in California. The executive did not have a hotel room and was going to be bumming a room with me.
He was just living off of people, living off of “investors”. A swindler. So the first couple of nights I ended up having to pay for us to have a place to sleep. So my buddy after day number two, he was like, fuck this and fuck him, so he called his sister and he was gone. Now, I’m stuck with this person. I have nowhere to go, I don’t have a sister that I could just disappear to. So I have to basically figure out what’s going on. Well the person in LA ran out of money because he thought I had money. He thought that I had money. Even though I told him explicitly I was broke.
Where do we go? We go to South San Francisco. How do we get there, how do you get there with no money? Little did I know at least at this time, if you go to the airport and you say that you’re stranded, the airline can… I don’t know if they do it now because I’m 37, but at least when I was 18, the airline… He came up with some elaborate thing that he was helping me out and blah, blah, blah. we only had the money for his ticket and blah, blah, blah. So the airline bought the lie and we flew up to the North and his investor, this Filipino came and picked us up, drove us to his house in South San Francisco.
Now I’m stuck in his room. He was on the bed and I was on the floor for two months. Now, it sounds crazy but in those two months I learned a lot. I was his slave from the time I woke up until the time I went to bed, he had different assignments for me to do all day long. And then there’s also reading a book, if I wasn’t reading the book fast enough, read it faster. He was like “if you want to get into this business, this is what you need to know and I don’t have time to teach you. So you’re going to have to learn on your own and I need you to do all this and I need you to type papers and I need you to do this”.
It was nonstop for two months. every minute of the day I was doing something whatever it was, it had to be whatever he wanted. The Filipino, he fed us for two months. During this time the Filipino was running out of money. The executive could see this, the Filipino was working to keep us fed and to invest. He had the big dream that one day he was going to make it big. He had spent all of his money on the executive thinking that was going to be his ticket to success. He was a sad, old, Filipino. He told me he had a wife, one of the things that stuck with me he said, “there’s no happiness when there’s hunger”. He had gotten a divorce, she left him for someone who had more money. He said, at one point in time, he was making good money but then something happened and the wife left him because they went broke. And so when there’s hunger, when you’re starving, there’s no love. That stuck with me for a long time because I understood what he was talking about and it was coming from somebody who it happened to. It’s different when someone gives you great philosophy and they’ve never lived the philosophy, but this philosophy he was living it and he was a sad man. He was believing in the person executive to bring him back to glory and I guess maybe, hopefully get his wife back or whatever, his fantasy was. So he was desperate and willing to do anything.
The executive he was on this Filipino, he was on him hard about, you need to give me more money. The Filipino didn’t have any, but the executive did not care. “You promised and you need to sell this house to come up with investment money.” But this is what happened, the executive introduced him to a broker to sell the house. (The executive and the broker knew each other, they might’ve done this before.) What they ended up doing was putting so much pressure on the Filipino and being really mentally being abusive.
The Filipino didn’t know what to do. Then they played good cop, bad cop. The broker we’ll call him the Nigerian because he was Nigerian. The Nigerian was befriending the Filipino and being the good cop, don’t worry, you can trust everything you can trust me. The Filipino feared that the executive was going to rip him off. The Nigerian convinced the Filipino to trust him and sign his house over, to the Nigerian. Then they robbed him blind. The second the ink was dry and the paperwork had gone through, The Nigerian called the police and told the Filipino that he needed to leave the property, it was no longer his house.
To make matters worse, the executive got mad at the Filipino and blamed him. So the Filipino still had to give the executive money to invest, but just lost his house to the Nigerian. The executive was still riding him, wanting every penny he had, The executive was about to go back to LA and probably laugh with the Nigerian about how stupid the Filipino was. So what was going to happen to me? During this entire time it was two months, he’s trying his hardest to get my trust.
But my uncle told him, my uncle’s a lawyer and he’s a co-trustee. He was like, this is not his money, I don’t care what he signed, what he told you, he didn’t have the ability to do that, and you can do whatever you want, it’s not going to work. Once The executive found out I was worthless to him, I became a liability. So he basically told me, and I remember this morning, it was Christmas Eve, Banks were open, thank God. So I’m talking about first thing in the morning, I’m on the phone. He was trying to screen everything, he was trying to leave me high and dry.
I had all my shit from my apartment, everything. I had a whole car full of stuff. I had no phone. My uncle and the bank knew this was coming. I’m telling them daily, man, this is getting bad. So I made a deal, to get me out of the situation, I made a deal with the bank. And the deal was, they pulled strings, the bank is headquartered in Chicago, my uncle was in LA, I’m in the Bay Area. There was another branch about 45 minutes away. I had no bank account, no way of collecting the money. It was an emergency right before Christmas something had to happen immediately or I was going to be on the streets, for Christmas.
They called someone from 45 minutes away and two ladies, about an hour after I got dropped off by the executive and the Filipino, two ladies came in they were so sweet. They’re like, “Here you go, Mr. Johnson, we were told that we need to give you this in cash.” Not only did they find me, they brought me money, they literally drove and went out of their way. Took care of me, got me into the hotel. It was for three nights Christmas Eve, Christmas night and one more.
My first Christmas out of programs, I am alone, broke in a hotel in Redwood city. I called one of my uncles because I never wanted to call aunts, I never wanted to because you got to remember, they always told me I was a master manipulator. So I didn’t want to manipulate my situation by calling a female because a female is more emotional than a male by nature. A mother’s more nurturing, if a mom hears I’m on the street, then she’d be more susceptible to let me in than a dad. So I called my uncle, I didn’t want to call my aunt. I knew they were out of town but I called him and said, “Is there any way that I could sleep in the garage? I’ll sleep with the dogs. I have nowhere else to go.” And he was like, “Erik, I’m sorry, I can’t help you. You’re on your own.”
That was really tough. It was hard because he could have solved everything with the snap of a finger. He could have flown me to where he was, because again, this was on the wealthy side, Atherton. So it would have been a drop in the bucket when it comes to money, but he didn’t. Part of the reason I called him and not my aunt is because it was Christmas and I didn’t want… maybe I wanted it to be hard, I don’t know. So the first Christmas I was by myself in a hotel room with barely any money.
After Christmas, the bank and my uncle decided I had seven days, to have a job if not, do not call, do not ask for another penny. So I had one week, I didn’t know anything about filling applications and it was right after Christmas, I didn’t know what to do. I think I filled out one application at Target, didn’t really know what I was doing, but then my artist, he had called me, I was still halfway in contact, and he was like, “Man, come over just hang out.” So I ended up spending the night. I think it was maybe two nights or something like that with his family. It’s weird, the grandmother which later became moms. She was like, “I feel so bad for what my family did. You always have a place you can sleep”
Now it was a completely different environment than I’d ever been around, but I had a house. Well, around the same time, my buddy, from Cascade, we had reconnected, he was going to be in Redwood city, which is the same place I was, to go to court, for that crystal meth pipe case. So he was like, man, don’t worry about it. Come with me. I was like, what about your family? He’s like, don’t worry just meet me there. He told his dad “he’s coming with us”. So filled his truck up and an hour later, maybe an hour and a half we’re in the North Bay. So after everything that I’ve just told you, I ended up at my buddy’s mom and dad’s house. Every morning, we’d wake up, walk outside and see the Bay, the water right across the street. We were in Sausalito, California on Bridgeway.
So I went from being alone for Christmas to now looking at a beautiful view, but I had no job. I had to go to Palo Alto to go to a bank for something. I had a little bit of money in there, I have no idea what ended up happening to that bank account. But when I was down there, I ended up seeing the person who had helped me move my stuff from Washington to California, which he was another member of the family of my artist. I didn’t know how he was going to feel towards me, but he was open and he’s like, if you ever need a job, just let me know.
I went back to the North Bay and I called him, he was like, “Yeah, you can detail cars.” So I’d spend the week detailing cars and then the weekend I go home to the North Bay. I was back and forth. And we did that all the way up to my birthday, my 19th birthday. I turned 19 at my buddy’s house in Sausalito. His birthday is February 19th so we kind of had a party for both of us together. In the next chapter, we’re going to discuss how going back and forth from Sausalito to Palo Alto landed me in Kentucky.
All right, so I’m getting escorted from Cascade, northern California, to CEDU Ascent, northern Idaho. I’m thinking that it might be Rocky Mountain Academy. I don’t know what they called it, I tried to Google it, and I couldn’t find CEDU Ascent, but that’s what we all called it. So, I don’t know what the technical term was, of what the program was called. Or they might have just erased it from the internet all together. After you hear this story, you might be like, yeah, they probably erased it.
So, you get out there. All bloody day, you leave first thing in the morning, and then you travel, travel, travel. It’s in northern Idaho, like 30 minutes away from Canada, in a small little place called Bonner’s Ferry. Crazy, crazy story is, later I got sent to the same bloody city on three different occasions. I got sent there the first time through Ascent. Got sent there again to a holding house, and then after Mexico, lo and behold, I got sent up there again. Let me take a note that the Neo-Nazi capital of the United States is in Hayden Lake, which is one hour away from where I was sent. I don’t know if you all noticed, I am Black, so why would you send a kid anywhere close to the Neo-Nazi capital, I don’t know. That seems very irresponsible to me, but again, I wasn’t in charge. I was forced to do all this.
So, you get up there, and now, mind you, you’ve been traveling all day, so you don’t look the best. So, they immediately take a picture of you, this is your before picture. At the end, they cut your hair, they make you look all pretty, and everything like that, and that’s your after picture. That’s their marketing tactic, you know what I’m saying? It’s all scams. It’s all fraud.
You are dressed down, you get strip searched, all that kind of good stuff, like every other program I’ve been to. And then you’re put in a teepee. I don’t remember what time I got there, but it had to have been later. And your first day … Now, I have already been through hell, so I was already expecting that was what it was going to be, like hell. And I’d also heard horror stories of this place, so I already knew what to halfway expect. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it was going to be hell.
Let me try to explain it. When you walked in, you had a building on the right, which was the administrative building. And it was all on the perimeter, in the middle it was a circle. When you look directly forward, there was the wood hall, where we would chop wood and cut wood all day. To the left of the wood Hall was the potty, the right side of the potty was for tatonka’s (boys) and the left side was for the otters’ (girls). Keep going around the perimeter to the left where the teepees. So, you had two teepees for the boys, and then on a different platform you had the girls, all together, there were four teepees. The end of the perimeter was the mess hall where we would eat and have inside therapy sessions including writing letters.
Now, because I don’t remember the exact hour I got there, so bear with me. We’ll just kind of go with the story. Basically throughout the day, they would just work you. So, we’d be hauling logs all day long, and you had to make sure you go, “One, two, three, log! One, two, three, log!” While you’re pulling all day long. So, they’d cut the trees, and you’re basically loggers. So, you’d be having to carry these bloody logs all over the place, right, from one place to the other.
And then, what did you do after you hauled the logs? You’ve got to cut them. The two men, dual saw, all day long. Because, why did we have to cut the wood? We cut the wood because that’s the wood that kept everything warm, so if we didn’t have any wood, we’d freeze. So, all day long. And I’m talking about cords of wood. So, you want to eat, but we didn’t have enough wood? Sorry, you don’t get to eat until you’re done.
Food. You get 15 minutes, in which that time you drink a quart of water, like a whole quart, and you learn really, really fast to space that quart of water out. Because what happens if you are eating … Mind you, we are in silence. You can’t talk to anybody throughout any of this, right?
And you learn to eat extremely fast, because 15 minutes seems like a lot of time, but it’s not. Because it’s not like you get a whole 15 minutes with the food in front of you. No, no, no, it’s like the whole experience is supposed to be like 15 minutes, right? And by law, they had to give us that. So, it wasn’t like, oh yeah, we’re being nice, you get 15 minutes. No, it’s by law, they had to give us a certain amount of time to eat, to process food and everything like that, before they put you back in hell.
So, food. What you’d do, you have to eat as fast as possible, but remember … I’m sorry, not remember. Let me first explain how to get into the mess hall. What you have to do is, everyone puts their arms like this. So, if there’s one person right here … You’ve got to put your head down like this, too. Man, that’s probably what happened, neck problems. I didn’t think about that.
So, everyone’s Held together with their arms, your right arm is over the shoulders of the person to your right and your left arm is on the shoulders of the person to your left, and then you have to go, “One!” And then, “Two!” “Three!” “Four!” “Five!” “Six!” “Seven!” “Eight!” “Nine!” “Ten!” “Eleven!” However many kids there were. And that’s called checking in. And then you have to be, “12 tatonkas checking in!” Something like that. Because we were tatonkas, and the girls were otters.
If you did not do it pristinely, perfectly, you do it again. If you did not do it correctly three times, you think you’re going to get inside the mess hall to eat? No. You had to sit outside on stools of wood or whatever, and basically have your food in front of you and eat right there. Still 15 minutes. But what if it’s raining? Doesn’t matter. If you don’t count in on time, you have to eat outside in the rain.
There’s been countless times where it’s, I mean literally pouring down rain. It’s pouring down so hard that your food’s hopping off the plate. So, you’ve got to try to kind of catch it and put it in your mouth while you’re sopping wet. It was actually, I preferred those times when it was snowing. Because, yeah, it’d be freezing, and it’d be worse when it was snowing, but at least, water and food doesn’t really mix, right, and it’s really gross.
And I do have problems after all this, because if you ever look at how I eat, I can eat cold food, I can eat horrible food, I can eat anything. It’s because I was trained to, you know what I’m saying? Food doesn’t mean anything. It’s just something that you have to eat to fuel your body. So, sometimes we were outside, snow, rain, sleet. Doesn’t matter, right? You’ve still got to eat.
Inside. We checked in, we counted in perfectly, so we’re inside. We go inside the mess hall, go through a food line, get our food, and sit down. 15 minutes. So, you’re literally eating as fast as you can. And like I said, a quart of water.
What happens if you drink a quart of water in like three minutes? Let’s say you’re brand new, you don’t really know that you have to space your stuff out, and you’re just like, I’ll drink it later, I’ll drink it at the end. Well, what you do is, you down it, right? And I mean, it’s really not funny … It’s kind of funny when you watch somebody else, but then when it happens to you, it’s not funny at all.
The water shoots to your bladder like a rocket, and like 15 minutes after you chug a quart of water, you immediately have to go to the bathroom, and you are dancing around because you’ve flooded yourself with water, you can’t take it, because they’ve been making us drink water all day long.
But here’s the problem: you can’t be like, “Can I go to the bathroom?” No, because you have to count in, right? I know I’m jumping around. I’m trying to tell the stories a little bit. You have to check in. Once, you know how we had to check in to go into the mess hall? Well, when you’re done, you have to check in and leave the mess hall, and then you’ve got to walk with a purpose. Which, walking with a purpose means you’ve got to run. You run everywhere. You run to the potty circle, then you’ve got to check in there, and everything’s on the discretion of the staff, right? So, the staff, who were in a staffly mood that day, and liked to watch people dance around and really have to go to the bathroom, or if you were a little weenie or something like that, staff didn’t really like you, what they would do is basically stall. So, you’re dancing around like, I’ve got to go, got to go, got to go. Staff just looks at you and starts laughing at you. There’s literally nothing you can do. The only thing you can do is pee on yourself, but then if you pee on yourself, you get in trouble for that. You can’t do anything. It’s one of the most miserable situations, when you have to pee really, really, really, really bad, and you’re not allowed to. Not fun. Terrible, actually.
The morning was much worse. So, let’s back up. No, let me explain after you eat. So, after you eat, you’re still in the mess hall. They yell, “Two minutes!” In two minutes, what you have to do … Mind you, this is all in silence, and everybody at the table has to do the same thing. What they would do, you’ve got to grab your tray, you’ve got to scrape your tray, you know what I’m saying? You’ve got to stack everything up, in silence, put everything together. You had your bucket for your plates and then your bucket for the trash, right? So, you’ve got to scrape the trash, put it in there, put the cups in there, lift the table, sweep under the table, sit back down, two minutes.
What happens if you didn’t do it in two minutes? Well, it all really depended on the staff. If you had a nice staff, they’d do it nicely, but if you had an asshole, then they would like to do it forcefully. So, what they would do is, they would take the scrapings, throw it on to the table, take your plates, throw it on to the table. “Do it again.” You learned it is better to do it right the first time, because the second time is always more difficult, because now you have food everywhere. So, you’ve got to scrape it off, do it again, do it again, do it again, you’re going to continuously do this until either staff is just tired of it and figures out whose fault it is why we’re not moving fast enough, and they’ll deal with that person individually, or until you guys learn to do it correctly.
Individual punishments. I’ve literally … I don’t know if any of y’all have heard people just screaming bloody Mary, like “Aah! Aah! Aah!” Just over, and over, and over, and over. So, imagine you’re eating, or it doesn’t matter what’s happening, what’s going on. This is happening (the screamin), on a normal basis. It’s not like it was a one time I was there thing. This is like a normal thing when a troubled teen would come, right? A teen that liked to talk back. A teen that would try to defend themselves. A teen that was a “troubled teen”.
You had this one guy, he was famous for this, his name was …… How do I remember his name? (no names remember) So, he’d be nose to nose. Most of these people were ex-military people, so they figured everything they were doing was perfectly fine. They’re military.
So, he’d be yelling at the top of his lungs. Spit would be coming out of his mouth, and all over your face. And his words would be, “This is not spit. Spit is when you do this.” Spit on the ground. “This is spittle. This is what comes out of your mouth when you’re yelling.” It’s funny I’ve heard that speech so many times, and watched him in front of everybody’s face nose to nose yelling and screaming at them. I still remember his favorite phrase 30 years later.
This counselor used to love to do the yelling, right? But then he had his little goon squad.They would have one counselor on the right of you, one counselor on the left of you and one counselor behind you. So, you’re basically enclosed, like a little box. Yelling straight at you. What if you flinch? What if you move your head? You don’t have to literally clench. Your hands could move and, Oh, all hell breaks loose, you are going to be restrained.
Restrained is a nice, pretty word for you’re going to get your ass whooped. You’re going to the ground, and we’re kids, and these are grown men, and they’re going to forcefully rip you to the fucking ground as hard as they can, to instill in your head, don’t ever do that again. They would restrain and take you to the ground so fast. Before you would even know, the counselor would still be right here, and because, don’t forget, you have two people on the side and one on the back. You do anything with your hands besides keep them right by your side, and don’t you dare flinch, don’t you dare make a movement. You’d better stand like a tree. It does not matter that someone is in your face, yelling at you at the top of their lungs.
If you move, you’re going down. And I’m talking about bam, you’re going down, right? They would forcibly rip your arms behind your back “Aah!” Yeah, not exaggerating at all. And you know, when you put your arm up, it really hurts, right? So, imagine, I mean you’ve still got your four staff. They’re throwing you on the ground, and they’re ripping your arm, right, and literally screaming. You’re hearing these people scream in pain. And then you get the staff, basically still holding you down, pushing you down, because you know, it’s restraining, right? And he’s still yelling at you, right? There’s been times, man, oh man, oh man. You feel bad for the person, but there’s nothing you can do. don’t try to be a hero, you know what I’m saying? It’s better them, than you. Sad to say, but that’s literally the way you think. “I’m glad that’s not me.” So, that would be one punishment.
Different punishments would be public mockery. So, they’d put an orange vest on you, remember when I told you it’s in a circle? It’s the perimeter, right? They would have your toes at the edge of the perimeter, head down with your hands behind your back for 12 hours. Staring at your feet all day long, for 12 hours. Don’t move. Remember, this was a nice consequence. If you were to move, you get to have fun, and you get restrained, right? I’ve seen a lot of my friends have to sit there for 12 hours and just stare at the ground.
Let’s talk about what happens in the morning time, when you first wake up. I know I’m dancing around, but it’s all one place, so bear with me. When you wake up in the morning, you pray to God that you wake up before the day staff. Night staff was lovely. “I need to go to the bathroom, it’s okay, there’s no check-ins, there’s nothing”. With nightstaff, you just kind of go to the bathroom, like, “Hello?” “Yes, what do you want?” “Can I go to the bathroom?” “Yeah, no problem. Go to the bathroom.” Great. Very simple, right?
Well, when day staff came, it wasn’t quite so easy. Let’s say you woke up right after staff change, and you’ve got to go to the bathroom. Well, you weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom. You hadn’t checked in. You haven’t done five minutes. I’ll explain five minutes in a minute. None of that. So, if you’ve got to go to the bathroom, the staff’s going to be like, “No, you can’t go. You haven’t checked in yet.”
I have seen a lot of my friends use the bathroom on themselves because they couldn’t hold it in. Like literally could not hold it in anymore. Staff didn’t care. It was horrible. When something like that would happen to you, you would think they would have some sort of dignity or sympathy? Oh, hell no. No, no, no. Now you were in trouble. Now you’re going to get punished, because you couldn’t hold it in anymore.
Let me explain five minutes. Five minutes. If it’s raining, don’t prepare, because that’s cheating. If they catch you cheating, you’re going to be punished. What do I mean by cheating? I’m talking about when it’s pouring down rain, and you’re like, you know what? I’m going to put my rain gear on top of my pants, I’m going to prepare. Oh, no, you’re not, because they’re going to check, and they’re going to ask, “Why did you do this?” “Because it’s raining outside.” “That’s cheating.” “Why?” “Because now, you started before the five minutes. You have to do this all in five minutes, so preparing while it’s raining outside is cheating.”
So, you learn, when it’s raining, you’re not allowed to prepare early. Oh, you think you could get up before you want to, and put your clothes on, do anything? Oh, no, no, no. They have not yelled five minutes yet. You are not allowed to move. You’d better stay in your sleeping bag. They haven’t called five minutes yet.
So, “Five minutes!” In five minutes, you better get out of your sleeping bag as fast as possible. You’ve got to throw your clothes on, tuck your shirt in, all that kind of good stuff. Roll your mat up. Roll your sleeping bag up. Make sure everything is faced the exact same way. Make sure the string on the sleeping bag is tucked in. You are not done, and you did not make your five minutes, and they will do one of two things. Let’s get there in a second.
Mind you, we’re all in silence. If you’ve got to go to the bathroom, this is miserable, because you have to do all this. If it’s raining, you have to undo your rain gear, throw your stuff on, and then sweep, sweep, sweep, as fast as you can. And this is, mind you, this is like 10 different guys all in your teepee. And run outside in a circle, ready to check in. And then you get inspected. So, I said one of two things, right? So, what happens if your string is out just a little bit? They can be like, “Everybody get back in their beds.” That means you have to strip, if it’s raining, you’ve got to take off the rain gear, fold it back up in a little ball, remember, because you can’t be prepared, and get back in your sleeping bag, and we’re going to do it again.
Well, after about two or three times of doing this, if one person’s having a problem, “Well, you’re slowing up everybody else, so we’re going to make an example out of you.” Everyone else gets to proceed and go to the bathroom. Don’t forget, you haven’t gone to the bathroom yet. And we get to start our day.
The other person, oh, no, no, no. They’re going to take all your stuff. It does not matter if it’s raining. Doesn’t matter if it’s snowing. Doesn’t matter if it’s windy. Doesn’t matter if it’s sunny. Does not matter. They’re going to take all your stuff and throw it out, Throw it out for everybody to see. And then, you’re going to be … Remember, I told you the perimeter, where if you got in trouble, you had to stand all day and look at your feet, put your hands behind your back? Well, in that same perimeter, they make you do bed drills all day long, until you become an expert at bed drills.
Why you need to be an expert at jumping out of the bed in five minutes and putting your clothes on in five minutes, I have no idea. I don’t know how this was therapy. But you’d better become an expert at five minutes.
So, after we’re done checking in … Let’s not forget, you’re going to get punished if you guys can’t check in correctly. Checking in and running was, everywhere we went, you had to check in. Remember, “One!” “Two!” “Three!” “Four!” “Five!” “Six!” “Seven!” “Eight!” “Nine!” “Ten!” “Tatonka’s checking in!” And it seems easy, but when there’s a new person, they don’t quite grasp the concept of what in the hell’s going on. Well, either you learn fast, or you’re going to get punished fast. One or the other.
After “5 minutes” you trot over to the potty circle, and check in again, the bathroom was basically a huge port-a-potty. Oh man, it used to smell terrible. For the guys, you had two wall buckets and three sit-downs. Use your imagination what a wall bucket is for and what a sit-down is. I don’t think I need to break it down that much. And then, once everyone’s done, you all can proceed to the mess hall for breakfast. Remember breakfast, I already explained what happens for food.
Then, when you’re done, you run to the bathroom, but it all depends on the staff. I was a big Black kid. I wasn’t a little kid, so I’m a little harder to abuse, if that makes any sense. Just a little bit, because again, I am a Black guy. So, they didn’t outwardly try to abuse me much. They kind of used me to abuse the other kids. I’m not stupid.I don’t want my arm broken, I don’t want to be forcefully thrown to the ground and restrained in excruciating pain. That does not sound like a good idea. So, what do I do? I follow directions! You want me to do what? Okay, let’s do it. You know what I’m saying? So, part of that, me having the, “Okay, let’s do it!” attitude wasn’t the best for the kids, and it wasn’t the best for me.
P.T. (physical training) Every day, I don’t know if you’ve ever had a broken toe before. For the first … I was there for seven weeks. Oh my God, for the first few weeks, it hurt so bad to walk. I had just broken my toe like the week before I got sent. We were playing capture the flag at Cascade, there’s a lot of lava rock there. Now, I’ve got the flag. No one could catch me. What happened is, imagine your foot I hit a lava rock and my pinky toe went up. talk about excruciating pain. Oh my goodness. I scored and went right to the doctor, like, “I can’t walk, I can’t walk, I can’t walk. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” They pushed it back down, and two days later, I’m getting sent to CEDU Ascent.
Now, I had told them I had a broken toe, and in a normal, sane world, they’d be like, “Oh, I’m sorry.” Maybe running on your foot, or walking on it all day is not the best thing for a broken toe. But we have to think that we’re in a sane world, like a humane society. Well, this was not a humane society. It was a very inhumane society. And it did not matter, I broke my toe. “You’re going to run.” “It hurts when I run.” “Sounds like a PP.” PP means a personal problem, just in case you didn’t know what that means. And a personal problem means suck it up. It’s a PP. It’s a personal problem. It’s not my problem. It’s your problem.
They would make us run. 30-minute runs, or a different type of PT. This one time, it was me and my buddy, another big kid. They used to love having us run PT. We were both bigger than a lot of the other little people there. We both had commanding voices and were both in better shape than the other kids. We were athletes. I think in his hometown, he used to play football. They put us in charge. it was kind of cool, we got to do the yelling. So, staff yells at us, and we get to yell at everybody else. There was a new guy. He was the quintessential couch potato. I don’t think he’s ever … walking to the kitchen was probably the farthest he’d ever walked. So, PT was a brand new concept for him. He’d never done any kind of physical labor. Now, using things against you is perfectly okay. Does that make sense? So, “Get up, couch potato!” “You’re so fat!” That type of stuff works. Fair game. Whatever you need to say to him to “motivate him”.
We are in control of PT, Staff’s telling us, you better motivate him, and you better do it. You didn’t have a choice, and I didn’t have a choice. What we learned from the counselors, we get real close to somebody’s face. So, when he’s trying to do something, mind you, he’s crying, He’s screaming, “I can’t do it, I can’t do it.” We look at the staff. “Make him do it.”
When someone doesn’t do something, when you first do it, you get frustrated. You don’t get nicer. You get meaner, right? You get louder. So, while we’re screaming and yelling at him, calling him every dirty name that we can think of that comes to our head, he’s screaming in excruciating pain, like, “I can’t do it! Aah!” Turns out he really couldn’t do it, mind you, this went on for a while, Maybe 10 minutes of us yelling at him. Staff tells him, “Get up.” He couldn’t stand up, so we had to get him up. We kind of carried him to medical care. We broke both of his legs. Stress fractures in both of his legs. He literally could not do it. His muscles, his legs, he’d never done any workouts, so his muscles weren’t capable, and the things we were having him do, he broke his legs.
Now, when something like that happens, you would think that staff would be concerned. No. What they were concerned about was the legality, and they were like, “You two don’t worry. You guys aren’t going to be in trouble.” I’m like, how would I be in trouble? I’m just following what you guys told me to do. So, they let us know that we didn’t do anything, we’re fine. Don’t worry, you guys are going to be covered. Don’t worry, you’re not getting in any trouble. And we’re like, okay, whatever.
You get two weeks to go camping. They give you a camera. like, wait a minute, they give you a camera? Yeah, then they take it away when you return to base camp. You’re not allowed to take a single picture of base camp. They didn’t want parents or anyone to see the hellhole. They’d allow everyone to see the beautiful scenery of the northern Idaho mountains. The two-week field trip was amazing. It was fun, you got away from hell. There was no yelling, there was no clean up, no potty circles. You did learn, drop some bleach your water, and then you can drink it. I don’t know how safe that is, but we learned it works. We didn’t get Giardia. We learned about the grizzly bears, and how to tell the difference between a grizzly and a black bear? Climb a tree, and if the bear pushes the tree over, it was a grizzly, and if the bear climbs up the tree to get you, it was a black bear. So, we learned that. I don’t know how that was relevant to my life today. The next time I’m in the northern Idaho woods, I’ll know the difference between a grizzly and a black bear. Other than that, whatever. Then you get back to base camp. They take your camera, they take everything from you, and you’re right back into hell.
The letters. So, it was every night, or every other night, or I don’t remember how frequent it was, you were told you had to write letters. Why didn’t you tell anybody what happened? Oh, no, no, no. You didn’t get to write a letter which you wanted to write. You were told what you could write, and you’d better follow directions, because they would read your letters on the way out. If you said anything negative about the program, your letter wouldn’t be sent, and there would be hell to pay. You had to lie, and it would be like, “Everything’s great, everything’s amazing. I’m learning so much. I’m so grateful for being here.” That’s literally what they would persuade you to say. You didn’t really have a choice. If you thought that you were going to tell your parents what was going on, you had another thing coming, and no, not fun. Not fun to watch people who thought that they were smarter than the system. Not fun at all. they were our legal guardians, by law. Because the parents had to sign over their parental rights to this place. So, by law, they’re your mom and dad, and they can do whatever they want to do, they are in control of you. You had absolutely no rights, and neither do your parents for the time, because they signed over their rights. Why the hell would you do that? I don’t know.
Shower time. This was always fun. I love this. I have eczema, my skin is very dry. I’ve had dry skin problems since I was a little kid. Well, lotion is for girls. Just letting you know. Let me tell this to the whole world. Lotion is for girls. It’s not for guys. At least, that’s what they proceeded to tell me every single time. Didn’t matter that my face felt like it was falling off, and I was in excruciating pain. It was so dry and was freezing cold in northern Idaho. Did not matter, man. Didn’t matter. Did not matter. “Lotion is for girls. Stop trying to be a girl. What are you, a girl?” “No, my face really hurts.” “That’s a PP.” Remember, a personal problem?
Shower time, two minutes. you have to, you drop your clothes, run to the shower, push the little button, you have to continuously push the stupid little button, because your water would stop. So, you’ve got to push it, push it again and wash it off, and push it again to wash your bottom half. Well, what happens if you don’t make it in two minutes? Or what happens if you have soap in your eye, and it’s a minute and 49 seconds? Or you’ve got soap all over your body? Again, it’s a personal problem, because what they would do, they turn on a water hose. Mind you, it is bloody freezing in northern Idaho at the time. They turn on the water hose, you can hear it, “Here it comes!” Some fucked up shit like that. They proceeded to take the water hose, and open the curtain. Mind you, there’s nowhere for you to run. You’re in a shower stall, it’s not very big. If you think you’re going to avoid the water, it’s impossible to avoid the water. Why? There’s only one entrance. There’s nowhere else to go. “Woo-hoo! Ha, ha, ha!” Laughing at you. “Yeah, it’s cold, huh? Ha, ha, ha.” Spray you up and down. Your ass would be freezing. They didn’t care. So, you’re literally going to have to escape the freezing cold water to get out.
Man, they got this one kid from London, horrible, dude. It was his first time. So one, they’re making fun of his accent the whole time. And then, I mean, they were excessive on what they did. It was terrible. They damn near kept him in there, and blasted him with freezing cold water, for it had to have been 30 seconds to a minute. they’re just whaling on him all through, and he’s screaming and everything like that. And I mean, he really couldn’t get out, and they’re just laughing and having a jolly good time at the expense of us.
Towards the end, I became cool with the staff, because I’m hard to break. You can’t really break me. Like, oh, you want me to run around all day? Okay, fine. I’m an athlete. My toe doesn’t hurt anymore. Oh, you want me to haul wood all day? Okay. I remember talking to one of the staff, and she’s like, “It’s not bad.” I was like, “Man, all I’m doing is working out all day. It’s like, go to school or work out all day. So, this isn’t that bad.” For everyone else, it was terrible, but for me, it wasn’t that bad. Trust between me and the program came, they started giving me an ax, so no longer did I have to saw the wood. Me and my buddy, we both got an ax, we were kind of like the teacher’s pets. Especially after we broke the guy’s legs for the staff. They figured they could trust us, I guess.
I remember, I used to, for the newer kids, because I knew the program, I remember staff used to let me be in control. Of course, I had to emulate the staff. Don’t think I got to do things my way. No, no, no. So, yelling, screaming, all that kind of good stuff. Watching the staff. “No, you can’t do this. Yes, you can.” I’m pretty good, right? That’s why, later, fast forward back to Cascade. Three weeks later, I got kicked out because I was too influential. Then I was sent right back to northern Idaho, and I had an argument with my family, and they proceeded to tell me I manipulated the program, manipulated it. After everything I just explained, how did I manipulate the program. They literally put us through hell, but I manipulated the program.
I remember screaming at them back, like, “How can I manipulate a program? I’m a person? How? So, you’re telling me I’m better than the whole bloody program? So, you’re telling me I manipulated an entire program? Please explain to me how.” Well, because I’m such a horrible person, right, and I manipulate programs, and I got kicked out for being too influential on the other students. But no, let me explain it to you, what happened that day, so then maybe you can decide if I was too influential.
So, when I got back to Cascade, remember, I didn’t get kicked out. I didn’t do anything wrong. I wasn’t in trouble when I left. They saw something in me, and they didn’t want it to go away, so I had to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to go to child abuse.
I got back to the program, and I was in trouble. Like, wait a minute, why? Oh, because they wanted to test me, to see if I’d really changed. So, their idea of testing me … mind you, I’d been up since 2:00 in the morning. I’m so exhausted. When I get to Cascade, I’m immediately sent to a forum. Then we go eat dinner, and I’m on max times dishes. That means that now, I’m basically on work projects.
I got put on bans with everybody. I was only allowed to talk to the people I had absolutely no desire to talk to. Now, one of the staff, thank God for at least one of them, right! There’s always one that fights Herd mentality, you know what I’m saying? You can do quite a lot of horrible things to people in a herd mentality, because everybody is fucked up in the head, and so they think that what they’re doing is correct. But it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re correct.
One staff member, (If you remember from the Cascade story it was the larger staff that would have been the better counselor for me opposed to the smaller minority staff) thank God for this staff, He was like, “That’s wrong.” He’d seen me on max time dishes, and he’s like, “Why are you up here?” I was like, “I don’t know. I just got back from the wilderness program, and now I’m on punishment” He at least fought for me and I was able to talk to one person I enjoyed. Just one. Another athlete.
Well, I’m Black. I keep saying this. People don’t get it. All the white kids were getting sunburned, I was the only Black kid there. So, they have a big meeting, and tell everybody, “You’re not allowed to not wear your shirt.” I’m like if it doesn’t apply, let it fly. So, I’m like, that doesn’t apply to me. I don’t get sunburned. Why do I have to suffer for something that other people do? I don’t have to follow this rule, I don’t sunburn. I mean, I understand for the white kids, it makes perfect sense, but I don’t sunburn, I guess he’s talking to the white people.
Yes, it did apply to me, early in the morning, me and the other athlete, we were playing basketball. This is before anyone was awake, we were practicing, doing drills. One staff member sees us. Oh no, we had our shirts off. Criminals, right? We were criminals, had our shirts off, practicing basketball. Well, the staff didn’t take too kindly to that. Yelled at us for having our shirts off, and then proceeded to tell the headmaster on us. Two days later, I was kicked out for being too influential on the other kids.
My family heard, “Erik’s just up to no good again. He didn’t learn anything from that hellhole we just sent him to, so we’re going to fucking make his life worse, we’re going to send him to Mexico, to a lockdown program where he has nothing and he can’t do anything.” And that’s what happened.
Good morning. quick recap. I Am Getting dropped off to the same escorts which took me to Aspen. We’re in the Bay Area, California, we just left Salt Lake City, Utah. it is about a six hour drive up to the middle of nowhere in Northern California. If you look on the map, it’s easier to look for Redding, California, then about 15 miles from there, there was a small itty bitty town called Whitmore. And then a little bit further into the abyss was the school, the therapeutic boarding school called Cascade.
Cascade was a boarding school. So if you remember back in middle school, I had been in boarding school. boarding schools, I’ve already been there,, since my parents died, I think I had maybe lived one year in a home. That’s total combined time, not consecutive. Sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, I was in boarding school, midway through ninth grade, I was sent away. So maybe a year and a half I lived in a home. Everything else was institutions.
Cascade is a massive property. You pull into the perimeter, the administrative buildings are on the left. On the right, you have dorms, individual dorms, like little cabins. There’s four boy cabins and then maybe four or five girl cabins. The girl cabins were on a different part of the campus. So they weren’t right next to the guys, obviously. There was a road that separated the sexes.
The first day, I met this lady who became kind of like a mom, but not. For a few years, she took the place of mom in a sense. Like everyone else, people will say they love you. But how long do they actually love you? So, I don’t believe in what people say, people make lots of promises, because it sounds like a good idea at the time. But then they meet other people or they move on in their life and the commitments or the promises they made are never held, because it was a good idea at the time. But everything in life moves forward. It doesn’t go backwards, or stay stagnant.
Cascade was a therapeutic boarding school. It was very different from any environment anywhere else in the world. So let me just go over some of the rules. So you have this thing called bans. Bans means that if there was a person sitting right next to me, and the two of us were on bans, I’m not allowed to acknowledge that person. I’m not allowed to talk to that person. It doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a boy. It could be a girl, could be a boy. And you get put on bans for numerous reasons. So if you’re too close to somebody, they’ll put you on bans. When you first get to Cascade, you’re on time limits. You’re only allowed to spend 15 minutes a day talking to somebody. So if you became friends with somebody, you’re only allowed 15 minutes a day to talk to that person.
Now if staff or if other class members were to see that you were hanging out with this person, let’s say they see you hanging out with this person at breakfast or in the morning time. Then later on, they see you hanging with this person during the middle of the day, they see you hanging out with this person at nighttime, they’re going to snitch on you, tell on you, they’re going to tell staff that, “Oh, Erik and this other person has been hanging out too long. So they shouldn’t be talking together.” So then you could be put on bans, then you’re not allowed to talk to this person at all, this person no longer exists.
I mean, anything that you can think of, you can be put on bans with. It’s not like being put on bans is reserved people, you can be put on bans with a type of food, you can be put on bans with a type of clothes, you can be put on bans with get creative, really just get creative, whatever your staff figured would be optimal punishment for you, So there really was no limit to what people could punish you for, if that makes sense. So they could get quite creative on what they would allow you to do and what you’re not allowed to do. So at one point in time, I was put on bans with the entire school besides like the five people I would have never wanted to talk to.
But that’s later on in the story. If they wanted to make your life a living hell, they could. What’s worse it was more like a cult. If they wanted to make your life a living hell, they have their little goon squad, people who loved the system,the ones really sold into the program. I would call them “Program Nazi” spies watching you all the time, if that makes sense. It’s a police society in a sense, or almost like a secret society too because you literally didn’t know who would use information against you to better themselves, to become friends, become closer to a staff member, to show more brand loyalty, I guess you could say.
Cascade was different from Aspen. We didn’t have to do any hiking. It was a boarding school. So you had to go to school, the typical things you would think of in any normal school. But in addition, the therapeutic part is what changed this school from a typical boarding school. So the therapy, so let’s discuss, we have three different forums a week.
What is a forum? A forum is a conflict resolution event or therapy event. What they would do is, I will, explain the forum and then I’ll explain how this can be manipulated, and turn into gang warfare. What would happen is you would have, depending on the size of the group, so on Mondays and Fridays, it was school wide forums. So you could be in a forum with anyone from any family, anyone that goes to that school, you can be placed in a forum with that person.
Wednesday, a family, your family when you’re at the school, it consists of the people that got to the school around the same time that you did. So if someone got there two days after me or two days before me, then it didn’t matter what age group they were. They could be in ninth grade, they could be in 12th grade, they could be in 11th grade, 10th grade, does not matter. Towards the end, the kids start getting younger and younger. It didn’t matter as long as you got to the program at the same time, that was your family.
Now, Wednesdays like I said were your family forums. With my family a lot of kids came in a short amount of time. So my family turned out to be one of the largest, I think it was the largest family at the school. So there might have been, let’s say, 200 to 150 students, and out of all those students, there were 50 people in my family. So like a big part of the school was a part of my family. My family was so large we had subfamilies.
So for what type of issues would be resolved at the forum? anything that you can think of. If you felt that someone was being lazy in math class or being disruptive, you could bring them to a forum for that. If you feel that when someone was on a work project, they were slacking, you can bring them to a forum on that. If someone wasn’t making their bed to your standards, you could bring them to a forum on that. If you’ve seen someone spit on the ground that you didn’t enjoy, you can take someone to a forum on that.
I hope you’re getting the point. A forum was a central place where you could literally discuss anything that’s on your mind. And so what would happen is, say 15 people in the forum. They’re all sitting in a circle looking at each other. Now, when you had your griping session, I think you got 15 minutes, maybe it might have been five, depending on how many people ganged up on you, I’ll explain that in a second, kind of how long it took. So if there’s one person just yelling and screaming at you, then one person yelling, there’s only so much yelling that one person can do before they get tired and they keep repeating themselves.
If it was one person, and no one else was piggybacking, then conflict resolution could go pretty fast. So like I said, you can only really yell and scream at somebody for maybe 5 – 10 minutes. And then when there’s no more energy, especially if the person doesn’t rebuttal. But if they do they get 5 – 10 – 15 minutes to address the problem to somebody, then that person would have a rebuttal, so they could defend themselves.
Then, if I remember correctly, it was an open forum, people could say what they wanted to say, when the moderator, the staff realized that okay, this is a dead subject, we’d move on.
Ganging up on people, where it basically became turf warfare, or even I’d say psychological warfare a little bit better, is you could bring your friends with you. So the staff got to decide. They would make the forums, they had this little forum box. So in essence, it makes sense. If you have an issue with somebody, how are staff going to know to put you guys in the same forum to discuss the issue? They can’t. They’re not mind readers, so they have this little box. You put your problem in the box, and then you put all the friends that supposedly know about the issue. I say supposedly, because if you just wanted to gang up on somebody, you just add your friends. If you want a yelling and screaming match, then you put people in there that you know are good at yelling and screaming at people, or you put people in there that are like program Nazis, because the program Nazi always had something to yell at.
If you looked at the ground funny, a program Nazi could find fault. A program Nazi could yell at you for anything. They were professional belittlers and yellers. Let’s say you’re stuck in a forum, You don’t remember what happened (you could remember, you could not remember) but then you start seeing, because you could tell it was click, you can see who was this person’s friends. You see this person sit down and your like, “All right, yeah, I figured it out. I got into an argument with this person. Yeah, this little motherfucker.” you can tell when you see someone come in and then your mind starts to remember, “Oh yeah, I remember. I figured you might come and try to take this out on me here. But then you start seeing their friends come in. You’re like, “Oh, fuck dude, this is not going to be fun.”
like I said, the conflict is not resolved until all party members get their yelling done. So if there’s a lot of yelling, or people just didn’t like you, the yelling session could go on for about an hour. I mean, the forum went for two and a half hours. So they literally could have a two and a half hour yelling session directed at you. And I’m not talking about yelling as in, we’re just talking loudly. No, in a forum, you have to be three chairs away from somebody so they don’t feel threatened. Then you literally can yell and scream until you have no voice left. It doesn’t matter if you make any sense, it doesn’t matter if this whole session is a personal issue and you just felt like you wanted to yell and scream at somebody and take it out on somebody. You are able to in this environment.
Now foreshadowing, when I was in Mexico, they wanted me to implement these forums into the Mexican social environment long story short, it does not always work how you want it to. It ended up being one of my worst mistakes, by utilizing and understanding forums. I upset the main Mexican manager, in the forum. After he had a vendetta and I was in trouble, I lost everything and was kicked out. But like I said, that’s a different story. We’ll get into that at a different time.
Hopefully I paint a picture for you of what a forum is. It’s mostly just a circle session, for conflict resolution. Now the therapy can come in. if you’re paying attention, you could literally learn how to screw someone up mentally, because it’s all leading with leading questions. For example, someone’s having a bad day, some staff were better than other staff. Some staff would make you feel uncomfortable, so then it shuts your emotions down. But other staff would be really, really leading. They were really good at manipulating your thoughts, persuasion? no, manipulation. They could, once you start thinking about something, it could be any issue. Now, mind you, this is with 15 random people unless it’s with your family. If it’s your family, then you know them a little bit better. But I’ve seen some wow, craziness I never imagined there was that much snot in someone’s body. Like, wow, say someone’s having a hard time, the staff would lead you, keep leading you, then tell you to close your eyes and imagine the situation.
There are certain ways you can paint a picture for somebody and make that person relive what they’re going through. Yelling and screaming can entice you in a defensive way. But then it can also, by talking louder and taking control of a situation, you can control someone’s emotions when they’re in a very vulnerable state. I’ve watched some of the staff truly manipulate people’s emotions when they’re in this state. it is the most uncomfortable situation you can be in when someone’s really emotional and they’re crying all over the place. this other part where, like I said, the manipulation part, just because someone’s yelling at you, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re yelling at you. They could be yelling to get something out of you.
They had this other thing called running anger and when you ran anger, this is where I’ve never seen snot fly all over the place. Running anger, wow if it’s the first time in the room and you’re in one of these forums and you don’t know what it is, you literally could have nightmares that night on what you just saw because it looks like something out of The Exorcist really! They’ll have snot and just hanging out of their nose and mouth and it’s touching the ground. And they got their heads in between their legs and they’re yelling and screaming and snot flying, they’re sniffing it in, and out like The Exorcist. It’s gross and it’s really uncomfortable.
It could give you issues, let’s just put it like that. Literally you have issues after having to go and watch this, it’s not normal. So those are forums, and those usually happen two and a half hours on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, then let’s see. How did they clean the dishes? And how did they feed you? Well, they had staff. So it’s not to say there’s no staff. But then you can’t put kids to work. It’s called child labor, at least in the United States, you’re not allowed to. However, community service is not considered work. That is a service to the community. the more trouble they gave you, the more community service you got to do.
So what do you mean, Erik? What type of community service? Well, you got first time, second times, and max times. So first time was like 15 minutes after dinner, you had to help clean up the tables Second times, I think it was like 30 minutes, then you might have had third times, which is like an hour. And then max times is you’re not leaving until everything’s done. Now, you’d be like, “Well, that’s not that bad.” But when you think about it, just think about it, what if no one’s in trouble, then you don’t have a work staff.
So it is impossible for you to have a school where no one’s in trouble, because you won’t be able to get anything done. It’s an incentive to keep people in trouble, because you need a cleaning staff to clean up after the dishes, to vacuum, to be on work projects around the property. Does that make sense? So there’s no possible way this program works if they don’t have people in trouble. There’s no way, because you can’t get your dishes cleaned. You can’t do certain things that require manpower. So I got a lot of community service, let’s just say that, a lot of community service.
It didn’t matter what you did. Any staff could put you in trouble, didn’t matter. Any staff, if they see me do something, they didn’t like, they could put you on dishes. I’ve already told the story in a different chapter so I’ll reiterate the story again. When I got back from my extended vacation, they put me on bans with everybody in the school. They also put me on max time dishes. So rain or shine, I had to be doing dishes at all times. So did I do anything to deserve that? No. Did it matter? No. Because my counselor figured it would be good for me to be a work slave. So I had no choice. I had to be a work slave for no other choice, no other reason than my counselor told me I had to.
That literally is what they told me. “We want to see if we can break you.” So they made my life a living hell, just to see if I was truly committed or not from the vacation where they sent me to actual hell, not a living hell. They sent me to actual hell and then I got back and then they made my life a living hell to see if I was committed. Obviously, I was not very committed and three weeks later, they kicked me out for being too influential on other students. You can only push so far before all your pushing breaks, it can go exactly opposite of what you wanted. About a year after they kicked me out, the whole school was gone. You can’t push too hard or you might ruin everything.
Matter of fact, two years after I was done with all this, almost every programs I discus in this book was shut down for child abuse. So we discussed a little bit of dishes, we discussed the forums. So yeah, work projects, so work projects, I discussed a little bit but work projects were basically what they sound like. You are for eight to 10 hours or 24 hours, however long they really made you do this, you had to do whatever the staff told you to do. Now, it could be vacuuming in one of the central areas. It could be sweeping the porches, simple things like that. There were a massive amount of Canadian geese, so it could be as belittling as walking around and picking up goose poop for hours upon hours filling bags of shit.
Another example of getting in trouble, so staff could do this to you, did not matter. It was a totalitarian environment where as a student, you had no rights, nothing. Staff literally could do whatever they want to you. We were playing football, I guess you could call it recess, when you could play sports, the time limits weren’t active, they didn’t care. you could play basketball with bans, it wasn’t always a horrible place, not every minute. Was it a place I would want to live forever? No, most definitely not. But was it always hell? No, it wasn’t.
So we’re playing football. It was probably about 10 of us. And we got tired of playing football. We decided that we wanted to play basketball. We were walking in. Now we’re playing tackle football. We were already done. Staff came, heard we were playing tackle football and did not care that as a collective group, we decided not to play football anymore and not tackle each other. And as a collective group, we’re going to play basketball. She didn’t care. She came out on her high horse and yelled and screamed at all of us and put us on work projects for the rest of the day having to pick up goose poop and put us all on bans.
Why? Still not really sure. Like I said, we had already solved the problem. So for her coming out and doing that, it was more of just a show of force, “I’m boss and all of you have to listen.” That’s how the staff could control you. If you see how easy the staff can change your life, what if the staff doesn’t really like you? They can make your life hell for no other reason than they don’t like you. So that’s a very important thing that you have to understand. If staff didn’t like you, your life was going to suck.
After changing my counselor a few times I got one of the owners of the school. This changed everything because now, I’m one of the owners of the school’s kids. He could trump everything anyone else said. My little sub family. Remember, I told you about my huge family, which was like 50 to 60 people, but then in that, we had subfamilies. Our sub family was really small, maybe like six or seven people. My sub family was the only family who had one of the owners as our counselor.
We ended up getting more privileges than everybody else. Other staff couldn’t fuck with me as much as they wanted. If they wanted to fuck with me, to punish me or something, they almost had to go talk to my counselor before they made a decision, as if it was anyone else, they easily can make a decision and they could literally ruin someone’s life like that. It would be no problem. But during the time that I had the owner’s protection, there’s nothing that any other staff could do to really mess with my life, if that makes any sense.
The owner of the place, in his eyes, he understood I didn’t have much of anybody. His whole mission while he was my counselor was he wanted to create Cascade as a reliable place for me and wanted it to be my home. The way he approached me, was different than with anyone else. So he wanted to let me know that no matter what happened, I always had a home. I don’t know if that makes a lot of sense. But that was what he wanted.
During this, he built a gap between me and my aunt on my mom’s side. she was my mom, if you remember from past chapters. What they did is (they should never have had me do this. Never, ever, had me do this) they had me write a letter. It was a very terrible letter I wrote, they prompted me to get everything off of my chest. So my mom died. My dad died. They wanted me to blame somebody, because it’s difficult to create therapy for families, if there’s no issues between the family and the student.
Everyone else was with their families like Mommy, Daddy. I was with aunts and uncles that I never really lived with. They don’t really know me. I don’t really know them. Its hard to work on family issues if there’s no family. My issues were more “his mom, his dad, everybody died. He got caught smoking weed, fix him.” With other families it was well, “With Tommy since he was four.”, there’s more drawn out, there’s more therapy that can be done. it was both sides of the equator wanting to work with each other. With me, it was fix him. It wasn’t my family. There’s nothing wrong with my family. They did nothing wrong. We are not participating on anything. Fix him. There was no, “At the end of this, we’re going to be family.” It was, “Just send him somewhere and get rid of him. He’ll be 18 soon enough.” So that was a huge difference. That’s part of the reason my counselor wanted Cascade to be my home. He understood, this kid, didn’t have a family and his family wanted nothing to do with him. They are literally just sending him somewhere because no one wants him at their house. They don’t want to deal with their dead sister or brother’s problem. So while he was my counselor, I was untouchable, people kind of walked on eggshells around me because of my counselor, this worked for good, but it also worked for bad. We’ll go back to this in just a minute.
So what therapy was done at Cascade? Okay, you had these 24 hour therapy sessions. It’s a 24 hour group therapy session. Your first Workshop was the Truth. The truth, you try to find out who or what your truth is, which I’ll explain in a second, The second Workshop was the Youth. What did you dream to be when you were a little kid? The Brothers or Sisters, you each individually go through a workshop together as a single sex to build a closer bond with your friends. the Heroes how do you become a hero, like your own hero a person people aspire to be like. There were a couple more but I did not make it that far in the program.
The truth was fairly interesting. Again the manipulation of emotions occurred. Obviously, you have forums inside these workshops, but they were forums on steroids. It was intense, to say the least, very intense to say the least. You have shame circle forums, where everyone around the room had to talk about things that they were really shameful about.
Now, this is great. Get it all out there. But if you weren’t really shameful for anything, you almost had to lie. I was an athlete, I smoked weed. What was I shameful for? I wasn’t shameful for shit. But then when you hear someone else, “Like seriously, wow, you’re fucked up.” But then when it comes around to you, you’re thinking like, “Oh, fuck dude, I got to think of something.” It ain’t got to be horrible. But God damn, I can’t sit here and be like, “I’m shameful because I didn’t make a basketball shot.” You know what I’m saying? like 10 seconds to go, and I missed the shot. And I’m shameful for it. That doesn’t work when you just hear some of the things you’ve just heard. Some of the things are private, if that individual person were to read what I’m saying, I don’t want to repeat the things I heard. But let’s just say a lot of things I heard were really bad. Like wow, are you serious? God damn. it was during the truth, you’re on the inner part of your shame. But by the heroes. Now, like I said, you kind of had to dig deep. Now people are used to opening up. So they’re talking about like, “Whoa, and you sleep next to me? I got to keep my eye open when I sleep now.”
Yeah, so that was fun. The truth was, I mean the shame circle, running anger, different exercises to try to put you back in the situation. Basically trying to manipulate your mind to change situations by yelling and screaming and crying with music. The youth, more of the same, but it was more geared toward, go back to when you were a kid when everything was so easy and free and what did you want to be, which was kind of bullshit too. During that workshop, everyone, no, I’m not weak, like most of the people that were there. And I’m not buying into this whole flip floppity, dippity, doppity fucking magic bullshit that they wanted to have me believe in. It just wasn’t for me. It wasn’t real, like what the fuck, I’ll do your stupid shit but don’t think that I’m going to be learning.
I’m like I was basically in school learning how to manipulate. I’ve seen some of the tactics and I was interested, like how the hell did he get him to do that? Man, this is pure power. They’re literally showing you how you could overpower people and be in complete control of the other person. So I was more learning, absorbing, even to this day. Yeah, I went through bullshit when I was there. But some of the things I learned and some of the traits and some of the tactics that I see that they use on the kids, I can see how they did it. That’s how I can say it was a very manipulative, and fucked up place, some of the tactics that they use now that I understand the tactics, were manipulative and fucked up. There is no other explanation besides it was pure unadulterated power.
They had supreme power over you, one, told you what you could and could not do. Two, they knew how to mentally fuck with you. Three, they could isolate you to enhance your punishment. They could turn the entire school against you, if they wanted to. When you see the dynamics of that, it’s too much power unchecked. And that’s why I can see how a lot of people and a lot of kids have a lot of issues after this, because the staff was given too much power over their emotions and their life.
I mean, both sides can argue as much as they want. But that simple fact that the staff had too much power over our well beings, over what we ate, over everything, they had complete control over everything. And when someone has complete control over whatever, they become evil. It’s just human nature. If you don’t believe me, look at the Stanford experiment. It is human nature.
So it can turn you into an animal, basically. So during the Youth, I’m tougher than most people. So they all hear my story. And they want to reflect like, they didn’t understand why I’m not boohoo crying every five minutes, and I’m not as emotionally fucked up as they were, which is, I mean it’s ridiculous. But people hate me for this. They literally would hate me for this. And how do I know they hate me for it? Because they told me they hated me for it. It was either the youth or the heroes, one of those. It was in one of the workshops. One of the exercises was I choose to hurt you. How do I choose to hurt you? Now that’s an interesting exercise. It really is. Because when you think about it, you really understand that wow, I thought you were my friend, dude. You’re literally out to get me and I’m over here thinking that we were best friends.
When you run that I choose to hurt you exercise with your friends, actually matter of fact, that’s probably why I believe I do not believe in friends, probably because I choose to hurt you. If you think about people, they actually make conscious choices to choose to hurt you, then every single person in the group. “I don’t like how you handle your parents’ death.” So basically, I hate you that you can handle it better than I can. This isn’t my fault. But they would hate me for it. And there’s nothing I could do about it.
Like here I am. I got a fucked up life. Everything’s fucked up. And then here are my best Friends, the people I cared about telling me that they hate me because of my life, something I had no control over. That’s not fair to me. Years later, I meet my biological brother and he says, within the first three weeks of us knowing each other, he says, “I envy your life.” How the fuck could you envy a life of nothing but struggle?
17th birthday. Remember, when I was like, my family was the biggest family? Yeah. Do you remember how I also said, now, I had some of the staff, one of the owners of the school was my staff. Well, he wasn’t going to be there for my birthday. He had to go on some vacation or something, some business meeting. So before, my birthday was on a Wednesday, maybe Saturday or Sunday, my counselor took our subgroup, which was like I said seven, eight people. And he threw me a party. So we got to listen to music, have a good time. And I’m not the only one that got to enjoy this. I’m not the only one. There were more people that got to enjoy this. Again, it was like seven to eight people. And it wasn’t for any other thing, because it was my birthday. And my family always forgets, he knew that. Again, he was trying to make Cascade my house, my family, my home.So he wanted to do something nice for me.
Now on my birthday, my program mom I was there. She wanted to do something nice for me. It is a sad thing that when it’s your birthday, you have to beg someone to not do anything nice for you. I begged her, “Don’t do anything for my birthday. Please don’t do anything for my birthday.” Do you think she listened? No, because she was like my mom. she was like, “That’s the most ridiculous shit I’ve ever heard Erik, I’m going to do something for your birthday.” Know what she did? She got me “jack in the box”, a hamburger. She tried to do it in secret. She got me a hamburger for my birthday.
Did she get me just a hamburger? No. She got another one of my friends. And this was her excuse. This is literally what she told me. She said, “Erik, now I brought your friend with you.” Again, I’m not mentioning names, “I brought a friend with you. No one can say that I’m being nice just to you. They can’t say it because I’m not doing it just for you. I’m doing it for this other person too.” And she bought him a hamburger too. Now she got me a little cake. She tried to make a point that “Erik, I’m not doing this just for you. So no one can say that you’re whatever.” And I was like, “Oh man.”, because I’m appreciative. But I knew I was going to get hell for this.
I know you are probably like, I don’t understand. Why would you get hell for someone being nice to you? Remember, I told you, I choose to hate, I choose to hurt you because every person in this bloody environment hated me for some reason. I don’t know why. My life was harder than all of their lives. But for some reason, they all want to take it out on me.
So later that day on my birthday, turning 17 years old, we have one of the largest forums I’ve ever been in. It was the entire family. So like I said, 50 people, kids, then you had the staff. So there had to be like 60 people, and I have never experienced this in my life. And I never will. But it made me tough, made me tough. for my birthday, it was the most ridiculous shit I’ve ever been through. Remember I told you, in a forum, if there’s only one person yelling at you, you got to sit there for 10 – 15 minutes. Well, everyone in this group was jealous that the staff gave me a birthday party and that the other staff bought me a fucking hamburger. So one by fucking one, each of them had their two cents to sit and yell at me, for manipulating the staff manipulating everything else.
The only people, the only people that could not say anything, was my sub family of seven people. So we’re talking what, seven plus me, eight, we’re talking about fucking damn near 42 people, one at a fucking time got to yell and scream at me for manipulating the staff. Now you would think, “Okay, it’s just the students.” No, no, it was the damn staff themselves. This was the one opportunity that I had no protection and not a single person could defend me. They all went ham on me, every last one of them had something to say, yelling, screaming I’m a manipulator. I’m a terrible person. I’m the worst person, the worst person known to man. All I do is manipulate staff and I’m trying to explain to them, “I fucking begged her not to do this. She did it anyway.” “You manipulated her to do it. “How the fuck did I manipulate someone to do something when I’m begging her not to do it?” “That’s how you manipulated her.” “What the fuck are you even talking about?”
Sorry about that. Still got a little energy behind this I guess. All right, so after my birthday… Yeah, we’re going to really sum this up, because I basically have 15 minutes. The school started going to shit. What ended up happening is… Remember I told you a little… The program Nazis. Well, the program Nazis were weak. They were not the strong character people of the school. They were weak, and they built strength from being a Nazi.
When you have the group behind you… It’s like a police officer. Think of a police officer. A police officer without his badge on, he’s just a normal person. And if he’s like 140 pounds, he’s a scrawny normal person that no one will listen to. But he puts that badge on and he has his little stick that if you don’t listen he can hit you, well now he has authority and he has power. But what happens when you have nothing but weak people in those situations, eventually no one cares. They cannot control situations, because people don’t respect them. They only respect the badge. But when the badge is no longer respected, then it doesn’t matter who carries the baton or who is in charge of this little program, the little Nazis of the program, because if you have weak people in positions of leadership, that house is going to fall, and there’s no way it’s not going to fall.
Now just because every last one of these people told me how much they hated me and how my life was so much easier than theirs and how I manipulated everybody. Now after the forum, I’m supposed to forget everything like this shit didn’t happen on my birthday. Do you think I’ve ever forgotten? No.
What happened after that? So part of the reason why all these people could yell at me is because all these people. I was stronger than all these people. Not one of them could approach me alone, so they had to gather 50 people together in order for them to find strength to yell at me, because other than that, I had more influence over each individual person than they knew. I don’t know if this happened or not, but I was told it happened.
Now to sum up my experience at Cascade. I had moved up, so I no longer had the protection of the owner of the school. We had moved up in the program and now they were giving us new counselors. There was a strong counselor, a really strong counselor, but he was white. And the school didn’t want me to be with him. There was a Native American counselor who was a minority, so they figured that it would be best if minorities were with minorities. Now the difference between these two counselors. One was much bigger than I was, stronger, was in the gym, and a no-nonsense type of person. The other one was almost half my size, I was already bigger than he was.
So why did they give me the little scrawny person opposed to the bigger person, the person I would respect to the person that… You better respect me. A little different. You see what I’m saying? So why did they choose that? Never know, because the only way the little scrawny person could get my attention was through punishments by trying to threaten me, that’s how scrawny people operate. They try to inflict power over people, which it’s very difficult… If you’re half the size of the person you’re trying to show that you’re powerful, that’s nearly impossible unless you can use shady tactics, such as a police badge or a counselor badge.
I remember, I got mad. I got real mad one time, and the bigger counselor had to intervene, I would have beat his little ass (my counselor). I would have fucked him up. After what he did, you probably would have joined me. What did he do? I was not in trouble. I didn’t do anything. Since he was the supreme leader of my life, the controller of my life. I can’t even imagine this. These people were like 30 years old. I’m 37 right now. These people are younger than I am right now in complete control of other people’s lives. They suspended me, not a normal suspension you are thinking about. One morning, I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m woken up and told someone needed to talk to me. It’s like seven in the morning. They told me they “saw something in me and they didn’t want it to disappear”. Was my little scrawny counselor the one telling me this? No. It was other staff, staff I respected, so I wouldn’t go berserk on them. I respected them. Where am I going? You’re going to CEDU.
CEDU was a place that everybody knew you never wanted to go to. CEDU was like you’re already in hell, now you get to go meet the devil in the flesh. And everyone knew CEDU was miserable, absolutely miserable. But they decided to send me there, not because I had done anything wrong. Because again, they wanted to test me. I don’t know if this is true. This part, I don’t know if it’s true. When they sent me away, everyone from the dorms came out and watched me leave and had a day of defiance. Which again, I don’t know if this is true. I was told they did that.
Which brings it back to my entire family yelling and screaming at me. So they were yelling and screaming at me. But at the same time, they probably loved me more than anybody else. I don’t know. It’s so weird. They’d follow me, but then also wanting to yell at me and belittle me, human nature.
All my uncles motion and tell me to, “Come in, sit down, and shut up.” My aunt is not the biggest person. She’s probably five-four, not big at all. But she has the voice of a giant, especially for my mom’s side of the family. my dad’s side of the family, my dad was six foot and he was the runt of the litter. Not the uncle I was living with during middle school. He was my aunt’s husband. He was little, he’s smaller than I am. All the other Uncles in town were over big.
I had no choice but to sit down and listen. My aunt proceeded to explain to me what was going on. She said, “Your life is out of control. We’re going to put it back in control.” she told me they thought I was misleading my life and then they explained to me that I would be leaving and I would be going with, (enter three enormous people). And they said, “you will be going with them to Aspen.” I’m like, “Okay.” Seems like pretty cool people. One was a Jamaican and he had a whole bunch of reggae music.
Their job was to transport me from point A to point B. They’re not stupid when they do this. I’ve heard stories where they handcuff the kids, and take their laces from their shoes to walk them through airports. Did you know that this happens? Yes, it happens, I don’t know if it still happens. But in my world it was common.
I had no idea at the time. I was like, “Who the fuck are these people? But whatever. I decided to go with them, one, at my uncle’s house, there’s a gate. So I’m not running anywhere. We were in Atherton, California where everything’s gated. So I went with them. Two, they didn’t explain to me what Aspen was.
The only Aspen I knew, I didn’t know it was in Colorado. I thought, Aspen, the ski place. Now, this is February 2nd. My birthday is February 21st. It’s a funny thing how our mind can play tricks on us. I’m thinking they’re taking me skiing for my birthday because it was ski week at school, the upcoming weekend. All the freshmen were going on some ski trip.
My stupid naive mind thought my family was taking me on a ski trip. The other thing that went through my mind was they were just tired of me and they were sending me back to my biological family. I really had no idea what was going to happen, but I was down for the adventure. I was okay. Let’s go. We fly to Utah. That should have been the first indication that we were not going to Aspen, Colorado. But again, at that point in time, I did not know where Aspen was. It could have been in Utah for all I knew. “I’ve been to Utah before we used to go skiing close to Park City, Utah.” So I’ve been to this airport. Not that bad. It’s freezing. It’s February. It’s freezing, but whatever. I’m trying to tell you, whatever I wanted, they were like, “Yeah, sure. No problem. You want some pizza? You sure you don’t want a hamburger too?” I’m like, Matter of fact, I didn’t even think about it. “Yes, I want a cheeseburger too. Can we get some french fries? Man, can I get a milkshake?” They’re like, “Whatever you want. Oh, you want to listen to this song? Man, here. Here, listen to track number 13. It’s even better.” I mean, they’re making everything great. I’m having fun with these guys. We’re laughing, joking, having a grand old time.
The next day, they take me back to the airport and I’m like, “Why are we going back to the airport? We just got here yesterday.” And they’re like, “Oh no, we got to drop you off to somebody.” “Wait, what?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our job was just to get you here.” “Where am I going?” “Aspen. That’s all we know. I’m sure it’s going to be alright, man. Yeah, it’s going to be fine, man. This is when the, “Where the fuck am I going?” It starts to set in, right?
“You’re dropping me off to somebody else. What the fuck?” the happy-go-lucky is not quite there anymore. It’s kind of a concerned smile like, “What the fuck is going on? we get to the airport and there’s these two ladies. And they’re just the sweetest, nicest people that you can think of. Kind of corny, but not. So I’m like, “All right. I can deal with this. I can get on these people’s good side.” You know what I’m saying? we also pick up somebody else.
Now, this person was a little different, He was 14, I was 15. I’m about to be 16 in 19 days or 18 days now. But there was something about him that wasn’t all the way there. One, he was a heroin addict at 14. So I had smoked weed, at the time, I think I only drank one of Boone’s daiquiri or whatever.
We get in the van. Now, this other person was very different. He had been down this road before and he was trying to warn me like, “Man, you’re about to go to hell, man.” And then all of a sudden his eye goes to the side of his head. I’m like, “What the fuck?” And then he starts hitting his head boom, boom, boom. He’s like, “Oh, man. It’s normal. It’s normal. It does that.” I’m starting to think, “What the fuck? They’re sending me to a loony bin.” But I’m still trying to be positive.
The two ladies have music on, singing. I’m singing along, trying to stay as positive as possible. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Then about an hour down the road, it could have been two hours. We arrive at a cabin on the outskirts of a small town. We get dropped off again. This time we’re getting dropped off to men. Because real shit is about to set in like, “We ain’t in Kansas anymore Dorothy.”
They bring you into this room. Now, they have men now. So you’re not going to fight. Well, you can fight if you want to. Good luck. And then they proceed to tell you to change. Well, first, before you can change, you have to be strip-searched. So they know that you’re not bringing anything in. this would be my first time being strip-searched. However, for me the strip-search wasn’t a big deal because years before when I was in boarding school grown men watched us shower it was a normal thing, they would literally have conversations with you while you’re taking a shower.
So being strip-searched that’s never really been a big issue for me because I’ve had grown men look at me naked since I was a kid. Once they strip-search you, everything becomes very real. You have no idea where you are. They don’t tell you anything. They keep you as ignorant and naive to the situation as possible. They give you, mind you, we’re in Utah and it’s February. “We’re going to freeze our little asses off.” They give you a pair of underpants like long johns. They give you wool pants. If you ever had wool next to you, it itches. It’s miserable, right? But it’s warm. On the top, they gave us a T-shirt. They gave us a green sweater and then they gave us a hoodie. They also gave us a little satchel that could fit two quart water bottles, and a little field study guide.
Your survival pack consisted of two tarps, you’d form them together as a backpack with all your necessities. Your clothes because they gave you extra clothes. I’m trying to think your sleeping bag, your mat, everything of your existence, basically went into these tarps and then you would fold them, and trust me you needed to fold them and have your weight perfect, you were not going to be adjusting, So if you did not have your weight measured perfectly, you one could be lopsided all day long. So you’re walking lopsided because it’s heavier on one side than the other, which is not fun. Or you could have something stabbing you all day while you’re walking. So the importance of packing your pack was vital. The first few times of packing your pack going to mess up. when you add more stuff, you’re going to mess up so it’s almost impossible not to be uncomfortable, at least a few times. So they show you briefly how to make a survival pack.
They purposely let it get dark, So you have no idea where you are. They give you two cans of peaches and a bag of gorp, which is basically trail mix. But it’s gorp at Aspen. Then once it’s dark, they got a guy, I forgot what his name was, but he was impossible to understand. His tongue was attached to the bottom part of his mouth. It was very hard to understand what he was saying most of the time, so you’d be like, “What?” He also had his dogs. So he would tell you straight up, “Bow you run. Me and my dog come after you.” So unless you want dogs and him coming after you dont run. It’s like, “All right. I get the point. I don’t even know where I am.” So they drive you around. It’s at least an hour. They do this on purpose. The longer they drive you around, I mean, they literally could be driving around in circles, but it’s dark, so you can’t see outside. It all looks the same they’re trying to disorient you, so you lose your sense of direction. if they drove you from point A to point B, you could get yourself back out. But the more directions they would take you, the more they would scramble your mind, the harder it would be for you to remember how to get out. So after about an hour of driving you around. They’re on walkie-talkies the entire time like beep, beep, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Beep, beep. You know what I mean?
Once they get you to the point where they want you to go, then he stops the car, some people appear out of what seems nowhere. Again, it’s all dark. And he’s like, “Yeah, you’re going with them.” “What the fuck you mean I’m going with them?” End of the road. You’re going with them. you could think in your head, “Well, Erik, why didn’t you fight?” And do what? I don’t know where I am. I have two cans of peaches and a bag of trail mix. And it’s February in Utah. I’m freezing. The last thing I want to do is fight. The only thing I want to do is get somewhere warm, and now, you’re telling me I got to get out and go into the freezing cold, and is there a fire? Yeah, it has fire.” “I’m out, let’s go.” But then when they get you up there, you learn that you’re not allowed to hike and talk at the same time.
The first night, they’re really nice. But you’re also a run risk. So their niceness isn’t genuine. They’re trying their hardest to feel you out to see what kind of personality you had mentaly. When you first get there, there’s no fire for you. You’re a mouse, mice don’t get access to fires. You have to be a coyote to enjoy a fire.
The first night is one of the most miserable nights you can imagine. Not just because it’s freezing cold. Not because you’re in an environment you don’t know where you are. Not because you have to sleep outside, because the other people in your group know how scared you are. I used to do this after. It was hilarious. Terrible for the first person, hilarious for the people in the group.
What we would do… Mind you, this is your first night. Man, you are scared shitless. You don’t know where you are. They bring you in at night time, so you have no idea what’s going on. You’re freezing and the fire’s over there and you’re not allowed to go to the fire. You’re not allowed to do anything, so you’re basically like this.”Oh my god. I’m freezing. What the fuck is this?” And the people around the fire, they’re like, “Man, how long have you been here?” “Man, I’ve been here for six months, man. They took me from my family and I ain’t seen anyone since.” Mind games. Playing with your mind. So you’re hearing these people a hundred something days, six months. Just straight horror stories. And the staff tells the kids to shut up and they start laughing. But the damage is already done, right? Because in your mind, now you’re preparing yourself, “Man, I’m going to be here for a hundred days, man. What the fuck, dude?” They’re eating, but it’s not like they’re eating anything good. They look like savages around a fire.
They’re dirty. They have different rules, farting and laughing. It’s just a different world. Just imagine, they’ve been out here for quite some time. Normalness is just thrown out the window. So that first night, scary. It was scary. I mean, the staff comforts you like, “You have to sleep between us in your sleeping bag.” so they know if you get up and run.
I don’t like the cold. “You put me in the sleeping bag. I’m not getting out of here. I’m freezing.” So the next morning, I made a choice. So again, you’re not able to do shit, but I was able to read the paperwork. I was able to understand what it was. Okay, I got to read this stupid little thing and do this paperwork and then I can graduate to become a coyote. I think it was two days, all you were allowed to eat was the gorp. It was basically detoxing. It might be part of the reason today I can starve myself because I was trained to be able to starve myself starting at age 15.
So day number two, my mind changes. There was this thing called eagle with honors. I was like, “You know what, if I’m here for however long I am, I’m going to try to achieve the greatest thing that you can, it’s amazing what your mind can do once you accept where you are. So if I had just denied the fact that I’m there, denied it, denied it, denied it then the next day it would have been miserable and the whole time I would be miserable, but I was like, “I’m going to make the best out of my situation.”
Okay. So I’m a mouse now. What do I have to do to get to an eagle with honors? So I just looked, and I was like, “Oh, wow. If you get to buffalo, you get a knife. At eagle, you can eat food that’s hot in the morning.” So my mind just switched from, “Oh, how miserable and how scared I am,” into motivation like, “Let me make my life as easy as possible.” So that’s what I did.
The program was very different. The next morning, when I woke up, I’m still a mouse. So I’m not allowed to talk to anybody, but you can observe. You’re off by yourself. So I’m observing everything that’s going around. Who’s the leader? Who’s the lackey? All that kind of stuff, right? And I’m paying attention to what’s going on.
What they would do is at night time before we go to sleep, we’d have to have our cow patties which is basically cow shit. We would burn our wood, but then when we’re going to bed, we put the cow patties on top of the fire. The reason why we would do this is because cow patties burn at a higher temperature than wood. So then the next morning you have more ash than you have charcoal like low coals. What we would do after that is we would take the… Our whole mission was we had to leave the place better than when we got there. So we had to basically make it seem like we had never been there. everything that we used. we even had to sweep our own steps. So like the fire, since the cow patties would melt, we’d burn it all down into a finer grain. Then we would take buckets and go shift it around to make it look like we were never there. In the morning, the very first thing that they have you do, which is one of the most miserable things to do, when you wake up in the morning, you have to drink a quart of water. Very first thing you do.
It was so cold when we were there that your water would be frozen or there’d be chunks of ice in it. This is how cold it was. I mean, it’d be so cold I’d be trying to move my fingers and I would not be able to move my fingers. To this day, I still have problems with my toes. I don’t have a full feeling in my big toes and sometimes they just ache and they tingle. I got a little bit of frostbite. My feet were basically dying from frostbite. I didn’t get like a full-fledged frostbite, so I still have everything, but it was that cold where you shouldn’t have kids out in those environments.
I learned some valid tactics on how to survive. What we would do at night, when we’re having our campfire… Let me explain the whole campfire. Before you go to sleep, there are two arteries in your legs, your thighs, your main arteries are there. If you need to keep yourself warm, there are two things that you can do. One is if you have to go to the bathroom. Go to the bathroom immediately, your body will shut all your organs down to warm your pee or poop. If you ever notice, it could be snow on the ground, but then you pee and your pee is nice and steamy, right? It’s because your body will not allow the pee to freeze, so it will send all of its energy to warm your bowel movements, which is great, but if you’re cold or if it’s cold outside, then it’s focusing so much energy on your bowels that it’s not warming the rest of your body.
If you get those bowels out of your system, then your body can spread the energy around and almost immediately, your body will raise temperature and you’ll feel a little bit better. You learn that fast. But let’s get before you even go to bed. Remember, they’re making you drink a lot of water like throughout the day. Well, I haven’t told you the amount of water yet. But before you go to sleep, to combat frozen water like.
You would take an MRI or MRE, something like that bottle. It’d be a red canister like about a foot long that is a screw top. It’ll be metal. So what you would do is you’d fill it up with water and then you’d stick it onto the fire until it was basically boiling. And then you tighten it up, put it in two wool socks and then you’d put it in between your legs before you’d go to sleep, that would keep your body warm. It wouldn’t keep you hot for the entire night, but it would keep your system warm. You were insulating your body. Then in the morning you had cold water, but not freezing water, huge difference.
Part of the reason I discussed going to the bathroom is when you were sleeping… So throughout the day, we would have to drink eight quarts of water. you had to go to the bathroom a lot. In the night time, you wake up, you have to go to the bathroom. Remember, I was telling you that all of your energy goes to your bowels. So when you wake up in the middle of the night and have to use the bathroom, you’re freezing because your body is extending all of its energy to keep your pee from freezing. So the rest of your body is absolutely frigid. So what do you do? You have to get out of your little cocoon, use the restroom, and try not to pee on yourself. You have to creep out of your little cocoon you made yourself, use the restroom as close to you as possible because the wind would be freezing, freezing cold. I’m talking about icicles. Never been so cold in my life.
So finding and putting your shoes on, leaving the sleeping bag and going to go find a tree somewhere, yeah, that’s not going to happen. Maybe for the girls, but for me it was, let me lift this bottom tarp up a little and as long as I don’t pee on myself, I’m all right. I didn’t really care too much. It was too cold to care. So now we figured out how to keep the water warm so we don’t have to drink freezing cold water in the morning. We figured out how we don’t freeze to death and how we can warm our body temperature up.
So sleeping. Remember, I was explaining to you about the two tarps. Well, those two tarps weren’t just your survival pack, they would be your shelter, one tarp on the ground for rain water so that you wouldn’t get wet and the second one would be to give you shelter. I’ve learned how to make so many different shelters. Everywhere we went was a different environment, you had to look around and be like, “Hmm. Where do I want to put up my mansion tonight?” Well, what about trash? Trash and then how do you cook your food?
Trash
Once a week when the food people would come, we had to tote around our trash every piece of trash. Remember, every day, we had to clean the campsite to where it looked better than when we got there. So we had to dust our footprints and make it look pretty and pristine. They wouldn’t let us burn it so we had to carry it. You wouldn’t think that you’d have a lot of trash. We’re out in the middle of nowhere. How do we have trash? I’m not sure, but every week, we’d accumulate it.
So every day, the day consisted of wake up, break down camp, hike, break, hike, set up camp, go to bed, do it again. So the person… Carrying trash on the first few days. Easy peasy. They came once a week. So the first couple of days, there’s no trash. But by the sixth day, the trash would be just about as heavy as your own bag. So all day long, you’re having to carry your bag, and then the trash you’re like Santa Claus, all day long. That used to be the absolute worst.
Now, the more responsibility that you have, the more in charge you become the more decisions you were allowed to make like who was unlucky and had to carry the heavy trash. You learn fast the dynamics of groups. So group duce is what we called ourselves. Now, you were either with group duce or you were against group duce. There was no in between. Now, we were a band of brothers until you pissed one of us off and or you said something or you did something and then you’re going to be blackballed from us, our band of brothers. So our band of brothers
Once a week, they take the trash out and then bring you food supply. Now, your personal food was the tortillas, a little piece of cheese, a little bit of butter, a little bit of brown sugar, and bacon. But they gave you a tiny little bit. Now, the group food was beans and rice. Basically beans and rice, survival food. Let’s say they came on Wednesday. If you just try to survive on personal food, you’d be out of food by Friday, they didn’t give a lot of personal food.
For a week you got a half a pack of bacon. you didn’t get much. So it wasn’t like, “Yeah, personal food.” They kind of force you to eat the group food, but what they also told us is… After I got there, the group figured this out really fast that if we work together, we could eat more. We all like to eat, And the longer we cook the longer we are allowed to stay by the fire and enjoy ourselves. We would, and this is absolutely gross, but we would cook. They would never resupply us on personal food, but group food was infinite.
if we ate all the group food, they would have to bring us more food. So we’re like, “All right. Well, that’s cool. We’ll save our personal food, the good stuff for personal use, We will not use any of our personal food so we can stack our personal food. then we could barter it. We liked making stuff, so we would make peach cobbler, donuts and other creative ideas. It was crazy. There’s another black person in my group for a couple of weeks and then he went on a vision quest and I never got to see him again. I mean, that happens a lot, I have lost more friends than i can count, here today disappear in the night and never seen them again.
We had fun, we had a kitchen. This is what I mean by we were group duce. Group duce worked amazing. We all worked together. Not one of us… We were a unit. We weren’t a team, we were a unit. We were like a high functioning unit. If somebody was tired carrying the trash and it was their trash, then another person would pick it up. In the day, we knew we had to hike in silence, but we also knew if we got to the destination faster, then we could have fun, and just relax for the rest of the day.
Group duce worked together and we got places extremely fast. So we would basically be running every single day so then we could have fun. I enjoyed every single person there. Not all the time, but each person in group duce was friends.
Yums
you couldn’t throw any food away. But we also knew in the morning, there was no way to cook beans and rice. So it would force you to eat your personal food for breakfast and lunch and then group food at dinner. We had a novel idea because we didn’t want to waste our personal food, because like I said, we had a kitchen and we’d make big concoctions for the family. We had these great tortillas, we’d smother them with butter, and brown sugar, amazing. I would never eat it now. I would probably throw up, but when you’re out there, it was amazing. The butter, and the sugar, and the fat it was great. We had fat too because we had bacon grease. we would save our grease. We were some innovative kids and we worked together so that’s what made it work. So we literally would save our bacon and grease and throughout the time, each of us would have it and contribute to our concoctions. The only way we were able to do that is we had to cook as much food as we could every night. And one of the big sandwich bags, I’m talking about huge sandwich bags, we would have that much food every morning.
You’re not allowed to eat any other food until dinner food was gone. So the next morning. I mean, there’s probably like 10 of us. We would take our little sticks, our eating device, because they didn’t give you anything. I mean, grab a stick off the ground and clean it up a little bit and hey, you got a fork. I’m not joking either. I’ll explain bathroom in just a minute. And we dig in.
You’d have one metal cup and you’d use this cup for everything and you learned how to clean with dirt. I mean you were allowed to use a little bit of water, but if they saw that you were dumping your water so you didn’t have to drink it then that wouldn’t work. Each of us would have to get an entire cup of freezing cold beans. No flavor, no hot sauce, nothing. Each of us would have to just suffer it down. If you’ve ever had just literally almost frozen beans with no flavor, they’re not the greatest, but we would do it. Every morning, I always talk about how I was trained to do things differently.
That point right there, I was training myself to not think of food as desire, think of it as its only purpose is to fill me up, because there is not a thing that was good about eating those beans, but we did it every single day. it wasn’t just one, it was all. Remember, I told you, we were group duce. So if you thought that you were not going to partake, then the whole group would turn on you. It wasn’t just one. If you thought you were having an attitude with this shit, then you’re not dealing with one of us, you’re dealing with the entire group.
We could be very mean and ugly there was no supervision. We had staff but sociology always wins out. So that brings us to cooking. How did y’all have a fire? Okay. Here’s the other thing. If you were slowing us down throughout the day, you had an attitude with a group duce member. In order to be a group duce member, we had to test you we basically turned it into a gang. We didn’t have any real initiation. We couldn’t beat the shit out of you or anything like that. the only thing we could think was the hardest thing to do was they had cloves of garlic so you had to eat the whole clove of garlic without drinking any water or something. I mean, it was really gross.
Today you know I see people popping garlic like it’s candy. I’m like, “Well, that’s nasty.” But that was our initiation. If you’re a group duce, you were group duce. Just because you were in the group, didn’t mean we accepted you as group duce. You had to earn your way into it. I’m thinking of it man. What a fucked up hierarchy. It’s a good example of life. In this small little group, we had a hierarchy and we created a completely dominant environment. As I proceed with this Aspen, I’ll explain where I became the ringleader.
What happens when you cook. So you have to make a fire to cook. What? Yes. If you wanted to eat hot, if you wanted to be around the circle by the fire, you had to make a fire. So sticks. The bow and our cup. you’d have a glove on your hand because they’d get really hot. You put it down, and this is your bow and then you’d go like this with your spindle and block. And then you’d make enough friction to where there’d be an ember. And then you take that ember and you put it into a nest of wood and leaves and things, and then you’d blow it into a fire.
Each one of us had to do this. Now, we had a group fire to where everyone could work together. But in order to eat hot you had to make a fire. Remember, I told you we were group duce. So group duce took care of group duce. So if you were a part of us and you’re having trouble with your fire, then we would send people to help you cover it. Blow the fire. Make sure that you got to eat hot.
if you were being an asshole that day, and it could be raining outside and it’s really difficult to make a fire in the rain. We wouldn’t help you, there were ways to punish people. If you complained about walking so fast, if you were lazy, if you slowed us down, then you were blackballed and we literally did everything that we possibly could to make your life a miserable fucking hell. Because in our eyes you were making our life hard, we’re going to make your life hard. that’s when the scheduling of who has to carry the heavy bag of trash, who has to do everything. Came into play.
What we would do is put the slow person in front. When a slow person is in front, you have a way to speed that fucker up. So we were not the nicest of kids. I mean all of us, we were great, but if you went against us, we were ugly as fuc. And you’re middle of nowhere, and being in the middle of nowhere with a whole group of kids that are basically ganging up on you… I don’t think about it, because it never came up on me. I was more a ringleader. It wasn’t the best of things. I say the ringleader. If you remember me telling you about space camp, there’s been a consistent thing of Erik being the ringleader, everyone following Erik’s direction.
Water
Where do we get the water? You had to drink eight quarts a day, so where did you get the water? Anywhere we could find it. What does that mean? So if there’s a stream then we’d have to fill our water bottle there. If there was a puddle, we could fill our water bottles there. Well, isn’t it kind of bad for you to drink water out of a stream because then you can get giardia. “Well, what’s giardia, Erik?” Giardia is explosive diarrhea. And yes, you can. You can get giardia from drinking creek water and spring water and river water. That’s why they tell you not to drink it. But we would have iodine, little iodine tablets. So you plop, plop, put your iodine in your water. Wait 15 minutes and your water is now safe to drink. It didn’t matter if it was muddy water. It didn’t matter whatever flavor. It was like Baskin-Robbins. We had 31 flavors of different tasting water.
You might think I’m lying, but I’m not. Every time we got water, it tasted different. I mean, it had the same general iodine taste, but sometimes we get really dirty water. Some really muddy water. So when it’s going down, it’s really grainy. Sometimes we got a little fresher water. Literally, I’ve seen cow patties floating down river while you’re filling your water up. Sometimes you get a little cow patty flavored water.
I mean you got all different types of flavored water. Then for a while we were pushing Mormon carts. I don’t want to ever do that again. That was miserable. Talk about, ugh. What a Mormon cart is, you can Google it. There’s one person in the front, that’s kind of the ox their job is to maintain the level of the cart, because if he goes up, the back goes down. And we’re pushing back here. if he lifts us up, then we’re going down. And that’s really bad on your back, it hurts. If he pushes it down too far, then it’s really difficult for him in the front. It’s easier for us, but it’s not an easy thing. In the beginning, you always like, “Well, that job’s easier.” No, no. I’ll stay in the back, because the back you got two other people you’re pushing all day long. That’s all you’re doing is bent over and pushing a stupid cart day in, day out, all fucking day long. And that’s it. You do that for two weeks. Two weeks you’re pushing carts. And all day long, up down.
The person in the front, I was like, “Yeah, no. Fuck this. This is easier in the front.” So I went in front. 30 minutes later I’m back in the back. Because the front, you’re guiding so you’re literally bouncing all over the place, take into consideration when someone’s pushing on the back, they could be pushing down or they could be pushing up. So it’s not like you’re just holding, you also have to maintain us pushing up and pushing down. Us in the back, we had people, I could talk to this person on my left or I could talk to this person on my right. But the person in front, nothing. There was no iPad, iPods. No music. We’re in complete silence. Well, supposed to be in complete silence. So during that time, we carried our water, which was fun. We had good water the entire time. We had fresher water. You know what I’m saying? I mean, you still had to put your iodine in there, but it didn’t taste like mud. IT didn’t taste like cow patties. It didn’t taste like dirt or grass. It tasted like water.
Explained the carts. Explained the food. Explain school. So while we’re out there because they took me during school. You did get school credit, they taught about rock formation. They taught about the stars. So you got like a crash course on geology and astrology. That was interesting. It was actually pretty helpful. I don’t remember too much now.
Solo
What is a solo? Kind of what it sounds like. At that program, I had three solos. Nine days in the middle of nowhere by yourself with no human interaction. The first solo was eventful, I had visitors every time. I mean, I had friends.They were the small furry kind that jump and run, and they would not leave me alone.
However, I had lots of them. I’m talking about mice, right? The first place they stuck me was a mouse colony. So everywhere, you had to put your food in the air because the mice would try to eat it. So my birthday is February 21st. My first solo ended on my birthday. That was my sweet 16 being on a solo, not being able to talk to anybody really. So that was that birthday. We did however get off that day and then staff found out it was my birthday. Everyone in my family forgot it was my birthday. Staff had to tell them it was my birthday. So I didn’t get anything for my birthday.
When we got off the solo, it started thundering and raining really bad, so my birthday present was we had to go to bed early and couldn’t even eat hot food. Literally, it was just storming. So you couldn’t do anything just basically stuck in your tent, because it was storming that bad. So that was my 16th birthday. One of the staff members, he could make wooden spoons. So he made me a wooden spoon, which to me at that time was awesome. Now, if you were to give me a wooden spoon, I’d look at you like you’re fucking crazy. But at that point in time getting anything was great, but then a spoon was even better, I wasn’t lying when I said you’d have to pick up a stick and that would be your utensil.
So the winter storm. Now, we go to bed. A week before, I looked up in the sky and I was like, you know what, a week from today, there’s going to be a winter storm. Everyone laughed. Well, a week later. They were fucking with me the night before. They’re like, “Oh, Erik, I thought there was going to be a winter storm.” Blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, “Just wait, just wait.” Now, I’m being arrogant.
Well, we went to bed. When we woke up, I ended up losing my spoon because my shit was everywhere. Well, when we went to bed, one of my friends, we had made ourselves a mansion that night. So we had put our tarps together. As long as you could whisper, if you created a tent with somebody else, you guys could whisper all night and just chit chat and hang out. Well, when we woke up, I was wondering, I was like, why the fuck are we so close together? I’m talking about we were mushed together. We look outside and I swear to you, there had to have been a foot of snow that just out of nowhere appeared. And mind you, none of us were prepared for it. Of course, my little arrogant ass was like, “I told everybody. I told you.” I mean, it was a massive snowstorm and none of us knew. We literally went to bed, there was no snow on the ground. We woke up, there was snow everywhere. So what do they tell us? They tell us we have to hike to a yurt because it’s unsafe. There was too much snow on the ground for us to find somewhere to sleep.
A yurt is just like a big army tent. In the yurt, there’s no snow on the ground. We get to the yurt. We hiked all day to get to this yurt, which is not fun or easy hiking in snow. It takes a lot of energy to walk in snow. When we get there, we’re great. Do not, I repeat this, do not take off your clothes because it gets hot in the yurt. It gets hot. We had it raging hot. We were sitting there taking our clothes off. Staff kind of told us like, “Be careful. Taking your clothes off is going to get a little cold at nighttime.”
We’re like, “Yeah, whatever, man. It’s hot as hell in here.” We’re really relaxed. Well, when the fire went out, about 2:00 in the morning… It’s dark we can’t see anything. Whoa, it went from like hot where we had our shirts off and having a grand old time to below freezing to where all of us woke up. we went to bed hot so we weren’t paying attention. Staff was looking at us like “be careful”. And in the middle of the night the temperature dropped on us from 60 degrees to 20 degrees. And it froze every last one of us. One of the worst freezing nights I’ve ever had.
In today’s world, we have toilet paper. When I was out there, mind you, I was there for eight weeks, there was no toilet paper. What did you do to wipe your ass? I got creative. What does that mean? Well, you find out that wet leaves are amazing to wipe your butt. They are the closest thing to toilet paper. Sage worked pretty well, a rock works very well too, but you have to be very careful. Make sure it’s a smooth one because you can poke the shit out of yourself. No pun intended. You can poke yourself with a sharp rock. Sticks work pretty well. They do, but bark tends to come off. So it would not be the prettiest sight. Let’s just say that. So what did you do to wipe your butt? You got creative. That’s what you did. Now, all of us smelled terrible. So sage was kind of like the deodorant. The bath too. I forgot about that. Some of us would have a little sage around our necks.
The worst days were shower days. None of us wanted to take a shower. It wasn’t really a shower. Shower day was this. Now, it’s 30 degrees Fahrenheit outside. So it’s already freezing. Your job is to boil some water, put some soap in there, your everyday biodegradable soap, take a rag like handkerchief, take your bucket of water, go out to the bushes. Mind you, you have to count out loud for staff to hear you. the entire time that you’re doing this and wash yourself. You mean get naked when it’s 30 degrees and take water and clean yourself? Yes.
What did most of us do? We just cleaned our ass. Clean your ass and then you’re done. That’s why some of us had sage we smelled absolutely horrendous. It smelled like a campfire and straight up Body Odor. If you don’t clean your butt, you could get serious problems. I can handle being smelly, but being cold was miserable. I mean, those are some of the most miserable showers I’ve ever taken because it was freezing cold and then you had to count.
I think I’ve covered the basis of Aspen. So let me tell a couple quick stories. I ended up making it into an eagle. I didn’t make it to Eagle with honors like I wanted to
My second solo was fun. I actually had an encounter with an owl. It was one of the most terrifying surreal experiences I’ve ever been through. The first night, it was terrifying. Second night, third night not at all. It was like he was my protector. First night, I had to have picked my sleeping spot under his house or whatever, his perch. Because would I hear, “Woo, woo.” Then I’d hear a boom. He would fly down and it seemed like he was right next to me. If you’ve ever seen owl’s talons, they’re huge. The first couple of times I’m like, “Oh my god. He’s going to get me.” I mean, he was right next to me. But what he was doing, he was eating. He was swooping down, grabbing the mice, and getting them. So the first night, like I said it was as scary as you can imagine. Second night, once I knew I was going to be alright and I was going to wake up the next morning, it wasn’t scary at all. It was just kind of like, “All right, whatever. He’s my protector.” At least, I know I got somebody watching me, watching my back. He’s keeping the mice away from me. So that was a fun experience.
As the time progressed and I became more of a senior member of group duce, more of the leadership came to me. One person graduated then I became more senior. And just my personality, I guess inspired people to follow me more than others. I had done everything I needed to do to move up from buffalo to eagle, but the counselors wouldn’t let me.
My best friend, when you have someone that will go through the nitty-gritty with you, that’s what you need. My friend and I went through the nitty-gritty together. In the end, we were supposed to graduate together. Well, they told me that I would be extended one more week. Not because I did anything wrong, because no one in my family had time. Which crushed me, I had worked my ass off. I had done everything well, and the only reason I was extended because no one had time for me. You heard of people being extended, but it was because of behavioral issues.
It was never because your family just stuck you there a little bit longer because they couldn’t schedule the time to come see you. I mean, they did have seven weeks to schedule it. So I was there for 56 days. So one more week. when they told me, they really wanted to see what type of character I had. Was I going to fold or was I still going to lead the group? For a little bit of time, I self-sabotaged. Fuck this, fuck that. But when you’re in a leadership responsibility or in a leadership role, your attitude is very important to the group. So if I were to be fuck this and fuck that, well, all of group duce, now I’m the senior member and everybody looked to me, would be fuck this, fuck that and it would be very toxic.
The staff took me to the side and they said, “Erik, you’ve done everything that you need to be an eagle, but you’re not acting like one.” what they meant is like just because you accomplished everything that you’re supposed to be, it doesn’t mean that you’re being a leader. There’s two different types of leaders. There’s appointed leaders and then there’s actual leaders.
They could have appointed me as a leader and gave me the eagle, but what they were trying to explain to me is I was already an eagle. I was already in charge of the group. I was already leading the group. It didn’t matter whether they gave me a title or not. I was already an eagle, but I wasn’t acting like one. I already had everyone’s ear. If I said, “Do this,” they’d do it. I was already in control of the group, but I didn’t have the title so I didn’t act like I was. But when they told me that, I started to switch. And I started to act like an eagle. And I started telling everybody, “Don’t worry about it. Don’t get on the staff.”
I reigned in my suicide squad, and I told them all, “Just don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about me being an eagle. It’s fine. We still have to do this. We still have to do that.” no longer was I trying for the title, I was just going to lead this group because I knew that this group needed me. So when I started doing that, then they saw the switch and they took me outside and they did a whole ceremony and said, “Soar like an eagle.” Later on in life, especially the older I get, I kind of see it like I can convince people to do a lot. But at a point in time, you have to make sure that you’re able to persuade or sway people in a positive manner, opposed to a negative matter.
Just that story comes back to me a lot sometimes when I’m trying so hard for something, if I look back, and I step back, I realize I already have it. If that makes any sense. I didn’t get to graduate with my friends, but what the staff didn’t tell me is that it wasn’t just one person that was trying to come to my graduation, it was my uncle who I’m named after. It was him. It was my aunt and it was my other aunt.
The other two females, yes, my family, but they’re my mom’s brother’s wives. So the entire time I was gone, my mom’s brothers, my actual uncles refused to talk to me. Tough love. They would not talk to me, would not write a letter, wouldn’t do anything. I guess they were preparing me for later in life when later no one would talk to me.
This is the time that they told me I would not be going home. That crushed me, I was under the assumption that if I worked as hard as I could, then I would get to go home, but they were like, “No. You’re going somewhere else.” My aunt drove me to the airport.The longest and one of the last conversations the two of us had was after I took a shower. I didn’t get to see anything. I didn’t get to say hi to anyone in my family, anything. Just transported to the next Gulag.
Then when I got to the airport, the same people who brought me to this experience. Were there again. It was good to see familiar faces, and at least it was the same people that escorted me the first time. So I got in the truck with them. We flew to California, and then we rented a car, and we were on our way north.
welcome back. Last chapter we were discussing my middle school and I was bringing us to the point where one set of aunt and uncles no longer wanted the responsibility of me and my sisters. Really, they didn’t want the responsibility of me. Since I was no longer going to be at boarding school, I was going to be living at home. It was mutual, I couldn’t stand them and they couldn’t stand me. I couldn’t have been happier to never have to go and be in their existence again when I was leaving. So we literally went seven miles across the street to my other aunt and uncle’s house, my mom’s side of the family. During the summer, it was different. There was no school, so the environment at my new aunt and uncle’s house was really relaxed, there were no responsibilities. I had my basketball and I had football. I was a year older, remember, I repeated sixth grade, I was able to be on the varsity football team because of my size and my athletic ability.
At the time through eighth grade, I was on three different basketball teams. I was with the school, AAU, then a city team. So me and my buddy, who used to live in the dorm with me, were literally traveling every day and every night. If we weren’t at school practice, we’d be at a different practice. If we weren’t at that practice, we’d be at a different practice. So we were all over. That summer, it was mostly just AAU, we would travel around California basically, The furthest we traveled was to Las Vegas to play basketball.
When I came back from Vegas, it was time to start school. When school something was brand new. They weren’t as sport-oriented as my middle school. When I asked, “Why am I taking a foreign language?” They were like, “Because you have to.” And I was like, “Well, I’ve never taken a foreign language before. I don’t want to.” They’re like, “You have to take a foreign language.” As long as I could play sports in middle school, why did I need a foreign language? I was athlete of the year.
Well, being an athlete and only thinking that sports mattered affected my life in a negative way. Through middle school, anything I wanted, I got. It did not matter. I was this statistic in the grade and I was an athlete. I was always in trouble, but I always got out of it somehow.
for three years, I was the master of my own destiny. I lived in a dorm, didn’t have parents. It was weird living at home every night. In the dorm, you have dorm parents, but it’s different. They’re not your parents. They’re not your guardians. They’re just kind of like a glorified babysitter.
But when I moved in with my aunt and uncle, then it was less structure, more rules, if that makes any sense. So the structure was completely different. I mean, I could go to the refrigerator when I wanted to. I could do whatever I wanted, but more rules as, “no, Erik, you don’t get to decide what you want”.
Physics. So now I’m taking a foreign language, never had to take a foreign language, got introduced to marijuana over the summer. Well, not really the summer. Yeah, it was about the summer, end eighth grade, early summer. When I first started, I was probably really stupid and slow. So physics was not making any sense to me. Mind you, I would smoke right before physics class.
All the other kids of color. They didn’t consider us smart enough to learn physics as freshmen. got to drop physics for the first year, they could take it later. It was too advanced for us. So I’m like, “Yeah, it’s too advanced. It’s too advanced.” I wanted a study hall.
Study my ass off on something I had no interest in, or go smoke and have a study hall, which one would you choose? Obviously, smoke, study hall. My family was not going for that. They disagreed with physics being too difficult for me. They took the stance of “Erik, you have to at least put in some energy. If you never pick up the book and you never open it, yes, physics is going to be difficult. But we’re not going to let you give up”. And I’m like, “I can’t do it.” They’re like, “Open the book.” I’m like, “That’s an awful idea, but no, I can’t do it. I can’t do it.”
Three years before, the other family, they would have been like, “Yeah, he’s just not smart enough. He can’t do it.” And they would’ve given me a study hall. Would have been easy. Well, this new family, they told me straight out. They said, “Erik, if you do not give 100% effort and show us that you are trying, we’re going to make you take that F. And then you can drop out of that class.”
I’m going to say that again. I didn’t believe them. I did not believe them because it was not up to the school. It was my family who made this decision. The school would have dropped me. My family was like, “No, you will take this F. And this F will follow you forever, this is a decision that you’re making.” Talk about being a kid to being an adult fast.
Now, of course, what do you think I did? I took the F. Well, by taking that F, my family took me off of football. This was the first semester, all the way up until Christmas, this was an argument, so midway through basketball season. Now, they took me off the football team, but they told me they will not take me off of basketball. They will let the school do that.
Now, I wasn’t paying attention. I literally still thought that I could get out of everything. But when I took that F, I was like, “Man, fuck.” So what did that F mean? That meant that now I was on academic suspension for playing basketball. I didn’t know that was really going to affect everything. I could get back on the basketball team, but that means that I would have to increase my grades and show everybody that I was trying.
That was the end of the year. Come January, I had a new perspective. They took me off the team. I was like, “All right, I’m going to start putting more energy into this to try to get my grades up so at least I can maybe play spring sports and get myself ready for next football season.” The cutoff for fall sports was coming up. I mean, it wasn’t like next year is a new year. You could be on academic suspension for more than a season, if you never changed your grades. So that was kind of a wake-up call because they took the one thing that for years, that’s the only thing that schools cared about is that I could play sports. Now I’m in a new school and they don’t care. They literally ripped the sports away from me and said, “Sorry.”
Remember, middle school Harker and my uncle I was living with at the time was very frustrated with the school. He had been dealing with the owners of the school on a personal basis for three years, and it felt like a slap in the face when they just had some random secretary call and say I didn’t get into the high school. All right. So fast forward to the fall. I ended up going to a dance back at the old school. And the dean of the high school, which was my basketball coach, basically seventh and eighth grade. And he was my math teacher in sixth grade. He’s watched me grow up and he had been my coach. The relationship that a young athlete and their coach has is a close relationship. It’s kind of like a father figure.
He said, “Why are you not home? Why aren’t you here?” This is the dean of the high school. I told him, “I didn’t get accepted.” He looked at me like I was just crazy. And he was like, “What do you mean you didn’t get accepted? I’m the dean. How did you not get accepted? I would have seen this.” I was like, “I don’t know. I didn’t get accepted.” that really affected me because it’s like, well, what the fuck? What do you mean? The dean of the high school, my old basketball coach, is asking me why I’m not going to this school. I’m telling him I didn’t get accepted, and he’s looking at me like I’m crazy.
The next day, I was talking to my aunt. Mind you, I wasn’t at the family that I’d been living with for three years. This is the new family. This is my mom’s side of the family. Well, I told her the story about the encounter I had with my basketball coach and now the dean of the high school. And she told me, “Oh yeah,” and she said this nonchalant like it was like everyday news. She’s like, “Yeah, the school wanted your uncle to donate a lot of vans and your uncle said he wasn’t going to do it. And so, you didn’t get accepted.”
I’m going to say that one more time. The response was the school wanted to bribe my family in order for me to go to school. But my uncle did not accept the bribe, so the school did not accept me. So when my uncle on my dad’s side of the family got the phone call and was like, “Well, that’s weird. I’ve been talking to the owners of a school for years. Why are they just basically brushing me off like I’m a nobody?” Well, because the owners of the school had been negotiating with my other uncle as well, the entire time. And when he shut the money off, they kicked me out.
So let’s go back to sixth grade when I was like, “How did I end up going to Japan?” Because my family paid for me to go to Japan. And they probably paid for the only other black person, because I told my uncle I wanted him to go too. That is a very important thing for y’all to remember, because my family has done this on more than one occasion when I was older. They all tend to manipulate situations through finance. When you have something that other people want, you can kind of dictate a situation more than you should be able to.
I mean, years later, I have extreme trust issues with everything nothing in my life has been what it seems. There’s always something being a puppet master. something as large not accepted into a school because my uncle didn’t want to donate cars, that’s below shitty. But whatever, abandonment again.
All right, move forward. Now, during this time, this large argument with my mom’s side of the family over physics, caused a strain on the relationship, obviously. So during this time of the argument with my family, they had three little kids. They would fly to Utah, we were in the Bay Area, California. They would fly to Utah because their kids were on the ski team. So every weekend, they’d fly out to Utah. They were little kids, so it was okay for them to miss school. And they were way more advanced, so it was fine.
My grades were terrible, so they were like, “Uh-uh (negative), you’re not going, Mr. you want to fight us over physics. You’re not getting any perks.” So I wasn’t going. Well, since I wasn’t going, they had to send me somewhere. So at this point in time, during the week, I’d be with this family. During the weekend, I’d be back at my other aunt and uncle that didn’t really want me there, and I sure as hell did not want to be there. I was basically living in a divorced family’s house because on the week I’d be at one house and, on the weekend I’d be at a different house, switching back and forth. My sister was a senior at the time and I was a freshman.
So February, Super Bowl Sunday, I’m at my aunt and uncle’s house, my dad’s side, the ones that I didn’t particularly like. So I’m bored. I am extremely bored. By this time I’d been smoking a little bit of weed. I had some weed, while waiting for the Super Bowl, I was like, “You know what?” I mean, I was such an idiot. But at my mom’s side of the family, I could hide somewhere on the property, smoke, and change my clothes, wash my face, and no one would know. But at my dad’s side of the family, I couldn’t go on a walk unless I had permission. And then when I came back, it was more like a Nazi camp. I had eyes on me at all times. I couldn’t do anything. So the night before, I was taking a shower and I smoked a bowl in the bathroom and nothing happened. There were people walking in the hallway and nothing happened. So I was like, “Okay, okay, well, I can smoke in the bathroom.” Not a smart idea. “I’m going to smoke a quick bowl and then come back down, play some video games and wait for the Super Bowl.”
I go upstairs to the bathroom, I pack my bowl, and smoke a little bit. out of nowhere, bam, bam, bam knocking on our door. I open it, and I’m a“deer in the headlights”. My uncle said, “Give it to me.”I almost had a heart attack. He scared the shit out of me, I was too high to process anything.
I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I do remember he called the police, they weren’t going to take me to jail, but the police offered this place. I remember they were talking. I was grounded as usual, stuck in my room. they called every member of the family, like I had just murdered somebody. This is just marijuana. I know, it’s crazy. Marijuana is legal and used for post-traumatic distress syndrome, it’s good for you.
They called the police, told everybody in the family, police gave them this idea for troubled teens. And then when my uncle on my mom’s side came, he picked me up because they were getting back that night. My sister had already gone home, but I had to wait. My uncle picked me up by myself.
You would think he’d be yelling, screaming and all this kind of good stuff, he didn’t. We went home and he said nothing. He brought me into the room and he started crying. And I mean, this is my uncle. This is the person I’ve been looking up to. And I would have never thought that he would cry at all. And he said, “Erik, you don’t know what you’re doing. You are throwing your life away. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”
That affected me more than anything. It would have been easier if he had just yelled and screamed at me, but that tactic, I was not ready for that. not much I could do either. So the next day at school, everybody knew. I was kind of popular now in a weird way because everyone was asking me what happened.
Don’t forget, my sister was a senior. I was a freshman. So even seniors were coming up. And also at that time, it was really difficult for me because I played varsity football. So all my friends were juniors and seniors, but I was a freshman. I knew a lot of people in my freshmen class, but I wasn’t really close to any of them. Plus they were all a year younger than me. So the natural age group I was, was a sophomore. So all my friend group were sophomore, juniors and seniors to where those people, they’re more advanced. They’re older kids and I was an older kid. I was turning 16 in my freshman year. I was in the age group of the grade above me. It was just more natural I hung out with them.
Wednesday, February 2nd, I remember that day very well, I was getting in an argument with my best friend at the time. At the time, we were young entrepreneurs. So we were trying to figure out how we were going to make a little bit of money. Now, of course I was in trouble at home, but I figured it would be in a couple of weeks and everything will go back to normal and whatever. As long as I could get my grades back up, by summer time, this would be in a distant memory. So back to business as normal.
My friend and I were embarking on a new business venture “mushrooms”. We wanted to see if there was a market to make some money. He knew where we could get them for cheaper, and then we would try to flip them. So we were in a heated argument about who knows, because it’s not like we’re arguing about lots and lots of money. We were probably arguing over about $50 worth of mushrooms or something, not very much. I don’t remember exactly what the argument was about, but we were arguing. That was the last time we would talk for years.
So what happened? There’s two places you can be picked up. You get picked up at the back or in the front. It was typical for me to meet my sister in the back. This was my sister’s first day of work. She was working at Starbucks. During football season my aunt would pick me up from the back as well.
A weird thing happened. I was called to the front of the school, “Your uncle’s here to pick you up.” I was like, “My uncle? Why would my uncle come and pick me up?” I had no idea why he was picking me up. This was probably the first time ever he stopped doing what he was doing, stopped working, and came to pick me up from school. I knew something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t connect the dots.
So I get in the car and we’re driving, he’s in a good, cheery mood. So I’m almost like, “Yeah, this was faster than I thought! A couple days and he’s already over it? Alright. This is easy.” We pull into the gate, there’s no cars, so I can’t tell what’s about to happen. I go in. I’m about to drop my backpack off and I kind of turned the corner a little bit and my aunt is like, “Erik, come here.”
When I turn the corner, I look in the room and both sides of the family, mom’s side and dad’s side of uncles are sitting down and they’re like, “Erik, sit down. We have something to talk to you about.” Now that brings us to the next chapter.
Welcome back, where did we end? We ended with mom coming out of the hospital and rejoining the family at home . My mom is having to walk with a cane, not doing superb. She’s doing very well at all. But then we got word that her mom had died. My grandmother had been sick. She had cancer, leukemia I think, I don’t remember what kind of cancer, her dying, wasn’t random, but it also wasn’t the best timing. All right.
It was less than a month after my dad died, then my grandmother died. we had to go to Ohio, I don’t really remember how we got there. I just remember we got there. And, once in Ohio, that’s where my mom was from, a little itty-bitty town in Ohio. That was kind of cool. I mean, mind the funeral and everything, as I learned how to play chess, I also learned how to tie a tie.
Back to Asheville I Was in 5th grade, I don’t remember very much. Well, I don’t want to foreshadow too much. But before middle school, life after my dad died was different. My mom changed, she wasn’t… I mean, mind you she was… If you remember, she was always kind of high strung a little bit and she was more the loud and yelling one, and my dad was more the relax, calm down.
But after my dad was gone, my mom, towards me, she changed. not in a negative way, more in like, “Erik, life’s about to get fucked.” Right. “So, I need to teach you everything that you need to know to survive.” I don’t think she trusted much of anything and she was taking a handful of pills everyday just to stay alive. I think she knew that she was going to die soon, or life was never going to be the same as it was before my dad died.
After we got back from my grandmother dying, things went back to “normal”. back to school, all that kind of good stuff. like I said, my mom changed. what she was teaching me, (she was alone, you would think that people would be really supportive, right?) But most people turned their back on my mom, or not just my mom, on us.
My dad was a doctor and had just opened a practice (partnership). They didn’t want to help my dad died too fast, So it would bring up the insurance premiums for all the other doctors. So they were against the million dollar payout or whatever it was to my mom, because they said my dad hadn’t contributed enough to the practice. you learn, everyone wants to say, “Oh yeah, so sorry,” and everything, but once everyone’s tears dry, then that’s how they really act.
My mom became isolated so we became isolated. I could tell, but not tell she was really stressed. she would give me another… I would want to say fucked up life lesson, but it’s not a fucked up life lesson if the things she told me during this span of time, I still keep in my head. And I’m still alive, doing well for myself
She has three kids, one of her kids is black. When there’s a mom and a dad, when there’s two parents trying to raise a black, it’s a lot easier. When there’s just a female, there’s more snickering like, “What is she going to do with him?” all that other kind of crap. people’s true opinions come when people are in need. You would think that people would be more sympathetic, but that’s rarely ever the case. mom sensed this and I’m pretty sure she’s seen, my life was just about to go to fuck. Not even shit, it was about to go to fuck.
she told me how much money I had, she told me what was supposed to happen if she died. she opened up to me more than anyone else. At least, I would think she did because she told me things that my sisters are like, “What?” And I’m like, “She didn’t tell you this?” And they’re like, “No.” So that’s why I’m thinking she opened up towards me.
October comes, almost a year since my dad died. My mom got sick, remember she had to take a handful of pills every day. I’m in 6th grade, 6th grade was different. My teacher was my mom’s friend so I couldn’t get away with anything. My sister was in 8th grade. all the 8th graders knew who I was because I was my sister’s little brother. So it was completely different, right. It was a different environment. But again, that changed rapidly come October. When we got home the ambulance was at the house, we went into my mom’s room, she’s crying and screaming, in excruciating pain. Like, “It won’t stop hurting. It won’t stop hurting.” they have to take her out on a stretcher. I was 11 at this time, so she had an 11 year old, a 13 year old and now a 15 year old. So they took her to the hospital and everything was kind of normal. I mean, she was just going to the hospital so I didn’t think anything too bad of it. I didn’t think any good of it either, but I didn’t think that was going to be the last time she was ever going to be home.
So we stayed at either my aunt and uncle’s house or my neighbor’s house those first couple of days. I think it was my neighbor’s house because they were just nMy sisters and I got an intercom call Thursday during school. The principal calls the Johnson kids to the office. She told us that we needed to go to the hospital, that something had changed and we needed to go to the hospital.
My middle sister lost it. She asked the question, “Is my mom going to die?” The principal told her, “No honey, she’s not going to die.” We just need to get you guys to the hospital. So they packed us up, and we went to the hospital and spent some time with my mom. By this time, they had attached the heart monitors so we could see her heart beating. She couldn’t really talk to us, but I knew it was important for us to be around. My family had been called, Her dad and her brothers, about 11 o’clock at night, they told us we could go home, she looked stable and they didn’t think anything was going to happen.
We went to my aunt and uncle’s house and we went to sleep. Around five o’clock in the morning, we were woken up and told we had to go to the hospital immediately, that something had changed and my mom needed us to be at the hospital. We went to the hospital and the first thing we saw was my next door neighbor. He was a doctor as well and he came out, crying. He said, “She’s not going to make it.” we were with her, holding her hand, my family arrived and we watched her go.
Now, my heart hurt so much at the time because everything that my mom was warning me was now coming true and I hated her for it. I hated her so much as she was leaving me. I couldn’t cry. I told myself you could save her if you just tell her that you love her and hold her hand and give her a kiss. I couldn’t do it. I watched my mom die, everything in my life changed the second she died.
Right after she died, war began, back at my house, my home a couple changes were happening.
My mom told me we were going, if anything were to happen and she died, we would be moving to California to be with her oldest brother, he was financially able to take care of us. Well, the State of North Carolina disagreed with that. They said that, yes, he is financially stable so we will give your estates to him to look over. But since you have family in the Carolinas, they will be responsible for your wellbeing. Since our house was bigger than my aunt and uncle’s, they moved into our house. So last night this was my house, tonight this is no longer my house. It looks the same, my bed’s in the same place, matter of fact, some of the food that was there yesterday is still there. But this is no longer my house, it was their house. No longer my rules, it was their rules. it does not matter your mom let me do this yesterday, those were her rules, these are our rules. See how that poses a problem? It was not fun. It was actually miserable. I felt it was worse than jail. I mean, I’ve been to jail a couple times, not for long or extended periods of time, but it was worse because every day was just miserable. Just being yelled at, all the time, being threatened with punishment on a daily basis it was just horrible. It was so miserable to this day I have nothing to do with that family and I never will. I do not want to hear anything about them, I don’t care. If they were on fire, I wouldn’t pee on them. That’s how much I do not care. It wasn’t just because of this small situation. This was the beginning years of straight shit.
It was a miserable living situation. Everything I was accustomed to my entire life changed in my own house, so I was no longer able to do anything that I was able to do before. All the music my mom bought me, they didn’t like so they confiscated it. Anything they did not like, even though I might have had it for years, they confiscated video games, confiscated… being locked in my room was a common thing. So that’s why I’m used to being stuck in a room. I was stuck in a room all the time, under their dictatorship.
After my mom died, school changed as well. They took me out of normal classes in the morning and gave me a personal tutor because “they said” I was too disruptive in class. They made me go to some kind of psychiatrist a little bit but that didn’t last very long because I didn’t want to talk to anybody (my thinking was and still is, can anyone bring my parents back? No! So why worry about things I cannot control? I have problems I can control best to focus on those things.) I just basically felt like my parents were on an extended vacation, maybe that wasn’t the best thing to do. But that’s what I did.
Remember, when my mom died the state said that the money can go to my uncle but we cannot. Well, the family that moved into our house had no money and no job. So we ended up moving to California anyways, so that my uncle that had the money and was able to take care of us and could give my other uncle a job he could take care of us. It would have been a world of difference if what my mom wanted happened. For this reason, that family (my moms brother) was more open and more advanced. Technologically advanced, socially advanced as well a different mindset. When you’re raised by the owner of a company or even the daughter of the owner of a company, it’s a different mentality as being raised by an employee of a company. Does that make sense? My mom came from a family of people that owned things. My dad came from a family of people that didn’t own anything. Two very different worlds. So when I was raised, my mom raised us, the only way she knew how. In the way of an owner, that type of way. Well when she died, the state thought it was more logical for us to go with a family that had nothing. Opposed to a family that was the same as my mom. The best way to put it, if we went with my mom’s side of the family, we wouldn’t have had to use our own money to survive. But with my dad’s side family, we had to use our own money for everything. The house we bought when we moved to California was 25% my house. The car was 25% mine. So basically everything was 25% mine. Part of the reason I have nothing to do with my dad’s side of the family is one day, in middle school, I don’t remember what year, it might have been in 7th grade. I repeated 6th grade. I was looking on a computer. I had to do something and I saw how much money my sisters were paying per month and how much money I was paying. Now mind you, I am at school, I’m not living at home, I live at boarding school. However I’m paying $500, my sisters are each paying $250, but I’m not even living in my own house, I’m living in a dorm. I’m living in a dorm but my sisters are paying half the amount that I’m paying. Is that fair? No. After I saw that, I truly lost all respect for this family. You’re robbing me blind, locking me in my room like a jail cell (in a house I am part owner) and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can do nothing about my own money.
When we first moved to California. I was told I would have to repeat 6th grade because my grades weren’t good enough, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I was like, “All right, whatever.” They first took me to this little rinky-dink middle school that was a Christian school, everyone there was like half my size. Coming from North Carolina and going to California was a culture shock to say the least. In Asheville at the time, there was like maybe one Asian family and I knew them, it was mostly just black and white. Then moving to California, I got to meet an Indian. Like not a Native American, like someone from India. I didn’t even know that half these countries even existed, but I got to meet a whole bunch of them because California was a little bit more diverse than Asheville was when I was growing up. I noticed they were all kind of small compared to me, they were a year behind but they were tiny, there shouldn’t be that big of a difference, but they were just little people.
I was at that school for a week, then one day I don’t know, my mom’s side of the family came with us and we were headed off to a different place. And, that other place was Harker and when I got there, I don’t remember if I left or what happened. I just remember once I got there, it was like, “Erik, you’re going to this school. What do you want to do?” I was like, “All right, yeah. This is great. I’ll take Japanese,” “Are you sure Erik?” “Yes, I am. Let’s do it.” yeah, not a very good idea. But this school, compared to the little rinky-dink that I was just at, the religious place, this was massive. It was immaculate. It was better than in North Carolina, I was in heaven, they had rows of basketball courts outside. They had soccer fields I mean, it was a beautiful piece of property. The catch was “You have to live here.” At the school. Weekdays in the dorm and weekends at home. “All right, whatever. I can do that. That’s not bad at all.” I was a bigger person so I had authority in the dorm. They left me alone. That’s where I learned to like waking up very early because when you’re in a dorm and there’s only a finite amount of water, I learned that if you’re the first person awake, you get the hot water. Not very many people spoke English. It was an ESL (english as a second language) boarding school so almost everybody was from Asia. There was one white kid, but he was from Russia.
That first year living in the dorm was an experience. Everybody was brand new, no one spoke English. And the culture, coming from North Carolina to basically living in little Asia was very different. It was fascinating, learning about the food and culture. Remember I was trying to take Japanese which was stupid. I didn’t do well at all. I got like a 6% or 13%, something like that.
Eric Johnson:
However, the school was going to Japan. They were opening up, with a sister school Tamagawa, an exchange program. So for 16 days you could go to Japan and then the Japanese kid would come and live with you for a little bit. That sounds awesome. So at this point in time, I was known as a statistic. So there’s white privilege but then there’s also black privilege.Black privilege is when a white school has one black kid, they want to include the black kid in as many things as possible so then it raises the numbers, and gives great opportunity for pictures.
If they had just sent all of one nationality to Japan, then we’re not a very diverse school. But if you were to send the two black people that were in the grade, oh wow, now we’re a very diverse school. Now, you can believe that if you want… That had a lot to do with it. The other part had a lot to do with my uncle. I wanted to go, for someone that’s failing at Japanese, going to Japan makes perfect sense, right? How much did it cost my family? How much did it cost me? In all actuality, who knows? But the reason I say that is because what happened at the end of the Harker story.
I am in detention every other week, the rules in California were much stricter than they were in North Carolina. In North Carolina we had known each other since we were kids. He had been with each other for the last, what? Maybe five years? 2nd grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, 6th grade. Yeah, five years we had known each other. We had grown up together, there was only 36 kids in my grade, so we all really knew each other very well, we didn’t snitch on each other. It was kind of us versus the teachers more or less. But in California, the other students were not as loyal. if I were to do something, then they immediately would go tell on me, and then detention. this one kid he was a little brat, we were in dance class, he was being an asshole. so I stepped on his foot, he went and told on me. Detention. Like what the fuck dude? You little cry baby. So everything that I did, I was always in trouble, I never could get away with anything. If I looked at somebody wrong, detention.
Now the other black kid, he was the smart one. He was trying to take French and could always articulate his words and he was the nerdy one. I was more of the troublemaker and he was the nerdy one. But turns out, we ended up both being in the dorm. So his family had gone through a divorce or something like that and so the best place for him was living in the dorm. He didn’t have anywhere else to go. So he had joined me in the dorm. We ended up becoming more than friends, it was more like we were brothers because when you literally spend that much time with somebody, they’re your brother. we basically lived together.
We woke up at five o’clock in the morning together, so we could both hog all the hot water. And then, we would go eat together, eat our breakfast because when you’re the first people there, the food is hot. You get to choose, It’s the best food when you’re the first one there. And then we’d go back and we’d get to do whatever we wanted to do until school, play basketball or anything, go to school early. So we did that basically for two and a half years because I think he moved in halfway through our 6th grade year, or it could’ve been the beginning of 7th grade, whatever. And we were the only two black kids in our grade, so naturally we became best friends.
Japan was awesome. Well, I was 13. For a 13 year old, it was amazing. I have absolutely no reason why I haven’t gone as an adult, I just haven’t gotten on an airplane and gone. But when I was a kid, it was just amazing to see the technology they had compared to America. They were just so much more technologically advanced than we were. And then, learning the culture and then going to their school and seeing the discipline. Like us in America, we had basketball practice after school. this is middle school, this isn’t like high school. These kids had to be at school at five in the morning. They had to be up and ready, not just up, up and ready at five o’clock in the gym practicing before school.
I mean, it was cool and we got to travel around Japan, taking pictures and seeing the temples and all that kind of good stuff before we went to the school. But when we went to the schools, just seeing the way they learned was completely different. So that was fun. During 6th grade, we also went to Yosemite National Park, again. The outcasts. the outcasts = the black kids and the fat kid. Everyone else had little cliques and everything. Well me and my buddy, we had our clique and then the fat guy, he was on his own so he roomed with us.
they gave us little cabins, it was three per cabin. We ended up shutting the whole thing down because we had a party over at our house. I don’t know how we did this, but we ended up getting in trouble. Not like in serious trouble, just probably a couple hours of detention. Couple more hours of detention for causing trouble.
In 6th grade, they allowed me to drop a foreign language. So after Japanese, I never had to learn anything, I got a study hall. So education never was really important to me. No one ever told me that I needed to learn. It was always, how do I figure out how I don’t have to do something? Or, in the easy class. So they would put me in all the easy classes. They would put me in study halls as long as I could play sports, that’s all they cared. Every year I was there, I was at risk of being kicked out.
I remember one time they were having… My uncle was there, it’s funny that he’d come for that but no one ever had time to watch me play sports. That’s crazy. I didn’t think about that. Yeah, I just thought about that. That’s fucked up. You couldn’t come and watch me play, but you could come and talk to the school. Well, it doesn’t matter. I was playing football or something, in the meeting, they’re talking about me being expelled for behavioral problems. in the middle of the game, I’m sweating, dripping sweat everywhere, they call me into the office and they sit me down and they’re like, “How many points have you scored?” “I’ve scored two touchdowns man, and I’m out there destroying.” They’re like, “All right Mr Johnson,” this is home. And I was allowed to stay, as long as I could play sports I could stay. It makes sense, they were opening a high school.
In 7th grade, where did we go in 7th grade? We went to Alabama, Space Camp. Now Space Camp, I do not know exactly what happened but yeah, we all got in trouble, like all of us. My whole crew, we basically made the staff cry. Like we were just terrible. I don’t even remember what we did, I just know that… I didn’t go home. I didn’t go back with the class, I went to North Carolina after. But it was told that when we all got back, the entire school was not very happy with me and my crew which… I don’t remember exactly what we did. But not very friendly, we didn’t win very many friends.
I went back to North Carolina for some memorial for my parents. There were so many people meeting us, so many people I didn’t even know, celebrating my parents. That was the last time I saw Asheville for years. So 7th grade, living in the dorm, I went home less and less every time I went home, I got in trouble.
My Uncle found a porno under the bed and I’m all hell broke loose. I was grounded for the entire summer, not allowed to leave my room for the entire summer, that was fun. The only thing I was allowed to do that summer was sit in a room, if I wanted to earn TV time or earn time out of the room then I’d have to read books. Well that would be great but then they’d give me a book, I read it and I read it so fast then they told me I was lying, that I didn’t read it. So then I read it and had to write a paper, so I read it, wrote a paper and they still thought I was lying and cheating.
Going home was miserable and towards the end I never wanted to go home. I never wanted to go home. No matter what happened, it was always my fault. I remember this one time I had just got home, literally just got home. Hadn’t gone to the bathroom, anything. Hadn’t been home for more than 30 minutes. My uncle comes yelling and screaming at me. He’s like, “There’s piss on the toilet seat.” I’m like, “I haven’t…” Like, “Why are you telling me?” “I know it was you.” “I haven’t even gone to the bathroom. It’s impossible for it to be me.” Now I was a liar, all this shit all over pee on the toilet seat that… I hadn’t even gone to the bathroom but I’m getting berated. Just, “You’re a liar. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And, “You’re grounded now.” So here I am, back in trouble over something I didn’t even do.
I liked Skittles when I was growing up, here’s another example of just get grounded, be trapped in a room. Just get home from school, mind you I was only in this house two days out of the week, all right? So two days, the rest of the time I was at school. Two days out of the week. I come home on Friday. Hadn’t even been home. Skittles are in… Mind you, there were little kids living in this house. There’s my two older sisters and then my two little cousins. Little kids in this house. And there’s a Skittle in a printer. “Eric, I told you no Skittles by the computer,” blah, blah, blah. I’m like, “I didn’t.” “You like Skittles, so I know it was you.” I’m like, “Was not me, and yes I do like Skittles, but it was not me.” Whatever. “Get to your room, you’re grounded.” Locked back in the room.
When I was younger he used to try to show dominance by grasping hold of me and things. But then 7th grade all that stopped because one time he was trying to show dominance and it didn’t work and I flipped him. So after that point he was a little less aggressive towards me because I would’ve fucked him up. Those times were terrible, it got to a point, in 8th grade, I don’t think I even went home. I had no desire to be around any of those people.
In 8th grade, we went to D.C. for our spring school trip. We came back from D.C. my uncle picked me up. He was frustrated, pissed off. And he was like, “After all these years talking with these people, I got a phone call from somebody I don’t even know telling me that you did not get accepted,” in the 9th grade. And he was pissed about this and he was like, “I have known the owners of this school for three years on a personal level, And now I can’t get them on the telephone, no explanation.” I didn’t find out until later why that was. There was a reason.
During 8th grade, they had just opened up the high school. That entire year they’re giving me jerseys, they’re giving me stuff. Anyways, they were taking me to sporting events. One of the dorm parents was one of the football coaches. The athletic director, he was all about it. It’s illegal to recruit, so they were more or less recruiting by giving me free shit and taking me to the games and by doing all that. Once they didn’t accept me, I actually had a meeting with the athletic director he was like, ” you know that we weren’t promising that you were going to come here. I just want you to make sure you know that,” just covering their ass, they were preparing me to go to the high school to play sports, but I didn’t end up going.
During high school everything changed again, after 8th grade, I was no longer going to be living in a dorm. I was going to go home. Well the family I was living with, they were like, “Oh, fuck no.” And I was like, “Ah, this is going to be miserable.”. Because I already hated these people. I didn’t like them and they didn’t really like me, I distinctly remember my uncle telling me I don’t have to like you, you don’t have to like me we just have to live together. They were like, “We feel like we need some time as a family, we just can’t handle you guys anymore.”
So we move over to my mom’s side of the family and you’d be like, “Well wait a minute, I thought your mom’s family was supposed to get you in the beginning?” Yeah, they were. But my dad’s family wanted to milk us as much as they could before they sent us over to that family. Or milk me, I don’t know what they do with my sisters, but they wanted to milk me for as much as they could.
So then later, we get moved over to my aunt and uncle’s. Now, this was a completely different change. Wow, I mean I felt relaxed. It was more like I was back living at home. The rules were more familiar like living with my mom, the conversations were more like living with my mom, my aunt reminded me of my mom. So it was much better but then also much worse.
The next chapter we’ll discuss high school and all the fun and interesting things that happened in high school. Now remember this, I had repeated 6th grade so I’m a year behind my regular year. I ended up graduating high school six months before I was supposed to, I only did two and a half years of high school and graduated with a 3.3 something GPA, got accepted into the University of Seton Hall, but I didn’t end up going. But how did I do that? Tune in. And a lot of other shit happened, like…
Read More Chapters, Choose Below
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy
google side one
Citrus Juicer
12 Years Of Hell
Google side two
Juicer
exercise bike
Six Strategies To Conquer Life: FYMM
FYMM JUICE: Reinventing MoonShine
My Struggle: FYMM
Every day make the impossible Possible!!: FYMM
One week in Israel: Erik Johnson Visits his sister in Haifa
google 3
Stock Market Sectors: Buyers Guide
ALL YOU NEED IS 10 MINUTES: TO CHANGE YOUR FUTURE
12 Years of Hell: A Journey of Loss, Struggle and Triumph
