Part 5 (1/2)
When I came to, I was in treh I didn't yet know that A tube ran up my nose and down into my stomach; I had one IV tube in my arm and another tube in my penis; stitches extended from my hairline to my solar plexus; there was a cast onThe pain was almost unbearable
A nurse came in and administered a shot, which took me up and away
The next time I came to I was in another rooave me another shot Weak, very skinny, and dehydrated, I drifted off again
5
CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP
I walked to the driver's sideand demanded his wallet, at which time he smiled with a baneful sneer, drew a pistol, and fired one round into ain and again, echoing away inwokeup in the hospital bed, I struggled for clarity Was it just a drea that could prove or, for that ain I bad been dreahtmare would be more accurate But my dreams, or those I could recollect, have always been punctuated with gunfire Gunfire directed at eneral vicinity And never have I shrunk fro chased by Randy's huge donut is quite another ic whatsoever That scared me For years that damn donut chased me around in my dreams I was so deathly afraid of those donut drea I often contee plastic replica on Norht of it My screa the daylights out of unshot victi Chicano nurse who, as it turned out, had seen such postshooting behavior many times She explained that it was quite normal and expected My main concern at first was to , and then my pride stepped in and I inquired about the tone and sound of ? Was it loud, or what?”
Against ed masculinity, or what I perceived to be such, she confirmed that yes, it was a scream and it was very loud Perhaps she felt she had been too literal for o, as I' posture She fell heavily into a spiel about”nor experience I had been through” All that was fine and sounded good, but could she please go down to South Central and explain that to my homies? Or, better yet, ht caused ins and set affiliation For if he belonged to the wrong set this could be very harmful to my reputation and perhaps h the ranks Monster Kody having nightmares? Unthinkable
Shortly after the nurse's departure and before the morphine she'd administered took me under, I questioned my roommate He was a hapless civilian, fresh out of the backwoods of a shly active part of Los Angeles He had been sprayed with buckshot fro vehicle The possibility that he was a civilian had never crossed my mind, perhaps because I always tried not to shoot civilians, unless of course the bangers outnuet some flack for that later on, we could always claim ”association” We were hard-driven for results, for confirmed body counts of co in the front yard when a passing car unloaded some buckshot into him After he told me of this and his immediate plans to depart for ”back ho southern drawl, ”da”
He was totally taken aback by LA's madness But to me it all seehtainst anybody as a ”result of the terrifying experience I had been through,” just like the nurse had explained Of course I twisted her explanation of my psychosis into a perverted alibi for my continued behavior I rationalized my actions continually, and with each successive level of consciousness I reached,toin the balance because ical reasoning So I'd avoided questioningradical behavior I'd deadened my conscience with PCP, alcohol, and friends, who the waves of thehow it ine living the life of a ”hook,” those seely spineless nerds ere always victims of someone's ridicule or physical violence, who never responded to an affront of any type I had, while in pri their ascent to ”king of the school” My milk money was taken My lips were busted two or three times Not because I decided to defend my dime or my honor, but because my assailant sia my tiain, if I could help it There was no gray area, noassociation with the gang, or else you were a victih schools, we'd often jump on hooks and take their money, leather jackets, hats, and such
What's contradictory here, and is one of the irrational questions I battled with in my later years, is why are hooks victiame in our lethal violence? The answer seeers-whom I'm convinced, like me, have been victimized at some point in their lives and refused to let it continue-respond with the sa more lethal Because of this, they s for lory in killing a hook In fact, it's frowned upon in most areas To me, however, to be unconnected ine that
The next time I surfaced from my morphine-induced drift, I was in tremendous pain Everywhere and all at once pain pounced on ically cut open to remove some shredded intestines, was now closed with sutures and staples Since the surgery was so recent the cut skin had not yet started to heal, and in between the staples the openings looked pus-filled The sutures were so tight that I could barelytied down My stomach resembled railroad tracks that in soht of this alone caused luhtly below my navel here the bullet had entered There was just a hole there, uncovered and open I could see pink inside My pain in this area came from under my navel and around the staples The tube in my nose, which ran down into my stomach, was attached to a pu at it caused pain It was extracting green sli it in a clear jar The nurse called it poison I couldn't comprehend that and just assumed I had been hit with poison bullets The catheter in my maleness ran from under the covers over the side of the bed and into what, I don't know I never looked This was also very painful My left hand had been broken by the impact of the second shot and was in a cast It, too, throbbed with pain
I had taken three hits in the left leg, two side by side in the her near my hip, almost on my butt Like my stomach wound these, too, had been left open and exposed I had also been hit in the upper back I assumed this hole was also left open Fro area, I had pain
Looking from my stomach to the catheter to the open wounds and then to the puhts ran at lightning speed in an atte submitted for clarification I was seriously dehydrated My lips were cracked and dry I reached out for the nurse's aid button hanging next to my bed, but my stomach pain was too intense, and I fell back in a heap Frustration rose up like an evil serpent from a murky river, snatched an to realize the i wounded and all the mental strain that I had actually been under
I lay prone for what seeether what had taken place in my life over the past five years damn, had it actually been five years? Yes, five years had elapsed sincetione very quickly At the sae with double rapidity At sixteen I felt twenty-four Life meant very little toMy mind-set was narrowed by the conditions and circu around me Certainly I had little respect for life when practically all my life I had seen people assaulted, es, and no one seerew and died in dog years Actually, so on someone's shoe was a capital offense punishable by death This was not just in a few isolated instances, or as a result of one or two hotheads, but a recognized given for the criardless of the condition of the shoes, the underlying factor that usually got you killed was the principle The principle is respect, a linchpin critical to relations between all people, but hettos and slums across America
I had no idea of peace and tranquility Frole, strife, and the ubiquity of violence This ranged from the economic destitution of my faing gang wars to the omnipresent occupational police force in hot pursuit Peace to rams like ”The Brady Bunch” I've never been at peace, and nothing has ever been stable Everything in e or subtleI've always felt like a teuest everywhere I've been, all of my life, and, truly, I've never been comfortable Motion has been my closest companion, frohborhood to neighborhood, school to school, jail to jail, cell to cell-from one man-made hell to another So I didn't care one way or another about living or dying-and I cared less than that about killing someone
The set was es took place in the hood, the hood itself never changed To ensure that it didn't, ed to kill all who set out to elie in warfare The ultimate stability, however, was death-the final rest, the only lasting peace Though never verbally stated, death was looked upon as a sort of reward, a badge of honor, especially if one died in some heroic capacity for the hood The supreme sacrifice was to ”take a bullet for a hoht to the power of the set If you died on the trigger you surely were smiled upon by the Crip God On my ho a rest” He was fourteen when he was h so h experience that it was sometimes better to rest in peace than to continue to live in war
In Vietnah he was sent hoer of the 'Cong existed stateside The as ten thousand miles away In contrast, our war is where we live Where do we go e've been wounded bad, or when our minds have been reduced to mincemeat by years, not months, of constant combat? If Vietnam vets suffer fro members who are combat soldiers are subject to the san wars
For us there is no retreat to a place ten thousand miles ahere one can receive psychiatric attention with full benefits from the Veterans Administration No, our problems are left to compound, and our traumatic stress thickens, as does our abnorone unchecked Is there any wonder our condition continues to worsen?
Talking with any gang h praise and respect given when, in the course of conversation, a dead hoht after the name of the deceased is spoken, ”rest in peace” will be co wounded, on the other hand, can be taken tays In soht and use their injuries as an excuse to say ”enough,” which, of course, still leaves the set in the position of having to respond to the attack All strikes against the set have to be answered in a tie wanes and eventually it collapses under the weight of the ridicule and emony But sometimes the wounded party utilizes their affliction to reaffir, they automatically climb another notch up the ladder toward that desired status of OG
Li'l Crazy De, for instance, has been shot thirteen separate times and is still committed to the 'hood In the tenth unsuccessful attempt on his life he lost his left eye and a piece of his scalp He is loved by few, hated by end is like that of the notorious gangster Legs Dia, however, fell deep within this second category, though there really was no need to reaffir that I'd be back But the Sixties were certain that I had died In fact, their premature celebration is what drew the set's attention to them as the possible shooters We were at ith soon any one 'hood, so the ho with and a few that we did, just to be sure The violence level rose dra-so much, in fact, that two officers from CRASH had come to the hospital with pleas for estured helplessly with my palms turned up they'd resorted to threats of conspiracy and accessory charges I couldn't possibly help them
When I finally reachedattended by an Afrikan nurse She hurried about the rooeneral state, and then informed me that I was to be moved to yet another room, on the ninth floor She was very talkative and witty, perhaps in her ed her as a stalwart Christian as a third-generation irant from the National Territory (that is, the rest of the United States) She was very dark and very shi+ny and her name was Eloise When she spoke she lit up the roo white teeth
”Nohat happened to you?” she asked, hands planted on both sides of her shapely hips
”I'ive me a shot?”
”Fo' what, so you can turn into a junkie?” she shot back
”No, so I can stop hurtin”
”Baby, you been gettin' twenty-eight grams of morphine every four hours for three days now I think it's time you slowed down”
”What? Three days! What is the date today?”
”Today is,” she said, looking at the watch on her fat wrist, ”January third, nineteen eighty-one”
I had no sense of time and just couldn't believe that three days had elapsed since I had been shot
”Nohat happened to you?” she asked again
”I was shot”
”shi+t, boy, I can see that But what happened?” She asked in a voice of genuine concern, so I felt coin' I was shot by other gangto explain it to her
”And who shot you?”
da me all those questions