I had not beaten up any black people in prison. I certainly wasn't any type of race hater or looking to set myself above anyone. I just wanted respect. Now that I was on the list of white people who were becoming issues in the dorm had me a little concerned. Whites weren't singled out but weren't gonna be protected or their opinions respected. Racism is very alive all over but it mostly has to do with the level of ignorance most people have about history . In prison, in the heat of the moment, history does not matter and being alone, watched and plotted on is some awkward **** when all you did was defend yourself.


Some time goes by and I'm not getting into anf beef with anyone and things seem to be forgotten with Supreme. I'm just one of the guys again (almost) and im still just the same cat that gambled and cut jokes and talked **** all the time. Chad is gone , I had heard he was on lockup still , but after having all this crap happen because of him, I kinda was glad he bounced. I didnt have to babysit anymore and I know all about Tammy now .

One week the stud game kicks off. There are all kinds of new gamblers around and the game is pretty fat with tobacco, the main currency and canned meat, the next best currency. When players buy in with this stuff, they got more where it cam from , so all the people are running in and trying to get hot and hit and run the game

its evening time , after night time chow and the table is full. We have been playing all day and Ive been caught out there in this strip deck version in a big hand , quads over quads and lost a massive pot to haiti. probably the biggest prison pot I played ever - at least 2 cartons of cigarettes in the pot. I was all in on 6th. just massive for the stakes

I go borrow to get back in the game and we are grinding back. All of a sudden I notice the crziest cheating I had ever seen.

Haiti was dealing-
everyone antes and he deals 3 cards for roll your own stud

I watch him deal out all the hands and then place the deck right on top of the hand he just dealt himself . The he picks the deck back up to call the action for opening bets for stud and he moves the ante chips off of 3 cards that were there and I never noticed. now he's got a hand again and it's three cards he placed there himself and knows what they are.

I watch him win this massive pot and at the end he rolls over a big kings full hand- he had rolled up kings unte the ante pile and while people were squeezing their hole cards, he was double dealing and slight of hand card cheating.

As soon as I seen his hand, I yelled out " you cheating bitch" and tried to turn the table over. one of the other players stopped it and then i started yelling he was cheating and I wanted my money back . I yelled out lets go to the room , which meant lets go fight and i went to my room to wait on him.

a minute later here he comes, older than me maybe early 40's . He is swinging his room key on his finger by a shoelace rope. This key is massive and if swung during a fight and kits you in the head, will cause you to get stitches etc. A lot of people are coming to see what's happening. The guys that live beside me in the next rooms, are in my room watching me and him. The tattoo guy is right there and his tattoo pack takes D batteries to run and he keeps a lot of them around. He had put some on a towel while we were standing there -

I told haiti, " my bad man, I don't want none" when i seen the key. It really will **** you up. Well he turned to leave the room when I said I didn't want none and when he did, " snow" the tattoo guy hands me the towel with d batteries and I busted haiti in the head with it as he went out the door.

that was some hard stuff even with the towel as a barrier and he grabbed his head as we botht went witht he momentum into the hallway / rock area. There was prob 10 people there watching this unfold.

As soon as i dropped the towel and he turned around, we locked up. we were brabbing at each other trying to get a hold to swing and at somepoint i stuck my left palm near his mouth and he ****ing bit me just like sweet pea said he would. I still have the scar. Not too deep but teeth will scar the **** out of skin.

i pushed him off and he tried to swing his key at me. There was an old timer named ernie standing close and i grabbed him and yanked him around as a human shield.
haiti is bleeding from his head and im bleeding from my hand.
ernie breaks free and i back up to get clear of the key and he bring his locker lock out of his back pocket-
in prison you have to buy your own lock and the commissary has several types- plastic master locks or the big #5 steel master locks. This is what haiti had and when he brought his hand up to throw it at me close range, I turned and ran towards the other end of the dorm, away from close devastation if he hit me.

well I got a few feet and thought it was a safe distance and at about the time I had that thought, I felt a massive impact in the back of my head. Haiti had thrown that lock and beaned me directly in the back of the head and it ****ing smashed me into next week. I am surprised I didn't go unconscious . As soon as it hit the ground from the impact on my head, I turned around and went right back at Haiti. He had no more locks to throw.

We stood there maybe 40 seconds and i'm drilling his eye and he cant do anything with it. someone yells police and everyone scatters to their rooms.

I'm in my room and my roommmate is in there with me and we've got the glass covered up , im in the mirror inventorying my wounds when I hear a knock on the door.

it greene- the unaffiliated weed guy who after i opened the door for him says to me, I couldnt stop them-

Then around 20 of the 5% nation members who lived in the dorm came to pay me a visit for fighting a black person. There were no words. When the door was shut, there was about 3 seconds of silence and then as I was trying to determine who would swing first, someone I didnt even see hit me so hard in my right eye that it shifted my bone structure a little and that eye has a slight droop now.

I have never been hit so hard. Even my stepdad hitting me when I was 8 was a bitch slap compared to this punch. In the cells there are the bunkbeds bolted to the floor against the wall. the lockers bolted to the walls and then a steel desk by the bed , bolted to the floor.

As soon as the first punch landed , i felt blows from everywhere and immediately dove for the desk and the bottom of the bed. My thinking was they wouldn't swing towards that steel and risk hurting themselves like that. I was right. It was a quick beat down.


When it was over, they rolled out of my romm and I was left to figure myself out. It was late , getting almost lights out when one of the officers seen haiti in his room patching up his busted head.When the officers see one guy hurt, they know there's a high chance another guy is hurt too. They go room to room looking until they see anyone with blood or marks-

They officers found me and marched us both out of the dorm. All 255 guys were standing by their rooms when they marched me out. I had just fought haiti, been bitten, smashed with a lock and then jumped by about 20 people who really tried to hurt me.
I walked out with my head held high. I didnt cry, I didn't look down in shame. I walked all the way across the dorm in dead silence with hundreds watching me walk out after getting my ass rung up.

When we got to the holding cell, Haiti told them he caught me in his room robbing me- I told them he was cheating . They sent me to lockup, while he stayed on the yard. I felt like I got a bad deal there after getting beat down, now going to lockup where because of this charge , I can be sent to level 3 long term admin seg . where you get reviews every 6 months for reclassification . if you get written up, you stay on lockup-

The first day in the hole after getting whipped like that is pretty terrible. The pain in my head, my eye swollen shut. my whole body sore . No doubt I had a concussion and that lock rung me up pretty good . I remember my head hurting for a week. It all healed though excpet that bite from haiti- that will never go away

Sure enough, I get to my hearing and they recommend level 3 admin seg, so im moved over to the long term side for the first time. Not leaving this building for at least 6 months. 23 hours a day lock down. At first I was in disbelief that I had found myself there and hated being inside that box.

You have to compartmentalize the facts of your situation- locked in a room that wont be opened unless you are dying or dead or they need to kick the **** out of you if you wont cooperate. You realize the earth could go into total war and the keys lost by the fleeing guards , why you slowly starve in the cage. So many hard truths you have to realize and deal with.

At first I rebelled and kicked the door and was just loud and went into super disrespect and games mode where i made the staffs job hard and the guys on my hall hated me for all the drama.

Then I broke the shaving razor one day and made the slightest cut on my arm, liks a shaving cut and told the guard I wanted to die. They came in and took all my property and then transported me by van to columbia sc from ridgeland that night-

they took me to gilliam psychiatric unit for " mental hygeine"-

I was excited just to get out and about and ride in a van, but that was short lived when it was officer johnson , who had found my onions thatwas going to drive me there. I was still a little salty about her powertrip . as we drove up and we talked I was telling her about family issues and all my stuff and after hearing all mine, proceeded to tel me that her house had caught on fire the week before and her daughter and husband had burned up and she was dealing with all that.

It made me have a new perspective about Mrs Johnson and I never gave her a hard time after that and took care to be kind.Even though I was in a prison and uncontrollable didn't mean I didnt know when to be a decent person.

Gilliam Psychiatric unit was a mistake on my part. I thought it would be a little get away , see another prison, kill some time. I didn't realize I was going into the pits of hell.

The dorms were just like the receiving and evaluation dorms at broad river r+e where the unit is shaped like a giant U with cells on two floors. You can stand at your door and see across to the other side what the person in the room ooposite you is doing. In my case , whenever I came to my window, the guy across from me was naked and jacking off. All day long.
Then the cells themselves were so filthy it was depressing to be locked in with it. The long skinny windows that you could barely see out now had thick screens over them to prevent them being broken for suicide . Now the light is filtered through those filthy , **** covered screens. The floors are black with filth. People that are crazy, dont clean their rooms. I had a rat who came every night to see if there were crumbs dropped from the food trays during the day.
I quickly wrote medical that I was sane, not suicidal and wanted to go back to Ridgeland asap. I stayed about three weeks and heard all kinds of crazy ****. One guy cutting his own eyeballs out with a tuna can lid. ot how about years later i see a news article where a guy killed like 9 people one day there , tricking them into his room then strangling them.
One thing that really freaked me out was that all my life I had never met anyone with my name. sometimes similar, spelled different or a different middle name . The laundry workers are coming thru and exchanging bedsheets , towels etc.

One of the workers is at my door and his name tag is clipped to his shirt pocket identifying him as a dorm worker. He had the exact same name as me- First , middle and last - with all the same spelling.

It kind of freaked me out and I havent seen anyone since then.

Back at Ridgeland, I'm reunited with my bag of letters and some books I owned. It felt great to be back honestly. The place was clean, as it was still brand new and the cooking was better than Gilliam. Prisons all make the same menu everyday but it depends on the expertise level of the prison cook whether it is the best it can be or the mediocre level that the psyche place was.

Then there was the quiet . The laid back and low stress way to do time. I realized that I needed to work on myself since I had time to myself with no where to go. I started reading whatever I could find. Some of these long term guys had mini libraries and I read all they would loan out. I started hustling for books. I would trade chicken from my meal trays for any book someone may have in the future.
I was writing the library and requesting books. Anything I could do to keep them coming I tried to do.
I started doing pushups in my room. At first I was doing 10 , then 20, then 50 then 100 at a time. I wasnt smoking any tobacco, I was eating what the state cooked, which was regular healthy foods- beans, potatoes, rice, fruit. I ate some of the meats but I usually traded it for things I felt more valuable.

after my first 6 months of level three lock up, I was starting to change in a lot of ways. I was maturing inside and using the box I was locked in as a tool to elevate my thinking.I was on the long term side, where others were also locked up for long periods.

some had been on lockup for years already. Religion plays a big part of prison life. Some religions are very strict and actually require you to educate yourself in many areas before you can even claim to be a believer. Some religions like christianity are incompatible with higher religions and inferior on every level but most people do not know this.

When you get to a long term 23 hour a day lockup- someone if not a few will be in that cell for their beliefs. either against institution policy or they are deemed a security threat. either way , there will be some there, as it's the way it is.
well at ridgeland there were a few on the long term side. These guys had been up there since the place opened and had been in other lockups before coming there. These guys were on another level.

On the weekends the staff is laid back and lets you open your door flap and everyone on the hall has an unobstructed view to talk to each other and just hang out. The guys who were already up there would talk for hours at their doors of philosopy and psychology. hours and hours debating law and procedure to beat lawsuits they had filed or appeals they were working on. They would talk mathematics, history, religion.
Some would talk about things most would deem unbelievable and have affected my life until this very day.

I was the only white guy on the hall. I was young, I was wild as **** but I had respect for people and their beliefs. I listened to every word these guys said and because of how I grew up and the situations I had learned from, i could put togehter most of what these guys were laying down as truth. The other stuff I could not verify without experience but just the conviction in their voices and the regalness one of these guys carried himself with , I knew they were some really smart guys and I tried to soak up every word they ever said.

I tried to build my mindset on what they believed and used to sit in my cell for hours unraveling history using what I learned from these teachings. I wanted to be held in the esteem that those guys had for the one who was their leader. He was in a cell that he was never getting out of and the guy was bulletproof mentally.

He knew high levels of meditation and would be silent for days at the time and the officers leaving him be, not even bringing him food. They didn't dislike him, he was their favorite guy- Just because you are in a cell doesnt mean the guy paid to keep you there hates you. Looking back, I'm grateful of the people that worked that lockup- I certainly benefitted from a few of them so I know they aint all bad.

These Rastafarians were vegetarians and I also became one. I didnt have any dreadlocks, But I certainly listened and read whatever material was suggested. I read about Haile Selassie and Babylon. I read about ciphers and counting in 60's . I wasn't accepted as one of them, but was allowed to have the knowledge since I came at the situation with respect of who and what they were. I valued the knowledge as I knew if I built my life on it, I could not be stopped.

I was right.

For me the base of what I learned from these guys was the belief of Self. You yourself is a divine creation and using your mind , body and spirit to express yourself to a higher plane thru meditation. Most people consider meditation to be some 3 minute rest. I've seen a 3 days straight meditation before , so I know how serious the REAL serious people can get.

When you hear philosophy and psychiatry pitched at high levels and then have to sit in a room staring at walls all day, it does something to you I believe. Was it because I was so young? I never took school seriously except for reading and writing. Some math I was good at but before I could get into higher learning , my home life fell apart and I began my Institution journey.

I would literally lay on my bed after doing my pushups and my shower and think for a couple hours how things or processes work in the world. I realized that for a fraud to take place there has to be a layer there. A layer is a barrier between you and whatever fraud you are perpetuating and the more layers you could add , the more power it gave your from security nd then finally those layers are sealed and cannot be undone in the " philosophical " sense.

I realized that this is the method used to control man for thousands of years and that there was so much misdirection and code that peeling back the layers for normal people was impossible. Whoever thought this out spent a LONG LONG LONG time putting into plan and then into place.

Like the wisest of the wise, who did nothing but think all day and debate, wrote out the master plan to control people and that has been the deal since it came out of the play calling book. Back then I could see in my mind how these things could have happened based on the results in front of my eyes. This stuff wasn't some made up delusion.
I thought about the process in use and applied it to the past and compared results- layers prevent the people from overcoming tyranny and that because of the design of the system, has held for a very long time. Almost like the people overcame the old system at one time, drove out the different tribes or whatever and those scorned tribes reinvented the system and patched all the flaws that led to the last downfall and then reinforced it all the way around with more armor plating.

After realizing the world was gonna do it's thing no matter what I settled down with all my books, all the banter with the guys and all my thoughts on what my life would be like when I got out of prison. After a year of being up there I reached out to my mom and one of the seargents let me call her from the office in the seg unit. It was great to hear her voice after being in that room so long. I don't think she understood what was going with admin seg rules and how long I had been there but when I asked for books and newspapers she sent me a subscription to USA today and a nice stack of fiction so she blessed me in that way.
I remember it was when Kennedy Jr and his wife died in the plane crash off the coast. Seemed like a few weeks of those front pages.

I probably read 500 books up there in 18 months. The spectrum of subjects and some weird **** at times. People will sneak in some weird ****ing porn in the middle of a story and you hate when that happens.

One guard named Seargent Boyd brought me a pair of headphones when he knew I couldnt get any thru the commissary as they were out and were having issues. I was waiting a long ass time and being cool but 23 hours a day lockdown and the others with you are silent because they are listening to their headphones while you cannot was a little crappy.
By this time I had been up there for a while, had earned the privilege , it was just luck they were out and having issues- BUT Sgt Boyd, who knew me from the yard and seen me in action, knew i was about it. seen I came up to this lockup and invested in myself and respected the men that lived beside me and what they stood for, he brought me in some from the street , on his dime and gave them to me.
These weren't fancy- They were a pair of the old cheap version of a walkman headhones with the curved metal strip that the headphones clipped to and sat on your head. Just a paif of those-
It was like I had hit the all time lottery. I could listen to news, radio , talk radio. i could tune out a lot of that prison until I was let out of the cell so having them was a blessing.
They sucked as wearing them , so I took some fo the styrofoam cups your lunch beverage is served with and knocked the bottoms out and inserted the speakers to amplify the sound around the room.
the metal strip that held the heaphones on was a good size for a knife so I started checking it out and seen it was really weak in the center of the curve around the head so i snapped it in half to see if it would be stronger in two pieces.

it was stronger but it was hard to file the tip down so I was just gonna sell it to whoever would buy it and set it under my bed where the molded property area was under the concrete bunk.

Sometimes when you take showers up there, someone will randomly come by and need to see you- the nurse, your caseworker, the C-O. they will pop that window and there you are buck naked and they are standing htere looking in. One way guys avoided it was they jammed their state issued toothbrush in the flap and it prevented it from being opened. Thinking about that one day I wondered if the flap lock itself could be jimmied to open from the inside on demand .

it was a different design than the door lock and having those strips made me think of trying to pick the flap lock from the inside. The strip was 1/4 in wide and about 6 " long. it took about 3 tries from the bottom angle to hit the lock and push it off the latch , popping the flap open.
From that moment, I could open my flap at any time, in seconds AND hide the tool before they could find it.
Right away I sent my 2nd " key" over to my homie that I kicked it with so much, Joseph. He loved having that key and never used it , was gonna hold it for emergencies he said.
As for my hiding place, In lock up , if the officers want to open your door, thes rules are that they must handcuff you first. security rules.
if they come to my door after I pop my flap and want to come in and search I would slide that small tool into the small slit ive cut in the double pleating of my boxer shorts. the piss hole pleat, has a double layer and if you sldie that in there, they never see it and skim over yous horts while looking elsewhere.
While they are demanding I come to the door to be cuffed to search, Ive hid that quickly by ducking down at an angle they cant see what im doing and when its all done, they find nothing and move on. I became a master at their games. I have gotten so much over on cops at times.

Rememebering all these events and the mindset I had back in those days is exhausting. I had started out at 12 getting into trouble, a weeks stay then had turned into a several years stay 7 years later when I was 19 and at Ridgeland. I had no life outside of a fence. No property,no girlfriend,wife or children. I had no job history or anything resembling an education. I was pretty much a child of the system .

My mom tried everything to get me to change course in my young life but her having that alcoholic demon stepdad around was not for me. I could not live at home where my brother and mother slept because of this scum of the earth loser. He pushed me in a direction that changed my whole being and thinking lately about the past and really being honest about it, I think i've had a lot of black magic spells placed on my life. my stepdad was one of them. The 1st night my mom stayed away from me while she was seeing chuck, I heard those crazy satanic voices of richard and gina at my grandpas house.

I just banged this story out as it was coming back to me and for the last couple of days, I've been thinking about it all. All possibilities. I've had THREE catastrophic injuries to my left side , starting as a young man . I had a motorcycle dirtbike and I traded my 4 wheeler neighbor friend for a spin around the neighborhood-

I had been riding all kinds of things for a while and was proficient and mostly careful. I was riding down our main subdivision road in Hidden Valley and all of a sudden, I could not turn the 4 wheeler. I wasn't going that fast, maybe 30-35. I angled into a wire fence and then into a lightpole-
The fence was heavily damaged, the 4 wheeler was bent in the front where it hit the lightpole and i was unconscious on the ground- My helmet had flew off and over the lightpole my friend said after I came to.
My left arm was broken and when my helmet had come off it almost took my left ear with it and ripped it pretty good on the back. This all happened shortly after Chuck came.

I never realized those voices happened her first night away. Was that satan talking directly to me? Telling me he was taking her from me ? Because thinking back, this is what was being said I believe. I loved , loved , loved my momma. I'm sure everyone does but we had an awesome connection and when she foolishly thought chuck and his families money were gonna change our lives, I'm sure she never had this in mind.

I'm trying to honor her by writing well and being honest. I have said this before here years ago- I write this , without proofs, without spell check- I flow and let it fall where it falls. when I get to the end , i will then go back and make it the perfect masterpiece I so wish it to be.

I never thought of any of this in Ridgeland Admin Segregation. I was in constant turmoil in that cell about who I was and where my life would lead. At the start of the long term lockup time, I was still in yard mode where any transgression against you had to be confronted and dealt with. I was fighting in the beginning , other young bucks of different sects.
A lot of new gang initiates or prospects want to impress their homies and think they will " try" a person with no affiliation to make themselves look more tough and earn their bones so to speak.One time a guy thought he was gonna handle me and it ended up bad for him.His friends didn't help him, he chose to start it.
Sometimes you get hardcore drug addicts from the street, that were good people at once , with talents but drugs messed their lives up.One guy on that lock up was named Michael and he was from greensboro NC and locked up in SC.He wasn't really what you would call my homeboy since we were both from NC- He was totally lost to drugs but was an insanely good artist and I contracted him to draw me a portriat of my friend Jeff who had killed himself at his girlfiends house. At that time I was till holding on to this " boys for life" **** where we were some power group of highschool ****heads.
At the time though, this was all I had being young and dumb , so I had him draw the portrait and he asked for tops tobacco and soap, so I had my guy who worked lockup laundry get him the stuff he wanted and he drew me an awesome pic that I later gave to my dear friend Sean Dempster, aka Treefrog to keep as he was closer to Jeff.

When the prison forst opened the yard area for the lockup was a square patch of asphalt with a basketball goal. A few months into being in lockup , they installed dog runs for each inmate to be locked inside of for yard time. You came from your cell handcuffed and led into your cage and then uncuffed thru an opening in the cage door. Totally locked down .

Michael who usually kept cigarettes was out of them and there was a dorught up on the lockup as the officers were searching the janitors and laundrymen for contraband. I had a little tobacco someone had given me and i rolled it up while we were all out on recreation one day. Michael was several cages down from me as I was in the end cage.

Thos amount of tobacco was miniscule and was a couple of quick puffs and it was done. I lit it up toook a couple hits and Michael starts screaming at me to save him a " short" which is the butt you are throwing away- He was several cages down, it would have to be passed, cage by cage and it was a a flimsy hand rolled cigarette that was nothing left. I told him it was done and threw the paper that was left down.

He started screaming and cussing me out , being the biggest cage gangster there ever was. I was like yea yea **** off and laid down in the cage to get some sun. maybe 20 minutes pass and I hear Michael tell the correctional officer who just came outside that he wants to go inside to his room.

Outside there are styrofoam cups for water and he had taken one and pissed in it and concealed it in his jumpsuit and the officer unwittingly cuffed him in the front because he was going in at an off time instead of with everyone else.
Michael walked down to my cage and threw a cup of piss in my face. I did not see it coming , I was just 100 miles away thinking about the future and here comes this drug addict weirdo who could not control himself over any type of drug has hit he with " gas" a cup of piss in prison -

We are going to war

I did feel like somewhat of an ass when I started getting into trouble and then getting stupid property crime felonies early on as a kid. Feeling like an ass was better than feeling unwanted at home. My mom was oblivious to the mental games chuck played and I was sick of them and being somewhere else locked up was better than home.

Getting caught in Myrtle beach in 1995 was kind of an awakening for me. Icouldnt make bond. My mom wasn't coming this time. I had to wait and see what the court would do and I settled into the wild side of the young people in the pod. This is where I met sweet pea the first time and where I ended up in the hole for the first time.

It was spring break time and there were lots of young people in the pod , coming and going at all times. A few of us not making bond and broke were trying to game the weak people for their goods. Making trades in our favor or in my case, this guy bret who had tried to kill himself years earlier with a 22 to the forehead and survived was locked up for arson and not getting out on bond.
He had a club foot from the bullet, along with a black dot of gunpowder residue from the bullet entry still staining the scar , right in the middle of his forehead. He had a hard plastic heel that he wore when he walked so he wouldnt fall down and would talk a lot of **** and try to use it as a weapon.
All the guys liked to clown him and i was kinda new, I'd say about two week in and it was commissary day.
The pods had two man cells with numbers on the door. A lot of people will go to the door and say " hey c.o. pop 215" and the cop will look at the door and whoever heard you say it will look because dudes aint got **** to do in jail but look where they hear someone talking, especially the requests to open doors.
99% of the time, it's the owner of the room requesting entry and that verbal request is the usual way an inmate asks to get into their room. Sometimes though you have a different opportunity to get your door open. If its pretty laid back and the c.o. is not being stressed out and isn't in a bad mood , you can stand at your door and hold your hand up or be real close to it and reach for the handle while holding your hand up -
He will see you and pop the door. Its not every time or every cop. Its situational and ive seen it not work. You have a great chance if the cop doesnt recognize you yet. Once you stay in for a while, they get to know regulars.
On this day , the day the rooms were filled with goodies , I decided to see if I could rob ol bret the loudmouth hammer foot. He wanted to die anyway so screw him right?

After lunch in jails on commissary days, it is quiet and people are enjoying their sugar or coffee or deodorant.Some like to play spades and this is where we find bret, playing spades. I told sweet pea I was gonna rob bret and he was cool with it so that emboldened me.
Sweet pee is like 2 years older than me and has been selling crack and an all around smart guy so i'm like lets do this!!
Brets door isn't far from mine and i stroll down to it and hold my arm up to get it opened. It pops almost instantly and I go right in and take his bag of food.
As im leaving someone sitting at the table with him see's me come out and points me out to him and he turns around and sees the bag I have and screams --- c.o. !! c.o. !! im being robbed!!

well the officer just popped the door for me so im caught. I get to my room anyway and close the door behind me. Because bret has the club foot, I know he can't get to my room quickly so I start eating everything I can to hide evidence.

I hear sweet pea outside yelling to bret " dont bring no drama to my room mothereffer"

Bret gets to the door and sees my mouth full of his food , debbie cakes and chips, he starts screaming again and this time he's banging on the door with his hard plastic club foot- BAM BAM BAM stop eating my food!!!

So by now the other officer has made his way to the door and popped it open to investigate the issue. I didnt buy any commissary, he did. The other cop opened his door and now I'm here with his missing stuff and I have to give it back-
plus go to the hole-

Honestly looking back, It was a super douche move to steal the food but It was boring as hell in that place and I remember laughing like hell till tears came down my face over this. I never really told anyone of this story because it's just too damn irregular to normal people.

If you were raised up in jail , it's normal life. People robbing others all the time. Fights. gambling. law debates. war stories. I didn't know all this yet, I just started my journey into real jail so It was just kid fun that didn't mean anything outside the walls. In jail the rules are different unless you hit staff. Then you get street charges.

My first time in the hole wasn't very nice- The jail was full and I had to be in 23 1/2 hours a day lockdown with a cellmate, who happened to be in his late 40's and had done his whole life in prison and was back in county jail for some weird sentencing thing. That was a trip.
I remember him being unbothered by the room and the person he was locked in there with. Only later did I realize you get used to a lot of stuff in these places. You either adapt and accept or go crazy and get hurt by staff until you do.

It was a few days after that and I got my own room and the person who was there before me had left books, one of which being the godfather. I had remembered snippets from the movie as a kid but had never seen the full movie then or understood the signifigance of it,but seeing the book and desperately wanting to feel like I was a gangster , I was overjoyed that I had it.
It was VERY thick , probably 500 pages and up until then had really only read a handful of books. Sitting still was hard for me back then and having this book was the start of my making myself read and get immersed into the words.

I ended up reading this book two times in J rueben long. I was in lockup the whole time I was there, never returning to the pod. The cell I was given was randomly searched like a week or so later and inside the mattress they found a lighter, which I knew nothing about.

This led me being taken into the red pod, the true lockup at j rueben long. Another section of guys but this time longer sentences for disciplinary stuff.The doors slide on hinges from a control room opening them . No keys required.

I ended up leaving that jail on my birthday , freshly put on probation and on the way to my dads in rock hill.

None of the adults in my life were strong enough leaders to follow or learn something from. My dad disappeared as soon as chuck refused to leave and then it was weak feckless chuck who hated me and my brother and treated us as we were invisible.

Moving back to my dads at this time on probation and still not knowing who I was or who I wanted to be like was very awkward. He lived like a total low iq dipshit with a girlfriend who was just as bad. I didnt want to be like weak ass chuck but I did like the finer things in life.

The differences in the two men was the graqnd canyon almost and I didnt really have any respect for either of them especially now after reading the godfather in jail.

Something about Puzos style and the way Michael Corleone had to first be one person and then circumstances change him into the don really enthralled me and to be perfectly honest made me want to be the whole mafia.

Something about Omerta and Luca Brasi made me want to form my own family and control my own destiny. It was those teenage pipe dreams of a lost soul but in my mind at that time, I had that mindset to guide me.

The be silent and listen mindset. The no fear , demand respect mindset. Even as I was doing the ignorant, stupid petty crime to get me sent away, I was already starting to think in terms of process and layers that would later help build a foundation that cannot be torn down unless I die or get locked up. My life would have never been the same had I not read that book.


So when I got to prison in SC, one of the first things I done was found that book. I must have read it twenty five times. The book is so great in depth and nuance of thinking compared to the movies which are great themselves. The book is a jewel though of knowledge for a man lost and in need of a role model.

Michael Corleone was my role model. I wasn't in the mob, I wasn't calling any shots but I was one fearless bastard in prison and my fight with Mike from greensboro cemented the fact that I did not give one EFF about handling my business.

In prison , when you " handle your business" you are about to be punching or stomping someone over a dispute.

At the extreme point of my prison stay on the yard before lockup , when I was coming into my identity as a man, I remembered back to sitting in myrtle beach , knowing i would end up in prison . I asked myself in that lockup cell that if I go to prison, " will you be somebodies bitch" ? for this petty **** you are going away for , will you become some weak **** ? Are you a clown like that? I asked myself this and then I answered myself-

You will do whatever it takes so that NO ONE will try you and if they do, there will be a fight. I can promise you, no other white guy at that prison was on my level- no fear. After Stretch broke my nose and that pain wasnt as bad as I thought, I was blood thirsty to be honest.

So here we are with Mike in long term lockup- He's gassed me with piss and I have a low chance of catching him beside me in one of these outside dog runs for a while. Its friday and we dont come back out until monday and a new shift will be working so I had time to sit in my room all weekend and plot on him.

One of the worst things you can do in prison is come at someone with a bodily fluid. That means all out war. If you mess up and spit on an officer or throw urine or feces on him/her, you will get a felony assault where when convicted you will do 85% of the mandatory 10 year sentence.

Rarely do inmates gas staff and even rarer they do it to inmates. Inmates will kill you if you do it to the wrong one.In my case I could not get to him , I only had one option-

Shampoo Bottles

Take a dump and then take a leak in it.use something and stir it into a mud consistency and then pour into the shampoo bottles.Now you got that fermented gas and a real threat to anyone if you have an enemy. you can keep that bottle by your door and when you catch someone slipping, bam- right in the face-
It is rarely done but it has been done and I'm about to tell you how I did it myself.

Monday rolls around and the new shift is taking people outside for rec- I grab my bottle and put it in my waistline to hide it before im cuffed and led to the cage. Well, because of chance, guess who they put right beside me?

Mike from greensboro and he's cuffed behind his back and is backed up to the just closed gate to stick his hands thru the slot to be uncuffed for his hour excercise. I immediately say
" whats up now mothereffer and pull out my shampoo bottle full off runny peepoo and start shaking it up like whipped cream-
I yel to the officer" YO MAN BACK THE **** UP" - " YO MAN BACK THE EFF UP" I said this like 5 times and when he didnt move the last time, I uncapped the bottle and blasted peepoo right into mike from greensboros face-

The officer got hit with spray that bounced off mikes neck. it landed up on his shirt and dud starting gaging immeditely and ran in the dorm calling on his radio. I emptied the bottle on mike , who had 2 bottles of urine or water stashed in his person and spreayed them at me.

at that point, all i could think of was the **** hitting the officer and now Im gonna get a street charge for it. I told him over and over to move, i screamed it to him. They came in goon suits and threw me in my room, took all my property and wrote me up assault on officer and for 5 days i was in that room shaking that they would street charge me.

well apparently , me telling him to move so many times, helped me not get charged on the street , but in prison, i got 6 more months lockup- I rememeber tears coming down my face in that hearing and the women I could tell were upset they had to do that to me. I got gassed first. eye for an eye.

Once this episode passed and I accepted that I was gonna be in that room a while I started to really do an immense amount of thinking and self reflection.

I would read the godfather and then try to apply that thinking to how I carried myself. I stopped being a jitterbug ( prison slang for young and ignorant) and started emulating some of these lockup guys that were so versed in wisdom. I would read a 300 page book in one day and then listen to guys build knowledge together based on math and symbolism.

After months of me being chill and "laying down" ( a term indicating someone mature about being in the hole) accepting my place and building my mind to handle it , these older guys noticed. These guys who had been in these rooms for years and didn't exactly mix with white people regularly, accepted me into their debates.

The things I was told and learned shaped my life immensely and at the time , I didn't know how much. I knew what I had learned was real stuff and that I had to be careful with the casual violence mindset because in the real world, people dont fight, they call the cops.

If one of my friends was thrown in there right now , they would be someones bitch. I know it with all my heart. A white dude with no street cred and scared of his shadow will not make it. One of my associates one time said he would prob be someones bitch and I thought to myself , yes you would with that mindset..

I don't like telling this story as it's pretty damn primal and that the person you would have to be to do this stuff is not someone most people can relate to. I adapted to my environment to survive and to thrive. I never went to jail to be someones girl or chump. I would have never soaked up any of that wisdom if it wasn't for Mario Puzo and that mindset got me thru several tough prisons and got me to the top in weed horticulture.

In a lot of ways I don't think my life has been fair. You cannot choose who your parents are and you can't make their decisions for them. I felt like we , me and my brother were losing our mom to chuck. she was working more and more , learning all aspects of his real estate attorney paperwork requirements and still doing her own real estate stuff.
They would get home sometimes at 9 or 10 at night , while me and my brother did nothing but suffer in grades and me getting into trouble and going away.

She helped him build up his business and then started her own real estate company as a broker when he didnt want to break up the partnership he had with his dad through the family company.

She boomed while he drank himself into a stupor everyday and showed up to closings drunk and finally getting disbarred after many complaints.

I knew he was a chump from day one at 8 years old. My mom went from low aspirations biker to local attorney and son of wealthy local businessman.She was not gonna let that go considering she was smart and wanted a better life for me and my brother but look at the damn cost.

She's dead. She died of lung cancer the day before her 48th birthday in 2006. When she told him that xrays showed something in her lung and that she needed to see someone his response to her was " Rose, we don't have the money"

So she sat at home and drank fresh vegetable juice from a machine and did all the home remedies. She pretended that she wasn't feeling bad and during this time leading up to her death, we weren't speaking.

I had gotten upset at her around september of 2005 about my dog Angus who had inherited some weird sickness thru pitbull breeding and he was horribly unhappy and I had to do something . I was gonna take him into town and have them put him down and she suggested the vet she had used on her wolf caleb a few years before who had died of cancer at old age. This guy did house calls and he came out and gently put angus down and handed me a bill for almost $500 and I got very angry about it and let her know.

I was so upset over Angus and at the time Tammy who I was in love with and had just gotten badly hurt in drunk driving accident caused by her brother. She almost died and was at duke for a month in ICU with a broken back. We were broken up at the time she was hurt and I always felt like if she had just chilled , she would of never got hurt.

Either way, I was upset about so much that I stopped talking to my mom for a few months and in this time she got worse and one day in early february 2006 she told chuck that she could not lay down to sleep that her back hurt bad , so she propped herself up on the couch.

Then two days later that stopped working so she asked to go into the hospital , the same place I was born- Johnston Memorial.

There were many other characters throughout my stay in prison at Ridgeland that I haven't mentioned so I want to " circle back" and include some of these tales and tie in my release and the times after prison before my mom died.

Living in the terror dome was something I wouldn't want to do again. Because I was going to and coming off of lockup frequently, I was in random top bunks with random roommates. You get moved into a room where the guy has been in for life, is gay and has aids. His boyfriend lives in the dorm and they " mess around" while you are asleep on the top bunk. Quick room change !!

Or then the prison pervert nicknamed " gunslinger" , who the crotch of his pants are torn at the seams and he wanders the prison in search of female guards , where he " posts up" and starts jacking off through this rip. This guy gave me the bottom bunk so he could open the locker door and block my view of the door from my bed and he would jack off to the female officers walking by counting us in the rooms.
There was one or two more like this guy but not as wild and open about it.

Then there was Kenneth Helms, nicknamed Red from rock hill where my dad was from but we didnt know each other or anyone mutually. He was white and a weaker type guy but wasn't a bum where he owed people and brought drama. that's what you try to avoid in prison.

Red was cool but he thought he was tough and I had to punk him down . The female sergeant that was on I forgot her name but older black lady, foxy as hell said " dont you hit him!!" as i was walking towards him on the rock which was the common area outside the rooms. He had a slick mouth and It was time to check him and she seen it and put it out.

The was another guy named " ears" who I didnt really know much about except his name and that his pants always had a dark oil stain in the back like he sat in oil. What was really the deal was he was taking it in the a$$ and that was vaseline stains. Late night bathroom stuff when the roommate wont agree to let you use the room to screw the dorm punk so you use the community bathroom. That was some sick stuff man, dudes in the card game acting like they weren't screwing the really nasty guy the night before.

Or the all time best was when new guys came to the prison. If they were wearing brand new clothes and new state issues sneakers, they were a new inmate , fresh off the street.

If they were white and " looked" like they could have had money on the street or " looks" like they could be gamed for anything of value, then the vultures step in to befriend them.

If the guy is broke and a worthless derp, he's cast off like dead weight and ignored when they come up later trying to talk like old lost pals.

If he has money they start trying to angle on befriending them to get some of that money.

Or if the guy comes in and starts talking about his girl on the street , or his bro is bringing him some drugs on visitation - depending who this guy is, if he has no homies or affiliations, he's in big trouble telling people this and that's exactly what I seen happen and will never forget the look of terror on the guys face after it was over.

Usually within two weeks a guy has been to the commissary and people know if that person has money or not. If a guy is using them , this is about how long the friendships last unless it's a " good thing" term for impossibly sweet hustle.

Then you have the visitation approval wait time which is about a month. Here is new white guy mid 20's , already balding and kinda goofy - he's friends with the absolute snakes of the dorm. I know right away he's in trouble but when it passes two weeks and they are still hanging with him, I didn't get it until I seen them standing at the door waiting on him to come back from his first visit in prison from his girl on the streets.

I can still see this dude holding up the approval letter he got in mail call saying she was approved. Smiling towards his homies like he was the man of the hour!

As soon as he walked in from visit , three of the goon squad , quickly whisked him into a nearby room where they demanded the drugs. When he said he didnt have any , they beat his ass. Then they went and got the aids infested punk I spoke of earlier and made him stick his finger up the guys ass to make sure he wasnt lying.
Then they beat him up again for lying about getting drugs.

That dude was never the same again and after that day I never seen the goons speak to him again. That dude learned a tough ass lesson. Some people will perpetuate lies to inflate themselves and I can tell you , prison is not the place to try to be that guy.

Haiti ran the regular poker game but others had the sports parlays tickets, dice games and my all time favorite game " skins"

I have played this game twice in my life and both times "shot the moon"-
meaning I broke the game and won all the money.

It has been 27 years since Ive played this game so I want to try and get it right.

You can play up to 12 people but its probably best between 7-9 players.

First thing you do is get a brand new deck of cards and shuffle them good, removing jokers etc. keep the box!

Place the deck back inside the box and tear a piece of it off so it would be easy to draw one card at the time-


NOW- the players need to draw numbers to see who picks a card first-
whoever goes first picks a card and can either play that card or sell it to someone else who may like that number or card. then it goes on down to the last guy until all players have 1 card each-

now the rules are this- you bet against the other players as to whose card will come off the deck first. If I have a 5, that means there are only 3 more 5's in the deck and there would be 43 cards left if 9 players picked one each-

I would bet anyone willing to take my bet that my 5 would last longer than their card.

You can have 6 bets going at one time , each card being pulled off the deck builds each bet with more money as everyone keeps betting their number if it doesnt lose.

If there are " clean " cards still in , a person whose card was pulled can " buy" that clean card and get back in the betting until it's over.

If a guy makes a run on the game and gets hot and wins it all, he shot the moon-

I played this game twice, shot the moon twice- havent played it since and wanted to introduce it to people out in vegas during the series as its a great dinner break game .

I've noticed that the moon is playing a large part in my writing. Because of the coincidences piling up , i've started to read into astrology and that has led me to etymology and then gematria. Because this story is so unique and i'm just realizing how much these things have played a part in my life and I never even knew.

When I was in lockup at ridgeland and went through that growth process, I became very self aware and in tune to people and the energies around me. This same thing is happening now, except that because of my knowledge and life path it is opening my eyes to the fullest and once this far down the path of Self, there is no return to being in the matrix.


I left South Carolina department of corrections on December 2nd 1999. My dad had driven down from Rock hill to pick me up as I was being released to probation again and had to start my life over there.
I hadn't seen him since I got locked up and walking out of that prison and getting into a dirty pickup truck that smelled like 200 year old tobacco smoke really bothered me. My prison time in lockup had turned me into a type of neat freak where my cell was always clean, my property always neatly arranged and uncluttered. And now getting into this truck with a guy who had no self respect or awareness of self.

I had left the prophets and returned to the serfs and it didnt take long for that ignorance to seep back into my life.

Tony Bolonie

I still remember thinking and feeling my dad was the greatest before him and mom split for good. Maybe he was great and my mom leaving him for chuck destroyed him. I kind of doubt it though because he was still making visits up to see me and my brother Justin shortly after he moved out and down to Rock Hill.

I rememeber we talked frequently on the phone , he wrote letters and sent money and then one day I stopped hearing from him. Sitting here just now sifting through my memories I hit upon these buried deep and it hurts thinking about it. I rememeber those phone calls , missing him and hanging up with the expectation and high hopes of seeing him soon.

And then there was nothing. I would ask my mom if she had heard from him and she would always say no. I'm beginning to wonder if she told him to stop contact. Maybe I was talking about him so much it bothered chuck. Either way this was a big time in my life because it hurts thinking about it.

The reason it hurts so much is because I put myself in what role I see a father should play and chuck would have been trying to pick his teeth up for punching kids/ Instead Tony disappeared, destroyed the bonds between his two blood sons and left them to learn on their own from a guy who had absolutely no use for some bikers kids.

Instead of being the tough guy that I thought he was. Instead of Tony being the best dad and my hero, he deserted me to be mentally and physically abused by a mentally ill alcoholic which led me to rather living in prison than at home. My whole life took a detour to hell and here is Tony Bolonie pickinbg me up from prison -

I had no where else to go. I had to go live there until I got my life straight and I was determined when I left Lee correctional , that I would never return to the south carolina department of corrections .

The ride home was pretty quiet except for his occasional wisdom tidbits on how to live my life. The guy who rented a two bedroom shack was giving me life coaching and this is how I viewed my dad after him coming back into my life. We had spoken on the phone once or twice before I got out discussing me living there and not once did he mention a roommate until I was in the truck on the way there.

He had a roommate that was using the other room so I had to sleep on a pullout mattrees in the living room beside the bar sized pool table.He didnt have a couch or a regular living room. His kitchen - living room combo was big enough for a kitchen table with chairs and the pool table and left just enough room for a few more chairs and plenty of space to walk around the table and take shots.

Frank the roommate was the brother of Shirley , one of my dads oldest and best friends and who was married to his other best friend Slim. Out of all my dads friends, these guys were the coolest and realest. Slims house was where I learned one of my biggest life lessons and played poker so I was fast friends with Frank. He was a satellite dish installation guy and sold weed on the side with my dad, thats how they got together.

It wasn't a massive amount of weed, I rememeber going to charlotte and getting a pound with frank one time and him being nervous nelly the whole way. Them selling weed and my dad basically being a party guy , doing any kinds of drugs, his house was a party house and I didn't know until I was on the way home from prison.

My life was now sleeping on the floor beside a pool table in a 2 bedroom house , where I had to wait until everyone left before I could go to sleep. I got a job right away at cracker barrel which was right down the street and started working as much as I could to not be at the house. There were all types of people coming by there to buy weed and the ones that wanted to hang out were losers, which I could read the second I was around most of them.
Friday and Saturday nights were always busy at the house. I would get off work and there would always be a crowd, drunk and shooting pool. I had to come home , wanting none of that and having no choice but to be there as I didnt have anywhere else to go.

I did great at avoiding drinking and smoking weed and cigarettes for a while but then as I was around the parties more and more, I would take a drink. Take a puff, bum a smoke and then bam, I had lost my good habits of pushups and working on self to bad habits and undermining self.

Washing dishes at cracker barrel was easy and for basically a starter job, a good fit for me as I still had a big prison mentality of silent but deadly and I had to reign in the deadly part- I had to dumb down my persona and act regular - which sounds weird as hell but once you ascend to a higher self, you know 99% of the people around you have never thought about anything related so speaking about it would be a disaster. Not many people can seperate the levels of thinking much less the levels of life so it's just better to listen than speak.

I worked hard and enjoyed the time being productive. I made friends with the two guys that worked along side me- They were metal heads and smoked weed. One of them was married and his wife worked there as a cook. They smoked weed and when I learned of it I started stealing bags from my dads pound and selling it to them to pad my paycheck.
I met a cashier girl there , Erin who was so pretty to me and thick as you know what .She started flirting with me coming by the dish pit and then we started to hang out after work . I was super awkward about who I was during this time , hating where I lived, who I was and the lifew that led me there. All i knew was that there weren't many one on one fights I was afraid of and the confidence that thinking gives you helps overcome a lot of situations.

She lived with her sister who also worked at cracker barrel and also as a cook like the dish pit guys wife- It was like I got a job and made instant friends. Everything was going well for a while, working and staying away from the people that stopped by my dads. Management at cracker barrel asked me to work double shifts for the night maintenance guy who was out sick-
this meant I would do my dish shift, end that and then start an overnight shift, cleaning and preparing the whole store for the next days morning open.
It was brutal but I quickly got used to it. I realized I had like an hour of down time and started calling people I knew back in NC like my old girlfriend from high school Jody, or back at ridgeland where I called operations late at night and captain eichelberger, one of the late night shift supervisors aswered and I lied to him that I was managing a cracker barrel lol and he replied- " who let you manage a cracker barrel" LOL as he knew I was one of a kind and least likely to be managing anything after so short a time leaving prison.

I worked the winter, all the way to spring. Sleeping beside a pool table and working two shifts. I was paying probation, passing my drug tests and holding down a job and trying to save money but i needed clothes and life stuff so it was hard.

One of the guys who was coming over to buy weed from my dad was a carpentry framer and he worked for an outfit of 3 guys who were sub contactors for a builder in town. Wendell Hill was his name and he had been a carpenter his whole life, first working for his granddaddy and then for the current outfit of Wayne Shelley.

Wendell used to play jokes on his grandpa about cutting off his finger with the saw and one day actually did it and they thought he was playing and ignored him for a minute or so. He was a big beer drinker and would stop by friday to buy weed and then still be there sunday morning , drunk as all get out- but ready monday morning to frame houses.

He had a vehicle and would give me rides so I was helpful to him most of the time, he didn't have a license and would drive on fridays lol , I guess thats why he stayed at my dads all the time. He drove an old chevy blazer with the smaller body style, like 1987 or so I would guess. It's brake cylinder was out so you had to pump the brakes to get them to work , so driving it was very dangerous. His house was about 4 miles from my dads and he never wrecked but one of the times I had to drive, I had to veer off the road , drive through someones yard, dodge everything in the yard and then drive safely back onto the road , away from the stopped car that I swerved to miss.
We talked about that ride many times. It was so lucky not to have hit anything .

Wendell offered me a job with the crew, framing houses for more money per hour than cracker barrel. I was fairly green , meaning no experience but since my dad layed carpet, I could read a tape measure and knew tools. I figured I needed to do it and get out in the air and sunshine , so I accepted and started the following monday morning.

Wayne , my new boss was a biker type guy like my dad but less hard core. He was very ambitious and was very good at building in general, not just a framer of houses.He would stick build any house or addition and then hang your vinyl siding . I learned a lot from Wayne for about the 8 months I worked for him. He also smoked weed and I also stole my dads weed and sold it to him for supplemental income.

Then there was P- a 17 year old kid that was a helper like me but less knowledgable. P, whose real name was Minor Gaskins lived just a few houses down from Wayne and got the job by word of mouth. He was a good kid and liked rap music and smoking weed and I was into both and needing someone around my age to kick it with since everyone around my dads was some weirdo druggie or real big fattie like this girl nicknamed " cheeseburger" that was like a year older than me that my dad smashed one time. She was disgusting.

When I first got home , before starting work with Wayne, I would come home to people partying and there would always be one in the crowd pointing out that I wasnt drinking or wasn't smoking weed or partying like everyone else- I must think im too good to hang out.......
hearing this more than a few times and it was tiresome as hell trying to stay away from drinking and smoking cigarettes. I never thought I was too good, I just knew the second I started down that road, that I would be stuck on it.

I slowly started drinking going towards the spring before starting the framing routine with Wayne. I had been drunk a few times so by the time I started with the crew, I was drinking and making poor choices again like eating horribly and smoking

Being free from prison and in that lifestyle situation in Rock Hill was a bad time for me.
I had grown so much in that room at Ridgeland. Meditating, thinking , reading and just being within myself to such a level that sometimes I honestly wish I had that time period back . You know what they say ,play the hand you are dealt so I'll take how it went because I have to.

Living at my " dads" , sleeping on a pull out mattress on a filthy floor beside a pool table with just a few clothes and absolutely flat busted. Right before I switched jobs , working those double shifts I had managed to build up like $300 and I had given it to my dad to hold for me to save for a car.

Most Fridays, people would be at our house until 1am. In and out buying weed, shooting pool and drinking or occasionally my dad would have meth, which he called crank or a little coke-( at that time I hadn't seen or tried either.) there would be the random people coming thru to pick that up and one of these times one of his old school biker buddies from the clubhouse days- Eddie Hicks- nicknamed Hicks as far as I know and I believe up the food chain a little more than my dad when they were younger.

Eddie was a painter and lived just off the Catawba indian reservation in a trailer that he owned and years before this night there was Mike Tyson PPV fight that I remember going to watch , I believe against Peter Mcneely. Anyway, he comes over to buy coke or something from my dad but somehow we end up playing poker with people there and it ends up being him and I heads up.

I was introduced to hold em on this night and lost my paycheck plus what I had saved and given to my dad . He was all pissy having to wake up at like 3 am to go in his stash and give it to me so I could pay Eddie. I don't rememeber any specific hands just the sense of doom because I was lost . I do rememeber demanding we play tunk about halfway through and getting turned down. Dude was hella cool though and old school biker and I will never forget losing heads up like that.

I started out with strict goals when I got to my dads.
It was mainly working and paying fines and successfully completing probation. I was determined to never return to south carolina department of corrections again so I would not smoke any weed except the afternoon I left my probation officers meeting.

After smoking for two days, I would quit again for a month. I tried to work as much as possible and show my mom that I wasn't doing any stupid **** anymore. We were starting to build our relationship back up and she was elated that I was such a different sounding person than before I went to prison.

It may sound easy to hold down a job and be a law abiding citizen and I have to admit those things are easy. But try it while a zoo and circus operate around you 18 hours a day, combined with the absolute carnage you just lived through that none of these clowns could even begin to understand or comprehend. I kid you not, I would literally size up anyone I met and estimate if they could handle what I had been thru , at that point in life.

I stayed on my goals up until about a month of working with Wayne and then I started drinking with P everyday after work. I was 22 and he was 17 and needed me to buy bottles for him so thats how my slide started.

E+J Brandy and cherry lemon sundrop-

I did not know. I thought there was no way this was possible and yet here I am .

I pray to you most High, the Almighty , the Divine Creator . If this is your will so be it.

The person I had to become to survive this world is not who I wanted to be. I had no choice , I felt it since birth and no matter how hard I fought myself, I never got rid of the driving voice deep in my head. I know you have that inner voice too but mine is so loud it overpowers everything and I've had to lie about it my whole life to keep from appearing crazy.

I know why I flipped out on people so much years ago- It's because those people were distracting my inner voice . I have learned to control it much better with age.

None of these things are good enough now. No story too great, suffering be damned. I cherish everything about life and love people so much. I torpedoed my own life on so many levels to try and make the lives better for those around me starting at eight years old. I had to turn to a life of crime by force to try and prevent my girl from being some destroyed mess in her later years, which she is now. I done everything I could at every level to do good in spite of the " bad" things I was doing.

I sacrificed myself and the pain of living this life has been a tremendous weight. My girl ended up being a shell of a person, destroyed by the drugs dumped on us. I loved her since the moment I looked at her in Mrs. Harpers 4th grade class and knew my life would never be the same. Meeting her and feeling the power of the connection and then the coincidences thru prison with her cousin, this stuff is on a whole other level I cannot explain. All I know is that the only person I loved with all my person besides my mother destroyed herself and I did everything I knew to prevent it and now I'm sentenced to a fate that I cannot overcome.

I tried so hard to keep the people I cared about together. It has not been fair as I watch others enjoy family and loyalty. It's not been fair as I've watched my mother die, my brother turn to greed instead of family and having to carry so many secrets that haunt me daily.


God Almighty , The Chosen- The Supreme - cover me in your armor and protect me as I have done no wrong. Hear my humble words and shine your MERCY on me .

In November 2000 , My mom invited me to move back home to North Carolina since I was showing her that I had changed. I had made several trips up to visit her and it was like peas and carrots again.
It meant so much to get away from South Carolina and my dads scene. I like drive and ambition and living at my dads, those words were a foreign language to most that stopped by.

My brother Justin who was 16 at the time, was and has been very jealous of me my entire life. That jealousy has been the undoing of our relationship as he has NEVER shown any loyalty to me. As I've gotten older, I have come to understand why. It isn't his fault- nor mine-

Because of the family dynamic and there being no father present, and no one to guide him, he over inflates himself and cannot level his thinking. Chuck never taught him anything except to supersize his combo so my mindset and demeanor do not mix with him and there is no fixing it. He lives in his stepdads basement at 39 years old and acts like he's some rich playboy.

So i'm home and he brings over two guys who I know to be my age and complete scumbags. One of them tricked me as a kid and pulled a chair our from under me and made me hit my head crazy hard. When I wanted to fight, his older brother was there to protect him. So here is this guy , at my moms house, on her couch and I'm fresh from prison and the first thing I can think about when I recognize him is the consequences I will face for hurting him right now.

I thought it over for five minutes before I finally said, Yo my moms on the way home, ya'll got to go. - He had no idea the danger he was in and I'm so happy I didn't go for it when I first seen him.

They left and I told my brother they were scum and he needed to not hang with them or anyone they roll with. Of course, Jealous bro hates me telling him to do anything so , he made these guys his best friends.

A few more weeks go by and I come home one day to two strange cars in the yard , with my brother having people over hanging out. I instantly recognize it's the older brother of the kid that pulled the chair out from under me as kids and with him was TAMMY FRANETTE BUTLER.

My ****ing eyes bugged out. Here is Chads cousin- The kid from prison where we had a crazy chance meeting and my life changing forever because of it . Here's the topic of our conversations, the reason we bonded. Here's the person I felt like I have know forever and loved so deeply at first sight.

She's sitting on my moms couch, oblivious to who I am. At this time, im still prison silent and was just in my head not being able to understand how she's here at my moms house. They leave and I start asking my brother about how she was here.

He explains that he's selling coke LOL and that they help him make sales.......What was really going on was my brother who was spoiled ass rotten by my mom, was pawning his jewelry and taking the money and buying coke to resell. But what was really happening was, these older people recognized my brother was a free ride and latched on. He could not see this , how dare I hate on him and try to ruin his friendships.

At that moment I knew that I had to become one of them and get my brother and Tammy away from the scum drug losers. I knew the only way to pry them away was become one and then turn them away. I knew this girl would be destroyed by drugs if I did not do something. I could sense in her the same weakness to addiction that my mother had and all I could think of was driving the people I cared about away from drugs and scumbags.


Tammy had an apartment in Four oaks where she was sharing custody of her two boys . She was separated from her husband Tim and the father of her two boys and had help paying for the apartment and food thru wic and welfare etc.

When Tim had the boys, her apartment became party central. This was the first time I tried cocaine , as I had never even seen hard drugs until I got OUT of prison. I hated the way coke made me feel because it enhances your thinking and believe me , I dont need any help enhancing my thought process. It was tough to be high and maintain the mission.

I absolutely hated the two brothers Kenny and Timmy -But I had to pretend to gain her trust. It took me a month but I finally got her hooked on my charm and then at my house in my bed.

I got her away from that scene, drug free. We never set an official date that we started dating so we just made one, January 7 , 2001.

Her family loved me. I loved her family. Her boys were awesome and I could only think of that they were never gonna be treated the way my stepdad treated me. I wanted to guide them to be mini me's , but only to an extent. It was so good and so great. It was the happiest time of my life.


I lived for her. I felt complete when she was by my side. I felt like there was NOTHING I could not do without her. I absolutely felt invincible because of the way she made me feel . We were HOT in love come spring of 2001 and I was needing to get a job as I had been home for months, just goofing off. Her dad Ronnie was a master mechanic taught by Ford- dude could hear your car thru the phone and tell you whats wrong with it. He had started his own repair shop in Wilsons Mills NC .

It was a big shop and they leased space in their lot to an auto parts company out of Columbia SC called Newsome Automotive group. They had a fleet of box trucks that delivered overnighted parts to cherolet dealerships in the southeast. Maybe 8 employess total. They needed a driver and Tammy called me and told me to take the job. I didn't even need to interview.

One of my biggest fears was that my criminal history would always ruin my job chances so when it was a no questions asked and work where your love works, well it was a no brainer.

The supervisor, Chad- was about my age and real cool. He taught me my route , where I drive up into Raleigh, Durham, Oxford ,South Hill , Danville and the whole area in a big loop , finishing back where I started , returning the truck to the lot in Wilsons mills and then driving home.

The job was great, I drove at night, slept all day and no one bothered me. I was in this routine for a few months when I showed up to work one night and had to drive a different truck as my regular truck needed repair or inspection, I really cant remember but it is a very significant event in my life.

This was I believe June 6, 2001 - I had driven all night on my route and was just about home on highway 42 at the thanksgiving fire department intersection-

I was approaching the intersection, speed limit 55 at around 7:30 am- I see a car coming down the intersecting road and it seems hes too fast to stop but then I see an unmarked sheriffs car behind him , so I know he's gonna stop right? I felt like he was gonna hit me but I thought , no way- there's a cop.

As im driving thru the intersection, I feel the impact and im instantly flung into oncoming head on traffic on Highway 42 AT 7:30 AM.


This was an older box truck with no airbags. The passenger seat had been removed to hold extra parts.and was just open space. I was not wearing my seatbelt, I had actually looked at the steering wheel earlier that night and said , damn man , your face will get mauled in a wreck if you have to eat that steering wheel, so I undid my seatbelt-

And this saved my life-

When he hit me , I went into the air and when I hit head on , it threw me into the motor cover- see pics related- I landed in the empty space where the seat used to be. I woke up there and instantly realized i was broken up inside but was alive.

As I was laying in the floorbaord waiting for help, I seen a deputy through the side mirror approaching the door but he was hugging the side of the truck and gingerly looking over the window to see the dead guy- But I wasnt dead- I had been flung into the motor cover at 60 mph and survived. I do not know how. I broke my hip, sacrum , coccyx and pubic bone.

The person I hit head on died at the scene, which I didnt know until I got out of the hospital a week later- my mom felt like I didnt need to know -

I had to walk with broken bones because sitting with these injuries can be fatal and is a lot of times to older people.

It was a workers comp accident and I wasn't smoking any weed at the time and passed all the drug tests required when at hurt at work. The guy who ran the stop sign was actually on his way to court-

He had no license, no insurance and ficticious tags. His family was recently on the local news for failure to send their kids to school due to religious beliefs because of being muslim. My theory is that he got nervous driving illegal and ran the stop sign because the law was behind him. Either way this moment changed my life forever.

The truck I was driving was destroyed. My mom went and took pictures and I saved them for a long time and during a recent move found them again noticed how bad it really was and the significance of only driving that truck one night. I believe it saved my life.
I ended up getting $100,000 dollars from underinsured motorist coverage and workers comp paid me weekly until it was over. I had to give the lawyer a 1/3- $33,000-

I screwed that money up being young and dumb but it also exposed the rats in my family like my dad- he had a lot of interest in seeing how I was doing when I got the check-
Thats when I told him about himself and told him to go **** himself.

I am a pattern recognition specialist- and knowing who he was with no ambition or drive, I seen him truly and I was done.

I believe I had a lot of luck and maybe a guiding hand to live through this wreck. Everyone I show these pics to can't believe im still here.


I know why I'm still here.

Ignorance is a very ugly thing. It grows and takes up brain space- It makes you a person that assumes since you know the ending, that you know the beginning and end.

Reflecting on the past and using hindsight, its really unlucky and unfortunate to know and understand life lessons but then not understand the foundation they were built on. It's like you get a bike and teach yourself how to ride. I taught mySELF and had to make assumptions that weren't right. Sometimes assuming is deadly.

I have had so much hurt and disappointment but I ALWAYS, ALWAYS , try to be kind to every person I meet, no matter the color or religion. We are all gods people. Of course, ive been angry at times and said stupid stuff about crazy news stories but I always felt bad after and reminded myself that I am no better than anyone else .

I have had so many friends that were other than white. One of my best friends and a brother to me is a Black Man. I used to fly to poker games with a guy from Iran. I've worked for Indians, Blacks, Whites ,Mexicans.
I don't believe i've ever worked for a Jewish man or family directly but I've played poker with many of them and they are something to contend with for sure on that level. I believe they were all born Psychologists.

That being said, as tough as I've had it. as angry as I've been at times , I never blamed ANYONE for my troubles. I know that this world has many levels and you have to get in where you fit in. That's Real.

In this big ass pool of life, It may be better to play in the shallow end than dive into the deep end and not know how to swim. It's deadly.

Tammys neighborhood was about five miles from my house on Mesa Court. Since we lived so close, I knew all the kids who lived in her neighborhood. It was a hodge podge of low income families and there were lots of kids. Tammy was beautiful and had the best smile and killer little body but she had a self image issue with her boobs.

She always compared herself to Stephanie Thompson who lived in the neighborhood with her. Stephanie had a brother named Alex and we played little league together the one year I played. He was a nice kid who would later be strung out on drugs and die .

Stephanie is a natural beauty and she also had a small rack but got a boob job and ended up becoming a stripper like right out of high school and basically became a top notch ho and during Tammys breakup with her husband Tim was heavily influenced by the drugs she brought around, through her boyfriend Timmy, who happened to be the guy I was gonna fight as a kid because his brother had tricked me with the chair pull.

When me and Tammy first got together I could tell she was jealous over Stephanie and I wanted to desperately tell her she was so perfect and so much better but how do you tell someone you can read their mind? How can you start a relationship off diving to the depths of someone psyche exposing their weakness.

Things were so ****ing good in the beginning. I felt totally alive and was totally enamored with her and how she made me feel. She was all mine. We went everywhere together and for a while I thought I had completely rid her of the parasites in her life.

When we first hooked up , she introduced me to her friend Brian, who was gay. She had met him at her job at applebees waiting tables before me and her met. When Timmy left the scene Brian showed up. I knew right away he was bad news because he was into drugs too and it was another case of her and I just meeting and starting our relationship, how could I disparage her friend?

I knew he was realll bad news. If her and I had a fight, he was her ear. We didnt fight much in the beginning. That all started right before I got the settlement money from my wreck. When we knew I was getting that large sum she instantly asked me to buy her a boob job and at that moment I knew she wasn't genuine to me like I was to her.

It crushed my soul to know that the person I thought I would never be without was preoccupied with improving her looks and in her mind bringing her better suiters.


The summer after my wreck was hard, I gained a lot of weight, I felt disgusted with myself at being around chuck and his insanity. I loved my mom and brother but living at home with chuck at this time was so weird. The housing crash was just starting and he had been disbarred for showing up to property closings drunk. A few years earlier he had been prescribed really heavy psychotropic drugs, I mean the heaviest and would sleep and sleep . then get up and cook 7 meals at once. My mom said that if she tried to leave him he could sue her for abandonment.....

I dont know if this law is true, It sounded like it could be and since he was a lawyer or was, he would prob know. I begged her so many times to get rid of him but she held on. What made matters worse was he had double mortgaged the house without her knowing and bought cars, antiques on down the line. So now when the housing crash comes and my moms business dies, he's disbarred, the money dried up-

One of the vehicles he had bout was a 1993 Ford Lightning that was all decked out with performance chips and exhaust on top of the 351 Windsor motor. It was a ****ing beast and it was sitting in out yard , not being driven.

I had a car, It was a piece of **** mitsubishi eclipse and once I learned I was getting the check, I offered to buy the truck. Chuck agreed and I started driving it immediately.Gas was cheap back then , thank God so filling the dual tanks wasn't that bad.

On September 11, 2001 I had an appointment in Goldsboro NC to get the windows tinted on the truck. It was a black truck with red leather interior, tinting was the way. I get down there on time and the take my truck in the back. It's maybe 15 minutes dude comes up from the back and says hey man, we're being attacked.

At first I didn't know what the **** he was talking about and then he said " they just flew a plane into the world trade center" -

In my shock, I said, " can I come and see?", there was no TV in the waiting room. He replies , NO- Like literally , no you cant watch it. In my mind i could not believe a fellow citizen would not allow me to come in the back and watch a crazy situation unfolding on TV. I assumed he didnt want any work injuries to non employees. Either way, I had to get all the way back to Tammys dads shop in wilsons mills to see it on their office TV.

Right after this, we started talking getting a place and going into Christmas, things were perfect. She was largely in her sons life , living at her mom and dads and working. Her mother Anne is very big on Christmas and she buys gifts all year to have a great big Christmas morning so my 2001 Christmas eve and Christmas were pretty special. I was living at home with mom , Tammy was safe at her moms, we were in love and it was seriously one of the best times of my life . I stayed late into the night on Christmas eve helping her set up her boys santa gift layout.

We got the apartment in Clayton, two doors down from my high school friend treefrog and his best friend David Bridges who I knew but wasnt as close with yet. This was new construction duplexes, $900 rent in 2002 was high imo looking back but the place was nice .

Of course, since I was getting workers comp and not working and she was, I had a lot of time on my hands by myself and computers had just come out. I was figuring out how to sign on dial up at this time and forgotten poker existed. Bored at home, I found internet porn one day and her being a woman found the link and went off. It was just porn. But it changed us.

It wasn't long after this she decided to stop working at her dads shop and start a job at The Dollhouse with stephanie the sugar baby. I was so ****ing mad inside because I knew it was the beginning of the end. She was determined to be into that scene and man feeling the sense of loss right then for her was overwhelming.

I haden't even gotten my settlement check and she's already started a job at the strip club, as a shot girl or some ****. she wasnt a stripper but a side ho in the room. She even was working one day and Vince Neil came in and she chilled with them for a while she said. She had a picture of them together when she got home. I thought it was cool , but I know what Vince Neil is about and again, the doom switch was sensed

I had been drinking one day and I'm not sure how it happened but I talked to Tammys brothers wife one day on the phone trying to buy weed from tommy and I started talking **** to her like flirty , just being a player - not really intending to do anything but she played back and I thought **** man , youve been locked up all your life and girls are throwing pussy, maybe catch some.

Drunk me drives all the way to her house and she was just trapping me. It was a few months into the summer of 2002 that she told Tammy and bam, that was it. I tried to **** her sister in law and now im dead to her.

well I didnt **** her, touch her or anything. all i did was get drunk and make a bad choice that I insatntly regretted and KNEW she would tell. I begged and pleaded. We went through a tough time but it smoothed itself out.

I had been getting workers comp for over a year and was sick of not doing anything so I called the lawyer and asked to speed it up. I believe I got my settlement in September 2002 and the morning the lawyer called and said i could come get my check, Tammy was right there listening but I didnt give it away that this was the call. I wanted to keep it a secret and do it on my own without eyeballs all day. I kind of didnt trust her anymore because of the boob job comments, the job at the strip club and all sorts of bullshit.

I kep the cash secret for 2 days and then showed her. My mom begged me to buy property so she had found a couple to show me and I took Tammy with me and showed her but I couldn't sense any want in her. She wan't interested in this. So then instead of buying the house, I started blowing the money.

I bought her a car, clothes and other stuff. I treated my brother and some other friends. All of a sudden her brother ronnie who was older, wants to be friends. Thats when I know they are there for the ride. I didnt tell Ronnie anything yet here he is for the first time, lets be best pals.

Money makes the worst come out in people. This settlement exposed all the people around me as false. My mother was the only genuine person I believe in this situation. I decided to leave the apartment Tammy and I had and move to my own place in Selma, renting from Chucks parents who owned almost the whole town. I prepaid a whole years rent, 4500 and bought furniture and everything I needed to start a new life.

The money dwindled quickly. You think 70k is a lot but it dries up quickly without being replenished. I wasn't working and was just honestly miserable.

What I thought was a dream scenario was garbage. I was pretending. I felt I was just the man with so much money . I wasn't out at any bars or clubs. I was at home chilling but I let it go to my head. I let it blind me to reality and I blew my money. I started panicking and started looking for a job.

In these days, the only job skills i had were laying carpet and rough carpentry, so I hit craigslist and found a locasl guy needing framers. I applied and got the job.Well , I didnt know it but this guy knew the guy I stole a gun from in High School and after I was hired he realized it and his crew leader started giving me a hard time. Dude really thought he could beat me up and I knew if he tried I might be going to jail so I let his mouth go.

I worked until Friday and then said I wouldnt be back and dude said I could get my check next friday and to call him. Friday rolls around and I call him and he doesnt answer or call me back, In the small business of framers , a lot of times these guys like to **** you over on a last check if they can and i knew this was what he was doing.

The guy who talked the **** to me drove the work trailer to his house everyday and I knew where he lived. I had come across an industrial set of bolt cutters some years before and took them with me one night and cut the locks on the trailer and took all the tools. I had a sheriff come by my house and of course I didn't know anything.

I hate I did **** like this. Its like whoever ****s me over, my subliminal conscience takes over and tries to get revenge. Maybe its knowing you walked a hard path and refuse to let anyone beat you. I don't know but I wish like hell this wasnt me.


This crime started a big shitshow in my life. I realized during this time what Tammy really meant to me and that I had to save her. She was trying to contact me and she did love me, but was stuck on her self image stuff. When me and her were at the top , good god it was so good.

There was a new restaruant opening in town called Sweetwaters grille and cheesecake factory and it was only a few blocks from my selma apartment. RJ Will III was the owner and he had been the GM at several chains before starting his own place. His wifes family owned the building and most of the street he was on so he lived close and it was easy to manage.

It was very popular and busy. I was cooking steaks, chicken, ribs and fish on the grill. RJ taught me about the quarter turn method for perfect grill marks. It was going good. My brother even got a job there and for the most part it was cool but then after a while of closing the store and staying late after drinking with RJ turned into me being a dumbass. I cannot drink socially , only when im playing cards. If I drink socially, I dont like it. sitting there just to get drunk isnt fun.


Tammy had moved out of our clayton apartment and we were still having issues. I had left a few things there and went to get them and ended up leaving the computer cord by accident. I noticed her ex husbands gun in the closet and had an idea to take it but i didnt want any issues .

I got home and realized I had left the cord and called her to tell her to bring it to smithfield but when i called, instead of giving in and showing how hurt I was , I went into full prison mode i demanded the cord. She drove the car I had bought her to meet me but wanted to meet at Stephanies apartment . This enrages me because she has no intention of change or being honest. It her way or no way.

I yank the keys from the car I bought her and tell her I'm taking the car. She pulls the pistol that I had thought to take earlier-

She ***** it on me and points it at me threatening and for a couple seconds I stood there but then I decided I didnt want gun pointed at me so i grabbed it and tried to take it. I wasnt trying to hurt her, i was pushing that gun away from me. Instead of letting the gun go, she pulled thr trigger.


It was a .380 and in our tussle it was in her hand up by her head but pointed straight down into her shoulder, some inches above the skin, and when it went off the bullet went straight into her shoulder and down need her shoulder blade, missing any major arteries or organs. I could not believe it.

In one instant I went from pissed to praying she lived because i loved her so much. I even told her when it happened that I loved her my whole life and that I was sorry. I was so shocked. it had went off in my face and it was so loud and fast, I stopped playing with guns pretty much on that day.

The police came and since they knew me , did a thorough investigation. They did a parrafin test on my hands for gunshot residue. took the three witness statements that she pulled it on me. It was actually one of the worst days of my life.

Right after it happened, Stephanie picks up her phone and calls Tammys parents and says this

" Tammys been shot" and hangs up on them.


the ambulance takes Tammy to Johnston Memorial and as soon as it leaves, Stephanie says something like- " why are you worried about her when you could date me"