The road less traveled

Someone told me I look innocent tonight... that's a new one. I responded "maybe I am, maybe I'm not". Before she told me that, I was thinking about this motor-head I used to smoke crack with. It was another low point in my life, in atlanta. I had a dealer I used to go visit. He had a house and a couple cars in the drive. I'd buy a 60 or so, and sit in one of the cars with the only other white guy within two miles, and we'd smoke until it was gone. Sometimes we looked at engines, he fixed a couple things on my truck, sometimes we watched porn on the onboard video. He was fixing up the dealers wheels. One time the dealer brought a white chick with the eightball i'd just bought. She was a crack-whore, I guess we were supposed to have sex. She stayed with me until 11 or 12 the next day. We never had sex. I took her home. She called me later saying she'd "found" some money, and did I want to party more? I knew what she probably did to get the money, and by then, I was already on the six or seven hour long slog back to sober.

This stuff really happened. I lived it. And the stuff I've seen is nothing compared to what I know others have lived through. Some of the people I've known... I would never want to walk in their shoes. But I've known them. I've loved a couple of them. And I haven't even begun to talk about the things I saw before, when I was a junkie.

Now I'm waiting for god to let me have a boat. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing in the mean time, so I work, I care for my friends, and I wait. And I thank him that I don't have to do the things I used to do. I drink, I write, I wait. I take a couple pictures.

I watch out for anger and resentment. Those are the things that made me depressed, that made me use. I promise myself I will never ask for anything I can't get by myself or do without. I may die without ever getting my boat, but I will live the way I believe I am supposed to live; without regrets, in the thick of it. If I die landlocked and poor, I can say that I never conformed. And I will believe that I am better for it.