Very recently, however, I’ve relapsed into the angry, hateful ways that were once my norm. I began to feel that every question and/or constructive criticism was an attack against me. I felt I was being pushed into a corner and needed to defend myself by striking back violently. I began looking at people at work with contempt. Every time I came across a coworker with a holier-than-thou attitude, which is common in the business world, I wanted to explode on them and give them a taste of street business. I had this overwhelming feeling of wanting to beat respect and humbleness into people I thought were self-serving, arrogant individuals. Fortunately, I began to recognize these unhealthy feelings and the damage they could create. I immediately sought out a therapist and I’m taking medication. I was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which explains my extreme mood shifts between manic and depressive states without ever feeling normal or at peace. I don’t know how this will affect my future. Please pray for me.
IN THE STREETS, the criminal is well known and highly visible, only he or she is ignored. In the working world, the criminal comes with college degrees attached to a résumé, shakes your hand, and compliments you instead of questioning the colors of your clothes and pulling a gun. They may not destroy you and put pain in the lives of your family via violence, but they do it by ripping your job out from under you and leaving you without any means of support. And they often get others to do their dirty work for them. This is all legal; there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
I often sit in meetings with people who have no clue what suffering really is and hear them discuss the futures of others as if they are God. I wish they could be stripped of everything they have and be put in the drug- and gang-infested streets so they could feel what it’s like. Then I realize that if they were in that situation, they’d probably become gang leaders, because the same form of ruthlessness is rewarded there. Gang leaders make decisions that are self-serving. They, too, use others to do their dirty deeds in order to expand their wealth and power. They are willing to destroy the lives of everyone around them without losing a bit of sleep. For a gang leader, making people suffer is all in a day’s work. That’s why I sometimes get the feeling that I want to grab one of these people in meetings by the neck and pound them senseless. But these are just residual thoughts. I know that sooner or later my name will be the one thrown around in a meeting, so whenever I hear of a position becoming available that I think I would enjoy, I begin preparing myself for it. This is the same action I take whenever I hear of a downsizing period approaching. I begin preparing myself to go elsewhere. I make it my prerogative to prepare myself to move on at the expense of those who show me the road. This is what my survival skills have become.
ANOTHER GREAT CHALLENGE I face is the sexual problems I have resulting from the sexual abuse I suffered. My sexual problems range from days of impotence to uncontrollable lust. I have been to doctors who assure me that my periodic bouts with impotence are not physical. I go to therapy, which has lessened the occurrences, but they still surface when least expected. Sometimes it even happens while I’m in the middle of a sexual act. How embarrassing.
My sexual dysfunction doesn’t seem to deter me from lusting after women. Fortunately, therapy has helped me to control the previously distasteful ways I used to express these feelings. There were times when I would blatantly undress women with my eyes and very obviously check them out even if they were standing in front of me giving me a work assignment, taking my blood, or charging me for purchases. The age or appearance of the women doesn’t seem to matter—my lustful feelings target all women.
My problem with lusting often puts me in very uncomfortable situations with serious consequences that are difficult for me to comprehend. At work I was talked to regarding how uncomfortable I made the women around me feel on several occasions. One female coworker went as far as filing sexual harassment charges against me. Out in the streets, women confronted me with hostility, as they demanded to know what the hell I was looking at. Still, I had no clue what I was doing wrong, especially since there always seem to be women who like being lusted after and want to take it a step further.
I have not yet gotten total control over this problem but, because I have identified and accepted it, I take precautions that keep me from putting myself in embarrassing situations. I make sure not to put myself in situations where I’m alone with women at work, and when I’m absolutely required to, I force myself to maintain eye contact and keep the conversation professional. Even with those precautions I have been told that I’m flirtatious. I have a long way to go.
I FEEL STRONGLY that if I had not been such a good student in grade school before the abuse started, I never would have survived. I would either be dead or in jail, or I would have made a career out of gangbanging and been a bum hanging out on the corner and terrorizing the streets of Chicago. I truly believe it was those first seeds of an education and my early success that ultimately gave me a thirst for knowledge and still give me the desire to learn all I can about everything I can. But then there are the aftereffects of the abuse.
Every so often I fall into daydreams where the beatings I endured replay in my mind. I cry when I think about how I had neither a mother nor a father to protect me from abuse by the other. But once these thoughts start to fade, I rejoice in the fact that they don’t make me act violently anymore.
Another thing I suffer from is the overwhelming feeling of guilt whenever something bad happens around me even when I am not the cause of the problem. I find myself retracing my steps to assure myself that I’m not the guilty party and pray that I’m not questioned about it because of my obvious nervousness. Needless to say, I’m not a very good candidate for a lie detector test.
I have thought about how it sounds like I have blamed all the problems of my life on my mother or some other adult. The conclusions I have drawn are based on how I feel about my life in my current state of mind, and the bitterness I feel about my past. The fact is that I have led a relatively peaceful, productive life since I started dealing with the violence of my upbringing. I have always understood right from wrong and the consequences, only now I choose to do right because of me, not wrong because of others.
GANGS WILL ALWAYS exist as long as the community and the police are enemies. Gangs will run rampant as long as people in the community do not trust the police. I also know that as long as the blue wall of silence exists—the one that protects corrupt cops—there will never be trust for the police.
The tragedy of September 11, 2001, gave all the cops in the nation an opportunity to put all bad feelings about them behind and start with a clean slate. Unfortunately that opportunity was wasted. Police across the country went from being ultimate heroes back to being the cowardly, abusive assholes most citizens thought they were before the 9/11 tragedy came to pass. It is hard to believe that a profession can be forgiven for shooting an unarmed man forty-one times, confessing to wrongly incarcerating citizens, and shoving a stick up an apprehended individual’s ass—all things that happened before the 9/11 tragedy—and yet they still managed to put themselves back on the public’s shit list. I wonder if their indifference in any way stems from the fact that a vast majority of their victims are people of color. Being acquitted by all-white juries doesn’t help solve the problem, but it does give an accurate picture of race relations in our country. I want to add, too, that I have not been harassed by any police officers since leaving Chicago. Still, it’s amazing how so many good cops let a couple of assholes ruin all their reputations by not speaking out.
I DON’T UNDERSTAND why jail sentences for those who will shortly be released back into society do not come coupled with educational goals. I fail to see why educational mandates are not set as conditions for inmates regaining their freedom. For the most part gang members are people who have very little education or skills to make it outside of the ’hood. Why not make them earn a skill that will help them get out and be productive instead of allowing them to sit in the weight pile and beco
me bigger, stronger, and dumber criminals? Getting some form of education while serving time worked for me. The only answer I can think of for wanting bigger, stronger, and dumber criminals is that it guarantees repeat offenders and keeps a billion-dollar industry thriving. So, you boys in the ’hood—which side of the industry do you prefer to be on?
I KNOW FIRSTHAND the evil that lives within individuals, and have chosen to never let myself be caught unprepared. In the streets, where you can potentially encounter someone who lives for the sole purpose of ruining the lives of others, this means packing a gun and being alert. In the working world, it means not being complacent, keeping yourself marketable, and having the same, if not a higher, level of alertness. It is unfortunate that we have to live this way, but people who thrive on creating pain in the lives of others exist in every sector of our society.
That’s why I’m pissed off at the world. I’m pissed off because of all the fuckin’ people who shut their eyes while others are victimized because it doesn’t benefit them to get involved. It pisses me off that every-fuckin’-body is such a tough guy until a tough situation is actually presented to them. Then they become crying little pussies blaming the world and everything in it. I hate that niggers, spics, and white trash get body slammed for everyone to see on television shows like COPS while the real higher-stakes criminals get elected to public office.
We live in the most racist country in the world, yet this racism can’t be confronted because it’s not patriotic. And it drives me crazy how rich assholes get away with every fuckin’ thing, including murder, while those of us who can’t afford a team of high-priced lawyers have our lives scarred for shit such as smoking a joint.
This is the country with the most freedoms but you’re not free to do shit unless you pay for it. You might disagree with what’s wrong, and yet you can’t point out the obvious and you can’t be angry without getting labeled a fuckin’ lunatic. So instead we blame everybody and everything else while our anger boils and until it fuckin’ blows up and you start shooting every-fuckin’-body in sight. Then all of a sudden people care, but only until the ratings drop.
For Those at Risk
TO THOSE OF you out there living the gang life or looking to get into it, please take a moment to let the following words soak in.
I have never met a gang member who wasn’t looking out for him- or herself first and foremost. The loyalty they show you to suck you into the lifestyle disappears the moment you decide not to risk spending the rest of your life in a jail, not to be a moving target, or the moment someone who outranks you suddenly has something against you. You are not the King or Queen of the streets as you are made to feel you are. You are simply a scapegoat for dirty officials and drug dealers you’ll never even meet. Don’t fool yourself—there are easier ways to live the hip-hop life. I mean you can wear the clothes, enjoy the music, do the dance, but do it with those who stay in school and without getting yourself killed. All the police, judges, politicians, and suburbanites you think you are hurting by your acts of delinquency are getting rich at the expense of your life.
If it is abuse at home that is making you turn to gangs, seek help. Please seek help. Go to a teacher, to a school counselor, talk to anyone who you think can get you out of the abusive situation. But you have to understand that extreme situations often call for extreme measures. Prepare yourself to make tough decisions that may feel as if they are the wrong things to do. Just understand that you have to get out and there is no time to be a pussy. Take control of your life before someone else makes you lose control. It’s amazing how so many good kids let a couple of assholes ruin their reputations and then they turn bad when they feel they have no choice. Or they get into a situation where they are hurt by a rival gang or a cop and suddenly have a reason to accept the gang way as the right way.
I can go on and on about the dos and don’ts of the streets but I’ll spare you the lecture. Bottom line is that standing on the corner acting tough does not make you tough. It makes you a stupid, ignorant asshole who fucks up everything for the rest of us. Get an education, and go live the life you think you are being denied.
Once a King, Always a King: The Unmaking of a Latin King Page 25