The Family Prayer

San Francisco, California

Fourteen Years Ago

If you catch the last train running to Colma and exit Civic Center, you may find yourself directly in front of a 24-hour Carl’s Jr. You may call it Hardees. I called it home.

There is a waist- high, gray concrete, u-shaped border that surrounds the staircase leading to and from the underground station. You could almost feel the unsettled energy as you stepped onto the red brick pavement between the train station and the restaurant, some fifteen feet to your left. By day, hundreds of tourists pass through. By night, the residents made it a battleground. It was my first.

This night, as always, the restaurant is not so busy. The truly homeless seek reprieve from the streets by hustling up enough to buy a meager burger, hoping they can sleep all night. The security guard, a robust, soulful man named Daune (pronounced Dau-Nay, but you can call him D) Paul Colvin III, usually doesn’t care about the homeless sleeping as long as they don’t stink.

As always, Daune’s post, to the immediate left of the store’s entrance, is surrounded by the usual crowd.

There’s Terry, who would be in his forties now. He was struck by a bus in his youth and lost partial use of his left side. He also had the common sense knocked out of him, you’d think, because it wasn’t uncommon to see him suck the toes of random women–before he took them home. Tall, lanky, black, eternally hilarious and relentlessly loyal, he was the mainstay of the group. His mother insisted he get out of the house each night, and he’d end up here to shoot the breeze. There were worse places to go.

Terry was also the best scrapper I’d ever seen. He could throw that left like it meant nothing. Once, during a sparring session, he knocked me straight to the ground. It was the last time I ever underestimated someone because of a physical disability. Other than myself, Terry was the butt of everyone’s jokes, but he could give it right back.

There was Chad, who, for some reason, I always likened to Guile in the Street Fighter series. Save for the hair, they could’ve been brothers, and Chad could take some monster shots. Come to think of it, when he fought, he very rarely took a step back. He never had a use for kicks, but had supreme use of his fists and no end to the amount of punishment he could take. He was my first real boxing influence.

There was Lee…and Lee, well, Lee was a trip. He was a high school teacher. He was bisexual and thought we all didn’t know (Funny story there). He was black-white, in excellent shape, very easy with the ladies and could shoot his legs to Heaven. He took me as kind of a little brother and sharpened the tae kwon do I already had. He was always smiling.

Christian was a wannabe goth, but he was one of the most decent people I’d ever met. He could only fight, but when he was angry. Then again, when he was angry, I saw him get this eerie, toothy grin that would’ve made the Joker shudder. Half-asian, six feet tall and always dressed in black. Christian didn’t fight as much as he inflicted pain on people.

Emalio, a young hustler who had endured a horrible childhood. He was quiet, shy, and the smallest of us. If you brought harm to him, you had to answer to D. You didn’t want to answer to D.

And me?
I had known the group about four months. I was the rookie, the untested one. I could fight, but these guys were on a whole other level, who happily kicked my ass repeatedly. D would randomly reach out and slap me. Didn’t matter where I was in proximity to him. He always a polite little smack upside the head. When I learned to block, it didn’t make a difference. D was an aikido expert. He taught me well.

So this night, things are a different. It’s Thanksgiving.
This night, we’ve all compiled our money and created one big pot to order a bunch of food. D went out of his way to inform me that my homelessness did not make me exempt. If I wanted to eat, I had to contribute. Luckily, the bang-on-the-change-machine scam had worked well that day, and I had fifteen bucks to my name.

We ordered KFC, Pizza,chinese food from right across the street, BBQ from across town, and enough stuff to where we had to unite two tables. Something for everyone.

Naturally, I was the first to reach for all of the food (slap). D ordered us all to take hands, lower our heads, and pray.
This shocked me; D was muslim, I was Christian, Chad was agnostic, and I wasn’t even sure what some of the others were. I asked D who we were supposed to pray to.
He looks me in my face and says; “Does it matter?”

I remember how good I felt when I heard that. I didn’t understand until I had seen more of the world.
We prayed. We prayed to who we believed in.
And then we ate.

Reinterpretation

I really wanted to throw something together at the last minute that reflected everything that’s gone on this past week. I just needed to find the right setting. I turned on “Reinterpretation” off of the stellar (and free) soundtrack to Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix and here we go.

It always traces back to a game…

After all the drama, once again, I finished the next chapter of Universal Warrior at the last minute and got it off in time for Molly to edit before posting. I was then hit with a hard dose of reality—most of you know about it already—that sent me into a nice little depression.

What does all this mean?

This was what I kept asking myself, as, in nearly blind rage, I sent my left fist into the tile wall of my bathroom over and over and over again, until I looked to the tile and saw red. The tile hadn’t even slightly cracked, as though it was oblivious to my presence, but my knuckles had been worn down. Skin was missing.

I can see someone coming from almost a mile off. I can associate people with how they smell. I can size up people by watching them walk. I can tell someone’s lying before they open their mouth. I can take someone’s arm and sprain it, break it, or make it completely unusable for the rest of their lives.

And none of this means anything any more. The hunter has no prey.

It would be easy to say that the hunter has no place in this world, and maybe it’s true. But since I’m not going anywhere soon, my dilemma was finding the bright side. I’m not one for self-pity. I don’t have time to waste like that.

I feel like I get penalized a lot harder when I break the rules. I admit that I screwed up when I lost my job, but why is it other people did worse and were retained? I walked off of my job site to try to be there for the girl I was with at the time and I got fired. Fair enough, I broke the rules. My former supervisor was caught receiving oral gratification from an underage girl in the stairwell and he was transferred. How the fuck does this make sense?

Wait, I’ll tell you.
Had I not lost my job, I wouldn’t have been able to launch Universal Warrior, I wouldn’t have gotten into freelancing, and I wouldn’t have met Molly, whom, even if I wasn’t dating, is still one hell of an editor. Odd, but it all adds up.

So faced with the reality that I just barely edge by in a month, I was finally forced to acknowledge something I had known for awhile. It’s funny how saying something aloud makes it real.

I will be in Jefferson City for, at the very most, one more year.
If I wanted to throw everything I had into moving to St. Louis in a couple of months, I could—but it wouldn’t make any sense. At the end of this year, my credit rating will significantly improve. Opportunities will open up in January 2010. But that’s not what really got me.

My children are growing up without me. I have no one to blame but myself.
My plans don’t really change. I’m still working, I still plan to see them, when I said I would see them…the contact I have with them now if better than anything I had within the last five years. At least this way, they get to know me, and me them, a little bit before we spend time together.

Yeah, but it doesn’t make it any fucking easier to swallow.

No, it doesn’t, but this is what I have to work with, and it’s better than nothing.

I do feel, however, with Universal Warrior, my children, and this relationship I have…this is the fight of my life. It was never about anyone in the street. It was about the only things that really matter—which, I’ve long maintained, are the people who will go to the wall for you.

And I’ve never lost a fight.
So that’s the best face on a new situation, and the band plays on.

del.icio.us Tags: Jefferson City,children,fight,Universal Warrior

Not Need, But Choice.

I wasn’t expecting the Ravens to get past Tennessee, but we did. So despite the fact that the Steelers had swept us this season, I held out hope that, despite the injuries and statistics, we just might pull it out. If we defeated the Steelers in their own home, we’d head back to the Super Bowl for the second time in nine years.

It wasn’t meant to be. To say that I dislike the Steelers is not to say that I don’t respect them. They wanted it much more than we did, and they had the experience to back it up.

Final score: 24-13.

To see my squad come so close to the big game, just to fall short one game shy of the super bowl, well, this is why we watch the game. We go through the highs and lows with them. The further we go, the harder it is to fall.

Molly was here for a four-day weekend, and barely stayed in her skin while I cheered and cussed out the TV, and then sank into a mild depression. Molly doesn’t like to people sad, especially those she cares about.

She immediately went over to my laptop and opened up my (extensive) Alvin & The Chipmunks collection. In a manner that ensured we will never end up on a reality dance show, we danced as she sang along with “Bad Day” among others.

There was a time when I would go on and on about the people I was dating in my blogs; keeping things relatively quiet about Molly isn’t meant to say that I’m not very happy where I am. It means I am learning to keep my mouth shut.

My closest friends know the truth, as close friends should. I can say that I have never stayed up late with someone downloading chipmunk videos and, later on, arguing opposite points of the death penalty.

As I grow older, I learn there are some things I need to keep to myself if they’re going to turn into something. What I can say publicly is that this place, right here, is where I want to be. Not because I feel a need to be here, or even because I feel this is where I’m supposed to be; no, this is where I choose to be.

I Fight For My Friends…

Even when people tell me I shouldn’t.
I live between two worlds. One world is the ‘normal’ world, in which people cringe at the thought of breaking the law, keep their head above the water, and do their best not to make waves. The other is euphemistically referred to as the underworld, where honor is often defined by the risks you’re willing to take, while keeping the details to yourself. Feeling inadequate and rejected by the normal world, I moved to the underworld and excelled.

The normal world is hard, and tends to turn a blind eye to people in the street; lower-class people are often condemned as murderers, thieves, hustlers, molesters, and ‘crazies’ before they’re even allowed to explain themselves.
To be honest, I understand the skepticism. A lot of these people refuse to help themselves.
But a few of them do.

Roughly ten percent of everyone I came across in my journeys had wound up in hard times because of situations entirely outside of their control. They didn’t feel sorry for themselves, and they devoted every moment they had to bettering themselves. Some succeeded. Some didn’t. Some took the so-called easy way out.

I can’t relate to depression, loneliness, or thoughts of suicide. I don’t know what it’s like to live with that kind of pain on a daily basis. So I reserve judgment and invite you to do to the same as you read on.

I have a very good friend in this area. I like to think of him as an honorable person. He’s a combat veteran. He’s dropped everything to be there for me and other people he cares about. I call him a friend.
He’s also the most terribly depressed and loneliest person I’ve ever come across. Like most of us, some of his problems he brings upon himself. Others were brought on for him. He doesn’t do much to better his situation. As his friend, I’ve never said anything until now. Part of this makes me sick to even think about. The other part—Busterwolf—won’t allow me to give up.

He is very, very close to crossing a line—if he hasn’t crossed it already—and I am desperate to stop him from doing this. I’ve talked to him. Other people have talked to him. This is my last resort because I know someone we both know will read this—it will get back to him.

Having lost someone I loved to violence, I can understand how that feels, and this is something we click on. However, it’s never crossed my mind to begin a relationship of ANY kind with an underage girl. So it was with horror that I listened and watched as he told me he was falling for her.

On one end, I was glad he was at least open to the idea of being in love again, and on the other…I despise pedophiles. I wonder how God so easily forgives something that causes so much damage.

The attraction is mutual; if I thought he would’ve taken her by force, I would’ve turned him in already. It wouldn’t have done a lot of good.

The more time they spend together, they higher the scenario is of something happening. I don’t want to see someone I care about get labeled with something that will follow him forever.

I don’t know what to do beyond this point. I post this and leave the rest to God.

Moving On

There’s a lot I don’t talk about publicly, but one thing that’s universal is that I have the uncanny ability, or fault, to move on quickly.

One of my quirks is that I can block someone completely out of my psyche, as if they do not exist to me. This is a habit I got into when I was on the road, when I wanted to forget the friends I’d made in an area…and the enemies. I’ve found that as I’ve gotten older, I can’t do this as easily as I used too.

I believe that when you love someone, you want to see them happy. If their happiness cannot be found with you, then you need to step out of the way. In a strange conglomeration of this belief and low self-esteem, I would get out of the way when the person I was dating wanted to be with someone else. Their happiness meant someone, or something, was more than I could give them. As was my life’s tradition, I would cross paths with someone long enough to see them through something, and then move on.

My most recent and pivotal ex was different; I liken that breakup to coming out of the water, only because I realized how much I was losing myself in that relationship. It was doomed long before it was officially over, and it was officially over long before I mentioned it on the net. I know that we never could have worked, knowing the type of personality I was. I’m never going to be completely grown or mature. I may one day rise above being self-destructive, but my inner child will always be well-nurtured.

Knowing that I could never make Sam happy, even after giving it my all, coupled with the knowledge that she is doing better without me (relocating near her family and re-entering school), that’s what allows me to move on quickly.

Some people are hurt by the knowledge that their ex might be better off without them; I’m not some people. When you love someone, their happiness is what matters. You either aid them in getting there or you stand by them as they achieve it on their own. Or you get out of the way.

The sooner you do that, the sooner the person you’re supposed to be with makes themselves available.

I sincerely believe this. This is why I can move on so quickly.