HUSTLER
Jimmy sells beat drugs. He hustles homosexuals. He hustles hustlers who are more small-time than he is. He will snatch a purse, take a leather jacket, steal a beach bag off the blanket, buy a stolen credit card and run it up to the max. A young looking thirty-one, despite a close call with endocarditis and heart surgery from shooting cocaine in his youth, he travels from coast to coast, from Rodeo Days in California, to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, to spring break in Daytona, to summer vacation on Cape Cod. Jimmy preys on party animals.
Jimmy was very introspective about his life when I talked with him. He spoke passionately. On his sixth time in prison, Jimmy forced himself to get into the drug program, and he says he's finally taken a good look at himself. "I can identify my character defects. My biggest character defect is that I'm fucking lazy," he says, pushing a shock of black hair back from his pale face. "I don't want to work for shit, because all my life I ain't never had to work for nothing. Shit has always been where you can go out and get it, and this is the easy way to get it. In fact, it was the hard way to get it."
Jimmy re-creates some of his work here so you can decide for yourself if it seems like the lazy man's way to fortune. What the stories don't always clearly communicate is the surge of euphoria he feels when he succeeds at his deceit.
"Ripping somebody off, when it's going just right, it's like a high in itself. I have the person believing that I'm fucking Joe Dope Dealer, and I'm getting them the best deal they're ever going to get. They're giving me all their vacation money, thinking that they're going to get some free dope and get the money back. It's going so well that they're just going to believe whatever I'm going to tell them. Just knowing that now you got the money, their money. They're still with me, and they're laughing about it. I used to like that.
"I've always noticed that once people have invested a certain amount of money with you, and that amount is gone, they convince themselves that they'll get it back if they give you more money. They don't want to believe that they've been ripped off. 'This can't be happening to me. I'm really too intelligent for this guy to rip me off.'"
Like many of the most successful criminals, Jimmy depends on the illicit desires of his victims to facilitate his job. If someone didn't want what Jimmy promises to supply -- but almost never delivers -- he'd rarely get the chance to employ his considerable talents.
"I always had some kind of weird luck, where I'll be sitting, won't be bothering anybody, and somebody will come up out of nowhere and say, 'Hey, buddy, you think you could get me some drugs? You know?'
"'No, I don't know.'
"'I got two hundred dollars, and I'm looking for some.'
"It's like, damn, man, I shouldn't take this guy's money. But he really wants to give it to me. I don't know why. Maybe because I have a few tattoos they pick me out of a crowd. I give up trying to find out.
"It's like when I was younger with homosexuals, if I was flat broke walking down the street at night time, and there was one car driving down the road, the dude would pull over and want to give me some money. And wouldn't be happy till I took it from him, or till he drove me somewhere."
There is just a glimmer of good news in Jimmy's report -- his hustle is less certain to work these days. "When I first started ripping people off, if a guy had long hair, he got high. If kids were Spring Breakers, they all used drugs mostly. Now with the kids, you take your chances. They might go straight to the phone and call the police on you. So you got to talk to them for a while. Now, lots of times, the guys with long hair are the ones who will want to beat you up and throw you off the balcony. They just say no. They just happen to have long hair because it looks good. The guys who buy look like Pee Wee Herman."
What is amazing is the level of personal violence Jimmy has chosen to live with as a relatively nonviolent criminal. He's been cut, threatened with a gun, shot at, chased, and cold-conked from behind. With his bad heart, he can only run about fifty yards before he's done in, so his chances of getting away are poor. Twice, Jimmy's been beaten to a bloody pulp. But the hot bubbling inner core of Jimmy's crime is his own addiction, to cocaine and to the rush of taking what belongs to somebody else.
"I've always known it would come down to this. I always suspected that I'd get shot, or something like that. You get used to it. You convince yourself that it's not really that bad. 'Hey, I'm having a good time.' Shit's bad, and if shit being bad is the only thing you know, you're not going to know when something is good. You're going to say, 'I don't know anything about that. I know about this. This is what I'm used to, so this is where I'm going to stay.' It's like feeling sorry for yourself. I knew this sentence was coming around, and it didn't even bother me. I just thought, 'Well, this is what I'm choosing -- to do these crimes. I'm not going to get a job and not be able to get high. So what I need to do is just be careful. I know I'm going to get caught sooner or later."
Jimmy wasn't careful. His crimes became progressively more and more serious. Instead of sticking to selling fake drugs to make enough money to get himself high, Jimmy was selling real drugs. In the 90s, he began to buy and sell a lot of crack cocaine. He was burglarizing hotel rooms. His habit was costing up to one thousand dollars a day. He was lucky to stay out of prison for ninety days before coming back.
"I'm surprised I'm not dead a thousand times over. I was just on a suicide mission. I would tell people that, and a lot of people wouldn't hang around me. I'm glad it's stopped, but I couldn't stop it."
***
For me, it was just whatever crime came along. When I was in my early twenties, out on the street, I would hang out in different big cities: Ft. Lauderdale, New Orleans, Los Angeles. I'd go to areas where there were tourists, and that's where I would make my money. Inevitably, where there are tourists, there are also homosexuals, cruising to try to pick up the young guys or runaways. For a while, I tried homosexual hustling, but I couldn't seem to make any money at it. All my friends could. I couldn't get myself sexually aroused like I should have.
So when one came along, I would try to talk him out of his money, or promise him whatever, then as long as I got the money, I'd try to get away from him. I committed crimes against homosexuals, muggings where I could just grab their wallet, just snatch something from them and walk away. I didn't even consider that as committing a crime on a regular person, because it's almost like they expect to get ripped off. They're out there, cruising around, picking up young guys that they know are extremely dangerous. It seems like this past time I was out on the street things were different for me. I don't know if I look more menacing now. I usually wear a leather jacket, T-shirt, and jeans. I dress casual. Guys pick me up thinking I'm younger. They'd pick me up, I would be high on cocaine, and they would actually pay me money just to get out of their car when I would start talking. "Uh-oh, I've picked up a crack psycho. Let me just give him money to get out of the car."
"What's up, man?" I'd say.
"Would you like to go to my place and make some money?"
"Yeah, yeah, uh, we'll party. But first we need to stop by somewhere I know. You give me a ride, we'll go over here, and then we'll go party, man. I like to party. You got anything to party on?" I'd ask them if they had any drugs and, of course, they didn't have what I want anyway. So I'd say, "I need to go get some weed or some coke. Instead of giving me the money to fuck around, give me the money now to go buy some drugs. When we get over here I'll buy."
Then what I'd do is take them over to black town or wherever I was going to get my dope, get the money from them, and make the buy. Then I get back in the car and say, "We need to make one more stop. Damn, man, just make this one more stop. I didn't rip you off. See? I'm back in the car." On that one more stop, I'd get out of the car and just go.
I don't really like homosexuals. They've always seemed worse of a leech than me. Whenever I was flat broke and doing really bad, or something like that, they've always been around and tried to fucking fuck me over. Here I am trying to fuck somebody over, but they're trying to take sexual advantage of me, or any young boy if possible. But me, I'm just fucking trying to get something to eat. Instead of saying, "You need five dollars to eat on?" they're always telling you, "I'll give you five dollars, if you'll let me suck your dick." Damn, man.
I used to sell a lot of beat drugs. It would be the same thing when I ripped those people off. I'd sell Procaine for cocaine, or I'd make fake hash -- sage and eggs, looks just like hash, smells just like hash. I'd let them smoke just a small amount. Not enough to get high, but to know that it burned, and it smelled real. I'd say, "Let me get my money, man. I got a date." Then I'd get out with fifty dollars. Usually that was the least I'd bother to sell for. The tourists are not going to be in town very long, at the most for a week. I wouldn't even bother ducking them. If they don't like it, I just tell them, "Look, here, have some cocaine."
I'd have dehydrated wild mushrooms straight out of the supermarket chains, and tell them that they're psychedelic mushrooms. The kids like that now. There's not a whole lot of excuse you can give them when they eat a whole lot of mushrooms without getting high, but I just tell them, "I traded somebody my coke for the mushrooms. Take some coke or something."
It's not likely that they're going to confront you. They're on vacation. They know they've been ripped off, but they're not going to go through the trouble of ruining their vacation, especially when you remind them, "Listen, you'll go to jail, bro. You better calm down." You don't let them get you back in the car, and take you into any deserted alleyways. You just make sure you stay out in public.
Some people are actually happy when they get ripped off. They think that they got their drugs. I've seen people snort up Procaine and swear that it was the best dope. I've seen people give me their real cocaine in exchange for fake cocaine, and tell me that they didn't like what they have. I was like, "I'll take all of it. Here, you can have this. Matter of fact, you can have some extra of mine." Procaine sells for fifty dollars to eighty dollars an ounce, and ten dollars for an eighth of an ounce. I can take that ounce and make eight hundred dollars. I can turn $10 into $180. So that's not bad, not bad at all.
It's always easy to make ten dollars. Even if I'm flat broke and spent all my money on cocaine that night, I can always find somebody to give me ten dollars. Or I'll just get whoever wants to buy the dope and tell them, "Look, I owe my connection ten dollars. Ride me to where they sell it and give me ten bucks. When I come back out, I'll sell you a quarter gram and give you ten dollars off the price, plus I'll give you a free quarter gram."
People are greedy. Drug addicts are the greediest people I've ever seen in my life. If they think they can get something for free, they'll give you everything they have, with the probability of never seeing anything back again.
Or I'll leave something for them. If they want to buy a pound of pot, that's going to cost them almost one thousand dollars. What I'll do is, I'll leave them with two ounces of cocaine for collateral. That's like eighteen hundred to two thousand dollars. "You hold this, and front me the thousand. I'll go get the pot."
I'll get their money and leave them with the fake coke. I'll come back to them a half hour later without the money and without the drugs, and I'll say, "Man, you wouldn't believe what's up. I got a deal where I can get another whole pound for five hundred dollars. Man, you guys think you can swing up some more money? And I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll give you all your money back, some free pot, and some cocaine. I'll give you another ounce and a half of cocaine to hold in the meantime. Or I'll give you a bunch of hash to hold, eight or nine ounces. Hold onto this, and hold this here, and give me five hundred dollars. I'll try to rush the deal."
I try to put them in a hurry, and see how it works out. If I can't get five hundred, I'll take two hundred, or a hundred, or fifty. I'll just take something, you know? I'll take their jewelry or their clothes, if they got new clothes, and it fits me.
Say it's a cold day out, I meet you. You want an ounce of pot. I don't have a jacket on, and you got a nice leather jacket. I'd say, "You know what, man? I'm fixing to go in there and get a quarter pound, man. You got a duffel bag I can use?" If you say no, I'd say, "Let me hold on to your jacket to wrap it up in when I come out. I'll be right back." So I'll get you for your money and your jacket. Leave you in some neighborhood.
Sometimes I'd get back in the car with you, and we'll ride back across the bridge into the beach area. I'll say, "It's a Jamaican dude, man, and he didn't want to do the deal across the bridge. He's going to meet us on this side. Let me use your jacket to cover up the pot."
We've been riding around for a half an hour, drinking beer. I done let you snort a little bit of my coke, and I done smoked a little bit of hash with you. I got to be your friend during that time, or what you think is a friend. Most people on vacation, they just want to have a good time. They get drunk. A lot of times, they're intoxicated. Especially if you find them on a pool deck. If you meet them on a pool deck, you can bet they're already intoxicated. They been drinking out in the sun all day long, shit like that, and it's likely they'll go for any kind of deal.
I was so naive when I was younger, I went out to Los Angeles thinking that I'm going to be like a superstar, just like the rest of the kids, thinking, "Probably not very many people sell beat drugs out there." So I went to Hollywood. "Damn, man, this is just like Times Square in New York City. People will run right over you. Don't nobody care about you. Damn, man, all these kids are junkies, they ain't no tourists. What am I going to do?"
I had a little bit of reefer to sell, so I got out there and had to hustle faggots, and rip faggots off on Santa Monica Boulevard. The first day out there, I ran into a great big old five hundred-pound homosexual who hit the drag on Sunset Boulevard. He told me, "You can stay at my place."
I played it off like, "Ah'm just in here from Louisiana. Ah ain't never had no homosexual. Ah'm only down here 'cause my girlfriend left me." He bought it for about a week. That whole time I was with him, I was finding a place to buy pot cheap down in East LA. I'd ride down there on the bus, buy an ounce of pot for fifty dollars, take it back and make it into fifteen dimes. I ended up getting three to four hundred dollars in my pocket. By the time that he was hitting on me really heavy, I was able to plan to leave.
That night I went to a concert. Usually, you can make some money at a concert with beat drugs. But the whole five or six days I'd been in Los Angeles, I hadn't got any pussy, so I just went to the concert in my mind to get laid. I met a girl there who was like thirty years old, nine years older than me. After the concert, we went back to her place. She lived right up near the Hollywood sign in one of them little villages of old Spanish-style houses. I ended up staying with her on and off for about three years. I would leave and come back, leave and come back. The age difference isn't all that much, but I just didn't find her that attractive. I wanted young girls, I wanted fine girls, and as many as possible. She'd give me the keys to her car, I'd take her old two-seater Volvo, and I'd just go cruise around picking up girls in her car and fucking them.
I'd go back to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and then on to Spring Break. In the wintertime, I end up going back to California and hanging with her. I thought I was a real player. I lived the life, man. I used to think to myself, "Boy, you're a real slick motherfucker. You don't even work, and all these people save up all their money, all year long, just to come to the beach for one week, and stay in this nice motel, for one week! Here you are, just living here, hanging out, Spring Break. And before Spring Break, where were you? You were at Mardi Gras, hanging out. Partying off these other people's money. Man, life is good."
I was bartending at a topless bar in New Orleans. The fucking girl I was living with was driving me crazy, and I lost my job, and my car blew up, all in the same day. So I called out to California, and I said, "I'd like to come out there."
"Oh, I'm doing cocaine now," she said. "We're sitting here freebasing a few ounces right now." I had never heard of it. At this time, I was just a junkie sometimes, every once in a while I'd shoot some dope. So I dropped everything, and flew out to California.
She was a base-head, really bad, smoking half an ounce to an ounce a day of fourteen hundred dollars an ounce cocaine. She worked as a computer programmer, but she had quite a bit of money from her parents.
She got to where she didn't care about anything except cocaine, and I got to where I was shooting and smoking. Really I like to shoot drugs a whole lot better than smoking them. It was my first time freebasing, and I seen thirty- and forty-year-old people, all crawling around on the carpet, peeking out the windows, and I said, "Man, these people are weird. I'm going to take my drugs, go in the bathroom, shoot them, and lock all these weirdos out." I had never seen anybody freaking like that. Shooting cocaine, you get so high you just got to sit there, and then you're fucking out of it, you can't do weird things.
Anyway, the thing fell apart. I ended up saying, fuck this shit. I took all my shit and left. Got out there on the street trying to make money by myself. Then she blamed her drug addiction on me. Turns out she had run through $160,000 trust fund in less than a year. Her dad had people looking for me wanting to break my legs. These were big dudes, in suits -- leg-breaker dudes -- the real thing. I said, "This man is going to fuck up my world." I hit the road.
I've been beat up three times that make a difference over a ten- or twelve-year period. Two of the times, it was people trying to take my fake drugs from me, because they thought they were real.
The other time I got beat up, the whole side of my face was caved in, my cheekbone was shattered. My nose was broken, my eyes blacked. I was shooting dope with these people. They had been ripping me off all night, just taking drugs out of my bag. They were also taking money from me, because when we started shooting drugs, they had no money, but then when I ran out of money, then they had some. I took one of the guy's money to go get some drugs. But I just took the money and beat him. Somehow they found out the area that I hung out in was down in the French Quarter. They rode around until they spotted my car, and waited for me. They found me about dawn, when I came back to my car drunk. Within about two minutes, they just kicked the shit out of me.
I got so bad on cocaine that I used to go into the black neighborhoods on foot, and trade the black guys fake reefer for their crack cocaine, taking the chance that they'll find out that it's not real weed and get me before I got out of the projects. That's how bad it got.
They got me one night. I got about five blocks away, and I heard somebody yelling. The dude I was with took off running and left me. I ran about a block, and this dude on a bicycle spun the bike around in front of me, hit me one time in the temple and dropped me. He hit me, I hit the ground, and then I shit myself. I was knocked out about thirty seconds. The dude had hit me so hard, I forgot which hotel I was staying in. I walked up to the main highway, and I couldn't remember what hotel I was in. Damn. That was the last time I ever walked down there.
When I get high on cocaine, I just really don't care. I have only certain things I'll do to get the money, but as far as to get the drugs, I'll go to any extent to get the drugs. I'll walk through the worst neighborhood in the middle of the night. It doesn't matter. I never thought twice in any city I've ever been in about going into a neighborhood. It just didn't matter to me. If that's where the drugs were, I was going in there to get them. And I was coming out with my drugs. The only way you were going to get them away from me was if you bodily take them away from me. I'm not handing them over.
I don't like to be around guns, and I don't carry guns. It's really weird, the anti-violent part of me. If I get a gun, man, I'll trade it for some drugs, because I don't want to carry it. That's a three-year mandatory sentence. An automatic gun, I don't even know how to load it, or shoot it, or anything. All this time I've been on the streets, all I've had is a revolver, and it doesn't matter if it's got bullets in it or not, because I'm not going to shoot nobody.
In a fit of anger, I've stabbed a few people, but only when they were beating me. I've pulled a knife when I've gotten cornered and said, "Look, man, back up. I don't want to stab you." I have a lot of friends, they'll just stab a person. If they pull out a knife, they're going to use it automatically. I always give a person a second choice. I've stabbed maybe three people, and it's just been a slashing thing. I don't even know if I cut them. It's just enough to get them off me, so I can get away from them.
In the environment I was in, that was the chance you take. If you jump on somebody to beat them up or to hurt them, be prepared for them to shoot you or stab you. If I stab somebody or pull a knife out on somebody, then I've got to be prepared for them to pull a knife on me, and stab me or shoot me. Whatever's fair is fair.
Actually, I've probably got real good sales skills. Every once in a while, I'd go home and stay with Mom, or I'd get straight for a while, and I always did okay in a job. It's just that I would get bored. I wouldn't be getting what I wanted fast enough. Or Spring Break would come up in Daytona, and I'd be stuck in some podunk town, or Mardi Gras would be going on. A couple of times I lived with girls who were good, steady girls that I wasn't able to turn into maniacs. I'd just take off for Mardi Gras and say, "Fuck this shit." Make a couple hundred dollars and take off. Because I've always been able to just jump out there in a city anywhere, with basically nothing -- just some BC Headache Powder and make one hundred dollars, or go to a bus station somewhere and make some money real fast ripping off a homosexual. I never worried about being broke. As long as I'm not locked up, I'm not going to worry about it.
I've had a whole lot of burglary charges recently. I started hanging around with younger kids on the beach side who were burglarizing motels. The way they get in is people actually leave their doors open, or leave the sliding glass balcony windows open. They'll be on the second floor and leave it wide open. The kids just climb up the wall, go in the room about four or five in the morning and grab the pants or a purse and go on out. They'd go in there when the people were sleeping. I tried that once or twice, and I was scared shitless. I have friends who would go into hotel rooms while the people were in there sleeping, get up between their beds where the nightstand is, lay on the floor, and do a hit of crack. Then grab the stuff and leave. Just kids who were psychos about that.
Then in the morning, these younger kids will have credit cards, they'll have traveler's checks, and they'll have cash. The money, they're going to buy crack cocaine, but the other stuff they don't know what to do with it. A lot of times, they have trouble renting a room in any kind of nice hotel.
Now on the street, even with my habit, I keep myself looking presentable. Never dirty clothes, never ripped up clothes, always nice clothes. With a credit card, the first thing I do is go and buy the best clothes I can for myself. I try to look so that people will have no second thoughts about letting me a room even without an I.D. I have nice luggage. I always conduct myself well. I always go in by myself. I'll go and get the room. I don't like a bunch of street people and junkies around me. If I'm going to sell drugs, I get a room to sell drugs, and then I get another room where I sleep. This way, when I pass out, I don't have to worry about anybody creeping in my room and robbing me.
I'd get the kids to stay with me, if they were good kids and made a good amount of money. If I had a young guy who made a goodly amount of money, I didn't want to lose him, I wanted him to stay with me. I might get him high all night until three or four in the morning. Then it's time for him to go to work. "Man, it's time for you to get out there and go climb in through a few windows." When he comes back, he's got a pair of pants, a wallet, a purse, usually a thousand dollars or more, plus people's credit cards.
I had this one guy for a while, and I thought we were doing good, because we were jumping from the Sheraton to the Marriott to the Hyatt. Get into the hotel in the middle of the night, and the first thing we'd do is call an escort service, have them send over two girls in about an hour. Then we'd go -- boom -- get some dope real quick, and come right back. We'd be sitting in a three-hundred-dollar-a night motel, spend five or six hundred on a whore, get high, and eat on room service. The next night he'd go out and do another one, and we'd get another hotel. We'd have three or four hotel rooms, all on stolen credit cards. I thought, "Man, we're doing good. I got five thousand dollars' worth of surf clothes, plus cashmere jackets, beautiful shirts, and shit."
Went to jail, and lost it all. That's how it goes every time. I get all these nice clothes and jewelry, and I give somebody my jewelry to hold for one night or trade it off, or I go to jail the next day, and it'll all be gone. Clothes, piles and piles and piles of clothes. Get a piece of luggage, be in a hotel, and I can't go back in the hotel, because it was rented under a stolen credit card, or because the police raided the hotel. "No clothes again. Don't this suck? Got to go out, make some cash. Buy me a stolen credit card, and go buy me some clothes."
After a while you just get to accept it. This is no big deal. Losing stuff is no big deal. Losing, being all fucked up, and broke is no big deal. You just got to make some money. And you convince yourself that it's no big deal, when it really is a big deal that you just lost everything you had, when you didn't have too much in the first place. In the morning when you get thrown out of the motel, because you spent all your money -- five hundred dollars -- smoking crack the past night, and didn't pay the rent for the next week, you're sitting out on the sidewalk and thinking, "Boy, am I a fuckup. Well, I got to find somewhere to stash my clothes. Then I'll go down on the beach and make some money."
You haven't slept all night long, and you got to go down on the beach, and it's a hundred degrees down there. It looks like a desert, because in July not too many people go on the beach, but locals. You got to walk along the beach, hungry, broke, mad as hell, trying to make enough money just to get a room and eat. Walk off with somebody's bag, sell something, steal something. You kick yourself in the ass the whole time. Then when you do make some money, the first thing you want to do is go get a rock. "I want to go get a rock, and then I'll go get the room." Sometimes, you just say fuck it, you get where the dope is and, "Fuck it! My clothes ain't going nowhere. I'll smoke up this eighty dollars and go back out and get another one."
You put yourself on a merry-go-round. You come in and out of prison. When you come out, you got nothing but the same people and the same thing to look forward to. Locked up, out on probation, busted again. It seems like ninety days is a lot of time for me to stay out on the street anymore. I'm lucky if I can spend a year out there without getting busted.
When I first started out I was like, "Wow, I'll never have no hooker as an old lady." You say to yourself that you'll never do that. "I ain't never going to have no hooker, old sleazy bitches." Before you know it, you end up meeting a hooker. She's making money and getting high, you're making money and doing the same thing. You become friends, and you're staying together. You say, "Fuck it," and she becomes your girlfriend. Even though she's pretty and shit, how did 1end up with a girl who sells herself as my girlfriend? Obviously, she don't care nothing about me.
You don't want to think about that, because damn, man, you realize that you've sold yourself. You're out there selling beat drugs, and she's doing the same fucking thing you are, and you've done sunk to this level, and-fuck it-who cares? Let's get high! You're going to hang around, no matter how long it takes, sooner or later, you're going to end up just like the people you hang around with. I always try to look a certain way, but what's inside is what counts, and I got real problems inside.
Harming people, taking their money so I could get high, that's fucked up. I convince myself, "Well, they're trying to get high, so it's really not that bad."
But what about these people, I stole their fucking credit cards? What about them? They wasn't trying to get high. 1don't even want to hear that shit.
What about that fucking pocketbook that got snatched? Those people were just sitting there. I don't want to hear that shit.
What about them girls you turned on to crack cocaine, ain't never smoked it before? One of them might end up being a fucking crack whore, fuck up her whole life. Over the years, there's been a few like that, you know, that were down on the beach side. I ended up talking to them: "Well, you want to get high?"
"Yeah, sure."
"I got some pot, and some other dope." I'd take them somewhere, and after we'd smoked some pot, I'd say, "Here, smoke some of this, you'll like this." Not even tell them what it was, and make them smoke it.
"Wow! I like that. That stuff's good." The last time I seen her, she was nineteen, and she was fucked up, selling her pussy, fucked up with fucking niggers, a young white girl, all fucked up, man. I said, "Damn, man, look how this girl has fucked up, man. How did she get so fucked up?" It was old sorry motherfuckers like me helped her get fucked up.
I didn't care, 'cause the next time I seen these young girls partying, and I had a fucking house on the beach that I was selling dope out of, I brought them up there. I told them there was a party.
There was a fucking party, all right. Crack whores and fucking junkies coming in and out of this house all the time, fucking smoking. I've got the guy who owns the house hooked on crack, so I can sell out of his house. I took over the guy's bedroom. I take the two girls in the bedroom, and they're like sixteen. They don't know any better, they don't really know nothing about crack houses, and all the fucking prostitutes like that.
"Here, hit this," I said. The one girl hit it. Obviously, she wasn't a virgin, she says, "Does it always make you horny when you hit it?"
"God damn, this is good here. It does me." I ended up having sex with one of them then, and the next day I have sex with the other one. She's over there saying, "Don't tell my girlfriend, because my girlfriend says this is a crack house, and all ya'll are crack heads."
"Man, this ain't a crack house. There ain't no crack heads. Look, this is a nice house," I told her. Which it was a nice house, but the guy who owned it had a good job and all this shit. Now he's on unemployment, and just wants to smoke crack. He's fucked up all his money. The only one he's got to look forward to get him high are me and the fucking people who come in the door. I'm buying the groceries and giving him a little bit of money, but he's taking the risk. Eventually, the cops come crashing the fucking door in, board the place up, and take him to jail.
I'm trying to convince her to smoke some crack, and she's smoking. "Yeah, I like to smoke it." We're sitting in the dude's bedroom, watching TV.
"Give me some more," she says. "Let me smoke it." But she don't want to get naked or nothing, so I say, "This right here, I have to save for somebody who I can have sex with."
"Who is it?"
"It's somebody. I don't know who it is yet. I was hoping it was you."
"Oh, if I did that, I would be a coke whore. No, I don't want to be a coke whore."
"A coke whore is girls who come in to buy drugs, and they buy by giving head. You wouldn't be a coke whore having sex with me while we're doing this together."
"Oh, okay then."
Things just keep coming around in a circle. I kept thinking that I could keep doing the crime and getting away with it, that I would never get old. Now I find myself thirty years old, and I don't have shit. I'm in prison for the umpteenth time. I been all these places for Mardi Gras and Bike Weeks and Spring Breaks, different places in California and Atlanta, all up North in New York City, Boston, Cape Cod. I went through all these women that weren't prostitutes before the prostitute part. And I don't have shit to show for it, not shit, except for a bunch of getting high and a bad heart. Everything I have to show for it is negative. I spent my whole life doing negative things, and the outcome is negative.
They have that saying, "If you keep doing what you been doing, you're going to keep getting what you been getting." There's no doubt about that. In the past seven years, my life has been shit. No matter how good the money I had was, it never lasted till the high was over. I always ended up in the same place I started.