It is hard to explain. But I will try. It’s good firing-off a high-caliber handgun into the night – it captures the sort of blind devotion to deviancy as, say, the infamous Pazuzu Algarad with his fake face, & it enhances a belt of fleeting joy a child feels towards Lost Puppies soon found. The magnum, like most of my material things, was a gift from My Special Lady Friend. Our night was still young – just the beginning of it, really – when I thought firing-off a few rounds might be good for me. Therapeutic, even.

And it was!

For more time than I care to remember, I could not – WOULD NOT – shoot. Shooting was something I grew-up doing, so don’t get the wrong idea about me: I have fired a few shots, in my day. There is no libertarian sense of The Grotesque in my mind about firearms; I just could not shoot one of them! Could not hold one.

I lived in a very bad area of Youngstown, OH. A VERY bad area. Hearing gunfire was as natural as a bolt of lightning striking… & just as unpredictable as to where the wrong side of the heat ends-up.

I never wanted to know how far I had gone. Then I had a gun aimed at me. At the time, I thought I was on the Right Side of that automatic. The man holding the piece was more afraid than I was. He shouted his threats, couldn’t keep the gun fixed on any one part of me, let alone ME… he seemed confused, like he did not know what he was shooting at.

I had tackled this guy, embarrassing him in front of several potential witnesses. And this was not the type of guy that you should tackle, obviously.

That is why the gun was brought out. That’s what has been told to me. Does not mean it is true. I remember the gun, the gun being pointed at me. And I remember how I felt at seeing the gun. But, for the life of me, I do not know WHY the thing was pulled-out, let alone why it was trying to stay trained on me like some malfunctioning torpedo.

Another thing I THINK I remember was laughing.

That is how FAR things had gone!

I WANTED TO GET SHOT!

And I was going to get shot while laughing.

It’s hard to express when you KNOW you are so utterly wrong & mad, getting shot seems like the natural way to The End of the story.

That is where I had found myself one year ago. One year ago, on December 15, 2020, I was in a drug-house not far from Youngstown University.

With no money, no place to go, and very little in the way of personal worth, I stayed at this house. It got cold sleeping on the streets. I was offered a mattress at this “home” for one reason, & one reason alone: I knew how to steal.

Christmastime, being what it is, does not exclude the children of prostitutes, drug dealers & addicts. Their children needed gifts, too.

That’s where I came in.

I’d get myself loaded-up on cheap vodka & shoplift from stores all around the area. It was a bad gig, trust me. But it was cold outside, and I did not have the month of May.

Ended up, once again, in a hospital.

My home away from home.