Hey Kid, Go Away.

After my mother came out of her coma (first issue when I mentioned her heroin overdose) it took her about a year to kind of function normally. This is when my stepfather, Roger, comes into the picture. He was a thug and one of the toughest gang members I've seen, he was also a hardcore drug user. He and my mother decided to rob a local liquor/gas station and take me along with them; I was about 7 years old at the time. As I am in the back seat playing with my happy meal toy, out comes my stepfather with a pistol and a bag of money in his hand. He jumps into the passenger seat and my mom drives off. Not too long after, we get pulled over and the police arrest all three of us. If I can recollect, I think it was my grandmother and one of my aunts who picked me up from the police station and that's around the time my mom lost custody of me. 

Around this time, I started to spend a lot of time with my Grandmother and Aunt and lived with them on and off for a few years. They were very positive female figures in my life, but when I left them to live with my father and stepmother, things changed and I kept all the stuff that was happening to me from the rest of my family. 

When I was around 11 years old, I had a stepmother and you guys are gonna hear a lot about her. Although I don't blame her for my outcome, I think a lot of you will side with me on most things when it comes to her. So, I was an 11 year old boy with a 19 year old stepmother. As a young boy with barely any mother figure in my life, I really wanted to be liked and accepted by her. From the moment she moved in with my father she hated me and she made it her mission to let me know. I was eager to do anything to please her and she decided that this was a really good way to manipulate and use me.

So, one day we went to the shopping mall and at the time she had a 6-month- old child with my father. As we entered the mall, she asked me if I was willing to steal some clothing for my little brother. Not really knowing any better, I eagerly obliged and got caught. As the security and cops are questioning me, they ask me if my stepmother was the one who had asked me to steal; recognizing that all the stuff that I had stolen was baby clothes and nothing for myself. At a young age, I already knew not to snitch on my family or friends and that included my stepmother. So I stuck to my story and said I had stolen it for myself and my brother. My stepmother begged me not to tell my father, so not only did I get in trouble for stealing, but my father also physically punished me. Time goes by, and the relationship between my stepmother and I grows more tumultuous. She continuously asks me why I'm living there, as all I do is cause problems and she consistently antagonizes me. My living situation with her, my father and brother were not bad, but they were not good. My bedroom was a walk-in closet, I slept in a sleeping bag and I was only allowed to eat welfare food, like powdered milk with my cereal. I was given the bare minimum to eat, while her and her son were given regular milk and full meals. I was only ever allowed to eat when I was given food. 

At 11 years old, I started running away and that’s when I started hanging in the streets or going downtown LA and hanging out with my mother. My mother lived off of Alameda and 7th, which is notoriously known as Skid Row. As I previously mentioned, my mother was a prostitute and so I spent a lot of time hanging out with her and her prostitute friends. The more time I spent in the streets, the more I learned how to survive out there and I became eager to learn how to become more mischievous. Every time I ran away, my father would find out where I was and that would often ensue in another ass kicking. But come to think of it, I wasn't running away, it was more so that I was being run out by my stepmother and this was a continuous battle with her. 

At this age, I was starting to develop my own personality and started hanging out and making friends with kids who were all in similar circumstances; they came from broken homes and had fathers and mothers that were gang members and drug addicts. This is where it all kinda begins, where my friends and I start forming our own exclusive circle- we called ourselves BSK.