Creating My Hell Read Count : 138

Category : Books-Non-Fiction

Sub Category : Biography

    The following is a true story.


With eyes closed, the smoldering heat and smell unwittingly brought me back in time to the year I was peer-pressured into joining the school’s seventh grade football team. Every day, during practice after school, my hate would grow, while my self-esteem would suffer. My head couldn’t make any sense as to why I had chosen to be apart of such agony.

     Every day was spent doing the same—running back and forth continuously, in what felt like an oven of radiation with little-to-no water, waiting for the coach to blow the whistle that ended practice. Hearing that beautiful sound blown out of the coach’s whistle was like hearing a judge read you a verdict of not guilty. But there was one more thing to endure.

     The worst would be over with, but it wasn’t the end. Even the locker room possessed its own version of hell, with its condensed warmth, joined with the stench of sweat and body odor. A smell I would be forced to get used to later.

    I opened my eyes to escape the pain and humiliation of that awful year, only to see the reality I had created for myself: sitting along the side of a building in a worn fold-up chair among men and a few women of another race, who looked at me with eyes of hate and confusion. I knew what all of them were thinking too:

    What the hell is this white boy doing here?

    This cracker looks like 5-0. Bitch-ass pig!

    I thought about taking off my dark sunglasses so they could at least see my eyes. However, with them being especially sensitive to sunlight, I left the glasses on. That only made me more suspicious to everyone who walked by and glared at me with half-menacing and half-puzzled eyes, from my appearance. Even people on the other side of the street would stop and stare. I could only imagine what I must look like among everyone else along the side of the building—a skimpy bit of cream-filling sitting in-between two giant Oreo cookies.

    I wasn’t wearing a watch, nor did I want to pull out my iPhone to check the time. The crowd around me wasn’t only predominantly black, most of them were homeless, as well. Among the many days spent being in similar situations, I’ve found out a vast amount about how the homeless live.

     It’s as if you’re in another world. Not so much another planet, but more like another dimension living alongside the one in which we live. It’s an anarchic state of mind—well, as much as it can be, with police entering in-and-out of their world. Other than that, they live by their own, mostly territorial rules, and these rules are respected by all. If not, you’re bound to get the ass-whooping of your life.

    Here, I was an outsider, invading their territory.


    Without a watch or phone, I had no sense of time. The only thing I could do was stick my head out and look in the direction where the owner of the chair I sat in had gone. I’d trusted him with my money solely because I knew he’d be back for his chair. He had scored a prime position right in the middle of where the action would be once the sun went down hours from now. Had I known it was going to take this long, I would’ve found someone else. This was the longest I’d ever waited downtown. A white minority sitting in a black crowd downtown, in the heart of this world… the world of addiction.


    I swear... I had watched the sun move an inch in the sky while sitting there, drenched in sweat. The heavy sense of being watched by suspicious eyes had blended with the background noise of voices, car horns, and tire skids. Every now and then, I was brought out of my daze by the scratching sound of a lighter. There’d be two or three back-to-back, then a few seconds of silence, followed by more scratches. Hearing that pattern was the reason why I endured the exhausting heat, hateful stares, and smell of sweaty feet.

    I popped my head out to the left once more, as it had become an involuntary movement from heavy repetition. Yet, this time I recognized someone walking this way. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t tell if he was the one who had me waiting here. My eyes darted around the vicinity where I sat to see if there was anything that would remind me of what he looked like. The mixture of years of drug-use, with the staggering heat, had made me stupid.

     I couldn’t even see that the reminder was clutched in my right hand, and had been the entire time I sat waiting.

    It was a black, wooden cane littered with scrapes and scratches. Once I finally noticed it, the conversation slowly came back to me…

    Yeah, man I got you.”

    “Some good?” I asked.

    He gave me look as if I was insane and born yesterday. “Shit. Yeah. Prolly the best you gon’ get right now.” He looked around as he spoke.

    “All right, all right. How long?” I said, handing him two twenty-dollar bills hidden inside my clenched hand.

    “Not long. It’s just right down there.”

    He had nodded his head in the direction I had become all-too familiar with. It was him. I couldn’t remember his face, but could recognize the clothes he wore. Not to mention, the limp in his walk, which was the reason for the cane—and most likely, the reason for the long wait. But my head wouldn’t match those together just yet; I could only think of what was about to occur in the very near future.


    Once he handed me the two white rocks, both about the size of marbles, I couldn’t help yelping out, “Holy shit!”

    He immediately shushed me, while quickly looking side-to-side like a robot on guard. Once, he back down at me I knew I was in the clear.

    After breaking him off a piece for the hookup—a gesture of courtesy and rule in the game—I stuffed a piece of white rock with a hint of yellow, into the Brillo of a stem pipe that was thrown onto my lap. I held the loaded pipe up to my mouth, and was serenaded with that familiar pattern of scratches from the lighter.

     The smoke circled around inside, filling my lungs as I held it in for as long as I could. Then slowly blew it all out through my nose, for it to make one last pass by my brain.

    Seconds after exhalation, every minute I’d spent dying in the heat, while others around whispered cruel words of distrust about me, had all become worth it.


     CLAAAANNG!!

     The loud noise echoes inside my head as it bounces off the walls of my tiny cell. It’s something that nobody ever talks about. The constant sound of loud bangs, clangs, and shouts that forever pierce your brain, interrupting every dream or mental escape from the reality you’ve created for yourself.

     That day, the few minutes of escaping my reality—tasting pure heaven—after waiting in what I’d thought had been hell, had all come to a quick halt after a familiar sound of a whistle someone had blown. This time, it didn’t mean practice was over. Shit, I’d rather be running back and forth on a field with my friends than sitting in this cold cell.

     This is the new reality I’ve created for myself. And here, I’ll be hearing a guilty verdict.

Comments

  • I feel like this on a daily basis

    Jul 19, 2019

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