Day 17

Wednesday – September 6, 2006: The life I led prior to being arrested was vague and ambiguous, at best; a desultory existence devoid of any real goal other than changing how I felt each day. No planned steps were ever followed up upon, because nothing was ever planned. Nothing about my life defined who I was because I never figured out who I was. Now, this methodical behemoth which was operating broken and crippled from overwork and unable to perform the task of its original intent, was set to define who I am for me. I stood on the highway and waited for a truck to run me over because something scared me on the side of the road, now, it was too late to get to the curb. Much time was spent pondering how I nurtured this dilemma. I went through life in a self-manufactured haze; judgment impaired and my cognizance addled intentionally. I placed the ‘kick me’ sign on my back. All this made it hard to blame someone else for kicking me. My demeanor could not be described as benign, not by a longshot. Being a New Jersey native living in California, much of my behavior – behavior I was oblivious to, having soaked in it for 24 years growing up – was misinterpreted at first by the natives; an asshole New Yorker. Maybe, but not with malicious intent. As I reflected back, I saw who I once was as unwittingly obnoxious, and more than a little misguided and sick. Not a violent thug, though the tag was about to be attached to the rest of my life. The truth would never matter again if it did not matter now. Looking like someone who could bust someone’s head if prone to punching heads, does not mean people are being hit. But wounded people will reach for any weapon of convenience I have learned, regardless of who is responsible for the seminal injury against them. I lived so recklessly, so careless with how I behaved and the things I said, if the tumblers lined up wrong, the target I placed on myself would be too big to miss, making me the perfect place to dump such emotional pain. An underachieving, semi-conscious, aimless oaf.

So I took the money intended for bail and gave it all to a lawyer. During my first visit to court with the court appointed attorney, I felt uneasy watching her shuffle piles of papers and repeatedly asking me my name. She dealt with those she represented the way someone doling out free samples at a fair deals with the endless stream of moochers; she never looked anyone in the face, and said the same things over and over. I was offered a deal that day for five years at 85% time, meaning I would do roughly four years, three months. An outrageous miscarriage of justice. From what I know about laws and courts now, if the truth mattered and facts were taken into account, this belonged in civil court. Since I had no money to sue for, and the State of California now pays people for being “victims”, this was the most lucrative avenue to pursue. The money was sent to a man who claimed to be an amateur boxer before he went to college and law school. This appealed to me because a boxer would know a right handed person would mark the left side of someone’s head. He also should have an understand that such a blow cannot be delivered without marking the hand, and the difference between a blow from a fist and a blunt object, like say a door. I thought he would be on my side. That is how I thought it worked. I would discover as the weeks went by, I was wrong on every preconceived idea I had regarding this attorney, and how it worked.