Why cant I tickle myself, part 2

The Coffee Shop
1

v

I once read that no person had ever done anything wrong, ever. Not you, not me, not anyone. Hitler’s henchmen, McVeigh, Manson, and every other evil person you have met have never done anything wrong. The thing is who decides? There have been times when I could choose between wrong and right…there never was a wrong. There was only “more right”. Sure, I knew it was wrong to steal food, but at that moment, it was more right than wrong. The justification for what is right at a single moment in any ones life is the thing that makes one famous, infamous or just like you and I…human. There has been a point in all of our lives; I would venture to say every day that we choose what society and its morays that it inflicts on us. This could be as simple as running a red light, speeding, lying to your wife about the ice cream that you swear you didn’t have at lunch, and for some, even murder, rape and if you can imagine – worse. I am not sure who I can credit this theory to; I recall that it was in a college sociology book I had read.

My tent was my home. That is where for the first time in a long time I felt safe, at peace. I did not consider myself homeless anymore, I had a home and though this would not be considered a nice home by many in the current time, if it was 1820 I had it great. I read and read…any book I could get my hands on. I really preferred text books and college level books on economics and literature. I knew that just because I was missing school, there was no reason to not get an education – I knew as my dad had told me – knowledge is power. Education is power.

Dad…ahh, there is a place for dad. That is what confuses most people in the story – dad. I had a dad, he was my dad. He tucked me in at night, taught me to catch, ride a bike, read, play…I had a pretty good dad. Sure, that was the rare occasion that he was not drunk on Vodka and water…but none the less, what I judge as a good dad. I was proud of my dad…what boy isn’t? Sure, he was not perfect I could accept that. As I grew older my father was more and more distant. When we lived in New Jersey is when I noticed the pull out. His family, a catholic family from the Bronx was every bit the stereo typical New Yorker Italian Catholic crew you would imagine…TV is about as close as you can get. His mother died when I was about 8 or so, can’t remember the funeral at all, not one bit…but I was there. She died of cancer of the cancer or something like that. At 11 her widowers room still had her dirty clothing in it, he had not cleaned the room a bit since her death, I think really since her diagnosis. It seemed odd to me that my dad’s four sisters kids all called this man “poppy”…and I was told to call him “Walter”…but that young I did not know why, hell if I could put things together. This man wanted nothing to do with me; he was not like my other grandpa.

Back to the confusion…when I was in court, learning that I was going to foster homes is when I found out. I had spent a week or so in Juvenile jail, not because I had done anything wrong, but because Dept of Children and Family services did not have a place at that time to send a 15 year old boy from a “troubled home”. There was a fight, my parents were getting a divorce, and the battle was on, I was a kid, I was leverage. Well, my two younger brothers, they were his real DNA kids and he wanted them, I think in my heart maybe he wanted me too…and my mother pulled out her Ace of Spades, I was not his. He never adopted me. He had no legal right to me as I was not an adult, and not his child. Off to foster homes I went, thinking now, he didn’t want me though. I was in court when I learned my real name…I was a person who did not exist, I was someone new now. That is when my other “dad” came into the picture.

I have to give my mother credit; she did well on either account when it came to the bank accounts. However, when I came to being a good man, my mother failed miserably both times.

So, I say “dad” no one knows who in the hell I am talking about, I have a DNA donor, and a dad, no father I guess, or maybe a father and no dad. Any man can fuck a woman and make a baby, not any man can be a father or a dad however.

In the time after the after the divorce, after I live in Florida, after I hitch hiked with my bike from Florida back to Illinois…the time that I lived with my mother and her new boyfriend (this was a total of less than a month mind you). There was a night that I will never forget. I would often walk around the apartment complex that she was living in; I would leave as my mother would smoke, drink and go to her room to do her cocaine. I think that by this time she was injecting it. My mother was an instigator; she liked to fight and was not happy unless she was mad. She got into a fight this night with her new boyfriend. I was out walking as I saw police cars fly by and go to her building – I knew where they were going. The neighbors had called them again, they were in another fight. This one was special. When I got there an ambulance was passing me – police taking out her boyfriend in hand cuffs. He had beaten her with a fishing pole, a fishing pole with a lure on it. Treble hooks had torn into her face and arms as he ripped the pole like a whip into her. She was bleeding from tears in her face and arms. I looked at my mother as she was being taken away in shock, and was at that moment grabbed by police and cuffed.

Police were arresting me; they had told police that I had done that to my mother. My mother was more concerned with her cocaine addict boyfriend who beat her (and supplied her habit) than her own son. I know now that the police knew the entire thing was a damn scam. That night the police treated me better than any cops had ever before. Before we left they took off the cuffs and put me back in the car. They asked me when the last time I ate was (happened to be the day prior as my mother had no food in the apartment). On the way to “down town” the police stopped at a Burger King and got me a Whopper and fries with a chocolate shake. I won’t say the officer’s name, as I am sure that is not allowed. (I have since paid him back with a free dinner for he and his wife at a very nice local restaurant – gave the place my Visa number and he and she got a free dinner, as well as a night in the hotel attached). I ate that Whopper like it was no other. To this day that is what a Whopper tastes like to me, and they never compare.

When we got down town the officer told me that they did not have enough evidence to charge me and they drove me back to DCFS office where they kept me up all night and the next day took me to another foster home, on a farm 30 miles outside of town. With out my bike. This was yet another farm this was the place that I found out that what people can do to you physically can be almost as bad as what people can do to you emotionally. (This I have never said anywhere, so I post it on the internet for the entire world to see, can’t take this back I guess) I woke up in the morning with an odd feeling. I did not know exactly what was going on. I had gotten to the foster home late, had a brief introduction to the foster father and mother, given the basic rules and sent to bed. It was before sun up that I awoke with the foster “father” pulling my pants down and putting my flaccid penis in his mouth. I did not know what to do, and pretended I was sleeping. The uncontrollable reaction was that I would get an erection, and I did…but that was all. Nothing further than that. I am not sure how long it took him before he gave up and whispered to me that I had better become a man soon or I was not going to get along on his farm. When the sun rose, began on of the proudest days of my life.

2

The sun came up late on the farm. This would be my first and only day on this farm. I was instructed to go out and feed the cows; I wanted a reason to go out and headed to the barn. On the way to the barn I saw a sing in a tree, I had to stop and got on the sing and swung like a kid for a while, I was happy just to swing to the point that the long ropes when slack and I snapped back as they went taught. I was standing on the wooden platform that the swing was made of, and I was at a ninety degree angle free falling back to the earth before the violent snap of the ropes attached to the enormous tree that was preventing me from breaking my neck hitting the ground. When I was so tired I could not swing anymore, I walked to the barn looking for “paunch” to feed the cows.

I guess they feed cows a mixture of fresh food, as well as the half digested contents of cows that were butchered prior…kind of gross really. Really gross really. I walked out to the barn and next to the tractor was a phone. I called some friends who told me that that was a concert that night at a local college, I should go. Only problem was that I had no idea where in the hell I was. I knew I was west of town that was about it. I did not feed the cows that day; I walked to the back side of the farm, went to a road and walked west. I got to a rail road track where a train that was heading west was going quite slow, I jumped onto a car of the train and off I went. The train stopped in a city that is about ten mile from where I wanted to be, at a concert. As I got off the train I saw that a police man saw me, and I imagined that he was looking for me, I was right. This was a county cop from the county line just east of where the concert was…he came to me, cuffed me and took me to the county line. That is where a Winnebago County officer met him and took me to DCFS offices, about two miles from the concert. He left me in the waiting area of DCFS where I sat about ten minutes and the walked out, and took the city bus to the concert. I had seen in the past that there were free passes for the bus in the drawer next to the receptionist. She left for some reason; I took a bus pass and went to the concert. I am sure that she had the police looking for me as soon as she came back and noticed that I was gone.

That night after the concert I went out with some new people I had met. The night before was hell. I was arrested and let go for beating my mother. Fed by a cop who knew that the whole deal was a damn lie, and then abused by some farmer. This however was a good day. I got forty miles by foot, train, cop, and then bus…and made it to the concert. That night I had a girl I met drop me off in the downtown area of the city, that night…I met a heat pipe that would keep me warm for months to come. This night, I was at a concert, stage dived, jumped from the speakers and even was filmed by the local news…who had decided that the type of music was static due to the bands name “Bludgeoned Nun”. I will never forget that night, it was the first night that I slept in a hidden room next to a heat pipe in an old apartment complex. This room would become my home. Where I went, for at least a winter…and honestly, to this day, and though I today make more money that I deserve, and can afford any hotel room I want…when Tracy and I got into a fight and she was out of the state, I went to this room. I feel safe there, I sleep well there, I feel at home there.

The pipe pounds, it sounds as if a hammer is pounding on it from a distance. It is a steam heat pipe from a complex of I bet 60 apartments that are no less that 60 years old. The room is cold, but the pipe is hot. I can wrap a blanket over the pipe to absorb the heat and keep me warm, I can easily sleep thorough the pounding that I imagine is the expansion of the heating system reverberating through the pipe. I sleep well there. Though this room is also before the tent. One nice thing about the room with the pipe is that it is connected to a laundry room were I could rummage for clothing.

3

Death is a thing not like any other, some look forward to it, or so they tell us. Some can’t wait till the day they go to heaven, or meet their maker, walk to the pearly gates, or just happen upon their past loved ones for tea.

The truck was called the Golden Eagle. This was a two part steel truck made my a local company Nyint. The truck was obviously golden, had an Eagle on it and was quite a toy. I was able to ride the trailer in tandem with the truck itself down the steep driveway of a neighbor. I recall one day that we were on the truck riding it down the concrete drive way and suddenly it stopped, cutting into my legs and tearing my pants as the edges of the truck tore into my flesh. It was not a big deal; I recall waking off the pain of the corners of the trailers tearing into my flesh as my momentum tore me past that of the truck that had ground to a halt. This was not a toy meant to be ridden anyways. I was pushing the envelope of what the toy was deigned to do, and was slightly bleeding due to my poor judgment.

Little did I know on that day that my mother would use this truck as a weapon of anger. Little did I know that she would hit me with the trailer section of the truck causing severe concussion and damage my pituitary. Little did I know that day that the truck that I had wanted would be my demise.

I live day to day knowing that there are things growing in my brain, and that they will kill me as sure as Hitler killed Jews with impunity. They do not care anything more than to grow. Tumors have no fear of death, no rational that if they do kill me as their host, they too, will die. Tumors have no soul, no fear, no god, no time, no anything. They just grow and kill.