December 3rd, 2008

Abigail asked me if I was fucking anyone else, and I said no. I feel like she thinks we’re dating now. She’s retarded.

I just got back from my H&I commitment at FRC, it was sick. Guess who was there?! I walk in and Gio, James and Jamaica are sitting all together. I walked in and was like holy shit. Gio was showing me all these new tattoos he got because he joined some gang. Now he’s got all these retarded gang tattoos. He’s so dumb.

Seeing Jamaica was crazy. I didn’t even recognize him at first until he said what’s up to me. It was his voice that I recognized. He did a year in jail and gained a bunch of weight. Jamaica is this big black kid who I grew up with. He’s like six feet tall, probably weighs 240lbs. When we were talking, I had a flashback of the last time I saw him. He wasn’t on drugs back then. He only sold them.

I went to meet him at a hotel down in the hood of Pompano. It’s a flop motel, everyone there is getting high and selling drugs. Jamaica used to hang out with this old lady and get her script filled and he’d sell the pills and she’d use the money on crack. I can spot these types of relationships a mile away; sometimes at a bus station you’ll see some weird old lady at a bus stop with some young hoodlum—she’s the pill connect and he sells them for her. I drive down to the hotel, it’s right off I-95 and it gets raided all the time. It’s old as fuck, one story with two separate buildings. Walking to the room he’s in, I see one of the doors open and peer inside. There’s two junkies sitting on a bed, a belt around one of their arms, shooting up, blood on the floor. The door closes and I keep walking. I knock on the door he told me to go to, and Jamaica lets me in. 

“Sup nigga?”

I give him daps. He’s selling Roxy’ out of the hotel. The old lady is in the bathroom. I look at him and then back at her. Then I see it. She walks toward me and I can’t move—she has a stem in her hand. I lock my eyes on it, she’s holding it down by her hip. 

She looks at me and says, “You wanna hit this?” 

I nod my head yes. 

Jamaica looks at me real judgmentally. I was probably 15 at the time, and he was like 19. No one was smoking crack back then and when he saw me smoking that with the old lady, he couldn’t believe it. He knew I did pills, but when I smoked crack in front of him, I could tell he was thinking, “This fucking little crack-head-ass nigga!” Not many people knew my age, but he knew I was 15. I ended up not even buying the pills and instead got stuck in that hotel room, smoking crack with an old lady. 

Now I’m clean. Jamaica and I are talking. 

“Yo man, I thought you didn’t do that shit,” I say to him, and he looks back at me, in his detox slipper and white T-shirt, still speaking real ghetto.

“Shit nigga, I got caught up with that old bitch. I started smoking crack with her, that fucking crack lady had me fucked up. I got roped and did a year for a trafficking charge. When I got out of jail, I got drunk as fuck. I would have a year clean if I didn’t drink, but nigga I had to drink when I got out. I was so fucked up in the head. Jail sucks nigga, I got a bad rash when I was in there, it was giving me fevers and shit. I’m tired of this bullshit though, I want to stay clean man. Everyone I know is strung out on these pills and this crack. If a crazy-ass nigga like you can stay clean I know this NA shit works. You got six months right?” 

I look at him like I’m offended. 

“Nigga, I’m coming up on NINE months!”

James has been in and out of treatment centers. He said this time he’s really going to try to stay clean. It was so cool to see three of my friends all together at a treatment center, especially at MY H&I. Man, I drove home like I won the super bowl… 

God really is good.