A N   E X C E R P T

I often want to be the man my ex-wife and my mother want me to be: a solid guy, a good Christian brother, one that comes straight home on pay day, one who doesn’t know where the floating crap game is, one who doesn’t know who’s got the good weed or which chick gives the best head, just a regular Joe, like my old man.

He has no use for the streets or the people in them. Solid as a rock. I’d bet my right arm that he never cheated on my mother. The man got up at 3:45 a.m. Monday thru Friday for thirty years. Thirty years. I’d pass him in the mornings, me coming in, him going out. He’d ask me, "Ain’t you tired of them streets yet, boy?" I would tell him no. But if he were to ask me that question now, some twenty years later, my answer would be yes, without a doubt.

In the past, the streets have always been my refuge, my place to go when I need life to make sense. I knew what to expect from street life. It was the "normal life" that kept me banging my head against the wall.

If I was more like my old man, I wouldn’t be lying here breathing oxygen through a mask with .22 caliber bullet holes in my chest, my neck, and I hope to God, in my thigh and not in my jones. My neck is bandaged so I can’t look down, but she was aiming at my jones. I think I put my thigh in the way, but I ain’t really sure. I ain’t prayed in four years, but when I woke up in this hospital room, I asked God to let it be my thigh and not my jones. Everything hurts, so I can’t really tell. When I piss I don’t know where it’s going or where it’s coming from. The nurse put the television on the Christian station. I guess she heard me calling Jesus and figured I was a Christian…