Power is not alluring to pure minds. (Thomas Jefferson)

When I was eight I got high for the first time. I didn’t mean to. I made a pot of tea to share with my mother who was in the study reading by the fireplace. I prepared the tray: poured milk, dappled out sugar from the bowl on the table, where my father and Uncle Tony were having their usual Sunday afternoon riot. I brought the tray in and even prepared my mother’s tea for her from the rations on the tray. She doted on me and was enthusiastic about “what a great girl” I was and “how sweet” I was. When the teacups were empty she realized that my sugar was heroin.

She was upset then angry, not angry like when the boys get angry, but angry in her own quiet way. It may have been the maddest I’ve ever seen her. She wiped away her tears and barged into the kitchen where in a firm voice she explained to the boys sternly what had happened. They giggled at the incident. She disappeared from the room and returned with Senior.

“What did you do?” Senior asked ominously.

“Nothing,” Uncle Tony defended with newfound sobriety.

“Penny tells me you two had a hand in getting her and Honey high.”

“Well,” my father started to explain before Senior silenced him with a fierce swipe that wiped the drugs and drug paraphernalia off the kitchen table.

He stormed out and my mother went with him, leaving the boys in silence. I could hear my mother crying in the other end of the house somewhere. I could hear Senior’s rich soothing baritone voice. I didn’t care about anything. I was high. I felt indestructible. I was a hero, no a heroine, and I loved heroin. I didn’t care about losing control. I had never felt more powerful. When my mother wasn’t around, which was rare, I would sit in the kitchen with my father and Uncle Tony. I would do drugs discretely and eventually not so discretely. I would listen to them intently and try to absorb every morsel of information they had to offer. I began to realize the importance of the information I could gain from them because they were the most powerful people I knew. I wanted to know everything there was to know about drugs, everything, and I wanted to know all about their lifestyles. They answered my questions and told me their stories. They didn’t realize it but they were training me to become a gangster.

After I got high that first time my fate was sealed. I always knew I wanted more power but now the plan was formulating as to how I could attain it. My family had the knowledge, history, connections – both good and bad, but I had something they never had: ambition. Ambition would make me and break me.

At age eight, heroin graced my palette and ignited the direction of my tireless thirst for power.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. (Ronald Reagan)

I realized the power of a gun that day and when I considered how many guns were at our house I realized my family must be pretty powerful. I started to look at our life more critically. I started to assess the people in my classes at school. I was suddenly very aware of how different my family was.

I thought I was better than the others. My clothes were nicer and newer. I didn’t have to take the bus. Someone was always waiting to pick me up after school in a car that cost as much as most of the teachers grossed in a year. People treated me with respect. No one ever butted in front of me in the cafeteria line. When I raised my hand in class other people would even take theirs down so I could be picked. They had been warned about me by someone but I wasn’t sure who exactly. Even the teachers seemed to have an element of fear when it came to me. No one dared to cross me. I liked it and I got carried away with the power.

Before I was out of elementary school I was commanding the student body as if it were a dictatorship. I was raised by men with addictive personalities and whether it was inherited physically or mentality, once I got a taste of what it was like to be in a position of power I was addicted. I devoted my life to it. Drugs were the downfall of my father and uncle. I watched them get high and dumb and thought that I would never be like them, not because of any sort of moral implications, I just didn’t like the idea of losing control of my body.

Knowledge is power, so I decided to be as intelligent as possible. My mother adored the library so I would go with her but I would never go to the children’s section. I would find atlases, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and biographies – I loved biographies. I was grasping at the best of times to understand what I was reading but I understood enough to know that I was learning. My mother thought it curious, but she smiled and encouraged me to read and learn.

My mother was amazing. Everyone in our house had a profound respect for my mother, perhaps just because she put up with their nonsense. She was kind to the maid and helped out around the house more than she had to. She was sweet, much nicer than I ever was or ever will be, but she always looked tired. My father never slept while my mother kept regular hours, but she was the one who always looked tired. Maybe she was tired of living with boys, maybe she was tired of pretending she had no family of her own, maybe she was just physically tired, I never figured that out but I remember seeing her face change. It was perfect and pure and angelically pale but as I got older I watched it get wrinkled and lumpy. She was still beautiful but her face wasn’t as soft and wasn’t as young. She aged faster than she should have. She was becoming an old lady while she was still a young woman. But my father didn’t seem to notice. He looked at her as if she was the only woman in the world. I envied that, not in a malicious way, but I envied the way he admired her because she was the only person – the only woman anyway – I knew who was treated better than I was. She was more respected, more beautiful, more gentle, more compassionate, more knowledgeable, more spiritual, and more loved than I was. I began to realize that all the traits that she excelled in over me all combined to make her more powerful. What was frustrating about this was that she didn’t care about power. She was content to be poor, ignorant, and utterly forgettable as long as she had her family. When I say her family I mean my father and me not the family she knew before us. She gave up even them to be with us. There’s something to be said for sacrifice but I didn’t learn lessons in sacrifice until I was much older.

Every war is different, every war is the same. (Jarhead)

I was born into a world of dreamers and drugs where hope was everything so it only seemed apt that Hope would be my name. Hope was written on my birth certificate, it was my mother’s choice. My father wanted to name me Martha. Uncle Tony wanted to name me Lucy. Senior called me Honey. Eventually Honey replaced Hope.

Don’t be fooled by the charming little name, dripping with sweetness, I was not the conventional Honey. I was raised by men, not just men, but wise guys. My mother was the best, don’t get me wrong, but I was always more interested in what my father and Uncle Tony were up to. I clung to Senior like he was my teddy bear. I was a man’s baby.

My mother and father took me to church sometimes and I sat through Sunday school with all the other kids but they treated me differently and I was always aware of that.

Someone asked me once, when I knew my family was different. I didn’t always know it was strange to live with my grandfather and uncle. I didn’t always know it was strange to have guns lying around the house or a panic room – I actually liked it when we ran to the panic room and got locked in there for an hour or two. It was exciting and fun and everyone focused on my needs and comfort the whole time. The baby, everyone worried about the baby.

I didn’t even realize how far from normal my family was when my mother’s father came and tried to rescue me. He tried to smuggle me out of the house one day when I was home alone with Uncle Tony, which didn’t happen too often, I’m not even sure how it came about then. Uncle Tony caught him and pulled a gun. He threatened the nice old man and for the first time in my life I knew fear. It’s ironic, I guess, that the first time I was afraid was the first time I met anyone from my mother’s honest and innocent family. Meanwhile, the lifestyle of the gangsters I was very much incorporated into from birth, well, that didn’t faze me.

Still, I didn’t realize my family was different until I was six. My mother had a book club meeting. She went once a week. This particular week it was at our house. So my father and Uncle Tommy let me come along with them on a routine distribution run. We stopped at a rundown house and they locked the doors of the car with me sitting wide-eyed in the back seat taking it all in. They approached the house and a man staggered out, he looked confused and harmless. As my father and Uncle Tommy joked with him, he raised a gun in slow motion. Their demeanour instantly changed. They didn’t pull out guns but they tried to talk the guy into putting his away. I didn’t understand what was happening. I could sense the danger but didn’t feel any urgency. Guns were commonplace to me and didn’t hold a grave impact.

The man shot at Uncle Tony.

My father pulled out his gun and shot down the dazed aggressor with two bullets. Uncle Tony had staggered back and fell to the ground though the bullet didn’t hit him. My father picked up Uncle Tony and they ran back to the car and we sped off. They acted like I wasn’t in there as they thrashed through what had happened.

At age six, I witnessed my father kill a man. He had never done that before.

Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about. (The Beatles)

Dear Ricky,

           If someone is reading this I must have gone through with it. I was never a coward but I doubted I had the strength to put off this final job. My last goal has been accomplished and I’m now in the depths of hell rubbing elbows with Judas, Hitler, and you. I don’t know what will become of my soul. I never gave much thought to spiritual matters so I won’t start now.

           I lived my life fast and hard and now it has to end. Even if I didn’t have the courage to end it myself it would be ended for me so why not do it myself while some dignity remains. What’s one more murder added to my tally? There will be more murders to come at my hand even after I’m gone. I hope that both perplexes and impresses you. I always wanted to impress you.

            Ricky, you were the only friend I ever needed and the only person I wanted to impress. You, alone, were my family. When I lost you I lost my purpose, direction, and my family. Your family was kinder than they needed to be but they couldn’t replace you and in the end they removed me, discretely. They snuck me out of their fold to die alone because without you I wasn’t truly one of them. Perhaps even with you I wasn’t truly one of them, but it felt like I was.

Was I just delusional? I wanted so bad to be a part of you in a more prolific way. I wanted to be more than a friend but I couldn’t quite muster familial status. Now I’ll never know what I was to you. You’ll never know what you were to me. No one knows anything.

             I’ve laced a noose and hung it over a pipe. The Beatles told me nothing is real and nothing to get hung about but I don’t believe that now because there will be no strawberry fields forever for me. There were never strawberry fields for me. My life wasn’t good but it wasn’t hard. No one will write any books about a two-bit criminal who didn’t change the world but I don’t care because who is there to impress with my stories now that you’re gone? It all comes back to you and it always will. I’m dying now but I’ve been dying since your death. I’ll be dead soon but what does it matter when I’m dying anyway? And what does it matter to you when you’re already dead?

            When the prison doctor, who could care less if I lived or died, told me I had AIDS I didn’t ask what it was or how I got it. What did it matter? I asked if it would kill me and he said yes. He frowned as he told me as if it was disheartening but he didn’t care and I didn’t care. It gave me a glimmer of hope because maybe, just maybe, our corpses don’t just rot in the grave. Maybe we do have spirits and maybe death could bring my spirit to your spirit. So why wait around? Why not take control of what is left of my life? He asked me if I had shared needles with anyone or slept with any men. I laughed. He looked at me with unnerving seriousness. I said yes. He listed the danger and detriment of my actions. I was dying, what time did I have for lectures? I didn’t have time for lectures when I was living.

            I came here to my little cell and wrote a letter to you. I ripped it up and threw it out. I’ve written this letter over and over again. This letter is my legacy and I don’t need my legacy to extend any further than you.

            Nothing is real. Lie. Nothing to get hung about. Lie. But my scratchy record player will belt out the Beatles’ lies as I die. I hope when the chair tips beneath me the needle skips and as I gulp my last breaths, wriggling like a fish out of water, the record skips again and again and the Beatles repeat: strawberry fields forever. That’s all I want now: forever, forever in hell with you. I would go anywhere for you.

Goodbye, Ricky, I love you. I always have and always will love you.

The difficult years end up being the greatest years of your whole life, if you survive them. (Brittany Murphy)

Vincent had left a note but no one would read it until after his funeral. Aside from a priest and both his estranged parents, our family were the only people present. His father shook Senior’s hand and thanked him for everything he did for Vincent.

I always wondered what could make a man waste his life. How could someone do that to themselves? What could bad enough to make live unliveable? I didn’t know Vincent well when I wondered that.

By the light of the moon the boys returned to Vincent’s snowy grave and built a small fire beside the headstone. They passed around a bottle of scotch. Each time it reached the end of the line they poured a splash onto Vincent’s grave. They talked about all the crazy things he had done and all the reasons they would miss him.

Senior took a flashlight and opened Vincent’s letter. He almost passed it on but neither Tommy nor Rider nor Tony wanted to read it.

So many 25ths of December, just as many 4th of Julys, and we're still holding it together. (Celine Dion)

In September, Rider went and pulled their drug dump out of its emergency grave.

By the end of October, it had all dwindled through the dorms of UCLA, bars on the sunset strip, bums on the Southside of the Venice Boardwalk, pimps in Long Beach, and everywhere in between.

In November, Rider came home for Thanksgiving and brought his girlfriend of the week just so he had enough luggage space to store all the cash. Tommy gave him back a generous portion for his troubles and they put the rest in the panic room.

In December, within one week of each other, Senior and Tony were both released from prison early on account of good behaviour.

On Christmas Day, the family was together, doing what they did best: drugs, drinks, and fights. Now Tony and Rider both had girlfriends. Tony had met his at a local strip club after his post-jail resolution to go out more came into effect. Rider’s was the twin sister of Tony’s girlfriend. The relationship had an expiry date. It would spoil on January 1^st when Rider would return to his new home.

The gifts were opened and everyone was sprawled out: full of turkey and heroin. Then it was time for the best gift: me.

Just before midnight on Christmas Day I came into this world of magic and mischief, greeted by an ex-made man/snitch, a future rocket scientist/current heroin addict, a strung out uncle on patrol and heroin, a pair of matching strippers, a father who hadn’t slept since December 18^th and hadn’t been properly sober since November 18^th, and a mother who loved them all.

In January, the phone rang. Vincent had committed suicide.

Penny cried. Tommy cried. Tony sobbed. Senior sighed. Rider asked why. I did nothing because I was a baby. I had never met Vincent, though I would hear stories about him for the rest of my life.

The road is long and in the end the journey is the destination. (OTH)

She hung up the grimy payphone and they bought two shovels in the tiny town well-off the highway and they kept driving further and further off the map. A very pregnant Penny helped Tommy dig a hole, as deep and as fast as they could. They dumped it and covered it over discretely. They memorized the location and headed home.

They were stopped just north of the Arizona state line. They waited outside as the troopers looked through the beast on wheels. They pulled it apart but Penny didn’t mind. Tommy feigned rage as they tore apart his camper. They laughed about it after as they were traveling free and clear all the way to Philadelphia.

The phone was ringing when they walked into the estate.

“I’ve been calling nonstop,” said Rider.

Tommy was alarmed. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“Kiss your wife for me. Shit, she’s brilliant!”