Monster

And for the first time in a while I started to shed tears and could not speak. Raising my head to look her honestly in the eyes, I said, “I don’t know,” and meant it.

My life was totally consumed by all aspects of gang life. I had turned my bedroom into a virtual command post, launching attacks from my house with escalating frequency. My clothes, walk, talk, and attitude all reflected my love for and allegiance to my set. Nobody was more important than my homeboys—nobody. In fact, the only reason my little brother and I stayed close is because he joined the set. Anybody else I had nothing in common with. My transformation was subtle. I guess this is why most parents can’t nip it in the bud. How?

I was six years old when the Crips were started. No one anticipated its sweep. The youth of South Central were being gobbled up by an alien power threatening to attach itself to a multitude of other problems already plaguing them. An almost “enemy” subculture had arisen, and no one knew from where it came. No one took its conception seriously. But slowly it crept, saturating entire households, city blocks, neighborhoods, and eventually the nation-state of California.

Today, no school, library, institution, business, detention center, or church is exempt from being touched in some way by the gang activity in South Central. Per year, the gangs in South Central recruit more people than the four branches of the U.S. Armed Forces do. Crack dealers employ more people in South Central than AT&T, IBM, and Xerox combined. And South Central is under more aerial surveillance than Belfast, Ireland. Everyone is armed, frustrated, suppressed, and on the brink of explosion.

I had no adequate answer then for Mom about what was happening to me. Actually, I wasn’t fully aware of the gang’s strong gravitational pull. I knew, for instance, that the total lawlessness was alluring, and that the sense of importance, self-worth, and raw power was exciting, stimulating, and intoxicating beyond any other high on this planet. But still I could not explain what had happened to pull me in so far that nothing outside of my set mattered.

In the years since, I have battled with my intellect to find an adequate answer to that question. Not to justify my participation, but to see what makes others tick. I have always been a thinker, not necessarily academically, but more on a psychological level. I have always been interested in how people think, what causes any particular thought, and so on. Action and reaction has always held my attention.

After Mom left I felt extremely bad and a bit torn. I was restless, and the day seemed to drag on forever. On my third day in Los Padrinos, my name was called for release. When I got up front to the administration building I found out that my case had been rejected for prosecution by the District Attorney’s office.

Mom was there to pick me up. On our way home she tried to make me commit to stop banging and get back in school. I told her I was in school, and to this she angrily retorted, “To learn, dammit, to learn!”

The fact is, I was being bused to an all-American (white) school in Woodland Hills: El Camino Real High. With some promises from Mom and some stern commitments from my probation officer, I was able to get in right out of juvenile camp. I went to school every day, but I never attended classes. Academics just couldn’t hold my attention. The only reason I went at all was because of the long trip from South Central to the San Fernando Valley, during which I was able to take in some awesome sights. Any relief from the drab grayness of the city was welcome, so I went along for the ride.

Once there, I’d get with the others who had no interest in academia and we’d stand around and pose in all of our cool South Centralness. The punk movement was in full swing at that time, and the Valley punk rockers initially mistook us—the eight of us who were steeped in the subculture of banging—for punk rockers because of our dress code. Perhaps they thought we were their New Afrikan counterparts from the city. We dressed almost alike, but it was only coincidence—we had never seen or heard of punk rockers before coming out to the Valley. A couple of us thought that they were Crips. We circled one another in an attempt to distinguish authenticity, then finally made a pact and began to hang out together.

But eventually I had to stop going to school there altogether, because the Sixties discovered the bus route, which ran through their ’hood. One day they stood and taunted the bus, and the next day they shot it up. By the third day I was not on that bus anymore.

Now, as if all other attempts would be useless, Mom gave up trying to persuade me.

I mad dogged every occupant of every car that came next to us, giving everyone a deliberately evil stare. I had perfected this look and no one except another serious soldier could hold my stare. I now overstand the look. It’s not how you stare at someone, but what you’ve been through that others can see in your eyes and that tells them you’re the wrong one to fuck with. Some refer to this as the thousand-yard stare.

Once I had gotten home, showered, and geared up, my shaken mentality of the day before vanished, as I was back “in country”—in the war zone—and conditions dictated that I think in accord with my present situation. I called around to notify the homies of my release and my continued support of and participation in the war, which had just escalated to another level.

Ckrizs’s sister had been kidnapped by the Sixties from the L.A. County Jail after she had gone to visit him: She was a civilian with no ties to gang activity other than her blood relation with Ckrizs. So now kidnapping had been added to the list of tactics used to terrorize the other side into withdrawal. Back in 1980, unlike today, there were no “high rollers,” or “ballers,” substantially anchored in any particular ’hood (“high roller” is Crip terminology for a ghetto-rich drug dealer; “baller” is the equivalent in Blood language). So the kidnapping had nothing whatsoever to do with ransom. This was a straight, ruthless move designed to strike terror in us. But, of course, it didn’t work.

A meeting was held for a select few who, it was determined, could pull themselves a notch above the latest terrorist attack and commit an even more hideous act to show the Sixties that two can play this game. Only our target would be not a civilian but one of their troopers.

We plotted and planned most of the night trying to decide on which act would most grab their attention. We pondered castration, blinding, sticking a shotgun up the victim’s rectum and pulling the trigger, and cutting off his ears. The latter, we felt, would be most significant. After all, killing him would be too easy, too final. No, we wanted him to live, to be a walking reminder of our seriousness.

After deciding our course of action and selecting those to carry it out, we sat and waited to hear the fate of Ckrizs’s sister. Finally, after three days of suspense, she was found in one of the Sixties’ school yards. She had been raped repeatedly, stabbed numerous times, and left for dead. Fortunately, she lived. That very night our selected crew was sent out to complete its first, but not last, extra-vicious act of warfare.

Combing the streets of the Sixties ’hood in a desperate attempt to find one of their shooters, the crew drove block after block, stopping civilians to ask the whereabouts of such notables as Peddie Wac, Poochie, Keitarock, Mumbles, or Snoop Dog—their elite crew of shooters. Finding none of them around, they settled for an up-and- coming Ghetto Star. They seized him, beat him into submission, and chopped off both his arms at the elbow with machetes. One arm was taken, and one arm was discarded down the street.

Later that night we parried and had a good time. The arm that was taken was brought to the meeting as proof of completion. There were no further kidnappings and our war plodded on in an “ordinary” fashion after this. During the ensuing investigation, the police department’s frustration arose not as a result of the act per se, but from their inability to find the victim’s other limb. We learned from this that there was a deterrent to certain acts. We had quite possibly laid down a rule then that certain things just wouldn’t be tolerated.

4. AMBUSH

By now, with the wars raging out of control and my paranoia peaking, I had ceased to recognize people—that is to say, gang members—by name. Gang members became recognizable as streets or sets. Further recognition fell into “enemy” or “friend” categories, which of course meant kill or let live. I forgot individual names, but I never failed to link a face with a set. With the exception of my particular homeboys and our immediate allies, I had no interest in storing names in my memory bank. I tried to store more crucial data, such as the addresses of enemy homes, the phone numbers of women belonging to enemy sets, and troop movements of potential danger.

I believe that I survived those chaotic times because I took my existence seriously. Since the time Tray Ball had first told me that banging was a full-time occupation, I have striven for professionalism. But banging falls short