In the ambulance I lost consciousness.
When I came to, I was in tremendous pain, in ICU. Three days had elapsed, although I didn’t yet know that. A tube ran up my nose and down into my stomach; I had one IV tube in my arm and another tube in my penis; stitches extended from my hairline to my solar plexus; there was a cast on my left hand and three huge bullet holes in my left leg. The pain was almost unbearable.
A nurse came in and administered a shot, which took me up and away.
The next time I came to I was in another room. The nurse said my condition was stable. She gave me another shot. Weak, very skinny, and dehydrated, I drifted off again.
5. CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP
I walked to the driver’s side window and demanded his wallet, at which time he smiled with a baneful sneer, drew a pistol, and fired one round into my chest.
BOOM!
The sound reverberated again and again, echoing away in my unconscious mind.
My own screaming woke me from my fitful sleep. Sitting up in the hospital bed, I struggled for clarity. Was it just a dream? I felt my chest for blood, a hole, anything that could prove or, for that matter, disprove my fearful thought of being shot again. I
Being chased by Randy’s huge donut is quite another matter, one to which I could not attach any sort of logic whatsoever. That
Against my worst fears of damaged masculinity, or what I perceived to be such, she confirmed that yes, it was a scream and it was very loud. Perhaps she felt she had been too literal for my young ego, as I’m certain she saw me slump into a mournfully sagging posture. She fell heavily into a spiel about my nightmares being “normal,” “natural,” and “a result of the terrifying experience I had been through.” All that was fine and sounded good, but could she please go down to South Central and explain that to my homies? Or, better yet, my enemies, who would just love to hear of me having nightmares. This line of thinking caused me for the first time to question my roommate’s origins and set affiliation. For if he belonged to the wrong set this could be very harmful to my reputation and perhaps make it all the more difficult to continue my ascent through the ranks. Monster Kody having nightmares? Unthinkable.
Shortly after the nurse’s departure and before the morphine she’d administered took me under, I questioned my roommate. He was a hapless civilian, fresh out of the backwoods of a small town in Georgia, whose people lived in a highly active part of Los Angeles. He had been sprayed with buckshot from a passing vehicle. The possibility that he was a civilian had never crossed my mind, perhaps because I always tried not to shoot civilians, unless of course the bangers outnumbered them in a gathering. Should we get some flack for that later on, we could always claim “association.” We were hard-driven for results, for confirmed body counts of combatants. From what my roommate said, he was simply standing in the front yard when a passing car unloaded some buckshot into him. After he told me of this and his immediate plans to depart for “back home,” he repeated over and over in a strong southern drawl, “Damnedest thang… damnedest thang.”
He was totally taken aback by L.A.’s madness. But to me it all seemed quite normal. “Normal” like the nurse had explained my nightmares were normal. It was “natural” for me to retaliate against anybody as a “result of the terrifying experience I had been through,” just like the nurse had explained. Of course I twisted her explanation of my psychosis into a perverted alibi for my continued behavior. I rationalized my actions continually, and with each successive level of consciousness I reached, my rationalization became less convincing to me. Questions were often left to hang in the balance because my conscience simply refused to process them due to such illogical reasoning. So I’d avoided questioning myself about my ongoing radical behavior. I’d deadened my conscience with PCP, alcohol, and friends, who themselves had done likewise. I dozed off under the soothing waves of the morphine, wondering how it must be to live a civilian life.
I just couldn’t imagine living the life of a “hook,” those seemingly spineless nerds who were always victims of someone’s ridicule or physical violence, who never responded to an affront of any type. I had, while in primary school, been victimized by cats during their ascent to “king of the school.” My milk money was taken. My lips were busted two or three times. Not because I decided to defend my dime or my honor, but because my assailant simply whacked me. Early on I saw and felt both sides of the game being played where I lived. It was during my time in elementary school that I chose to never be a victim again, if I could help it. There was no gray area, no middle ground. You banged or held strong association with the gang, or else you were a victim, period. To stress this when we made appearances at high schools, we’d often jump on hooks and take their money, leather jackets, hats, and such.
What’s contradictory here, and is one of the irrational questions I battled with in my later years, is why are hooks victims of our physical wrath but unfair game in our lethal violence? The answer seems to be that hooks seldom, if ever, shoot back. Other bangers—whom I’m convinced, like me, have been victimized at some point in their lives and refused to let it continue—respond with the same violence they receive, if not something more lethal. Because of this, they must be smashed. Hooks are easy pickings for most anyone. But bangers know that there is no glory in killing a hook. In fact, it’s frowned upon in most areas. To me, however, to be unconnected meant to be a victim. And I couldn’t imagine that.
The next time I surfaced from my morphine-induced drift, I was in tremendous pain. Everywhere and all at once pain pounced on me with mind-wracking weight. My stomach, which had been surgically cut open to remove some shredded intestines, was now closed with sutures and staples. Since the surgery was so recent the cut skin had not yet started to heal, and in between the staples the openings looked pus-filled. The sutures were so tight that I could barely move without feeling tied down. My stomach resembled railroad tracks that in some areas had been blown apart by saboteurs. The sight of this alone caused lumps in my throat. To the left and slightly below my navel was where the bullet had entered. There was just a hole there, uncovered and open. I could see pink inside. My pain in this area came from under my navel and around the staples. The tube in my nose, which ran down into my stomach, was attached to a pumplike machine next to my bed. Looking at it caused pain. It was extracting green slime from my stomach and storing it in a clear jar. The nurse called it poison. I couldn’t comprehend that and just assumed I had been hit with poison bullets. The catheter in my maleness ran from under the covers over the side of the bed and into what, I don’t know. I never looked. This was also very painful. My left hand had been broken by the impact of the second shot and was in a cast. It, too, throbbed with pain.
I had taken three hits in the left leg, two side by side in the meatiest part of my front thigh, and one up a bit higher near my hip, almost on my butt. Like my stomach wound these, too, had been left open and exposed. I had also been hit in the upper back. I assumed this hole was also left open. From every hole, or its surrounding area, I had pain.
Looking from my stomach to the catheter to the open wounds and then to the pumping machine, I just couldn’t put it all together. My thoughts ran at lightning speed in an attempt to answer some of the questions now being submitted for clarification. I was seriously dehydrated. My lips were cracked and dry. I reached out for the nurse’s aid button hanging next to my bed, but my stomach pain was too intense, and I fell back in a heap.
