SUN SHINE STATE

 

  So after that we were on the next city bus out of there. The next states over were Mississippi and Alabama, but we had no desire to stop in either state. We made it to Jacksonville, Florida no more than a day after we left the big easy. Florida, now how can I describe this shit hole of a state? Let’s say the whole state is nothing but rich tourists, rich old retired people, rich fags and ghettos. There, you have the state of Florida.

  We were in Jacksonville for a day or two and I got ripped off, for crack, the first night we were there. I saw the guy the next night, and we almost got into a fight but he ended up getting me my shit.why almost ate him and I should have let her. One really good thing that happened in Jacksonville was that when we were leaving town we ran into a couple army brats that were driving down to a place called Hollywood Beach, which was not far from Miami. We were headed to Key West, so that was a good haul. They ended up giving their hotel room keys to us so we could shower and rest for the day, while they went and grabbed their army gear. They said they’d pick us up later that night. We thought they were full of shit but, sure as fuck, they came back. And we hauled ass the whole eight hours.

  This was the first time I had seen the Atlantic Ocean this far south. Wow, it was awesome! The water was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was crystal blue/green and I immediately jumped in. I remember thinking “Fuck, I hope I don’t get eaten by a shark!” I was in awe. Plus, it was December, and I was swimming in the ocean.

  We took a city bus into Miami and I had ten bucks on me. I really wanted to bang some coke from Miami. Like you would. Fuck, you’re in Miami, and this is where the shit is cheap and pure! We got pointed towards Little Hattie! Holy fuck, talk about the projects. It was something you only see on gangster movies that you would think wasn’t true, but it totally was. Niggaz everywhere and you know they’re all packing. This is one of the worst ghettos I’ve seen in my life, and I’ve been in a few.

  We reluctantly gave our money to some black dude not thinking he would come back, but he did. We didn’t have a needle and we couldn’t get one for the life of us. The guy that got our shit said he could get one for 5 bucks, but we were broke. We ended up having to snort it, which really pissed us off. We were in Miami where they have the best coke and I had to snort it. Fuck off! It was the first time I had snorted coke. I got a lift off of it, but you could say I was rotted.

  Downtown Miami was locked down at night. All the doorwayswere sealed with steel shutters and it was dead as fuck. We ended up finding a place, down by the water, that had people trying to make some money, but it sucked so we left the next day. I wish we would have gone over to the beach, that’s where it’s at.

  We kept getting caught on the subway with the dog, so we had to walk most of the way out of town to Homestead, which is where we could start hiking from to get to Key West. It was a long ass walk. I don’t remember how long it took us but I remember passing a movie theatre and the Little Mermaid was playing, which was Syd’s favorite movie when she was a kid so we stopped and made money and went to go see it. We were walking on a bike path downtown, but sometime after the movie Why was pissing us off for a reason I don’t remember. I just remember walking without Why for about 30 minutes before we gave in and turned back to go find the cunt. We were mad as fuck at her but we had to go find her. We felt so bad when we found her cowering in the bushes, bleeding. It turned out that she had sliced half her pad off her paw, from a piece of glass, and it was pretty bad.  We found a vet and he was nice enough to help us out and bandaged her up and then we were on our way.

  It didn’t take us too long to get a ride once we were on the highway. It’s only a couple hour drive, if that, to Key West. We were told to go downtown to Duval Street. Duval Street is another street that is full of bars and bumping all the time. It was really exciting for me to be this far south.There are markers that say you are 90 miles from Cuba and that you are standing at the most southern spot in the US. I saw my first beach bum down there. Fuck, he was gross. His skin literally looked like leather. It looked awful. The sun there was some fuckin powerful, shit man. The whole island is four miles by four miles, but like I said, Florida is full of ghettos and Key West was no exception. I was going down there to get some of that real yellow crack that was so amazing.

  I was only there for three days before a cop saw me crack open a beer on the street and off I went for having an open container. I was only 17 at the time so I gave them a fake name and birth date and told them I was from Texas. I went to court the next day and got three days. They didn’t get my prints back so I guess I got lucky and made it. As soon as I made it back downtown, Syd was there with some money for a beer so I went over to circle K and bought a 40oz.I swear to fuck, I cracked that fucker. I took one pull and heard, “Hey you!” Just my luck, it was a cop. Off again I went for the same shit!

  So when I get to court my public defender (aka public pretender) tells me they want to give me 30 days because I had literally just got out for the same shit. They were making me out to be some kind of big criminal. Like fuck off! Oh my god, he’s drinking on the street, run for your lives! So I’m sitting in the courtroom waiting for the judge and two sheriffs come in and pull me out of the room and proceed to tell me that they had got my fingerprints back from the R.C.M.P in Canada. Man, I  started to flip out. In my mind, I think I may have even cried. I thought for sure I was getting deported and would never see Syd again. Syd had met this guy that owned a drop-in center and told him I was in jail and asked him if there was anything he could do for me. So he went to the jail and told them he would give me a ride out of town and surprisingly it worked. I couldn’t believe it when they came to my cell and told me I was leaving. What it was is that they really didn’t want to deal with some 17 year-old kid from Canada, and they probably had no idea what to do with me. I’ll take that! They just wanted me out of their pretty little tourist town.

  Well, you know, I got the fuck out of there as soon as buddy picked me up from jail. Syd and Why were in the car ready to go as well. We hitch-hiked up to Gainesville. We didn’t bother stopping back in Miami but  a couple of interesting things happened to me in Gainesville. It was the first time I ate a pot brownie that some guy gave to me while I was panning. I’ve ate pot a couple times since but that one was by far the best. It really fucked me up.

  One day me and Syd were trying to get some crack on and off all day but could never find anyone. Which was strange because usually there were crack dealers everywhere around wherever we were. Finally, I see some dude that looks like he’s buying something off another crack-dealing looking motherfucker from across the street. So I get excited and run over to him and ask him if he’s got a ten piece. He says “yes” so I pull out my money and he goes to snatch it out of my hand. I pull back thinking he is trying to rob me. But, out of the corner of my eye, I see about 15 cops jumping out of an unmarked van with their guns out. They’re yelling at me to get on the ground and that’s exactly what I did. They were tackling the other guy that had bought something before me as well. So they grab me and, get this, they tell me I’m under arrest for attempt to purchase crack cocaine! Attempt? What the fuck is that? They couldn’t get me with possession because he never put the rock in my hand and he didn’t get my money. But let’s back up here. This was a real cop selling crack. What the fuck man! That’s entrapment, oh wait - not in fuckin’ Florida!

  It turned out they were doing a big sting that day and that’s why we were having a hard time finding someone that was selling. They were all hiding. When they took me to the county jail there were like 30 crackheads getting booked that had done the same thing. It was ridiculous! That’s what the cops were up to instead of catching someone that raped some chick, oh that’s too hard. It makes me sick! I was only in jail for a couple hours before they figured out that they had a minor in with the adults. They probably could have got in trouble for that if I would have kicked up a fuss. But just like in Key West, they didn’t know what to do with me so they brought me to a youth shelter.

  A couple days after that I was sitting on the sidewalk panning and some douchebag cop came up to me and arrested me for obstruction of the sidewalk. I had heard of people getting nailed for this but didn’t believe it because that shit doesn’t happen in Canada! Same thing happened and they released me to the same shelter. The sad part about it all was that if I would have been a year older I would have sat in jail for a little while. Well after all that we said “fuck this city,” and headed over to Orlando.

  Orlando sucked dick - I didn’t like it. I don’t know why we stayed as long as we did. A couple things I remember were; eating nothing but Whoppers from Burger King for two weeks (I couldn’t toucha Whopper for years after), getting into a fight with some crackhead that the cops came and took in because they were racist fucks, and smoking lots of crack while listening to gunshots go off all night. We decided to head over to Tampa bay. I knew some girl named Janice that had a place to stay with this girl, Sky, from Montreal.

  We had gotten picked up by this couple that brought us home for the night and the dude was super abusive towards his wife. I felt so bad for her because she was so nice and didn’t deserve to be treated that way. I can just imagine what went on while there was no company. They gave us a ride into Tampa and we headed  to a part of town known as Ybor City. I think it’s 7th Avenue, which is the bar strip, but on the weekends it’s fuckin packed solid. Janice’s house was not too far from 7th, right in the ghetto. We stayed with her while we were there. We were drinking a lot of fortified wine called Mad Dog 20/20. Man that shit gets you wasted!

  One night one of Janice’s friends gave me five bucks and asked me to get her a five piece of rock. I only had to go a couple blocks, so I told her that I would. I couldn’t find the guy I usually got it from so I asked some gangster kid and he’s like “here you go” and passed me a piece but I don’t give him any money. I tell him I want to taste it first so he’s like “go ahead.'' I put it in my mouth and right away I could tell it was soap. So I go to give it back to him and tell him I am not buying it and the next thing I know, I  have a blue 9 millimeter pointed at my face. “Boy give me your money.” Obviously I gave it to him and turned around and walked away. I was lucky I didn’t get shot for real. He was maybe 20 years old and could have shot me just to get in some gang. He had a couple of his homies with him as well. The worst thing about it was that the girl that had given me the money thought I had ripped her off. Fuck you!

  I saw macho man Randy Savage down on 7th one day when we were making money. I grew up watching him so I got right excited and ran over to say hi. He was with two huge bodyguards and wouldn’t even look at me. Fuckin dick fuck, Macho Man! We also met this kid that was friends with Janice and had a job at one of the bars down on 7th and there was a job opening there for a cleaning person, so Syd decided to apply and got the job. This was new years eve in ‘98 and there was a fair in town. I met a couple of guys that were doing the thing where you dunk the clown in the water by throwing balls at the target. They asked me if I wanted a job doing security for New Years Eve and they’d pay me $50, so I told them I would. Syd had been working at the bar for maybe a week by this point and our plan was that she was going to save money and we were going to get a place. We had met with Janice’s landlord and looked at a place and everything was ready to go. We just needed the cash. I worked most of New Year Eve but got tired of being sober and watching everybody have fun, so I quit. They ended up paying me anyway and were cool with me quitting, which was nice of them. So I went and got smashed.

  When I got to the house, Syd was sitting on the chair, bawling her eyes out, because she had gotten fired for coming to work smelling like booze. I couldn’t help myself, I thought it was the funniest thing ever and started laughing. I got a lot of flak from a couple of the girls that were there for laughing at Syd. She was really upset because she really wanted us to get a place. We stayed a couple more days then headed to Daytona beach. I can’t remember if it was just before the bike week or just after when we got there, but Daytona beach really sucked. It was really nice there though. It was dead as fuck, so it was heard to make decent money. I’m sure this town would be wicked during spring break and bike week.

  We ended up running into a french kid I had seen around in Montreal named Piccolo. He knew Jancie as well and didn’t know she was in Tampa. Piccolo was in a pickup truck with two other guys and they were headed back to Tampa so we decided we’d go back with him and show him where Janice lived. We were lucky we didn\’t crash and burn on the way back to Tampa. They guys driving were fuckin’ wasted and were flying down the interstate at 100 miles an hour, no word of a lie. “GO FRANK GO '' is what buddy was yelling the whole way there, while pounding on the dash. Syd, the dog and I were in the back of the fuckin’ pick up, so if we would have crashed you can just imagine what would have happened. I’ve had some fuckin’ crazy rides in the back of pick ups but I’ll get to that later! I don’t remember how long we stayed in Tampa when we got back but it wasn’t too long. Piccolo was expecting mail from Montreal that was supposed to have a gram of heroin in it so we were all excited about that. We waited for the mail everyday but it bever did come.

  This is the kind of stuff that comes from dreams and nightmares and makes people think they can fly! Don’t ever take acid and huff gasoline!!!!!!!! Especially from the top of a ten story building, which I wasn’t - thank fuck.

  I had gotten a hold of some acid, but no one wanted to do any with me so I found myself tripping out at four in the morning all by myself. I stumbled upon a jerry can, three quarters full of gas and thought it would be a good idea to huff some. So I start huffing, and the next thing I know is that there are balls of fire shooting out of the top of the jerry can, bouncing off walls telling me that I’m going to die. “YOu’re going to die, you’re going to die.” So I throw the jerry can out the backdoor yelling at the top of my lungs “Fuck no, not me!” Then I hear Piccolo yell at me in french to shut the fuck up.

  I had this really cool t-shirt at the time, it was a Budweiser shirt but instead of saying Budweiser, it said ‘Buttweiser’ on it and instead of beer cans it was three chicks wearing bikinis, with their asses sticking out, on the front of the shirt. I really liked this shirt but had to throw it away because it was soaked in gas. Fuck sakes!

  Well after all that bullshit with the cops, guns being pointed at me, the countless bottles of Mad dog 20/20, and mind altering substances we decided to go up to Atlanta.