True: True Stories From a Small Town #3: Life in A Minor

By Dell Sweet

In AA they say that addictions will take you to hospitals, Mental Institutions and Prisons. It's true. They will. I have been in all of those places because of my addictions. But addictions are not responsible for the life I lead entirely, and certainly not responsible for the things I did. I may have used because I believe it solved problems, or to cover pain, but the decisions I made, I made because I wanted to make them. Because I chose to make them.

This is about the life that I lead that took me down the path of addiction that ruled almost all of my life. Although my addictions were not responsible for my actions, lifestyles and decisions, when I was still in those addictions I believed they did. I believed that addiction took me where it wanted to take me, instead of me using addiction to cover the pain and anger that made up the greater part of me.

There are depictions, explicit depictions, of drug use, street life, sexual situations, alcoholism, prison life and more. I want you to understand that I wrote these situations as they were then. I do not believe now that drugs, prostitution, alcohol, promiscuity or anything else actually does anything for the pain that is buried inside many of us. It certainly doesn't solve it. This was a different time too. This was a time, some of it early on, when a man could beat his wife and children and it was considered his business. If the cops were called in situations like that is was because of too much noise, not because they intended to do anything to the man. So when I write it, I am writing it from that perspective alone. I am not in any way endorsing or romanticizing it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writerz
• Release date: Feb 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311914590

Dell Sweet

I was raised in Texas and New York. I write short stories, novels, lyrics, poetry. I also enjoy building 3D models in my down time. I have written several series and collections.

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TRUE: TRUE STORIES FROM A SMALL TOWN #3: LIFE IN A MINOR

By Dell Sweet

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SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Original Material Copyright © 1976 – 1984 - 2009 – 2015 by Dell Sweet

PUBLISHED BY: independAntwriters

All rights reserved, domestic and foreign

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TRUE: TRUE STORIES FROM A SMALL TOWN #3: LIFE IN A MINOR is Copyright © 2015 Anonymous & independAntwriters All Rights Are Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, electronic, print, scanner or any other means and, or distributed without the author's permission, except those permissions that have been stated in this text. Permission is granted to use short sections of text in reviews or critiques in standard or electronic print. Permission is also granted to copy and use this text in any word amount, or in its entirety, for study, or a study aid in any state, county or privately run facility: Including state prisons, county jails, mental institutions, drug programs, sex offender programs, AA, NA, or any program where the aim is to share experience to promote healthy change and progress in men and women.

LEGAL

This is not a work of fiction. Names have been withheld and changed to keep the focus on the Addiction and the Addict, not the person or persons. The story is true.

TRUE: TRUE STORIES FROM A SMALL TOWN #3: LIFE IN A MINOR

FOREWORD

Twelve years ago, after years of drug and Alcohol abuse I fell down completely. Destroyed the life I had and went to prison. I am not the sort of person who believes people should get a pat on the wrist and then move on. I didn't always believe that. I went and I did my time because I was guilty. I worked at understanding myself and my addictions. With help and insight I got those addictions under control, and eventually I came home.

I want to say a few things before we begin. I believe men and women that commit crimes should go to prison and do their time. Whether they are lawyers sons, Judges sons, or some dirt poor kid like me. I don't hate cops. I don't hate C.O.'s. I don't hate the judge or the prosecutor who put me inside. I don't hate authority, society and rules. I was just never sober or straight enough to see that clearly. Going to prison for ten years changed me. Saved me.

There are depictions, explicit depictions of drug use, street life, sexual situations, alcoholism, prison life and more. I want you to understand that I wrote these situations as they were then. I do not believe now that drugs, prostitution, alcohol, promiscuity or anything else actually does anything for the pain that is buried inside many of us. It certainly doesn’t solve it. This was a different time too. This was a time, some of it early on, when a man could beat his wife and children and it was considered his business. If the cops were called in situations like that it was because of too much noise, not because they intended to do anything to the man. So when I write it, I am writing it from that perspective alone. I am not in any way endorsing or romanticizing it.

Lastly, this is not written to please anyone. I expect it would embarrass a few people in my family, maybe a few people who once knew me and think they probably still do know me. It was not written for people that committed crimes against myself and another family member that scarred us for life, although I want them to know, although we couldn't speak then we have now. It was written for men and women who have become trapped in addictions, street life, crime, and are looking for a way out of that existence.

I have talked to many therapists, counselors, Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Correction Counselors, convicted men, Correctional officers, Police officers, Doctors, Nurses, Civilian DOC employees both in and out of prison, Judges, and I listened to the things they said to me. I took the advice and help they offered to me. I didn't do any of this on my own, and you don't have to either.

Most of this is written in first person, but some is written in story form. Story form writing was a technique I learned that allows you to place some distance between your self and painful events so you can gain clarity, and be able to discuss or write them out.

In AA they say that addictions will take you to hospitals, Mental Institutions and Prisons. It's true. They will. I have been in all of those places because of my addictions. But addictions are not responsible for the life I lead entirely, and certainly not responsible for the things I did. I may have used because I believe it solved problems, or to cover pain, but the decisions I made, I made because I wanted to make them, because I chose to make them.

I know those are hard words for some of you to hear. I have sat in groups when those words were given to me and I did not want to hear them, but the biggest part of healing, getting the poison out of you, is admitting the hard truths so you can move past them. So they do not own you any longer. So I want you to understand clearly how I feel, and what I learned about those actions.

Everything that follows actually happened. This is about my life...

Dell Sweet January 28th 2014

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD

CHILDHOOD

THE STREETS

LOCKED UP

PAROLE

HOME

AFTERWORD

CHILDHOOD

My Earliest Memories

Written in story form and read aloud in group. A technique suggested by a counselor to allow me to write it out, but distance my self a little at the same time.

The morning was just under way. My Father drove the old pick-up truck slowly along the roadway. I think it was a 1960 Ford, something like that.

Fishermen: other vehicles; the road was crowded even this early. Galveston Bay was like a live thing. The saltiness of the ocean was in it. In the air, slipping up my nose as I stood on the seat top, balanced against the vinyl back as my Father drove.

The man's body was at the edge of the water. My Father said, Don't look at that. But of course he was too late. I'd already looked. I'd looked with my four year old child's eyes that see much more than they are supposed to see. And I saw much. Things that didn't make sense to me.

Why is that man in the water?

Why doesn't he blow his nose to get some of that slimy stuff off himself?

Why are those men standing away from him? Why are they looking at him? Why does he look so funny? But I didn't say any of those things.

Okay, Daddy. I wont.

I did though. I watched as my Father left the truck, with me standing on the seat so I could see over the dashboard, and walked to the men who stood starring at the man in the water.

Later in life I found out that my Father had worked in the Air Force as a Medical Corps man, picking up the bodies of dead service men... Retrieving the dead. At the time it meant nothing, but later in life it explained why my Father seemed so comfortable handling the man's body, helping to place the body on a stretcher. While the other men seemed upset... Ghostly... White... Angry even.

But I was only four years old. I watched and wondered my child thoughts. Who he was. Why he was. I had not seen enough dead people to even realize that that was what he was. I didn't realize that the man had been dead until later in life.

At the time I realized something was wrong. Out of place. I may even have thought dead, but I didn't understand dead. I only understood my Father, My Mother. My Baby sister who was not yet old enough to go for rides with my Father and stand on the seat and look out at the world. This man in the water, lifted out and placed on the stretcher that my Father helped to carry, was a mystery to me.

My father came back to the truck. You didn't look did you?

No, Daddy.

Good.

He pushed the clutch in, the radio came on with a soft rush of country music. He shifted into first, pulled out behind the ambulance and we drove away into my memories.

Group room 321B Afternoon Group C.

The Counselor: What was the purpose of that story? I mean, what do you think it was about?

Me: I... I think the guy in the water was the guy my uncles were talking about in the park the night before... It seemed odd that my father drove down there to the bay. He never had before. And it seemed odd that he would leave me there in the truck and get out to help.

The Counselor: "Okay... I don't know about this night before."

Other Inmate: His uncles, and shit, were on his dad about some dude that owed some money, and they wanted him to take care of it... You were off Thursday... we talked about it Thursday."

Me: Which is kind of fucked up, I added. I've had the floor for two times now... It's time for someone else to take a turn.

The Counselor: Okay... I agree... But we have to come back to that and … Uh, before I wrap it up... are you saying you think your father killed this man, and then drove there the next morning with you in his truck and pretended to find the body?

Me: I'm saying it seemed that way to me. I wrote the story out... I've written some others out. Like you said. Like they were stories about someone else, not personal, although I did write them as me, but it did give me some perspective and distance so I could be more honest as I wrote them. And that is the feeling I got...

My Next Earliest Memories:

Written in response to direct questions from the therapist: Tell me as much as you can remember about your early childhood. Places you lived, parental involvement in your life. Did you feel loved? Unloved?

As I grew into my early childhood I saw my father less and less. My very first memories are from about the age of two. We were living in a trailer park in New Jersey while my father worked at a wild west type of show. Sometimes playing in bands, other times acting the part of one of the citizens in the scenes that were played out on the streets of the little western themed town. The few times I can remember seeing it, it seemed real to me. It scared me.

I remember meeting a real Indian chief while we were there. He seemed like a strong and likable man to me. This is one of the few times I can remember my mother being there to raise us. I remember there was a rooster that terrorized me every time I went out to play in the dirt at the side of the trailer. I can remember my mother chasing it off, even throwing a pan of water at it. I remember a bad earache while we lived there, and a doctor coming to the trailer and treating me. Later in life, looking back at those memories it reminded me of living with a traveling carnival show. There were people coming and going all of the time, hard drinking, strangers around, it had a rough under edge.

From there we moved to Miami Florida. Things began to change there. My father played in more bands, worked sporadically: Odd jobs so that my mother had to begin the job of being the responsible adult and holding down jobs so we could live. There was just my one sibling and myself at the time, she was a year younger than I was. I can not remember seeing her much at all during that whole time. I can remember crying for my mother, but her not being there.

My aunt lived in that area, and we were taken there daily. I can remember her telling me I was special and that I would be a star someday. That I had to do everything she said. Listen, practice.

My father was supposed to be watching my sister and me, but he would take us there and leave us with her. For part of that time we stayed with my aunt until we could get our own place. My father was supposed to be looking for work, but he would take off with my blood uncles every day, so it got to be that I never saw either parent for long periods of time. That would change on occasion when my father would take me with him to bars while he drank or played in a band or both. I would be at the bar with one of his girlfriends. It seemed perfectly natural to me.

My aunt began to sexually abuse me the first night. It continued the entire time we were there. Months. I didn't know until years later that my sister was locked in a closet while this went on.

Eventually we got a place of our own and the abuse stopped.

A few months later my cousins came to live with us and the sexual abuse started again. Just different people. It ended a few months later when they were caught. They had us tied up. The cords were tight. Not really cords at all, cloths line. My sister and I were tied back to back. My cousins, a sister and brother, had already molested us for over an hour. I can not recall where my mother was during that period of my life. She was gone a lot. I think she was working because he didn't work. That's all I know.

My father was around more often. I don't know why. They, my cousins, had been squirting lighter fluid on the floor, lighting it, and then putting it out before it actually reached us. A game during the abuse. But they tired of the game because my male cousin stepped forward, squirted the lighter fluid on my sister and me and then lit us.

The door opened and my father ran to us with a blanket and put it out. We were still burned, but there were excuses as to what had happened, how it happened. I still have the scars.

For the rest of the time we lived there I would see those burn marks on the floor every day. It was a wooden floor. The burn marks were very prominent. The scars on my body were things I had to explain to doctors, lovers, and even myself. Standing in front of a mirror, trying to make sense of them, the motivation behind them.

~

FROM GROUP: Written out as responses to questions

What did your aunt do that first night? Write honestly about it. Try to remember everything that went on, how you felt, anything else you think is pertinent.

It was the first night we were there. I don't know why we were there. She came into the bedroom I was in and had me get out of bed. She undressed me and told me she was getting me ready for bed properly, but all she did was undress me. She knelt before me as I was naked and started to perform fellatio on me. The door opened and my father stepped in and looked at her. He shook his head and she rose. He led her from the room.

I had the impression he and she were going to do what she had just started to do to me. No one said that, it was just the impression I had as a little kid. I got redressed and went back to bed.

The next morning she showed me how to please a woman. Her words. I have no idea how long it went on. Weeks, maybe a few months, maybe longer.

Recently I finally approached my sister about these things because it worried me that maybe she was sexually abused too. She said no. Every day my aunt would lock her in a closet. She never knew what my aunt was doing to me during that time.

My father never mentioned it to me or stopped it. I felt he had to know. That's all I can remember.

More scattered memories:

From a work sheet on my childhood and the memories I had of it.

The balance of my preschool time in Florida I spent with my father in bars where he played, drank or did whatever it was that he did with my uncles. Some sort of organized crime stuff. Drugs? Gambling? I'm not sure. I know that I spent a lot of time with strange women he had relationships with. I assume now they were sexual relationships, but at the time it seemed normal that they should be there. Someone to take care of me... I expected it, I mean. I remember them holding me, calling me poor baby. I remember them and my uncles giving me alcohol: Laughing when I got drunk or sick.

The Night Before:

Psychologist (hand written post-it note stuck to five sheets of unlined, blank copy paper.): I want you to write this night before incident out. Write everything you remember, your impressions of it.

One night. Late. On the beach, some woman with big breasts. She kept holding my head against her breasts and whispering to me. We were alone, and then my father came and they whispered. Then he took her to a