Sex and Drug Addiction and the Insanity of It All

By Xlibris US

In his latest novel, SEX AND DRUG ADDICTION and THE INSANITY OF IT ALL, Dave Rice tells the story of addictive behaviors and the associated consequences which eventually lead to the physical and emotional destruction, of possibly some of the most exciting and dynamic characters he has ever created in his mystery writing career.

Jimmy Lee whose military career ended after a tragic accident and he became addicted to prescription pain medication, and Barbara, she was a woman whose sexual needs could not be satisfied by her husband, and she finds ways to fulfill her sometimes incestuous needs, and there is Neil, the male woman- chaser that doesnt know which way to turn and found doubt in what he believed was the truth, and finally there is Toni, the character that you must read about in this novel to truly understand the intense insanity that controlled his, or maybe her every behavior. All of these exciting characters are eventually consumed by the dark shadow of their own personal and quite often deadly addictions.

I hope that you enjoy reading my new novel, SEX AND DRUG ADDICTION and THE INSANITY OF IT ALL.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493159451

Book preview

SEX AND DRUG ADDICTION AND THE INSANITY OF IT ALL

David O. Rice

Copyright © 2014 by David O. Rice.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014900111

   ISBN:   Hardcover      978-1-4931-5944-4

                  Softcover      978-1-4931-5943-7

                  eBook            978-1-4931-5945-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 01/14/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

PART ONE

HOOKS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

PART TWO

VANDERPOOL

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

PART THREE

TONI CAPRIATI

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

PART ONE

HOOKS

Chapter 1

Jimmy Lee Hooks grew up on the streets of Cleveland’s southeast side in a section of the city that was called Miles Heights or, as those that lived in that section of the city called them, the projects. All of the units were small and stuffy, they were cold in the winter and hot as hell in the summer, and these ‘projects’, where mainly black families lived and called home were not really that well constructed either.

The units were made out of the cheapest construction materials that could be purchased by the Cleveland building commission, which consisted mainly of chalky clapboard siding that had been overlaid with heavy tarpaper that was used to keep the clapboard siding in place. And as for roofing materials, the roof consisted of a thin layer of insulating material that was nailed to two-by-two wooden studs that had corrugated tin sheets on top, which made up the roof. And all of these materials in combination caused loud thumping noises that could be heard during rain or hailstorms inside the units.

This particular type of housing development that had been implemented by the city government in the late forties and early fifties, was a quick and efficient method of providing housing within the city limits of Cleveland for the flood of southern blacks that were migrating north seeking employment and a better way of life by moving away from the poverty and segregation of the south, and into public housing in the northern cities. It was uncommon for black people to own land in the south during that period, the land was mainly owned by white men who profited well by the system known as sharecropping, which was leasing their lands to black farmers and giving them little compensation in return.

Rather than continue living with this hopeless situation that black people found themselves living under in the south, these people accepted the sacrifice of living in the northern ghetto projects simply because living in the north at least gave them the chance to better their lives by getting good-paying jobs in the north. Although most of the people that lived in Miles Heights—there were exceptions—didn’t have that much money because of the stacked-deck employment policies that existed during that period in the major industries and private businesses at that time.

Some blacks did manage to find work in manufacturing plants, but for the most part, some of the blacks that did find employment usually found jobs at gas stations or in food services at local restaurants, working as kitchen helpers or dish washers, which only paid minimum wage at the most, and would never provide enough money to escape the projects.

The city of Cleveland’s economy was exploding with thousands of postwar unskilled-labor jobs at the time, but these jobs were quickly taken up by the excess pool of white workers and not by the blacks that needed work just the same as the whites, but were denied employment for the most part.

Miles Heights was inhabited mainly by blacks, and those black people were never given an equal chance to attain a better way of life and the chance to fulfill their dreams. However, the ‘projects’ weren’t restricted to black people only, there were also a few white families that were just as poor as the blacks who lived there and didn’t have anywhere else to live accept the projects of Miles Heights.

And both blacks and whites, and even a few Mexican immigrant families found themselves thrown into the mix that was known as Miles Heights, just because of the circumstance of being poor and having nowhere else to live but in the Miles Heights projects. Though poverty was the one thing that everyone had in common; all of the people that lived there were poor and couldn’t do any better. This commonality in poverty brought all of these people together as one, and rather than separate them, they became one driving force, all with the hope of changing the financial circumstances that controlled their lives.

The unity of poverty that had brought them together was for no other reason than that of everyone being poor and unable to find good jobs. But there was another reason for the city isolating these people away in the projects that had to be considered, that was to hide the existence of so many non-white poor people from the predominantly white population of the city. The rational was to push them out of sight and off into a corner of the city limits where they would not be seen by the tax-paying public eye. However, still these people continued to hold onto the dream that sooner or later, they would somehow overcome all that had been to thrown against them and become equal partners with everyone else in the city.

And if they could only maintain the effort of seeking a change in life by finding better jobs, these people would be able to pursue the dream that continued to evade them and find a better way of life for themselves and their children. These people wanted the same chance for their children as all of the children outside the boundaries of Miles Heights.

They were not asking for anything less than simply being given the same chance to succeed as the other citizens of the city, which included all of the people living in projects all over the country. Blacks, whites, Mexicans, or any other race that inhabits this country, they all just want an equal chance at success.

Chapter 2

Jimmy Lee Hooks would often look back on his childhood with warm thoughts of summer days playing in the woods that surrounded Miles Heights. The wooded area in Miles Heights served as part of the barricade the city planners used to separate the projects from the rest of the city. There were railroad tracks on one side and Ohio State Route 43 on the other end that completed the encirclement, and these barricades all combined to buffer the Miles Heights projects from the rest of the population in the city of Cleveland.

Even though young Jimmy Lee had no idea at the time that he and everyone else in Miles Heights were considered to be nothing more than a malignant blight that needed to be hidden from the rest of the city, he still had dreams and ambitions that there was something better in store for him. But young Jimmy Lee had no idea that the plan of isolation that was used by the city, was a temporary solution to the problem of poverty, separation and confinement to Miles Heights was just a means to an end. It was as though the residents living in the projects were an invading colony of lepers that were intent on spreading their infectious disease of poverty into the city itself.

Even the school board added to the charade that involved separation and confinement within Miles Heights while hiding behind a façade of educating all students on an equal basis. Through the use of sometimes questionable legislative actions and policies, the school board had managed to keep in service an old building that had been built in the late 1800s and should have long ago been condemned and demolished long ago, but this old building was used to continue the isolation of black children and keep them from receiving the basics that all children need to establish a good foundation on which to build an education.

The faculty at the Sunrise Elementary School consisted of two token black teachers; both were women, Mrs. Huntsville, the music teacher, and Mrs. Fortson, a sixth-grade classroom teacher, who Jimmy Lee fell hopelessly in love with the moment he saw her. Mrs. Fortson was only four foot ten in height and extremely pretty, and by the time young Jimmy Lee reached her sixth grade classroom, his hormones were just about ready to explode the first time he saw Mrs. Fortson. However the rest of the teaching staff and janitorial people were all white.

Some of those teachers may have actually been committed to educating young children no matter what their ethnicity might have been, but they were seriously outnumbered by those white teachers that felt no such commitment to these children.

Some of the non committed teachers had been sent to Sunrise Elementary for disciplinary reasons such as alleged alcoholism or being such ineffective educators within the schoolroom that the board gave them no other option: either transfer to Sunrise Elementary or be terminated from the school system.

Filled with resentment for being punished, those teachers didn’t hesitate to let every child at Sunrise Elementary know that education was the least of their priorities; they saw themselves as simply being the caretakers and not the educators of these children and gave them the distinct yet silent message that there was no chance at all that they would ever escape the stigma of coming from the Miles Heights projects.

Having no other way to judge teachers, Jimmy Lee made do with what was offered and tried to do the best that he could with what he had until he finally left Sunrise Elementary and was transferred to a newly built junior high school outside the confines of Miles Heights, William C. Taft Junior High School, that’s where Jimmy Lee Hooks finally learned that there were other people just like himself that weren’t confined to a life growing up in the projects.

Chapter 3

That September after graduation from grade school, Jimmy Lee and all of the other youngsters from Miles Heights walked through the barricading woods and up the hill into the white section, extremely excited because they were on their way to the newly constructed school that was off in the distance.

Just like a parade, they walked down the middle of the street laughing and talking loudly, as the white people that lived on the street, that was mainly inhabited by European refugees or displaced people that had recently fled the horror of the Hungarian revolution that had occurred not that long before, were peeking from behind darkened windows at this invading hoard of non-white children. It was as though their precious new American way of life was in imminent danger from these children who dared to walk down the middle of the street that these European immigrants had been given as sanctuary in America.

The hateful stares, along with the thick guttural broken English and heavily accented European voices that were spitting out words of hatred toward these American born children, weren’t even heard by Jimmy Lee Hooks. Jimmy’s focus was concentrated on the new junior high school that was off in the distance, in the center of a huge field at the end of the street.

A brand new world seemed to be opening up to Jimmy Lee, and it was giving him hope that there was something much better outside the boundaries of Miles Heights and all he had to do was to reach that shiny new school off in the distance and seek it out.

As he and his friends crossed the huge field behind the school, Jimmy realized that there was another group of students waiting at the main entrance of the building. It was a huge congregation of young white kids that had a few colored faces intermingled in that sea of white, but the few blacks that were among the crowd were sharing the same cautious stares at the approaching Miles Heights children as had the older ethnic people on the white street earlier, maybe not with as much outright hatred and viciousness, but definitely they were showing a degree of concern.

Jimmy Lee had no idea that so many white people existed on this side of the new school, and he felt his suspicion grow as a warning alarm went off in his head. He immediately sensed hostility in these soon-to-be schoolmates as both groups of children began filing through the main entrance, it was nothing that he could actually put his finger on, but there was something very disturbing that he was noticing in the atmosphere of his new school.

Although it did make Jimmy Lee feel good to be in such a new and fresh school as opposed to the elementary school he had known, which had been falling apart for years. When he was assigned to his homeroom at Taft Junior High that also functioned as the music room for the school, his homeroom teacher’s name was Mrs. Massey, and she was also the girls’ gym teacher.

Mrs. Massey was different from the teachers he had been used to in elementary school, and if she had any hostility or hatred toward her new students it never showed in her interactions with any of the students, and Jimmy couldn’t have been more encouraged as he realized that Mrs. Massey was treating him the same way as she was treating the other students in the classroom, and that’s when he got the feeling that his education was really about to begin here at this new school.

During the next class periods on his first day, meeting his new teachers and the people he would be attending classes with, Jimmy Lee tried not to show his feeling of excitement and tried to act as though nothing could ever get him excited; that was until he saw one of the most beautiful young ladies he had ever seen in his life, and as he looked into her eyes, he felt as though something had slammed into his chest with the force of a sledgehammer. Bright lights started flashing all around him like flashbulbs going off; he heard loud slamming sounds that were ringing in his ears, and he couldn’t even breathe as his eyes widened at the sight of Annette Sullivan.

Annette was from a middle-class family that lived in an integrated section of Cleveland that was called Mount Pleasant, and she looked, dressed, and acted as though she wasn’t any different than her many white friends that were surrounding her constantly.

From the moment he first saw Annette, Jimmy Lee had fallen in love with her, but he knew instinctively that she might as well have been from another world, a world that he doubted he would ever become a part of; and in his youthful mind all he would ever be able to do was to love Annette Sullivan from a distance, because Jimmy Lee couldn’t even imagine himself being a part of this beautiful young girl’s life, and in spite of her being Negro, he knew that Annette Sullivan belonged to the world of white people.

For his next three years at Taft and then on through high school, Jimmy Lee carried a secret torch in his heart for Annette Sullivan; he loved her from a distance and never once believing that he would be good enough for someone like her. Whether it was because he was too afraid to approach such a beautiful and popular young girl or that he was just too afraid of her rejecting him, Jimmy Lee didn’t know which, and he never gave himself the chance of ever finding out.

However Jimmy Lee did learn one important lesson from watching Annette interact with her white friends throughout their school career; he learned from watching Annette manipulate all of those people that were constantly around her, he had learned what it took to make it in the white man’s world, and that was to believe that you’re better than all those white people that you have to associate with. After learning that one particular lesson from his observations of Annette, Jimmy Lee found it much easier to blend into this new world that he had suddenly been opened up to him; that is until he enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school and got the adventurous idea of making the military his career.

Chapter 4

Jimmy Lee had worked his way up to the rank of sergeant after four years of service, the last serving as an Airborne Ranger with an Infantry Division that was based in Columbus, Georgia. Most of the men in his platoon were impatiently waiting to find out when they would be receiving orders for deployment to Vietnam, but Jimmy Lee had already received his deployment orders, and one night at the non-commissioned officers club, Jimmy asked one of the men that had been sitting next to him about his status concerning Vietnam.

Hey Jack, have you got your orders yet? he asked Jack Thomas who was also a sergeant and one of his best friends in the unit because he was also a black man.

Hell no, Jimmy, mine haven’t come yet, but I’m hoping that I’ll hear something real soon, and Jack turned on his barstool and said to another man sitting at the bar, How about you Hillbilly, have you got your orders yet? Jack asked a big white country boy that was a corporal named Jules Youngblood from West Virginia that everyone called ‘Hillbilly’.

Naw, I ain’t heard squat man, and if I don’t hear somethin’ real quick, ah’mo sho’nuff go on over to HQ and beat the livin’ shit outta one them computer-typin’ sum’bitches and find out why, I swear fo’ god I will! Hillbilly answered. They all laughed because both knew that Hillbilly probably would go over to HQ and raise some hell. There wasn’t anything sexually wrong with Hillbilly, but he’d rather get into a good stomp-down, knock-your-ass-out fist-fight than he would making out with one of the big-legged, short-dress-wearing, pretty women that came into the club nightly.

Why in the hell don’t you bastards shut the fuck up and let the white men in this unit take care of Vietnam. Thomas, you ain’t gonna do shit with your black ass but hide in the jungle somewhere and shake like a dog shittin’ razor blades. And you Hillbilly, you ain’t nothin’ but a traitor to the white race, always hangin’ ‘round with them damn niggers, a pot-bellied, greasy-looking mess sergeant from another platoon said and started coughing loudly as the beer he swallowed went down his windpipe. The men sitting at his table were all rumored to be members of a white supremacy hate group in town known as the ‘Stompers’.

Sergeant Thomas immediately jumped up and started punching the shit out of the fat mess sergeant even though he was still coughing and choking on beer.

Hillbilly leaped from his stool and landed on all the other men that were drinking at the table with the fat sergeant and they all crashed to the floor, with Hillbilly swinging his huge fists as they fell. Jack Thomas had his arm locked around the fat man’s neck and was choking him so hard that his face began turning purple as he struggled. And as he slumped to the floor he still continued coughing, but this time it wasn’t beer he was choking on; he was choking on his own vomit, and as Thomas let him fall to the floor, he looked around for someone else to beat the shit out of, but there was no one else left but another fat-assed prick that Jimmy Lee was punching in the face so hard that he finally fell to the floor unconscious, so Thomas just coughed up a big wad of thick sputum and spit gob in the fat man’s face as he too lay puking and bleeding on the floor.

Let’s get the hell outta here before the MPs come, Jimmy Lee said as they hurried out the back door. After the three men got back to the platoon barracks, Thomas asked, "What are we gonna say when the MPs get here, you know they’ll find us