Poisoned Apple: The Weeping Man

By Don Nolan

What else can I say? I cry black teardrops. Fake tears, a hustler's tears through years and years of drug addiction here in New Orleans. The Big Sleazy, I mean, the Big Easy. This is what I dislike about myself to this very day. My past. All the lying to loved ones, cheating, stealing, in and out of different prisons. Learning and teaching myself how to jose (do time) like a real career criminal. The lifestyle has tattooed itself across my brain after twenty-one years of being a junkie. One point in my life a long time ago, I was a good kid. Played sports, had lots of good friends, came from a prominent, upscale family. Then, a big bad wolf came into my life, a child molester which we delve into when the story unfolds about what happened that truly messed me up as a child. This may have been the start of the downward trajectory I chose in life, and my bottom is what drug addiction has done to me. Turned me into a hustler, a cheat, a liar, a criminal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781642142747

Book preview

Introduction

I’ve been to hell and shared a bed with the devil for many nights. All my experience with the street life and all my street smarts don’t do anything for me in corporate America. When you’re raised to know right from wrong and go against the right thing just for fun, it becomes habit-forming. Next thing you know, you’re hooked on doing wrong. It took me many trips to jail, many months of homelessness and eating out of dumpsters to even try to break myself of this habit. I can’t say I’m completely innocent to this day, but I’m nothing like I was. Why won’t God recognize me and give me a blessing in disguise? Am I still doing something really wrong? I’m such a coward. It’s so easy to blame God. I’ve made my life this way. I just wish people who don’t know a damn thing about me or my past couldn’t read me so easily. It’s as if I have Heroin Addict, Male Prostitute, Thief, Can’t Be Trusted tattooed across my forehead. Maybe the streets and jailhouse mentality have instilled themselves on my tongue. Maybe I don’t even realize that I’m a little intimidating and too forthcoming in my speech. Maybe Americans are being raised like a bunch of delicate little flowers and my speech and mannerisms hurt their fragile sensibilities. Every day and night that I stay awake from smoking crystal, I feel like I’m losing something, maybe just sleep. Every time I masturbate, I feel sad because I’m not really fucking. Everybody I say hi to looks at me like I’m a lunatic, probably because they’re not getting paid to say hi back. Everything I do makes me pathetic, and I still feel like these are the better days of my life.

I will always hold my head high. Every day, every time, everybody and everything don’t affect my pride. Wanna know why? Because I slept in the same bed as the devil and I know what awaits my eyes. Constantly complaining about how people are too sensitive, yet I myself am a regular teardrop doll with growing proclivities toward spite. These proclivities I speak of must be used for the good of man. I’ve experienced so much for twenty-two years of age—a lot funny, a lot sad, a lot intense, but mostly horrendous. I shall use these horrid stories to teach these young people today the difference between right and wrong. I do expect the critics to say that I’m basking in the ambience of my evil deeds. This is not true. I have a macabre story to tell; this is true. But there were always consequences for my actions. So if one young person reads about what I’ve done and they are doing the same, maybe he or she will lean toward the right thing to do. And this is my goal in writing this book. If I save one life from the one I’ve lived, then in my heart I will feel as if I’ve saved a hundred thousand.

Again, my writing is not for everyone. I have a foul tongue due to my exposure on the streets and, many people say, a strange way of thinking. But I do know right from wrong. My main focus of the reader will be the high schoolers with their turbulent years of peer pressure to drink and do drugs. I started a couple of years before high school, but it’s all in the company that you keep. Tell me who you run with and I’ll tell you who you are. My mother taught me that saying. She taught me a lot of good things. I really was raised right, considering the fact that my mother and father used to be a nun and a priest. But we’ll get to all that when the story begins.

To come forth with the introduction and point at hand, my writing (if you can handle it) is very grizzly in the detail about life in the city hooked on drugs and alcohol, being a male prostitute when I was not homosexual, and becoming extremely comfortable with my life outside the law. If you read this book and feel it is too graphic in detail, maybe next time you’ll drive down Canal Street in New Orleans and open up your eyes to see all the smelly, unshaved miscreants with one foot on the wall and something definitely on their minds. You might see what I used to be. No matter how smelly and socially unattractive these obscure people seem to you, be aware that every last one of them has a God-given talent. Know that money doesn’t make the man, but when you sink down to the levels of lifestyle which I had attained, to society, that makes me the man I am today, and that will never change. Years of pain and anguish I have smitten upon my family’s hearts and the bewilderment and astonishment I felt when they didn’t believe a word I’d say. Alas, every dog has his day when it comes to the heart and love and pain. I’ve been talked to, told right from wrong, cursed, and eventually put in prison. But no one has ever come to me and said, I understand you. The same sort of things happened to me too. At least no one who was on my plane of abnormal thinking.

This is another motive for writing this book. I would love to know if there are people out there who are like me. I’ve never met anyone like me, and generally, people tend to shy away from my presence in social situations. I do not speak of my horrid past in public, but like I said before, it’s as if they can read it across my forehead. Maybe there isn’t anyone out there like me. But anyway, back to the point: if you’re a fucked-up teenager who hates life, who cuts or burns his or her self to numb the senses, who constantly takes drugs or drinks to escape all of life’s tedious little complications, who can’t make a friend because everyone thinks you’re crazy, who generally cannot stand life as a whole and just wants to end it, then you might want to read my book for the motivation to walk down the street with your head held high and for the inspiration of knowing there are other sick fuckers out there (like me) who don’t care what people think or say about them. I’m not a Bible-thumper, just a thumper of my own man-made morals and experiences growing up. So if you exist, Mr. or Mrs. Sickness, you might want to flip through. My name is Don Nolan, and this is my book.

Chapter 1

Proper Etiquette 101

In the beginning, around the mid ’sixties until the early seventies, a man and a woman met and really liked each other. But this wasn’t your average Harry meets Sally. This man and this woman were obligated to a somewhat higher duty. The people I speak of I love deep in my heart and in my psyche. Yes. It sounds insane but it’s true. My mother and father were a Roman Catholic nun and priest. My father was a high school teacher in an all-Catholic school, and my mother was more of the sensitive, caring missionary type. As a matter of fact, they both got their college degrees with three years of master’s between them. My mother, after college, spent her time in Peru, South America, as a missionary. She taught the natives animal husbandry, vegetable farming and cooking among other things, and, most importantly, religion. She told me the stories about the people’s rotten teeth and toothaches and how they chewed on cocoa leaves, drank primavera (100 percent corn alcohol) and get zoned out. My father volunteered for a missionary assignment to Peru. He had no idea he was going to meet his loving wife there: Gina. He ran a parish and administered the sacraments, but how they met is remarkable. They were both in the mountains of Peru, and traveled, like others, by motorcycle or horse. They both had motorcycles. One day they were both going up pretty steep mountain terrain on two separate roads that connected at the top. They nearly drove right into each other as they reached the top. To the surprise of James Nolan and Gina Marie Lane, in seeing another Gringo, they both got off their bikes, introduced themselves, and had been friends ever since.

But things didn’t happen all that fast. I believe my mother was stuck at a crossroads between being a nun and going out and using that fancy college degree. My mom is extremely smart. She learned it from living a rough childhood with an alcoholic father. He was drunk and violent, abusive with words and generally unhappy. But he was in World War II, so I understand him a little. After all the havoc of growing up with that, my mother felt a natural discomfort with men and decided for the devotional. Like I said, my mom is smart. After seventeen years of service, she left the religious life, and a short time later, my father left the priesthood. He went to see Mom and asked her to marry him. She declined and told him he should go back to the priesthood. Well, the way my father tells it, he drove back to Chicago the whole way in tears. When he got back, my mom called and asked him to marry her. My dad said that was the happiest feeling in his life. My mother proposed to my dad. They dated for a couple of years and lived in various apartments, each having their own. I know for sure they each had an apartment on Royal Street, right in the heart of the French Quarter. Dad worked in a wholesale liquor in the evenings after getting off other knickknack jobs during the day. Mom landed a great job in politics for the city of New Orleans, then Dad got a great high-level job in management for a big oil company. So they both used those fancy degrees after all. My folks were married soon after that, being financially secure and all.

Mom was soon pregnant after the honeymoon. Family members and friends consistently asked if she would be all right during the pregnancy (being that she was thirty-five at the time and getting older). To much dismay, after my sister was born, I popped up six years later. You think the family was concerned with Anna; now my mother was pregnant with me at forty-one years old! All I know is they moved into a big beautiful house right on Bayou Saint John, the best neighborhood in New Orleans. I was brought home from the hospital to a place that, in the not so distant future, caused heartache, loss, distrust, and the worst kind of heartbreak.

The earliest memory I have was of my mom’s day care center on the bottom floor of our house. I remember having a violent fit as the baby because my mom went upstairs to take care of a few things. My fondest memory of my young years was of Sutter Academy where I was a handful and didn’t even realize it. My first year of kindergarten I was held back because I kept bringing knives to school. They (the school faculty) thought I would grow out of it. They were right; I grew to bigger and better things. I had a principal, Mr. Belson, who would paddle my ass raw for the slightest indiscretions. I received the same discipline at home. First time I got caught with a knife at school, during first year of kindergarten, was also the first time my dad paddled me. He had his own paddle from when he was a priest and it said Fr. Nolan/Cascia Hall on it. My mom cried because of how innocent I was. Little did she know! After dinner, my father told me to go into my room and pull my pants down. When my parents got into my room after I called out, Daddy, I’m ready! they saw me bent down on my bed with both my pants and underwear pulled down. Mom burst into tears and left, and Dad gave me only one lick.

My second year of kindergarten was the first time I fingered a girl. The teacher walked up when I had my hand in her pants and she had her hand on my pants. So we abrasively shuffled our hands away from each other. The teacher turned and looked very concerned; this was all going on during nap time, of course. The next day, Mr. Belson paddled my ass, but I never admitted to anything and he never told my parents. My mother and father were starting to have a tough time with my sister dating and all, so I never really got into much trouble with the focus mostly on Anna. Quite honestly, I wasn’t much of a troublemaker in those years anyway.

In first grade, my class and I went to a drug prevention class in the library where I belted out Drugs are cool! I like drugs. Now this is coming from a child who doesn’t have the slightest possible concept of what drugs are. All I knew was that they made you feel good, and that was swell enough for me. The homeroom teacher demanded that I get professional help (a psychiatrist). When I went to the headshrinker, I answered all his questions to my benefit. I believe I lied through half the questions. For the more serious questions, I told them what they would want to hear.

The start of the second grade was different for me. I think it was because I actually had a teacher who liked me, Mrs. Wilkins. I made straight As and worked hard at it too. It’s amazing the difference it makes when your presence is appreciated. I only got into trouble once in all the second-grade year. There was a bully who was bigger than all the other kids. As you might be able to tell, I have a certain disdain for bullies. During after-school care, I made a sandcastle in the sandbox, and it was my greatest masterpiece yet. I remember the ecstatic feeling I got from creating something with my bare hands. Then I remember the fiery furnace of bursting raw emotion when that kid came over and kicked over my sandcastle. He said, What are you going to do, cry? So I stood up and hit him so hard in the dick sucker that he flew off his feet onto his back. A moment passed, and I was ready for more if he wanted to fight. He started crying his eyes out and ran to the teacher. I got suspended for a week because of that little love tap. I heard everyone made fun of the bully, and he went home crying every day. He transferred school right before I came back.

Third grade was harder because they had a Christian (Baptist) teacher and I never did like those Bible-thumpin’ Baptists.