12 screws and 3 plates [part 2]

Click here for 12 Screws and 3 Plates [Part 1]

Before other onlookers had showed up, when it was just me and the cop and one other person from apartment security, it hit me that I still had a pocket full of fake IDs and credit cards.  One of these IDs matched up to the name that we had given the AirBnB renter to give to apartment security so that we could pick up the key.  If the AirBnB renter showed them that discussion they could connect my face to not only the fake ID, but the AirBnB hack too.  It tied me to everything and invalidated my digital online Craigslist alibi. If they found that ID, they could discover that this was more than just a basic scam. What really concerned me was the thought of them reaching out to the person on the ID.  It had his real DL number and address on it so they could easily contact him.  If they contacted him, he would no doubt unload a full story on how he had been having a lot of identity theft shit happen to him lately.  When we had a fake ID on someone, we penetrated deep into their consumer credit life.  We would have no doubt opened multiple credit lines in their name.  My mind immediately jumped to a worst-case type scenario.  The cops are going to call this guy, this guy is going to tell them someone opened lines of credit at Best Buy, Nordstrom, Verizon etc… and then the cops are going to pull up department store security footage of me maxing all of his shit out.  Then they are also going to call all of the other people whose fake IDs and credit cards I had on me and do the same thing.  The fraudulent cards in my pocket were the tip of a Titanic-wrecking sized iceberg.  I was facing dozens of felony charges and serious prison time if the detectives did their homework.  I had to make these cards disappear, quick.  “Use the broken leg” I thought.  I started screaming that my leg was hurting (some real Academy Award type shit I’m sure) and as I grabbed my leg I acted as if the pain was so immense that I couldn’t control myself and I rolled my ass right back into the bayou.  I pretended that I was trying to get myself back on the ledge but kept slipping back into the water.  I rolled so that my side of the body that had the IDs in it was now under water and I frantically tried to empty that pocket without the cop seeing.  I couldn’t get them out easily and struggled with it a bit.  I heard the cop yelling “He’s trying to empty his pockets!”  “Don’t empty your pockets out son!”  I yelled back “My fucking leg is killing me! I can’t get back up!”  The cards slipped out of my pocket and I jammed them into the mud beneath the surface.  The cop kept yelling at me and all of the sudden there was an electric shock resonating throughout my whole body. He’s tasing me. Wtf?!  I couldn’t believe this.  I’m 20 feet below this guy with a broken leg and he is tasing me!  Either that or it was some weird trauma shock type shit.  To be completely honest, I’m just not sure.  At first I was 80-90 percent sure he had tased me; in retrospect after talking to my lawyer and reading the police report, I am now about 20-30 percent sure I was tased.  At the time though, that’s definitely what happened and he was wrong for doing it so now I had some leverage here.  I was going to sue the fuck out of this guy and flip this whole bad day into a nice fat settlement check.  This is America after all.  The Litigious States of America.

The number of curious heads poking over the edge of the railing slowly increased.  As my luck would have it, the side of the building that had everyone’s balconies on it faced the bayou.  Word got out that some dumbass broke his leg and everyone and their mother came out on their patios to enjoy the show and take cell phone videos and pics.  I can’t blame them, shit if I was at home in the middle of a weekday and was given the opportunity to watch a piece of shit burglar break his leg I would have been all over that.

Either way, I had now mentally latched onto the tasing conspiracy and ran with it.  I would love to see one of the bystanders cell phone videos from that day.  I wonder if my antics were as convincing as I had hoped they were.  I was screaming and yelling that I couldn’t believe he had tased me.  “You fucking TASED me bro!”  And yes, I actually said “bro,” I couldn’t help myself on that one.  When else would I be able to say that phrase and have it be applicable to the situation?  “I am down here with a broken leg and he’s tasing people!”  He said shit like “ain’t nobody tase your ass boy.”  Ill give him the benefit of the doubt, I think I was grasping for any reason to try to illicit sympathy from people and make them think I was the victim here.  Then again, maybe, just maybe, he did tase me quickly before anyone saw.   

There was no easy access to where I had jumped.  When the firetruck rolled up, HFD sent one of their guys down into the water to assess the situation.  “We’re gonna need the basket!” He yelled up to the top, then he let me know… “This is the first time we have used this mountain climber basket you know!”  Guess there isn’t much need for it in Houston.  They positioned the firetruck parallel next to the bayou and swung the ladder over the edge like a crane and loaded me up and slowly raised me up and out.

They lowered me down onto the ambulance gurney and immediately handcuffed me to the rail on the side of the bed.  They asked me for my name.  I remember holding off on this.  I have a fake street name I went by and I didn’t want to give them this name nor did I want to give them my real name.  If I was going to hang onto the Craigslist alibi, I could use my real name.  If Phil and Marie had gotten away, this Craigslist alibi might still work. No way was I ready to give up just yet.  The best defense is a good offense so between my being tased,  the broken leg, and the Craigslist story, I had plenty of word ammo to shoot off at HPD and a plausible reason to be panicking and not listening because shit my leg is broken and I’m an innocent victim.  They assigned a female cop to ride with me in the ambulance on my way to Ben Taub County Hospital and the entire route I tried to maintain control of the conversation and limit it to tasing or Craigslist until more time had passed and I found out more about what happened to Phil and Marie.

As soon as I got in the ambulance the addict part of me sprang into action.  Ambulance = hospital = pain meds.  I love me some pain meds.  Especially the good medical grade trauma type shit. I had a 6 year affair with oxys and norcos and knew that I was about to get pumped full of the good stuff.  Non-addicts may not understand this, but anytime I am in a car accident or become a trauma-related victim, I attempt to leverage this position as much as possible to obtain the maximum amount of pain medication possible.  I make a game out of it.  I started screaming to the ambulance tech that my leg was hurting and to please give me something for the pain.  They gave me some morphine via IV and that old familiar warm friend was back with me again 😀

On the ride to Ben Taub, the female cop kept asking for my name and I kept avoiding the question.  I kept insisting that we had found an ad on Craigslist.  She was telling me that was bullshit and to just tell her the truth.  I told her that maybe I could tell her if I wasn’t in shock from being tased!  “Nobody tased you.”  “Yes, he did!  Look I bet I have the tase marks on me somewhere, just look if you don’t believe me.”

Good lord the next hour was one of the craziest mental and visual trips I have ever had.  I wonder if the ice in my system made me less susceptible to being fully knocked out and increased my level of awareness from the anesthesia.  Whatever mixture of dissociatives and painkillers they gave me was pretty fucking amazing.  I went in and out of consciousness a few times during this period.  I remember seeing the nurses behind the glass x-ray window and I had no idea what was going on.  I had forgotten I had broken my leg and what all had happened for a bit.  After the x-rays they wheeled me into a room in what felt like a basement ER.  The female cop from the ambulance ride was waiting for me.  I was telling her the whole alibi story and I was trying to convince her to go on Craigslist and find that ad.  She never believed me.  While we were talking a doctor came in with a group of med students and they all stood around me.  I remember them getting some type of strap or rolled up towel and saying they were going to reset my leg.  They put me under and I didn’t regain consciousness until hours later when I came to in some type of huge chaotic group recovery room.

When I regained consciousness, I was in a hospital bed in what looked and felt kind of like a MASH unit.  There were probably 20 or 30 people laid out in beds one right next to each other in one big room.  No curtains between us, no privacy, just rows of beds.  This was a room full of gritty looking patients.  A lot of poor and homeless looking people and a bunch of crazed out druggies, lol.  THIS is when the pain hit me.  It came in waves of stinging fire and intense burning up and down my left leg. My leg was on fucking fire.  I screamed for the nurse and she would bring these plastic looking juice packs of dialuded.  I passed out again for longer this time and when I came to again, it was dark and I saw that I had been taken to my own private room.  I saw it was like 3:00 AM. My left leg was elevated and there was an HPD Officer sleeping on the couch in my room.  “This is my chance!”  I had been waiting for an opportunity like this.  I knew this was going to be my last shot to get away.  I was going to make my way to the wheelchair in the corner, wheel myself out of the hospital, go down the street, and then figure the rest out later.  Deep breath.  “You can do this. He is passed the fuck out.  Just stay quiet and move quick.”  I raised myself up in the bed as quietly as I could and when I tried to swing my left leg over this explosion of pain overwhelmed me and I screamed “Oh Jesus FUCK!” in pain.  The cop opened his eyes and I said I had to go to the bathroom.  So much for my great escape.  I’m officially fucked.  I accepted my fate here and rang for the nurse to bring me some pain meds.  She brought me some dilauded and I was content for the time being. 

I’d like to give the nurses and staff at Ben Taub kudos for their hospitality.  I guess since I had to have a cop with me at all times, I was given a private room.  I had my own tv, privacy, and every day someone came to give me a food menu so that I could pick whatever I wanted from the menu.  The food was delicious.  When you come down from long term meth usage, your body craves food and sleep so my hunger returned and I pretty much gorged myself.  I also realized that I was about to eat nothing but jail food so I really tried to savor and enjoy each bite and these last days of freedom.  I was at Ben Taub a total of 3 days.  I had an HPD Officer assigned to me this whole time.  24/7 around the clock eyes on me at all times.  There wasn’t much for them to do but sit there.  I was surprised to be in so much trouble as to warrant a full-time babysitter, but if they weren’t there, I would have for sure taken off so I guess it made sense.  They would sit on the couch and hang out with me for the entire shift. It felt weird being waited on and treated so nice by hospital staff right in front of the cops.  Here I was ordering cheesecake for dessert and eating it right in front of a cop with his sack lunch.  I asked the hospital worker that took my food order if we could get some extra food for the cop “Get him whatever he wants!  It’s ok you can put it on my tab!”  Painkillers put me in a good mood no matter what the situation so I had a blast at Ben Taub.  The cop even got a kick out of my asking that and said he appreciated the offer even though they said they couldn’t do that.

On the third day of my stay, after my second surgery, I woke up and saw that I now had an external fixator attached to my leg.  I had a rod running horizontal to my body running through my Achilles heel, two screws that had been drilled into my shin, and rods connecting all of them together. 

A Sergeant came in that third day and talked to the doctor about when I could leave.  They said I was good to go and wouldn’t need anymore operations for a while.  HPD, understandably, did not like wasting taxpayer money babysitting me. The Sergeant told me that I couldn’t just go to county straight from Ben Taub.  They needed to officially book and charge me first.  They wheelchaired me into some type of disability cop bus and drove me to one of the jails in south Houston.  I was there for a day while they processed and charged me officially with burglary and credit card fraud.  A detective came in at this time and talked to me asking how we were able to hack that lady’s AirBnB account.  I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about and I stuck to my guns about the Craigslist story.  He told me to just tell the truth and it’ll work out better for me.  I hesitated, but didn’t want to give them anything more to work with so I said nothing else.  When I later spoke with my first court appointed attorney, she told me that HPD had sent officers into the water and they had found the IDs I tried to stash in the mud.  They had the fake ID that matched up with the AirBnB conversations so I was fucked.  The detectives, however, didn’t dig deeper than that.  They never reached out to the gentleman whose name was on the ID.  They charged me with credit card fraud, tampering with government documents, and burglary of a habitation.  All felonies.  The first two carry possible jail terms of 2-10 years and the burglary was 2-20 years.

When I was discharged from the hospital to take my ride to jail, I didn’t have any clothes so they gave me a paper thin blue jumpsuit to wear.  I was transported to Harris County Jail and booked and placed in the medical unit.  I was there for about 10 days before unexpectedly getting bonded out.  I had called my parents and family and told them what had happened when I got to the first booking jail.  This was actually the second time I had ever been arrested in my life.  The first time happened to occur one week prior. Since that was my first arrest ever my dad came down and bailed me out same day.  This didn’t slow me down one bit though. I immediately went right back out and here seven days later my parents are getting another call from me that I was in jail again and this time I broke my leg.  My parents chose not to bail me out this time.  They said they would put money on my books but that they wanted me to stay in jail and try to learn a lesson.  I told them I understood.  What I wasn’t expecting was that Marie and another close girl friend of mine, Paisley, had put together $750 and bonded me out.  I was surprised they had done that. I like to think I would have done the same for either one of them, but you never know if someone will ever do it for you until that time actually comes.  When people get arrested and are faced with serious consequences for serious crimes, their true colors show.  Often the people that tout loyalty and brotherhood the most are the first ones to turn their back on you or sell you out.  Marie and I had been through some crazy shit together though and she remained loyal and a good friend.  I had helped Marie escape from her pimp a while back.  I looked out for her and genuinely cared about her.  Unfortunately I got her into more bad situations, but it wasn’t out of malice and we definitely had a close connection.  I’ll save her story for another post, in summary, we both got out of the tweaker world and ended up dating for about a year in sobriety.  Pretty cool. 

As much as Marie had my back, Phil went the complete opposite direction and totally fucked me over.  Before we got arrested he and I had become pretty close.  We had paired up for several months together running fraud shit.  We sometimes joined up with a other fraud people and a couple times we even all stayed in the same hotel for a bit.  One time his parents left town for a week and we stayed at his place.  A lot of people came and went while we were staying there.  One night he got all pissed off and told everyone to get out and that I was the only one that could stay. I actually almost died at his place.  Raquel had come over to hang out with me and I told her to shoot me up with H.  I mentioned something about the shot looking big and she told me not to worry about it.  She gave me the shot and I passed out only to come to with Phil and Raquel slapping me in the face and both panicking.  Apparently I had passed out and stopped breathing.  Phil was in tears crying thinking that I had died.  I felt just fine and shrugged it off.  I sometimes forget that this happened to me and I don’t think about it as much as I probably should.  Maybe since I’m putting this in writing it will help remind me how close I came to dying and didn’t even care.  That could have easily been it for me.  My daughter would have been fatherless.  And for what? That’s the closest I have come to dying from anything drug related.  That was also the last time I ever did H.  For family members of addicts it may help to realize that even though someone comes close to dying, if doesn’t mean it will knock any sense into them.  Especially if they don’t go to the hospital.  Although I’m pretty sure if I had gone to the hospital at this point I still wouldn’t have slowed down. 

So Phil and I had made a lot of money together.  We could always afford a place to stay and kept a constant stream of tweaker girls entertained.  Phil also had a badass connect for ice.  His old cell mate from prison was a high level dealer in Houston so we both had a direct line to a lot of good ice.  His dealer accepted more luxury and fraud shit as payment though so that was nice.  He would take his dealer to Sak’s on a shopping spree and get 50 cents to the dollar for everything his dealer wanted.  Both of us would casually leave out ounces of ice.  If we liked a tweaker girl we would call them from a department store and tell them to go online and pick out whatever they wanted.  Sometimes they came with us on these shopping sprees.  A couple of decent and educated tweaker guys that let them buy whatever they wanted at the mall and also had a bunch of ice.  Hard for them to not get hooked.  I took some on shopping trips to Nordstrom or Macy’s and they absolutely ate that shit up.  We would lie to girls and other people constantly about different shit, but were honest with each other for the most part.  We made a pretty good team and had a friendly competition type of attitude.  We would often discuss our plan for that day, what stores we were each going to and what products we were going after.  We would come back at the end of the day and give half of what we made to each other.  We would literally just walk up to each other and toss up to a few thousand bucks in each other’s hands.  Some days one of us would strikeout and some days we would both strikeout.  Overall we stayed pretty close to even as far as how much we contributed to the duo.  If you really wanna get technical I think I brought in a little more, lol.  We are both competitive and we drove each other to a higher level of fraud production.  When I scored a diamond pair of stud earrings from Nordstrom, he countered with a Rolex from Jared’s.  We almost always had I-watches too.  We flaunted our loyalty and success in front of girls we would have had over.  I would be sitting on the couch smoking ice with some chick and he would walk in and set his backpack on the table.  Grab the ice bong and take a rip, then whip out a stack of hundreds and count me out my half of whatever it was that he made that day.  I reciprocated.  One time he had two girls in his hotel room, I knocked on the door and just handed him $1200 cash.  He was laughing because he answered the door naked and tried to hide it from the girls but they saw it. Apparently some S&M shit went bad with those girls and they ended up ripping his ass off when he passed out.  He got pissed and we never saw those two again.  I think they got him for like two or three grand.  Fucking tweaker girls.  I would say 80% of the time we were 100% honest with the money we shared.  The thing is we were successful enough to not have to worry about nickel and dime shit.

At one point, me, Phil, Jamal, and 3 other close fraud friends all had separate rooms for about 2 weeks in this massive Holiday Inn Houston Intercontinental at Beltway 8 and JFK Blvd.  This was the pinnacle of our fraudulent fun.  We were all working together and had clicked for a while.  This hotel was huge and old and perfect for what we were doing.  It was big enough to where we felt like we had our own wing far away from everyone else and we ran rampant in this place.  A fucked up tweaker summer camp.  Jamal’s room had dozens of pairs of Jordan’s covering his room. Phil had white boy terrible fashion sense and he had ridiculous looking snapback hats, Jordans, mismatched Ed hardy shit and boxes of iPhones in his room. My room had colored light bulbs, Bose speakers, laptops, designer shit, and iPhones. I was selling, Phil had a connect so he was selling too.  Jamal would work the IDs, one guy was even able to print fake $10 bills using a cheap $30 printer from Wal-mart and a couple of easily accessible other supplies.  We all rotated through tweaker girls and didn’t give a fuck about really hiding our shit.  Everyone’s room amplified their persona.  Eventually, when you make enough money to sit on for a while, some people get lazy.  Some got more lazier than others and we just didn’t have matching drives to keep working hard after scoring big licks.  Phil would disappear sometimes with his head far up some random girls ass and that became annoying, but he and I had gravitated towards each other and stuck together through all of this until this last falling out where he completely sold me out.

In the course of my arrest and hospital visit, all of my clothes had been cut off.  I had lost my wallet and cell phone in the bayou so I didn’t have either one of those.  The cops didn’t bother to give me my “shoe” when I left the hospital, so when I went to jail, all I had was that paper medical scrub type jumpsuit and nothing else. 

Harris County had issued me a wheelchair while I was an inmate, but when I got to the holding cell for release, they took it away from me.  No crutches, I was now literally hopping.  A couple of inmates took pity on me and helped me or let me use their shoulder to hold on to while we were waiting in line for release.  I made friends with one of them and he said he would let me use his phone when we got outside.  Otherwise I had no way of reaching out to anyone.  When we got out I used his phone to log into my Facebook and tried messaging Phil.  No response. I then messaged Paisley who had signed on the bond for me.  She had her own apartment and she responded immediately and sent an Uber to take me over to her place.  When I got to her apartment complex, I hopped all the way down the hall on one leg sweating my ass off, taking several breaks, and knocked on her door.  She lived by herself and welcomed me with open arms.  If I had wanted to, I’m pretty sure I could have stayed there as long as I needed to.

She had heard about what happened and told me that Marie had raised the money for the bond and she signed for it.  Fucking awesome of them to do that.  Paisley also always had ice so I immediately hit the bong and was right back getting high again.  I still could not get a hold of Phil.  This was not like him. I could see that he had read my messages but hadn’t responded.  Super strange. I started reaching out to mutual friends of ours and our buddy Jamal finally hit me back and dropped this fucking bomb on me.

Welcome to the tweaker world. Paranoia. Jail. Backstabbing. People schizzing out over dumb shit.  When I say “schizzing out” I am referring to “schizophrenia”-type actions.  Acting in a manner that doesn’t make rational sense.  Letting paranoid and worst-case thinking affect your actions instead of taking a reasonable and logical approach to a situation. 4 cop cars showed up to Phil’s parents’ house in the Woodlands wearing vests and surrounded the place.  Phil thought it was because of me and he completely turned on me.  I was livid.  Not only was he not answering me, he had my laptop, clothes, Braun toothbrush, IDs, Bose speaker, and my backpack with all of my other shit.  I soon found out he started giving all of my shit away to random tweaker girls.  I couldn’t believe it!  A couple of them let me know right away and I was able to get my backpack and some clothes back.  This fucker also went into my car and completely emptied it out.  He unhooked my subwoofer and gave it to David, my Mexican homeboy that I introduced Phil to for pills he liked to buy.  David also cooked crack and had a direct line to the cartel for really good coke.  Coke so good that Arielle wanted to start moving it in Dallas.  David and I were tight and David was a lot more street smart than Phil so when Phil told him what happened and that I snitched, David asked him how it went down.  Apparently, Phil told David all about our fraud shit and how we ran the scams and over-talked and went into a lot of unnecessary detail.  I can totally see Phil just tweaking out and blabbing away kind of bragging to David about our shit.  David told me he called him out on the spot and said something like “Bro, how you gonna tell me all that shit yall do and you don’t even know me that well.  Alphatweaker don’t seem like a snitch to me, but you sure like to talk a lot.”  David totally had my back and took my subwoofer from Phil and gave it back to me.  He didn’t sell it back or ask for anything in return.  Just rightfully returned someone’s shit to them because it was the right thing to do.  So not only was Phil ignoring me and giving all of my shit away, he was trying to ruin my name and reputation.  The following discussion is from this girl that was with Phil when I was in jail.  He got pissed at her for accepting a phone call from me while I was locked up.  She stayed way more loyal to me than she did to him and she sent me the following message that Phil had sent her calling me a “horrible horrible piece of shit” and that I’m “dead” to him, yeesh.

It wasn’t until a few months later that I found out his reasoning as to why he thought I had snitched.  A couple of months prior to this AirBnB episode, I had purchased a $1,000 in AirBnB gift cards from Lowe’s by hijacking someone’s credit account there.  We used the gift card and booked a town home in Midtown for a week and stayed there.  In one of the rooms, we came across a bin of sensitive documents.  Tax returns, warranties, but most importantly, an unexpired Texas Driver’s License.  The picture on this ID was close enough to where Phil could pass for the guy.  On top of that, we found some junk mail addressed to him advertising a special pre-approval promo code for him to apply for a new Amex.  Since we had all of his info and we were staying at his home, I called Amex and went through their online phone application process.  I expedited the shipping of the card to the address on record and activated it as soon as it arrived.  It worked for a couple hundred bucks, but then stopped working.  I called customer service and hesitated and fumbled not expecting some of their security questions and they cancelled the card.  On top of that, since we had his social and drivers license we opened a line of credit at Micro Center and Best Buy and maxed them out.  Phil also rented a Porsche Cayenne off of Turo with that info.  When we left that rental Phil had accidentally left behind a copy of a temporary paper ID with his real information on it and they were able to connect him to some fraud shit.  By sheer coincidence, the cops happened to come looking for him for this crime at his parents house on the same day that I was bonded out of jail.  He figured I must have told the cops about his fraud shit and was thus released. I get how he could think that, but I don’t get the way he reacted to it.  What he did was some blatant hoe ass shit.  The typical tweaker nonsense that got me really upset was the whole “close and inside source” line.  Like come on.  He didn’t say how he knew I rattled him out so he just says he has an inside source.  He was also a little bitch about talking to me and confronting me with this accusation.  He would only communicate with me through other people.  At least have the balls to tell me to my face or shit even on the phone that you think I snitched you out. 

I had a solid reputation at this time.  I didn’t lie to a bunch of people and try to rip people off. Being an honest and good person comes in handy when someone tries to pull some bullshit like this on you. I sold my ice at fair prices and hooked people up fat.  Most of our mutual tweaker friends liked me more than Phil and a couple called him out on his bullshit.  Shit, David asked me if I wanted him jumped and I almost agreed to it I was so livid.  David and his crew love doing that type of shit.  Especially with someone lying about snitching.  A snitch is like the worst possible thing you could say about someone in these types of circles.  I could have easily had set Phil up, have his ass beaten, and then taken all of his shit just like he did to me.  I was extremely pissed off at him for doing me like this.  It was something I really never forgave him for.

Marie came and met me at Paisleys and we ran together around for a couple of days trying to get my shit back.  Phil never once talked directly to me about any of this until months later.  Having absolutely no money or possessions and a broken leg, I decided to throw in the towel and go back to my parents.  I stayed at home and stayed sober for a bit.  This is when that Facebook messenger discussion in my previous post took place with Raquel and I. 

Around July 1st, he had heard that Raquel had passed away and reached out to me knowing I was in a bad spot.  He had found out by this time that it was his own fault for leaving evidence behind and not me snitching that got him those new charges.  I think Phil reached out to me knowing I was upset about Raquel and was feeling bad about what he did. Deep down, way down, there is still a good person in Phil.  He was raised in a loving family that cared about him.  Even though he did me dirty, I kind of get it.  I would have been pissed and upset too, but I would have had the balls to at least talk to me if I were him.  He owed at least that to me.  I also wouldn’t have given his shit away to random girls in a desperate act to get them to like me more.  Regardless, he was raised with morals and ethics and shit, both of his brothers are doing very well for themselves.  Better than average.  One of them is a up and coming star politician in the conservative Texas A&M scene.  Phil himself had a golf scholarship to Penn State before losing himself in the game. His brain is still hijacked just as mine was.  Although a major difference between us is that Phil had already done two years in TDC (state prison.)  he made the choice to return to the game after spending two years locked up.  I spent 6 months locked up and I feel like I learned my lesson.  I also feel that losing Raquel and Jess and also breaking my leg all contributed to my wanting to stay far away from that type of fast life again.  When Phil called and we spoke for the first time in months he immediately said he was sorry about Raquel.  He knew her and I were fairly close friends.  He also apologized for what he had done and he told me he would make it right with me.  He explained why he thought what he thought and he hoped I understood why he did what he did.  When we met up to talk more he gave me an ounce of dope, about $800 bucks, and a new laptop to replace the one he stole.  I reluctantly accepted it knowing that I needed Phil more than he needed me at this point.  I had almost nothing and was still recovering from losing all my shit.  I had accepted the fact that I was busted for the burglary and would be going to jail for it, but I still made the decision to keep going hard until I reported for my sentence.  I needed Phil’s resources and skills to at least last me until July 25th when I was due in court.

We ran some weak fraud shit together but couldn’t get back into a good rhythm.  My old game room partner had an apartment and we used it as our home base for fraud operations.  Phil and I got on each other’s nerves a lot.  It just wasn’t working.  I remember one of our last arguments I completely hated on the whole fraud shit.  He said something about me not caring like I used to and I said “you know why I don’t care Phil??? Cause this is all short money… there’s long money and there’s short money and all this fraud shit is little short fuck-boy money.  It’s appealing to you because that’s exactly what you are, a fucking little small time fuck boy.  I need to drop this shit and get back to the long money.”  “Oh whatever Alphatweaker, whatever man.  You just can’t get over old shit and I can’t fuck with you anymore.  I was happy to bless your game when I did, but I just can’t fuck with you anymore.”  “Fuck off Phil. I’m heading up to Dallas to run with Arielle these last couple of weeks.  Later.” Phil did not like when I said that, lol.  In Phil’s world, no other tweakers were as good and consistent with the fraud shit as he was.  He was at the top of that game and that was the most money he had ever made.  It was fun at times, but just as fun as it could be, it could just as shitty. It pretty much evened out in the end. I meant everything I had said to him.  Drugs, fraud, the game…its all short money.  Long money.  That’s the real shit.  That was my old job that I tossed away like an empty beer can.  That was fucking real money.  A marathon not a sprint type shit.  This was one of the many times during this period of my life where the thought of “Good lord what the fuck have I done?” ran through my head. 

After leaving Phil and heading back to Dallas, I met up and ran some fraud and drug shit with Arielle for the last couple of weeks before I went to jail.  I took a huge risk in getting busted during these last two weeks.  I was running fraud shit in stores on crutches and had to make a quick getaway a couple of times.  Hopping my ass out and across a parking lot thinking they were onto me.  Hiding in the bushes and having to call an Uber to come pick me up and take me to my car on the other side of the parking lot type shit, lol.  I have a distinct memory of scoring a quick and easy Ipad from Best Buy in Dallas and then hitting the ice pipe in my car afterwards.  I was due in jail in a few days and the ice wasn’t even getting me high anymore.  I tried to bottle that helpless feeling up and remind myself that this is what happens when you go all the way.  You end up broke, alone, desperate, and the drug doesn’t even get you high like it used to.  I hugged and said goodbye to Ariel in the parking lot of the La Quinta hotel by Love Field and drove to Houston to report to jail. Haven’t seen her since as she got locked up in Denton County while I was locked up.  I headed back down to Houston and reported for jail on July 25th 2017.  I was supposed to do a full year in County, but I got let out six months early by the grace of Judge Vanessa Velasquez (thank you very much ma’am.) This is a selfie on crutches standing outside of Harris County Courthouse and Jail.

I talked to Phil after getting out of jail and he asked if I was back in the shit.  I told him no I wasn’t and I didn’t plan on going back.  I told him he was too smart to keep doing that shit and that he should stop now and try to get clean. He said he was working on an Ethereum farm (like bitcoin mining type shit) and that he was supposed to sign for a 5 year bid, but took off and ran.  Last time I spoke with him was a few months ago and he was planning a move to California and to stay on the run.  It’s only a matter of time with that guy before he’s back in prison.  It’s inevitable. Jamal’s ass got popped in San Marcos with over 50 fraudulent forms of credit cards and IDs and since he had also done previous time he was looking at 4 years last time I checked.

Marie went to jail and she ended up doing 6 months same as me.  We wrote each other letters in jail and kept in touch.  When we got out we both moved back with our parents in Dallas and we ended up dating for about a year.  We recently broke up.  When I first met her she was strung out hard and working for some pimp; today, she is back in school getting fucking straight A’s. She works a waitressing job and lives with her dad and brother and is staying out of trouble. Her and I are the only ones I know from this period of my life that got out of the game and are still out.  Everyone else is still in it, in jail, or dead.

Looking back, breaking my leg was a blessing in disguise.  Also losing Raquel and Jess had a profound impact on my decision to stay away from that life.  A broken leg, friends dying, and 6 months of jail time is what it took to knock some sense back into me.  I didn’t pace myself at all in that fast life. I went all out until that miscalculated jump.  This is my leg today!  12 screws and 3 plates later.

Raquel had asked if my surgeon was French because it looks like an Eiffel tower in there, lol.  When I look down at my scar, a lot of fucked up memories come back, but I am trying to maintain a positive vibe to it.  When I got those pictures of me in the bayou in the previous post, I shared them with my ex-wife and she said that it made her sad seeing me like that.  I told her shit, I’m glad that happened to me.  That’s what it took to knock some sense back into me and to slow me down from that fast paced shit.  She said she was happy I saw it that way.  I try my best to keep things in perspective these days.  Some days are harder than others, but I guess that’s just life. Right?