Meth A Memoir Read online

  It was in the band room that I ended up developing my first cocaine habit. The guys in the bands might have been starving and basically homeless, but there was rarely a shortage of drugs. It was also because of being in one of these band rooms that I encountered meth for the first time, and it was completely by accident that I did.

  Dave and I both smoked cigarettes. Since we didn’t work, we didn’t always have money to support this particular habit, not to mention any other ones we had. This meant we would always pocket any unprotected cigarette packs that’d be laying about the band rooms.

  One night after a show, one of the guys in another band was raising hell because someone stole his smokes. He was making a pretty big deal out of it, so Goober, Dave and I decided it’d be best if we left before someone started patting people down and found all of the cigarettes we had stolen. Although Goober didn’t smoke, he still would steal cigs for Dave and me.

  When we got back to the house, we dumped all the cigarette packs we nabbed out on the coffee table. That’s when Goober happened to notice a small baggie of white powder. “That’s why dude was pissed, his dope was in the pack!” he mentioned upon noticing it.

  Thinking it was coke, Goober handed it to me. I looked at it, but it didn’t look right. I showed Dave, and he determined it was crank. “Cool!” I thought to myself. I hadn’t tried that yet.

  Goober was still drug-free, but we talked him into doing the crank with us. We cut it into three lines, and snorted it. I loved the high I got off of it, and was suddenly a huge fan of Methamphetamine.

  Things stayed pretty good until we lost our place to stay one morning. We were having a party the night before, and Goober fucked the girl we were staying with while she was drunk. The next morning, she flipped out and told all of us to get the fuck out. There was a reason that this psycho bitch was off-limits, and this was it.

  Chapter 6

  Dave was getting discouraged in San Francisco anyway, so after we packed our shit we decided to head to LA. Dave felt as if he’d have a better chance of success there.

  We ended up blowing the motor in the Buick just north of LA on Highway 101. We had enough money for one motel room for a week in the town of Buellton, so we checked in.

  During that week, Dave decided to give up on his Rock ‘n Roll dreams. His parents were now living in Houston, so he called them for money to come home on. We went with him to the bus station, to see him off as he left for supposedly greener pastures.

  While we waited for the bus, Goober noticed a “Help Wanted” sign in the window of the bus station/video store/UPS pick­up/Western Union. This town was apparently so small, that this one store offered all of these wonderful conveniences under one roof.

  By the time Dave left, Goober had a job as a clerk in the video store. I was hired on as a clerk at yet another video store owned by the same person. My store did nothing but rent videos and VCR’s, and was only a couple of miles from the motel we were staying at, so I could easily walk to work. Goober’s store was just around the corner from the motel.

  The good news for us was that we had jobs. The bad news for us was that we were completely broke, and our week at the motel was almost up. We sold the Buick to a service station for parts, so we had a few dollars left for food until we got paid in two weeks.

  We only trained for one day, and then we were set loose to run the stores ourselves. If we had a problem, we just called the owner who told us how to solve it. No sweat. We made sure we didn’t have many problems. In fact, the only problems might have been us.

  After our first day alone at the stores, we got back to the motel room and started to talk about what we were going to do for dinner. I suggested we go to the store to buy chips, soda, and sandwich makings. This was pretty high living considering our meager available funds from the sale of the Buick. Goober looked at me kind of funny, and I smiled as I pulled a small wad of bills out of my pocket. He started laughing his ass off as he pulled an even larger wad of bills out of his pocket. Apparently, we had both been on the same wavelength all day. Now that we had both figured out ways of skimming money, things were going to be a lot easier for us.

  What we were doing was simple. At my store, I simply took the paper out of the printer. When a customer came in and wanted a few movies, I’d write them a hand written receipt and pocket the money. Half of all late fees went in my pocket as well. Absolutely none of these transactions went into the computer.

  Goober had more opportunities to skim money at his store because of the Greyhound. Greyhound wasn’t computerized at this location in those days, and so the tickets were handwritten.

  When someone came in to buy a bus ticket, Goober, the clerk, removed a ticket packet from a box. The ticket packets were numbered, so he would take one from the middle of the box, instead of the front, like he was supposed to do. He would write the ticket, then tear off the carbon copy. The copy and money went into a drawer. When the customer left, Goober would take the money out and pocket it. The carbon got wadded up and thrown into the ceiling rafters. Those carbons are probably still there today.

  We were stealing several hundred dollars a day between the two of us. We had plenty of money for my cocaine, Goober’s alcohol, and our motel and food. Life was great and so, we did what we always do when life was great, started partying heavily again. My cocaine was being supplied to me by the video store owner’s daughter. Ironically, or maybe coincidentally, she had recently been fired by her father for doing the exact same thing we were doing, robbing him blind. Although we never told her, I’m sure she knew what we were up to.

  We knew everything was about to fall apart when the owner came in and made a remark about how the Greyhound sales were down. The next day, Goober and I pocketed every single cent we brought in. After work, I met Goober at his store, and he had two tickets written up for us to go to North Carolina. We were out of town before the sun set. I’m not sure exactly why Goober decided on North Carolina, but three days after leaving California, we were stepping off the bus in Charlotte.

  We worked when we could at day labor places, and stayed in motels for several months. I kicked my coke habit for a while, but got back on it after meeting a girl who was strung out pretty bad. Since she had no problem supplying me with free drugs, I had no problem using free drugs. In order to make money, we created a scam where the girl would pose as a prostitute. She would get picked up and bring the guy back to a motel we had rented. When the guy, walked in, Goober and I would beat the hell out of him and rob him.

  This shit went on for weeks, and one day, Goober and I decided we had to get away from this bitch before we all went to jail or got shot. We left without telling her where we were going, and started to hitchhike back to Mississippi.

  We got a ride from a small family who were also going to Mississippi to look for work around the Gulf Coast area. They were as broke as we were and running low on gas. Goober and I stole a couple of gas cans out of some garages to help get us a little further down the road. After dark, we were able to siphon enough gas from cars in a hospital parking lot to get us most of the way to our destination.

  We started running low on gas again in Evergreen, Alabama, so we stopped at a church to see if they would help. They called the local cops to tell them they were sending us there for a gas voucher.

  We got to the cop shop, and the cop who came out to talk to us asked us for identification; all of us. We got the voucher and we were on our way; except Goober. When they ran his ID, he had a federal warrant for desertion from the Army. I guess we were so busy, we kind of forgot about that. He went to jail.

  Goober would end up getting out of trouble from the military on a technicality. I left Mississippi and went to Kansas after Goober was released from military prison and decided to head there himself. I was off drugs completely by then, but I ended up in trouble for forging checks.

  I ended up leaving Kansas, alone, and went back to Charlotte, because I knew I could get work there. I knew also that I needed to str
aighten up and settle down somewhere. That was my plan, and for almost twenty years, it worked out fairly well.

  Chapter 7

  Not long after arriving back in Charlotte, I met Karen. Karen was thirteen years older than I was, but you couldn’t tell it by me. She definitely didn’t look, or act, her age at all.

  I moved in with Karen, and a couple of months later, we moved to Johnson City, Tennessee where she was from. One afternoon while riding around, we decided to go get married over in Elizabethton, Tenn. Because of where we lived, it was closer to go to the courthouse there instead of the one in Johnson City.

  We went to the courthouse and got the marriage license but there was nobody there to perform the ceremony. We drove to Weaver’s Store in Stony Creek to find Judge Weaver. He was there, mopping the floor, but kindly stopped long enough to marry us. Afterward, we thanked him by buying a couple of moon pies and some Pepsi. After all, what’s a wedding without cake and champagne, right?

  The marriage was doomed from the beginning. Mostly because Karen caught me with another woman a week after we were married. This would become a regular occurrence for the both of us, so after seven years, we came to the realization that we were better at being friends more than anything else, so we decided divorce would be the best option. Karen has always been a great friend to me ever since.

  During my marriage to Karen, we constantly moved back and forth, to and from Johnson City, and Charlotte. There was no real rhyme or reason for this. We just did it.

  After receiving a large insurance settlement from a car accident, Karen and I teamed up with her brother to buy a bar. One of our regular customers was an ex-marine who would become a police officer, and later a DEA agent. He was also the brother of a friend of mine, and my brother-in-law’s girlfriend, Kelly.

  Ironically, this would be the same DEA agent who would lock me up for fifteen years on federal charges almost twenty years later; funny how life turns out sometimes.

  While separated from Karen a few years after we closed the bar, I met the woman who would later become my second wife. I’ll call her, “Elvira.”

  Elvira was sexy and she knew it. She wore short, bright colored dresses, and spiked high heels. She certainly had the legs for it. Elvira also had beautiful, thick, long, dark, wavy hair. She tended to wear bright red lipstick, with bright red nail polish to match, on inch-long fingernails.

  When Elvira stepped out of her showroom-condition ‘66 Mustang, she could stop traffic. She was HOT.

  She was also a drunk, a pot-head, a pill popper, a coke junkie, and a whore. Elvira had a husband and two beautiful girls, Chris and Dee, but that didn’t stop her from screwing anyone she took a liking to. One of those people happened to be me.

  I started seeing Elvira and after about a year, her husband found out about our affair and beat her ass. That was the end of that marriage and, before too long, I ended up married to her.

  To give her credit, Elvira was a good mother to her girls, who I would raise like my own, and to our son Damian, that we had together. She even gave up most of her drug habits. She just couldn’t get being a whore out of her system, and that’s what killed our marriage after seven years. I believe I’m noticing a pattern; seven doesn’t seem to be a lucky number for me when it comes to marriages.

  After Elvira and I divorced, I started to drink regularly, but it wasn’t really much of a problem. I worked the night shift, 11PM until 7AM, and I would drink a 6-pack after work every day. On the weekends, I would go to the club, where my best friend Shane worked as a bouncer, and would get drunk.

  Out of boredom, I let a buddy of mine from work talk me into joining a local gym. I was living in Elizabethton and the gym was only a few blocks from my house.

  Every morning after work we would go workout together. It was a great way to kill time, and I enjoyed it.

  Eventually, I was able to obtain and acquire a steady supply of anabolic steroids. Once I got on the juice, I really loved lifting weights.

  Working out was a good substitute for drinking, and so, I got addicted to the steroids, and the gym. I stopped going to the club, so Shane started coming by my house to hang out just about every day.

  I had beautiful hardwood floors in my house. For the hell of it, I took some cans of Liquid Gold furniture polish one day and shined my floors with it. I might as well have just poured oil on the floors.

  That afternoon, after polishing the floors, Shane came running in through the front door. His feet went straight up into the air and he landed on the dining room floor, right on his ass. It was hilarious!

  Shane was a good dude, but he was strange. He couldn’t tell the truth to save his life, and I think he honestly believed most of his own bullshit stories. He was convinced he had a relative involved in every major world event from the Mayflower to the World Trade Center.

  Shane’s ex-wife Trina had a mixed baby, half white, half black, and he thought the kid was actually his own. He said the kid had some kind of rare pigment disorder. Trina being married to a black guy at the time did nothing to change his mind either.

  Something about Shane that used to freak me out was that he was in love with his own mother, circa early 1970’s. He had a photo of her that he used to carry with him everywhere he went.

  In the photo, she was a young, pretty hippie wearing a t-shirt and tight bell bottom jeans. Her hair was long and straight, parted in the middle and falling over her shoulders. Shane would sit and stare at that picture, and talk about how beautiful she was. It was really creepy.

  For all Shane’s faults, and he had a lot of them, he was a good friend. I knew I could trust him, and no matter what, I knew he had my back if I needed him.

  Shane could do one thing right. He could pick up beautiful women. He was never able to keep one for very long, but he had no trouble getting them, short term. Shane’s trouble with keeping a girl was usually due to them figuring out pretty fast that he was full of shit.

  Lying wasn’t the only thing that drove women away from Shane. A lot of girls, even some that knew him well, thought he was gay. Sometimes I even had to wonder if he was fighting some sort of buried homosexual feelings. He definitely had some strange ways.

  Sometimes, when getting to know a woman for the first time, Shane would start talking about how good he cooks, how good he cleans house, and what soap operas he liked to watch. If he was going for a sympathy approach, he would tell a story about how he was molested as a kid. Not really the kind of shit you want to tell a girl you just met.

  I tried pointing these mistakes out to him, and also tried explaining that he was never going to keep a girl like that, but he was sure women found his sensitive, victimized game irresistible. Personally, I think he made a better stalker than a Romeo sometimes.

  The biggest problem Shane had with trying to have a relationship, was his living arrangements. Shane had two sons, and custody of them, because his ex, Trina, isn’t worth a damn as a mother. The three of them, Shane and his boys, lived with Shane’s mother, because Shane simply does not like to work.

  The only job Shane has ever held for any length of time was his part-time bouncer job at The Nashville Sound club in Johnson City. That job paid just enough to cover the bar tab he’d run up on his days off.

  When Shane would hook up with a girl and would “fall in love,” (which was at least once a month) he would say, “I need to get a job, so I can get my own place.” The job rarely happened, and when it would, he would quit or get fired due to some great injustice. There would be some long story that always sounded similar to the last one.

  I felt bad for the guy most of the time, because he was my friend. As I said, I would try to point out what he was doing wrong before he had a chance to screw up, but in the end, the girl always left.

  In October of 2003, Shane’s flaws and bad luck with women actually worked to my advantage. Well, I might have manipulated the situation a little bit so that everything that happened benefited me, but it was definitely his hopelessly ince
ssant, simple-minded, moronic bullshit that made it possible for me to screw him over in the first place. Therefore, I don’t feel bad about it. If you saw Lisa back then, you would understand.

  Chapter 8

  Shane met Lisa for the first time at The Nashville Sound on a Thursday night. Thursdays were ladies nights and Shane made sure he always worked on those nights.

  At the time Shane met Lisa, I was working as a machine operator at Exide Technologies, a car battery manufacturer, in Bristol, Tennessee. Since I was working the graveyard shift, I rarely went to “The Sound” on Thursdays. I never had to worry about missing anything though, because Shane would be at my house by the time I got home from the gym to fill me in on everything that went on during the night. His story would always end with him having crazy sex with some girl who had never been to the club before, and oddly enough, would never return for Shane to point her out to me to prove she existed at all.

  Whenever Shane would meet a new girl, (a real one..) he couldn’t wait to tell me all about her. I mean, he was worse than a kid at Christmas. She was always “the one”. But, when he first met Lisa, he never said a word about her to me. Maybe my feelings should be hurt.

  The first I ever heard of Lisa was on a Saturday night a week after Shane had met her. This was the first night she had been back to The Sound since their first meeting, and as soon as Shane saw her again, he decided he was going to ask her out. He had just one problem, and he would need my help solving it.

  I was on my way to Johnson City thinking I would go see a movie and get something to eat. As I drove down 1-26, my cell phone rang. I checked the caller ID, and saw that it was Shane. I started to ignore the call, because I was looking for a quiet night, but I answered it anyway. Shane asked if I could come to The Sound as soon as possible. It was important, he’d said.