[Legally Blind: The Book] Part 1: Chapter 21 - Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do?

I was already a big bright blip on the police radar, but as of yet they’d been unable to nail me. They knew Willie and I were behind the St. Valentine’s Robbery and that I was selling weed and LSD, but they could prove nothing. Once they discovered I was the source of the madness that had overtaken our town’s bored, misdirected youth, I was no longer a blip—I was the target.

Pissing off the police was about the only thing that gave me enjoyment. If I wasn’t high, I was tripping. If I wasn’t tripping, I was drunk. If I wasn’t drunk, I was fighting. I was exhausted from screaming on the outside and crying on the inside. I was ready to end it all. Suicide was becoming a viable option. The insights I experienced and the moments of freedom I felt made life even more pointless and depressing when they were inevitably squashed.

Maybe that’s why when I sent some controlled substances through the mail I wrapped them up in my father’s business cards before stuffing them into the envelope. The father of the person I’d sent them to opened the package before my friend could get to it. I don’t know if it was an unconscious desperate cry for help, a foolish act of carelessness, or some part of me just wanted it all to stop.

I was at the kitchen table sitting in my underwear. It was a cold New England winter’s day. The police knocked at the back door. My parents let them in. It was the same fat detective who had fallen asleep in the house while I was robbing it, accompanied by the cop who made it his life’s work to make my life miserable. The detective knew I was the thief and blamed me for his humiliation. He’d come to exact his revenge in person. He asked me some questions about my selling drugs. I denied everything. That was when he held up the bag of drugs I’d mailed. Rather than calmly respond, “Nice try, but that is not proof,” I snapped. Most likely because I needed a way out. I needed to feel that this was it, that they had won, and I had lost. This was not a conscious decision, but something more like a survival tactic coming from the reptilian part of my brain, because I do not think I would have lasted much longer if I was not stopped. Fight or flee kicked in, so I RAN FOR IT! I bolted out the front door like a scared animal, my father right behind me.

Here I was again, running through the snow, trying to get somewhere safe, crying, helpless. I was running, but to where? The last time I ran through the snow crying was to get to my warm, safe home. This time I was running to nowhere. I had no home to save me. Out there, in the freezing cold, in my underwear, in two feet of snow, barefoot—even I had to admit defeat, but I refused to let it show, though it was obvious to everyone. In a pathetic display of feigned resistance I surrendered by pretending to trip. I returned to face my gloating accusers completely broken and humiliated. I would pay dearly for crossing them, but maybe that was the price to save my life.

I was arrested, facing a sentence of four years in juvenile prison for a federal crime. Even though I was an out-of-control delinquent, I’d never been charged before. Because this was the first actual offense I was arrested for, my lawyer managed to get me a reduced sentence on one condition: I needed to admit I was a drug addict. As a drug addict I could apply for rehab and avoid jail. This was my first real exposure to the legal system. I was lying, my lawyer was lying, the judge, unless he was a true idiot, must have known we were lying, yet we all pretended it was true. This was not a court of justice; this was a performance with everyone acting like they were not full of shit. I didn’t complain—the farce was falling in my favor. I was sentenced to the rehabilitation ward of the state-run mental hospital for three months.