This Next One's A Doozy: Chapter 2

I left you somewhere around me smoking with the neighbor boy and our next move. Before we moved from that apartment I celebrated my tenth birthday there. My mom was dating a crazy guy named Eric. He was insane. Like, ate cat food, had a morbid dark side, insane. My mom had to work on my birthday, but gave Eric money for Peter Pipers. I invited the only friends I had at the time to come with us. On our way there I was given a Barbie for a gift but the girls took no time at all to rip open my present and play with it before I did. We went to Peter Pipers and I wanted a medium size drink. I was not given a medium size drink. I was given a small drink, and a girl named Rosie got the medium. I was so crushed. I know this sounds petty but it matters when you're ten. After pizza and my one ride around the carrousel we went to the park. They all ditched me, including Eric, and left me on a bench somewhere, where I played with my Barbie for about an hour until they came back for me. I sat in the back of the van crying until we got home. That was my last memory before that move.

Moving is considered a skill at this point. We moved often. Twelve different school moves, over forty homes/apartments/friends houses. It was so normal. I will probably skip over some moves or stories. I can't possibly remember everything. At this point we had moved again. My mother to a home, my dad to a new apartment. Those two places were completely different lifestyles. My mothers house was always a bit of a free for all. She had met a new friend from her job and she and her five kids had just been evicted from their apartment. We were all to familiar with evictions so had no hesitation to offer up a home for them, with us. We had ten kids, two adults, four dogs, a pig, two ferrets and three bedrooms. It was a little tight to say the least.

The lady that moved in was given the name "Mamacita". She was our Mexican mother and she taught us the strict side of life. I remember one time I didn't clean her cast iron pan good enough and she came up behind me and smacked my butt so hard that I can still feel the sting of that bad boy on my rear end. She was also a stoner. Her three eldest children were all stoners, mushroom/ecstasy enthusiasts and big time drinkers. I was already a smoker so I had an in with the "cool kids". They would bribe me to do their chores with promises of nights of drinking and packs of cigarettes. Mamacita's logic was, as long as they can support their habit she would buy it for them. They were between the ages of twelve and sixteen. I felt SO adult hanging out with all of them. We would drink 40's of Mickey's all night, play "three man", and smoke cigarettes in the garage all night. I was a fifth grader going to school hungover.

One day, a friend of Mamacita's daughter offered me weed. It was my first time but I had seen them do it out of joints, bongs, one hitters, pipes, hookahs, toilet paper rolls, apples, foil, etc. I felt prepared to try it for the first time. After that, I became a recreational weed smoker. I would get high with Mamacita and her kids, or sometimes my mother. Every single time I ever smoked weed in my life I have thrown up. I never put two and two together. Probably because I was so young and dumb.

During this time period of the chaotic mess of a life, I was starting to learn new things. Like how to chat online with people and lying about my age. Or, fighting with girls in my school for no reason at all. Fist fights too, not just scream sessions. I started dressing like the kids I lived with. Baggy jeans, tight tank tops, neon bracelets. They were ravers. I was transforming into this person I had not intentions of becoming. One of the daughters of Mamacita would take me to parties and have me lie about my age. She would tell me to tell them I was 16. I was becoming just like them.

On the other side of things, there was my fathers apartment. We didn't have much there but it was our sanctuary. He would rent Corina, Corina or Pee Wee's Big Adventure almost every weekend. We would hang out as a family, go on day trips up North or down South. We did things together even though we were pretty broke. I remember one year getting presents for Christmas from Christmas drive. I don't think my dad could afford a lot of gifts that year. I begged him for a peanut M&M Lazy Boy recliner dispenser. I don't know why I wanted it so bad, but I did. I didn't realize we were somewhat poor and I was so persistent. Come Christmas morning I had this M&M dispenser I wanted so badly. My dad always found a way to make us happy.

At the end of the weekend it was back to our life with our mom and Mamacita. Eventually, they moved out and my mom started dating this guy Matt. He was strange but always a lot of fun. He lived in a studio apartment and we would hang out there sometimes when he was at work because he had a pool. My mom and him were together for a little while but it wasn't much longer until we moved again and she was done with him.

My mom dated a lot of guys. They were in and out of our lives. There was David, Mark, John, Skip, Pierce, and some other random guys. Then my mom met Brian. They fell deep in love and got married. Brian was a painter by trade but had a really bad drinking problem. I fought with him constantly, as I did most men my mom brought around. With my mom being married now meant no more stripping. So, for a little while she stopped dancing and went back to personal fitness training. He sort of saved us from the lifestyle we were living in at the time. Brian had two dogs Max and Molson. Molson and I became very close. He became my dog eventually and Brian was totally o.k. with that. We moved, again.

We were now in North Phoenix for a little bit and I was thrown into a whole other lifestyle. People had money here. They had possessions I never even dreamed of owning. They had nice cars, nice homes, they played sports. The kids had all these awesome toys! They had computers and video games! I was in a wild dream or something. Life was starting to look up for us. That was until I met some new friends.