The Sea Monster

Jevauhn Hampton

Jevauhn popped in and out of the Some People Press prison autobiographical writing workshop. Everyone always loved the stories he wrote and read to us. He seemed like a natural writer. And then, as sometimes happens, he was suddenly transferred to another prison and we lost contact. A while ago, Laura bumped into Jevauhn at an event. He told her had been released a few months earlier and was doing well. He was interested to know if we still had his writing. We emailed everything we had to him and said if he would write some more we could eventually publish his book. In the meantime we edited the existing writing into a sort of long short-story-autobiography and have included it all below.

……

I was born in Portland, Oregon at Emmanuel hospital at 11:59 PM. My earliest memory is when my brother Robert (he was just a few months older than me) and I were play fighting with our stuffed animal snakes at our dad’s house (we had different moms). The eyes on the snake were hard, so when I hit him in his mouth his tooth came out. It didn’t bleed or nothin’ because it was already loose, but Robert’s mom, Heather, still came in screaming about how Robert’s tooth wasn’t ready to come out.

Can you believe this lady? Yelling at me over a tooth that was already loose. Not to mention I didn’t do it on purpose. I wasn’t even four years old yet. My dad had to come in and calm her down. He was my hero. To me back then my dad was like the dark knight, but his woman was a mean lady, ivy poisoning him to keep him away from his true love, my mom.

God, I loved my mom. I had her around for most of my life. Without her I’d probably be dead by now, instead I’m just telling this story from prison.

It all starts when my dad was in that relationship with my brother’s mom, Heather. But back when she was still pregnant with Robert. One day my mom randomly called my dad from a pay phone (he’d given her his number when they met at some point) to get a ride because she didn’t have a car. That’s all it took. One ride turned into two and then there I was in my mama’s belly with no clue about the world I was about to be born into.

When my mom was in labor with me my dad wasn’t there because he was in county jail. As I got older, I found out he was always in and out of jail. He came to my mom’s house to meet me a few days after she’d been discharged from the hospital. He was fresh out county with no laces in his shoes.

Obviously, Heather didn’t like my dad spending time with my mom, which explains the hatred she had for me. I’m not sure what excuse he gave her for his cheating, but it was pretty clear to me she wasn’t OK with it. My dad had a house with my brother and Heather, but he still made sure my mom and I were taken care of. He bought my mom cars and paid the rent every month, but I never saw my dad at my mom’s house, only at his.

One night my dad and Heather left me and my brother at the house alone. My brother, who was just a few month older than me, saw his mom being mean to me, so he was mean to me too. I went to the kitchen to get some juice. When I opened the fridge, I didn’t see the normal juice I drank, I just saw a bunch of little green bottles. I grabbed one, but it was really hard to open. I was thirsty, so I just kept biting the cap little by little till I got it off.

Finally, some juice, or so I thought. I drank two gulps fast and then spit the third one out. I said to myself, what the fuck is this spicy shit? Then I realized it was my dad’s alcohol. Little bottles like they serve on an airplane. I’d never tasted it before, it was disgusting. I was scared shitless about what my dad would do if he found out what I’d done.

I put the bitten cap back onto the bottle as best I could, set it back into the fridge, and then cleaned up the alcohol that I’d spit on the floor with a dish towel.

Man, when they got back, I could hear Heather open the fridge from the bedroom and then start shouting, “Rob, how long has this been opened?”

“I ain’t opened that, one of the boys must have done that shit.”

At that point I was trying to appear as normal as possible, as I heard Heather stomp down the hallway to our room. When she busted in, she yelled, “Which one of y’all opened this?” holding the little green bottle in her hand.

“Mommy, I been here in the bedroom the whole time,” my brother said while running up and hugging her.

You a sucka I thought to myself, looking at him.

“Jevauhn, did you open this?” Heather asked me.

“No,” I said back.

“Yeah, you did, look at yo eye’s, you been drinkin’ nigga,” she said, smiling as she walked out the room.

I learned two things that night, one: alcohol tastes nasty as fuck, and two: I couldn’t lie for shit.

*

The last time I seen my dad before he went to prison for a while was at Oak’s Park Skating Rink. He took me, my mom, and my mom’s whole side of the family to the rink and paid for everyone. I remember skating with my god brother Marquez, who we called Quezzy, and my uncle Malik. Quezzy just walked around in his skates and kept falling over, but Malik floated like a butterfly, it was something to see. More importantly though was watching my mom and dad skate together. I’d never seen my mom so happy. Everything felt right that day, but it was a fleeting moment.

Soon after that my dad wound got incarcerated again and I didn’t see him or my brother Robert anymore for a while. I was watching a lot of Star Wars back then, so in my mind I figured my brother went to “The Force” and I wound up on the dark side, but nobody told me how dark it was actually going to be.

My dad had been in prison for about three or four years when I turned eight years old. Mom and I were struggling. Most the time she just beat on me and tried to keep me out the kitchen while she was “cooking.” I didn’t know what she was making in there, but that shit stank.

I hated when she cooked whatever it was, because when she finished, she left me at the house alone for hours. One night I begged her not to leave, so she took me with her. We pulled up to a Chucky Cheese parking lot and she got out the car. The window was foggy because it was so cold. I wiped it with my sleeve and seen her walk up to a white dude in front of the pizza place. He handed her a knot of money, and she handed him some white stuff wrapped in plastic. At the time I didn’t know what that white stuff was, but I knew she got paid for it, and I wanted to get paid too.

Apparently, that was a sting operation because the police suddenly pulled up and blocked the white dude’s car. My mom somehow managed to make it back to me and we got away safe. The white dude had to be tellin’ though, because a week later my mom was gone to jail, and I was staying with my grandma, aunty, and an uncle I’d somehow never met before. My grandma and aunty babied me, probably because I had no parents left in my life.

My uncle, on the other hand, who was still just a teenager, was a muthafucka. He tortured me. He used to make me stay in the front lean position for hella long. I’d be shaking and my eyes would be so watery I couldn’t see. Soon as one of my knees touched the ground, he’d grab me and throw me in the basement. He’d lock the door and I’d be stuck on the dark steps till he decided to open back up. If I didn’t do everything he said and basically be his fucking servant, he’d force me back in there, and I’d sit on the steps crying for hours.

Eventually, I got tired of it. So, one time when my uncle told me to get him some juice, I went and poured a glass of hot water and grabbed a corkscrew. I tossed the water in his face and tried to poke him with the corkscrew. I was little and weak though, and he was almost ten years older than me, so it didn’t hurt him much. He grabbed me, chocked me in a headlock, and then pushed me down into the basement. I didn’t cry that time. I just hoped whatever monsters or creatures were living in there would kill me quick, but nothing came.

Then I realized I’d been locked in there on those steps so many times I could see in the dark. I slowly walked down the steps and when I got to the bottom I stepped in water. It was probably from an old washing machine. As I walked deeper into the basement the concrete floor turned into carpet. Then I entered a secret room area. The room was kind of cool. It had a bed, TV, and an old record player. What I liked most was the Snoop Dogg and Tupac posters on the wall. I didn’t know whose room it was, but I got into the bed. I went to sleep staring at the posters.

My aunty came and found me a few hours later. She asked what I’d been doing down there. Instead of telling her what happened, I just said I wasn’t scared anymore. My uncle didn’t force me into the basement after that.

*

My aunty ended up serving in our country’s Navy, and that’s how I wound up going to Italy. My aunty was stationed there and my grandma decided to take me to go visit her. We went to Italy in the summer around the fourth of July, I remember because we missed the fireworks back home, but I didn’t care. I loved everything about that place—the rural roads, the narrow streets, even the naked statues. It’s a very civilized place, yet at the same time gives you a sample of what the old world must have looked like.

My aunty lived on the top of this hill in a small apartment off base. I remember what seemed like about a thousand steps to get there. It probably wasn’t a thousand exactly, but it was enough for me to lose count. We went everywhere, I seen the Colosseum from the outside, and let me tell you it’s huge. I also seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa and it’s not very tall, but it does lean to the point where it looks like it’s actually going to fall over.

I even seen a lemon tree. I’d never seen one of those ever in my life before. I picked a couple of lemons off the tree and bite into one. It was sour, but I liked it anyway. I took lots of pictures and got some souvenirs so I could remember the trip. I saved some Euros too, that’s what money is called out there.

My aunty took me on a boat ride off from the navy base, just me and her. It was nighttime when we were on that little speed boat, so the water was black. There had to be at least fifteen submarines in a parameter line off the coast there, so we couldn’t go out any further into the ocean area. But that was OK, I was just happy to be out there on the water with my aunty.

I’ll never forget that trip.

*

My mom was in jail for about fifteen months. When she got out, she started bringing me over to my cousin’s house a lot. The family on my dad’s side was in the Kirby Block Crips, and the family on my mom’s side was in the Rollin Sixty Crips. At the time I didn’t know any of that and I wasn’t really interested.

It was my fifth-grade summer, and I’d been playing football for Parkrose Middle School, and I was good. I got my first girlfriend, Dayami, she was beautiful. Her family was from Cuban. I met her at Glenn Haven Skate Park when I thought I was a skater but was really just bustin’ my ass, fallin’ down and shit. She kept laughing every time I fell over. One day we started talking and it turned out we really liked each other.

Anyway, I was at my cousin’s house on my mom’s phone with Dayami, and my big cousin Twandre, rest in peace, came up the stairs and said, “Vonnie come downstairs.”

I’m like, “Hell nah, y’all gonna jump me.”

He was like, “On Grandma Rell, we ain’t jump you.”

Now, I felt in my nuts that this nigga was lying, but if he respected our grandma like I did he was telling the truth. So, I went down there and his crew was all sitting on the bed, side by side quiet, watching TV like they were in church or some shit. Normally, they would have been jumping around listening to music, cussin’ and shit. So, I was like “Wassup?”

I don’t know if I got pushed onto the bed or pulled onto the bed, but I was getting beat up by all of them. I was using my arms to block my face till someone hit me in the dick. I was clutching my sack and that meant open season on my face. To be a Sixty Crip you gotta get jumped for sixty seconds, but it felt like they was whoopin’ my ass for sixty minutes.

They finally stopped when my mom came down there saying, “What y’all doing?”

Tevin said, “We puttin’ ‘em on.”

My mom walked up, pulled me off the bed by my arm, and said, “My son ain’t no gang member, he play football.”

“We’ll get him a number sixty jersey,” Tevin yelled at her as my mom and I walked back upstairs. I probably would have rather been from Kirby, but my dad was preachin’ some higher power shit at that time I couldn’t comprehend, so I wasn’t spending much time around there.

In the Fall I went to school looking like a walking blueberry—all Crip blue everything head to toe. The kids my age wasn’t really banging, so they just thought I liked the color blue, which I do, but that wasn’t why I was wearing it. The older kids at the high school across the street knew what it actually meant, especially the girls.

I was still playing ball, and we were winning school championships, so I got love from the staff and students. The girls were really on me because I had this whole bad boy image, but I was also acing classes and ballin’ on the field. It didn’t take long for me to want more than just a kiss from those girls--I wanted some pussy. But every time I’d almost get some, something would fuck it up.

My sister, who I haven’t mentioned yet, was on the cheerleading team. She was friends with the cheerleading coach, and the coach’s daughter Lisa. I’d walk to pick my sister up from the coach’s house from time to time, sometimes with my uncle Malik (who was just a little older than me). Eventually Malik and Lisa started dating so we wound up going over there sometimes without my sister.

The cheer coach’s husband was always out of state cheating on her. One night me, Malik, and my friend Aronte went over there together. The cheer coach and Lisa was drinking Four Locos, our favorite drink back then, well at least mine, because I was still a baby sipper. The cheer coach was walking around in nothing but a robe, drunk and ranting about her husband’s cheating. Malik was like, “It’s coo’, Jevauhn and Aronte gone keep you company.”

She started smiling, said, “OK,” and went into her room.

I was looking at this nigga crazy, like fuck no, but he jus’ gave me a nod and mouthed, “Go in there.”

Aronte and I went into the bedroom and sat at the end of the bed, side by side. The cheer coach was laying down. I was scared so I told Aronte to go first. He turned around and got between her legs for like five seconds, then came back to the end of the bed and whispered to me, “I was extra soft,” Then got up and walked out the room.

I wanted to hurry and get that shit over with, but she said “You gonna hit it like this,” and turned over onto her stomach. She had a fat juicy ass, but I couldn’t really handle that like I could now. I was in it there for like a minute till Malik walked into the room drunk and yellin’ “OK, Neph!”

About a month after that Malik and Lisa got into a fight and he decided he was gonna tell about what happened. I begged him not to, but he did anyway. The cheer coach got fired, Aronte stopped coming to practice, and Malik didn’t go back to school at all.

The school staff kept questioning me, and every time I’d mess up during practice, the coaches would make slick comments like, “That cheer coach on your mind huh Hampton?” and then the whole team would start laughing. All the girls my age thought I was nasty and didn’t want to fuck with me anymore, but the high school girls did.

I told my mom I didn’t do it and that it was just Aronte who did because my mom was the queen of beatin’ ass and I sure didn’t want my ass whooped and I didn’t want her to go hurt that lady either.

Out of all that shit going on I couldn’t help but to feel bad for my sister. She had finally found something she liked to do, finally found people she liked to be around, and even though it wasn’t my fault exactly, my name was involved, so as far as she knew I was the reason she couldn’t cheer anymore.

I don’t really count that as losing my virginity though.

*

It wasn’t until eighth-grade summer, when I met my Janaya, that I first really had sex. I’d been smokin’, drinkin’, robbin’, sellin’ coke, and puttin’ in work. Shit, I even got stabbed with a Chinese knife, and man them blades is sharp. It cut down to the bone.

My mom caught me leaving the house in the middle of the night masked up a few times. I tried to keep my outside life away from her, but I’m pretty sure she could imagine what I was doing and was determined to get me to stop.

She enrolled me at Grant High School. I wanted to go to Park Rose, but I got expelled from there for shanking a kid in the neck with a sharp ass pencil. I was like, fuck it, it’s a new start at Grant. I’m going to be a freshman and I’m going to do good.

I tried out that summer and made the football team. They had me lined up to play in this seven-on-seven summer league event. I was taping up my fingers, putting my spandex on, gloves, and everything else, and was ready to play, when one of the coaches approached me and said, “The school counselor wants to see you.”

The event was starting in like twenty minutes, so I ran all the way to the school building from the field. I was clankin’ down the hallways because I still had my cleats on. When I got to the counselor’s office and asked what she wanted she said, “I reviewed your contact information, and you don’t have a Grant address. You’re supposed to go to Jefferson High School.”

I was like, “Jefferson?”

She said, “Yes, so you can’t compete in today’s event.”

I walked backed to the field, head down, disappointed. My bro ran up to me and was like, “Come on man, we warmin’ up.”

“I can’t play football, and the lady said I gotta go to Jeff.”

He shook me up and I said he’d see me on the other side of the field. Then I walked to the bus.

I wanted to go to Grant High School because it was a good school in a nice neighborhood. Kids who actually wanted to go to school and become something in their lives went there. Jefferson was a gladiator school in the hood. I knew once I stepped foot in that place there wasn’t going to be anymore trying to be good.

The first day my mom dropped me off late. I was mad about that, but I figured I had bigger problems to consider. I was worried I was gonna get jumped. I was thinkin’ all types of crazy shit like that. But when I walked into that school building my mind moved on to other subjects, because there were so many girls, and in every color and size--thick, thicker, and super thick.

*

As soon as those girls cleared the halls there were just a bunch of Bloods left behind and all flamed out in red. I was in blue, as I mentioned previously. They didn’t say nothin’, just walked by mugging. I came to find out that all the Bloods from Woodlawn (another neighborhood in NE Portland) went to school there, and all the Crips went to POIC (Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center) around the corner.

I was like, man this some bullshit, but fuck it, I’ma have to soldier through. I walked to lunch hella slow by myself. Then I heard someone call my name. My heart was poundin’. I was like, here we go. I turned around like wassup, ready to fight, but it was my bro Tyrese from Parkrose.

I was like yes, somebody I know. We shook up and he was like, “Look man this how we get paid, we hit licks, Jordans, phones, and laptops. Niggas here just be leavin’ they shit out in the open.”

I told him a lick doesn’t mean stealin’, it means getting money. He was like, “That is how we get the money.”

And that was all it took. We started taking everybody’s shit, to the point where when shit came up missing, they always thought it was us, even if it wasn’t. I started spray painting “L-boys” everywhere, that was our handle.

My first time in the back hallways was with this random girl. She literally poked her head into one of my classes and called my name. I turned around and one of my friends was like, “Go get yo’ bitch.”

So, I did. When they say Jeff had back halls that’s an understatement, they have back halls that have back halls. You could have an orgy of twelve, and no one would know unless you told them. I fucked my freshman year off. I ended up having to go to night school and summer school just to get back on track for sophomore year, and I didn’t even play football that year.

*

As a sophomore, I continued to smoke, drink, gang bang, and bang girls in the locker rooms and back halls. Only difference from my first year was also being on the honor roll and playing ball again.

I kicked that year off with a life changing lick. I was done with my work early in Mrs. Mullen’s class and was mulling around the classroom and decided to try twisting her closet door. It was unlocked. I quietly went inside while everyone else was still testing. I looked around with the flashlight from my phone. I scanned down and there was a stack of at least thirty Apple laptops.

I’m like oh yeah. Day by day after that I’d go in there and fill up my duffle bag. I took the laptops to another student’s locker that I rented from him because the school would never check it.

Tyrese knew this African tech wiz who worked in the basement of a store around the corner from Jeff. He’d take anything we brought him and give us weed or money in exchange.

A few days later I saw one of the counselors leave some keys by the counseling room on top of a bag. I grabbed the keys and ran upstairs. I told Tyrese and he was really excited because he realized we had the keys to the whole school. At first, I didn’t believe it, but then he showed me that the numbers on the keys matched the room numbers on the doors. I tested them out on the gym door, and the key worked. We was on.

After that instead of buying lunch we just went to the concession stand room where they kept all the snacks for all the games and events. I had a whole new idea--the best high school heist of all time. The school had a dance team called the Jefferson Dancers. They wore black hoodies and sweats for their performances. I told Tyrese if we gone do this heist we need to do it the right way. I said if we wear those uniforms and someone sees us inside the building after hours, we’ll just say we’re on the dance team and are there for practice.

Tyrese said, “So we’ll be Peter Parker during school, and Spiderman at night?”

I’m like, “What?”

He’s like, “Yeah, those uniforms are kind of like Spidey fits.”

We snuck down to the dance room, unlocked the door, and started grabbing sweatshirts and sweatpants. But it turned out, when we got back upstairs, my bro had only taken sweatshirts and no sweatpants, and he couldn’t fit into mine, so we went back down there during class to grab him some pants, but one of the security guards seen us. He brought us to the security room for questioning. I was looking around the room, and the lady in charge there said to me, “Hampton, stop casing the room and look at me.”

I was thinking, damn was I that obvious?

The security guard who found us said, “Some keys came up missing, so from now on if y’all not out the school by 3:30 PM we’re calling the police.”

The lady said, “Where did you get those?” pointing to the sweats Tyrese was holding.

I was thinking, shit what’s he gonna say?

Tyrese paused a minute then smiled and said, “Lost and found.”

I was thinking wooo, that was gonna be our asses if he didn’t come up with that.

After they let us go, I told Tyrese that saying we were dancers was no longer an option.

*

We went about our business anyway starting with that concession stand room. We cleared it out, only leaving the snacks we didn’t like. Then we grabbed the guns they used for the track team at the start of a race. They looked real so we sold them as if they were. Lastly, we hit the counseling room. They had like twenty boxes of brand new Jordans in there. Unfortunately, I only could fit two pairs in my duffle bag and Tyrese could only fit one in his.

Tyrese wanted us to just carry the rest, but I was like hell no, let’s throw them out the window and come around and get them later. I’m glad we did that because as soon as we got out the room, the principal hit the corner and was like, “What are y’all still doing here?”

I told her we had basketball tryouts. She said, “Alright, but you need to leave now that it’s over.”

When we walked out of the school, I was like, see if we had all them damn boxes we would have been booked. Tyrese said, “Man, I know.”

Another time we even made it up to the roof of the school. On the inside of the door there were all these old signatures from past students who had been up on the roof too. I signed ours “2016 L-Boys.”

We also found this secret door that led down into this deep basement corridor, and when I say deep, we had to have been at least thirty-seven feet underground.

Crazy thing was there were lights on down there, so I was like bro, either somebody’s down here, or coming back, so let’s get the fuck out of here. I had a feeling there might be a secret world beneath the school that led to the lost city of underground downtown Portland, but I’ll never know now.

Eventually, I came to my senses and dropped the keys to the school in one of the mailboxes in the counselor’s office. The burden of the opportunities was too much to take, and I was supposed to be doing better that year.

But just as easy as I’d gotten up, I fell back down. I ended up getting the whole school put on lockdown and was arrested and charged with robbery in the third degree. It was the first time I’d been to a juvenile detention center. But I’m not going to go into the details of that. Maybe another time.

I’d say it was the first time I’d been arrested, but I’d already been arrested and booked downtown, when I was twelve, for spray painting some gang stuff on a school. They just let me go that time.

This was different though, they didn’t even bother taking me in for a mug shot, they just sent me straight to the Donald E. Long Home, which is what the juvenile hall is called in Portland.

My first jail shower was cold like the ocean, and I felt like I was drowning.

I sat there locked up for a few months. The lady who ran the place or something was determined to send me to MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility for five years. My counselor at the time told me he had to go along with her recommendation. I never been so itchy in my life.

I ended up taking a deal, but at court my counselor came through, he said, “My supervisor wants me to recommend MacLaren, so that what I’m going to have to do.”

I’m thinking like OK, so he’s subliminally telling the judge he has to follow the recommendation but doesn’t really want to. It worked and I was let out on probation with an ankle monitor for a year.

*

After that I was expelled from all Portland public schools, and couldn’t go to Parkrose either, because even though it’s not technically in the district, they honor all Portland Public School expulsions.

I didn’t want to go to an alternative school because I thought I was too smart, so I enrolled my junior year at Evergreen high school in Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland. The football team there was trash, but the school was filled with opportunities.

The coach put me on the second string because I started school late, so I decided to show him that was a mistake. On my very first play I ran the ball all the way from the fifteen to the one-yard line, before somebody tackled me from behind. When I got up my foot and ankle were facing backwards and I fell back down to the ground.

There I lay on the field looking at the sky. It was such a beautiful day for something so horrible to happen. I’d broken my fibula bone and dislocated my foot. After surgery I was on bed rest for months. I was so fucked up I had to piss in water bottles--I had a little collection on the side of my bed.

Things got even worse when my mom gave me some mail and there was an early decision acceptance letter to University of Oregon with a football scholarship. “I can’t go there like this,” I said, throwing the letter onto the nightstand. I just sat there and starred at my Oxycodone pill bottle. At least I had that.

After drowning myself in Oxy for a while and getting my dick ridden by females whose names I can’t even remember, I came to a conclusion--I was going to be a rapper. But being a rapper was short lived. I put a couple songs up on Sound Cloud, and they got some views, but as soon as I learned how to walk again, I stopped making music. I was back to selling coke, smoking weed, and now I was also addicted to Oxy.

The track team helped me learn how to run again. I didn’t really like track, but I needed to prepare for one last stand on the football field senior year. That summer we moved to Troutdale, Oregon. Me and my Southside homie Christian was out there kickin’ it with Shyindia and her sister Mexi. We took a fly ass picture, and I guess they posted it a couple days later. Christian tagged me in the comments that a girl named Alie made, saying, “Who’s that?”

I looked at her pictures and thought she was cute, but when I went back to the comments, she’d deleted it. So, I messaged her and it turned out she lived nine minutes away from me in Troutdale. That whole summer Alie and I were with each other every day, and she became my girlfriend. My mom and sisters liked her too, so it was perfect until I started school.

*

I hit the football field and realized I couldn’t play the same. I was still good, but deep down inside I knew that was it for my football career. All those summers in the hot sun and winters playing in the mud were for nothing. We were still winning games, so I had a lot of girls on me, but one, Jaiden, was really persistent. For two weeks my bro Kavossia kept telling me she was saying she could swallow me whole.

I guess I got tired of hearing that shit, so one day I’m like, “Man, point this girl out, I’m not going to class till I see her.”

Kavossia was like, “That’s her right there.”

“In the yellow raincoat?”

“Yup.”

She was so bad, she looked like the porn star Pinky. She had on this yellow raincoat, Timberland boots, and some box braids in her hair. I walked up to her and asked her what’s up with all this shit I been hearing. When she smiled, she had blue braces. I was thinkin’, yeah, I need that.

Apparently, Jaiden was a virgin, so she wanted us to wait. I already had a girlfriend, so I was clearly not waiting on shit. I decided to leave her alone and be loyal to Alie. Then one day Jaiden begged me to take her to lunch, so I did, and she told me she was ready.

Till this day she still has the best pussy I ever had. Soon as I slid in, I was pre-cumin’ like crazy. It felt like her pussy produced baby oil. I was officially cheating but Jaiden didn’t have a phone, so we talked through email. I thought I was good because Alie checked a lot of my shit but didn’t look at my email. One day after a track meet Alie was acting hella weird though, I asked her what was wrong and she said, “Who’s Jaiden?”

I told her I didn’t know, and she said, “Yeah I seen your email, you tried to delete it, but when you delete it, it just goes to the deleted box.”

I was like fuck, she was even lookin’ at my email, I never expected that. For the next week she went on a pussy strike. Alie wasn’t giving me no play, and she found a way to talk to Jaiden too. That Saturday morning Alie woke up extra early. While she was getting dressed, I asked her where she was going. She said, “I’m ‘bout to link with Jaiden to talk, and you’re taking me.”

I was like, “Fuck no, y’all can talk on the phone if you need to talk to her.” Then she started going on and on about how she’d never talk to me again, how I don’t love her, and about her getting an abortion.

Me being dumb, and knowing damn well she wasn’t pregnant, I took her to see Jaiden anyway. It was silent in the car, so I turned on some music. She turned it back off, that’s when I knew she wanted to do more than just talk. Man, I kid you not, when we pulled into the school parking lot, it was like fifty-six bitches all with they phones out. I was thinkin’, what kind of get together is this? When we got out, I had the hat on extra low.

I seen Jaiden leaning on the hood of a car, and in the midst of all that shit, I still couldn’t help but notice how sexy she looked. When Alie walked up to her she asked, “Why you fuck my nigga?”

Soon as Jaiden said, “I didn’t fuck your nigga, your nigga fucked me.” I just started walking back to the car. Alie began beatin’ her ass, I turned around and see her snatch Jaiden off the car and start chasing her through the parking lot.

That following week, all the girls at school was mad at me, like I’d initiated Jaiden to get beat up. So, I was like fuck it, I’ma come to class extra late and leave early. I’m already ahead in credits, so I’m gonna just cruise up out of here.

*

I graduated in 2017 with twenty-five and a half credits. After high school, I started working warehouse jobs, driving the forklift and selling coke on the side. That’s how I got my first apartment. I was actually doing pretty good, but the problems with Alie didn’t stop, they only got worse. She lived with me, but I was doing all the work, paying all the bills, and buying everything.

Alie only did three things--get me off, break shit, and argue with me till my fucking head hurt. I just wanted to come home from work to a cooked meal and a kiss, instead I got dirty dishes and arguments.

I couldn’t leave her, I loved her too much, and she knew me too well. I didn’t want to start over, so instead I just kept cheating on her. I don’t know how, but Alie always found out who I’d cheated with, would confront her, and then, out of nowhere they’d become friends.

I met this girl on Facebook and had her buy me a gun at a pawnshop on 122^nd because I was too young to get one myself. But I’m not totally stupid, so I went in with her. None of the guns in the cases caught my attention. Then I spotted one on the bottom shelf that I could barely see. I asked the clerk about the gun. She pulled it out for me. I held it for about two seconds and was like, yeah, this the one.

It was an M&P 9-millimeter with the fiber optic red dot. It had the sparkles on the grip tape, all black. All the guns I’d played with in the past were my uncles’ or cousins’, but this one was all mine, which made it extra special. I would have bought a gun off of one of those relatives, but they wouldn’t sell to me back then—now I understand why.

When I came back home, I was all smiles showing Alie my new gun. Then she asked who got it for me. I’d been so excited about the gun I forgot to tell her how I was getting it, and you know she wasn’t gonna be happy to hear that shit. When I told her about the girl, she went crazy on me and then called the police. I wound up in a car chase and ended up throwing the gun out the window. They eventually caught up with me and I got arrested again, but they didn’t find the gun.

*

I got my cousin on my dad’s side to buy my second gun--it was a two-tone XD. I think Alie’s little brother found my thirty clip that I’d lost somewhere in the apartment. How did I lose a fully loaded thirty round clip you might ask? Because I’m dangerous, and probably because I was drunk and it fell out my coat pocket.

Anyway, Alie was yelling at me again, and I’m not a loud person, I’m actually pretty mellow. So, I said the only thing I could think of to make her shut up. I was like, “Wow, that’s crazy, Andrea would never do me like this.”

Andrea was one of my ex-girlfriends and for some reason she and Alie hated each other. Alie stopped yelling and her eyes got wide, like she’d just hit a fat crack rock. She said, “You still thinkin’ ‘bout that bitch? I’m ‘bout to kill you.”

Then she ran into the kitchen, grabbed like seven knifes, bunched them up in two hands, and stabbed me in the chest with them. Luckily, they didn’t go in very far. I grabbed her wrist like, bitch stop. She dropped the knives, then said, “Actually, where’s your gun at?” and ran to the bedroom.

Instantly, I patted my waist, but that just happened to be one of the times I’d left my gun in the bedroom, and she knew exactly where to find it. I ran in after her, but it was like slow motion--she grabbed the gun, cocked it, and pointed it at my face. I pushed her hand and she shot the wall instead. She blew a fat ass chunk out of the drywall away and then ran into the living room. I heard her say, “Hello 911, yeah, Jevauhn Hampton just tried to shoot me and my son.” I forgot to mention we had a son together by then.

I’m thinkin’ like, I know this bitch playing. I went into the living room, but she wasn’t there. Normally, when she acted crazy, she’d go outside and sit at the bus stop. We’d talk things over, and everything would be OK, but this time she wasn’t at the bus stop when I went outside. I looked across the street at the weed dispensary and saw SWAT team officers running down from their van steps. I went back inside. They called my phone and told me to come outside, said they had snipers and red dots on me. The whole one-way street I lived on was blocked.

When I told my mom and stepdad what happened from the backseat of a police car through the window, they asked if the police had run a GSR. I’m like, “What’s a GSR?”

My stepdad started going off yelling at the police telling them to run the GSR, which I found out later means a gunshot residue test. They still didn’t do it though, probably because they already had it in their minds that they wanted to take me to jail not Alie, her being a mother and all. They took my gun too because it was considered an “inner city discharge.”

I spent some time at the Justice Center for that incident and lost another gun.

*

Finally, let me tell you about my third gun, which was part of the reason I ended up in this prison where I’m writing now. I just turned twenty-one, so I did my research and bought a gun legally. It was a bad boy. I bought myself an XDM 5.25 competition series 9-millimeter. The M stands for match grade barrel.

I was doing some business with this Russian dude. He was picking up some stuff for me from Arizona, but the numbers didn’t match up. I was having a good day till I found out.

I was in the car with Alie. I know I wasn’t supposed to, but I was drinking a little bit. I brought that up and the situation with the Russian, but she was like, “Its coo’ baby, you’ve been eating so you should be OK, just don’t fuck with that dude.”

At first I agreed, like, yup let’s go out like we planned, then my schizophrenia kicked in. I started to think to myself, the Russian dude thinks I’m stupid. I don’t really want to go into detail about what happened after that.

About a month later the U.S Marshals arrested me. Google my name and you gonna see my mugshot next to my gun and a bottle of Snapple, like it’s a fucking advertisement for Snapple or some shit. Eighteen charges and all Measure Elevens. For those of y’all who don’t know, in Oregon a Measure Eleven means mandatory minimum sentences for various crimes. I was fortunate enough to get an OK deal though anyway.

Alie was their star witness, so I decided to plead guilty to burglary in the first degree, assault in the second degree, kidnap in the second degree, and unlawful use of a weapon. They ABC’d my dumb ass. It’s all in the public record so if y’all want to check the facts do it.

I was supposed to go to a minimum-security prison when I got sentenced but for some reason, they sent me to a max. I learned a lot in prison about myself, about the people I love, and what I want in life. I saw a lot in there--riots, people getting jumped, people dying from drugs. I never seen anybody get rapped, but I could hear that happening some nights when I couldn’t sleep.

Alie was gone in the wind. She ratted on me then went and had another baby, started strippin’, hoin’, and smoking fentanyl. The way I see it now, we were both drowning when we were together. I tried sacrificing my air to her but eventually I drowned. I didn’t die though. I made friends with the sea monsters, and eventually I became a sea monster myself.

Now I’m swimming back to the surface. She has her hand out as if it’s always been there to help me. Only thing is that when I drowned, I was still a person, now I’ma sea monster. I hope y’all get that metaphor.

One thing for sure, I will never fuck with Alie again. I know a lot of dudes fuck with their baby mamas, but not me, not after all that, it hurt way too much. I always thought when someone got snitched on it was by innocent bystanders, not someone you grew up with, someone you loved.

I’m not going back to prison ever again, the police gonna have to shoot me in the back if it comes down to it. But I’m gonna try my best to make sure that never happens.

I’m going to leave y’all with this quote I just made up. “They say dreams come true, but what if all you have is nightmares?”