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Pen Pals

The Good Ole Bad Ole Days

Bad things were happening all around me, but I was in a pre-ejaculatory state of perma-bliss. I had dough, I had a girl, I had fun, and thought I had all the freedom in the world just ‘cause I bought a lotta shit with blinky lights.

Once upon a time, I was a carefree kid living the American Dream: selling drugs, making money, and having fun partying hard. I wish I could say that old life was flambé lame and gone non-existent, so it would be outta my sight, outta my mind. But it’ll always be my past that forged the fucked-up sword I presently hold. I don’t like where I’m at, or the nonsense I’ve gone through with Johnny Law, but I always keep in mind the positive thought that if the Pork Chops didn’t stop me maybe I would’ve done something really stupid… like died.

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I dabbled pretty ferociously in my own supply, and drinking and driving was basically an everyday thing. It will forever blow my mind how I stayed completely out of legal trouble untill I hit 23. Nights became days and then days were nights again while I drove around in a minivan twisted, looking like a blood-sucking vampire, misplacing thousands of dollars and then making it all back again. It was so breeze-easy for me. I thought it was much more bonerable than dealing with real life. It sure as shit-candy was fun to play the game, but in the long run what an embarrassing mess I masturbated on my lap of luxury. Self-pleasure isn’t what it’s all about. I’m still extremely immature in the sense that I don’t really want to work hard and fail. I’d rather jerk off and fail, so I’m not really a failure, just a jerk-off, which is the role I’ve comfortably played all my life. Sounds good, but maybe it’s not true. I need some excuse.

I remember when my idea of hard work was driving for six or seven hours a day doing drug delivery. On a good day I could make a thousand dollars profit. It kills me to this day that I wiped my stinky butt with that money rather than trying to hustle something legit. I bought a lot of musical equipment and records, but I haven’t touched the tables in over three years so what was that worth? My fondest memories are of nights DJing with lil’ bundles of fun stuffed under the foam of my turntable coffin. Not only would I get paid for playing my music, I’d walk out with mucho cash in the pocket. I thought I was Big Dickin’.

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It didn’t really faze me that I heard someone got arrested with five grand of my money or that some white-trash crack zombie put a maybe-fake, maybe-real gun to my head to snatch a QP of bud or that I came home early in the morning after evacuating Manhattan during a shroom-induced breakdown to find my apartment’s glass door smashed and a $3,000 piece of fine music machinery vanished. I thought, Oh well, I’ll make the money back in a weekend and kept it moving. That wasn’t the last time someone stole music equipment from me. More bad things were happening all around me, but I was in a pre-ejaculatory state of perma-bliss. I had dough, I had a girl, I had fun, and thought I had all the freedom in the world just ‘cause I bought a lotta shit with blinky lights.

That’s the ultimate irony of what I did to myself. I used to always brag about the freedom that drug dealing afforded me, yet, I haven’t truly been free since 2004. Even when I’ve been out on parole, it’s not really freedom when I have to ask my PO if I can stay out past nine or go visit my girl’s house for the night and run the risk of her saying no—sometimes I did it anyway and if I get caught out, it’s back to the clink-clink. I don’t feel 100 percent free when I’m told I can’t leave the country, drink, or do drugs, and I have to go to various groups for drug and behavioral treatment (a serious crockpot of shit shakedown racket). I don’t like being told I can’t drive, or that you can’t hire me ‘cause I have felonies. Even when they don’t ask about felonies most places still google my name and find an old article from an Upstate newspaper claiming I was a drug trafficker. I don’t even know what trafficking means, but I don’t think I did it. I was a college kid who supplied party favors to college kids and I was nice with it. I don’t think anyone I ever hooked up would tell you I fucked their life up. Then I was doing a three to nine behind the razor wire for possessing coke with intent. I only shafted myself.

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So, eight years later, would I have ever believed I’d be the pathetic piece of shit I am now? Back then, I had illusions of grandeur for sure. Maybe I watched too many movies and honestly believed I possessed enough special points to circumvent reality. I still think that if I acted with better discipline and a little more brainpower I could have continued my reign of game, but I have to assume it all ended for a reason. Maybe I’d be dead or in worse shape than I am now. I keep telling myself that to feel better.

Luckily, I’m still a semi-arrogant bastard who believes the puzzle will piece itself together before too long. Maybe I’ll suffer a few more years, but eventually I’ll piss pure bliss. I remember an asscockfucktwat-load of people telling me that my life was over when I first got arrested. I didn’t believe them. I fail to feel fear, and that is my biggest problem. Wherever that trigger resides in the frontal lobe it musta been banged hard and rendered retarded when I was a little spunky punk. The bulletproof brain vest just got thicker and thicker as I got away with more and more slicker shit. Granted I got kicked out of three schools and still refused to follow the rules, so maybe I just never learn. I need to get terrified that I’ll never amount to tiddly-winks. Maybe I should go on Scared Straight: The Getting Savagely AssPlowed Alabama Edition and see if that’ll put the fear of Satan in me.

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I said it before and I’ll say it again, the worst part is what I put my loved ones through. I can get used to jail. It’s robotic. People with a kid or significant other in jail are kinda locked up, too, but more confused. The misery they feel is possibly greater than that of the individual incarcerated. Shit blows big balls for real. I wish I knew how to subtract the sad facts, and bring the relaxed days back… It’s a cautionary tale.

If you’d told Little Bert back in 2004 that he was going to be locked up till 2013 and beyond, he would’ve been so incredulous he would’ve shit in his hand sideways, smelled it, and hollered “Well, I’ll be dipped in shit!” He was one slick sperm-shootin’ son-of-a-gun completely unaware of the idea of consequences. He thought he’d go to the loony bin before the big house—that was in the days of the funkapuss (aka LSD) when maybe possibly he was cold-cocked crazy. He didn’t even wanna sell coke anymore… He only did it ‘cause the demand was percolating profuciously in Saratoga Springs and all the other suckas had doodoo. Bert wanted to grow weed, be a good-smelling hippie, and buy a dwarf goat, milk that bitch's titty early in the morn, and drink that good nipple juice at night. All this prison shit has been a drag… I wanna say good-bye to it respectfully like the formidable foe it’s been. It’s whooped my ass well again and again. Leave me be… I’m sleepy and my testicles are swollen. Sooner or later, my rectum is gonna catch a prolapse from the MAN’s punishing rump pumpin’. I’m just a kid… stop stompin’ my nuts and screwin’ my butt like that. SHITS BEEN PLAYED… FREDDIE’S DEAD ALREADY.

Bert Burykill is the pseudonym of our prison correspondent, who has spent time in a number of prisons in New York State. He tweets here. Previously on Pen Pals:

I Saw an Inmate Get Struck by Lightning Through the Phone

Finish What You Start