The First Annual Story Awards - True Crime

I Got Conned By The Black Keyser Soze
I was working at an art warehouse in Chelsea in like 1994. I was riding my bike home and it was snowing really hard. I got squeezed in between a car and a bus, and I ended up knocking the side-view mirror on the car pretty bad. It fell off and kind of hung there. I thought to myself, “That’s fucked up. I’ll stop and handle this the right way.” So I pulled over and the car pulled over and immediately this African lady, like a lady from an African country, jumps out and starts screaming at me in broken English. She’s just cussing and screaming like crazy. So I’m like, “OK, fuck this. I’m outta here.” I jumped on my bike and she jumped right on my back, still screaming the whole time. I kind of just stood up off my seat and leaned back, and she fell right on the ground. Out of nowhere, I’m fucking surrounded by all these local guys—black guys—who just happened to be nearby. They really came out of nowhere. They’re all looking at me and there I am: This young white guy who just pushed an old African lady down in the snow. There’s this moment of slow motion, just looking around the circle of dudes and they’re all getting closer, kind of pulling up their pants, rolling up their sleeves, and going, “What the fuck, man?” I didn’t know what to do, and without even thinking about it I went into Crazy White Boy mode. I picked up my bike and started fucking slamming it up and down onto the ground screaming, “Fuck! FUUUUUUUCK!!” That made everyone pause for a second. All of a sudden this one dude runs into the middle of the group and goes, “Wait, wait—I saw the whole deal! This guy was being cool. He stopped and tried to talk to her and shit!” He calmed everybody down and they were all kind of stepping back as they started to understand what had happened. I mean, yeah, I did hit her mirror. But then I stopped and was fully ready to take responsibility, pay for it, all that stuff.

All presenter photos by Patrick O’Dell. Styling by Sara McCormack.

Luis: Hugo Boss suit, Dee Cee shirt, Welsh MFG Co. glasses, Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons pin.

So I say to this guy, my fucking savior, I go, “Thanks a lot, man.” He was like, “I work in that store over there”—he pointed to a bodega on the corner—“and I saw it go down. It’s cool.” So we’re all talking and I start looking at her mirror with this guy and we’re trying to fix it. He goes, “Hold on, man. I’m just gonna go tell my boss what I’m doing.”

The cops came just then and were like, “Is everything OK here?” We all said, “Yep—we have it under control.” Even the African lady had calmed down by then. We were all best friends. The guy who saved me gets back and keeps looking at the mirror with me and goes, “Oh shit, man. All you need is a little bit of that super-strong glue right here. See?” And I looked and he was totally right. He goes, “Dude, I’m gonna run to the store and grab it for you. I’ll be right back.” I was like, “Thanks!” and I was just thinking to myself, “Damn there are still some really nice people left in this city.”

Then he goes, “Hey man, let me use your bike—it’ll just take two seconds. Here, hold onto my bag while I’m gone,” and he hands me this Jansport bookbag. I was like, “OK, cool,” and then he hopped on it and rode off. Then, right away, it was the total

Usual Suspects

moment where it all came together. The dude had been talking about my bike the whole time: Asking me where I got it and how much it cost and all that. I looked down at the bookbag. It was some bootleg Canal Street shit. Then I looked up at him as he rode away, and—swear to god—he flashed me the V for victory hand sign and mouthed the word “Peace.” And then he was gone. Poof. I never saw him or my $600 bike again.

The African lady saw it all happen and just started yelling, “Oh, you stupid! You so, so stupid!” She had a carload of kids and they all started laughing at me too. She ended up driving me around looking for this guy, but it was like no way were we gonna find him. Finally I just hopped out at a red light and started walking home. I never did fix her mirror either.

TERRY SISTERS

Riot Town

On April 29th, 1992, one week after my 16th birthday, a white-trash trucker named Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck at the corner of Florence and Normandy in Los Angeles and beaten to a bloody pulp by a mob of angry black people. Summer and Christmas came early that year.

Me and my brothers are Koreans, born and raised in L.A. We grew up in Koreatown, but ended up going to high school in Beverly Hills. In my art class Frank Sinatra’s granddaughter sat to my right and Sammy Davis, Jr.’s adopted son sat to my left. In front of me sat Ariel Pink, to whom I was very mean because I thought he was a fag. Mort Saul’s son was in my science class and he would drive KIT from

Knight Rider

or the De Lorean from

Back to the Future

to school. I hated everyone, and was filled with an intense rage and anger, mostly directed toward Persians and privileged white kids that didn’t understand humility. My only outlets were playing the bass drum on the marching band and graffiti. But then in Ms. Goler’s English class I discovered creative writing, and wrote and prophesized about a day when the minorities and the have-nots would rise up and take over. My older brother Jimmy had started to get into stealing cars, while I focused on shoplifting at all the local malls. The idea of anarchy ruled me, and of course its sign was etched into my notebooks and fake leather jacket. Two weeks later it all came true.

The rioting had escalated overnight and school was canceled midday. There was pure chaos and pandemonium in the air. All the rich kids were scrambling to their secure houses in the hills or catching flights out to Palm Springs, and I felt like I had finally come home, at peace in the heart of a storm. The air just smelled different.

So my brother pulls up onto the school lawn in a delivery van that he stole with our mother’s sewing scissors. He’s inside with his friend Fred (another Korean kid) and yells, “GET IN!” I jump in with my best friend Eddie (also Korean). Olympic Boulevard was just a huge parking lot. No one was moving, but we didn’t give a fuck. None of us really knew how to drive, so we hit all the cars, drove on the sidewalk, over newspaper dispensers and parking meters. There was a sunroof and we had loaded the van with huge rocks and we were screaming like maniacs and chucking them at rich white people in their fancy cars, breaking their windshields. Everyone was scared to even look at us—we were so bloodthirsty we would have killed them.

As we crossed Western into South Central, the scene changed. Blacks were putting up signs that said “black owned” so that people wouldn’t loot their shops. People were running in the streets and we were getting crazy looks. We pulled over into a mini-mart area and started throwing rocks into a store, then these black dudes came out of nowhere and it got scary. But then they started to join us, and it was over for the race war. Now it was just about getting ours. The shop window was broken, but the gate wouldn’t come down. A gangbanger pulled out a gun and started shooting at the lock, and then a fleet of police cars came speeding toward us and everyone scrambled. But they just drove by. That was it. We were in anarchy. There was no more law. I could practically hear the Cannibal Corpse songs in my head. We kicked the gate down and raped, ravaged, and pillaged the karaoke shop in seconds.

We saw Eazy-E drive by in a convertible wearing black gloves and shooting a pump shotgun into the sky. I was screaming with joy. We drove past a Gap and I saw Shawn Pringle, a black kid I grew up with, with all his black friends. I screamed his name, but he pretended like he didn’t know who I was. That hurt. Everyone was grabbing shit and looting and pushing and punching. We got in our van and crashed into everything on the way to East L.A. In the black neighborhoods, on every other block a store was on fire. In the Mexican neighborhoods every fucking store was on fire. You could feel the heat through the windows. Moms were looting with their babies, stealing diapers and beer and dry cleaning.

Everywhere that we’d grown up was on fire. Koreans were on rooftops with automatic weapons protecting their businesses. We were the only Koreans that looted during the riots. That’s why I still get called a nigger by my own people. There was definitely a sense of us vs. them and I wasn’t gonna run and hide behind closed doors. I came to play and I wanted to fight, but whatever racial inequalities started this war were long gone. At this stage in the game it was all about stealing. When the walls went down, no one gave a fuck what race you were, everyone just had jumbo-screen TVs in their eyes.

As we turned the corner onto Vermont, we drove past a Von’s Market where the sky opened up and Huey choppers were circling. Soldiers were rappelling down and lining up in the parking lot. We slammed on the brakes and made a U-turn. Game over. We drove back home through Hancock Park over everyone’s lawns.

When we got back to Beverly Hills it was a ghost town, no one on the street, not a sound. There was a line of Beverly Hills cops protecting the city border. We parked a few blocks away and set the van on fire. It didn’t explode like in the movies. We stashed our loot in the bushes and walked back home.

A week later I wrote this same story for my English class and it was dismissed as fiction by Ms. Goler, but everyone kissed my ass and wanted to be my best friend. I used it as an opportunity to lose my virginity and get invited to rich kids’ houses, where I raided their refrigerators and shit in the top part of their toilets.

The day after the riots we found out our parents’ business had burned down. We spent the next few years on welfare.

DAVID CHOE

The Biggest Lie

I went to Cuba with my parents a few years ago even though I was almost 30 years old. You don’t really do that when you’re that old. You either have your own vacation with buddies or you maybe visit your folks in Boca Raton, but this was odd. I felt like one of those awkward 13-year-olds you’d see playing Star Wars with kids that were five years younger than him (remember those poor bastards?).

Anyhoosers, I realized very quickly that the only way this was going to be fun was to get laid. Luckily there was some very hot Paki girl that was also way too old to be there. We recognized each other immediately during the dinner buffet and she kind of gave me this “Hey, what’s your story?” look. Being the pussy that I am, I looked away and went over to my mummy and daddy to finish dinner. I hated myself for that move and stared at the ceiling all night conjuring up an excuse for my behavior. By daybreak I had it. My mother died. Who was that woman that we were having dinner with? Um… it was my dad’s new girlfriend—that’s it. That’s why I couldn’t say hi. We’re on a really weird vacation where this crazy lady is trying to replace my mother and that’s why I couldn’t come over and say hi but I’m saying hi now, “Hi.”

I did this and it worked like a charm. She was bored shitless and some drama about a dead mother was a great icebreaker. Of course, I had to make sure my mother, who was very much alive, never pointed out that she was my mother and not, in fact, some floozy posing as my mother.

I got my 14-year-old brother in on the scam and we were off to the races. It was the center of our conversation for the next week. My brother and I talked about how great our mom was and how much we missed her and the Paki (her name was Samara) almost cried every time. One time I was going on a walk with her (in Cuba they keep you on this compound surrounded by razor wire so all you can do for a walk is kind of scope the perimeter) and I told her this long and involved story about how my brother dealt with the pain. She had been confused by how cheery my brother had been acting despite having lost his mother only a year and a half ago. So I fed her this pile of bullshit:

“My brother was incredibly calm at the funeral and even afterwards when we were alone he didn’t cry. He didn’t cry or even react for months and months and months. Then, one day, we were at the bowling alley and I asked him to get me a Coke (keep in mind this is all coming straight off the dome). So he comes back to our lane and he’s holding a Diet Pepsi. I go, ‘Strachan, what the fuck? I hate diet drinks. What’s the matter with you?’ and he goes, ‘I thought you said Diet Pepsi.’ I got even more angry and pointed out that I would never, ever order a Diet Pepsi. Then you know what happened Samara?”

“What?” she asked with tears in her eyes. “He collapsed to the floor and cried and cried and didn’t stop for three days. He had been holding it all in and it just came out like a flood.” At that point in the story we were BOTH getting teary-eyed. I was starting to believe my own bullshit.

The only time my lie came into jeopardy was when my mother showed up on the beach drunk and started talking about what it was like changing my diapers when I was a baby. Luckily she was so hammered that she stopped herself a few times and said, “Or was that Strachan,” and other weird slip-ups so all I had to do was look at Samara and shake my head like, “Sad eh? Can you believe this psycho?” and Samara just looked at my mother in disgust. We got so good at it my brother took me aside one night and said we had to stop. He said he caught himself looking at our mother with contempt and thinking to himself, “Shut the fuck up, bitch. You’re not my mother.”

Fucking funny. Anyway, this is where the whole story takes a 90° turn. On our last night in Cuba, I was walking on the beach with my brother and he was talking about his girlfriend and what a dick her stepfather was. He would tell her what to do all the time and act like he was her father and tell her to turn her music down and not let her friends come over and not let her go to sleepovers, etc. For each of these things I’d say “What a dick,” or “Cocksucker,” or something appropriate. Then he goes, smiling, “Yeah, and when she goes to bed sometimes he’ll come into her room and like, touch her tits or some shit like that. He’s such a grosser.” At that point I had to stop in the sand and grab my brother by the arms and explain the difference between “jerk” and “rapist.” Kids don’t realize the difference sometimes. The rape story became a hotter topic than the dead mom story and Samara and I spent our last hours in Cuba trying to explain to Strachan that old people can’t touch young people in their swimsuit areas. He still didn’t get how serious it was and didn’t want to call the police, so, after giving him a week to tell a grown-up, I did what I had to do. I called the police.

Holy shit do they ever handle their business fast in the People Who Fuck Kids Department of the police. Before I could finish my conversation they whipped over to where the stepfather worked, dragged him out of his office, and threw him in jail. The next day they brought him into some kind of interrogation room where they let him give his side. He claimed that the girl was just mad because he had said she couldn’t go to a party the night before.

Do you realize how heavy that is? His defense was based on the timeline of the previous night! Strachan had told me about this problem over a week ago. That means our conversations in Cuba had become a crucial piece of evidence AND Samara was a crucial part of those conversations! That means I had to call Samara and not only tell her we’re going to court, but also that I had lied about my mom being dead (if that came up in court, it would totally discredit her as a witness). Can you imagine that phone call? It took about three tries to lay it down straight and by the time we went to court she: Knew the truth, hated my guts, and, most importantly, was ready to testify. The guy got some lame sentence like no jail time and a restraining order, but that was enough for us. A little kid’s tits were safe. Apparently the mother blamed her daughter for driving the boyfriend off with slutty lies but later realized it was the truth (things like the girl going to bed with seven layers of pajamas on started to make sense). My brother was a rock about keeping it a secret and, even though the police came to his school to ask him questions, he never told a soul. That was the year he became a man.

GAVIN MCINNES

Old Lady’s Car

When I was 18, me and my cousin lived together. We both did a lot of drugs. Primary among them were crack, coke, and PCP. Other than that we just kind of drove around and riffed. He did crimes, like random burglaries and stuff, but I didn’t really get into that. The most I did was wait for him outside in the car while he robbed shit.

Anyway, my cousin’s burning desire was to steal a car. That’s all he talked about for weeks. One night, we were wired on shitty coke and watching

120 Minutes

on MTV. So I guess it was a Sunday. Anyhow, we ran out of coke and I resolved to sit there and stare straight at the TV until I could fall asleep. It would probably only take about six hours. My cousin, on the other hand, stood up and with a resolute “Fuck this,” marched out the door to steal a car.

Three hours later, I was in the exact same position when the phone rang. It was him, breathless and as excited as a little kid on his birthday. “Come quick and meet me at the Denny’s,” he said. “You gotta see this.” I drove the next town over to the Denny’s that we went to fairly often and found my cousin standing out front. He waved me around back and trotted off in that direction. I followed him around the corner to the parking lot, and there he was, standing there beaming like a proud father in front of the most unremarkable stolen car I have ever seen. I parked next to it and as I was pulling in I noticed the handicapped license plate on the back.

My cousin jumped in the driver’s seat and I got in the passenger seat and we both sat there, kind of going, “Hmm.” It smelled like mints. Pulling my sleeve up over my hand, I opened the glove box and started rifling through the stuff in it. There were just a few McDonald’s napkins and the driver’s license of a 70-year-old woman who lived in our town. It was really depressing.

He told me that he’d simply walked until he felt comfortably far enough from our house (about five miles) and then started trying to open every car door he walked by. Finally, one was unlocked. He got in and pulled out the butter knife he’d been carrying in his coat pocket. He jammed it into the ignition and rattled it around for a few minutes, thinking it would start the car. I don’t know where the fuck he got that. After a total lack of success, he gave up and decided to check the glove box for anything of value. Lo and behold, there were the fucking keys, just sitting there. He snatched them up and had been driving around the back streets ever since. He wanted to take the car to a chop shop, but realized that he had no idea where one was.

We sat there for a while kind of feeling weird in this old lady’s sad car and then I got out and drove home. My cousin joyrode the car into a bunch of trees near our grandmother’s house and then walked over there and fell asleep in her back bedroom around dawn.

JON PHERSON

Maced In The Porn Shop

When I was 21, me and a friend went on a trip to Atlantic City. We didn’t have any money, so with about an hour left before we arrived at the casinos, we decided to stop off at every motel we passed along the way (there are a lot of them on that stretch of road) and steal the gumball machines out of their lobbies. As I drove, my friend smashed the gumball machines open with a hammer in the backseat and collected all the quarters. After pissing away about $150 on slots we decided to try and find a titty bar. When we found one, the dancers were gone because it was close to 6 AM, but the attached porn shop was open, so we decided to shoplift porn. As we were walking out of the store the alarm went off. I guess the guy that worked there decided he’d had enough abuse and jizz-mopping in his lifetime and jumped in front of the exit. He lifted my shirt to expose the porn I was stealing. Me and my friend both tried to push past him to the exit, so he took the phone cord from the mounted payphone on the wall next to us and wrapped it around my neck. My friend got out but stuck his arm back in through the door to mace the guy. As the porn store clerk choked me unconscious, he repeatedly slammed the door on my friend’s arm, forcing him to mace us both. So I was covered in mace, passed out on the floor. When my friend heard cop sirens he decided it was time to leave me for dead.

I woke up as the cops were picking me up off the floor and asking me who the fuck my friend was. I told them he was a crazy hitchhiker I picked up who made me do all this crazy shit. After threatening me with felony robbery charges, they finally decided to believe that my friend was a hitchhiker because I stuck to my story and it looked almost like the crazy hitchhiker had deliberately maced us both to get away. Or maybe the head cop just respected the fact that I didn’t rat my friend out to save myself and decided not to press the issue. I got tickets for shoplifting and receiving stolen property—which by NJ law were only misdemeanor tickets—and a couple of days in the Atlantic County prison before I could finally beg a relative to come get me.

My fucking mace-happy friend WALKED all the way back to the Philly suburb where we lived. It took him three days.

CHARLIE MCCARTHY

That was some story, Charlie. You are one crazy guy. Oh man. True Crime is a great category because we all like it. From

The Brothers Karamazov

to

Crime and Punishment

to

Law & Order

, you gringos are suckers for a good crime drama. Anyway, the winner for best True Crime story is… the Oriental guy!

WINNER: RIOT TOWN

David Choe: “Wow, this is the first trophy I ever got. I’d like to thank my brother for stealing the van and making this all possible. It was the funnest night of my life, but if I have any regrets it would be that we made it racial. We were mad because we saw Koreans getting arrested for guarding their stores with illegal AK-47s and then we were more mad at blacks for looting their stores after the Korean owners were arrested. We destroyed black-owned businesses for revenge and that was wrong. I thought I was being the champion of my race, but I was being the not-the-champion of my race. Whoops.”

LUIS

I’m from Ecuador. When did you leave? 1999. I came to visit a few times before I decided to stay. What did you do back home? I was a technical professional in politics. I’m a business lawyer by education, so I worked as an analyst in several commissions. We worked on projects to improve the national economy. And what do you do here? I work in jewelry, as a middleman between the big companies and small local ones. What do you think of the States? It’s a great country. There are a lot of business opportunities and people have an open mind about everything. The education’s really good too. I want my sons to become professionals here. There’s so much corruption in Ecuador, even if you’re a professional you can never really make something of yourself.