I was sitting in my backyard with a broken foot, when I had the idea to write this. I’ve had this building up inside for a long time. As gay as it sounds, it feels cathartic to finally just write and and exorcise these demons. Much of this I have been unable to talk about because of the powers-that-be and some I have just been afaid to.
If you are on the outside looking in, you might think that I’ve got it made. While I do have a good life — things are not as easy as they seem. For the last 14 years, I have had some kind of fucked up shit holding me down in one form or another. As soon as I think one hurdle out of the way, another comes to replace it.
For better or worse, here it goes…
It all started, 9/11/1997.
I was driving outside of Atlanta, to join the band The Spoits to tour the East Coast. I had a quarter of weed and 2 hits of acid on me. All clearly for personal use.
On a barren stretch of I16 (town of Soperton, Treutlen County, GA), I get pulled over by this redneck cop. I crotched the drugs, but this faggot cop actually put his hand down my pants to retrieve the drugs because (as he would later admit in court) “I had an obvious budge in my parts.”
They take me to jail, charge me with felony possession of LSD, possession on marijuana, speeding, and DUI (?).
The sheriff introduces me to his bondsman buddy (Wesley Wadley), who is more than happy to get me out of jail if I would raise the cash ($4000 on a $6000 bail – the max allowed by law is 10% of bail). I called a buddy in Atlanta and he brought the money down. I spent the night in jail, they confiscate my truck, took the 4k, gave me no paperwork, and let me out the next day. At the time, I only wanted to get the fuck out of there, so I paid the bond and left the truck.
1997 goes by and I never heard anything from them. Almost another year goes by and still nothing. I start thinking: Was this just a payoff and I’ll never hear from them again? I so, I’m fine with that.
Wrong!
Late at night in March 1998, I get a call from Wesley Wadley asking if I would be in court the next day. I tell him this is the first I’ve heard of this in 2 years, he says he’ll check on it, and then calls me back 10 minutes later to say it was a mistake. I needed to come in to sign some “continuance forms” in the next few days! Keep in mind, they had my correct address. If they had sent a summons, I would have gotten it.
So I went down a few days later to sign the “continuance forms”, I stepped behind the counter, they locked me up for failure to appear, took my 4k bail money, and took my truck.I would spend the next month in the county jail.
I hire some lawyer down there from jail, he goes to the post office and finds the letters they supposedly sent summoning me to court and they were stamped “not deliverable to this address” even though they HAD THE CORRECT ADDRESS ON IT! That was the scam the Sherriff Wayne Hooks had running down there for years: They would arrest people, charge outrageous bail bonds, their cousin at the post office would tamper with the letters, you’d miss court, they’d keep the money, and THEN run you through their meat grinder justice system! My lawyer showed the envelope to the judge and the let me free on bail till my trail.
The DA offered me a plea “bargain” of 10 years probation and 7000 dollars in fines just for the LSD. My lawyer advised me to plea “not guilty” because so much fucked up shit had happened, that I might be able to get off on a technicality.
While I was awaiting my next court date, my lawyer sends a letter to the bondsman reminding him of what the maximum GA state bond fee are. My truck and my money (less the 10%) are returned not long after.
After some legal wrangling, it’s time to go back to court and I’ve realized that there is no way to do anything to defend yourself in Soperton’s “Good Ole Boy Network”, so I ought to accept the 10 year plea.
Strangely enough, in the wake of getting our money back, all of a sudden the prosecutor has changed and (according to them) the plea deal next existed. The new prosecutor wants to “give me 5 years” – I wind up taking a new deal, that is 10 years of probation, $8,000 in fines, and 6 months in prison.
I plea guilty. I am now a felon.
In February 1999 I went in to begin my 6-month stint in the joint. During that time I broke my foot while working on the chain gang, was almost sentenced to 5 more years for an arson attempt, and generally had come to realize that prison life wasn’t for me.
In July of 1999, I got out of prison and was picked up by my fiancée. I returned to ATL life as normal, selling drugs, playing with my band, only now under the looming threat of probation – which meant: no drinking, no drugs, no leaving the state, no arrests, no fights, no bars, keep a normal job, and show up every month – none of which I was willing to do. So that made life pretty complicated.
In the weeks that passed, a strain in my relationship with my girl seemed to develop. We weren’t getting along. When one of my best friends came over to tell me that he’d fucking her the whole time I’d been locked up, I realized why.
I was absolutely livid. I couldn’t seem to get past the hatred I had for the world, Atlanta in particular. By my own admission, I had turned into a raging psychopath. Even my friends were scared of me, but I couldn’t believe my “friends” would stab me in the back. So, now here I was living in this town I now hated, but unable to move because of 10 years of probation.
I was fucked.
The only one good thing that did happen during that time is I started to get more involved with the adult Internet. When I went to jail, I had placed 2 links to porn sites on www.dickdelcious.com and had a check for $140 when I got out. I figured if you can make money when you are locked up, imagine what I could do if I applied myself!
To be honest, during this who period my chief source of income was DRUGS. If you needed weed, coke, and sometimes ecstasy – I was your man. Over time, the money from online porn started to rise, so I stopped selling coke. At one point, I even tried to quit selling weed but was talked out of it by my suppliers.
After 2 years of completing the “administrative” part of my probation I stay out of trouble, ao I’m released to “unsupervised”. Unsupervised means: no more visits, no leaving the state, no fines, or drug tests – just don’t get arrested.
That was all fine until July of 2002.
During this whole period, I had kept my story of Treutlen County posted on the Internet, hoping that maybe one day, somebody with power would read it and finally bring some heat down on these corrupt rednecks. That never happened, but someone was reading it: Sheriff Wayne Hooks himself. Now I realize, you may you have free speech, but as long as someone has power over you, you don’t really have it.
Unbeknownst to me, Sheriff Hooks had recently got Federal violation of civil rights charges and it now suited his needs to get anything off the Internet that would make his case look bad in court.
One July day in 2002, I get a summons from Treutlen County in the mail telling me I need to be down there in 3 days (it’s 300 miles away). I had no idea why they would want to fuck with me after this much time. I knew one thing I couldn’t do in 3 days: Pass A Drug Test!
I tried to see if I could postpone the meeting or even find out what it is about, to no avail. If I couldn’t get it postponed, I wanted to at least get my lawyer to accompany me, as I already know these cretins in South Georgia don’t play fair!
My South, GA attorney was in Europe and couldn’t go, so I sought the advice of an Atlanta lawyer. He told me it would be better not to show up, if the piss test would be dirty, which makes sense to me.
The day I was supposed to go down there, I gave myself a drug test, which came back clean (surprisingly) and I went on the lam. I spent the next 6 weeks sleeping in my van, stripper’s apartments, bars, and offices while I was waiting to see how this situation would sort out.
I finally hear back from my lawyer. He tells me that he spoke with the judge and that it was fine to reschedule to probation visit. I go back to my apartment for the first time in weeks. That night, I get picked up by the Atlanta police on a probation violation. The Judge had even lied to my lawyer.
They haul me off to the Dekalb County jail. The next morning, Sheriff Hooks himself picks me up to take me on the 300 mile drive back to Soperton. He was facing his own trial that next week. Needless to say, that 4-hour drive was damn near surreal. I was preparing to for him to pull the cruiser to the side of the road and beat me to death at any moment. As soon as I get to the Treutlen County jail, the probation cunt piss tests me, but by now weeks have passed and I am clean.
On August 22nd, the sheriff is convicted on federal depravation of human rights changes, gets house arrest and has to resign from law enforcement.
On October, 3rd I have to go to court for probation violation, after sitting in jail for 6 weeks. They charged me with failing a drug test, refusal to submit to a drug test, and failure to report. My lawyers ask why Treutlen probation felt compelled to call me down after all of this time. They produce a printed page containing what I had written about the corrupt sheriff and a picture of the “Bigger Than Ron Jeremy” CD (which depicts me doing a line {of sugar} off our drummers head). The dirty drug test charge gets dropped, the refusal to take a drug test gets dropped, but they stick me on the failure to report. I sentenced me to a year of supervised probation out of Atlanta.
In big city Atlanta, the probation officers have better things to do. When I first met with my new probation officer, she couldn’t believe that I had been given 10 years to start with, never mind all of the harassment of the last few weeks to coming out of Treuntlen County. I explained my position, what I had written on the Internet to pissed them off, and how the sheriff was now a felon. She seemed sympathetic and placed me on write-in probation immediately, meaning I’d only have to send in a letter once a month.
By this time, my Internet porn selling career was really flourishing. I was making more money than I knew what to do with. The band had broken up, I wasn’t selling drugs anymore, and didn’t have a girlfriend. Other than probation; there wasn’t anything tying me to Atlanta.
I needed to go.
I don’t know what had taken me so long to realize it, but The South sucks balls and really needs to catch up with the rest of the country.
Durning those next few months, I get the offer to buy into OCCash.com, so I fly out to California in the spring. I decide to do it and fly back to pack up and leave. Now keep in mind, I still have 5 years left on probation and I’m not supposed to be leaving the state!
In my last few weeks in Atlanta, I set up a very elaborate series of fake voicemail boxes, bogus addresses, fake IDs, and phony employers — juts in case probation ever comes to call.
Spring, 2003 I am out in California fulltime. I first lived in Huntington Beach, but didn’t really like it, so I moved up to LA. I really love LA; people who talk trash about it need to get a clue.
Now keep in mind, this whole time in am out in California every time I go to the DMV, get a traffic ticket, or leave the country – I am waiting for the other shoe to drop, have a warrant turn up, and get dragged back to Soperton!
Yes, I know that while on probation, you aren’t supposed to be doing things like leaving the country, drinking, or smoking pot. If a mans average lifespan is 70 years, there is no way I am giving them one out of every seven days for a stupid drug charge!!
You gotta’ live! Damnit!
In spite of everything, on Feburary 7th 2009, I actually finished 10 years of probation! I couldn’t believe it. Yes, I had beat the system, but it really sucks having to live every day knowing that this all could be taken from you and you’d wind up back in prison!
In March 2008, I had my official “Off Probation” party and I was free — finally free!
Or was I?
I admit, that I did go a bit crazy drinking and partying when the whole probation deal was done, but it was nothing I hadn’t done before.
Just a month later, in April 2009 I started to wake up late at night drenched in mysterious pools of sweat. At first, I thought it was just my nerves or maybe partying. As the weeks went on, my condition worsened.
I stared to Google “night sweats” and saw hat there were three conditions commonly associated with them: menopause, tuberculosis, and AIDS. Needless to say, I freaked out because there was no way it was menopause, nobody gets tuberculosis anymore, so that left only one thing….
I went down to the AIM clinic the next day and go checked for HIV. Fortunately, I was negative. I chalked it all up to nerves, and for a while, the symptoms seemed to fade.
By the end of May, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I was starting to feel really run down and was losing weight, but still wasn’t convinced that it was anything serious, so I went to see a doctor. He checked my breathing, my chest was badly obstructed – he thought I should go directly to the emergency room.
I was so sick that one of my lungs had actually already collapsed.
I get to the emergency room and was admitted immediately, I still didn’t think I was that sick. They start running all kings of test on my X-rays,TB, HIV, bloodwork, immune response, and everything checked out normal, but I keep getting sicker and sicker.
X-rays show that I have a massive effusion in my pleural cavity. They drain the liquid out me by sticking some spikes in my back (I am awake for this), but the infection if still keeps coming. The doctors think it might be TB and order a second round of test that prove inconclusive.
Halfway through my stay, I have to get a major operation (a trorasostamy) to remove the infection from my lungs. The operation is a success, but the infection still keeps coming. If the source of the infection can’t be identified, it will happen again.
After being in the hospital of 18 days, they diagnose me with “valley fever” and am released. The day after I get home, a blood test used to screen for TB came back positive. To find out if I actually had TB, I would have to wait 6 weeks for the results of my biopsy to come back. To be safe, I was placed on a regimen of anti-TB meds.
In July, the results of my biopsy came back:
I had tuberculosis.
I probably had contracted TB somewhere overseas in my travels or (even more ironicly) in prison. TB an airborne disease that anyone can get, one-out-of-3 persons in the world have been exposed to it, it requires something to wear you body down (in my case it was drugs/alcohol) enough to become active. I had an atypical pleural TB, which isn’t in your lungs, so I couldn’t cough and spread it. If you hung out with me in that period of time you are fine – I wasn’t contagious.
I spent the whole summer of 2009 sober. I wasn’t even smoking weed. Honestly, once the TB meds had kicked in I felt pretty much normal, aside from the pain from the surgery.
If you have been reading this far, you probably realize: I like to drink. I can’t help it. I suffer from a form of social anxiety. I am a very quiet and shy person naturally, it takes some alcohol to bring be out of my shell. When I am sober, even the most mundane of social scenarios make me nervous and fidgety. If you know me, that may seem ridiculous, but it’s true.
One of the cruel tricks TB meds play on you is they completely cure the disease (if taken properly) but destroy your liver at the same time. The state also sicks the health department on you. It’s a total pain in the balls and actually reminds me quite a bit of probation!
The last 6 months of 2009, I have been getting complete blood workups done once a month and as of December 17, 2009 I was completely cured and my liver survived.
So, I am free to live my life again, right?
Wrong!
On December 18 2009, while preparing for an Xmas Christmas party, I tripped walking on some steps in my backyard and re-broke the same foot I had broken in jail. I will be spending the next 6 weeks in a cast and on crutches.
Now I know a bum foot is not a big deal compared to felony convictions, backstabbing friends, corrupt sheriffs, and tuberculosis, but it is just a continuation of living the last 14 years one-crisis-to-another.
I accept responsibility for my own problems I’ve created, but this run of bad JuJu is ridiculous.
And it leaves me to wonder…
What’s next?!
Jay
