We are such fragile creatures giving ourselves over to immense pleasure and pain. With one the other bound inexorably to its side. As the music plays and the glass empties; I write this my tale. These being the final days of June in 2006, I give reflection on the past events that have landed me in my current situation.
Early April 2004. A fair day at working in the video store in the Santa Rosa mall, with only a mild hangover from the nights before, I return home to find my apartment complex parting on the second story balcony. As the good little drunk that I was at the still tender age of 18, I supplied the party with my last bottle of port. Glass after glass, the group went through whiskey of all sorts, wines, rums, alcohol was pouring around us, and the glasses never empty for the hours this party raged. The liquor was drying up to quickly for some of our tastes so we set about smoking weed from the stash that was stored in our half of the complex. Funny side note if anyone wanted any drug of any type, and multiple choices, all one had to do was go to any one of the people living in that complex and they had a supply. Mine was liquor. So with the weed came thirst, with thirst came the need to go more alcohol.
Embarking on a journey with a gay man that I could barely tolerate, let alone stand going and buying liquor with we set out to the store. Some how we wound up going through the local cemetery and my drunken ass fell upon the cement slabs that keep the dead from coming up in to much water. Kevin was his name, the bastard. Wasting no time he had my pants around my ankles and fell upon me in his 250 pound girth. I could feel the ripping into my flesh as he took advantage of a situation I was too drunk to avoid. Since I was face down, being held there as he did what he did, I did the only thing I could do; I went limp and waited for death to take me. I couldn�t fight it, all my training, all the things I knew on how to stay out of these situations, and I could do nothing. He was pretty much fucking a corpse for a good 15 minutes or so, time is all fucked up at this point, just the wind as it rustled the leaves in the trees, and I felt the ice cold grip of death enter into this place of death. I felt what better way for a necromancer to die, then being raped of dignity upon the very place where he sought out death to come. As moment passed from moment, he realized what he had done, and picked up my body and pressed me against his chest, I wanted to die, just so that I would have the strength of death to destroy his very being. To send him to the hell he visited upon me.
When enough feeling returned to my body to get up, we went back to the party, to find it still going on. I had a few more drinks to try to push out these memories from my head, that they would just be a premonition instead of an actual occurrence. He made the comment that �if I stayed any longer he was going to push me into his bedroom and take as much advantage of me as he could before I sobered up�. Never again, did I push the limit like that with my drugs and alcohol. Never again did I mix. Never again will I allow for that fucked up shit to happen to me. That night I lost my glasses. Seven days later, I found them in that spot when I went back, where they were laying in the leaves, his slipper like some twisted fagot fairy tale was laying there in the mud. It was a great personal effect to have him put away for a good long time. The police said that there was nothing they could do. There were no witnesses other then the dead, so it was my word against his, and he could have lost his slipper in the cemetery walking there anyway, no way to prove that was his. Let�s give it up for the system. When a man rapes another man, nothing happens.
The next weekend was intense. I had at that point sworn off the liquors and shake that I wound up doing that night. Figuring I had two chances left to get things over with, under the strain of an already exhausting month, a few days before my 19th birthday, I drank a bottle of Coppola Merlot, while talking to my dad. I offered him a glass, he didn�t want any. I pretty much licked the fuckin bottle clean, while I told him about being raped in the cemetery, that I was gay, and I had a new tattoo, which at the time was only two. Basically I went through everything I had gone threw in the last week and a half at this point, how I had been suffering from alcohol withdrawals and it was not helping my overall decline of a shattering mental state. The next morning he gave me a hug, and was shocked I didn�t have a hang over, and was most pissed off that I had another tattoo, a lovely triquatra with green shading.
Well the thing is about this point, I had really started going through the fires of hell, mental state in such a decline, that all his advice was, was to not kill that son of a bitch, but to find a counselor to help me get over this little issue. Sobriety sucked. Instead of getting tanked telling my mother I was a cocksucker etc�I spent my birthday down the bottom of a bottle of Stoli. The next weekend, week three in this lovely mess, it was my mother�s birthday so I spent the time with her, dad already broke the news to my mother that I was a wreck, she was also a wee bit fucked up herself with all the issues she had been going through. Well it was not a good time. We went through everything again, which was like salt on an open wound. She even wanted to see my most recent piece of ink at the time. She liked it, well that�s neither here nor there at this point. To continue on my little story; simply explaining what the goings on of this time frame were are important to what is coming.
In a country where I had received no justice from the �LAW� and from the world of Society from whom I was growing more and more discontented with. Already a queer activist, and thief I felt as though my only shot at an attempt at sanity and survival was to go where no one could get me, a place where 12 miles out is international water. I was given a box of food by my mother from mother�s day and spent that night with her, lying to her saying everything was lovely and nothing was wrong, and I would work everything out. So that next morning, I lied and said I had to be at work that day, and went out to see my friend Kat, well in one of the many nights insanely drunk with at least two 750mL of vodka and that amount of wine consumed by us, she said she would go with me if I ever stole a boat. I went to her house to take her up on her offer. I should have realized then, that when she says something, no matter sober or drunk, always have a back up plan, always. She told me to go ahead, and if I made it, she�d meet me in Mexico. The advice she gave applies to this very sound piece of wisdom that has served me well.
1) Never eat spiny fish
2) Moss grows on the north side of the tree
3) If you get caught plead insane.

This was it, and I was off. Went back to my hell hole in Santa Rosa, and tossed my swords in the car, snagged my computer which had maps on it, and fled and left the water on for the cat. Locked the door and drove. The sound track to Pirates of the Caribbean was blaring on my stereo system, the beat driving me on as I searched for a place to get out, to get free. I drive to Bodega Bay, at the last beat of the CD come to the marina. A quick walk down the open pier allowed me to scope out the vessel which I was going to call home, until I could sell it in the West Indies. The 54 foot, a three masted sailing yacht; whose name will forever live in my memory, reminding me of why I sought to flee.
Selecting my vessel, I unzip the canopy and get under cover, the sun just setting, on what was to be my last day in this country. I take one of my knives and pry open the hold with a quick stroke at the seams of hatch and roof. Entering down into this world of kerosene, and dark wood, I felt at home, for the first time, this was mine, and I was to be free. I load up my gear, position my weapons for a just incase, and set to work about the holds disconnecting the GPS, and communication system, checked the fuel levels, and added the needed oil to the tank. Then when I went topside, I rigged the sails, the three main sails, and the one front end for the draft. Dodging into the shadows behind one of the masts as a security guard made his rounds. Then it was time. I found the on switch, and made my first major mistake, I let loose the pivot line first, then cutting the last mooring line, I backed out again another mistake, in the wrong direction. It was to be the stern first, the bow was going first, and the wind caught against the keel and sent me into the pylons of the slips.
Perched stationary in my little world of damnation, I saw a moment for escape, to attempt at a later date. Instead I tossed off my id into the water, as a promise that I will sail sometime in my lifetime. There was a guy who asked me my business, the harbor master showed, they asked me my name, they missed my cinema reference as I said, �Jack�. Bastards, but then the coast guard showed up, and a sheriff or four. In handcuffs I was taken to the transfer station in Guerneville, chained to the floor for about 3 hours while they got everything taken care of. The police stole from me my sword, which was not involved in the attempted commandeering of this vessel no more then my food.
I played off the entire thing as it was an elaborate attempt at suicide. I got Grand Theft Vessel, tagged onto my record. I spent 90 days in county, and have five months left to my probation. There are words of wisdom that I can offer to anyone who seeks to flee, is that escapist tendencies are valid, but always remember:
1) Never eat spiny fish
2) Moss grows on the north side of the tree
3) If you get caught plead insane.