When I entered in, he was behind me; I looked left and saw an old woman sitting slouched over in front of the television in the living room. The man put both of his hands on my shoulders and directed me to another room. Something just wasn’t feeling right about the entire situation. I was a hungry kid and wasn’t really worried too much until I entered into the room that had a bed in it and I was there to eat. The walls in this mans bed room were flooded with pictures and snapshots of naked boys that look to be around my age and also some that I knew from the neighborhood. When I looked to the dresser I saw a camera. At that moment I felt like that suspicious feeling I had was now loud and now telling me to run. I quickly shrugged his hands off of my shoulders and ran as fast as I could out of his house crying. I may have never got food that day but I also didn’t end up on that pedophiles wall either. I never saw him again, anywhere! Around the age of eight I moved with my brother into my Aunts place in Hollywood Court. Her name was Delores and she was a prostitute who was on drugs. I attended Scott elementary on the West Side of Atlanta on Hollywood Road. I used to hate going to school at times, but would always go because that was the time I could get food and not feel hungry. I used to hate going to school because I smelled like piss. The situation was definitely fucked up because my brother used to piss on me and there was no way to wash clothes or even myself most of the time. If there were a deeper word than poor I would use it to explain my child hood. I remember hearing talk about Ronald Reagan being President around 1983. I was only eight years old and I remember this because it was on the black and white TV and I was hungry. All we got during that time was the government cheese that was handed out. One week when school let out for spring break I recall eating nothing but different types of corn bread during that week. After staying in cardboard boxes, shelters and then eating only corn bread to survive, I realized that life was going to be hard. When in school, my brother Charles, my sister Leonda, and I used to have to leave the shelter early in the morning because we had to walk to school at 5:30 in the morning even while it was still dark. Sometimes we’d even arrive at the school before the janitor. He would show up and let us in so that we could wait inside and not freeze. At the elementary school I had a best friend named Speedy. I can remember him having a fine sister name Cookie. Speedy used to live in a house somewhere and his Grandmother lived in Hollywood court so whenever he would come to the neighborhood we would hangout. Another best friend of mine from around this time was named Trumaine. He was someone I was close to at the elementary school. People used to always call us Michael and Jermaine Jackson after the famous pop star and his brother. Trumaine passed in 2008 due to a heart attack. Around the time when I was about 8 years old, Channel 11 Nominated me as Child of The Week! They asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I told them that I wanted to be a police officer, then Mayor, then the President. They asked me if I was going to be the first Black President, and I told them yes. They asked me, “Why do you want to be President?” I told them that I didn’t want anyone to go hungry and that I wanted everyone to be fed. I thought that everyone was hungry like me. I didn’t know that there were people who ate well every day and never starved. I just knew the World around me; and I was hungry everyday. When the schools and churches used to take can food donations to give to the needy, my family was the needy ones who got those canned goods to eat. On top of being the poor kid in the school, my Aunt would fuck with me about my name and also about me never wanting to fight the people that picked on me. We were staying with my Aunt in an apartment on Cleveland Ave called Bryans Way. Kids would tease me all the time about my name. They would do something like running up to me, saying “he he” like Michael Jackson the singer and kick me at the same time. I wouldn’t even defend myself. My Aunt would Call me a punk and make fun of me as well. She would say things like “Who you think you are, Martin Luther King Jr.?” because I used to talk my way out of fights; or something like “You running, you may want to put a dress on and keep running,” for the times when I had the option to run from a fight; and other things along those lines. There used to be guys in Hollywood court who were between the ages of 13 and 17 who used to pick on the smaller kids, rape girls and kill people. I used to talk to a girl around there who was 8 years old and that I used to have a crush on. There was a group of guys who would just come and take her and rape her in a nearby abandoned building. They would call her Baboon and not only rape her, but beat her as well.
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