please let me know what u all think, its unedited and my grammer sucks but im tryin


I’ve always wondered what it’s like to smoke weed or anything else for that matter; but for reasons that are obvious, if you know me, I need to see the world through clean eyes. If I got high everything might make too much sense and throw me off my random track of waking and sleeping everyday. I was exposed to drugs at a young age and it has maintained a constant presence in my life. When I was younger, I’m talking high school younger, when the shapes and colors of the class room were shaping my mind and creating things that I’m still nostalgic about today; my home life was an entirely different story. Growing up was great, but developing some kind of awareness about what was going on around me was hell. I have no idea how my ma’s drug habit started, and the effects that her actions had on my life really didn’t become apparent to me until I was midway through high school. Some of the things I remember often when I was younger was running up the stairs, because we lived on the second floor of a two story house, and right before I would get to the door and knock I would hair little pings, that sounded like someone was delicately shaping a sculpture. However, it was anything but that. When you buy cocaine you can buy it in a fine powder, its all white and looks innocent; like something that could sooth a baby, but when you buy crack it comes as a rock with an off white look to it. You buy it in a little baggie and depending on what area you live you will notice your streets populated with more bags then bugs. The little pinging noise that we heard was the sound of my aunt and my ma’s razor blade chopping that little rock into a fine powder. My aunt would roll it up with her weed in a joint like one of those old Cheech ‘n Chong movies, me and my brother called this lacing weed. My mom on the other hand was hard core with it. She would take crack, I prefer to call it work and anyone who has ever sold crack or dealt with it calls it the same thing, anyway my ma would take her work and smoke it from a stem. A stem can be anything from a little glass tube to broken metal piece of hollow TV antenna. I used to find so many of these littering my house that it made it impossible for me to not know their purpose and how to make one. So officially my ma and my aunt were, and still are crack heads, I love them both regardless, but they are what they are and I’ve accepted that. When your parents or anyone that provides for you is addicted to drugs and lives the lifestyle of an addict, you too are forced into their life style. In essence you get the same suck ass existence of a crack head without enjoying the high. The pitfalls in life are many, but few are as deep as the ones your parents create for you. I don’t remember when exactly I realized that smoking crack could kill you, but afterward every time I would come up the stairs and I would hear that little pinging raining out from underneath the hallway door knowing that uncertainty would carry me over the threshold. Life like that is a push, nothing about it is of free will and the stigmas from living that way made sure not many things in life would be. I’m 23 now, still a young man but for some reason my memories don’t make any sense before my 15th birthday. From 15 on down the days smiled upon me the same way adults smile at children, while admiring how “new” everything is for them. My preteens was absorbed with watching my mothers marriage dissolve into what would later become my resentment for her. My resentment stemmed from me not understanding that just because life was good for me and my brother life for my mom was a different picture. The chemistry that my mother had with my step father was similar to the chemistry between chocolate mixed with habenero pepper, its taste has purpose but its misunderstood unless you’ve had it. The chemistry between them is what occupied all the delicate moments in my childhood, that once given shaped cannot be weathered, nor reversed through the constant changes of living. So like all of you, I am smooth, and in one piece, however the illusion that carries me through the day and drags me kicking and screaming through social interactions is anything but. The thing that makes my 15th birthday a starting point for me was that it presented the beginning to most of the things that matter to me today. It was at 15 that I first felt the shame that follows the stares of all the people that I was caged with in high school. At that same age I first felt the lashes and the ambiguity of being black, and even worse at 15 I saw it as a helpless condition at which I was left to defend myself against. For a long time and partly so now; being black had become an excuse and a vessel for me to transport my shortcomings. I was 15 when I had my first kiss, my first pet and at that same age I committed my first crime.

i'm with amber... listen to her, mpx!... there's some really fine stuff in this 'mess' and it deserves to be straightened up and made readable... the content is honest and real... it wouldn't hurt for 'upstanding citizens' to read what life is like for the less fortunate in this country... despite an 'unacceptable' word or two here and there...

if all the grammar was 'fixed' it would suck all the juice out of its reality...

if you want any help with this, mpx, let me know... i'd be happy to help you figure out how to fix it up without sapping its power...

love and hugs, maia
maia3maia@hotmail.com

mammamaia i will take you up on your offer, and the next free moment i have i will be emailing you. thank you every one for telling me how you are all interested or not interested and all your comments are appreciated. i should be done with the next part in two or three days, i work 60 hours so i have to write when my head is clear

Looks like you have already received great advice, but I would like to say you kept me reading, and wanting more. It is a bit rambling, no paragraph breaks, but the grammatical errors are simple to correct. I always believe it is the meat of the story that matters. And you definitely have enough meat!!! The pinging puts the reader into the heart of the story, and makes you hear and feel the essence of what you are putting across. Nicely done. Sometimes the most unfavorable of circumstances can bring out such an authentic voice, and I believe it has done this with you. You should be very proud of yourself.

Keep writing, I look forward to reading more.

Thanks,
kganz

still needs a bit of fixing, honeybun... first and foremost, needing to be put into paragraphs, so folks can read it without going blind... to post it and keep the paragraphing, you need to use line spaces instead of indents... i'm going to take the time to edit this for you, because i believe in your talent and want you to see how much better this truly fine writing of yours looks when 'written properly'... copy and print this out and put it next to yours, so you can see what needs fixing, ok?... here goes:

QUOTE: My birthday is in the beginning of December; amidst all the high hopes that Christmas brings and the long depression that the comes with winter. My presents had to contend with the hoards of gifts expected on Christmas day, and the unrelenting heating bill. After you through threw in the fact the that my brother's birthday is 2 two days after Thanksgiving, and my ma was left to the generosity of the Buffalo welfare system, the prospects of my getting gifts were slim and limited to what ever the corner store sold as toys. As a result of this, at a young age I learned to appreciate family gatherings.

December 6th 1997, on a Saturday, I had my 15th birthday. My ma, my brother Damone and myself had just moved out of the apartment that emborided [?] the marriage between her and my stepfather. My aunt saw the opportunity to get help with the rent, so she offered for invited us to live with her, not far from our old apartment. My Aunt Cindy and her son Donnell lived in a two bedroom apartment, in which half the living room was dedicated to plants, and various other things that one finds stimulating when faced with the boredom of having nothing to do.

That first morning I woke up and counted whatever change I could find in my pockets from the day before, which amounted to something like 35 cents, and I went to the store to get a huggie [?] juice so I could have it with my breakfast. On the way home I saw Tony, the little boy who lived downstairs from us, walking home from the church on the corner. His parents was deep into the church thing, which I still find confusing to this day, because early on in my adult life I would learn that while at a party, Tony and two of his friends beat up a boy, drug him into the bathroom and sodomized him with a broomstick. I heard this on the news one day after the cops found a dumpster burning in back of a church and discovered the boy's body.

Anyway, back to that birthday morning, me and Tony walked to the house engaged in conversations about nothing, and parted ways at the hallway. I went upstairs and into my house where my ma was sleeping on a mattress in the middle of the dining room. I stood over her for a moment allowing myself to be transfixed with how beautiful the notion of her was, lying there, silent with her hair exploding out of the covers.

After breakfast, me and Mone stood on the porch so he could sneak a cigarette. He started the conversation by making fun of how fat Donnell was and how he ate almost all of the macaroni and cheese that we had for dinner the night before. So that set the tone for the day. Later on my ma made a cake, my aunt made dinner and from 12:30 pm till around 10:30 pm it was just like any other birthday I had ever had.

I was in the living room lulled half to sleep by the orange tint of the street light outside the window and the boring rerun of living color when I heard my ma go downstairs, which wasn’t uncommon because we had a washing machine in the basement, but when she came back up I heard two people coming up the stairs in place of just one. So naturally, out of curiosity I started for the kitchen where I saw my ma escort a tall man with a black scarf that draped over a black wool trench coat into the back room, where my aunt and herself had been sitting.

Of course I thought this was strange, because two single women living with their kids usually don’t frequent with men at their homes, but being 15 was more of a status then-- it was a reality--and I felt it would be more grown up for me to not say anything or beckon my ma’s attention. So I went back to watch TV and after an hour or so had past passed, I went to the bathroom, which was adjacent to the room they were in. That’s when I first heard the small tapping noise of my mother and aunt chopping crack--I had no idea what it was.

Soon after, I went to sleep not knowing the milestone I had passed in my life. When I woke the next morning, I went to the kitchen to get a drink and my ma sat at the table with the man that was a stranger to me at the time. She looked at me and said, “ Greg, you hungry? 'Cause I was gunna make some eggs,” and before I could answer, the stranger looked at me and said “ Hey, boy you don’t speak?” so, embarrassed, I gave a half-hearted wave and accepted my ma’s offer for breakfast. It was Sunday, so in a big way I didn’t want the day to end because I didn’t want to go to school the next day.

...there are so many really great lines and phrases and images in this, that i can't list 'em all, but the best by far, imo, is your description of your mother sleeping on the floor... any mother would dissolve in tears of joy and pride, to have a son write that about her... you've got a true gift, sweetiepie... all you need is to learn the technical basics, to be able to share it with the world... i hope this will help you to see what you can do with the next section of your story...

love and hugs, maia

---

for 100% free help/mentoring:
www.saysmom.com

"You must BE the change you wish to see in the world." Gandhi

i'm so glad my nit-picking is helpful, honeybun... i'm sure some cuss words are necessary in a work like this, but for the board you can just put in the first and last letters and ... or --- in the middle...

as for working this into a novel or story for publication, you'll need to work with someone on the grammar, etc. [all the stuff i had to correct], 'cause no publisher will look at work that isn't polished...

i don't know where your 'story' goes, but it may end up being a good non-fiction book for teens... too many have to live through the things you write about and it would help any of them to know you came out ok and 'became a writer'... it would be a great goal for them to want to match...

regardless, it IS 'your own' right now... even if i or someone like me was to help you by editing and correcting it, it would still be ALL yours... i know it's hard to revisit all those times and events, but it will only make you stronger in the end... and you do have a gift for putting things in words that resonate with the reader... that touch one's heart and mind and paint vivid pictures from real life... not the fancified life most writers dream up, but the nitty-gritty of the streets and those who have so little chance to 'make it' in life...

be proud of yourself for getting this far... both in life and in your writing... you're a keeper!

love and hugs, maia

For the first time in my childhood I started feeling the effects of being raised by a single parent. My mother suddenly had to adjust from relying on the over powering nature of my stepfather, to taking on the full responsibility of heading a family. I blamed my mother, in a vary heated way, for the life we had to live. I felt she choose to live like this, she choose welfare over work, drugs and booze over food, I even felt that she made my step dad choose to leave us, but I was naive. She didn’t choose her life any more then I choose mine. However, she did choose to accept the circumstances she was in and that’s why things were how they were. She also choose to take on the role as an observer instead of a parent.

As a teenager I was calling my own shots, a free agent if you will, and the only thing that I had going for me was deciding I was on the ground floor. Every morning I choose to go school, and it was choices like those that turned me into a man. I absolutely hated school, every day was a battle between my Kmart or hand me down jeans, and the other students crisp, clean, non faded name brand jeans. I went to Leonardo Davinci High school, which was tucked away on the fourth and fifth floor of Dyouville college. My high school was supposedly a college prep high school and my class size consisted of only 58 students. We didn’t have our own cafeteria so we were bussed over to Grover Cleveland High School for Lunch, Gym and misc. classes. Grover was a district high school; so the difference would be equivalent to mixing the high-class society of the Hamptons with the rowdy more earthly class of people in the Bronx.

My first day back to school from Christmas vacation, I sat in home room amongst the empty minded ramblings of all my peers, and caught pieces of conversations. The main topic of course was all the great stuff every body got for Christmas. I was sitting next to my man Gerald and I could feel the question pulling away from his lungs, however, when faced with it, instead of telling to truth I choose to lie. I told him I got a play station, the new wyclef cd, a new TV for my room and a couple outfits. I didn’t want to tell him how my ma went into my aunts closet and wrapped miscellaneous things, like shoeboxes, and old plaques that my aunt got from work, and put them under the tree hoping that by the big day she would be able to replace them with real gifts. I didn’t want to tell him about how she spent every dime she had, drowning away the looks on me and my brothers face when my cuz opened his gifts, with booze. So as I sat their, eves dropping on every ones happiness, I quietly painted my face, and folded up my emotions and put them in my pocket.

The night before my ma had went to the corner store wearing my coat. She must have had it on for a while because I could still smell the parliament lights all over the sleeves. When the radiators came on and began to heat up I could smell the legions of bubble gum colonies that cloaked them. As the room started to heat up I stood and pulled of my coat and something fell out of my pockets. I could tell it was made of glass because when it hit the ground I heard another piece shoot off into the distance. Before I could look down and grab it mike roddam already had it in his hand examining it. “ Taylor what’s this”, I looked at him confused and said “hell if I know let me see” he handed it to me for me to examine, but since others had heard It fall we all leeched on to the task of figuring out what it was. Then from the far left Jesse, a Rican from the west side, said “ it’s a f**kin pipe” I said “what, get the f**k out here“. He said “ no look this stuff near the top is where they put the brillow pad in and hold the flame to it and this clean part in the back is where they smoke it from”. my life stopped, I took a brief reprieve from realty, because I needed to make something up quickly, I didn’t have any time to hurt, but strangely enough the gravity of what it was sunk into me instantly. My eyes were soft and defeated. Without dignity, nor refrain I said a clear as I could “ my cuz hustles so it must be from someone he hit off last night, cause he wore my coat ”. Jesse must of seen the desperation in my face because he said “ Greg c’mon we know you smoke you crack” which caused every one to laugh, the first class bell rung and I was free to fall through the clouds, and past the trees breathing fire to the world and into the sh*t whole life afforded to me by God himself. When I got home that day, I stood in the bathroom looking in the mirror. mentally, I was there naked and raw. Silently crying, quenching my thirst with tears.

The summer of 98 was by far the most humid summer I had ever lived through. The changing of the seasons in my neighborhood was marked by the increased frequency of gunshots and the glimmer from polished chrome rims giving praise to the sky. The street I lived on was partly lined by trees, one of which was near the corner; in the fall huge chestnuts would erupt and litter the streets. Since I didn’t have school During the summer months I would stay up late , I spent most of my time on the porch listening to the trees with their hungry outstretched leaves whispering through the night breeze. Tony’s father had just divorced his wife Elanor and I swear no more then a month later he moved in his new girl friend Rachel. Rachel had a daughter named Jocelyn, they were both from Ithaca new York. My brother and Tony’s dad never got along, partially because earlier in the year, me and my cousin LT stole the radio from his car, my brother being the more malevolent of the two of us automatically got the blame for it. Somehow through the bonds of marriage Rachel also shared this dislike for Mone.

The first time I got to speak, and actually have a conversation with Jocelyn I was on our porch at around ten pm. The sun had just went down and the entire street was alive with anticipation. Jocelyn had just got dropped off by one of her friends parents , as she was getting out of the car , my attention was forced around the curves of her hips and my mind took a nose dive down her calves. My excursion into what would later become a reality was snapped short by our eyes meeting each other, my attention was broken into fragments while I scanned across her face. Our introduction would have been so simple, plain, and ordinary had I not broke stare to look down the street , where I noticed Donnell squaring off with someone in the distance. Quickly, I reached behind the column of the porch to grab my ratchet, which was a little black 22, that wouldn’t scare away a dog if pointed at it. I rushed up tucked the 22 in my pants and hauled ass in the direction, not giving any thought as to who else might be out there. As I was closing in on Donnell I heard footsteps shuffle from my left side, but before I knew it, I was stumbled back in a daze. as I tried to refocus I heard four shots bang out ( clap clap clap clap) I stayed low and ducked underneath a car to see if Donell was ok, but he was out of line of site. So I’m kneeling down, pistol in hand waiting to hear sirens, but instead I hear some old lady telling me I had better run and I did just that. I ducked into her yard, hopped the gate, to the next house where I rested for a second, took off my shirt and stashed my ratchet.

while I was walking back up the street I could see that the cops were coming up from behind me , my instincts told me to run , seeing how I only had a couple more houses to go till I was home, however, my common sense told me to sit on the first porch I came to and fade away into the sea of spectators. In my experience police was always alerted to differences, so I stayed quite and listened as the brakes squealed slowing the cars down to a stop. I looked down the street and saw my Donell limping on the porch, he acknowledged me with a suddle head nod and disappeared into the house.