American Convict or The Great Adventures of Kalifornia Dave July 29th, 2010

I have figured out what makes me so like-able at times and hated at other times.  Before I delve into this concept I would first like to ask some questions.  Some of these questions are rhetorical, some should be answered, but either way, it helps to ask questions before writing.  Do I come off as being intimidating?  Do people think because my life is free and lived in the moment that I am always going to be a doormat?  Has my past decisions and choices doomed from society and being able to take part in the progress of society?  How often have you thought of me as many different people?  Am I forever doomed to an eternity of loneliness?  Or do I create the loneliness because it is comfortable to me?  Is it possible to survey your own life in terms of everyone else and how they live theirs?  Can hell exist in the present, as in are we living in a hell, which is why everyone goes to heaven upon death? 

I know I am reaching with some of those questions.  Some of them are really deep, and some are pretty shallow.  I have realized in the past 24 hours how much of a problem I am to others that try to build relationships with me on an intimate level.  The past year and a half has become something completely different in many ways, yet the same as it was 10 years ago.  When I first left for Hawaii, I left Chicago with high hopes thinking I was embarking on something grand for myself and my future.  At the time I was dating a woman named Connie.  I fell in love with her more quickly than any other women since Beth.  That said a lot about my mindset and emotional detachment from society over the years.  Case in point, an ex-girlfriend was talking to me yesterday and she told me I am heart-breaker, and destined for an eternity of loneliness because I refuse to let people into my head or heart.  I tried to argue that this was not true.  I said, "I have let people in, but they all died!"

Her response to this was, "Well at least you have an excuse then to fall back on!"  At first this statement didn't sink in, but after having some whiskey and beer last night and taking a very long walk through my old neighborhood, I understood what she means.  I am a selfish bastard.  A man that has gone through life taking what I want, and when I don't want it anymore moving on.  A man that lived in the moment for so long that the moments become a blurred line of past realities.  The realities have changed over the years, so have the faces, but my choices and life experiences follow a pattern of destructive behavior.  I do not do anything mean on purpose, nor do I feel that the choices I make that affect others have an ulterior motive.  At times, this is true, but most of the time, I am just looking at life through a shattered lens.  My glasses were broken time and time again by disappointing choices that others made involving me.

I was never a heart-breaker growing up.  Jason was that guy.  He was the one that scored all the ladies in our early teen-age years.  I was the nice guy that girls would say, "You are such a good friend, I don't think of you that way."  Then, of course, there were my Aunt Tracy's friends that said, "I can't go out with you because your Tracy's nephew, and that would be weird."  Yet the same girl that said that ended up dating the older brother of another friend, hence becoming a hypocrite.  So at the age of 15, I changed my persona.  I was rotten, but very nice to the ladies.  I mean I fought a lot before 15, I knew how to react to the men/boys in my circles.  The ladies, however, had me spinning like a top.  I never knew how to act, and it showed.  So the change was made over time.  I became more about me, and did what I wanted to do for as long as it was fun.  This freedom allowed me to have more and more ladies around me that liked that attitude.  They embraced it, and it showed.  After making those personal changes, I began to become an asshole to women.  I did this because I saw that the men I hung out with were assholes that got laid all the time.

This change worked for me.  The following 10 years got me laid so often and by so many beautiful women, that my theory was correct.  It is not about who you are, but whom people think you are.  I continued on that path until I fell in love with Katie Maki in 1995.  That broke bad, and I was hurt considerably, so I had to resort back to my old behaviors.  Then came my wife Karen, and we had an awesome time, but external circumstances such as her parents and a car accident forced that relationship into remission.  Then came Beth, now that was a torrid love affair.  After a few years, the love turned to hate.  We began to hurt each other through words and actions over the years until her death in 2001.  At that point, I had changed so many times that I truly didn't know who or what I was.  Add a prison sentence, and countless days behind bars, and all the violence from the streets, I was bitter and jaded.  The media didn't create the desensitization of my mind, but instead society did.  I watched people get murdered on the streets, and in prison.  I came out of prison with a very negative and bad attitude.  So when Beth died, the fog surrounded me, and I embraced it.  I became the most rotten, violent, and hard-core man.  The level had reached its high-point in 2003 as I planned the most violent crime/score of my life.  This crime would have been the death of me had it gotten off the ground.  Luckily, I got arrested and was given an opportunity to change my life back to the way it was in the late 80s and early 90s.

That journey to changing back took over 2 years.  I spent so much time in therapy, dealing with Beth dying, fixing my internal thinking mechanisms, trying to understand how to get back to living.  And I finally did find it, it was living in the moment, as I had started so long ago.  Except this time it was without drugs and alcohol and partying.  This time was very different, and it worked.  5 years later, I was an author, an actor, a radio d.j., a filmmaker, a business owner, and I had managed to get my family back into my life.  The family that turned their backs on me during my fall from Grace.  This became quite a ride, yet during those times, I still lived and met women the same way I had always had.  A lot of them fell in love with me, but I was incapable of loving anyone, I was still bitter from Beth's death and it showed.  I started hitting the weights, starting building up my body to match up with my mind.

I found and met some wonderful women.  Women I envisioned a long future with, but then things would happen.  They have all tried to change me back to that caged animal.  I am not that type of guy.  I can't live in your future.  I don't know how.  I never liked money; as was stated many times in my blogs; and I don't understand how so many people base their lives on how much money they have.  Nobody needs money to look at the forests and the fields.  Now, I am not getting on hippie trip here, I am just saying that most people forget how nice the world is and everyone gets stuck in the daily grind.  I am just as much part of this group as anyone.  Since at times I find myself chasing the dollar.  Then I wake up, like it was a bad dream.  I remember how it used to be.  This part of my life has been reinforced lately by some of the things that have happened to my father.  He lost 2 properties and a huge chunk of his 401k due to the failed housing market and economy.  Now the IRS might take his last property from him.  A man who worked since he was 14, and saved and provided the entire time.  Yet at the near end of his life, he has nothing left.  Now here I am 18 years younger than him, and I have nothing in terms of money, but I do have a ton of memories, memories of travels, and strange faces I will probably never see again.

This type of lifestyle still continues today.  I mean I live in Hawaii, and I do it with less money than people save for 10 years on a vacation there.  I might not have all the answers for anyone else, but I do have a pretty good perspective on my own life.  I don't need a lot of money to be happy.  My mom raised me to understand how to be happy, poor.  It is a way of life.  I don't feel any differently about having a million dollars versus 1 dollar.  Most of my friends and family could probably say I spent over a million dollars at this point, yet most of my friends haven't even gotten close to earning that much.  So am I a rich man because I spent that much?  Maybe, maybe not, but I am rich with the understanding that my life has been fulfilling to me.

Back to the Connie story, we broke up last March while I was in Hawaii.  Too many things had happened to her while I was away at school.  They happened so fast that she shut me out because I was 6000 miles away.  I understand it now, but back then I was pissed off by the whole experience.  After the anger passed, I started dating a girl I met in Hawaii.  That lasted for a month, but I came home to more chaos.  Johnny Law had posted a new warrant for me from a case from 1998.  So I spent last summer on the run, and in the process I cut communication with the girl in Hawaii.  It was for the best, I didn't see myself returning there, why?  Because the money wasn't available...The MONEY!

Well, I solved the legal issue, and didn't find myself locked back up.  During that process, I enrolled back at NEIU to finish up the M.A. degree I went to Hawaii for, but by the end of summer I found a way to return to Hawaii.  With the help of that girl from Hawaii, and her mother, who believed in my smarts and skills as an academic, they got me back to the island to finish the schooling I started there.  Another buddy of mine hooked me up with a room in his apartment for a cheap rent.  And there I was, back in Hawaii, living for a lot less than if I had stayed in Chicago.  Then we moved in Alex, our other roommate.  Things were smooth for a while.  I came home for the holidays, the girl that got me back out to Hawaii must have had selfish reasons to get me back there.  She said it was for my future academics that is was done, but I think the truth is I had her in love with me.  And she thought if I was close to her, then maybe we could re-connect what we had in the spring.  At first, I wasn't thinking that way.  In my mind, I had a wife and I was tired of feeling like I had two wives.  So I made it clear that the deal was I pay back the travel there by doing good in school, and paying back the travel costs.  I tried to do that, but Hawaii is expensive, even with cheap rent.

Well, after a few months of being there, her and I re-connected like she wanted.  We took a trip to Big Island around Thanksgiving, and then she went home to Europe to see her family and I came back to Chicago to see mine at Christmas.  I ended up here hanging out for a while, and then I took that trip to Boston with my Marine buddy.  We had an awesome time on that road trip, and I returned to Hawaii, to pick up where my girl and I had left off.  Things got worse between us because my living situation had changed.  Alex turned out to be quite a handful.  So I ended up feeling like I had a 23 year old child.  I was putting out money for bills, and food, and other things that were not my responsibility.  I was trying to keep things at an even keel.  Well that all fell apart when we had our prison-like brawl the day before Alex went back to South Carolina.  The cops were called, my laptop was broke, my blu-ray was broke, and I was disgusted every time I sat in my living room.

So I moved out for the last few weeks of school to my girl's house down the block.  I sold my big screen tv to Walt, and just finished out the rest of the semester with the worst grades I have gotten yet since starting my grad studies 18 months ago.  Too much had happened to me.  So I figured why not just live with my new girl when we got back to the island after the summer.  I made a pretty solid plan for the summer in Chicago.  I wanted to sell my truck, put some money in the bank, and come home to play some poker.  The living playing cards was pretty nice for a couple years in 06-08.  I mean I made enough money to pay my bills, support my play, and have spending money.  Well, I ended up selling my truck in May for less than I wanted too.  I came home short-changed from where I wanted to be.  Why?  I figured it out, because I tried to plan it.  I don't plan well, I live in the moment, and when I change that up, I end up failing.

So now, summer is almost over.  My girl and I have been fighting for weeks now over finances.  Now her parents want to stop helping her, and this in turn causes her to try and change the rules from last summer.  Last summer there were no conditions for me to live by concerning my return to Hawaii.  Yet I have realized that if I don't stay with her, then she won't return to finish her own studies.  She says she will say in Europe and crawl into a hole.  Now, my logic is why would she throw away 2 years of studies because we can't seem to get a long anymore because everything is about money now.  I didn't return a year ago under the assumption that we would be together, so why would she not return now if we went our separate ways?  It bothers me, that I would have such a negative effect on someone's future.  Not to mention, because her parents are worried I am some kind of gold-digger.  They seem to think I am with this girl because of what they own and how much money they have.  hahahaha, fuck their money.  I am tired of being manipulated by women who love me and want me to change to become their puppet in their life! 

I say fuck it all.  The original rules from last summer should apply, but they don't because her feelings are much stronger now.  I love her, and I want to be with her, but I will not give up the way I live, the way of life that is right for me to make her think life is peachy.  I get a check in September, and she bought my plane ticket in August. 
She pushed my buttons yesterday again with the money conversation.  I snapped.  I broke my desk with my fist, my family all asked me what the hell happened since they heard a very loud pounding and finally a crash when everything flew off the desktop after smashing the keyboard drawer.  My hand is all busted up, my anger has still not subsided.  So, how do I move forward from here?  What do I do?  She doesn't listen to me when I tell her I don't want to continue to have the same conversation over finances that have no solutions at the moment.  I get my check of 6,000 dollars in September, so without the money in hand, I don't see a need to discuss what I am supposed to do.

She keeps making it sound like I am her pet project, well guess what, I am not.  Any of my ex-girlfriends' that still read my blogs can post whatever comments they want.  You all know me, I do not compromise well in terms of finances or ways of life.  I wish money and time didn't exist, it creates turmoil worldwide for far too many people.  It also keeps that bourgeoisie and proletariat division in place.  This is where I feel like I am.  I feel like someone is trying to control my production, i.e. school.  So, when I fight it, I get told its either this way or no way.  Well, when my back is against the wall, I will usually take the shot to the head and say, "no way then"....I don't like ultimatums especially from women I am intimate with.  Connie tried that with my drinking and partying in Hawaii.  Nicole tried it with my poker playing.  Theresa tried it with my living situation, she wanted someone to build a castle for her.  Well, I may be chivalrous at times, but that wasn't one of those moments.  Here I am, at another crossroads.  The conversation yesterday with Amy was dead-on.  She is happy now with a man and her three kids, and here I am still running through life leaving a wake of broken hearts. 

It's not on purpose, and I am trying so hard to keep this relationship together.  I do love this woman, and I want to see her happy, content, and secure.  But what do I do when I can't make promises like that?  What happens if I make those promises and I can't keep them?  Doesn't that make me a liar?  And through all this, am I changing?  And if I am being changed by a woman, and this change is based upon money, then won't I be lying to myself over the long term?  I may not be the best man in this world, nor am I perfect, and I definitely don't have the answers about a lot of relationship questions, but I have done extensive therapy, and I do know what works for me.  Otherwise, if I go insane, which some of you have seen, is not good for me, society, you, anyone.  If I reach the point of insanity again, I don't think I will return this time.  I was able to come back from a point that most people have died at, yet I still stand here after Chief, Armando, Jason, Greg, Yost, Beth, Lewandowski, Mike, Paul, and the list goes on and on, that never made it back from that edge. 

I will continue to live, and I will finish my studies in Hawaii regardless of what choices are made in the next few weeks between me and my girl.  I am hoping for the best, but I am also expecting the worst.  I do love her, and at this point, I still want to be with her, but not her money or parents, just her!  I don't know if this is possible.  We were going to live together this next semester too.  I really don't know if I will be buying another ticket and sleeping on the beach, or whether we are going to move forward past this stalemate...With every question I get answered, 100 more are asked.  The questions increase so much that I getting overwhelmed with what I am supposed to do.  So for the moment I am just taking it very easy, breathing, and thinking and analyzing my life for the moment.  I am not speechless obviously, but definitely confused on the direction I should be heading right now...Thanks for listening, so is this American Convict (my autobiography) or The Great Adventures of Kalifornia Dave (the other autobiography)?  You decide!

Later
Kenny