Hi. Its just Nash.I am yer run of the mill transguy that is certainly not proud of the bodies he left in his wake in his non stop pursuit of the unattainable,  that promised "super-hi-me" that rarely, if ever lived up to its trumped up efficacy, and more or less generally fell between the level of mediocre and short lived.  Currently its all I can do to attempt to maintain my slow forward progress on my rocky path of recovery from the sometimes unnoticed seedy underworld that consists mainly of the unscrupulous wheelers and dealers hell bent on acting out the staring role in their own personal dope show. Most of the players initiate their criminal pursuits in an all consuming passion play that is their never ending pursuit headed down the pathway where the acquisition of dope and dope money is know on the streets as the dope game.

    Personally, I was slowly indoctrinated shortly upon my release from my first long stint in the good ole MCJ.  For the uninitiated, this succinct acronym stands for my home away from home and unfortunately sometimes just my home, the Madison County jail. Shortly following my release, with a wad full of the useful phone numbers of my many new criminal associates and a head full of new, ingenious and useful, albeit illegal ways to make a quick dollar I set off on my new exciting career path to destruction. I was a quick study and rapidly assimilated the skill set of how to properly sneak around behind bushes evading the police, that were apparently everywhere you wanted to be, the ethics of the deal, and the art of getting retail stores to pay you to shop.  By the time I left that fateful October in 2016 I had already been in the dope game for a hot minute. My DOC (drug of choice) was crack back then and with the black dealers I had the pleasure to associate with, did not invite me on the ride where all the action apparently took place. My vehicle was my one way ticket to high.  I always had my ride and used her every way a car could be used to acquire the elixir of my life.. That is until my much more recent ill fated endeavors. Ruth, my right hand man and means to all favorable ends was my life, and thru her all things were possible.  It wasn't me my associates were calling upon to save the day, it was her. The ticket to their continuously sought after drug money.

     My grifts started by people utilizing my transportation services for all the evasive drug seeking you could imagine. I quickly became accustomed to being the one guy in the group that somehow managed to retain both his ride and the ubiquitous modern communication device know as the cellular telephone, These marvels of modern technology only managed to remain within his grasp not due to his superior intellect or some magical resourcefulness he got from the ether but simply because of the one of the great coincedences of life that he apparently won the winning ticket in some former life and lucked into the continually present fall back plan know as mom and dad, his once generous benefactors. I'm afraid that's Ruth's days as our 24/7 money maker in our endless stream of increasingly riskier criminal endeavors may have been met with an untimely end . She was last seen at the South Parkway Walmart on August 25th at approximately 1 pm Central. I almost made it to her loving embrace. She was in my sights when my constant nemisis, the LP guy, made his move and abated my forward momentum in my drug seeking agenda. I was in the process of signing my rights away to my constant companion for a measly gram of dope. I couldn't handle her very real needs.I could barely handle my own needs rarely eating, sleeping, or even bathing. I was too preoccupied spending my meager earnings on that next score rather than on her much needed car repairs.  I never did listen well.  My once mentor of the streets, Miranda, was always reiterating the need to take care of business before pleasure.
   
     Days started early because we had to utilize our "creative price negotiation techniques" to make the dough for the room every day by 11. There wasn't enough time in the day to ever get ahead. The idea of paying for a room a week in advance wasn't even given a single thought because of its absolute unattainability. Tick, tock...tick, tock was the constant tune playing in the background of my mind. The ever present sound of the clock urging me ever onward to my next grift, my next lick, my next score. I always characterized Miranda as my handler, the ringleader, the protector of the flock, and my own personal subculture anti-hero who was always making sure the bills got paid and all our ducks were in a row. Previously, I'd been in a few battles of my own but was never privy to the larger war that was taking place in the greater world until our fearless leader stepped forward to do what she did best. The continuation of the slow, total immersion program for my indoctrination to the merry world of the street level drug trade.
 
     We never stopped. Our off hour pursuits included rummaging through dumpsters for free bounty and playing escape and evade the real and/or imaginary police. We had this ongoing game of "spot the undercover cop." This task was diligently pursued and it was our job as members of our tiny band of misfits to come up with lists to properly track identifiable characteristics of undercover vehicles and the subtle body language demonstrated by their drivers while trying our best not to stick out and fly beneath their radar. It was a constant cat and mouse game we were determined to play.  On the streets, even the people who espouse to protect you and have your back may really just be protecting the bounty for themselves so they can take what they want first.  My main crew consisted of  mostly symbiotic relationships even though some of their peculiar behaviors confused and baffled me. I'm a born follower and Miranda showed me the way through many a dark night to the reward at the end of the day when she finally took that rig I'd been dreaming of in her hands and finally plunged my reward deep into the veins under the skin of my arm and let me fly.

     Back in those days, before the paranoia got real bad, we were all flying as high and as much as humanely possible. She was the Batman to my Robin, I the faithful wing-man, standing by patiently as she silently yet swiftly worked her way through all the eligible bachelors of that small country town that were players themselves. The myriad of men she would find herself temporarily betrothed to managed to somehow put up with my near constant presnece adjacent to their relationship while trying to appear non-intrusive as thevvarious let me burrow into a long disused side rooms or allow me to wedge wherever they could squeeze me in. I took for granite all that male hospitality till there was no one left with housing in town.  So we did what we always did. We packed up and moved on. The most recent Mr. Right rode with us full tilt and didn't have a home base to provide for our merry band.  This was when it became our daily need to quickly, yet stealthily aquire the funds by any means necessary to attain one of our rotating cheap hotel roofs to lodge for the evening. Then I didn't even think to question the reasoning behind this singular decision to waste money on a room I was only going to immediately egress from as soon as I fulfilled my daily goal of getting the best hit the unsuspecting customers of your nearest mega mart got to inadvertently subsidize. I didn't waste a mnute being stationary while money was out there to be had for the taking. You're always in demand when you have something they want.  In retrospect. I kind of wonder why I even botherd to pay for half a room a night I would only briefly dare enter for the benefit of a private place to collect my heartily hustled for reward. This was when I would run Ruth around 24/7, making my moves around the clock while periodically running the opposing teams around in our own Amazing Race for drugs and other prizes.  When I left my home team, I would immediately get on the line, put out a good old fashioned PSA that I was available for business, and offer my services to the highest bidder. The winners were of course the ones promising the most dope, for the least amount of effort, in the most minimal time span. You know what they say, "Time is money," and we all lived by this mantra while speeding around 3 adjacent counties playing our similar games,, and making the plays of the one with the loudest voice. We ran several different routes from our 3 am "shopping" trips to huddling up in non electrified shacks smoking dope way out past the middle of nowhere and back again. The way we tore up those roads all over North Alabama it was actually amazing we didn't run into the long arm of the law more often than we actually did
.
     Recently having been released from girl, jail I meander over to the computer and peer down at the previous years mug shots where I have wild eyes and am marinating in my own profuse sweat, I find it odd these photographic renderings make me remember the good ole days when I was really good at getting strung out. I didn't realize what a "successfull" drug fiend I was till I saw the proof written all over my face. However the good times can't last forever as we all rotate thru jail on the reg to do our time for the crimes they actually caught us perpetrating.

     The stem weaned me off my first true love, the bottle while my crack habit eventually morphed into a different animal all together, I realized,my drug use had escalated to the point of a very regular needle habit when the paranoia got the best of me, I didn't even realize it at the time that the subtle whispering voices in my head dictating rubbish to my weary mind were not the scheme of some sadistic dope boy trying to make me look crazy in front of every cop in town, but were truly emanating forth from my own disturbed psyche. I was convinced "they" were trying me to look crazy to the  many police officers we encountered on our various escapades around town. At some point I had to come to the foregone conclusion that I myself was the one bringing my crazy to display on Front st., on display to every cop in sight. There is nothing much comparable to that unique rush after a long day battling the evil corporations for our share of their profit. And for our meager, illegal momentary release from the many hardships of this life, a price had to be paid, Sure, I got my high, but I also got the privilege of living in a constant state of fear where possible captors could be lurking behind any otherwise benevolent street corner waiting for any one of us to be just ever so slightly off our game so they cart us all away to the nearest friendly neighborhood correctional facility. But the worse thing that is likely to occur at the end of these fairly plausible scenarios, is the fact that that next hit will be a long time coming after many sleeplesss nights behind think walls of concrete and glass, and after some enlightening conversations about our own personal depravity in front of a jury of our peers. But hey look at the bright side, Its a sure bet that I will know the majority of people that had previously received their free ride downtown.
   
     Unfortunately, I am not adequately qualified to determine if the particular experiences I insisted upon putting myself through were typical of others that a live "the life". Hopefully I am able to remain an itinerant player that was fortunately not born into this exhilarating, yet inherently dangerous lifestyle whose fathers and cousins managed to pass down over the generations as their offspring were veered onto the identical life path of forever chasing that high.

     I lost everything, including my dignity and self respect. This last time put the nail in the coffin of my inhospitable life. While I was out scoring my responsibilities were abnegated to the point that this last time in jail my once plentiful possessions had been wheedled to the single bag I toted on my back. My house got sold, my back account raped by my opportunistic "friends",and even my dog was given away, and my dear Ruth is still missing in action.  So I barely got invited to spend my days on my sisters couch recounting the good old days when the dope was strong, the car was fast, and I was working on my downward spiral leaving me a virtual ward of the state wondering where I even fit into the world anymore.  I tried to rejoin the human race only to find I had been voted off the island by the powers that be because of my misdeeds and my hedonistic pursuit of my #1 goal of getting so fucked up I didn't even know myself what I was talking about anymore. Jail Saved me. It always does. Either when you are at the top of your game or barely skating by. They pluck you out of the muck and sit you down. I get the privilege of doing "normal", eating, sleeping, and even walking for recreation. A forced break. The life they saved may have been my own. I never got driving off a bridge in a high speed chase, or broke the rules letting the rig get out of my sight where other drug seekers filled the hypodermic with whatever they choose depending on what side of their ever changing mood you found yourself on at that moment.  Many of my comrades in arms got out, did their "super-hi me" shot and never came back. Others went down to the big house down south where they are given the constant supervision they so obviously need in their lives and protect the innocent from their deceptive tactics to separate you from your wages so they can get the much needed respite from their hectic lives on the constant pursuit of the unattainable. I always sought that perfect moment with the perfect shot and the perfect lay where the euphoria ran rampant through my pulsing veins to the pleasure center of my brain. Then there are the other 2 hours a day where you get to stay on the path to that perfect attainment where it first hits you in the throat, then the base of your feet, makes it way to the palms of your hands, and finally to your special purpose. But these feelings are temporary and you still wake up on the same cold concrete floor being crossed by the local wildlife or sharing a love seat with 2 dogs who were obviously there first. I have a hard time periodically looking at my life and having to find some peace with the mundane where the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day and sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do, force yourself to get up in the morning and try to find some less recless meaning to the quotidian nature of life. Scrubbing floors, and not driving yourself insane without the presence of or the constant pursuit of endorphin's surging to the point of enevitable exhaustion where you'r body forces you to take a step back andsleep weather you want to or not. At least today I don't have to fear waking up because I will be lucky enough to be in the same place tomorrow as I was today,  The mundane may be painful to work through during silent moments that I lived so long without. I simply must learn to temper my megalomaniacal self-effacing grandiosity, take responsibility for my own life for once and learn to cherish those quiet moments at the end of the line.  Life wasn't designed to be lived in 24 hour increments till you end up iin the hospital or the gutter.  I d have to look over the fact that dad wont even let me know where he lives, and I get uninvited to support groups and even Thanksgiving for my long string of conduct unbecoming of a member of the human race.
     My only next move is to try and slowly reintegrate myself into polite society.  I have the feeling that after my self induced bent on destruction I can't blame people for trying to stay out of my way.  The jury's still out weather I can sit myself down, and make a feeble attempt at doing "normal". I may not make it, I still here the sirens lure to run over as many people as are in my way in the endless pursuit of that unattainable moment when the juices are flowing and the pheromones are pumping out at an abnormally high level. At least I know that they will always be out their waiting with the open arms of their society of misfits. I often feel like this balls to the wall lifestyle is out there dancing to the beat of their own drummer, participating in the life I was an ever present player in. But the games are always the same it's just the day that changes. I will just have to live out my macabe fantasy in my minds eye rending a pretty accurate picture of what "my people" are out there doing right now without me.  I know there is intelligent life in the universe and I just have to cross my fingers that when I find my people I haven't gone to far to rejoin society. I've been running so long at this point I don't have the energy for the pursuit. At least I can say I made it through alive and thankfully in one peace. Some are not so lucky and thier bodies are discovered in 3rd rate hotels with the needle still inserted into their veins with no one out there searching or their missing loved one because their loved one was lost way before the final note in the interim between being a recreational user and a very real self imposed madness.  In any town across this country, if you look hard enough you will find the players, the dope boys, and the working girls out there hustling for dear life. You may say it could never happen to you but you don't know til you try now do you. Or you can enjoy the thrill of the chase from the safety of your own couch and live vicariously through these lessons I insisted on discovering with my own two downward turned eyes and you can retain your dignity and self-respect. If you don't believe me, they are out there, waiting to rid you of your hard earned dollars to perpetuate the cycle ad infinitum until they are living shells of their former self. A slave to the game in their cold invisible chains that may always beckon me back to the excitement of the perpetual near death experience. I can safey say I have stared death squarely in the face and I don't want to look back.  Good luck with whatever path you choose . I'll cross my fingers that you too may live to tell about your experience flying high and running wild.  God Speed