When I Was Hated (and underrated)

This was written the morning after the events when I got home. Ah the fun I used to have... I can only say that if I knew now what I knew then I would still be having fun and probably impress people more. The wrong people mind you but then again, there is only one I want to impress and she hates me. She would have hated me back then too. Probably slept with me but hated me all the same.

Date: September 3, 2007 at 12:07 PM

Location: "Redmonton", North of 118 avenue, west of 82 street

Mission: To boldly get wasted where no white man got wasted before

Some times mornings just start off letting you know the world is shit. So if you were to ask me how my night was all I could really say is “Great! If you like having a knife held to your throat”. Trouble is in my world that means the night was typical and the knife was real.

I hadn’t been back to the “hood” since returning from Salt Spring Island down on Canada’s West Coast. I had shown up looking like a shell-shocked veteran. My time on Edmonton’s streets in the inner city had left me dazed and tormented. The emotional and physical wasteland that had existed around me had made me weak and crippled. The homeless, the addicts, the gang-bangers and the transient hookers, not too mention the dead ones turning up by their own hand or the serial killer the cops can’t seem to catch, had worn me down. Like a fucking martyr, I had let all their pain, all their fear, all their last lingering hope attach itself to my soul and drive me over an edge than even my own breed of insanity couldn’t cope with.

I needed a vacation. So I took one. I suppose it was time to get selfish.

Salt Spring was wonderful, an Avalon so to speak. A mystik isle for a battered warrior to retreat to, lick his wounds like a beaten dog, find his bark, and return to aid and protect his master’s home. By the time I left, healed and strong, I contemplated moving there. Leaving behind all the vicious swords that had cut their way into my soul back in E-Town.

Funny now, because I always thought I was smart.

The street and its people, those denizens of darkness and the abode they call home are like a disease. An infectious virus that worms it’s way into your heart, gripping you with all it’s horrors till you gasp with your last breath. Like a vile symbiotic life form, eventually you realize that to be true to your self, you can’t survive with out it. A mitochondria of the soul.

There can never be a true escape. Say what you like, pray to your God but street life ain’t like that. Like The Eagles’ “Hotel California”, you can check out any time you like but you can never really leave.

And I thought bad acid trips were a bitch.

For those of you that are blissfully uninformed of my world, I suppose I should tell you what the inner city breeds. Open up the heart of the beast so to speak. For those of you that have lived there, in whatever city or neighborhood it was, this may all seem redundant.

Canada’s most disenfranchised, those that suffer the greatest racism and misunderstanding live there. The broken and weak, the terminal and suffering. The mentally ill and challenged. But most of all the Native Canadians - Cree, Blackfoot, Dene, Soto, and Inuit. For those of you who only know of other countries, or in the US where you still use a word like “Indian”, is it any wonder that the heartless call them Prairie, Bush or Ice Niggers? Niggers! The ill got term for those neglected worldwide.

With all that lack of love or understanding, isn’t it amazing that I, as a loud mouthed white boy, hasn’t been thrashed or threatened more often? Been sacrificed on the altar of racial loathing? The only thing lower in the public eye is a deranged, schizo-effective meth-head. It is the only circumstance where a Native is more likely to be given a job, rented a room or gain the attention of a pretty girl in the bar than a living flail machine a\wake for five days on crystal. The Shard Crazed Meth-Head, the new low for the twenty-first century.

Yup, its some world to live in. Especially for Native Shard Crazed Meth-Heads.

And as I said at the beginning, that world is shit!

My “brother from an another mother”, Jay had called me up. It was simple – come to his place. Thing is, I wanted to avoid the streets and the people of pain that come with it. I had moved out of the hood after having my home surrounded by the SWAT Team and a cop threatening to bust up all my stuff and lock my housemates and me up. Heck, me I didn’t mind, but the house wasn’t mine and my roommates don’t deserve the shit I bring down.

They already put up with me befriending hookers.

And I mean befriending. I had CDs, DVDs, a telly, players for all and a countless other things you could have got cash from at a pawn shop. And the hookers never stole any of it. Why?

Cause I never slept with any of ‘em. And that dear friend is the secret.

Once you sleep with a Sex Worker you become a Mark, a John or a Trick.

As it was I lent them socks when their feet got cold from standing on corners waiting for fools. I never got those socks back so I suppose I could claim “Hookers stole my socks!” but that is another story.

And the SWAT Team? Some cop had improperly stored his gun and as a result some thief had grabbed it as well as his night stick, bullet proof vest, pepper spray and a couple of personal hunting rifles. He got ripped off by some thief, and some crack head afterwards decided to finger my house. After staring down men in bulletproof armour and carrying M-16’s I figured it was time to leave the hood.

I moved to a new local. Away from the shit that was dragging me down and putting more stress on my already stretched nerves. Still I cared for the bros and sistas I had left behind.

That is why when Jay called me up I was down for going down. I missed the SOB and he was one of the few gangbangers I knew who was trying to go straight.

With Jay I had walked into some of the toughest crack shacks and gang cribs in the city. We once fronted crack (bought based cocaine with a promise to pay later) at a Redd Alert trap-house (sort of a place for street drug wholesalers) and immediately sold it for half what we were expected to pay them back (we never did) just so we could buy beer. When I was asked why we didn't smoke the crack or sell it for value by the various native lads surrounding myself and Jay, despite being the only white boy in the room, I told the truth.

"I need the cash quick because its my job as a white-man to make this red-skin" I answered grabbing Jay and shaking him, "drink as much fire-water as possible so I can retain all the land I stole!"

"Fuck you!" Jay spouted back, deftly saving me from repercussions of a violent sort, "Maybe I should scalp you."

"Scalping?!?" I shot back, "Another fine tradition you people stole from the white man."

This event that led to me educating a bunch of Native boys in the origins of scalping, the payments bestowed by both British and French Crowns as well as the results of testing the DNA of over ten thousand scalps held by the British Museums of blonde, red and light brown scalps. Turns out over half of them where died by Natives to disguise the fact they were taken from Natives and not Europeans so they were worth more.

I would have stuck around and told them the actual facts as given by other Natives at the time on the Iroquois Confederacy. Stuff like how the first democratic Native government before the white-man, genocided neighboring tribes or that Hiawatha was given the government concept, according to legend, by a white skinned, red headed dude (probably a viking) but a drug dealer was driving some "sex workers" downtown and we wanted a ride back to my place.

We also stole the beer the guy had in his trunk. No wonder I wanted to hang with him again.

Anyway, I showed up at Jay’s place where he lived with his uncle, Doug. As soon as I saw Doug’s sister I should have known trouble was in the works. She was hot, sexy and a goddess as only a native girl with an attitude can be. After three beers I was hitting on her relentlessly.

Worse yet, she handed me beer and was doing the same flirting game. I mean, I knew where I was. As I have said, I have been to crack shacks and gang cribs. I know when the white man should hold back. Perhaps I should have this time as well but damn! She actually wanted to talk and get to “know” me.

Then her nephew walked in.

Terry had just got out of jail, a three-month stint. Not long enough to become institutionalized but long enough to hook up more closely with the lost and pathetic souls that run those places. And trust me friends, that ain’t the guards.

The gangs control the jails and up here in Canada that means Native (Indian to you US mothefuckers). Redd Alert, Indian Posse or Warriors, even the Aryan Nations, Hells Angels and Irish or Italian Mobs bow to them behind bars. In a land that prides itself on democracy and equality, it is only where freedom is denied that the Native people have rule over their environment.

So naturally Terry came out wishing to kick white boy ass. And guess who was the only white boy in the room. Worse yet, hitting on his auntie? Gee, I couldn’t have asked for a more volatile situation. And I was thinkin’ with the dick so I wasn’t backin’ down.

Lucky me Terry wasn’t full blown “gang crazy”. He sat down and asked to talk. He was polite and calm and his aunt got up and walked away, figuring I was safe. She was wrong and I was too drunk to know better. That is when the knife came out.

I didn’t see it. To be honest I was too drunk to care. All of a sudden there was a knife pressed hard against my throat and an early twenty something kid threatening my life. To be honest I have truly been in worse situations. Of course I never handled them well either.

And that is when it happened. That is when I stared into his eyes. I don’t know if I believe in psychic powers but at that point I saw that boy’s soul and knew there was something to be saved. At that point, for reasons known only to me and the Creator, I felt no fear. At that point I decided to reach out and try and help him cool the angry hell-fire that ate at his soul.

I felt that I had a mission.

He yelled. He screamed. And all of it was with pain. I don’t remember what he asked me but I do remember my answer. “ Terry, in this room we are all pieces of shit!” Then the whirlwind happened.

Jay and Doug’s sister saw the knife to my throat and pounced on him. Terry was hauled off me like a case of beer from a passed out drunk. Quickly with no disturbance of it’s environment. I never even felt the knife leave my throat. Truth be told, I wasn’t even scratched. And friend, that knife was pressed hard!

Now this is where it gets weird. I mean I could have got up and walked away but instead I stood up for Terry. “Hey its OK,” I said, “We were getting’ somewhere.” Actually I don’t know where it was going but I knew in my heart I wasn’t looking into the soul of a killer.

The hardness, madness, hatred weren’t there yet. Sure the pain and fear were present, but live on the street or exist in the hood and friend, we all get that. He just wanted to bust a white boy’s balls. And dudes and dudettes, I was the only white boy available.

“Let him alone” I asked my nichi and his hot babe of a cousin, “We are still talkin’.” And despite the better judgement of a sane or sober person they did.

Or perhaps it was the sane decision. Creator was guiding this whole thing after all. ‘Cause friends, Terry sat right down, handed me the knife and placed it right in my fucking hand! I stared at it not knowing what to do when he grabbed my hand, clutching the knife, and placed the blade to his throat.

“Your turn.” was all he said.

I was stunned. I was a criminal. I had even pointed guns at people and looking back, I would probably have pulled the trigger. Of course that was a life time ago and now, well that moment of "now", I wanted to be and strive for something different.

Scratch that.

I wanted us all, you, me and Terry to strive to be some thing different.

I handed him back the knife. “Sorry brother, this just aint’ my trip.” He wouldn’t listen. As I tried to pull my hand away with the knife at his throat he held it there!

“No man, it’s cool!” and so I talked as long as I could to him, about pain, fear and quelling the anger we feel to an unjust world. Strange. If we would only actually talk it is amazing how much we have in common.

I wish I had a happy ending to this but I don’t.

A month or so later, Terry held up a guy at an ATM and was caught on camera. From what I heard from his dad, he looked as frightened as the guy he was robbing. Still, that don’t matter to the cops or a judge. Terry is doing some hard time now and I don’t know how salvageable he will be when he gets out.

Doug’s sis, the amazingly hot aunt? Well after that I sort of cooled off and though she wanted to hook up later, some Redd Alert gangster came over. Despite my now better judgement I treated him like shit. When they wanted to fuck behind the couch I forced him to carry the foamy mattress that was there into another room.

“Hey can you help me with this?” he asked in a strangely polite way.

“Do it yourself! What do I look like – white?” and so puzzled he left me alone.

That mourning, as the buzzing and hum of the telly woke me, I glanced over to see the local mourning show, The Big Breakfast, interviewing a hip hop/rap school. No shit!

Here was this group of people trying to teach suburban trash, privileged asshole kids how to be ghetto gangbangers. And I had just lived another thankless night of it.

The crux of the whole insanity of these money paying fools came when the host, one Bridget Ryan, asked a kid, “What is your name?”

“Chris Walker.” He replied.

“And do you have a hip hop name?” she asked.

“Yeah, I am 2-Easy-2-Cool.” And friends I lost it.

That little fuck would die if he were anywhere near the streets. Still he does have a hip hop name. So here is mine. Seeing that the real ghettos in Canada are filled with our Native people I feel I should honour them and my white heritage.

You can all call me “Land Master Pale Face Fresh Fork Tongue”.

And lets start loving each other, OK?

Take care/ Do good –

Dave Dutton-Fraser

The Most Hated Man in Edmonton.

All names have been changed but mine but mine, the various organizations and enterprises and Bridget Ryan. To members of law enforcement, sorry I once again did ;ittle to incriminate myself but you can get me for negotiating $20 for crack.