Death May Be Closer In Your Mirror Than It Appears

Well, there is some of the the Vice Lord symbols -- top hat, a symbol of shelter. Cane is for the staff of strength like some ghetto Moses parting the RED sea. (Get it, we wear red?) Playboy Bunny because Vice Lords are players and it's ears for a "V."  Wine glass is celebration. Five point star's points are...Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom and Justice.  See-- nice emotional words to cover up the violent platitudes that are surrounding those words of vigor.

Same reason all the projects in the world have nice balmy names -- Sunny Side, Cabrini Greens, Pine-Crest.  Nobody would want to live in a project called Your Mom's on Crack -- Or Drive-By Lanes, or There's a Body in the Dumpster Heights... we need to hide our vices in robust words that stand for valiant affairs for peaceful lies.

DEAD TO THE WORLD

The funny thing about near-death experiences is they're not funny. Death has no permanent residence. But he does prefer to vacation in some places more than others -- Syria is a favored vacation spot for the grim reaper. One thing you can count on is he'll be at the last place you put your feet for their last step. He's quicker than email when it's your time to clock-out on Earth.

DISCLAIMER: Language because that's what I felt at the time it was happening.

My first near-death experience goes a little something like this... hit it!

I started my little gang and even created about 50 pages of literature, because every upstanding gang that is a valuable asset to society's decadence needs literature to instruct their foot-soldiers in their criminal conduct. I ran around declaring a gang that no one's ever heard of and it attracted members - because most wanted the prestige of being in a gang.  Only one problem, I attracted every nerd this side of the Mexican border. Within a month I had created the largest weenie machine outside of an electronic diaper convention for pedophiles one could imagine.

They came far and wide to join the ranks of a gang that absolutely knew nothing about being in a gang. But I was chief and that was that. Until I claimed we were under the 6-point star and the Folks banner. Which attracted real gangbangers to quickly punch holes in my phony gang. The force was not with us and my members couldn't even fight with a plastic light sabers in a plastic bag.

The first wave of G.D's showed up in small numbers of about 30 and decided they were going to beat my Uncle up as he was collecting mail - but he had stupid smarts and challenged them all.  It was probably the PCP talking. But nothing came of that; they seceded to his bluff.

So guess who gets lined up to shut me and my weenie machine down? More wannabees just like me. The first time they showed up they did what any professional hitman would have done, called the phone and threatened me that they were coming over.  I segued to the protection of my brother. What does he do? He answers they door to three bare chested dudes ready to rumble and yells, "It's for you!"   My brother's a douche. The whole purpose of having him answer the door was to look like I had some badass beefcake brother that would rumble in the jungle with me. Nope. He opened the gate and fed me whole to the lions.

So I stashed a blade, came out making sure they saw the knife. They breathed some threats out of their sewer lids. My reply was that I'd cut the first one on the porch. That kept them at bay.  My dork turf consisted of four weenies that lived in the neighborhood. I thought five made a good number. But if you put us five together, we were like that cartoon robot -- we formed one giant Poindextor -- or maybe a mad Urkel after he's had a wedgie, or an all paid cruise with his head in the toilet bowl.

As luck would have it -- few days later one of the wiener's showed up saying the leader of the wannabe G.D.'s had conveniently come clear across town to play basketball at 10:30 at night. Wow! What an unlikely coincidence that this couldn't possibly be a setup? What luck I had? Awesome! Time to toast the turd.  And the crap head that relayed this information just happened to go to the same school as this leader. Couldn't be a setup, no never.  I wasn't one to back down in the face of adversity -- so I grabbed a shadow blade and collected two more members of my Urkel squad and headed down to the park to make a batch of Cool-Whip out of this clown's face.

On the way to the park, Crap Stain asked if he could see my blade. I gave it to him. I figured he could hold onto it -- I had Dumb and Dumber for backup, probably wouldn't need it. When you have matchsticks for arms like I did, I had to swing first. I got this. It all happened so fast, I never thought about asking for the knife back, nor would he have gave it back.

First ninja observation  -- the dude was by himself. Who plays a game of basketball by themselves in a neighborhood clear across town? That data seemed to be a fleeting rain drop off a windshield. I was set on ass whoop mode.

I get down there and wannabe leader steps out saying, "What's up now, bitch?!" To four people?

I advanced to attack and suddenly noticed -- I was alone. The three bad breath bandits with me were gone out of sight. But two more shadows came running barreling at me full bore. I turned around to see a glimmer of something -- then time began to crawl. Something metal and shiny was in full swing to my face. Trademarked Louisville Slugger. I could even see the grass stains painting a picturesque landscape picture on the metal.  I was about to be jumped -- and I had a metal bat about to play ball with my head.


IMPACT COLLIDED... my size. This ogre's size. The equation was momentum times two to move an object my size was overkill. I couldn't count how many rotations my body made before finally landing on the ground face down. Feet. Fists. And rage rained down from above. I was beat before I even hit the ground. Then, my head was lifted up as more blows came from the side. The main guy doing the beating was a big guy on the football team.  I couldn't count how many times the right side was hit. It was somewhere in the range of infinity. I used to fight a lot in St. Louis. I saw the principle more than I saw my home room teacher, but there's was nothing left to fight. I was beat first blow.

Finally, numb and dumb, I grabbed onto the grass knowing I had to get away from me being a punching bag because he wasn't stopping. With all I had, I pulled up with the grass and ran. I made it across the street. Vision was blurred by blood. I got hit with the park trash can the minute I got into the neighbor's yard from the park. I went down. And someone was watching too many gangsta movies to hit me with the damn trashcan.

Truck of muscles continued to rain down on me. By this time, there was nothing left. My head just went right, left, right, left....  All I could do was nothing but watch my own ass whopping. Someone yelled, "I think he's dead!" Thank God! I'm dead. They can stop the beating now.  I was wondering when death was going to show up.

Car screeched up. Doors opened and closed. And I laid there staring at the stars wishing one would fall on that car leaving in a hurry.

Then the two faces of Dumb and Dumber looked down on me. These two did have superpowers after all. They could disappear in the blink of an eye.  Crap Stain was gone verifying he set me up with them. Then, one of the rubes said the dumbest thing -- well, they were dumb, but they said, "Are you alright?"

Great! Just great! Someone Babe Ruthed my melon, then a guy three times my size beat on me for a few minutes and had a heat-seeking trashcan nail me  -- I'm fuckin' fantastic!!! Let's go buy dinner. Idiots.  What a bunch of clowns without a traveling circus!?!

That's when I noticed I could only talk outside the left side of my mouth. Body wasn't responding. And my right eye was black.

Oh, you haven't heard nothing yet. The next two days would literally bring hell to my doorstep, freak the doctors out, and make my brother a Buddhist. Well, he was a pacifist already when it came to backing me up.  I was as close to the living dead as you could imagine.

Next blog -- Donald Trump and his toupee. No. The Near Death Experience Continues...

The Other World Beneath Ours

GANGS ARE A SUBCULTURE

They have their own laws of the jungle in forms called literature.  They have their own police force called enforcers. They have their own underground pharmacies. Own banks. Gun stores. They have their own vernacular and code book. They have the old cats who bestow gang-wisdom down on the youth.

They also have their own hypocrisy and intense levels of violence. Gang violence whether to other gangs or laid down on innocents, altogether incorporates 75% of all violence in America.  Why would anyone in their right mind want to join a gang?  Well, I'm not in my right mind by clinical standards -- I'm in my left mind.

WANNA-BE

There was a prestige to gangs in smaller town and cities that wasn't enamored in Chicago.  Since about 30% of the West Side of Chicago is gang-affiliated, there's too many chefs in the kitchen for them to be important. Go to a smaller city down state -- you go from a small fish in a big pond to a big fish in a small pond. And any gang-member, even if kicked out of the hood for smoking crack, we're all the sudden legends in the smaller cities. Legends that smoked crack, but still legends. Didn't matter, they were from Chicago where the main gangs were founded from Latin Kings... to the rest down below...

Movies like Colors and Boyz-N-The-Hood came out. Sensationalism cologne spraying began, and the scent traveled downstate like a French whore parade. Movies made them cool.

LA riots showed the world the colorful side of LA gangs.  The red-headed stepchild that many cities tried to keep in the basements were coming out -- gangs became popular. And every crestfallen kid from life like me, wanted a piece of honor in a despicable way. Dishonor among thieves.

We look up to older brothers -- because they're first to experience things before we are. Such as when my brother stated a vagina had three holes and if I missed the right one, I was screwed.  This Rubix cube woman maze he falsely laid upon me probably kept me away from women more than I should have been. If trying to find the right hole was a crap shoot -- I didn't want to gamble my pride and embarrassment if I came up with the wrong one. My brother made it sound like they could die if you missed. He was an armchair vagina specialist and hadn't even hit second base. But when you're young, you're gullible.

What's a wanna-be? -- someone that is beneath the stain stuck to a well-used toilet. It's someone who wants to be in a gang.

By the time I moved in with my aunt:  My self-esteem, self-worth, and ego was shattered to the point I was a walking broken mirror, reflecting my angst back at everyone who did have self-worth, confidence -- and those people the chicks bowed down to. I guess they could find the hole. Bastards.

In St. Louis I was raised around Blood and Crips.

In Illinois there were...

G.D.'s and V.L's

This unnerved me that the gangs in Illinois were using acronyms and not full names. Blood and Crip graffiti would take an calligrapher expert to decipher -- G.D.s and V.L's liked symbols and needed a hieroglyphics expert to tell you what the hell you were looking at.

G.D.'s were Gangster Disciples under the six point star of David. They wore black and blue.  Their mortal rivals were the Vice Lords, and they were under the five point star. They wore black and red. Universally they had a rainbow of different colors in different branches on both sides.

I'll go more into the history in a later blog. But basically they have been fighting each other for almost fifty years.  They weren't tap dancing and using trashcans to sing a tune like the West Side Story -- they were singing with the sounds the little grim reapers(bullets) made.

Me, I wanted to choose the most popular side. One problem, I was as skinny as a string of dental floss and could offer neither warring faction any prolific quality but my big mouth. And the streets were a silent form of warfare -- big mouths weren't a commodity.

So I attended some rumple in nice clothes middle-school and the G.D.'s had brothers attending there. They were the most popular. They wore the Starter jersey's that had the ladies drooling over them. They owned the school -- just by being the brothers of G.D.'s.  Vice Lords had no influence there. They were talked about as the welfare gang with the dumpy members. Out-numbered. Loathed. At this school the Vice Lords were considered non-existent and only tantamount to janitors in street cred.

So I decided I wanted to join the G.D's

One big colossal problem. I didn't know any G.D's, nor was popular enough to their brothers. And I didn't wear Starter Jerseys. I was poor and wore the 20.00 dollar Sears knock-off jerseys. Actually I did eventually wear them -- when they went out of style and on wholesale.

My brother even had hubris for knowing a G.D. at the buffet he worked at. The scorn of my mother's loins had more clout than I did. My stinkin' brother!!!???  I had to do something... and fast.  So the first thing I needed to do was buy a bunch of gangsta rap tapes and memorize them like school texts. Done. Did it. And I was still puny. Okay, that didn't work. Next step...

If you can't beat them -- make a gang up under the 6-point star and declare myself a leader...

Sounds good. WELL, IT ALMOST COST ME MY LIFE...

On that cliff-hanger...next up, tea at Martha Stewart's...wrong cliff hanger --  Next up... the beating that let me see hell. And after all these years... hell still doesn't have an ice machine....

READY FOR MY CORPSE-UP

THE BEGINNING OF A FABULOUS DEATH

Corpses like stars get close-ups.  A true cyclical turbine that comes back around -- those being prepared for a funeral are as elegantly done up and fake as those prepared in the makeup chairs of Hollywood to play a fake part.

They both are not entirely different, you see. In Hollywood you're always as good as the last thing you did -- or at least that's what they say. I see a few writers and directors churning out more turds than a fiesta of 400 pound fat people at a free buffet.

On the streets, it's the same thing. Stories of ghetto super-stars are constantly circulated. In fact, it's the best kind of story when you're getting hammered on the stoop waiting for the next car load of bullets to be fired at you. Externally the bullets will harm, internally the malt liquor will rot your gut, which death is faster is the question.

I'M THE MAN SYNDROME... GANG PSYCHOLOGY

Here's a philosophy I percolated in my brain brewery for some time. Like a good film, you need motivations for your characters -- what is the motivation for getting in a gang?

1)Your mom mixed your bottle with gun powder when you're a kid and now you you have a proclivity to be attracted to any type of firearm and a wanton death to die by same.

2)You're in a neighborhood that basically leaves you no choice -- Chicago, New York, and LA are like Baghdad in the summertime. It was a join or die attitude.

3)You had the criminal gene and riding solo you sucked at being a criminal and couldn't even properly steal from the milkman, so a more organized criminal network would give you a broader horizon to commit crimes.

4)Life tossed you too many lemons and you needed to belong to something bigger than yourself and a gang provided you the biggest lemon squeezing machine available.

5)And my personally favorite -- you want to be the man.

Mafia life glamorized this on the silver screen. This is how crime and Hollywood are inexplicably married to wanting to have it all -- fame or infamy, fortunes, girls, street cred, drugs -- and having access to everything under the sun. Street people have access to Gang-Mart.

Mobsters were the talk of the town. People idolized them like movie stars. They had the jewelry. They had the girls. The had the names that people feared. Gangs wanted this but in a smaller income bracket -- but it was all about being the man. Someone that could get anything, from anywhere, at anytime.

She want your mom beat up from swatting you with the broom too many times? Call Tony. T -- he'll smack mom around a bit, knock the curlers out her hair.

Creating fear.

You want blow? You want friends to show up at a party so everyone doesn't think you're the loner loser whispered about in the high-school hallways...? Gangs come in multiple flavors and sizes and give you instant friends when you join.

You can dry clean your way to a fancy business, but usually a business owner doesn't carry the name a gangster does. I'll prove it -- how many people are afraid of Bill Gates? If they were they wouldn't have thrown pies in his face.

I'm the man states, you have few moral boundaries and that makes you instinctual deadly like an animal. You have the power to take lives because you live under a different code that restrains Joe Blow from knocking someone off. And some gangsters don't kill -- but they know the ones that do. And that fear right there keeps people from stepping on your toes.

But that's really a fallacy as well. Because more people want to kill rival gangsters and gang-bangers then most people who punch the time-card. Unless you're in Syria. That's a illusory correlation. Although those that punch the time card a work everyday are the ones gangbangers declare open robbing season on. You earn it, we'll take it.

Hollywood made gangsters glamorous.  Chew on that one, Fergie.

I wanted to belong and I wanted to be the man that everyone could come to get anything except Bibles from. Didn't sell bibles. Want guns? Got it. Want drugs. Got it. Want Saturday night hookers? I can arrange that.  Need Grandpa to knocked off his stroller -- I drew the line there.

But I was the guy that could come in a bar or club and get instant seating. The guy everyone sneered at when I made the papers, but let them get in a bind -- and you're the first they'll rub shoulders with. And tell their friends -- I know Brandon Wyse. Pull out their phone in front of their fling and call me about some stupid shit. Same person gets around a cop -- I'm the splat from a bird's ass on the windshield when my name comes up.

I was an honest criminal. I didn't believe in hurting no one that didn't have it coming.

NEXT BLOG -- Welcome to the warzone -- G.D'S AND VICE LORDS -- mortal enemies.

And for an intermission... It seemed to make news when I wanted to go straight. For your viewing displeasure... ME, MOI, AND I.

Former Gang Leader Looks to Write His Way to Hollywood

From Gangs to Screenwriting

Every day is just a measure of how we bide our time until death...

Who cares about gangs anymore? They're stupid? Retarded? Dying over colors that come from dyes in a plant?  But the big gangs did start on a more level playing field and actually fed a need to uplift impoverished communities.  This story is about their camaraderie, fraternity, and out in depth this gang really was before it went spiraling out of control.

This story isn't about stealing cars, shooting rivals, or ripping off old lady's purses. This story is what it meant to belong to something that meant something before it didn't mean anything.  The psychology of belonging... it's the rise and fall of one of Chicago's oldest and most violent gangs -- from someone that lived through it as it began to become a towering inferno late in the game. You're not going to get the bling-bling glamorous trip down rotted memory lane of girls, money, and elephant-sized ignorant stupidity of killing over a pair of funky stinky-foot Nikes -- you'll get the truth.

DISCLAIMER: Names and dates have been changed to protect the guilty.

Gangs weren't just about set-tripping back in the day -- they were a brotherhood forged in blood and steel. A Bismark unification of scattered and disorganized city streets. The story  all told through the eyes of someone that had a very high I.Q. that wound up in the wrong place at the right time -- just as Chicago gangs were going from bad to worse. Don't believe that -- watch the murder count rising in the last three years and I'll show you how it's going to get worse and the first fuse lit that caused what's happening today that began 20 years ago.

This is about a white boy that become the leader of a city for a black gang. At a young age. I thought of myself more as a street psychologist than a menace to any enemy that crossed the block.  This is about the physiology and psychology of the criminal mentality. Not from some doctor looking from the outside inside, from someone on the inside trying to get out. You won't read another gang story quite like this I promise you.

We can choose to do things to uplift ourselves and those around us, or we can find a detriment to society's social norms which are constantly in a state of flux.

No one chooses this course knowingly if external factors and environment have anything to say about.

My name is Brandon Wyse and I took the less traveled path for a white kid who's mother lived in poverty and father lived in riches. This should have been my first clue that I was forever going to be chained to being bi-polar. There would be no middle-ground in my life. No happy medium to the rescue. I was going to be balls to the wall aggressive -- or passive as a little lamb -- but I would not be passive-aggressive at the same time.

I didn't choose gangs, they found me like Jesus at an over-convoluted Jerusalem bazaar. My mother had a Rolodex of mental illnesses she graciously passed the lesser evils onto me. She was wild, unpredictable, fighting knock-down drag outs with her demons and everyone around her.

My mother Violet committed suicide when I was 9.  

I had one brother who had all the proclivities to grow up and be a serial killer. He would have been an All-Star on Mengele's basketball team.  He experimented on emotions like a pre-teen chemistry set. If he could make you cry, angry, hate, feel pain -- he was having a good day. 

I was skinny by all standards, so I had to use my brain to stay alive where weight meant a guerrilla mentality you had to throw around.  When I was a kid, cracks in the sidewalks were health hazards because of my size. But I saw myself as someone bigger. He didn't. And he got away with it despite those meddling Scooby Doo kids until I joined a gang.. Then I got so tough I would beat my brother's ass with toothpicks -- that was a damn lie straight from hell. He'd punch me and I ran, not to dad -- he died of cancer in 1990. I ran straight to the telephone and called some pipe hittin ass gangbangers to come ratchet him down a few notches.

He had a hard head. One time didn't work. Two times wasn't a charm. But the third Ph.D (pumpkin head deluxe) was enough to stop him from ordering from McBrandon's fuck-you-up-menu. 

So how did this whole scenario start in the first place since I'm getting way ahead of myself? It's called fitting in. When both of your parents are extricated from the planet, it leaves you with a little disorder called abandonment.  You start to see the world as more concave and evil than straight and innocent. You begin to feel no one loves you and if no one loves you, you become less and less caring about other people's feelings. Since you can't control the circumstances of loved ones leaving you, you look for circumstances you can control and manipulate, creating your own homeostasis, equalized environment.

Love is one of those abstract concepts very few understand without conditions -- but fear, now there's one that has its own controlling element. You can love someone until your blue in the face, but if they do enough series of shit to disown that love, like a spouse cheating too many times, a drunkard becoming abusive too many times; that bed of lissome love will turn into a pit of fire with rattlers for feelings, willing to bite you at every turn.

So this is the beginning of a blog, or a course on street psychology...

FAST FORWARD...

I controlled a whole city by the age of 17 and rained terror at street corners and bullets from lampposts... and all I got was a shitty T-shirt saying "I was screwed,"  and ten years in the state pen for all my efforts to harness my own reality because normalcy didn't want me.

Now I'm in LA putting up with bigger liars than a two-ton fat mack perched on the side of his gold-trimmed Cadillac -- no matter time, no place -- hustlers exist in every walk of life. It's just finding out what their hustle is. 

Next blog -- THE BEGINNING... Time to take a trip down memory lane with packed bags...