ENTER THE VICE LORD GANG

WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS...

Step right up, come one, come tall. I had a buddy in the neighborhood that wasn't a part of the nerd mob I abandoned. He was 6'4, and looked like Opie on organically grown steroids. After the beating, I needed new friends -- Big Red was it.  He would steal his mom and dad's van -- which looked like a toaster oven on wheels, and that was the trouble mobile until he wrecked it a week later -- I wasn't there but it probably popped him out the top like a burnt piece of bread when he crashed.

Terrorizing the neighbors... Most the neighborhood I felt abandoned me. So we started launching bottle rockets down a pole, aim the pole, and we had a mortar. We even hit one neighbor that looked like Ned Flanders right through his cracked window as he drove by.

My Aunt was quickly becoming persona non-grata to the local neighborhood association, which they never invited her to anyway.  They even took our house off the neighborhood watch list and probably invited burglars to do a home invasion hoping I'd get whacked in the process.


And the end of the day -- I HAD BECOME VIOLENT

 I started whacking kids with nunchucks -- pulverizing closet doors to strengthen my knuckles. Stabbed my brother with a sword. It was all theatrics. He advanced when I had it pointed at him. It was a small cut and he played the Oscars in front of my Aunt rolling around on the floor like the Night Stalker just cut him up with Freddy Kruger's claws.

I had enough. Blood for blood. Vengeance over forgiveness. Two eyes for an eye. I took martial arts. I was planning to go to Tennessee when I was 18 and join the Nine Gates of the Shadow Ninja Society that had a black-clad pajama camp in the woods.

I began ordering knives, machetes, weapons, nunchucks, blow guns. Who better to start to terrorize than my brother, Mengele himself. I got the blow gun. Looked at the darts -- This aren't pointed! I had been duped -- I didn't understand physics then. I put all three pieces of the blow gun together -- waited until my brother went to mow the lawn. Cracked open the door and and blew back the dart -- crap -- the plastic ball on the end sucked down my throat.

After digesting Barbie's missing testicle -- I loaded a second one and clenched my teeth and blew like the Big Bad Wolf - and what do you know? It stuck in his hindleg. My brother swatted and jumped around like a Bee stung him -- swiping the dart out. I would have got away with it if it wasn't for the meddling -- okay, I was too slow to shut the door basking in the torment I laid on him, and he saw me laughing my buttocks off. They fell off and I had to reattach them after he chased me around the house for ten minutes.  After years of mental and physical torment by my brother -- the Ninja Tabi boot had switched to the other foot.

What I thought I was...

What I really was... only I was skinny and not gigantic Titanic.

IT'S A BIRD -- IT'S A PLANE -- IT'S A SLOBBERING DUCK

Since I had met death and lived - I relished in all things death. Books on how to kill people, Anarchist's Cookbook -- all the martial arts books were on the death punch. Destroying people's temples. Anything with death -- including death metal was my friend to explore.

THE VICE LORDS

One day Big Red Rooster pops up saying his friend is in from Davenport Iowa. And he's an Insane Vice Lord.  The very words Vice Lords meant weak, small gang, and losers. I didn't want to be a G.D. anymore, but didn't want to be nothing.

James(the guy from Iowa) shows up in my garage. White guy, mind you. And the guy has a lisp, and leans to one side like someone stuck a brick in his left pocket. HE LOOKED GOOFY -- He would not shut up about being a Vice Lord -- confirming my suspicions that if trash balls like this are Vice Lords, they truly are the dumpster of the Chicago gangs.

Something clicked...

His pride for this gang. He wouldn't shut up about them. Then someone had threatened Big Red and James got on the phone and reamed this guy up and down naming tons of names of Vice Lords he'd get after this guy -- scared the guy into a tearful apology. He slobbered and spit so much talking, the phone needed to be toweled off like it had been Tyson in the ring for 3 hours.

His pride intrigued me. If the Vice Lords are so dumpy, why does he love them so much? James couldn't fight, so he wasn't the esprit de corp of any gang -- he swung his arms like some crazed windmill after hitting an exhaust full amount of crack to try, by a miracle of God, land a punch. I watched him do his stupid monkey Kung-Fu, and the opponent stepped back, drove one blow on James -- and he went face first into the snow with his butt sticking up in the air like he was in prison waiting for a pounding by Bubba-Spanxx.

Thee old notion to be a part of something bigger than me crept up again. But still, I could see no Vice Lord clans in Normal. Then James, the Slobbering Duck windmill puncher, went to work at a buffet restaurant. And there was a Conservative Vice Lord working there. So I show up to make sure James finishes work without putting his wiener in the jello-salad and we're invited to the Friday goal(meeting) of the Conservative Vice Lords.

Conservatives are the oldest formal branch, and under the fluid type of Vice Lords. There's two types -- Fluid and Shabazz -- the Shabazz family incorporates all "Insane" branches of the Vice Lords. But Conservatives as a whole were the biggest branch back then -- barely holding onto today as Insanes have grown. The fluids also contain Travelling Vice Lords and Unknowns. More on them later.

This was the moment of truth. I would be shocked, pissed, and proud all within a month.

THIS IS WHERE WE LEAVE OFF UNTIL NEXT WEEK -- JOINING THE GANG through bullets and struggle.