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And so I did.
And so we did.
"That's your buddy, right?" Peyton asked, her fingers absentmindedly tracing the edge of a tattoo on my chest. "Virgin. That was him."
"That was him," I agreed, nodding.
"What was this MC?" she wondered. "I know most of them aren't like this one. Were they into guns or prostitutes?"
"Heroin. They were into heroin."
Those were rougher times, less moral men.
Chances were, if there was blood spilled in that town, you knew whose hands it was by. The police pinched men when they could. For possession, for assault, for drunken brawls.
Phil went away for a three-month stint when I was five, ripping me away from Virgin, who had become a brother to me. It was the two of us against the world.
When Phil or Dwayne wanted their rooms that we shared with them since there weren't enough to give us our own so they could fuck the ever-present clubwhores, we went out into the yard, climbing trees by moonlight, playing cops and robbers - except in our game, the cops were the bad guys. When shit went down and men with guns were at the gates, we would shoot downstairs, huddling behind the furnace, pretending not to jump at the shots popping off above us.
Then all of a sudden, I had to leave him. To be shipped back to a mother who I only really remembered from the day she left me. And on the drive to Staten Island, all I could think was how we were never supposed to leave a brother behind. And that was what I was doing; I was leaving Virgin behind.
But at five, choices weren't mine to make.
"Seany, baby," she had greeted me at the curb, eyes glassy, voice slow, something I attributed to her drinking since, at that age, I didn't understand the concept of 'high' yet. "You remember me?" she asked, eyes and voice filled with hope.
So I had nodded. And let her hug me, cry into my hair, tell me how much she missed me, bring me inside to a house that wasn't familiar, to be put on the pull-out couch in the living room like an unexpected overnight guest.
But she cooked for me.
She tucked me in.
She told me how she was making moves, getting her life back on track, trying to make something for herself so that one day I could come back to her.
If I wanted.
Not three months later, just when I was starting to settle in, Phil was at the door, fresh out of jail, ignoring his orders to stay in the state, coming to pick me up from my mom.
It was the first time I remembered feeling torn between them.
It would fade quickly too.
Once I was back at the clubhouse, back with my buddy, back with the men and the lifestyle I had grown accustomed to already.
"How'd you get the name Sugar?" Peyton asked, smiling down at me. And, let me tell you, I liked that sight just a little more than I should have.
I was seven.
And we - my father and I - had been spending a lot of time in an abandoned storefront in town. Inside, there was no heat. The electricity was stolen from the movie rental place next door. All there was inside was a folding table and cold steel chairs set up beside a counter that was full of bowls, old credit cards, bags of pure heroin, and pounds and pounds of sugar.
For cutting it.
Which was what he did.
Every day after school, Phil would scoop me up, and bring me to the storefront. Sitting at the table, he would pour, sift, and sort, putting the finished product into baggies as he helped me with my homework.
I was never allowed to help.
The job seemed simple enough - pour the white stuff, move it around with the card, put it into the little baggies.
But my father never let me even try.
It was one of those nights.
I was bored trying to train my yo-yo to walk like the other kids at school could.
Phil had just finished his sifting and sorting, and was running out to grab us dinner.
"Don't touch this shit, you hear?" he asked, stuffing his baggies into his pockets. "I'll clean it up when I get back," he told me, gesturing to the bags and baggies and credit cards on the table.
With that, he was gone.
And, well, I was never known for having great impulse control. As soon as I saw his figure disappear out the window, I jumped up, went to the table, and started imitating what I had seen him do hundreds of times. Pour, move around, put in baggies.
Just as I had suspected, there was nothing to it. Before I knew it, I had twice the amount of little baggies that Phil had made just stacked right there on the table.
