Prologue

There I was, lying on the cold tile floor of the kitchen, hungover, hurting from drinking Jack Daniel s and ripping cigs the night before. As I opened my eyes, I could see the dust, dirt, and a decaying cockroach under the dishwashing machine. I passed out there. What happened? How did I get here? What was going on in my life? I was 32 years old lying on the kitchen floor and trying to figure out what happened? At that moment, fog-headed and bruised on the inside and out, I realized the journey to this demise started in the eighth grade.

When I was four, my family moved to a rural farm, in Holcomb, Mississippi, where my father managed a 700-head cattle ranch on 2,500 acres of the most beautiful landscape you could imagine, which was owned by a German company. It was my beautiful hell rolling hills and pristine views but lots of work and tons of isolation. I attended the local academy 20 miles away from the farm. Every morning, my dad would take me to the local Baptist church and drop off my brother and me to catch the Road Runner school bus. It was a bright red school bus with the Road Runner cartoon character s image on the side of it. It looked like we were on the way to Woodstock or Coachella, not school. The bus picked up the twenty or so farm kids at the local church at 7:15 a.m. and dropped us off at school at 7:50 a.m. The parents in the small, rural town who sent us to the academy collectively purchased the bus to haul all the students back and forth from school. Getting off that hippy-style bus every morning at school was a shot of insecurity. We were called Holcomb hooligans and most of us looked like little rednecks stepping out of a deer stand. Some kids on that bus were hailed by the nicknames of Bucket, Stick, and Boll Weevil (pronounced Bo Weevil). We were the country kids going to school with the sons and daughters of doctors, bankers, lawyers, and other wealthy folks. It was an all-White school, but it was segregated by socioeconomics, as well as urban and rural addresses. There were other rural kids there too, from other surrounding small communities. But the country club kids let us know our place in the pecking order within the walls of our educational sanctuary. Throughout elementary school, I was one of the smallest kids and was made fun of because of my crooked teeth. I was not popular, but in a class size of fifty students