Growing up in a house dictated by an abusive alcoholic, I didn’t know love as anything besides the absence of hate.

My family is a casualty of McCarthyism after the Korean War. My biological dad was accused of colluding with the enemy as a prisoner of war, arrested, and incarcerated. I have three siblings: Donna, five years older than me; Jimmy, four years my senior; and Paul, one year my junior. My mother first got pregnant at fourteen, and told me she didn’t even know how women got pregnant until a doctor told her. Her parents, uneducated and poor, didn’t discuss such matters. That habit carried over to my generation.

When I was three, my mom met my stepdad. I don’t know where they met or what their interests were. My first memory is of living in a big old house in a small town. My step dad worked on the surrounding farms, irrigating the fields with siphoning pipes. Alcoholism was in our house from early on: he and my mother would go to bars and usually end up fighting. I remember the fleshy smack of him hitting her. I wet the bed and had a speech impediment that wasn’t resolved, with a simple cut of the connective tissue under my tongue, until I was in first or second grade.

As a young boy, I don’t remember love even existing in our house. Growing up in a house dictated by an abusive alcoholic, I didn’t know love as anything besides the absence of hate. You either loved or hated, feared or didn’t. Mom had dinner ready for my stepdad, had his drink made, took off his boots and socks and rubbed lotion on his feet; she made sure we knew to be quiet or leave the room, that we didn’t do anything to make him mad. So I thought love was not hurting someone. Being in someone’s presence and not being afraid. Love wasn’t something we talked about. “I love you” were just words that meant everything was okay for now.

But I knew something was missing. There was something Mom was giving my stepdad, a nearness of bodies, that I wasn’t getting. I sought out that physical expression, even if I didn’t grasp the essence of what it meant. Even my first sexual encounters were by the numbers: first base, second base, third base. Is it the same for everyone? I thought so. Fortunately for me, my “first time” was with a fifteen-year-old French girl. I was thirteen, but lied and said I was fourteen. I’m glad I lied. She taught me to slow down and notice things. She placed my fingertips on her neck so I could feel her pulse. She made me keep my tongue in my own mouth—so much for French kissing! She taught me that the nearness of bodies could be one of trust and discovery.

That experience with Evonna showed me that there was an equality to a sexual union between girls and boys, not the subjugation and dominance I had seen growing up. I felt she had revealed a secret to me, though it was more of a sense than a knowing. Looking back now, the respect she showed me, and the respect I was responsible for showing her, was as close to love as I had experienced at that point. So I equated sex with love. I wanted to be loved a lot! This was the summer before high school. My second week of freshman year, I was expelled for smoking marijuana with another student. I was called into the dean’s office, where two sheriffs were waiting. The dean told me the kid I had smoked with was acting bizarre in class and had given me up. I asked if I was going to be arrested; he replied, “No, you’re going to be expelled.”

I was used to maximum punishment for small infractions at home. All I could think was that my stepdad was there and would see me coming back in a cop car, and that as soon as the sheriffs left he would beat the shit out of me again. I asked the dean if the cops were going to take me home. “No,” he said, “you can walk yourself home.” I was more relieved than he could know. He shrugged and filled out a form, ripped off the yellow copy and gave it to me, and said I could go. The closer I got to home, the more frightened I became. I started folding the paper into smaller and smaller squares. I was tired of being beaten by my stepdad. He’d been beating me with his fists for almost ten years. Just for ten seconds or so each time, but he’d hit my ribs and my back—even my butt, because I’d instantly curl into a ball and wait for it to end.

I came to a telephone pole a few feet from our house and stuffed the paper into a crack. I stuffed it in as far as I could. Then I looked at the house and realized there was no love in it. I kept walking and never returned.

I hitchhiked from California to Vernal, Utah to see my cousin Roy. He’d know what I should do. He was always good to me; he was fun to be around and his whole family was cool. My Aunt MaryAnn smoked pot and drank RC Cola from the bottle—to get along with her all you had to do was leave her RC alone! No one beat anyone in that house. That was nice.

I got to Vernal with no trouble. My third or fourth day there, we went to an engagement party. A little later I saw Roy getting into a car and I jumped in too; so did the owner of the car and the newly engaged couple, and even Roy’s small dog. Since Roy was the least intoxicated, he was chosen to make the beer run. Thing was, the car only had one headlight on the passenger side. I told everyone we should take a different car. The owner said if I didn’t like it I should get out. I told Roy to pull over; he did and I got out. I begged him to get out too, he begged me to get back in, and I said I couldn’t. He drove off. The very next car picked me up. We saw Roy and them on their way back to the party; I knew it was them because of the one headlight. It was the last time I saw him alive. A head-on collision killed everyone in the car except the owner. I wanted to kill him, but when my aunt took me to his house two weeks later I just stood there and then left. He was a drooling mess. I felt more alone than I’d ever felt in my life. I was still a runaway, now without my cousin Roy. For years I wished he had survived, not me.

I was fourteen. I didn’t return to school for forty years.

I was a mess. I was so completely engulfed in grief that I don’t remember leaving Vernal or arriving in Las Cruces, New Mexico. My aunt Harriet and uncle Joe were too young to look after me, though they did show me a different example of a loving couple: they did not berate me, hit me, or treat me badly. Still, I was lying constantly, ditching school so much I don’t recall going to a single class. I had no friends, male or female. After, I don’t know how long, I was put on a Greyhound bus and sent back to California. Looking back, I think Harriet and Joe loved me. I know I should have treated them better.

On New Year’s Eve 1976 I arrived in Ceres, California, at my aunt Sheila and uncle Jim’s place. My cousin Darren had leukemia and would pass the following April. I knew I wouldn’t be welcome for long, but luckily my uncle Paul and aunt Ramona were visiting. Paul traveled the world working on offshore oil drilling platforms; he offered to take me with them to their next destination on the condition that I go back to school. I said yes with great relief, and I turned sixteen at the Horus House Hotel in Cairo, Egypt! By this time I had learned that females were safer and more fun to be around than males. Ramona, in contrast to my mom, was a fierce defender of her children whether we were right or wrong—a maternal love I hadn’t experienced before. This made me realize that it mattered how I treated people. I still felt apathy for most people, but I learned to treat some with respect. When I told Ramona I loved her, I was saying, “I won’t hurt you, I won’t steal from you, and I will be as honest with you as I can be.” Evonna had taught me a respect for females; Ramona taught me a reciprocal kind of loyalty.

Meanwhile, I still had a deep fear of and resentment toward males. The men in my life had mostly terrorized me; at eight or nine I got lost and, when I went to a house to ask for help, was drugged and raped by a man and a woman. This powerfully distorted my attitude and behavior toward men and women in general, and gay men in particular: for many years I associated homosexuality with pedophilia—I know now that this is ridiculous, but it was how I felt as a young man. (This experience is shared by many men in prison. It’s not spoken of often, because we feel that having been sodomized will make others think we’re gay.) So, for a long time, not being attracted to other males was of the utmost importance in how I represented my masculinity. I did and still do on occasion find some men attractive, but that’s no longer an issue because I understand that beauty can be seen anywhere, in anyone.

For most of my life, then, I would run away from situations I didn’t understand instead of asking for help. Being lost was dangerous, letting someone know you were lost was dangerous, and asking for help was even more dangerous. Period. I have always had this insane reflex to clench my jaw and move on into the unknown instead of admitting that I needed help; when I say I haven’t always recognized when I was loved, it’s because love looked to me a lot like the “help” that hurt me so badly as a child. All of this created a strong sense of entitlement in me, which made it seem acceptable to steal and rob. “This happened to me, so fuck you!”—that was the apathy I felt toward people I didn’t know.

Back to Egypt. We lived in a community called Maúdi, about seven kilometers outside of Cairo. For a while I attended the Cairo American College, a prep school that was out of my league academically, although I did get good grades in creative writing and had an essay, “The Nile,” placed in a ten-year time capsule along with a picture of me that I had developed myself in a darkroom, Aunt Ramona had helped me set up in our flat. I wrote the first draft of the essay sitting on the very top stone of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

In Egypt I had my second sexual experience, with a Nigerian princess—literally. Her family had been exiled there by a military coup, and we met on a school trip to the Cairo Museum of Antiquities. She dropped some papers in the aisle of the bus and we both bent down to pick them up. When our eyes met, I was dumbstruck. She thanked me but I couldn’t speak, so she raised her eyebrows to let me know I was causing a spectacle. Someone changed seats so she and I could sit together. Later we wandered through the museum, amazed at how much time and effort people spent just to have stuff in the afterlife. We agreed that this life should be spent seeking pleasure—which is just what we did later that day in my bedroom when Aunt Ramona walked in. It was an incredible experience, but love had nothing to do with it. (She did tell me I was the best kisser she had ever known: thank you, Evonna!)

Like most teenagers, I was self-centered and had no scruples about breaking agreements. Promises were just a way to get what I wanted. My lack of empathy or regard for consequences resulted in getting a wonderful girl pregnant. I wouldn’t know about it until eight months later, after she moved with her family back to Mississippi and a friend of hers brought me a letter with some adoption forms to fill out. I punished myself for many years after that, vowing never to have children because I hadn’t looked after the one I brought into the world.

Eventually, failing all of my classes besides creative writing, I had to go to work. My uncle told me I wasn’t going to be a bum. I got a Eurail pass and took the train from Geneva to Paris to Brussels to Amsterdam to Frankfurt back to Cairo; by then my uncle had punched some guy in the nose for making a derogatory comment about Texas, and we had to pack up and move back to Ceres, California.

Back to California I turned eighteen and went to work at a Wendy’s. I met a girl my age, and within a week met her stepmom, who was nine years older. What a mess! Margo was a bona fide cougar, a twenty-seven-year-old ex-hooker married to a preacher. She separated from the preacher and swept me off my feet, I moved in with her. Aunt Ramona tried to convince me I was making a mistake, but I cut ties with her and my uncle and cleaved even tighter to Margo. I made her feel good because my youthful vigor was all hers, and she kept me right where she wanted me. Meanwhile, I was doing landscaping work for my crooked uncle Jim, who paid me just enough to stay broke and work for him. I could install an entire sprinkler system, front and back, by myself in twelve hours.

With Margo keeping me in bed and Jim keeping me digging ditches, I finally got the bright idea to join the Army. In 1978 I passed boot camp and advanced individual training and became a military policeman. I figured this way I could provide for Margo and her children, but just before I was to go on patrol she flew to Alabama and convinced me to leave the Army. I did as she wished, regrettably. Her influence on me was supernatural. Why was I so under her spell? Well, she was nurturing and safe, knew how to make me feel manly, and literally screwed my brains out! I still felt a responsibility to provide for her, which was the catalyst that led to my first bank robbery at the age of nineteen.

Unable to find a job in Sacramento, where Margo had moved while I was in the Army, I decided to return to Bakersfield and get a job on the oil field—but a couple of days of job hunting proved that employment was scarcer than I’d hoped. One night, I saw on the evening news that a lone gunman had robbed a bank and made off with an undisclosed amount of money. All they found was a ski mask in the parking lot. Hey! I thought. Fuck yeah, I can do that! I envisioned a sack full of money, Margo happy, the kids happy. Why not?

The first robbery brought me a whopping $570, including $300 in one-dollar bills. That wasn’t enough, so I kept going. Without giving it another thought, I robbed more banks, getting more money each time; finally, I had a few thousand dollars and returned to Margo a few weeks later. We moved to Modesto and I went back to work with Uncle Jim. Since he was a crook, I told him what I’d been doing. What I didn’t know was that he was also on parole. Guess how he got off? A couple of days later, he came to where I was digging a ditch and took me around to the front of the house. I looked around and saw suited men in sunglasses approaching from both sides of the street. FBI. “Don’t run, Mike, you’re surrounded!” I just looked at him. He told me they had my mom’s phone tapped and had heard him talking to her, but that was a lie. He had turned me in in exchange for release from parole. I don’t hold it against him. I turned twenty in federal prison in Englewood, Colorado, serving six years for armed bank robbery.

At twenty-five, I was married after a romantic date, as we were leaving a restaurant where the pianist had played just for us, I said, “Will you marry me?” I hadn’t meant it literally, but Bobbie’s eyes lit up and she said, “Oh yes, yes. I’ll marry you.” Oh shit was all I could think. We were married the next day by a justice of the peace, with his secretaries as our witnesses. I had been released from federal prison a little over a year before. To me, by this point, good sex was love. It was easy to say “I love you” and mean it, and it was easy to hear it and believe it.

I chose to get an education so I could find out what a good man is.

In retrospect, my tears of remorse were a sign that I had learned to exercise my apathy and internalize empathy.

Robbery, I discovered, is no more about money than rape is about sex. It’s about feeling powerful and in control. I realized that the abuse I experienced as a child and the helplessness I felt growing up were silenced by the power I felt when I was robbing a bank. All the criminal activity I participated in was either to feel in control or, in the case of drugs and alcohol, to not feel at all.

When I finally looked inward with acceptance, forgiveness, and self-love, everyone around me became more human. I could see their ages and intentions. All of a sudden, as I said before, I wasn’t seeing threats, but opportunities.

I have made it. I have become a better human.

As I sat before two people who would determine whether I was suitable for parole, I was reminded of the jury of twelve that sentenced me to 102 years to life for the murder of another human being, exactly twenty years ago. I was sixteen years old then. I have since received a commutation from Governor Jerry Brown that reduced my sentence from 102 years to life, to 19 years to life. 

Before I tell you about the Board’s most recent decision on Dec 17, 2020, I need to back up and share with you my first experience at my initial board hearing. At 33, I was very hyper during that hearing and I received a three year denial. This meant I would not have another suitability hearing until three years later. I was told to stay clean from write-ups during this three year period and I did not.  On July 27, 2020, I used a pay phone to call my mother without permission. Here is my justification on why I called her, I was at work all day, 14 hours straight, cleaning 10 cells where people had tested positive for Covid-19. Secondly, no San Quentin staff clean cells, it’s up to the inmates. I am part of a voluntary team who chooses to give back to the men in blue, to our community; if we don’t clean, no one will. Lastly, after a long day of stressful work, I wanted to use the phone to hear the comfort that comes from hearing a mother’s voice. 

Stress, anxiety, depression and hope were all with me, when I went before the Board this second time. At 10:30 am, I nervously sat at a computer in the hearing room. I had not slept in two nights. Thoughts were racing through my mind about the write-up I received six months earlier for calling my mom on the pay phone without permission. The first question they asked was, “Do you know why you were denied the first time you went before the board?” I answered, “Yes, because I engaged in criminal thinking in 2015.” I felt entitled and impulsive, when caught using a cellphone. They wanted to know why I again used a phone without permission. I owned it and did not try to hide the truth. Both commissioners asked question after question after question about the second write-up, beating me up with their words.  

“Do you know how different this hearing would have been had you not had a write-up?” They asked. “Yes” I said. These two officials had so much power over me, I felt like I was failing and not representing myself. I wanted to point out that although I did get on the phone without permission, I was no longer a criminal. Before, I didn’t give a damn about rules and regulations. But today I do. For me to be a criminal nowadays is something that is disrespectful towards humanity, and today I appreciate humanity. I am not a criminal.

At this subsequent hearing, the commissioner told me it’s his job to make sure that my getting on the phone was not indicative of a pattern of criminal behavior. The questions felt so hard, maybe because I knew I screwed up by getting written-up. They asked about my crime and why I did it. I told them I wanted to be tough so I’d get praise from my peers in order to feel validated. And then he switched back to questioning me about the write-up, the phone call to my mom. 

I stood my ground, trying to show him who I was then, and who I am now. I felt intimidated. Small.

My intern did a great closing and I ended by saying I wanted to honor my victims. The commissioners went into deliberation for about ten to fifteen minutes. I talked to my attorney and thought I might get a split decision. But I trusted God. As much as I screwed up, I had to trust God. 

When the commissioners returned, one said he didn’t agree with my attorney that the phone write-up was not a connection to my crime.  He said that, by getting on the phone, it was a direct connection to the murder I committed at sixteen. I put my head down.

Then he said, however, based on the support letters I received from staff showing maturity, he saw my growth and believed the phone was just a bad decision. He also mentioned the fact that my honesty and acceptance of the facts was very important. Next, he said they had found me suitable for parole, that I did not pose an unreasonable risk to society. Everything else was a blur. I mean, wow! Two years ago I had 102 years to life. And now I might be going home. Who would have thought? But then there is my faith in God: that miracles can and do happen. When all else seemed impossible, my prayer was answered with the stroke of a whispered “Trust in God.” In that last-gasp moment of hope a sentence that began with 102 years to life just vanished into thin air.

When I first got arrested on my death penalty crimes, back in 1984, I had a few different girlfriends at the time. I did a bit of letter writing in those times; I discovered I had a knack for writing poetry. At first it was all love poetry—and all rhythmic/rhyme type poetry. Later I began to write poetry about all kinds of topics, and different forms including sonnets, in various forms or anagrams especially anagram poetry using a person’s name vertically upright so that the letters of the name are the first letters in the words of each sentence of the poem. I also began to write some poems that do not rhyme.

I had a knack for doodling in my letters which grew into the really extensive type of mixed media artwork I do now. This is where my drawings and poetry came up together. I’ve made countless greeting cards for holidays, but mostly love cards which all had my original drawings and original poetry. In those times I was not as christian based as I am now and many greeting cards were X-rated. I sold a lot of greeting cards for years, and that’s the only money I’ve ever made from my poetry. I entered poetry contests which turn out to be the type of contests where you don’t win but they want to use your poems in books that they sell even to you that you get no proceeds from. I imagine my poetry appears in at least one or more such books. I honestly do not know how many poems I have written. I have been writing them off and on since the mid 1980s. I’m sure I’ve written hundreds of poems. Though I remember the name of a few, the only one I know by heart is the first one I wrote, titled, “Patience Is A Virtue”. The only reason I  remember it so well is because it was my first. Even though it’s a rhyming poem, it resonated with me like it was something special. It made me feel like I was unique  and articulate with words because of how it sounded reading the rhymes about love aloud. I sent the poem to my girlfriends, used it in greeting cards I’ve sold and shared it with many people—the only poem, of the hundreds I wrote and never kept a copy of, I know completely by memory is “Patience Is A Virtue”…

PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE

A poem by Kevin

They say that patience is a virtue,

There are such long nights I spend without you.

There is not a minute of the day you don’t cross my mind,

My love, in short, I think of you all the time.

Wanting a needing you as I do,

Makes the days longer that I ensue.

The minutes on the clock slowly fade,

An hour or a day is like a decade.

Each day and each week the waiting persists,

And to think of you is torture I cannot resist.

How much longer will I wait I wonder,

For my wants and needs to have turned to hunger.

Every time I think of you,

I think of the sadder things that time can do.

Once we regain time on our side,

We will take each other to the highest highs.

I’m hoping that day won’t be too far,

When I’ll join you my love wherever you are.

We will laugh, we will cry, and then we will kiss,

And do all the things together we both so miss.

We will talk about how things were with me,

We will picnic under a shady tree.

We will talk about how things were with you,

And eat peanuts and candy at the county zoo.

The most important things to me,

Are that I’m with you and that I’m free.

So keep in your mind that day anticipating,

The day we will spend no longer waiting.

They say patience is a virtue,

Soon I will be with you.

Patience and love, are two of many philosophies I’ve woken up to while I’ve been on Death Row. Every person should want to be the best person they can be no matter how the world may pull and tug us in negative directions. The world is going to come at us sideways sometimes, so we have to combat that by taking a proactive approach to contributing things to our inner good that ends up affecting our outwardly good and tolerance towards others.

During my time on Death Row I have written a bunch of short stories. I’ve written using such topics as a man’s experiences traveling across country on a greyhound bus, a slavery story, a western, a futuristic Sci-fi with  a giant space station the size of a city, etc, etc. My short stories are usually 5 to 50 pages in length. It’s been a long time since I wrote a short story. I have never sold nor even published any of my short stories. I usually write them and just give them to someone, like my friends or the fellas here with me. I could write a whole book on everybody I’ve known who passed away in the years I have been in custody. Losing anybody in prison who made life more cool in this messed up kind of way to live, and it’s a big loss…but a story I will remember forever.

I made a key for you all reading my story so that we can all know how close I was to some of these folks.

✳  REALLY GOOD FRIEND

✔  KNEW PRETTY GOOD

⭕  KNEW TO SPEAK TO.

✳ Freaky Pete was like a pawn shop, you could buy or sell anything through Freaky. If you were bored he could tell you a million crazy stories that were really true about his life. Bad health problems.

✳  Taco was one of my basketball buddies. While I was away in Los Angeles on appeal he died. Heart Attack on Basketball court

✳  Ronnie Bell had some porn subscriptions he shared with me. That was before they took all the porn magazines out of prison and I started doing the christian thing. After his daughter got killed,  he changed and got really sick and never recovered from losing her. Bad Health Issues

✳  Stag was a friend I knew in L.A. County jail during my appeal. I never met nobody like Stag, he was cool. A diehard Crip. he knew everybody. He loved his daughter and the Raiders football team. He would give the shirt off his back to anybody—a straight out thug though. He died from bad health.

✳  Old Folks; This guy was a good friend to just about everybody. His last months of life he was in a cell about 10 cells away from me. It surprised me greatly that he was in his cell instead of a hospital. This dude was really, really cool and always a friend to me for many years. He really suffered a lot of pain, dying from Cancer.

✳  Wilbur was an old guy who still played basketball with us. He had a filthy mouth and was just fun to be around. He died of old age while he was out to court on appeal.

✳  Cuba was a basketball buddy of mines, a chess playing buddy of mines, and someone fun to talk to and kick it with. His health had been on the decline—almost all of us on Death Row including me caught that Coronavirus, but people like Cuba with declining health did not survive it. It was 20 or 30 Death Row inmates altogether who died of Covid-19 I think.

✔ Slim served time in California Death Row but got sent to another state where he also had Death Sentence. Slim was a basketball buddy—I enjoyed shooting basketball with him. He always had a perm he took real good care of, like James Brown. Slim got executed there in that other state.

✔  Sam and I went all the way back to L.A. county jail 8 man cell days, before we ended up on Death Row. Sam kinda lost his mind a little after coming to Death Row, but was still real cool, not a threat to your health to be around. Killed accidentally by prison guards on Death Row with too much pepper spray.

✔  Baby Kelsie: It blew me away when Baby Kelsie died. He had bought some of my greeting cards I made that same week. Bro had a fly perm and was one of the buffest muscle-bound dudes on Death Row. Suicide.

✔  Mario was a real cool Blood gang member that I knew from High Power high security area in Los Angeles county jail before he and I ended up on Death Row. We used to be in chess playing tournaments for money back in our Los Angeles county jail high power days. Drug overdose.

✔  J.D.  seemed like a happy-go-lucky dude. I was surprised to learn he took a bunch of pills. I talked with him on the yard a bunch of times—played basketball with him too.  Suicide.

✔  Tales Of The Crypt Suicide. Tales Of The Crypt got this name in jesting that he looked like the Tales Of The Crypt guy. I spoke with him about christian stuff, and even had one of my christian aunts write him—was surprised to hear he suffocated himself with a plastic trash bag. Suicide.

✔  Tom was a Vietnam vet. A real cool mellow white dude. He was one of the first one’s put to death when California started back executing people. Tom was one of the one who got put to death by gas—a torturesome process of breathing in ammonia laced with cyanide. Executed.

✔  Pride was hard like Stag, but Pride is from Northern California. Pride used the weights on the exercise yard like lifting weights was his religion. He was an alright dude though. I think we lost the privilege of having weights on the yard right before or right after Pride died. I always associate him with those weights in my mind. Shot & killed by prison guards during a fight.

⭕  Tookie Williams: Big Tookie was HUGE. I don’t bang, but grew up in Los Angeles in mostly Crip areas. I got to shoot basketball a few times with Tookie and was on the yard with him a few years. I’ve found him to be cool and the integrity of the yard and the yard’s mentality was mellow when he was here. Executed.

⭕  Lado: A latino gang member I knew in Los Angeles county jail during my death penalty appeal. He was a high ranking gang member but he treated me cool and called me by name. Drug Overdose.

⭕  Steven. Just like Old Folks, around the same time as Old Folks had his cancer, Steven had his cancer in a cell almost right above Old Folks. Steven was one of my best friends, so that made Steven cool with me. Cancer.

⭕  Malcom was the oldest black guy on my yard. He was Muslim, and cool to talk to. Old Age – Bad Health.

⭕  Richard “The Night Stalker”: Yes, this is the Night Stalker. I met him in the Hole when we both were there. I at that time was in my Super Christian Era and even talked to Richard about believing in Christ’s salvation. Drug Overdose.

Every person should want to be the best person they can be no matter how the world may pull and tug us in negative directions.

My name is Adriel. I am one of the transwomen here in San Quentin. I am 43 years old, and a Taurus. I am Spanish, French, and Yaqui Indian.

I knew by the age of 5 that I was born in the wrong body. But I couldn’t tell that to my parents, because the machismo was running rampant in my home. You were born a boy, you will act like a boy, like that was going to be easy.

I was way too flamboyant for my own good. Luckily for me, my family thought I was going through a phase. It was difficult growing up in a household where you couldn’t feel comfortable enough to talk to someone, so I had to bottle up all my emotions.

I have always loved going to church, but with COVID-19 that is not possible. I am looking forward to going again.  A year without church services is driving me crazy. Church is where I find my inner peace. I find answers to many of my questions in church. For instance, concerning my transition to womanhood, I pray to God day and night about my inner feelings about who I am.

One day I decided that I was  going to be straight-forward with God. I said, “God, You know what is in my heart. This is what I am asking of You: If I am walking in Your Will, let the hormones that You bestowed upon me work to make the changes to my body. If it’s not Your Will, then the hormones won’t have their effect on me. I just don’t like that I am holding back from the growth that needs to be done. I need that inner grace so I can excel at the piano and singing and play the drums better.” Within a month after my prayer, my body started changing. My diabetes was under control and my blood pressure has gotten better. I started feeling a whole lot better. I started feeling like the woman I should be. My focus at church improved, including playing the instruments and singing. Everything was going so great  even my hair began to sprout at the bald spot on my head. I was so grateful that God heard my prayer.

Now that I was transitioning into the woman I was meant to be, my family had a huge surprise coming. What they thought was just a phase is actually who I am. They get to see my truths in the way I think and act, and about my life overall. They might not understand it at first, but that’s ok. I just know that I have changed a lot from the person that I used to be. I am a lot more compassionate, affectionate, empathetic, kinder, friendly, loyal and trustworthy to those around me. My talents have become better as time goes by, and it’s only going to get better. But while these changes are happening, I’m glad that I can still find peace and comfort in my surroundings.

What brings me comfort, you ask?

When I am nervous, stressed or  have anxiety, I go to my comfort food of chips. I  have different categories of chips. If it’s nerves about work, I go to my plain Lays potato chips, they are salty and just plain ol’ good. The salt from the chips soothe me. I know that is weird, but it truly does. You would think I would get high blood pressure, but it is just the opposite, it’s plain uncanny.

When I am edgy about a conflict that takes longer to solve, I resort to Doritos nacho chips. Yummy! The cheese and the taste of the chips helps me think of solutions that other people are not able to come up with. I guess I can say that it is my thinking chip. LOL. Sometimes I eat half of the bag because I usually come up with something that is easy to execute. Other times I end up eating the whole bag because it took a little more brain work to come up with a solution.

When I am jumpy about life, not knowing what is going to happen next, I get out the big guns. Grilled cheese sandwiches. It  varies in what I put in them depending on my stress. There are times I would add chicken chunks,  onions, bell peppers, and  tomato. Or I would put some pastrami with the veggies and sliced pickles. Who doesn’t love pickles, yum!  and I add Jalapeno with a little cilantro-lime seasoning just to give it extra flavor. I just find ingredients and off I go creating a wonderful meal.

There are other times when a sandwich just isn’t enough or the world is too overwhelming; then I make burritos.  I would just do bean and cheese. Other times I would make it with just vegetables and cheese. When you cook it with butter you’ll sound just like Homer Simpson drooling over a donut. Just the other day I used four shredded beef pouches, with three honey turkey meat logs, with black beans and rice. Talk about a party in your mouth. You just felt like slapping somebody. SMACK!!!

When I am sad I go to my Gospel CDs. They bring calmness and joy back into my life. When I lost my dad, what brought me comfort was music. It brought the memories of when my mother and I would play music throughout the house and just have us a good ol’ time. Music and food bring me comfort at the times that I need it the most. Just like my dad used to do….

I would like to introduce you to someone who is special to me. My dad. He meant the world to me. He was my hero. Remember the old Superman show that was black and white? I used to suspect that my dad was actually Superman. I even asked my mother if it was true. She said, “Yes. your dad is really Superman, but you can’t tell anybody, because then they will want to take him away so he can save the world again.” I was in total awe of my dad because he decided to retire and raise me. I looked up to my dad because he would comfort me during an earthquake. I was truly afraid of those. When one would start,  my dad would hear me scream, he would run and scoop me up in his arms and head for the couch. He could cradle me into his chest so I wouldn’t see anything shaking or hear the rumble of the quake.

Growing up, my dad would tell me little corny jokes,  but I had to laugh because he was trying. If he couldn’t make me laugh, he would tickle me until I was breathless, pleading for him to stop. My dad was great. He taught me how to ride my bike and drive a car. I always appreciated him for that. He also gave me words of wisdom. As a child, I was deathly afraid of the dark and I could not sleep in the room by myself. My dad stayed up late, so that I could sleep, before he got to bed. One night he sat next to me and asked me what I was afraid of. I told him that something was out to get me, I heard noises outside. He told me to shut my eyes and listen. It wasn’t that hard to listen since the walls didn’t have insulation, so everything was crystal clear. While my dad sat there I closed my eyes and listened, slowly I started to recognize the noises. Like the pigeons that my dad kept in the backyard, they were cooing and their babies were chirping for their parents. I heard the cat meow. My dog was running around the yard chasing the cats. After a while, I did not feel my dad next to me, but I was not afraid.

When I got into trouble for shoplifting in Santa Cruz, my dad was truly upset and that was the last thing I ever wanted–to disappoint him. He told me that I should choose my friends wisely because I never knew what kind of trouble would come my way. He also told me to observe all things around me. If I did,  I would eventually learn to spot trouble before it came to me. That advice has helped me throughout my incarceration.

I never thought that I would lose my dad while incarcerated, but I did. It was the hardest time for me. But God looked down upon me and had mercy on me. Fortunately, at that time, I had a very cool boss. I thank God for that sergeant. I was able to talk to my dad every day on the phone. I was thankful that I was able to sing to my dad; I sang one of his favorite songs to him over the phone before he was gone. I miss my dad very much, but one day I will see him again.