I can tell ya, as a former gang member, I got out and it aint easy, if dudes see me again I can be murked but for sure f'd up. My story is the story of about 98% of gangsters, I grew up in sh*tty ass hoods all my life up until now that is, I went from El Monte back in Cali where it was hell of the valley deep in SGV Mountains east of L.A., then here to Tacoma, south end living in a 1 bedroom apartment with 2 families, and a lot of the time I was just pissed cuz I could never as youngster understand why life was so f*cked for me and my fam and seeing other people so fortunate, still I learned hard lessons most couldn't learn at an early age and was well disciplined until Junior High... I was pretty small entering 7th grade and I wasn't white, and RACE does matter believe me.... so being the 4'11" nerd that I was I picked on hella, beat up and insulted for no reason, I remember in math class this ****ing faggot ass white boy (no offense to white people) would always talk about gangs like he knew everything about em, I told em once I was rolling with the 20s (LIE OF COURSE LOL) and he told me to punch him, him a 9th grader and a lot bigger than me, I SAID NAW, he said if I WAS A REAL CRIP I WOULD DO IT, and thats where I f*cked up, he bullied me for a whole f*ckin semester, even brought a lil wooden stick he would hit my wrist with, but time went by and I remember one day I walked into the bathroom and I saw some latin thugz beating up my good friend who was unusually small, even smaller than me at the time, so I tried pleadin wit em and they wouldn't listen and even had me up on da wall, I was finally getting SUPER PISSED of everything: my fams poverty, my despair and cowardice so I spit in the dudes face and head butted him, I started SCREAMIN for no reason and tried to hit as many as I could but they f*cked me up good and I remember they had to take me to the hospital for a concussion cuz I was laid out cold on the bathroom floor, I switched schools for a couple months and FINALLY HIT PUBERTY!!! I grew to about 5'5" in 2 months and gained some weight. So second semester rolls in and I start doing some dirt around my new school, getting into fights for whatever reason just to learn the hits ya know, smoking, and just out of control **** to be cool I guess, I caught the attention of a local crew, they were Surenos, and for those who don't know surenos they are a gang originally from Cali with ties to the Mexican Mafia in So Cal prisons that spread everywhere and deep I didn't know that at the time but I read up... but the Big Homie asked me if I wanted in and I said naw, I turned around and they all jumped me bad, it seemed like a whole 10 minutes of nothing my kicks to the kidneys, that sh*t was painful I even cried, but they all stopped and stood me up and said "your stuck 4 life"... weeks roll by and I felt I was getting deeper and deeper, dudes was on me and I had no one to turn to so I accepted myself in their crew, most of the time people got no choice and see no other way of dealing with life, dudes aint gettin love at home, and got a broken ass family.. put all those dudes together and you got a gang, but I didn't see at like that once I got in deep with them, I saw these dudes like family, at first I wasn't really accepted due to my backround being only quarter mexican and also mixed with rican, sicilian and black so I wasn't down with the lingo or nothin like that or really the whole cholo culture but I adapted.... I saw it like being accepted and feeling like the cool kids I saw at my school, I felt like big sh*t when the homiez where around, we all played each other off good in front of girls and just had a good time, but theres always that price of always being down for whatevers needed, I wont say i've killed anybody but I sure felt like I did, i've stabbed a dude, shot at peoples houses, I even took off my belt in a fight once and whipped a dudes face over and over after school and that landed me in Remann Hall for aggravated assault (like a belts a deadly weapon), after I got out they had me on diversions so I felt even bigger cuz now that I had my claim and the back up I needed so I felt like I was untouchable cuz everyone at da schools knew me and knew who I was kickin it with, same with the other homiez. But there was always tensions cuz if you ****ed with me or any of the homiez, you knew you would get caught slippin later on no matter what, same for us for anybody from other hoods, but we were always trippin on each others lines just tryna ignite some sh*t, so I went back to my old school for the big payback, the thugz knew me and knew they did me dirty, that white dude who used to hit me wouldn't even step to me when I confronted him one day just for fun cuz I had the look of a killer, I wasn't the scariest dude around but everyone heard the school rumors, everyone knew who stabbed the dude last week, or who beat up the mothaf*cka for lookin the wrong way, and they knew what I did, and how I wasn't no punk. And from there it was same old same old up until I started high school, and I was still bangin when I started making music, MUSIC SAVED MY LIFE, but thats later on in my story, but **** changed for the better, and for the worse, better cuz my dad loyalty to his job paid off and he became a regional manager for Treetop, JUICE COMPANY, went from 30k a year to 150k, moved us to the suburbs where I started being happy cuz it was a long fight and struggle for my family to make it, I was just finally happy, but this **** wouldn't seem right to people, I mean an UPPER MIDDLECLASS BANGER, word got out cuz I wasn't looking so hungry no more, I got real bigger (topped out 5'9" my sophmore year), got my license and my dad got me a lease on a nice VDub, he even put rims on it but to my homiez I was looking like a fool, but I finally called it QUITS for good in 2006, I was 16 going on 17 at the time and my two good friends were killed, it was just wow to me, I mean we've all been beat up, jumped, or shot at, but we was all high on our own luck we never thought any of us would be killed, in the end we weren't really gang members cuz we never thought of death being an actual consequence of what we do, but it was and that hit me deep, I mean it was no different than seeing your own brothers in a casket, who you just played basketball with the day before, I was asking how could this happen? Am I next? Whats gonna happen to me? Am I gonna die? How could my friends get killed? Stupid kids, we never think of the consequences in the beginning its just to fit in and think of yourself as being somebody who people respected and feared cuz I know its brutal but I LOVED being feared, and in the end we never for once took the time to just sit and think and say "we can die or get killed doing the stuff were doing" cuz to me it was like a game, I knew the ins and outs and all the cheats and exit strategies to maintain and keep a head in all the crazy stuff, and it was routine doing dirt, like beating a video game for fun again and again but then losing and realizing you were on your last life and didn't even save at the checkpoint and now your f*cked, I was paranoid, scared so I started making music as an escape and a cop out to tell anyone who was tryna kick it cuz I knew now what could happen so I was being a b*tch for months just staying indoors and looking out my window like no other even though no one knew where I lived really cuz I was too embarrassed to say (EMBARRASSED OF BEING WELL OFF LOL) I even did online school LOL but I knew I couldn't go on forever so I thought real hard and embraced the real me, I loved skateboarding but never admitted it to my "friends" and I loved making music but never told anyone, I loved rock, I loved life, and I wanted peace, like that I erased myself from almost everything I knew, except my family, I got real close to my fam and just switched it up completely, I attended an Arts High School In Tacoma to which I drove with A NICE ASS BEAMER where I graduated last year, got a nice job being a Business And Marketing Intern on pay, grew out my curly hair LOL, threw out the dickies for some dockers, my ben davies for levi slims, and just stopped all the fronting. I made new real friends and they stick by me no matter what, reading between the lines you can see, as I see, kids who have it hard see everything as unfair, so what do they do? They play the only game that has been played on them. A lot of kids don't really make it through, I was just real lucky, real lucky but I don't think anyone forgets, and you can see in my story financial status played a HUGE ROLE in how sh*t turned out, but leaving a gang is an insult and makes them look weak, if any of my old friends see me again I don't know what the f*ck i'd do honestly. For all I know they could ask "How ya been man?"- and then take a smith and wesson
twin blade to my neck. So I guess after all this babblin and off topic ideas and sentences, people who gang bang don't see it like me and you do, they see it from behind and only really want the feel of being accepted and being a part of something greater than them, but doesn't everybody, all of us here wanna be part of something obviously cuz we all come here to learn and give advice. I've posted this story on countless threads and recited it to hundred of ppl who are at risk, and they never listen. The only way to learn is to lose something you really love (and moving up doesn't hurt either).<<<< AND thats real truth.
But I stay humble cuz dont want ppl thinking i'm putting anyone down cuz of how my fam made it, i'm just stating it so people can comprehend how much of a poor muthaf*cka I was and how money made all the difference.
RIP TO MY LOST BROTHERS
Albert Mauro Flores
Santito "Capone" Flores
YOU GUYS didn't go out in vain, just so everyone knows you changed a life for the better.
Theres hundreds of positives:
Money
Friends
Respect
Fun
The "Rush"
the key is to actually teach people what the price of these things really is when they do they things they do.
And I know I ain't the only one, I was having a similar convo with another FP member, can't remember his name right now but this is all too common.
Been typing for a whole hour, well thanks if anybody reads this and much love, never felt so emotional on an internet forum, I feel like i've said alot on here, from me getting kidnapped by fake cops to this. I don't really know any of you dudes but I feel like were all real close and its cuz of music. Music brings everything together.
NO HOMO LOL
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