My Generation

         I've known Will since our days at the jungle-gym of our catholic do-good elementary school. After two words we knew each other like a pair of old hounds and we knew that we were better than everyone else. It was years later that I would meet Jimmy and many more until Jesse changed my life.
         When I first met Jesse he had a white cast over half his arm and he wore it like a medal. Never in my life had I met someone so full of a joy for life. That is to say, he wasn't the type of person who would walk around all smiles with please and thank yous, that wasn't the real joy and Jesse knew it. He suffered from an unbiased view of life. Everyone he met he liked and everything he did was right until proven wrong. Seldom did he get mad, but the temperance of a bull raged inside him. It was in the summer of 2006 that I met Jesse.
         Me and Will would raise hell at our school. Fights, theft and insubordination were our specialties and we did it all like gentlemen. I was the thinker, and each day I would articulate justification with casual grace and arrogance for our principal, a woman, who received little respect from me and my compadre. The real trouble adults had with us, and me, was that I wasn't dull. Every man with leather shoes or women with a gray skirt has dealt with a brat making inconveniences, but we were an anomaly, a grotesque misrepresentation of our generation and I know this not from how they handled us but from how we handled them. They would talk to me all sorts of solemn patronizing bullshit, but without reason and logic behind their rants they couldn't put the fear of God in me, and without the fear of God I wouldn't budge.
         It was in highschool that I met Jimmy; the first drug dealer I knew on a personal basis. He was a good guy who would always give the best deals even when he couldn't afford it. We would watch Scarface, Blow, the Goodfellas and every other drug lord movie, dreaming crazy futures of coke and power. At fourteen, the whole mystic of the drug world slowly started to slip away as I became a part of it and as quickly as I unfathomed its secrets they were replaced by a desire for more. More money, more drugs, more contacts, more reputation, more girls, more everything. When Will and I made that paramount transition from drug user to drug dealer it was like getting in a Ferrari, hacking off the brake and throwing a brick on the gas. A world of preparation and opportunity opened up to us and when we touched it we never wanted to let go.