Nothing like Christmas to bring on another guilt-trippy panic attack.

Christmas and drugs, that is.

I should have guessed that the mysterious cookie someone left in my room on Christmas morning was suspicious. But when I woke up from my post-brunch nap and saw it sitting on the lid of my laptop, I couldn’t help it. I was just too curious. Was it good? Was it stale? It looked handmade, but who made it?

I realized my mistake after the first bite. In fact it was my only bite. I could tell the moment it hit my tongue what kind of cookie this was. It was a weed cookie. Since I’d only taken a small bite I decided to swallow it and just deal with the effects. Surely they would be mild, if anything dinner would probably taste better and I would be feeling more socially in tune with my family.

So, I go downstairs, start preparing the Brussels sprouts my dad requested, pop them in the oven, and sit down to have a chat with my brother. He’s just admitted to my parents that yes, he has in fact dropped out of school. He’s drinking a beer, looks totally sheepish and awkward. Pretty usual behaviour for him lately. I set my new Sony eReader down on the table, a present from FG, and he starts asking questions about it. How much? Where’d you get it? Why is there no backlight on this thing?

I lie, say it was refurbished off eBay, cost around $200, tell him he should look into getting the pocket version. I hate lying to my brother but my dad’s in the next room. I have no choice.

Soon my sisters come in and seat themselves around the table. Eventually dinner’s ready and my dad is taking things out of the oven and my mum is getting utensils.

Holy. Fuck. Am I ever stoned. All of a sudden everything slows down. Everyone’s talking weird. All I can hear is the clanging of utensils in the next room. It seems like she’s been digging in that drawer for 10 minutes. It’s probably been 10 seconds.

My stomach drops. Is there any way I can get out of this? Can I pretend I’m feeling nauseous? Sleepy? No, they think I have an eating disorder for some reason, this would just prove their suspicions right. I guess I’ll have to battle through the next hour, pretending to be normal. Which I can never do when I’m high, the moment I feel THC in my bloodstream is usually the moment I retreat to my room and watch SpongeBob Squarepants or something equally cheery.

Why? Because things like this happen: I panic. I have no appetite at all. I’m incredibly paranoid. How did one bite get me this stoned? My brother gets up from the dinner table before the food comes out to go pet the dog. I follow him into the foyer.

“You could have warned me!” I hiss, but he doesn’t hear. He’s probably stoned as well, maybe even a little drunk. I sit back down feeling completely suspicious. Surely everyone can tell. I feel like I’m being totally obvious.

Food starts getting served, I take as little as I can get away with: two spoonfuls of mashed potatoes and some carrots and Brussels sprouts. The stuffing looks too revolting to even consider. And I don’t eat turkey so at least I’m off the hook there. If anyone asks, I’ll tell them I ruined my appetite with candy.

My dad looks at my brother. “So, does anyone have any family announcements?”

Everyone pretends they don’t hear him, or maybe they really don’t, but my mind starts positively whizzing. I have an announcement: I’m gay! I’m stoned! This eReader was a gift from a 40-something American guy I’ve never met! It was more than $200! He knows this address. And sends me cash for getting naked on webcam. Those mysterious packages that come are almost always SEX TOYS. Which I USE. I want to quit my horrible job and become a porn star. I’ve been emailing escorts – that’s right mom, real hookers – and random people on kijiji about hooking up for NSA sex. I might meet one of these escorts. I want to move to London so I can have my privacy back and set a stripper pole up in my room and go nuts with whoever I want whenever I want and never feel guilty again.

Somehow I survive dinner without saying any of these things. I pretty much stay quiet which is normal for me. When dinner is over I try to stay on the main floor and watch Red Eye with my sisters so I don’t seem suspicious but I can’t handle it. I feel like they can see my high-ness, so I sneak upstairs and have a panic attack on the internet talking to my friend J about what a horrible child I am, doing such perverted things in my parents house and keeping it a secret.

She assures me I’m not perverted, crazy, or a horrible person. In fact I’m quite normal. I remind myself every choice I’ve made in the last few months has been deliberate, and in the bright, clear light of sobriety. I haven’t been stoned or drunk in weeks, maybe months. And I haven’t been THIS stoned since college.
I was tripping balls for two hours and had a horrible zombifying high-over this morning when I had to get up for work. In fact I felt dead my entire shift… I need a new job.

For a while I was angry at my brother for not telling me about the cookie, or how freaking strong that thing was (imagine if I ate it all!) but eventually when I started coming down I realized, what else can I expect? He smokes pot pretty much every day. This is the guy that thinks there’s no such thing as getting too high (there definitely is). And his brain chemistry is probably so fucked from such long-term use that he needs more and more and can’t function without it. I try not to judge or meddle in his life, but maybe he needs some tough love/intervening after all.

All I know for sure is, HOLY FUCK no more drugs for me, thanks. At least not for a looong time. I haven’t had a guilt attack of that magnitude since the summer. Sobriety is definitely a lot more fun.

It’s typical Nina to be a little too open even about the most closed and private of things. However this came a little too close to being a total blow of my cover this time last week when my prospective father-in-law asked me what club it was exactly that I worked for. I said the name of a regular night club, however he then threw me by saying, ‘not [insert name of actual club], then?’ I said no, but that that was where my friends who clubbed where I worked were from. He had got the name of my club from Googling the name of one of the porn stars I work with – Samara Sands – and finding the most local club she works as is indeed in the city I work.

There’s not much that can make me use discretion, but this is one thing which has pushed me to. In fact, so much discretion that every time I commute to work I have to be somewhere else according to my prospective parents-in-law, because I’ve told them I’ve quit! The first day that I have to work this magic on will be Saturday. It’s my brother-in-law-to-be’s birthday party morning til early afternoon but I have to escape from this in time to drive an hour and a bit to work ready for the evening when it’s the club Christmas party. Wish me luck!

The first question people ask me when I tell them about my foot fetish youtube channel is “why?”

I’m not totally sure I know the answer myself.. It started out as something funny to do as a stress relief thing while I was working on my NaNoWriMo novel. I was looking for pictures and videos of people in x-hi chuck taylors to judge whether I wanted a pair for myself or not (turns out I did) and came across this video by Youtube user MissPinkConverse. It seemed kind of amusing, looked sort of fun, and I thought “hey I could do that”. That’s really all there was to it, I was bored and it seemed like a good challenge, post more videos and get more subscribers than MissPinkConverse and then I would win. Or something.

Now, I had already been introduced to the world of foot fetishism. Right now I have one main client, the previously mentioned FG (Foot Guy), who I’ve known for a little over a year. I do webcam foot shows over instant messenger for him and he deposits money into my paypal account afterward. Of course we’re also friends, we talk about different sex toys, he makes sure I’m in possession of whatever delicious new toy I’m lusting after, and I report back with my experiences. He’s more of a soles/toes/entire female body guy, whereas most of my Youtube subscribers seem to be more into crushing and trampling. Which I definitely find interesting.. I never even really knew that sort of thing was out there before now! I don’t think I’d ever really want to step on someone, though, especially with heels on.. but it’s fun to pretend crush stuffed animals and stomp on food. Even though it’s not my thing (I have no type of foot fetish whatsoever), I think I can sort of see the appeal of it.

Recently I found a new potential client, this time a YouTube viewer. He’s offered to buy a pair of my used pantyhose with a short DVD with video clips of me wearing them. Which definitely seems like an easy way to get money. Another question a lot of my friends ask is “why aren’t you doing this full time? you could make so much money if you went pro!” Believe me, I definitely think about it.

In fact, the more I update my YouTube channel, and the more research I do on starting your own website, the more I think it may actually be a good idea. It would certainly beat dealing with rude customers on drive-thru 8 hours a day. One of Steve Pavlina’s articles (10 Reasons You Should Never Get A Job) really made sense to me – why settle for minimum wage and being treated like just another cog in a giant corporate machine, when I could start my own web business and make decent money in my sleep? The way “real jobs” work has never made sense to me – hell, my teenage self would be kicking my ass right now if she could see what I was up to now. I never wanted to work for “the man” and be told what to wear, when to show up, what to do, how to do it, be forced to blindly follow the rules..

And yet somehow that’s what I got stuck doing. I wear a hair net to work for crying out loud! I should get paid more than $9.50 an hour for that crime against humanity alone. That’s not even mentioning the slave-like conditions (two fifteen minute breaks over an entire 8 hour shift? seriously?) or the convoluted system for doing everything..

But I’m getting off-topic here. Just know that I am putting serious thought into starting a foot-fetish type of website. I think I’d probably model it on Ariel Rebel or Ancilla Tilia’s delicious porn site. With less nudity. I suppose YouTube is like practice for that, learning about cameras, flattering angles, editing, uploading, etc. and of course I don’t have a digital camera or video cam good enough to warrant having an actual site, since all I have is a cheap point-and-shoot I bought at Future Shop on sale. But I could work on that.

The main thing that’s holding me back is knowing exactly how stressful leading a double life can be. When I first moved back into my parents and wasn’t yet employed, there was a period of about 6 months where I was looking for work and having to actively hide the fact that I actually already had a decent income. There was just so much fighting and lying and horrible feelings of guilt. I couldn’t take it and it was definitely putting strain on my relationship with my parents. Now, my mum knows that I have experience with sex toys, she knows I majored in Sexuality while I was at school, and she knows I’m definitely no prude. But she has no idea what I do when I’m on the internet. She doesn’t know about my blog, my YouTube channel, FG or the myriad other nefarious reasons I put a lock on my door the day I moved home.

I haven’t even come out and told the woman I’m gay yet, I’m not sure I could tell her I basically want to start my own porn site.. out of her house, no less. I’ve been slowly working on her since I’ve been home, correcting some of her misconceptions about sex workers, questioning why she has certain attitudes, hopefully nudging her outdated attitudes in a more sex-positive direction.. But this is the same woman who gets squeamish when Oprah has an episode about spicing up your marriage.

I realize I shouldn’t let my parents’ attitudes get in the way of having a decent internet career or doing the things I want, but for now, things at home have finally just settled down (for me anyway) and my relationship with both of them has started to get better. While I’m still living under their roof, I want to do everything I can to avoid going back to that place of mistrust and secrecy. I realize moving out again is also an option, but damn living rent-free is just so nice. Especially when I have $20,000 of student loan debt to worry about.

So that’s the story behind the YouTube account. I’m considering switching to a job that’s closer to my house and would be about half the hours. That would leave me time to work more on my blog, YouTube channel/clients and possible website. I’m still not sure what I want to do but I don’t think it involves walking 25 minutes to work every day in this freezing Canadian weather and standing beside an open window for 8 hours. Real jobs suck!

AA’s Fifth Step liberates us alcoholics, although AA literature describes it simply as we “admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” Details about this ancient tool appear in:

• Alcoholics Anonymous, which describes this step on pages 59, 72-75 and
• Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which describes this step on pages 55-62.

Psychologists become frustrated with us alcoholics (my first-rate analyst certainly did). We shield secrets about our double life (our sober self versus our drunken self). We seldom tell them the full truth or follow their advice. So we need the therapeutic premise for the Fifth Step which according to the Big Book is that “we must be entirely honest with somebody if we expect to live long or happily.” There are also spiritual reasons for the Fifth Step—including that we need “outside help if we [are] surely to know and admit the truth about ourselves—the help of God and another human being,” as Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions explains.

In form, the Fifth Step is a confession—an intimate practice used by Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians from ancient times to the present. Christian scripture directly links confessions, forgiveness and healing in Matthew 9:2-8, I Corinthians 11:27-30 and James 5:16. Even so, AA uses confessions in a spiritual and psychological (but not necessarily religious) manner. The human being who hears what we alcoholics admit may or may not represent a religious group. But at the very least, AA recommends one alcoholic, one other person and one Higher Power for the complete Fifth Step experience.

And the purpose? “Only when we resolutely tackled Step Five” did we know “we’d be able to receive forgiveness and give it, too,” Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions says.

But what about humility? How could something as unscientific as that affect healing in any way? For one answer, we turn next to a man known as “Dr. Bob.”

Copyright © 2009 by Randall E. Greene

Ce soir, une pub que je trouve somptueuse, même si je n’adhère ni au message, ni au produit… Mais il faut rendre à César ce qui lui appartient, le film est superbe.

Haven’t blogged much these last couple of months. Have been completely immersed in chapters 21 and 22. Seem to be living a double life. I have this strange connection with Luke Joseph. During daylight hours I’m him. I know exactly what he’s feeling or thinking. It’s like he’s my twin.

I’ve also been ill. Is it the strain of being Luke?  His life is pretty intense. I’m as bruised and as beaten as a Dodgem Car. Fortunately, it didn’t prevent me from going to Muse’s Resistance tour! Would have taken nothing short of a hurricane to keep me at home.

The stage was their most elaborate so far. It had apparently taken eighty crew members to build, evidenced by the huge mass of trucks outside the arena! Three huge towers dominated the stage, with Escher like figures going up and down staircases and as they started to play, curtains fell to reveal the three band members playing in the middle of each of them.  Mr. F. reckoned it was their best set so far. Personally I thought their sound was a bit wobbly at first – on top of those 3 columns. (Do they secretly suffer from Vertigo?)

They didn’t take off really until the towers lowered them to the ground. During “New Born,” the place was chock full of lazers which bounced off the seats at the back like thousands of stars. I was completely awed. The set and lights might have been pretty crazy but Matt didn’t seem as mad as usual. He did his usual twists and turns and knees slides but there was no trashing of guitars here, jumping off of podiums or flinging a guitar into the audience. Even his clothes were relatively subdued. But I suppose that’s one of the things I love about Muse – they shuffle on stage, ordinary as your mates down in the pub, saying little more than “hi” or “love you”. Then they rev up and you’re blown away by the most jaw dropping, mind blowing music around.

Yep, their music was as astonishing as usual!  There were beefed up versions songs and various interludes – heavy rock, jazz that cool little back b-side, “Nishe.” ”There were a few disappointments too – there was no string orchestra and they only played Part 1 of the uber amazing “Exogenesis Symphony.” And what happened to the Chopin Matt, at the end of “United States?”

My mates reckoned the best part was when Chris and Dom jammed together, standing on a column than span round. It was so LOUD – difficult to believe it was just two people! But for me the songs of the night were: “Exogenesis 1” (my favourite track from “The Resistance”) and I liked the way the towers seemed to swim underwater, the rocking, ear-splitting, “Unnatural Selection.”  United States” was incredibly moving. But my ultra – best track was “Stockholm Syndrome.”  The foundations of the building were shaking in that. I swear!

Can’t wait to see what happens to the tour by the time it gets to Wembley. Please  please please though Matt, do you think we can have a string orchestra this time?

Haven’t blogged much these last couple of months. Have been completely immersed in chapters 21 and 22. Seem to be living a double life. I have this strange connection with Luke Joseph. During daylight hours I’m him. I know exactly what he’s feeling or thinking. It’s like he’s my twin. I’ve also been ill. Is it the strain of being Luke?  His life is pretty intense. I’ve been living life on a roller coaster.

A double life. Two of me that reside in the same body at the same time.  I find many points where I’m not quite one and not quite the other.  This is what I mean….

1. I am a sister but feel more like an only child. My brothers are 6 and 9 years older than me.  We also moved when I was 13 so that only added to the distance.

2. I am a child yet in charge.  This pertains mainly to my parents.  I am their youngest, their baby but more and more I am the one who helps makes decisions, is their go-to person in moments of need, and the one who worries about them.

3.  I am a wife yet independent.  I have a wonderful husband and I enjoy the partnership we share.  However, I am also fiercely independent person and sometimes that side of me doesn’t gel very well with being a wife.  It’s caused me a lot of internal conflict. I’m always working on it.

4. I am a parent but not “Mom”.  I have a stepson but I’m not his mom.  I definitely identify him as my child and he sees me as his parent.  We have a special love for each other.  However, I have never attempted to make him call me Mom or diminish his mom’s importance in his life.  I always thought my time would come later.  But after 10 years, it still hasn’t. 

It adds a weird layer to my infertility.  My husband gets to have his biological child yet I don’t.  They look a lot alike and enjoy their father/son relationship.  On one hand, I’m eternally grateful for my stepson because it’s given me a chance to parent, to bond, and to have a child.  On the other hand, we all work as a group to parent and have to share our time with him.  It’s not the experience I had expected. 

5.  I am a wife but not the only one.  My husband is divorced and it really was the right choice for them.  I see that now.  But our lives are never just our own.  We have to clear schedules with his ex and work around my stepson’s schedule.  There is no privacy and we all share in each other’s good and bad times.  My extended family usually has to take what it can get as far as seeing my stepson.  We make it work and our stepson is a very happy, well adjusted young man.  That’s why we do it but there’s always a price to pay.  A price that sometimes feels a little higher for me than everyone else.

6. I’m done and I’m not.  I did make the decision to stop trying to have a biological child.  However, that doesn’t mean we took any permanent steps to closing that door.  I’d still very much love to find out I was going to have a baby.  You can’t just turn that feeling off.  It’s not like that.  Sometimes I wish it were that simple but it’s not.  The truth is there’s still time.  It could happen and I could get pregnant.  And on the other hand, I haven’t and I don’t feel it in my future.  Make of all that what you will.  I know I’m still trying to.

I’ll end there.  You won’t hear me talk about my stepson much.  Not because I don’t love him.  I do. Very, very much.  But, this is my space to be me, as an infertile and embrace all that comes with it.

A harsh Biblical view of drinking alcohol is pervasive among conservative Christians. Some examples: (1) “Wine produces mockers; liquor leads to brawls,” Proverbs 20:1 warns. “Whoever is led astray by drink cannot be wise.” (2) Another in Galatians 5:19-21 advises: “Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, let the Holy Spirit fill and control you.”

I care deeply about scripture because I am a Christian. Yet knowing Bible passages never kept me sober. Approaching the age of thirty, I repeatedly prayed for God to end my drinking. Yet I always got drunk. Over time I felt increasing guilt, and passages like the following in Ephesians 5:18 only condemned me more:

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, your lives will produce these evil results: …outbursts of anger, selfish ambition…, drunkenness, wild parties and other kinds of sin…. Anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Biblical views may not affect agnostics, atheists or alcoholics who are intellectually indifferent to scripture. But for someone with my Southern Baptist background, the related shame and fear only debilitated me more. CBN.com unwittingly offers the kind of double-bind message that, years ago, entrapped my thinking: “You are enslaved by the sin of alcoholism. Yet there is hope. God is able to deliver you completely….”

Enslaved. Delivery. Sin. Hope. In the depths of my active alcoholism, opposing words like that did not encourage. All I heard was hopelessness, condemnation and rejection. Years later in the mid-1990s—during yet another disbelieving era of my life—I would stop reading the Bible, stop attending church and stop communicating with Christian friends altogether.

During both eras, the Good News made me want to kill myself—which signals that alcoholism is a major spiritual matter for many of us. And alcoholism triggers something ancient and psychologically dangerous.

Copyright © 2009 by Randall E. Greene

My Double Life: In one life, I am writing a thesis and in the other, this blog which is my guilty pleasure.  One version of me has to kowtow to the rigour of academic writing and the other has the freedom to say what I really think. I’ve been weighing up the possibility of pursuing one over the other-it’s a bit sliding doors.  How I feel as I consider each option is my guide to the decision I have made to pursue both. It’s a habit of mine to seek balance.

The Double Life of Emotional Processing: It’s not lost on me that emotional information also passes through 2 parallel processing routes. One is  automatic  and allows a first pass analysis. The other is a controlled monitoring of the current state of things to match up the outside world with inner desires and goals. We know this because many rats have been sacrificed in the name of science, and many humans have had their brains lit up by functional neroimaging while they perform emotional processing tasks. Results show that threatening information is quickly and roughly processed, so that an appropriate response can be generated which ensures immediate safety. Meanwhile, via a more considered circuitous route, the finer details and more precise characteristics of this information are  analysed to check whether they hold any real threat.

The Two of Us:You can see why we might need both – a quick response keeps us safe and the more considered one checks all the facts. Back to the sliding doors analogy. The original version of me decides to fire off quick posts that are an immediate reaction to what I’m reading. I feel satisfied because I have spoken in my true voice. It’s a bit of a gamble though- it could be a false positive. There is no way to know what the outcome of all my immediate reactions will be. The second version of me writes via the more circuitous route where alot of consideration    is  needed- it’s hard work and I feel frustrated, but in the end it will be worth it.

“About the real alcoholic? …He does absurd, incredible, tragic things while drinking, …a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, …insanely drunk.”

We alcoholics boast that it takes a drunk to know one. Others may suspicion our alcoholism, based on how we behave, drink or think. Yet externals won’t always expose us. We are human chameleons. Consider “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” It was virtually unthinkable in the sixties for Rob and Laura Petrie to be alcoholics who maintained a suburban residence at 148 Bonnie Meadow Road, New Rochelle, New York. But in 2008, Mary Tyler Moore said alcoholism was “my strength during the years I was on ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ (where Van Dyke also battled alcoholism).”

A bulb goes on in our chameleon minds, and we smile. It is a major production to sustain a double life, whether on national TV or in petty existences. We get confused. Am I Rob or Dick, Laura or Mary? That sounds schizophrenic, except most of us alcoholics are not. We possess singular inner voices. But in time, those voices exhaust from two-handed juggling, from the truths we tell differently to different people, from the Big Act. Somewhere along the way we no longer distinguish truth from a lie—quite honestly—we forget when, how or even if that happened.

It feels as if we only appear in roles as people. We do not write reality’s scripts. Yet if we dare describe that to nonalcoholics, they really fidget….

In 1983, 46-year-old Moore checked into Betty Ford Clinic, then followed up with Alcoholics Anonymous. By 2008 the actress (who was seventy-one that year) said in an interview, “I get my strength from myself.” For many of us alcoholics, Moore’s 25-year recovery journey forms a time capsule, almost a parable about transitioning from an addicted double life to safe, inner strength.

That is what I expected—peace in bonnie meadows—when I first surrendered to alcohol in the Bluegrass. Back when booze felt perfect. And when memories of Rob and Laura Petrie living in an idealized suburb seemed as natural as starch named Faultless®.

Copyright © 2009 by Randall E. Greene

So, I read a comment on This blog and it caught my attention.

Great blog about John Edwards. I’m not sure how people can live a double life, and look at themselves in the mirror every day.

First of all, take a quickl look at that blog. It’s a short post, concise, and simple. On the subject of that, yeah it sucks. John Edwards is one of the worst people I’ve heard about, there’s just always something going on with him, and it’s never good. Plus, he reminds me of the guy from Crossing Over with Johnathan Edwards, who was just a little bit of a douchebag. But that’s aside the point. For that matter, so is John Edwards.

The point is, double lives really do suck. The commenter was refering to people who attempt to lead another life because they want more than what they have, but aren’t willing to stop what they do have and go fully to the other side. Instead, they keep things secret and seperated, and in a huge way it’s being greedy.

Others do so for different reasons. Sometimes, a double life comes out of nessecity, not of desire, or else is forced. I realize as I type this that it may not make alot of sense, but it does in a certain way… I want to say “the reasons are different” but really, they’re not that different. In terms of transsexuality, there is a double life, at least for a time. Certainly yes, some transfolk are able to make a complete transition suddenly, but most of us can’t. I’m at a point now where I live double. There’s the side I want people to see, me being female and enjoying myself, and then there’s the side that I have to show people, me being male and doing as I should. Around my family I have to be male, and when/if I get a job, it will have to be male also. When I go out casually, to the movies or shopping or anything else, it’s always female. Really, yeah, I am leading a double life, although it’s not as drastic. It will become more drastic before it’s done away with though. I hope to get a job, and I hope to make friends, and if I have it my way those won’t happen as the same gender. I don’t want friends who know me for being male, because that’s not what I am. At the same time, I’m not at a point where I can get a job as female. I know my situation isn’t that dramatic, but for others it is. Some are able to instantly transition, while others have the opposite, a slow and drawn out change. In my opinion it’s like a bandaid, and needs to be done quick, but you don’t always have the luxery of that.

How do people with double lives look at themselves in the mirror? Well, it takes effort…

Well, seeing as I am the most hip-hop gangsta this side of Bomoseen, I often enjoy doing the stereotypical gangster activities, including, but not limited to: drive-by shootings, drug deals, murder, light treason, and casual gang violence. I also record rap music under several aliases, such as White Lightening, DJ Awkward Beatz, and my current pseudonym, G-Money Fantastica. But I am also a sensitive soul. I enjoy watching romance films. I have a notebook exclusively for poetry. I am a member of the local neighborhood watch. These are my dirty little secrets. My homies and dawgs could never learn of my double life, or all of my respectability would be lost. This sometimes proves incredibly difficult. One time a few weeks ago one of my best friends and senior gang member D-Dawg Jones was stealing my vacationing neighbor’s television. I was torn. Should I call him in as part of the neighborhood watch, or should I go and help him as a hardcore gangsta? In the end, I did nothing. I said nothing to no one. When I saw the TV at his crib the next day, I pretended I didn’t see it. I felt horrible, but I think that is unavoidable any way I go.