I'm Shooting High By Wakingspirit.com ©
‘I can’t stop this world from killing us. You took the first shot long ago and I died,’ kept ringing in my ear.
It was Friday afternoon - visiting hours. I didn’t know if Crystal would come. We never gave each other anything solid to hold on to. Leaving the other one hanging by a rope gave us a twisted sense of pleasure. Bitter sweet torture and merciful release fueled our attraction, we thrived on it. We asked for nothing - freedom. We gave everything - surrender. If she showed up the first thing I’d say would be…
‘I can’t stop this world from killing us. You took the first shot long ago and I died.’
I used the magic marker they gave me and wrote those words in one long sentence down my arm. It was by chance they gave me a red marker. We loved the colour red. Our one room apartment was painted red. Crystal called it the red room. We would write poems, anecdotes and random thoughts all over our bodies in red permanent ink. Once I wrote on her back, ‘red, yellow and blue lights up your moves, the sound of your footsteps say you have nothing to prove.’
It took her half an hour looking over her shoulder into the mirror to figure it out. The next day on my back she wrote, ‘Baby, you take me to the stars.’
She repeatedly reminded me about the colour red always using the same words...
‘Red is symbolic of the fire and blood that runs through our veins and burns like a cigarette in our souls…it’s strong and intense…like us.’ She would say with fire in her heart, then stop for a moment, look deadly serious and finally say...
‘But, like anything dominated by such great passion it’s always in conflict - it can inspire us to create or drive us to destroy.’
Crystal arrived. She looked rested. Over the past year she was burning out and constantly had dark circles under her eyes and sickly pale skin. Now, she was revitalized. She was so completely beautiful at this moment - no make-up, dark raven hair, penetrating green eyes, full cherry lips and milk white skin. She wore a black dress. She was radiant and I was soaking her up like sunshine. I could no longer see the telltale signs of pending danger and disorder in her eyes. The aura of disaster that hovered around her like an old unwanted friend was gone.
‘Well Charlie,’ she looked around my cell, ‘we’ve hung out in worse dives than this.’
She gave me a penetrating stare, the kind that says I know what cards you have hidden in your hand. I stretched out my arm. She read the words out loud…
‘I can’t stop this world from killing us. You took the first shot long ago and I died.’
She stroked the length of my arm with one finger like she was underlining the words and smiled.
‘Charlie,’ her smile faded, tenderly she asked, ‘do you even remember how you ended up here?’
How I ended up in jail was a big blur to me. I was an addict. These bastards were making me go cold turkey. Oh sure they had me on some detox program, but it wasn’t working. Everything was the flipside of being on acid or heroin. Instead of being in Heaven with my head in the clouds I was in Hell with my head in a vice grip. My sense of logic was out the window. I was half awaking from a coma finding myself in prison. I concluded I’d rather be a prisoner in my head than a prisoner in their world. I was still in a fog. My memories were scattered. It felt like an overzealous movie editor was cutting a film of my life to shreds, to the point where the storyline becomes incomprehensible. Here I was in the editing room picking up random strips of film and viewing them through a distorted lens.
There was a simple way to sort this out. I asked her how I ended up here.
‘My dark little darling, my recollections wouldn’t help. You need to figure this out on your own.’
I was raveling in her presence. I was exhausted. I laid my head on her lap and she stroked my sweaty forehead. She licked one of her fingertips
.
‘Hmm, you taste unusually salty. Go ahead - tell me what you can piece together.’
‘I woke up in an alley with powder burns on my fingers,’ I said.
*******************************************************************************
I remember all the booze and drugs I took the last day of my coherent memories - more than usual. It was my only way to keep up with her, and these substances were her only way to distance herself from her fears and dark spirits. Without a concoction of booze and drugs there was no way I was going to get to her star - her star where shadows fell on her face like prison bars. Even though we were surrounded by death and turmoil we battled to be optimistic with an eye for beauty and hope. We were pure of heart and showered each other with unrelenting love and support, but we weren’t fooling ourselves…we knew if we did not change direction this path was suicide by the installment plan. In our darker moments we flirted with ideas of faster ways to get there. Crystal argued these were our lucid moments not darker.
We were struggling artists. Fire and blood - there was no other life for us. We were determined to live off our crafts or starve.
I had started a band. Crystal had slightly overdosed, woke up in a sweat at 4 a.m. and insisted I call the band the ‘Cry Out People.’ We had a small hard core following with a few gigs a month. Crystal and I co-wrote the songs. She’d dance at every gig – non-stop.
Crystal was pursuing an acting career. She had done a few commercials and actually had some minor talking parts in the movies. I was going nowhere, but there was hope for her. She was uniquely good looking and on film she was stunning. Her acting skills were impressive. She remembered and said her lines with the perfect measure of emotion. She could convincingly cry or laugh or conjure up any emotion without hesitation and her voice was sultry and hypnotic - keeping you hanging on every word.
Someone with her survival skills did not need acting lessons. Crystal grew up in Fresno in a broken home with a broken mother. Her abusers were plentiful and constantly preying on her. It worsened from grade four onward. She had no one to help her face these demons and pitfalls - no gallant knights, no heroic nuns, not even a social worker - she vanished through the gaps. She found out the hard way that resistance was painful and dangerous. Instead, she became an actor. She became the right character that could get her through the neglect and abuse at any moment. It even helped mute her loneliness and despair, but like anything muted the loudness is still faintly heard, buried just below the surface and does not go away.
Her mother was cheap trash and was not fit to care for her daughter. In fact, she was just one more of the abusers that added to Crystal’s cuts and bruises. Her mother’s live-in boyfriend would have his way with Crystal nightly. She was only 15 years old. After his assaults she would cry endlessly through the night. She was such a good actor that despite the loathing and disgust she had for him, she convinced him that she loved him. This was her way of dialing down the abuse and pain. She was too innocent and good willed by nature to seek revenge, but she discovered through acting she could manipulate and deflect the ill intentions of her abusers. Instead, he took her illusory love as a sign, a sign to kill the mother. He was quickly arrested and a 16 year old girl’s weeping testimony put the final nail in his coffin. Found guilty, his execution was fast tracked and a year later the State carried out the deed.
I came from a New Jersey suburban family. I despised them and they despised me. I never experienced physical abuse, nor love. I was completely different than my parents and their indifference to me was like a brick building endlessly falling in on me. As a kid I’d often overheard them telling family and friends how unhappy they were with this weirdo son, they’d say, ‘Something went wrong with the gene pool.’ It ripped my heart out. Feeling defeated, late at night I’d sneak out of my parents' house and roam abandoned factories where I made friends with homeless people who cared more for me than my parents. At home I was misunderstood as far back as I can remember. I was dying and needed to get out.
From different worlds we arrived in Los Angeles on April 1st - two 17 year old kids. I was greeted by a gray overcast sky as I explored the city on my first day. After endlessly wandering the streets I went to chill out in a park. I saw Crystal on a bench. She was dazzling. She wore a tattered black and red dress and had a 1950’s beatnik haircut. She looked like a gypsy fortune-teller. I was compelled to walk closer to her. I saw she was reading, ‘The Shores We Walk.’ I couldn’t believe it. I was blown away. I loved this book - it was the only book that ever talked to me. I sat beside her. I told her, it was the best book ever! She tested me to see if I knew what I was talking about. I passed the test. She smiled, the clouds lifted and we opened up to each other - pouring out our hearts and souls. We discovered we had no place to stay, we concluded that fate brought us together and we were meant to be together - Crystal and Charlie forever. We found a cheap hotel room. That night she said, I was a pretty looking boy and that we’d be perfect for the roles of Romeo and Juliet. We became friends, lovers, roommates, muses, care givers and everything to each other. From that point on we were inseparable and determined to help each other chase after our dreams.
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‘Weren’t we at a nightclub…last I remember?’ I asked.
Crystal kissed my forehead.
‘Yes, we were at the Bee Hive,’ she said.
Being at the Bee Hive means we were out of drugs. If we had drugs we’d be home playing Scrabble and listening to Crystal’s only Album, ‘Ann Richards,’ playing the song, ‘I'm Shooting High" ten times over.
The lyrics are forever enshrined in my head...
I'm shooting high
Got my eye on a star in the sky
Shooting high
I'll never stop till I get to the top
Tell you why
Shouldn't I?
You know it's you I'm after
You're my lucky star
I'm on a rainbow rafter
Climbing up to where you are
I'll have a time
It's a climb but I'll make it
Cause I'm shooting high
We were regulars at the Bee Hive. People selling drugs would take up at tables appearing to be customers. The regulars knew which tables were offering acid or cocaine or whatever your pleasure. After a few outings it felt like a very normal way to get the things you needed, like a trip to the corner store. We even had a perverse bond of friendship with the local dealers and users at the club. Often we’d get our fix or stuff and stay for several drinks before leaving. Don was our favourite character at the club. He sold cocaine at a table in the corner. He always had five or six highball glasses filled with green liquor on the rocks that illuminated like neon glowing signs under the ceiling lights. He said it was his billboard to draw customers over. One look at Don and you thought the devil carved and served him up. He was truly riding the razor’s edge of despair and hope.
Don had the twisted intelligence of a beguiled poet and his keen insight on life took you off guard.
‘I speak to angels and they sound like you,’ he once told Crystal.
He was a good man making the best of a bad time. He told us, he was being looked after by the Green Fairy along with his patron Saint - Saint Vincent Van Gough.
I told him there was no such Saint. Crystal put her hand over my mouth.
‘We’re allowed to acclaim our own Saints,’ she insisted.
Don worshiped her from that point forward. He always told us that he could get us anything we ever wanted…anything. We told him someday we may take him up on that, not knowing what we’d ever want from him other than drugs. We really knew the underbelly of this town. We were humble and courageous in sharing its scars and stench when we were down, and proud and eager to flaunt its grit and coolness when we were up.
I was nodding off. Crystal woke me and gently slid my head off her legs onto my pillow. A guard came by and gave us the ‘wrap it up’ look. She tucked me into the bed.
‘I love you, we’ll never be apart,’ she said tenderly. She told me she’d be coming back to visit tomorrow.
******************************************************************
The next day we talked about the lowest point of our existence. Crystal needed to air it out. Tears were streaming from her eyes. Last year she got pregnant with twins. We were too young but intent on having the babies. People tried to talk us out of it. We cleaned up our act. We both stopped using and drinking. I swallowed my pride and got a job at a call center. She was working at a book store. We put a crib in the corner of our bachelor apartment and decorated it with fine red silk scarves and hung on the wall pieces of art and scrapes of poems we had created for our baby boys. All over her swollen belly I wrote the different names we had picked out. I was pretty sure she wanted to name the boys Billie and Sammy.
Something went wrong and we had a miscarriage. Fire and blood - we both went off the rails. We went back to using and drinking more than we had in the past. Crystal blamed herself. She thought her drug use and drinking had screwed up her metabolism and killed the babies. I blamed myself for being party to all this abuse - we’re not kids anymore - we should have been more responsible.
I dried her tears. I held her tight in my arms. I could feel her heart beating way faster than it should. I could feel each vertebrate as my hand ran down her back. She was getting too thin - it was unhealthy - it made me worried about her. I rocked her gently back and forth and told her that we are just kids ourselves - we’ll straighten out - we’ll right the wrongs in good time. It pained me to think that her turbulent past imprisoned her more than I in this cell. This world had been cruel. I prayed for her salvation.
My moment of chivalry did not last long. I was nauseous again and needed to lie down. We hadn’t covered much ground. I was still in a fog about everything. Crystal could see I was fading.
‘There’s no rush - we can pick up things tomorrow,’ she said, then she softy sang, ‘Over the Rainbow.’ I dreamed I was flying and drifted off to oblivion.
I was in a deep sleep. A guard had to shake me awake to get me up for breakfast the next morning. All this time food was surreal and nonsensical to me. I forced it down.
It was afternoon. The sun was streaming in from my small cell window. The shadows from the window bars fell across the room, painting the floor with black and white stripes. Today Crystal was wearing a white dress. She never wore white. I found it very strange, but it made her look like an angel. Her pitch black hair in contrast to the white silk fabric was stunning.
‘You should see what the newspapers are saying about us,’ she blurted out. She seemed amused more than anything else.
‘You’re a loaded gun with a hair trigger and I’m a cracked up star no one can figure out.’
Crystal laughed.
‘Charlie, we are creatures under the Sun that they will never figure out…we don’t paint this world as we see it, we paint it as we feel it…it scares them, their only solution is to kill what they can’t understand.’
She started rubbing my shoulders. It felt so good.
‘Charlie, it won’t be long now before it all comes back to you. They’re going to tell you their version of our story. Baby, remember, they can never figure us out. They’ll never get it right. Soon you’ll get it right in your head, trust your vision and just stick with it, move in that direction.’
We kissed and she told me that she wasn’t sure if she could come tomorrow, but when the time was right she’d be there for me - not to worry.
She was gone. Now more than ever I needed to figure this out. I needed to make sense of this madness. Reality was knocking at my door like a stranger messing with my head - I open the door and nothing is there. Why was I in prison?
Everything was unclear. I remembered something else she said over several visits, ‘We are not meant for this world, it’s tearing us apart, let’s leave this world and not look back.’
*****************************************************************
I woke up late the next morning...I was anxious for Crystal to return. We had so much to sort out.
After about ten minutes the morning fog lifted from my head and I saw a message written on my cell wall...in red ink. Crystal must have come and gone before I woke. On my cell wall was written:
Let’s take our words to the dump
Let’s get out of this verbal slump
They’ll want to dissect all the nouns
Can’t tell the experts from the clowns
We could teach them how we speak
But we know they’d rather just critique
We’ll take our tongues to another land
And hope at last they'll understand
At noon they took me from my cell to a room with a desk. They sat me at a chair on the far side of the desk. A middle aged man in a suit sat in the chair across from me.
He pulled out a file. He looked me over briefly and said, ‘The doctors tell me you should now be coherent.’
‘Charlie, I’m Mr. Myers, your lawyer.’ He nervously fiddled with his glasses. ‘I’m convinced you have no idea what happened and why you’re here, so let me tell you.’
I wasn’t as fully coherent as they thought, the room was spinning and his nose was moving all over his face, finally falling off his chin. I clung to the last dregs of my consciousness trying to maintain my composure and not let on that I felt like Alice in Wonderland.
He began to fill me in. Point blank, he told me that I had murdered my girlfriend. I was charged with first degree murder and facing the death penalty for my crime.
I was rattled and completely thrown off balance. I needed to scream out loud, but there was no wind in my lungs. I needed to tell him she was still alive and that I’ve been talking to her all this time, then it dawned on me and I realized I should say nothing. Crystal warned me of their deceit and that they wouldn’t understand. Silence has always been a good defense mechanism for me as a child and onward. If someone is reproaching you or punishing you and you have no power to fight back the best thing to do is bear it, show no emotion and deprive your antagonist of the satisfaction they would get seeing you squirm or breakdown. I wasn’t going to give him or anyone the satisfaction. I just blankly stared at him and listened.
They knew that Crystal and I had a blowout fight at the Bee Hive. I was thinking, so what - fire and blood - we fought all the time, but we never did any harm. Sure, if others saw us fight sometimes it looked like we were going to strangle each other, but they weren’t back at our flat seeing us recount the fight, laughing and making love like it was our last day on Earth. In public our fights were even more explosive. She was an actress and I was a musician, we both loved putting on a good stage show.
After we fought I would always say, ‘Baby, take another notch from my soul, it’s time to go down, it’s time to drop.’ She loved those make-up words and would instantly kiss me and we’d make love. I know that the outside world would see those words as toxic - they would see our fights and label us as misfits. They would judge our relationship by their squeaky clean and sterile phony standards. They’re all hypocrites. When she was coming down from a bad trip they didn’t see me tenderly holding a cold washcloth to her forehead, or changing the soiled sheets on the bed - hanging by a thread, they didn’t hear her tell me, ‘I see you through the red…you’re my Mr. Magic.’
Whatever happened to being judged by your peers? Label me as a no good junkie punk, I don’t care, but I was incapable of murdering anyone, and I would never hurt Crystal.
Apparently, the evidence was overwhelming against me. The police responded to 911 calls about gun shots in the alley behind the Bee Hive. It was April 1st, 6:30 a.m. They found us with bullet wounds to our chests. We were rushed to the hospital and into the operating room. They said it was a miracle I survived. Crystal died on the operating table. At first investigators thought we had been mugged and things got ugly. At the hospital forensic experts noticed gun powder burns on my fingers, ran the tests and determined that I must have pulled the trigger. In the alley they found a handgun called a Raven MP-25. I found this eerie because the Raven was Crystal’s Totem Animal. No one knew where the gun came from, it was untraceable. I hated guns. She hated guns.
My lawyer could tell I was fatigued and decided to let me go back to my cell. We could talk more tomorrow.
I tried to regain my composure back in the cell. I thought this was some kind of cruel and diabolical interrogation tactic. This is torture. Why are they messing with me? They are saying this crime happened four months ago. How could I have been out of it that long? He said I was shot in the chest. I opened my shirt. I ran my fingers through my thick mat of chest hair. I felt a bump on my skin. I separated my hair and I saw a scar. Alright, I had been shot, doesn’t this prove I was a victim of a crime - not the criminal.
*****************************************************************
I was lucky that my sense of time was askew. I had no idea about the passing of days, weeks or months. All I knew was that Crystal had not come to visit. I missed her but I was not bothered by her absence. She told me she’d be back for me and I had absolute faith in her.
I vaguely remember going to trial. Again, my recollections were like tidbits of film off the messy editing floor of my life.
I remember the prosecuting attorney posturing like an intimidating alpha ape and saying, ‘It’s plain and clear, no amount of thunder can shake these facts…the accused is a violent and volatile man who planned out and killed in cold blood his girlfriend out of rage and angst.’ He seemed to be gesturing to a higher power.
‘Then like a coward he failed in taking his own life. He should be found guilty and sentenced to death.’
They showed a picture of the crime scene. The first cop to arrive thought we were both dead. He took pictures with his cell phone while waiting for the paramedics. Our bodies were beside each other stretched out in the alley. The sun had just peaked over the canyon foothills and flooded our bodies with light - our lifeless bodies were glittering with a soft golden glow. There was a large amount of blood on the cracked asphalt, under the spotlight of the sun it shimmered and was a bright ruby red as it pooled between our bodies. Our bodies were surrounded on three sides by brick walls vandalized by all types of colourful graffiti. It was dominated by a huge drawing of a woman’s smirking face painted in shades of light and dark green, it added to the dreamlike and abstract qualities of the photograph. I found it hauntingly poetic.
Crystal told me it wouldn’t be long before it would all come back to me. She was right. The fog had lifted. I just recalled on Crystal’s last visit to my cell as she was leaving she whispered in my ear, ‘Remember you took the first shot.’ I felt a sudden jolt of pain in my chest. Now, I remembered everything.
I stayed silent through the balance of the trial. They said I was a cold blooded and psychotic killer. They even submitted misinterpretations of my songs as evidence. Silence was a strong reply, only my peers would understand. It seemed like a day, but I know it was longer - I was found guilty and the judge sentenced me to death.
My lawyer wanted to file an appeal. I said no. He said the forensic experts had new evidence - Crystal had gun powder burns on her fingers too.
‘Then you should understand,’ I said.
San Quentin State Prison, April 1st, as a thunder storm raged, they took me to the execution chamber. The officer strapping me in the chair saw that there were words running up my arm in red magic marker. He didn’t know what to do about it. He called his boss over.
I could hear them reading it out loud...
.
‘This one will know how to live beyond the stars.’
‘Just strap him in and hook him up, it doesn’t matter,’ said the boss.
I noticed the various officials in the observation room behind the glass. My faith was stronger than ever. And then I saw Crystal in the back of the room. She was in her white dress engulfed in a soft golden light. She looked so peaceful and happy. She smiled at me. I smiled back. She looked down to both her sides. I followed her gaze. Standing on each side of her was a baby boy holding her hand. The boys looked like me.
The officer asked if I had any last words to say.
I graciously grinned and nodded yes.
Crystal winked and from memory I recited the poem the two of us wrote and called Neon Night...
'Let’s take our minds to the Laundromat
Let’s have a dirty little chat
They’ll listen in and shake their heads
And masturbate that night in bed...
We can’t learn to please the Gods
But we can play against the odds
We’ll polish our hearts and shiny sins
Laugh in silence with wicked grins....
We will dance to our souls’ delight
Riding the storm of a neon night
And when they think we’re dead and gone
Let the thunder be our song'
I took a deep breath…my last one.
‘I'm shooting high...to the stars...it's you I'm after,’ I calmly said out loud as my last expression in this world.
Everyone in the room looked perplexed.
Crystal blew me a kiss and reached out her arms to me.
The switch was thrown.
