Hoodlum's Miracle (eBook)

Chapter 3

Sex, Stealing, Sexual Abuse

My mom remarried when I was nine, and I was relieved to not have to be the man of the house anymore. That whole concept of being the man of the house may sound cool, but looking back it was a psychological nightmare. When I was ten years old, we moved to a different neighborhood. We had a bigger house, this time with three bedrooms and one bathroom. This was a very ethnic, Irish neighborhood. When I got to be about twelve, I remember feeling a spiritual presence very close. No matter what I was doing or where I was going, the Divine was looking out for me. Whenever I let it, this presence was my guide.

About a half a mile from our house were some woods where I liked to ride my bike. I liked going over there, and being out in nature. There was a big hill there that was fun to speed down. I was a twelve-year-old boy, racing around on my bike. One day I was over in the woods, and there were three guys at a picnic table. They waved me over and we started chatting.

One of them asked me, “How fast can you ride that bike on the grass? That’s a lot of grass out there.”

And I bragged, “Oh I’m pretty strong, I can ride fast.”

One of the other guys was looking at me and said, “Yeah, you look strong.”

At that point, it was probably about five in the afternoon. I started getting a funny feeling, and I remember thinking, I have to come up with an excuse to get out of there, so I said, “I gotta go. I have to be home in time for dinner.”

The guys got up to leave, and I got on my bike and started pedaling away. When I was about fifty yards away from the table, I had the feeling of a burning light taking over my body. It was like a divine image overtook me and said, “It’s time to fly, get that bike and get out of here. Those three guys mean no good.”

I felt really nice and somewhat mesmerized by the feeling of this presence, and then I looked around and saw those guys walking toward me. They were all spread out and not walking together, but behind me was that steep, grassy hill. I took off, pedaling as fast as I could. The guys started running after me. I was pedaling faster and faster, and they were trying to cut me off. I finally got to a parking lot and I could really get going. At the other side of the parking lot was a trail that the neighborhood kids had made through the woods, and I knew where it went. I hit the trail at full speed on my bike and came out by the railroad tracks. I raced home as fast as I could and hid my bike in the garage. Then I ran into the house, went into my bedroom, and lay down on the floor pretending to read a book. I was hiding. I was so scared, but I couldn’t tell my parents about what happened because I wasn’t supposed to be in those woods. As I was lying there I thought, Wow, the spiritual presence came to me again. The Divine came to me to warn me. It was like a big bolt of intuition. I was told to get going just in the nick of time. I really felt like someone was looking out for me, and this episode counts among my divine experiences.

When I turned thirteen, I felt really close to the Divine, really connected and that I should do the good and right thing. I became a leader at school. Then I became president of a school club, and I was really trying to do good things and be like the Divine. As a leader, I was responsible for training other members at the school and showing them around, where things were kept in case a teacher wanted something. There we were, joking and playing around and we got into where some wine was hidden. We started drinking that wine. We were getting a pretty good buzz for a group of mischievous thirteen-year-olds. I was trying to be a big shot and show them how important I was. We had a pretty good time, but as is so often the case with teenagers, someone couldn’t keep the secret.

Next thing I knew, I was brought in front of the principal and quizzed about drinking the wine. The result was that I was fired from being president of the club. One of my uncles was a big shot in the schools and another uncle had been a huge leader, so that helped keep me out of the worst of the trouble. I started to feel like I really messed up and embarrassed my family. I knew I was being bad, but something was there and it kept coming back in spite of the things I did.

This was also about the time when I really started to be interested in girls. I’d be out with one of them in a secluded place, or maybe even in a movie theatre, and we’d be kissing. Sometimes they even slid their hand down into my pants and played with me until I experienced exquisite pleasure that I began to crave over and over again. I also found out how easy it was for me to explore their bodies under their clothes. I loved touching their bare skin, especially touching under their panties and feeling them push against my hand. Kissing their nipples through the fabric of their shirt and feeling the nipples get hard was such a turn on for me. I was having these experiences often, and for a young boy of fourteen it was something else.

I was walking home from a girl’s house one day and feeling bad, feeling like I was an awful person. I tried to remind myself, They tell you not to do this. I got a feeling from inside, “Just remember what I told you. You have to work hard to be close to me.”

I thought, But I don’t understand.

And the voice said, “You don’t have to do anything, but just accept me as part of your life, accept that I’m the main one. Don’t think about your pleasures.”

And I thought, Wow, even though I was bad. I have been fooling around with girls for months. But in spite of myself, the Divine was always there.

I always believe it was there for me, in spite of my carrying on. I decided I needed to calm down and cut back on playing in girl’s panties.

I was fourteen years old now and feeling very close to the Spirit. It came to me in a vision one night, again reminding me that it is harder to get close to this Force than it is to make a million dollars. I asked myself, Why is something telling me this?

It came to me that maybe since my hormones were on fire, that I should talk to a mentor. Maybe that was the meaning of the message. I found a mentor and really enjoyed the input from him, being able to let my guard down and trust him, and the feeling that I was close to turning things around. I took up basketball and was a great athletic success! Along with basketball success came popularity and invitations to parties.

As with many high school parties, beer was served and I drank the beer and enjoyed getting drunk. Next thing I knew, some of the older boys told me now that I had been drinking their beer, I had to help them get beer. I wondered how we were going to do that.

I was soon to find out. A group of us were at the local liquor store. One of the guys was a big tall black guy, and the rest of us were white guys. The black guy carried a big book bag and went to the end of the store where the smaller liquor bottles were. While he was over in the liquor department, the rest of us went to where the beer was kept in a cooler and filled our school bags with beer. Then we’d wander toward the checkout, where our friends who were lookouts stood, and said loudly, “Well, I don’t think we have enough money for candy.”

Then we all walked off together, scooted down the alley, and hung out between parked trucks. At the same time, the black guy headed toward the door saying, “I don’t see what my uncle likes. I’m going to tell him it’s not here.”

Sadly, we knew the incredible prejudice of that time meant that as he reached the front of the store, the staff would stop him and search his book bag, his pockets, everything. The plan was that he never took anything, so of course they had to let him leave. He’d meet up with us between the trucks and we’d all drink beer and get drunk. Then we’d have to go home and try to pretend that we weren’t drunk in front of our parents.

That got me started shoplifting, I thought it was easy, and then I started to take it further. We were poor. My mother got me one pair of shoes for the year. I had I think two pairs of pants, so not a lot of clothes. At some point, I saw the movie Robin Hood, about the man who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. I thought I was poor, so why couldn’t I start shoplifting? I got a crew of clean-cut athletic boys together and we went to the shopping center and just shoplifted away, stealing all sorts of things. This was a time in my life when I had things, enjoying the thrill of finally having things. I remember thinking this was so good. If I wanted something, I just stole it. I was stealing liquor, too, and then I was selling the liquor and had some money from that.

I was also able to steal some fake IDs that said I was twenty-one years old. With that, I set up a business of buying liquor for all of my friends. Within a month, I was taking orders on Friday and Saturday nights. I would mark up the beer, wine, and liquor by 100 percent, making a good profit. Within three months, on a typical weekend night I was buying about twenty to twenty-five cases of beer, plus some wine and some hard liquor. I was known in the neighborhood as the Hoodlum. That was the name of a movie back then. I ran this operation for about two years and had some close calls, but never got caught by the police with the liquor in hand. I guess in some way the Divine was watching out for the Hoodlum.

Now that I had money, it was easier to hang...