Solace From Strangers

Benji Henderson, 23 | San Bernardino, CA (He/Him)

This interview was originally recorded on December 17th, 2022 inside of Benji's dorm room that he lives alone in. Above Benji's bed was a poster of Britney Spears' Oops!... I Did It Again album. Next to Benji's bed was a bedside drawer with a small TV and an original Xbox on it. I've been inside Benji's dorm on multiple occasions. We've played Tony Hawk's Underground 2 together on a few occasions. We've had long conversations about nothing inside that dorm room. I've watched him play the Reservoir Dogs video game in that dorm room. I first met Benji in August of 2022 when I had first joined a state agency that we both work for that also provides housing for the both of us. I knew from the moment I first heard him speak a word that he was someone I wanted to be close to. There was a charm about him that most would find difficult to replicate. He was down to Earth while still being flashy and extravagant in the ways that he presented himself. I'm stating this in the most respectable way possible: Benji did not feel like a real human being; he was a character, a character that you just loved to see whenever he was on screen. Benji can be found on Instagram with the username "@this.is.benjiii".

Tell me a little about yourself.

Shit, pretty much bro, when you see me, I want you to think "hustler." When you see me, I want you to be like, "Damn, that nigga's a success." That's who I am, bro. I'm outgoing. I'm energetic. I got too much ambition, bro. I feel like I could do anything, bro. That's just me, bro. That's me. That's just who I am. That's what I'm about. I'm about money. I'm about status.

You grew up in San Bernardino; that [San Bernardino] has one of the highest murder rates in the U.S., so can you tell me about your experience with growing up in San Bernardino and how it may have shaped you and your life?

Growing up in San Bernardino, it's pretty chaotic. I experienced my first loss of gun violence when I was eleven years old; that's when I lost my first friend, my neighbor. From there it just built up momentum and a lot of people around me were just dying. A lot of the things I had growing up, they just started tarnishing. For example, there was a roller skating rink down the street of where I used to live; me and my homies would go there all the time. Like every other night, just go roller skating. Eventually, somebody I knew, they just shot it up just because they bought a new gun and they were bored and they wanted to see if it worked and they just shot the skating rink up. After that, that shit just got shut down and then it became a dispensary and then it got shut down again. And the building owner, I feel like for insurance purposes, he just burnt this building down so he could get money. Now that building do not exist no more. That was a big staple of my childhood; that shit's not even there no more.

A lot of people that I know is gone. It's crazy, people will backdoor you. Niggas will snake you, bro. There's people who will ask you to hangout and in reality they just wanna rob you or they probably want to kill you for something that you did that you don't even know that you did to make them mad. It's crazy. It's foreign, bro. It's different, bro. It's something different.

Do you think that any morally wrong actions that you may have committed in your past were because of your DNA, like it was in your nature, or because of the environment that you had grown up in?

Nah, I personally believe that there's certain things embedded in your DNA, but to kill is really not one of them. I'm sorry about that... I'm getting ahead of myself, you never said nun' about that. I don't think it's embedded in our DNA, like that kind of shit. It's not, bro. I feel like that's something that you learn to do, because you become a part of your environment. I feel like that was my case. I never just decided to wake up and be like, "ay, you know what? I'ma buy a gun." I didn't just wake up one day like, "Ay, you know what? I'ma rob somebody. I'ma be the reason why they don't have a car anymore. That's lit." I never woke up just thinking that. I slowly got conditioned into that shit. Next thing you know, that's what I was doing, bro. I was out and about in the streets.