Save Me From Myself.

Tough Aint Tough Enough.

Dallas POV:

My life has always been what I can make of it. Or at least that's what I've always told myself. That's what helps me sleep at night; pretending I've had control this whole time. Pretending that I'm not just another sad, sorry, son of a bitch with a pity party past to dwell on. The reality is— that's exactly who I am. I'm a broken man, or a boy. Whichever floats your boat. I'm 18 after all, soon to be 19 in another couple months.

Let's get this straight, I don't want sympathy. I don't want whining or sobbing or whatever people do over stories like mine. I never have. That's why I don't tell anyone this stuff. That's why it only lives up in my head where I can pick it apart and fall apart along with it. My life hasn't been easy. And I know that no one has an easy life, I'm not stupid. I know that people have it rough. Despite that, I've always felt as though god is punishing me for something I must not know I did. I don't believe in god. But that thought always crosses my mind on days like today.

I need to go back. Back to the beginning before it all. Maybe then I can make sense of all of the ache going on in my chest right now. Just maybe. Right from the start I was fucked. My mother was a prostitute of some sort in New York. Her parents kicked her out at 14 and she was just trying to get by. That was how she met my dad. He was older— and I mean a lot older. She was 15 when she met my 28 year old father. Do the math. He pretended he would 'save her'. Instead, she ended up pregnant with me and glued in an abusive relationship until the day I was born and she finally died. Birth complications killed my mother before she ever got the chance to hold me. She was 15. She was nothing more than a child.

From then on my father raised me. And by raise, I mean that he got drunk and pretended that he could care for a child by acknowledging it every day or so. I ended up in the ICU 3 times as an infant for being malnourished. As I got older, he'd throw a loaf of bread at me or tell me to go find some food in the kitchen. There was rarely anything at any given time. Sometimes the neighbours in our apartment would give me food if they saw me wandering the halls or outside to get the paper.

By the time I was 6, that was when he started to beat me. Just like he'd done to my mother. Worse off sometimes. I was just a child. Just a baby. I ended up with multiple broken limbs back then and always had a cast on some part of my body. The streets became my safe haven during the day. I'd wander them. Busy New York during the day was beautiful as a child. All of the people and the lights and the noises. We lived in the ghetto but at that age I didn't know any better anyways. I'd just walk around the town and to the parks and sometimes I'd talk to kids who clearly wanted nothing to do with a ragged out kid like me. I didn't have friends. I didn't know what a friend was. I got along better with the stray animals that roamed the town than I did people.

By the age of 10 I'd practically been living my own life. I got my own food from the soup kitchens and I stayed out till whatever time I pleased and I started getting involved in gangs. Lots of gangs. You couldn't just get involved with one. If you started messing around with one, you had to know all of the others. Lucky for me, I didn't join a gang. At least not at that age. Unlucky for me; that meant that no one knew what 'side' I was on. I constantly had trouble following me around wondering if I was snitching on people or causing shit. I never was. Not at that age. I was just getting by and I felt like these people could be my friends. I was arrested for the first time at that age. 10 years old and in Juvy for shoplifting. 3 months. It was the first disturbance in my long record to come.

By the age of 13, things got harder. The beatings got worse and the streets got less light. The streets were trouble and at home was just pain. The things that guy would say to me, man... it was unbelievable. If it hadn't of happened to me, I wouldn't have ever believed a parent could treat a kid that way. Never. But he did. He hated me. He didn't care if I was dead in a ditch or woke up in Juvy or some punk kicked my head in. He didn't care. That was when I first stopped coming home. I started staying at a flop house for local gang members. And to live in a place like that, you had to earn your stay. The leader of the gang pimped me out. Somehow, it was better than being beat by my father. Somehow, the shame wore itself on me, instead of me wearing the shame.

By 16 I'd barely been back to see the old man. He was getting married to another chick who he beat and she was moving her little boy in to live with him. That poor kid. The marriage would never last. Never. By then I knew the streets well. I was a street hustler. I 'worked' the strip. Which kindly meant that I was a low level male prostitute by night and sometimes day. During the day I usually tried to feed myself and sometimes I'd be sent off by the leader of the gang I stuck by to go run errands. Errands could be buying toilet paper for him or they could be stealing truck loads of cocaine. It varied by the day. This was all I'd ever known by this point in my life. This was as good as it got.

By 18, my current age, I was doing bad things. Worse than selling my body or doing deals for gang members. I was getting into shoot-outs and becoming involved with murder wraps. Worse off than that, I'd been dabbling with hard drugs. Cocaine wasn't anything I liked. Pot wasn't my cup of tea. I'd tried crack and heroin. Both had different highs, but both somehow made me forget all of the pain. The abandonment. Everything. Until I stole a pocket full of heroin from the same gang I was initiated into and suddenly I was New York's most wanted. They wanted me dead or to pay for what I did. And by pay, I ain't talking cash. I was a drug addict, a loner, and a loser. I was all on my own. So I ran.

Without anywhere to go and no one to trust, I ran from New York. I ran straight away and didn't look back. I drove until my car broke down, here in Tulsa, and I've been here ever since. I'm clean now. I haven't touched a drop of drug of any kind since the day I stole what I did. Since that's been gone, I haven't touched a thing. I want to forget. I want the pain and the depression to go away. But I know drugs are only a temporary fix, so I had to stop. I've been clean just over 6 months now. For the first few months I was here, I barely spoke to anyone. I played pool and got into bar brawls and had some harmless fun with these people. I've learned about the smaller town life. Instead of gangs, they have the soc's and the greaser's. I'm more like a greaser but I'm also just a hoodlum. Everyone knows that. I've had some run-ins with a few guys; made myself aquatinted even with some of them. There are these guys, some of them are brothers, and their parents are real nice. They've offered for me to stay with them over and over but I won't accept. I barely know these people. Their kindness blows me away and makes me want to hide in a corner at the same time. The guys are all cool, rough boys. They're tough. Even the younger ones.

I met these guys when I was walking alone in the rain one night. A boy stopped as he was jogging by and asked if I wanted to come dry off at his place. I said no. He said that dinner would be done soon, he'd get me a change of clothes, and I wouldn't have to stay. And that was what happened. Ponyboy coaxed me to his house, introduced me to his parents and brothers, let me shower, gave me clean clothes, fed me, and even let me be when I passed out at their table after dinner. Since then, I've hung around that house and those boys. Their life seemed so perfect. Perfect until last week. I only found out when Two-bit, one of the guys who hang out with the Curtis boys, stopped me outside of the Dingo looking like he'd shot a man. His face was pale and he'd been crying. He was shaking. I ain't good with that stuff or comforting people. I'm just not. But he just down-poured on me. He told me how the boys parents went out for a picnic, how they didn't make it back, and how the train destroyed the car so bad that their bodies were nearly ripped in half. He told me everything.

Yesterday was the funeral. I don't remember ever crying before. Not even as a child. I'm sure I did and I have in the past— but I don't remember ever crying. Yesterday I cried. Softly. Quietly. At the back of a crowded area surrounding two coffins in a large graveyard, I stood under a tree and I let the tears roll. They fell off of my cheeks so gingerly that you'd think I was splashing water on my face. I didn't talk to the boys. I stayed for the service and I said goodbye to their parents in my head and left.

I went to Bucks place. I met buck in jail when I first got here and spit on a cop for pulling me over. Buck is a good guy. He lets me stay in a small room upstairs. Nicest place I've ever had. He barely charges me anything to stay there. This is the closest thing I've ever had to a home. These people are the closest things I've ever known to be a part of my life. I'm sorry for their loss. I'll miss those kind people too. I think my best bet is to give them all space and just stay away. Let them grieve.

Lost in my thoughts, suddenly, there's a knock at my door.

"I'm coming, one sec."