“Don’t work like that. You broke the law.”

was in sixth grade when I smoked my first cigarette. It was one morning before school where I met Dwayne Cotton and J.C. Hicks, as planned, and we walked down Finley to a ditch. This was two blocks a way from Travis Junior High, and Finley Rd. was busy, especially this time of the morning. Dwayne was a short, mischievous but nice kid who would later drop out of school and I heard even got a girl pregnant. J.C. Hicks was a fat dumbest that would later get arrested for pushing his girlfriend down a set of stairs senior year of high school.
There we were in the middle of a ditch, the aluminum sided houses and trees towering over us on each side. It was there, nestled under the canopy of suburbia that we were to smoke one of J.C’s dad’s cigarettes. I could see Dwayne’s breath as he spoke.
“Have you ever smoked before?” he asked us both.
“Duh” barked J.C.
What a shithead liar. He hadn’t smoke and neither had I. Besides what kind of question was that? We were in our first semester of sixth grade, barely eleven years old. Where were we supposed to have smoked, in Elementary school? J.C was a fucking liar.
“Yeah, all the time,” I lied.
Dwayne handed the cigarette to me. Me and my big mouth.
“Okay.”
I held the cigarette by the filter with my left hand, and a lighter in the other. I touched the tip it to the flame, and there was a spark. Our eyes light up.
“Okay it’s lit!” said Dwayne.
Smoke was pouring out of the tip. I looked at Dwayne and J.C’s eager eyes, awaiting my next move. I put it up to my mouth and dragged in. It tasted like a thousand freezing daggers piercing my throat. I knew I was going to cough, so I held it in, as tears welled up in my eyes. Triumphantly I blew it out.
“Gimme,” said J.C.
I put it in his stubby fat fingers, which carried it to his fat pink white-boy lips. He sucked it in. No cough. No tears. Maybe he had smoked before. He passed it to Dwayne, who took it like a pro.


Five months later I am in the very same ditch, only this time its after school. It was me, Jeffrey Castro, Marcus Rodriguez, Dwayne Cotton, Carlos Shriner and some Salvi kid who might have been mentally retarded, I never figured that out. Just like last time I was there with a plan.
We all hid in the gutter under the street. I walked towards the group of boys huddled under Finley St. A police car slowly rolled over them, and I started running in.
“Quit running Savage, your gonna make us look all suspicious and shit,” warned Jeffrey.
“Yeah, yeah. We’ll let’s see it Jeff.”
Jeffrey pulled out a zip lock bag from his backpack, in which lied a crudely rolled joint.
“Where’d you get that shit?” asked the likely retarded Salvadorian.
“Stole it from Lydia.” That was Jeffrey’s sister. What happened next was very similar to what happened months earlier in the ditch with Dwayne and J.C. Except this time, we all coughed.


Two years later I am in eighth grade. Christel Ifulu is braiding my hair my hair in homeroom.
“African style,” she tells me.
I looked fucking ridiculous. I had braided hair, a black hoodie with all sorts of band patches that made no sense, and corduroy pants and a pair of Airwalks. In walked Eddie Mendez and Akwasi Opong. Eddie was your classic cholo burnout guy. Akwasi was an authoritative fifteen-year-old who was still in 8th grade. Akwasi summoned me to the hallway. We walked four doors down to the bathroom.
“Aight nigga, here it is.” Eddie handed me about five small nickel bags, tightly wrapped in those little tiny zip lock bags. Akwasi looked me in the eye.
“I got this from my homeboy. Good shit.”
It wasn’t. I paid him twenty bucks because we were in 8th grade and this shit was half oregano anyway. But at the time I seriously believed that he was selling me outstanding shit.
“Tell ya white friends, this is what we smoke in the ghetto.”
I assured Akwasi that I would relay the message to all my white customers.
And that was that. The nature of my relationship with Eddie and Akwasi was strictly business. They knew white kids wanted weed, and that I was a good ambassador between social structures.
The first person I hit up was Becky Schmidel, whom I was dating at the time. She was a pathetically sad white girl with self-esteem almost as low as mine. We had been having sex, an activity that I bragged about at every opportunity. I liked here for that reason, and she liked me because I had weed. Let me say now that Junior High was the lowest ethical point in my character.
I bragged to Becky how great this weed was.
“Akwasi got it from his homeboy in Dallas. Its like… really good or something.”
“Sweet,” said Becky, about as enthusiastically as she could muster. She was always depressed. She now has a kid and still lives in the shithole called Irving, TX. Last time I saw here she was working at Pizza Hut.
After school we set out to smoke the weed. This was no ordinary ditch weed though. It came all the way from Dallas. Approved by Akwasi’s very own homeboy. We had to take it somewhere special.
“An alley!” I said. “I know this alley, behind the baseball field.” I was referring to an alley that ran behind MacArthur High. A much nicer part of town then where Travis was. More over by where my parents lived. About a mile away.
“It’s a nice neighborhood, there are never cops there,” said Becky, approving of my locale.
The first thing we did when we got there was make out, because I guess that’s what you do when your in 8th grade and about to smoke weed in and alley. I dunno it made sense at the time, nothing too heavy. Then I pulled out the baggies, some papers and a lighter.
“You wanna?” I asked Becky?
“Nah, your better at rolling.” I rolled a seriously nasty joint, and we started to pass it back in forth. I remember when I was high I would always try to get real “deep”. Probably a combination of me being fourteen and high. Becky didn’t give a shit about what I had to say.
“I can smell what you kids are doing from inside my house!” Came a voice. It was the owner of the house that we were behind. Becky flipped him the bird, and we both cackled out of control. He stormed inside. This should have been warning enough for both of us but sure enough, like dumbasses, we held our ground.
It wasn’t ten minutes later when I cop car slowly pulled up next to us. My heart dropped to my stomach. I looked at Becky. She was ghost white. I quickly tossed the roach over the fence.
“What are you doing?” asked the woman cop.
“Nothing, hanging out,” I answered with a tremble in my voice.
“Hanging out huh? Yeah, it smells like your hanging out real good.”
Her words were like slow motion to me. I watched Becky start to cry.
“Can I take a look inside your bag?” Had I known that I could have refused her that access, I would have, but I didn’t. She looked through my bag and found the nickels.
“What are these?”
“Marijuana—hey can we just talk about this, I—“
“Yeah, okay let’s talk. Let’s sit down, you me and your girlfriend, and have a little rap. Let’s talk about why you have marijuana on you.”
“Hey let’s just talk okay man…” I was high and panicked.
“Yeah okay, let’s talk about where you got this.”
“Eddie.” I blurted out. Whoops.
“Okay, that’s a start. Who is Eddie.”
“Some guy at my school.”
“Well does Eddie have a last name? White, Mexican or Black?”
“I don’t know his last name,” I lied. “I think he’s Guatemalan.”
“…mexican,” said the cop, as she wrote something down on here note pad.
Becky was crying. The cop started on her.
“What about you miss, what’s your story.”
“The pot is mine!” I cut Becky off. “She didn’t have any, it’s all mine.” Becky looked at me astonished. I was taking the hit for her. As Jesus himself would have done.
“I’m gonna call your mom,” the cop told Becky. “You go stand over there.” My interrogation continued.
“We’ll Andrew, I’m gonna take you downtown.” I begged and pleaded with her to just let me go. I promised her I would never smoke weed again.
“Don’t work like that. You broke the law.” I was handcuffed and taken away just in time to see Becky’s mom pick her up.
“Okay so I’m gonna call your mom or your dad, which one should I call?”
“My mom,” I answered. As if one was going to be easier than the other. Damn. All I wanted was to impress Becky. Look at where I was now. Damn my pride, why did I take the fall for her?
What followed was one of the biggest falling outs my parents and I ever had. Probably the biggest. I dunno, maybe tied with the time me and my friend Aaron charged $300 in phone sex bills. The next day in art class I had both Eddie and Akwasi. The rumors were already flying. Eddie greeted me warmly.
“Haha, you stupid ass pendejo! Ha, everybody gets caught once. Then you get smart.”
I tried to tell him, but I didn’t have the nerves.
I sat there in class distraught about my future. Because I new so many different types of people, the reactions I got were all across the board. The preppy kids in my honors classes looked down on me. Some kids thought I was a rebel hero, fueled by rumors of me trying to escape, and later taken to a mental institution. Others just felt sorry for me.
“Can I have Eddie Mendez and Andrew Savage in the office please?” asked a student office aid.
Akwasi looked at Eddie. Eddie looked at me. I turned white. My teacher, who had heard the rumors by now, knew what had happened immediately. For my protection she sent me first. I felt a thousand eyes on my as I left the art room.
“Andrew, for your protection I’m gonna keep this meeting anonymous,” said the school police officer whose name I don’t remember. Yeah right, a little late for that. “You’re a talented artist, you probably look up to a lot of these other guys who do all sorts of drugs?” I nodded my head in confusion. “I used to be like you man, I used to play guitar! I love Jimi Hendrix man!” he was buddying up to me. “But hey dude, tell me this… where is Jimmie now?”
“Dead?”
“You betcha buddy, and that’s where your gonna be if you keep on doin’ this stuff.”
I nodded, confused as ever.
“Hey listen, I know you told Officer Doyle that it as Eddie Mendez that gave you the stuff. If you need I can protect your identity.”
“Yes please,” I said. I knew that I had no identity left to be protected. I was toast.

To be continued…

hen I look back on the time I started hating school, I can almost recall its exact moment. Sixth grade. Everything before sixth grade had been an absolute blast. Elementary school was a breeze; I made straight A's and was well liked by teachers. My parents were happy and I was happy. Fast forward to the dawn of my tenure at Travis Junior High. What I consider to be one of the most dismal points in my existence, academic and otherwise. It was one of the first truly transitional periods in my life; a real turning point. My declining grades combined with a new sense of pubescent rebellion provided the groundwork for years of angst and hopelessness. I had made my first C, and by the end of my first semester, already flunked a class. My time in Elementary left me ill prepared. Forced into an institutionalized life and society that I didn't understand, I found comfort in things I had never sought comfort in before like punk rock, skateboarding, drugs, smoking of course cutting class. Yes, I remember when the great aversion to academia began, quite well.
Leap to tenth grade. At this point I was no stranger to cutting class. It started with waiting in the bathroom, drawing for over an hour until the bell rang. Then I started skipping lunch periods, staying in the cafeteria instead of going to class. Gradually, by the time I was in high school, I was leaving campus grounds to explore the intoxicating freedom that is only delivered by such an experience. In all my life, the rush and thrill has never been matched to the feeling of skipping high school. A ritual, a celebration so cathartic, I credit it with getting me through the experience of public school.
So by this point, I had only skipped periods. Single classes at a time. My ambition was to skip an entire day, and treat myself to the perfect vacation. A Buelleresque escapade that only I would know about. Well, almost-- I couldn't do it alone. I convinced my friend Chris Jacobs to join as a co-conspirator. Chris was a senior, and even for high school had a deep and booming voice. He spoke clearly and confidently, and I knew just the way Chris' gift would benefit me.
"Okay so what am I saying again?" he asks me. I remind him.
"Tell them that your son Andrew can't come to school because it's a religious holiday."
"What religious holiday?"
Drats. They'd look that up wouldn't they? Very well. I continued.
"Tell them I'm sick."
"No way, that’s a dead giveaway!"
"What? Parents call in sick for their kids everyday, it’s the perfect crime!"
"I don't know... If it’s a Fisher, I'm screwed. They know my voice." Chris was referring to the Vice Principal, Mr. Fisher, who attended the same Mormon Church as him. His wife was also worked in the office.
"It won’t be a Fisher. Besides, my only other option is faking a death in the family, and I'm not a good enough liar to milk that." That was true, I was, and am a terrible liar.
Chris caved, and we walked to a pay phone. I put in the quarters and dialed the number on the MacArthur High School pencil in my pocket. Chris began his practiced speech.
"Hello, this is John Savage. Andrew Savage is my son, and he's in tenth grade. He's real sick and I think were going to take him to the doctor tomorrow and let him get some rest..."
I paced nervously.
"Uh huh... yeah... I understand... alright, thank you very much ma'am, you have I nice day."
Chris hung up the phone and smiled in victory. I congratulated him and told him I would make it up for him.
The next day began like any other. I woke up early, ate breakfast, and told my parents goodbye. I lived two blocks away from school and always walked, so I wouldn't have to worry about an escape attempt. I knew where I was going. I was going to Four Seasons Sports Club and Resort. A little background information: The Four Seasons was one of the highest rated hotels in Dallas, and where all the celebrities stayed when they were in town. It was located in Las Colinas, the commercial section of Irving that, unlike the rest of the city, is upper middle class and Caucasian. My house was right outside Los Colinas, and just a few blocks from the hotel. I took a discrete route of alleyways; alleyways I knew well from wandering about Irving. I rehearsed my alibi extensively on the way: I was on vacation from Europe where I home-schooled. I took a back way into the Sports Club, avoiding the front gate security. The fence by the loading docks was easy to hop. I remained confidant and walked in like I owned the place.
The first thing on my agenda was to take a dip. It was fall, and pretty cool outside, so after sneaking into the locker room and changing into my swimsuit, I headed toward the indoor pool. I had it all to myself. The only appropriate point of entry was a cannonball, and the best cannonballs are declared loudly midair. I knew this at age 15. Whenever someone would enter the room I would get nervous and remind myself of my excuse.
After the swim I headed back to the locker room. To sneak in I would have to either wait for someone to leave or wait for someone to enter and press in their membership number on the keypad. The latter happened when an old man walked up carrying his duffel bag. I paid close attention to the number he put in and repeated it in my head. The Four Seasons locker room is one of the most luxurious facilities I had ever stepped foot in. It had a sauna, hot tub, steam room, cold plunge and showers. In the bathroom there were shaving stations with mouthwash and cologne. There were also grooming station with combs, hairspray and scissors. I felt like a true man. I showered, groomed and took one of the most glorious shits of my life. The high I was riding, acting like an adult in the "real world", was a total rush.
Fresh and clean, I found myself sitting on the tennis courts. I peaked over my book occasionally to glance at the matches happening below. It was a cool October day, and I was reading a book my dad bought me, a left leaning biography of George W. Bush called Fortunate Son. I thought about my friends and wandered what they were doing. I thought about my girlfriend who I would not tell about this (to this day I have never told her). She was a key figure and keeping me on the straight and narrow, and would have been disappointed in me for my truancy. I thought about school and the pointlessness of it. I was happy to spend my time alone, I was a pretty introverted kid, and when I wasn't with my girlfriend I was usually hanging out by myself. I had lots of friends, but being alone was something I had always remembered treasuring, perhaps because I was a latch key kid.
Out of either boredom or adventure, probably both, I wondered on the golf course. That day I walked all 18 holes of the Four Seasons gigantic golf course. The course was world-renowned in the golf world, and the famous gold legend Byron Nelson said it was his favorite course. There is a famous tournament there that bears his namesake. The course was groomed to perfection and surrounded by mansions. It went on for miles and miles. I don't remember how long it took me to walk the entire course, definitely hours, but when I got back I was famished. I made a beeline to the resort restaurant and got a smoothie and a Power Bar using the membership number I had memorized from earlier. They were delicious, but not quite satisfying. I knew where I would go next: Midori Sushi.
Midori Sushi was down the street from my house, and was my favorite restaurant. They had a daily lunch buffet for ten dollars that was all you can eat. I saved up all my lunch money from the previous week in preparation for the occasion. My only hope was that I wouldn't run into a MacArthur High faculty member. It was the height of the lunch rush, but they had one table that could accommodate me. I didn't even bother seating myself, rather heading straight to the buffet and filled my plate with California roll, tempura, rice and teriyaki. You see, in my adolescent meat-eating days, I was ignorant to the suffering of animals and the detrimental effects of omnivorous lifestyles on the planet. I was all about meat. Each bite's deliciousness was enhanced by the adventure. I was thrilled to be in a busy restaurant in a busy part of town, eating lunch on a school day.
For desert, not that I needed it, I went to Tom Thumb to buy about a pound of gummi candy, which they carried in bulk. I sat on a hill and cloud watched, feeding myself gummies while I reflected on the day's success. It was Friday, and I was proud that my weekend had started off so swell. I then walked to my friend Katy Smith's house. I took secretive routes, since she lived across the street from the school. Katy had her own door to her room that she kept open. I don't think I ever told Katy this, but I sneaked into her house and watched several episodes of Ghost Writer on her cable TV until I fell asleep. When I woke up school was over, and I always called my mom when I got home from school. I walked the block back to my parents’ house and called my mom to let her know I was home. It technically wasn't lying, because I never told her I was at school.
It wasn't the last time I skipped school, but to this day it is undoubtedly the most memorable. I'm in college now and the every once in a while when I decide not to attend class is never matched by the thrill I felt in those days. I live away from my home now and the amount of authority members I have scrutinizing my every move is drastically less. My disdain for school lasted until I was in college, at which point I had a clearer head and embraced the institution once again. I rarely go back to Irving, TX and whenever I do the landscape changes, but my high school, the Four Seasons, my parents old house are all reminders of a simpler time when rebellion was simple, freedom was treasured and thrills were earned.