Sitting By The Wayside...Getting Fucked Over By Laurie Still

In a way, I've been waiting for my chance at happiness since 1980...I had to grow up very fast.  I was like 10 or 11 years old and one afternoon, I went from being a kid to a young adult.  Too young.  Too soon.  I often think about what it would have been like to have lived anywhere where people didn't know everything about you.  I use to live in San Diego and would tell people that the one thing I liked more than anything was the anonymity of living in a city.  You have to understand...for most of my life, I've had a stranger living inside of me, someone that sought to destroy me more often than I got back up to succeed.  My brain would tell me to do one thing, but I was receiving signals of doubt and negativity, when my inclination was to be upbeat and positive.  A contradiction of thought.

I'd had 10 or 11 years of confidence building before my world changed, so I knew that the feelings that I began having in the 7th grade weren't, at all, normal, for me.  It's one of those things that happens when you have someone you love accused of something terrible.  I'd never have thought of anything like what someone accused my father of...especially my father.  It was inconceivable.  It's important to note that both my mom and dad tried their very best to protect me, I just didn't know how to handle it in public or at school.  There really is no "adulthood" training for kids in this situation, you usually grow into it.  My childhood ended the day my dad was arrested.  It just stopped.  No more happiness without thinking about it.  In a way, I was thrust into the role of grown up...perhaps that was the plan?

Rather than get into the specifics of that whole situation while Laurie is listening in, I'd rather explain the concept of how this made my life into a sort of "always waiting" for something to change feeling.  Working hard wasn't ever a problem.   I got my first job at like 13 or 14 as a fry cook for Kentucky Fried Chicken.  I constantly smelled like fry grease when I would play basketball...I stayed busy.  By this point I'd already learned that Laurie had people trying to physically hurt me for no reason.  There were like 7 or 8 people that she would trade drugs for "violent encounters" with Kevin.  I never knew that Laurie spent all of her time trying to find a way to hurt, injure or kill me. I say that, but I also had a feeling something evil was going on that only the hair on the back of my neck understood.  I had to be careful of where I went and when I went there.  Call it a sixth sense or call it the anger I saw in Laurie's ugly face when she first screamed that, "I was a flaming faggot and everyone knew it!!!"  You can't believe how she looks when she's ready to bully. Pure evil.

Somehow, through my confident exterior, I knew that there was something that I couldn't escape in my small desert community of 29 Palms.  Something that was "after me".  So while I was the student body vice-president, honor student, basketball team captain and voted "best looking" in my class (like that means anything), I was always waiting for my chance to be me.  I felt stifled in my community.  Now some of you will chalk that up to being gay, but that really wasn't the only problem.  I literally had people outside of my friends that were trying to physically hurt me and I had no idea why.   My friends literally knew that I wouldn't go to certain parties because that "dangerous element" would be there.  I'd had one confrontation with Laurie and her friend Julie, the first or second week of school at a party and from that point on, it was time to limit my exposure.  As you will find out, Laurie doesn't like my ability to avoid her...she finds a way into your home and friends' lives.  She has an obsession that doesn't stop at my door mat.

When the time came for me to go to college, I picked a place that was far enough away for me to be free, but not so far that I couldn't be near my family.  I chose U.C. Riverside while my sister played volleyball at Cal State San Bernardino, just down the freeway.  None of the negativity that I'd experienced all through high school with boys trying to beat me up for Laurie's pleasure came with me.  That was all in the past.  College fit me perfectly.  I loved it.  I got a job inside the dorm's snack shop and shared a dorm room with my best friend from all my life.  We had a few friends from nearby Yucca Valley going to school there too, so we had friends and quickly made more friends inside of our dorm.  That feeling of "waiting for something" was gone, I was 18-19 and happy.  There was no more "danger" in my life.  I thrived.  I joined a fraternity, played lots of volleyball, had lots of great times and I never regretted a single thing about my first year.

One strange letter or two, I can't recall, came from a girl I kissed one time in high school.  I was surprised to get it and wondered why she would write it.  The letter was totally hateful and I didn't honestly remember the girl until I looked her up in the yearbook.  There was no reason for her to be angry with me, it was simply one kiss.  The scathing letter talked about her driving her car into her garage door because she's hallucinated that she'd seen me standing in front of it...so she drove through the door.  That was scary.  I didn't write back.  Who goes to the trouble to write a letter about being crazy enough to drive through a garage door?  It certainly didn't fit the image I had of this girl, she was totally nice and very pretty.  I chalked it up to the past and forgot about it.

There was one more thing that happened that year that set me back.  About two thirds of the year before we were done, my best friend and I moved out into our own apartment just down the street from campus.  I worked at a bagel shop across from our apartment and my roommate worked all the time as a checker for a big grocery store chain.  We rarely bumped into each other.  One day I walked into our apartment and was taken back.  One of Laurie's friends that always tried to "beat me up" was standing, inside my apartment, talking to my best friend.  So much for my carefree life.  The situation was quickly defused when he extended his hand and apologized for the past and I accepted.  You see, he and I grew up together, but as soon as my father's problems started, for some reason, he stopped being my friend.  I didn't realize that Laurie was giving him dope and telling lies.   It was odd though because I had no idea how he found out where we were living, but the past was the past. Hatchet buried.

I would find out later thought that neither of these incidents were as innocent as I thought they were and they actually were HUGE RED FLAGS for what was to come.  I would return home for my first college summer, life guarding at a local park, looking forward to the next year of college as a newly initiated brother of Phi Gamma Delta. 

"Waiting" for the happiness that I'd tasted to really take hold.  That summer, I'd end up meeting a guy in Palm Springs named Roger, another named Jonathan and finally Steven Frey.  I was meeting up with gay friends for the first time.  This couldn't have been a worse situation.

Without knowing anything about Laurie's continued hatred of me, I went to a party on Treasure Chest in Cathedral Canyon where Laurie was squatting.  I went with Roger, but I wasn't in to that whole scene so we left.  That must have been when Laurie found out that I was gay, for certain, and that I was in that area.  Somewhere during that trip I introduced Roger to Steven Frey and I met Jonathan Mendenhall.  Three men that would change my life.  You all know that it was during my 19th summer that I was, without knowing, infected intentionally with HIV without sex and implanted with an RFID device.  I would spend the next 29 years "waiting" for that happiness and growing the fear from my past.  Happiness was put on hold, stalking would then begin and life would never be the same again.

The first part of my sophomore year started off okay, but right off the bat, something would happen that would never make sense to me.  Before school started, I brought a guy over to my fraternity loft that was gay, but we didn't have any kind of sex, just talked and went to Laguna Beach.   The next thing I knew, two or three of my fraternity brothers started to make jokes about my "lofty experience"... school hadn't started yet and I'd not done anything, but all of a sudden some of my fraternity brothers were making some crude jokes.  I'd lost my phone that summer too...all of my fraternity brother's phone numbers were taken with that phone.  I had no idea that Laurie had begun spying on me...and calling my friends.  It would only be a few months before her HIV took hold and I had to withdraw from classes and leave my loft. I was sick for about three or four months.  I wasn't just sick, I was inexplicably sick...very very sick.

I would then be delivered the news that every man and mother didn't want to hear in 1987, I'd been infected with the HIV virus and I was going to die...that's what I thought.  In 1987, you were dead with that diagnosis.  I would spend many years "waiting" for happiness to ever come my way again.  HIV positive without having any sex and never even thinking about drugs...my "happiness" was never going to appear.  I would be living at home for the rest of that year.  When the fall came around, I'd made the decision to return to college and try to finish my degree.  I thought that the least I could do was finish something I'd started before I died.    It wasn't the most positive way to re-enter college.  I had no desire to return to my fraternity and someone had already began the "gay" rumor so I'd hang around a few people but mostly I studied and worked.  I began noticing people following me...everywhere.  It was daunting...who was following a person with no life around.  It didn't make sense.

The stalking continued...until I graduated and after.  Odd things kept occurring.  People would, from time to time, confront me with things that never made any sense.  Things that I would never tell anyone would blow up in my face like the worst case scenario.  Over and over, I'd get confronted by non-sexual girlfriends, roommates, friends of roommates...and so forth.  Nothing ever really made sense to me.  It was almost like someone was reading my mind and making the worst things come true.  I would have vehicles stolen, books stolen, clothes stolen and all the while these people were following me around.  Usually wearing dark sunglasses and a scowl on their faces.  There was a wave of negativity that I didn't understand.  At first I thought it was the "AIDS police" but I didn't tell anyone but my own family about it.  They told nobody.  At that time, the stigma was way too great and the laws were different to protect HIV positive people.  Later I would find out that Laurie and her brother, Brian, were telling these people that followed me that I'd "infected her brother with HIV" or Brian would say that I'd "infected Laurie with HIV"....no wonder people were following me.  There was no way in HELL I would have had sex with either of them!!! As I've told you before, I considered Laurie a horrible person from the past...I'd never think of anything sexual with her or her brother, whom I'd never even known existed.  Laurie use to tell people that she was an "only child".

What I didn't know was that everything that I did think about was being told to my friends that Laurie could still get ahold of.  Not that I was actually spreading a rumor, but that I was hearing from my friends and Laurie was stealing it from my intellectual property.  Think of all the stuff you hear about your friends that you wouldn't necessarily tell anyone else.  How easy this made it for Laurie to spread ugly rumors to my best friends...so that they became even more distant.  I would never do that to a friend, but with someone like Laurie listening in, they might as well have told her themself.  Laurie also would lie her ass off too.  Some of the shit I've heard is absolutely ridiculous.  Laurie didn't go to school with me.  She didn't like me nor me her.  We weren't having any mutual friends.  It was all her attempt to finish what she'd started in high school.

Waiting...for happiness...that would never come while I lived in Riverside.  I did manage to get my degree in History and credential so that I could substitute teach, but when you are being followed by people everywhere, being around school kids that you are sworn to protect, just isn't safe.  I would never intentionally put a kid in harm's way, remember, I lost my childhood at 11.  I would never let another kid lose theirs that fast.  It isn't fair.  I had a friend that I'd helped out by long term substitute teaching her sixth grade advanced class for a few months, but it was better suited for a teacher that was trained to be a teacher.  I recommended another friend of mine from high school for the job and she took over.  It was hectic to be bar tending at night and teaching during the day being followed by a group of sun glass wearing Nazi's that would wait for me to get off work to follow me.  It proved to be too much.

After the class was handed off to my friend I turned to meth to chase away my feelings of "impending death" and being followed.   Here I was with my college degree and I'm a bartender.  I wasn't happy so I confessed to my parents that I had a problem and went back home to dry out.  Strangely enough, my sister seemed to know about my meth problem, I'd never spoken to her about it.  She was dealing with her own family's problems with drugs but I'd never mentioned it to her.

I'd still have to "wait for happiness" again.  Now I was still alive without a career.   I didn't want to teach because of the people following me but I knew I wanted a career in the law.  After I was sober, I enrolled in San Diego at U.C. San Diego at their "Legal Assistant Training Program" and moved to San Diego for school.   Once again, the people began following me everywhere.  At one point they even stole my certification of completion of that program, the day I graduated.  It was the weirdest of situations.  I didn't use any more meth for ten years.  The stalking kept me "waiting" and the specter of having a career was looming large.  It was "find a job" or "move home" situation.

My roommate was working for a huge law firm at Gray, Carey and others and he was dying of AIDS.  We never really talked about it, but I watched as he withered.  It was sad and I needed a friend so I turned to one of the only people I knew in San Diego, my friend Tom whom worked for Computer Edge magazine and Ted Currall, whom most people know as Kevin Williams from gay porn.   Between the two, I was entertained and busy until I found a job working for an attorney service where I worked like a slave driving every day from one end of San Diego to the other...it was grueling and paid like shit.  But I was learning how the courts worked and I was employed so I moved in with my friend Tom and his then roommate Max.  The three of us would live together in Hillcrest for quite some time.  That's when I learned to accept my sexuality and was, for the first time, finding "happiness"...it would come and go, but there was always the "black death" looming large.

At this point people stopped following me for a long time.

My life would have a relationship with a Navy officer, whom I love to this day.  Somewhere along the line though, Laurie wrote or called him and told him I had HIV.  Rather than come forward to tell me that this is what happened, he told me I had to get tested.   It was wasn't any kind of thing where I was afraid that I'd infected him, there wasn't that kind of sexual relationship between us, it was a matter of knowing that if I was positive, the relationship was over.  He expressed an interest in women, I wasn't about to put myself through that so heartbroken, I moved out.  He has since found out that I was positive then, but he isn't positive and he will find out that I felt just as betrayed by him not telling me that Laurie had contacted him as I felt about the HIV.  I know I'd never infected anyone intentionally...and I still think he's a wonderful person.  That's one thing that I still find odd about Laurie, her need to involve herself in my unhappiness even though she is responsible for her crime.  What nerve a rapist has to have to intentionally infect someone then send that message of infection to people that person knows...allegedly...it's an admission of infection, in a way, but it's so much more cruel.  Remember, I'd never had sex, so being infected wasn't a known possibility.  People wonder why people don't disclose their HIV status and back then I didn't unless I had to...which meant having unsafe sex...that didn't happen.  This person made it clear to me that someone had told him something, but never came clean about it.  Now, when you see how that affected my life, and HIV is manageable, it really goes back to honesty.  That wasn't the relationship for me.  A good friendship was made, but not lifetime love.

I wasn't happy and was still "waiting"...then the cars started showing up again.  People started following me again.  It was so obvious, when I moved into my own apartment that I began writing a diary shortly after my brother-in-law was shot and killed on March 4, 2002, two days before my 34th birthday.  I'd just gotten back from a trip to NYC for a friend's 40th birthday and I got the call.  I was stunned and saddened...thank god my sister was okay.  It was around this time that I dedicated myself to spending more quality time with my nieces and doing what I should be doing.  I took a trip to Kaui, Hawaii and made sure I dried out.  When I arrived home the back window of my car was smashed out...it was like someone was mad at me, but the gang stalking continued.

Happiness would have to "wait" again.  Years later I would find out that Laurie, allegedly, played a role in that death...setting the wheels in motion that lead to the shooting, now Laurie had finally taken something from my family that she'd always wanted...a life.  Allegedly.  She must have been thrilled.  For twenty one years Laurie had interfered with my family waiting for her chance to cause a death (remember the intentional infection in 1987), now a death, a quantifiable victory for her....even worse, it was Laurie's uncle involved in that shooting.  Her family and mine.   Finally something that would link us together as sick as it seems.  Her uncle defended himself and that's what caused the incident, but the reason why my brother in law was like this is something of a "what did you say to him" to make him that angry?

I moved into a new condo vacated by a friend and the stalking continued, but this time I had underground parking and I felt somewhat safer, but never safe.  I took the bus to work and was followed every minute of every day.  To the bus stop, home from the bus stop and in between.   I met a guy that I liked and he moved in just in time to help me move out when a mysterious girl called my landlord, Yvonne Wylie, to act as if she was going to sell my condo so I had to leave.  I'd only moved in a short time, so I moved, with John, to an apartment downtown.  We both knew each other's HIV status and moved right next to the El Cortez hotel...until the night of July 30, 2003 when we decided to call it quits.  He wanted to move to Portland and I was dealing with my addiction problems...395 days from the day my brother in law was shot, I was driving home and someone took a shot at me through my driver's side car window.  The night was the only night that people didn't follow me, in fact, it was so eerie that I intentionally took and alternate route home through the Italian Villiage.  It rocked my world.

Soon John would leave for Portland, I'd be forced into counseling for rehab and, in the meantime, Laurie began calling my work.  My boss told me that he was responsible for the "people following me around" and I was panicked.  I found and told two or three attorneys that this is what he said and they helped me find someone to deal with the situation, but in the meantime, I had to move to Palm Springs.  I don't know how many times Laurie called my former boss, whom is now the current Clerk of Court for Riverside County, but I do know that the stalking caused me to get a DUI for "poppers" in my car and then a second one after someone drugged my drink inside of my car because I passed out thirty minutes away from my intended target.  I didn't feel strange until I began driving...next thing I knew I was in a ditch in Yucca Valley.  I am sure he knew about both DUI's.

Then I went to The Ranch, thanks to my sister, whom had been really misinformed about my drug use over the years...but I agreed.  The drug use wasn't anything compared to what Laurie was doing, but I needed to stay away from it completely. So I sobered up.  I made the decision to not to return to a job in San Diego when they offered it because my sobriety demanded change and moving on.  I couldn't put my friends and the judiciary in the position to be recorded or photographed and I certainly was in no position to tell anyone that I was being followed. Now I wanted to know whom was stalking me.  It was my newest career.  I knew it was Palm Springs related...

My point is this.  I've always been "waiting"...always.  I've been making things happen by working hard and being a great person, but I never ever could be happy.  I would always lose what I wanted just before I had it.  It's like Christopher.  I love him, very much, but I haven't seen him in nine years.  I've been waiting to have an honest relationship with him and he knows what this crime is like, but something always prevents me from achieving my goal, as hard as I work, it gets taken further away.  You see Laurie and Brian have this thing about fucking with a person for their whole lifetime...and for some reason people seem to fall for it.  I think it is ironic that I thought I was going to die and not experience love, now I'm afraid that I'm going to live and not experience it.  What's worse?  Poets have debated that for years. I've offered my help to my team forever.  They obviously have more work than they can handle.  I'm the person that volunteered to get the police involved.  I can't believe how long I've been waiting for my train to pick me up.  It's been a lifetime of sitting.