FREE JESSE

Part 2
Growing Up
I was born in 1984 on April 3rd in the city of Fort Worth, Texas.  Carol and Jesse was my mum and dad, an unstable lot both wild and lawless, which seems the norm coming out of my bloodline.  Carol had been a stripper from the age of 14, having been forced into that life style by her mum, which followed a life of drug addictions and alcoholism. Dad was a heroin addict and drug dealer. I did not have much of a chance of survival or having a normal life between the two of them, plus, she had my older sister Jamie to look after. Thinking it best to let me go by giving me to my father, who was going to live in California, she sent me away. I can honestly say that she did the right thing. I wold not be here today to tell you this.  Dad and I flew to California when I was two years old. Goodbye, Mum...

Oceanside California
Dad and I lived in he Cavalier Mobile Home Park in Oceanside, California with my grandpa Will McGraw. My life consisted of many dark things between 1986 and 1990.  Alot can happen in four years.  Product of the world I was living in. I did not know any other world, so I thought my life was normal I supposed every other kid lived like me, though I suspected that much, I did not have to ask.  Sometimes you just know.
I watched Dad make heroin when Will was away getting drunk at the bar.  We would get in the car and drive to various places to meet with his regular buyers day and night. Sometimes the location was a remote spot up on a hill, secluded with trees, or a piss stinking alley or someone's home.
When he was finished, I would watch him cook his heroin, shoot it up, and then pass out for days, like a never ending sleep. I would get locked in the bedroom with his girlfriend Joey as they slept their lives away. I could not let myself out.  Having no toilet and no food, my clothes were dirty.  I would cry but no one would hear me. i would gather up all their needles and place them in a pile in the corner of the room. Looking out the window, I discovered I could climb out and relieve myself under the trees. It was a long drop from the window to the ground- mobile homes are elevated, but I started dragging lawn chairs and rolling spools so I could climb down and be free.
Freedom meant water from the garden hose and the buffet of fruit Will grew.  I freely at from our grapevine, oranges and plums, and feasted on my neighbors patch of strawberries.  I was king of my own backyard. and no body stopped me.
One such drug deal went bad.  I had seen drug deals go bad quite a few times in my life,  I lived in gang run neighborhoods, so this is just life as usual.  My neighbor across from me got gunned down while he was outside eating lunch with his little boy - the pop pop pop of fun fire exploding as it rattled our windows, screeching tires as the gunman speeds away.  But my dad could have let the same happen to us. He liked to cheat people. One day, while we were parked in a narrow alley, he had just finished a deal with a homeless guy we called Stinky John, when all of a sudden I heard this explosion and the back windshield showering in a spray of glass.  John was running toward the car with a gun.  I was sitting in the front seat as dad jumped in and we sped away.  Several blocks came to a traffic light.
Suddenly I was jerked from the seat, pulled through the open window, as John took off running, carrying me me under his arm...  I was being kidnapped in broad day light. Dad sprinted after us, and tackled him to the ground. I landed on the sidewalk, Dad on top of me as John and Dad exchanged punches. Dad ended up beating the brakes off him.  That was, perhaps, the most fatherly thing my Dad ever did. Then dad took the man's gun and his dope and we took off.
Joey and Dad were notorious bank robbers.  I think they fancied themselves as Bonnie and Clyde. They chain robbed banks all over California while dressed in disguise.  I know this because I waited in the car every time they went in and ran out.  Dad carried shit Uzi under his flannel shirt.  I liked to play with it. It was actually a squirt gun. Naturally, we lived on the run. We were always on the run from the cops, and any sirens or suspicious glances, fueling their mounting paranoia all the more, so we were always kept moving. All the money in the world could not keep shoes on my feet.  But when I finally had shoes, I taught myself how to tie them.
Back at my grandpa's place, I would try to avoid my Dad so I would not get locked in the bedroom at night. However, I enjoyed watching "Fright Night" with them late at night, laying between Dad and Joey - who had become my mum to the extent that I forgot who Carol was, and that Joey always was my mum.
Carol's name was spoken in hushed tones, and every time I heard her name I knew she was somebody I was supposed to know - it felt so familiar. Carol, Jessica, and Jamie were all names I carried with me, not knowing exactly who they were, and never receiving straight answers when I asked. I made it a habit to be on the other side of the bedroom door when they locked it up at night.  I slept on the couch adjacent to my grandpa Will's cat. I always felt safe around him.
What I am about to say next may come as a shock to the mundane, or those who can accept no reality beyond their own.  But as I started drifting off to sleep, I could feel my body floating up from the couch and felt his spinning sensation as if my body was rotating around the living room.  I would look down and watch myself sleep. Every night.  I have been an astral projector my entire life, and it feels good to share these secrets, like a weight has been lifted.
I ran with a mob of kids in our neighborhood, going door to door asking for candy, picking flowers as gifts for the beautiful mothers, and stealing newspapers off the porches and reselling them in other neighborhoods. We helped each other climb into dumpsters so we could scavenge for treasures and we antagonized crawdads and made them fight to the death.  Cavalier is surrounded by a deep ditch we explored every day, and on rainy days the water rose several feet, and we would attempt to ford the rapids on abandoned wooden pallets pretending it was the Mississippi river, and we were Huck and Tom Sawyer from the stories other kids told me.  By the time I was almost six I was breaking into houses and staling food and stuffed animals. I would play with them a little while then return them.  Once, I got caught, and the owner of the house beat me unconsciousness. His daughter put herself between her dad and I, forcing him to stop. I have no recollection of this event, other than that I had run into the girl many years later and she recounted the story and said she had saved my life. Her dad would become the one killed in that drive-by shooting.
Joey was a shop-lifter.  She would steal clothes and toys for me and surprise me when she got back to the car where Dad and I sat waiting for her quick return.  One day she would not be coming back to the car any more. I watched her as she was escorted outside in handcuffs by the cops as they stuffed her in the back of the police cruiser.  I pointed and said to my dad, "Daddy, look!  They're taking mommy away!" Dad cursed and we drove off, and I never saw her again.
We took frequent trips to Tijuana, Mexico to meet with Dad's associates and to pick up work.  There was shoeless mobs of kids begging for money and for food.  My dad's only act of charity I have ever seen was when a little boy ran up to him with his palms out.  Dad was drinking a Sprite and he thought that the kid wanted the plastic bottle to recycle so he downed the rest of the soda and handed the boy the empty bottle, not realizing he only wanted a drink.  When it dawned on him, he gave the boy some money and the boy looked at us as if he had just won a four course meal; thanked us and then ran off.
If I ever had a hero, it was my grandpa WIll. I used to play in his closet and dress myself in his Navy uniform, sticking my tiny feet in his polished shoes and wear his glasses. He was a Korean War veteran, and he used to be stationed on the U.S.S. Hancock.  Due to his many travels in the navy, my dad ended up being born in Spain.  This is the kind of grandfather who caught fireflies and put them in a jar for me so I would not be afraid of the dark, and who took me to see my very first 4th of July fireworks display. Will was an alcoholic and could not take care of me the way he wanted to, and I knew this because I saw the pain in his eyes whenever he looked at me, and knew how my father treated me, but nothing could be done about it without the beer having the first and final say.
For my sixth birthday Dad brought home a shiny red bicycle for me.  There was a catch- there was always a catch with him. The tires, bike chain and training wheels were not assembled on the frame.  After weeks of hearing him tell me 'I'll do it tomorrow', I dragged his toolbox up to the front porch and figured out how to put it all together myself. I felt really proud of myself and thought I did not really need Dad anymore.  It was true, even in my six year old point of view.  I could climb the kitchen counter and pour my own damn cereal and milk. Make my own toast. Clothe myself, and found the bus stop all on my own, and took it to school.
As vulnerable as I was, I was also a pretty tough kid. I have almost died twice at the hands of bullies.  No doubt I would take off running if I saw a bully, but I was also waiting in ambush with a hand full of rocks or sand to throw once he got close enough. A bully almost drowned me in a swimming pool once when I was almost five.  Another pinned me down in a sandbox while another force fed sand down my throat. Yeah, I had something waiting for him.  By the time I was seven I had taken my own training wheels off, and that same punk that had always chased me on his bike, kicking me off my bike - I got his ass good one day.  I was hiding in the bushes when he rode by. I threw a stick in his spokes as he flew head first over his handle bars. Justice served.  With my dad's fatherly advice to justify the cause, I kicked another bully square in the nuts with my cowboy boots when he kept pushing me down on the ground.  Yeah, pwnt his arse, and rightly so.

Foster Home
158 Marwood Lane, Oceanside California was where my next door neighbors, Marion and Fausto Bertin lived.  We lived adjacent just on the left of them, for those using Google Earth.  They fostered a little girl named Chrissy.  I sought refuge as often as I could in the Bertin home. It was a family unlike I ever knew. Being there was like living in a dream, or in a fantasy world for someone as young as me. They were the perfect image of what a loving and involved family would look like. They fed me, bathed me, clothed me, read me stories, taught me, and Chrissy, their foster daughter, was like a sister to me.  As time went on, I simply stopped going back home.  The best part of it was that nobody came looking for me. My dad and Grandpa had to know I was in a better place now.  This was 1991.

History
Marion was born in Chula Vista California on March 3, 1934.  Fausto was a native of Italy who had immigrated to Ellis Island in the 1940s.  He was twelve when he made the long voyage by ship all by himself, carrying a suitcase full of homemade cheese and sausage to fill his belly.  He was raised in a village surrounded by mountains close to the Australian border when Nazi soldiers invaded the village and took up occupation.  Fausto was a Catholic altar boy in those days, and a bit of a troublemaker. He used to climb the bell tower to the church and scout for passersby and merchants and whatnot. No doubt it was Fausto who first saw the movement of German soldiers moving toward the village. The soldiers occupied the area until they realized their blunder, picking up and heading into Austria. THeir stay was not of a particularly hostile nature, and come the brutal winter in the elevated land, some of the troops spared extra service cots for the children in the shivering bare threads, one even measuring Fausto's arms and hemming the sleeves for him.  You must understand, while I do not care for the Nazi ideology, and having personally known a woman who was a holocaust survivor that had barely escaped the gas chamber, I am only recounting Fausto's story.
Fausto and some of his friends stole a couple of German grenades and went fishing with the intent to blow the fish out of the river. Unknown to the boys was a German soldier washing his clothes not far off.  Fausto pulled the pin and chucked the grenade into the waters.  The shrapnel ended up wounding the soldier.
Fausto and the boys were paraded to the town square and made to stand blind folded while their terrified mothers pleaded for the soldiers to let the boys go. They stood there all day and into the night.  A firing squad was formed and a count down was initiated while the townspeople watched and cried out begging for mercy for the boys. By the time the count reached one, the firing squad pulled their triggers as their leader shouted "BANG!" Nothing was heard apart from that that, and a series of clicks  from the empty weapons. The boys were allowed to go, scared out their minds, which was what was intended as punishment.  Shortly after when the Germans left, Fausto sailed to America.

Musical Prodigy
I had an intuitive ear for music.  I could pick out tunes I heard from cassette tapes and play them on the piano.  I was seven and Marion saw and heard what I was doing. Chrissy ended up going to live with her real mum, and Marion would invest her entire time, life, money and energy helping to draw this talent out of me, refine it, and make it a natural part of my life. In three months, I held my first piano recital for all our neighbors. Will was there, and he was so very proud of me. I saw my dad outside the window to the sun room, and he did not look too happy - with himself.  He had lost me for good, and I believe he knew it too. By the start of the fourth grade, Marion pulled me out of public school and enrolled me into home schooling. By this time I already had two piano teachers  Later in life I would also have four violin teachers, one guitar teacher, a pipe organ teacher, and I wold be singing in the San Diego Children's Choir. I studied music theory, ballet, modern jazz dancing, tap dancing, choreography- and taking acting and martial arts. My every waking hour and every night would be involved in some musical art form.  I could play any instrument I touched within an hour, I could play blindfolded and deaf with ear plugs.  I could play under the piano or two pianos on either side of me. I could play songs on the piano strings.  I had flawless pitch and could tell you what note the refrigerator was humming.  I became a showman and touring classical pianist.

Adoption
By 1994 I became Howard Daniel Bertin, son of the Bertin family.  This was a very important move for me, and the adoption was uncontested. I gave my life over to music entirely.  Marion did all the home schooling work for me, and in exchange for an education she taught me everything she knew or took me to the Oceanside public library.  Meanwhile, I went on several national tours as a showman and pianist, playing at festivals and concert halls and competing competitions.  By 1996, age twelve, I was to become the youngest winner of the Play Alike Look Alike Liberace Museums piano competition, beating even all the adults. This was in Las Vegas, and my name remains engraved on a plaque with the list of annual winners at the museum to this day.  
I have played the outdoor pipe organ at San Diego's Balboa Park, and the giant pipe organ at the Crystal Cathedral in Anaheim. I opened shows for Frank Patterson, who was one of the Irish Tenors, and Roger Willains who played with the Kingston Trio. I was heavily connected within the San Diego music industry thanks to Marion's networking, and I was featured in newspapers as I began my rise to local fame.  My dream, the reason why I was doing this was to be accepted into the most prestigious music school in the world, and that, hands down, is Julliard.
I was surrounded by entrepreneurs, investing money into only the best teachers.  My classical violin teacher was Howard Horowitz, first chair violinist with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. On top of music, I also went to art school and I became a model through A Nu Image, and did runway fashion shows, one such show I modeled kids wear for Target's back-to-school promos.
I had such privilege, signing autographs where ever I went. But as time went on, I became very lonely, exhausted,  and started to fall apart from the tremendous pressure I was put under. The concert; endless practicing and training. My friends I used to run the streets with, who used to knock on the door and ask if I could come out and play, simply stopped asking.  I was not allowed to go outside and play. I might fall and hurt my hands.  I was no longer allowed to ride a bike.  I felt like a prisoner and realized I only wanted to be a kid again. I could not watch TV or play video games.
I was trained to speak perfect English.  I was instructed on how to treat a lady. How to use eating utensils properly.  To refuse candy and soda. I was only allowed to listen to classical music. I had to listen to it while I slept, engraving it deep into my subconscious. I was manicured and put to sleep wearing gloves. It seemed the more I wanted to be normal, the deeper I was pulled in.  My success became Marion's obsession.  I could not back out when I had come so far. By the time I was twelve I had already tried to blow my head off with my father's gun, and suffocate myself with a plastic bag.

Free Time
I sought refuge in my library books.  I was only interested in true ghost stories and parapsychology., most of which was written by Soviet-era scientists.  I found the published research very comforting, because it meant I was not an anomaly, that there was truth in my own psychic experiences, which I had kept secret most of my life. I was a clairvoyant child growing up and my ESP has only intensified the older I get. I can also see auras. I thought everybody saw what I saw. Mum would take me to church and I would see this full color spectrum expand out from the people I looked at. I never knew what it was until I chanced upon a book on auras at the library.  I was also fascinated by spygadgets, cryptography, law enforcement training manuals and anything to do with spies. To this day I enjoy codes and developing code schemes for building secret messages. Books provided me with mystery and intrigue in my sheltered little world.  What is 'Metallica'?  What does 'thats the bomb' even mean? When I first heard The Beach Boys I thought they were a new band and everyone must be listening to them.  Of a truth, I was living with the 1934 generation.

I Gave it All Away
By age thirteen, I could not take it anymore. I forcefully put my foot down and said 'No More!' Marion was not always right or perfect as a mother, but to this day she is the most perfect Mum I could have ever asked for. I knew she only wanted to give me a future.
One old trick she used to play on me to get me to practice was to threaten to call the cops, and they would take me away from these wonderful things I had.  She knew I had a fear of the police.  The one day I called her bluff was the day I was taken away in a police car. She had lied to the cop, telling him that I was stabbing her furniture with a butcher knife screaming "This is you!" I pleaded with the cop to inspect the furniture himself and that she was lying, but he only roared in my face "Shut up!  How dare you disrespect your mother like that?" Call it the first injustice I had at the hands of over-zealous law enforcement.
This was Mum's way of teaching me a lesson, but I had never been so betrayed or confused., or hurt like this. I was taken away to a mental hospital.

A New Family
I was sent to live with my sister Dana and her fiance, Howard, whom I was named after. Dana is much older than I am, but she and her husband-to-be became my new parents. This was in Woodland Hills, by Los Angeles. They never had agreed with the way Mum had been sheltering me to such an extreme, so they gave me freedom.  This was a difficult transition for me.  I was enrolled in 8th grade, but had no conventional education whatsoever and I flunked everything except English. There was no way I could relate to my peers because I was the ultimate foreigner. I did not understand their mannerisms or their slang.  I hated school. Kids were evil.  Yeah, I was bullied - ALOT. Beat up alot. I was not trying to get stabbed or knocked out over my bike. It was a rough school made up of hispanics, blacks, Persians and Armenians. I had already been mugged and my view of the streets was pretty fearful, given my history in the streets with my dad Jesse. As it is, I had almost been kidnapped.  Marion got kidnapped at gun point. Fausto got kidnapped with a knife.  Dana had been kidnapped, dragged into a man's truck and assaulted with a pizza cutter. So I have always carried a fear of losing the people I loved based on a history of actual events.
Flunked Middle school.  Flunked Summer school.

High School
When I first heard the name 'Playstation' I thought it was some futuristic playground. Dana and Howard bought me a playstation. But at this time I spent all my time riding my bike all around Woodland Hills, or playing computer games like Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, and Wolfenstine 3D.  I had a Pentium 28 with a 56K dial up modem, running Windows 95. Of course, the very first computer I ever played games on was a TRS-80.  But a computer was just a computer to me.
I was a goth now. It was a way to show others that I belonged somewhere, though I was quite the outcast. Dana was a wiccan, and Howard was an atheist Jew.  I was also an atheist, and Howard and I engaged in thought-provoking discussions about God and science. But I favored wicca and loved to read Dana's spell books, and took to some of her beliefs; crafting my own convictions, however, as I tried to discover truth on own.  I was invited to a Spanish Episcopalian Church by a girl in my homeroom.  I went, and literally ran out, scared to death!  People were writhing around on the floor, wailing and babbling in Spanish and some other form of nonsensical jibber jabber. The pastor was screaming for Satan to come out of people. Apparently Satan was in everybody that night because the pastor was grabbing people's heads and shouting for Satan to come out of them.  OMG!  I ran to a payphone and called Howard to come get me as far away from there as possible.
I so hated high school. One of the kids on the football team would chase me in his car, trying to force me to pedal my bike into oncoming traffic.  But then, I made a friend, and what he was about to show me would change my life forever.

Acid Rain
I met Acid Rain in my special education classes.  He was in Special Ed because he had a hard time concentrating. I was in there because I was undereducated. We had a computer in our math class, and I would watch him write and run code and access restricted areas on the school network. I knew diddly squat, and he loved the fact I was completely computer illiterate. He was a narcissist who would laugh at my stupidity. He would give me floppy disks with dos games he injected with a backdoor server- a trojan, and sooner or later our ISP would call to notify us that somebody was using our dial-up numbers. He would have me downgrade my RAM, swapping my more superior hardware with his older hardware. I was too easy.
He introduced me to mIRC, and from here I began to catch up on the broader world of the internet. Here I could download and read tutorials, get warez and network with people in an exciting new way for me - the chatroom.
On the wold wide web I discovered old archives of PHRACK, and script-kiddied myself stupid with old hacking tools like Voob, BitchX, HakTek, CatCall (tunedialer) and an assortment of Nukes, flooders, and war dialers. Yeah...  look out everybody! A skiddie on the loose! But I was a fast learner. Text files were treasures to me.   Acid Rain never would teach me anything. In all honesty, hacking is not about what to learn, but how to learn. The 'what' is to be confined by borders, walls, restrictions... but the 'how' opens you up to endless discoveries that you can stumble upon yourself.  Does this make sense?
One day, Acid Rain gave me a floppy disk with some text files from the Anarchist's Cookbook, and a couple of 'bombs'. I did not know what they were. He just told me to handle them carefully and keep them in a safe place. He was always playing pranks on me because I was so gullible. One time he was telling me about this canister he was holding, that it would explode if not handled with care. It was a CO2 canister which he told me was a grenade. Then he handed it to me, deliberately letting it slip from my fingers as it clattered to the floor.  "RUN!" he screamed as I dove into a closet and slammed the door. All I could hear was his hysterical laughter.
I passed 9th grade and progressed to 10th grade, but I had began to fall into suicidal tendencies and began deliberately overdosing on ritilan, up to 50 pills. and I had drank half a bottle of Iodine.  I was extremely depressed, lonely, and just terribly troubled by my peers at school. IRC is all I wanted to do, and when I had gotten grounded from the computer, I would rage.
Acid Rain concocted a poison for me to drink, assuring me it would kill me. I felt so isolated, I felt like a curse. My only friend wanted me to kill myself. and I simply did not care about anything, but withdrew into myself as I popped pills, and cut all over my arms. Self mutilation was a physical means to release emotional pain, so that how I coped. Then Dana found out about a planned suicide attempt while I was at school  I had been holding in alot.  I sat in the school's counselor's office and told her everything.  Suicide.  Hacking.  Bombs. Yadda yadda. Schools do not handle these kinds of problems, and so I was expelled and admitted to a mentlal ward.
Meanwhile, my school had been evacuated as the L.A.P.D. and Bomb Squad searched the school as a precaution. My house was raided and they found the 'bombs'. Turns out they were fake. (Ha ha, jokes on me,eh?) They confiscated my computer disks and all my Pokemon cards. Acid Rain was interrogated and was allowed to continue being a student, while I was given the short end of the stick.

The Hospital
Broken kids.  Some shattered, some fractured, and some so shredded from harsh realities that they were practically psychologically gutted. Kids from drug overdoses, suicide - you name it. They all looked normal enough on the outside, and most really were normal, since being a teenager is a roller coaster of emotions and experiences in and of itself. No one here judged me. Not in this place. It was in this place that I truly realized that I was not the only one who suffered. With this discovery came the desire to rise up and help my fellow peers by doing what no body else was going to do for us... to listen.  We only needed someone to listen to us.
I would listen to their stories that came from people who lived very different walks of life, yet we all suffered in many of the same ways. When my week had ended, I convinced my parents to bring me back by feigning hallucinations so I could be around these people that were just like me, and listen to their stories. I would usually befriend the ones most disliked by the others, and take them as roommates. It was here that I learned how to asphyxiate myself, which gave me a way to shut down and pass out without the use of drugs, which I have always refused to do, on account of my past. Asphyxiation helped me spy on the counselors and medical staff.  I could return to my body and tell the other kids what I saw, and what was said. I would do this again in the future.

Boarding School
By the year 2000 I was sent to live at a boarding school in Murrietta called Oak Grove Institute. Yet again I felt like I was being discarded from one place, only to be dumped off in another. But it was here that I would discover my leadership attributes.  The other teens seemed to be following me, so I took advantage of this and get back at the system I had been dumped in.  I had been planning ahead for months.
Before I came to OGI I would sit at my computer, searching for the file system that had basically fried my file system. I could only boot into dos. Windows could not boot.  I searched every directory, folder, and subfolder looking for the nasty bugger.  And when I found it, I saved it to a floppy.  I was carrying a weapon.
At OGI I had convinced 20 other boys that we were all hackers and gave them membership to my crew called 'The Matrix Hackers'. I had them pouring over laptop catalogs, begging their parents to buy them computers, choosing new aliases to go with our secret mission.  Plan a massive AWOL as a diversion, so I could slip behind the staff's desk and insert my nasty weapon called 'The Trinity Virus'.  Bring the whole system down, fry the network and gave them the middle finger as I slipped out the front door and hop-scotched my way to freedom.
A day before the scheduled launch, someone snitched on me, but one of the boys overheard the informant and gave me a heads up. I flushed my notes quickly and punched a hole in the back of the closet and threw the floppy disk - attached to dental floss - inside for later retrieval.
They called the police. I denied all actions of wrong doing as the staff escorted me out to wait for the police. When the police heard what they were supposed to be taking me away for, they only laughted and said "He's your problem, not ours." I got to stay.
Marion told me I could not come home because I was a ward of the state. Years later I would discover that in fact, I was not - it was just that no body wanted to deal with me.  I was stuck there. I had risen quickly through the ranks and became president of my dorm, which meant I got to run counseling meetings, draft rules and select enforcers to keep the peace.  We were a dorm of 50 boys, and I had earned the respect of them all, including the staff.  If anybody had a problem with me,  I had the entire dorm on my side.
Out of all of the staff, there was one who was my favorite.  An off-duty cop, of all people.  He was also a hacker. He was the one who introduced me to networking. My love of hacking was rekindled, and he would take me and the boys on outings to the mall where he took me to a bookstore and bought me my first 2600 magazine.  It was like a rite of passage.
I was discharged from the school a few weeks from my 18th birthday. What was I going to do with my life?  You will never guess!

Reunions
Alot was happening as I was turning 18. Alot was riding on my mind.  I was reunited with my dad Jesse. I had been hunting for my biological family since I was fifteen. My grandma Peggy, Jessica, Dad...  the works. I had to know. It was my right to know. Once, while home in Woodland Hills on pass from OGI I was watching Dana check her email when I saw Peggy's name in the inbox.  Then it dawned on me that the Bertins had always kept in touch with my biological family, some of them. Jessica and I would write letters to each other, but the letters were censored with a black marker, obscuring details such as email addresses, phone numbers, and location information. Marion had told me that the adoption agency censored our letters, but I discovered later this was untrue.
I emailed my grandmother for the first time.  Then, we talked for the first time since I was a toddler. She gave me Jessica's phone number. I had never head my sister's voice before.  She was at work when I called her.  I spoke with the bartender at the strip club Jessica waited at and told her not to tell Jessica who I was. When Jessica finally made it to the phone, I told her who I was. She stared screaming hysterically and burst into tears. Yea, I had finally found my sister.
Peggy also put me in touch with my dad.  I secretly met him at a mall.  When he approached me, he was crying, and I saw how he had aged; but I also saw the pain he carried in his eyes, which revealed a world of regrets. I hugged my dad and we ate lunch together, and got our pictures taken in a photobooth.  I always forgave him for the history we shared. The past was over and done with, and we did not have to live in the past any more.  He was still drug dealing but I supposed some things never change.  I knew he was dealing, even when he tried to hide it from me.

Rerise to Stardom
Had it not been for Marion maintaining the connections throughout the San Diego music industry, I would not have been able to walk through so many of the doors I have walked through. We were friends with the president of the Bluegrass Folk and Heritage Club, and he introduced me to an alternative country band called the Mark Jackson Band. I had not forgotten how to play the fiddle, since the violin is a natural part of my own body. We played at Train Festivals, Marathons and Coffee houses all across the country. We were featured on KUSI morning news several times and NBC morning news as we played a set in front of the news studio.  Playing the fiddle the way I do is the most liberating experience, but I knew I was in the wrong genre.  I was this young, gothic guy amid an older crowd, and since I had options I moved on and joined a traditional celtic group called The Highland Way.  Irish and Scottish music is in my blood, and we gathered a more rowdy and involved crowd at the pubs we played at, and at the San Diego Highland Games.  We danced and stomped and I ripped fire from the strings of my fiddle.
We often crossed paths with Flogging Molly at the events we played at, like Dave King, Matt Hensley and Bridget Reagan. Bridget sometimes filled in for bands missing their fiddler or to accompany them as a guest star, and they lingered often at the pub I played at in Carlsbad called Tom Giblins'. Matt Hensely partied at the pub often.  I played Devil's Dancefloor on the accordion with the Clay Colton Band for Matt when he was throwing a party for his friends that had graduated from the local firefighter's academy.  Tom Giblin's Irish Pub was my home away from home.  I'd roll in from Oceanside on my skateboard, violin strapped to my back as people honked and waved at me, recognizing me from my gigs around town.  I know I was a sight to see, long haired goth boy dressed in hooded cloak with a vicious fiddle in tote, and I was making cash five to six nights a week. I did studio time with Mark Jackson and Highland Way, cutting an album with the latter, and still I was not done.
I joined the Clay Colton Band, an alternative rock band and doubled my work load - and loved every minute of it!  I had an apartment with a view of the ocean, a 1979 Volkwagon bus, and a model for a girlfriend. I had finally met Jessica and Peggy, even Dad loved coming to hear me play.  "I'm your biggest fan, son," he would say to me. Aye, and it was true.
I recorded an original Irish punk album and Clay had take me take to the stage and sing my own tunes, which sounded like some kind of pirate music. But people went nuts over it.  The driving fiddle reels and jigs- I loved the audience'e energy and their response to it was epic.
I had everything.  But even that was not enough.  I would visit mum and tell her that I needed to find Carol. I needed to know her. In fact, I cried this to her, and I knew it broke her heart, but I just had to know. She decided to hire a detective.  Ironically, at this same time Carol was trying to find me, too.

God and Religion
Marion lived next door to Peter, the bassist for the Irish punk band called "The Plug Uglies" I helped him and his band renovate the house and talk about punk music. One day he asked me, "Are you saved?" I had never heard this saying before, and while I had moved from my atheistic ideals of a godless science of evolution, I had started to hold to the possibility of Creative Design. I called myself a Christian, because everybody seemed to call themselves that, though I knew nothing about Christianity itself.
The church I had always grown up in was more of a new age establishment.  Nobody ever scowled at me for wearing a pentacle around my neck during my years studying wicca, and this talk of salvation was both uncomfortable as it was intriguing.  Uncomfortable, because it was on an entirely alien concept to me. So I went through a phase where I started looking for this God and this saved experience. I ended up getting sucked into a cult, studied in the Bible School for a year, graduated, and thought I had it all figured out. HA!  I was a Christian now, or something like it.  I guess.  Maybe, not really.

Reunion
When I dialed Carol's phone number for the very first time, the child in me - lost and fragile, seemed to come out when I heard my mother's voice for the first in almost eighteen years.  "Mom?" My first word. Marion made good on her promise, and now I was on a plane to DFW airport.  I was almost 20, and the year was now 2004.  
They were all waiting for me at the airport.  It is so hard to write about it because I relive that moment when ever I remember it. I cry as I write about it now.  My little brother Vinnie and sister Jennifer, my older sibling Jamie; I would meet Linda a little later, and my mum.  It was surreal. like in a dream.  You see these stories on TV. It was MY story now. I think I wanted to faint, I was raptured in this moment, and I could watch it on the video Jamie's husband recorded for us. And I watched it alot. I had siblings all of a sudden, and Jessica lived close by, too.
Carol brought me to her church - she had been telling all of them about me for years, about how she would find me one day.  And then, there I was. She had done a year in TDC for manufacturing methamphetomines.  She had been a stripper for twenty years, which seemed to be one of the norms in my family history...  Stripping.  Crime.  Drugs.  Prison.  She was the least likely person in the entire family to get her life in order.  She was infamous for being the wildest in the entire family.  But she had become an evangelist and married a pastor, never to return to the old life. Her church was strange, there was something there I could not see.  Something dense and atmospheric.  Then my life suddenly changed.

Mystical Experience
This is going to sound like absolute insanity, but this is how I sum up the experience. I am no stranger to the paranormal, being clairvoyant makes that evident, at least it does for me. This mystical expereince was also a paranormal one.
I was sitting in my chair at church, not particularly moved by any sermon or song, I was just visiting a church, when all of a sudden this dense and electrifying force moved upon me.   I felt like I was being struck by lightning, thought I felt absolutely nothing other than otherworldly peace. It cause me to tremble and convulse as I collasped to the ground in a flood of tears - not because I was sad, I just really felt whole in a way I had never known before. Bliss and zen at its highest peak.  I knew I wanted more.  And suddenly everything back home in California seemed so insignifigant compared to this.
I felw back home and finished out my contracts. Of course, all my friends thought I had gone mad. The Mark Jackson Band was nominated Best Americana Album in the 2003 San Diego Music Awards as we came against Nickle Creek. Highland Way was up for a international tour through Glasgow, Scotland, and Clay Colton was gearing up for a national tour.  I played my last gig on a yacht party out in the pacific ocean and found my way back to Texas to chase after this new experience.

The Ministry
I guest-appeared with Rock of Ages, a Christian 80's metal band led by Johnny Rhodes, and also with Johnny Nitzinger at a Cancer Awareness Fund Raiser.  I was finding my way around various Christian musicians and playing fiddle in a biker church that rewrote ACDC and Led Zepplin lyrics. By early 2006 I found myself on tour with Eddie Hames & Ultimate Call, a christian youth ministry.  We practically lived on a tour bus and played everywhere, from churches to youth rallies and conventions.  But times were changing.
I had astronomical experience with music and I felt my pastor was taking advantage of my talents and my time. People themselves started acting bizarre, so uniformed and brainwashed and cold and consipiratorial.  I was kept under such strict control that I barely had any control over my own life.
We were swimming in a sea of obscure and hidden scandals and cover ups by the use of fear propaganda to keep people from associating with the people who had left our church and to keep questions at a minimum.  What began as a passion truned into slavery and exploitation of the weak minded and the ever playing on convictions.  This is a very long account in and of itself.  So I will spare you this time around. I was losing the mother I had just reunited with to the control of the church. All of us, her kids, could only stand by and watch as we could do nothing about it.  I had been kicked out of the ministry by the Bishop who branded me as demon-possessed and a sinner and my mum bastardized me for a time until I could reason with her that God had not in fact commanded her to excommunicate me, but the fact she would meant I did not have alot of value.  Today she does not even speak with me; alas, my lot.  An endless bed of suffering it seems. I do not regret my coming to Texas, but I have had enough of cults, and I sure do miss Marion, who has been waiting a decade for me to finally return home.  Woe to prodical mothers.
 I assumed the role of 'family protector' or the big brother by helping my brother move out of our parents house so I could move him in with me. Hell, our parents helped.  They had oppressed him so much he probably would have killed them.  I mean, we were both Jesus freaks but they were exploiting his zeal for slavery.  "If this is the way Jesus is, I want no part of Him," he told me one day.  The Bishop heard of my brother's move, and our parents turned their backs on us by lying to the Bishop, saying that Vinnie had run away to live with me against their consent. The man tried brainwashing me into believing I would be guilty of my brother's downfall...  blah blah blah...
My little sister Jennifer moved into an apartment unit a stone's throw distance from us, I looked after them and kept them safe.  I kept my eyes open for drug dealing or any suspicious activities that could put us in harm's way.
Sometimes my daughter would stay at my mother-in-law's apartment.  I noticed plenty of heavy traffic going to and leaving the neighbor's apartment no five feet away from her front door.  She would talk with the guy, much against my wishes.  I feared my daughter or my family could get caught in the middle of some static.  My intuition proved me right, I felt something off about that man.
One day my mother-in-law and daughter were elsewhere, an unfamiliar man quickly climbed the stairs to the dealers apartment.  The door ws unlocked and he quickly slipped inside, a knife in his hand.  There was screaming.  The unfamiliar guy dragged a naked woman outside by her hair, she was bleeding from knife wounds. He dragged her past my mother-in-law's front door and then kicked the woman down the stairs. She was the wife of the unfamiliar man and she had been caught sleeping with the dealer, who took off running butt naked down the street. He moved out two days later.
But with my arrest, there would be no one to save my siblings from what seemed inevitable. I was their keeper, even if nobody would keep me. With me behind bars, I had to watch my siblings succumb to an assortment of drug addictions, threats from gang members, and be forced to remain helpless while my sister's boyreinds beat her up. The agony has often times been unbearable. My wife had hypoglycemia myelitis, and with my being in prison meant no one was there to save her from diabetic coma when her blood sugar dropped while she slept. She would later divorce me after cheating on me, but the worst part of all this is knowing my daughter is fatherless.