Here are my two words Allen Iverson. I just watched a film on his life, after I watched the whole series on Michael Jordan and the Bulls run to six world championships, and the two stories brought some clarity to my own life in a way. There are no obvious connections to either, or why they would, because I grew up in Canada, although like Allen Iverson, I grew up in a single mom up bringing, just me and my sister, we were broke, we were broke because we were living in poverty for quite awhile, even though my mom gave it all she had to support us, but we were also broken too, because our house. for many years, was a violent violent highly abusive hard core house. And we saw some things.
I have memories of my sister, four years old, I don´t wanna share right now, but when I look at my sister and what she has become and what she has accomplishment and what she keeps doing, I just get choked up, it wells in my chest the truth and the courage of it all, maybe more lately because of losing my dog Jackson, so I trigger easy, but also I have so much respect for my little sister, and its her story too someday to tell, and maybe she will have to or maybe she wont.
Theres things though in my sister´s and my story, our story, that if i share them right now it will maybe hurt her, but someday I know I have to, and I pray to God and to my mother to ask God to not let it be that, but I know my purpose as well, and I know it because my mom told me it.
My mom told me that my life is to be a witness, to really be a witness and to things that most people can´t witness, they have to look away, they won´t allow themselves to see what it is. It´s my journey to find a way to put a lens on that so that they can, and maybe because we have to look at what I know, what I see, because its also what we have done, and what we are doing to the great gift we have been given.
And maybe that is why my life became so hard and why harder today than it has ever been ever, plenty because of my own stupid mistakes, but also I have lived through some gnarly bad times.
I don´t share even share five percent of what I know, what I have seen, what I have been through that prepared me to be what I am, to be able to sit in a concrete bunker of a room with some very unpredictable people who have no issues with the underlying details of their business. But had I not had the experience where I was offered the services or the life of a child to have sex with in that particular moment, where I had that uncomfortable lousy feeling that maybe they might also just shoot me in the back of the head and bury me in the desert out back of their place, had I not been through that, then i couldn't with any clear conscience, tell the story I have to tell.
One time it was so casual a discussion that the guy actually was hoping I would pay the money for two girls and maybe we could have a party, which I remember saying, bro, you understand that the very idea of what you said would so undermine and contradict everything I have sacrificed so much for, like, this isn´t a cover for me.
That is a side to this whole thing that really is the reality, that there are guys out there, who think that, hey, I might act like Jesus, and I will save that kid, but Jesus forgive me because Im gonna have my moment too with that child as well. Ive seen it. Ive by accident even lifted the plywood that revealed the rattle snake hiding beneath it, and the light hit it, and I watched that snake scurry away, literally.
No brainer here, but no pedafile wheres a tshirt that says, hey Im a pedafile, they are sociopaths and they will defend the lie every way they can. What better way to hide in plain site than to advocate against the sex trafficking of kids. That is one reason not much is getting done about the issue.
The other time it was just a straight up offer to purchase this beautiful girl from Guerrero, barely 13, and not for a single experience, but to own her, and what I remember is her, with such a light still shining, with a ´please buy me´ look in her eyes, because she knew things already, had been through things, and the best she hoped for was that a guy like me would come along and buy her, and so what about the sex, I looked like a good person and she could live with and be a good wife someday too, and not live in total fear everyday for her life.
I have told that story before, and how I wish I had the money, to buy ever kid out there, and let them live a life like they should, and I get to be the guy on the porch eye balling their prom date, to let them know that midnight is midnight, and not Mexican time either.
Anyway I have spent some time around some very dangerous people, and I know that God led me right there to that moment, to square up and be brave and live in that moment to my purpose.
I have in the process of my spiritual education spent time in houses with ruthless cut throat people, who were not evil at their core, but they were in the thick of it, their lives swallowed by it, and thats all they knew and to survive they had to make their deals with the devil too.
I have spent time with some people that not one person reading this would consider anything accept to lay their judgement on them. I can´t see many people share a thread of compassion for that person, their hate so deep, and say wait, I feel for his suffering and I pray for them too, after nothing but the brutality of a ruthless world laying suffering on him I pray someday he knows the end of his suffering and the love and peace that I know God made us for
I used to hate, I hated a lot, and would yell out with the thunder of Moses, and say that low life piece of shit, or say that monster deserves the hell he is in, for what he did he deserves to rot in hell, but I dont ever say that anymore, although I have met people I would have no problem sending them to that place of judgement, because to protect a child you have to be willing to really protect them, to go the distance in a bad moment.
still, I learned that I gotta have respect even in the most darkest place where nothing grows, no light, no garden, because I don´t know what circumstances brought that person to that place, I don´t know if I would have had the courage to keep on going if I had lived in their shoes.
I know God makes something grow though in the darkest of places we create, and I have seen it, what it is, and I have been sat down made aware of my own injustice a part of this world, and I have embraced people who you might right now hate, and certainly be afraid of, and said, hey thank you for you shared with me today. I will own the promise I made to you for you sharing that story with me.
I have promises out there with people who will never, save for Armageddon opening the doors to that prison, they will never ever be free for the sentences they got for what they did, and I have promises to them I need to keep. And not because Im afraid of something. I am afraid of nothing in this world, accept that I don´t keep that word that God allowed me to give them, and I have a fear of the consequences that may come from my own shallow existence, and that I know I need to be forgiven for too.
So Im gonna share soon enough, because I have nothing left, or not much left, of this heart that beats tattered and scotch taped together in my chest.
So this book of Jackson its a Trojan horse of a situation because although it´s the fulfillment of a great partnership I had, with a dog that was like the friend you look over at when you´re just not sure of how to play the moment, and that friend, who like a shark for you, just gives you that small tiny nod to the left, or nod to the right, and you know whats up. So in our story, the 4000 days of adventures, are the truths as well that make up my very personal story into the heart of darkness these last eleven years mostly.
Rene Russo has told me so many times, you gotta write your book, your story, and she thinks that this thing with Jackson is my strong right hook, and its time to let up with the left jab to bring the guard down and unleash it.
Then Euva Anderson, another strong willful woman, also a legend, and well, as Rene once said to me, when you have the advice from the willful spirit of women, women who have been through stuff, and they are giving you their advice with the total conviction of nothing but love driven intentions, maybe take a moment and listen.
Rene pointed out to me that God has blessed me with a small army of amazing women in my history. So take it as a sign.
So Euva, she not just shared the exact same advice as Rene did, and they don´t know each other so I know its not some conspiracy, I joke, but that this Jackson book is special and I need to write it. Euva also put her money down on the first book, the special edition version, and there will only be so many, so she´s got her name tagged on the first one.
So I get to have the advice of a few pretty bad ass women, but the first woman, and the one I take her words first always, is my mom.
Ya, but, so why Allen Iverson, well if I asked you to tell me which NBA player most represents the spirit of your company or your style of doing things, who would you pick. And I know most people would want to choose Michael Jordan, and I know there´s white players or whatever who are pretty awesome choices, even a Canadian, who´s stories some how capture how I feel as well and maybe today there are woke people with the opinion with this bullshit racist stuff going on who would say I have to choose a white player, haha, but this exercise is not about race, its about your spiritual core, and so for me I would choose Allen Iverson.
There was one thing he said in particular and how he said it in a way that I totally understood and I connected to.
It was after he was sentenced, at barely 18 years old, even though he was 17 when the event happened, to five years in prison by white people who should be so ashamed of themselves for how they abused their power to make a worthless statement at the expense, at the time, of a young man´s life. So on that day, when he felt his life imploding, at age 17, he asked his grandmother why would God allow this to happen to him, because here is a good kid, more gifted than Michael Jordan as an athlete because Allen could have easily played in the NFL as well, and a kid who was totally innocent of the charges laid on him, and here he was having it all destroyed. So he tells the story of asking his grandmother how could God let this be. and he said ´I´ll never forget what she said to me that night, but from that day on I have never questioned God ever again´. He never said what she said though.
What was important was that his grandmother, a willful woman of great character said the right words right then to him that made all the difference in his enduring that adversity, to living that story that lead to him becoming Allen Iverson, who gave us the great story to witness and learn from.
I have in my life had to face some gnarly consequences for things that happened, some true, but some not true, somethings misrepresented in the press, and then used by people who would benefit by my falling from grace, and I have still had to pay the price in ways that has been so difficult, but my mom, when I asked her the same thing, why is God allowing me to go through this, why have I had to lose so much, I made mistakes, but this has been so long a road.
I don´t like the struggle and I don´t like knowing what I know, but the moment my mom told me what she did, I never questioned God again. And my faith no matter what my life has had to endure, to lose, no matter what I´ve been put to, no matter how stretched it has been sometimes, but the one constant at the center of my spirit, i know what my purpose is under God and I know the strength of his will that has carried me through some moments I had no legs to walk with.
I might be a mess, I might be a contradiction of my own terms sometimes, I have made plenty mistakes, I have let people down, or I have people who feel let down who just lost faith, who I will still show who I am to and come through for, but even so I still feel lost, I still feel that I am broken in ways I didn´t know there were things to break.
I would say I am alone, and right now I kinda am, but I also am grateful for the friends I still have who haven´t abandoned their word. I am very blessed with one friend who bless his heart has kept me alive and in this dream to fulfill still, who I can never share who he is, and someone also I knew through the most gnarly times of our lives, and that history cannot be denied what it is, and we were once a band of two brothers, and that guy deserves me to show this world whats up with what I know, and harvest the rewards from that too. And buy him a BMW, like a1974 model, because he sacrificed that to help me and that car meant something to him.
Thats how you know a true friend, when they will sacrifice or give away something that actually hurts when they do it, to help you, and if you have a friend or two like that, then it is a always a good time to own up to that, and that you need to dig deeper to prove them right if you haven´t.
So that is my reality, but today Im not asking anyone to suffer to help me. But if you all got a hundred dollars I would highly recommend that you purchase a ticket on our Transgender Love Story project we call TRANS, because these are the last days for you to take part in what is gonna be a remarkable story.
100 dollars will bring you back 450 dollars. That is my word right now, and then you can purchase one of the Jackson limited edition books because when you see it you will love it.
But right now is when I need some help to get this to the rim. Once we are rolling I wont need the same help because then Im in a new reality. So this could be the only time you will have the opportunity to get in on an experience of being a part of the impossible becoming a reality, and knowing someone, who no matter what has come at him, has never given up on the passion and the faith I have in making a dream happen.
So I know I won´t ever be an Allen Iverson story, no big epic heroic NBA rise up story, but I will be the story of someone who found his way through a gnarly path to win, because my story is going to help some kids, and maybe find the Iverson story in a barrio far from your reality, not to play basketball, but to be a filmmaker of vision, and so all this might just bring some kids dream to life somewhere that we need to have the life in that dream to give some light where we might now be standing in darkness.
So all that said...