To dream again and again

This project is supported by the Unshame CA campaign, funded by the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) through a grant administered by Shatterproof.

By Jeffrey “Jazz” McGee

in conversation with Amelia Rayno

She was the love of my life.

She married me while I was in prison! That’s the kind of woman Erica was. She saw the real me. After I got out, we bought a beautiful home in Victorville — four and half bedrooms, a kitchen with an island, a master bedroom with a fireplace.

I’d never had anything like that. After decades of survival, lost dreams and institution-fueled trauma, I felt like I was truly healing.

Tashila was born in ’94, and Michael in 2000. They were good kids — beautiful, funny, smart, just like their mom.

Believe it or not, Erica and I broke up after nine years, and she moved out to Palmdale. Still, we got through it and we became close friends. We still spent a lot of time together and co-parented the kids.

On the evening of September 8, 2018, I drove to pick them all up and bring them to the house for the weekend.

We took the dirt road to the 15 and we were just cruising and talking. The kids were in the back and Erica was playing an album she said she was dedicating to me. Telekinesis by Neo.

I think she was letting me know that she could still touch me without touching me, you know?

That’s when life changed, went completely upside down.

The accident is still a blur. I blacked out.

When I woke up, I was in the hospital.

They told me my whole family was gone.

Love and Basketball

I grew up in Harlem, New York. My dad was Puerto Rican, a real Ricky Ricardo, and a merchant marine, operating the cranes that brought cargo into the ports. I get my swagger from him; he used to shine his shoes every night. My mom was a phone operator, and a true tomboy. She’s the one who taught me to play basketball. I first honed my shot on milk crates tied to the light post on the stoop.

We were poor. As the oldest of five kids, I would stand in lines for government cheese and government rice. Mom and Dad would get into arguments about the number of rats in our apartment — she’d lose it and say somehow we had to move.

But we were together, and that’s what mattered. I watched my mom make miracles in the kitchen. Rice-A-Roni, eggs and grits, tuna casserole, French toast, Jiffy cornbread — she’d make it look like a feast. Sunday nights were for the family. When 6 p.m. came, you had to be there.

At first, basketball was just about spending time with my mom. As I got older, we would shoot together in the school yards. But by the time I got to middle school, I realized I was really good at it.

In high school, I started getting a lot of attention for basketball. I was the star point guard, and I had scouts coming from all over the country. Of course, the girls loved it too. I was the man! I got invited to Nike Camps in Minnesota and North Carolinaand played down there in front of John Thompson and Dean Smith. I earned the nickname ‘Sweet Pea’ for my smooth moves on the court.

It was a totally different reality than I was experiencing in class. I was dyslexic and was put in special education. I had problems pronouncing words, and it made me not even want to try.

Basketball became freedom. It gave me confidence. It gave me joy. It took me away from the other problems of the world I lived in.

I got a full basketball scholarship to Syracuse University.

I was going to do those four years and then go to the pros. I knew it. My mom knew it. Everybody knew it.

But the dream was cut short.

Broken with a bullet

One night during my senior year, my friends and I decided to experiment with Angel Dust. PCP. I had never done any hard drugs until then, just smoked weed. I don’t know, I guess I was curious.

There were four of us, all from my apartment building, and we were sitting on the staircase on the 33rd floor. None of us knew what to expect, and it hit us all different.

My friend Todd’s eyes started rolling back, and he got stuck. June just started taking all of his clothes off. He was losing it. We tried to take him back to his mother’s house but he wouldn’t go. I felt like everything was happening in slow motion. We took the elevator down and went outside. June’s coat was on the ground. He reached into the pocket and pulled out a gun. Then he just started shooting.

Fffeww ffewww ffewww!

We all ran. And when we got to the park, someone looked at me and said ‘Your leg!’

I had been shot, in the ankle, and the bullet never made it through. I passed out.

When I woke up, I was in the hospital, my foot raised up in a halo with screws coming out of all sides.

The doctor told me I would never walk again.

New Jack City to Boyz in the Hood

I couldn’t even think about myself because I was so worried about my mother. She took it real hard. I think it almost broke her. My dream was also her dream, our dream, but it broke with a bullet.

I was in the hospital for seven months, but I did learn to walk again, with the help of a physical therapist.

When I got on my feet, I realized that my family needed money, and I needed a new plan.

I started dealing. You ever seen New Jack City? I was one of them guys, building a narcotics game on the streets. My mom didn’t want any part of that, so I would sneak it to her. I’d put money in her coat, in her shoes, in the couch cushions. Sometimes she’d realize what I did and wouldn’t want to take it. But when rent came due, she’d find what I left and do what she had to do.

It went fairly well for me. I never got caught, and I put food on the table. Christmases and Thanksgivings got better. All of the sudden, we had something real for Sunday Supper — barbecue, potato salad, collard greens.

I started smoking dope around this time, too. First just to try it, and then because money was flowing and it was easy. I hid it from my family, but I liked the way it made me feel. It made me feel alive. Everything I was doing, I felt like I was able to do it a little bit better. Most of all, it made me stop feeling. I didn’t have to address the pain of lost dreams.

After some years, I came out to California, initially chasing a girl I was dating at the time. It didn’t work out with her, and I went back and forth for a while. Ultimately, I decided California was a new dream— for its weather, and its drug market too.

I had less luck out here, and I wound up in prison. But still there was optimism to be found.

Prison, incredibly, was where I met Erica.

‘I couldn’t help but fall in love’

I will never forget the moment I saw her.

Floored.

Now mind you, I wasn’t a bad-looking cat myself. But she was a Baywatch beauty. Tall and gorgeous. I couldn’t believe she was there to see me.

It started with my cellmate. His wife would come to visit, bring us both egg McMuffins and cigarettes. I told him I wanted what he had! She didn’t want to set me up with any of her friends because she thought I was a ‘player.’ But one day, she brought a piece of paper with the number of a friend who lived in Denver, Colorado. An RN, who worked at the local hospital and ran an informal daycare for the neighborhood kids.

It was Erica.

I had gotten a cellphone on the inside, so I was able to call her. The first three times she answered, I hung up. On the fourth time, she said, “Jazz? Is that you?”

We started talking every day. We were able to really communicate. She accepted me for who I was, and who I wasn’t. She was so caring, and completely non-judgmental. After a while, she started coming to visit me — all the way from Denver! — once a month.

We got married in jail, just so we could have family visitations — every 90 days she would come and spend the weekend with me. I got to touch her.

Initially, I didn’t want to fall in love with her. Honestly! I just wanted someone to send me packages and stuff. But I couldn’t help it. She was amazing.

When I got out, she had already relocated to California, and was staying with my friends. We built a life with all the trimmings.

Even after the breakup, I felt like I was finally home.

Until suddenly, this dream was taken from me too.

To go out in a blaze

When I got out of the hospital after the accident, I had no idea how to start over again.

I got back to the house and felt a gutting question take me over.

‘What the fuck am I going to do?’

I was more scared than anything.

The next day, I decided to go downtown — to distract myself, I said.

On the freeway, I started thinking differently.

I should just kill myself — the thought emerged on its own.

I didn’t want to be in the world anymore, and I had no idea how to continue to live.

So, I thought, I’ll just quit. I’ll go out in a blaze.

I got some heroin. After all those sober years, I still knew where to find shit. But I was scared of needles so I had to get someone else to shoot it for me. I couldn’t get enough of it in my veins to die.

I tried everything else. For a few days, I was completely strung out. I found a motel and parked my ass there. After a while, I remembered I had a car. When I came outside, they were putting it on the flatbed. They wouldn’t even let me go in to get my babies’ photos.

That’s when I decided I was stuck. And once I was stuck I didn’t care no more.

To dream again and again

Years went by. My parents died. All of my siblings died. I lost everyone.

The bone cancer I was diagnosed with two years before the accident got worse, and I kept expecting that one thing or another would take me. But nothing did.

Smoking dope became what I thought was the last medicine — a way to quiet the pain and trauma, a way to continue to move my hurting body, to get up in the morning and halt any thoughts of quitting in their place.

Two years ago, I stumbled on a new kind of medicine: community.

I realized that a lot of the people around me had been through similar things. My hurt was reflected in others. My pain was their pain. It made me start to think differently about myself. And I saw a way to give back.

At Blue Hollywood Street Sanctuary, I found love again, then family, then a renewed purpose. I started working on the street outreach team and suddenly I saw a new vision — one that was beyond myself.

Here in community, people find therapy in each other, because each other is all we’ve got. I’ve given someone the shirt off my back, the shoes off my feet, the little money I have in my pocket. I found love at the bottom, and I want to pay it forward.

Now, I’m not mad no more. I’m not sad no more. After all was lost, I have family again.

I started polishing my shoes again, just like my dad. A month ago, I got my housing — a new apartment with new promise.

I still hurt, but it’s no longer in solitude. I still smoke dope, but it’s no longer the only thing that gets me out of bed.

A lifetime of dreams have been crushed, and I carry them with me every day.

But I am finding a way to dream again.

—

Author Jeffry “Jazz” McGee is a community uncle and friend, spoken word artist and has the tightest shoe collection on the block. He works 2-3 outreach shifts per week at Blue Hollywood Street Sanctuary (BHSS), connecting his Skid Row neighbors with public health supplies and helping to maintain the physical space. In April, after eight years living in hotels, shelters and makeshift structures, he moved into permanent supportive housing.

Blue Hollywood Street Sanctuary is a community-based nonprofit organization and harm reduction program that provides street outreach services, case management services and community care for unhoused and precariously housed individuals in Skid Row, Los Angeles. This narrative project works collaboratively with residents to tell their own stories in their own words.