So, life is full of choices. Some are important, and others, well, not so much. Sometimes we make poor choices, and other times, they are just plain dumb.

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I’ve definitely made my share of dumb choices, and thankfully, I’ve lived to tell about it.

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Sometimes, I’d learn from them, and other times, I’d just keep on being dumb. There was a time in my life, only really about a decade ago, when there really wasn’t any point, purpose, goal, or boundaries. Though I made it through, I’m glad that I’m not there anymore.

Anyway, near the beginning of that time, I was already diving deep into drugs and alcohol. I wound up diving a lot deeper, but I was leaving the shallow end of the drug pool behind at this point. A relationship that I had been in had just ended poorly, and I was caring even less than usual. An old neighbor and one of his friends stopped by to see if I wanted to get high, so I jumped in the truck with them.

As it turns out, they didn’t have any weed yet, so we went to a local dealer. This must have been very early in 2000, because it was still winter. Anyway, we showed up, we smoked, we purchased some weed, and they left…

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But they left me alone in the room, for just a moment, and that was all that it took.

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I was the last one out, but I didn’t leave alone. My companion? The dealer’s wallet, thick with dollar bills. As I’ve said before, I’ve done a lot of things in my past that I regret, and I’ve hurt a lot of people. Most likely, you wouldn’t have liked me much before. I may have seemed like a happy, fun guy to be around, but I was more like a crazy disease, without any real benefit or positive influence on anyone. I may have regrets, but I cannot change what happened. I can only change how I live my life now, and how I choose to attempt to fix the errors in my past.

So, I had a brief moment of opportunity, and I took it. Both the opportunity and the wallet. On the ride back to drop off my friend’s buddy, I sneaked a peak at my new bankroll. Though I got hundreds in cash, there were also multiple checks in the wallet. I guess that it was either Christmas or birthday money from relatives, but since they didn’t have my name on them, out the window they went with the rest of the wallet. I just kept the cash.

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Before too long, he came looking for me.

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Since I had no problem being a thief at that time, lying was not an issue either. I had no problem deceiving someone if it made me look better or kept me out of trouble. So, after a very convincing episode of “I have no idea what you’re talking about, it must have been one of the other guys,” life went on as usual.

Years passed; but sometime in either 2002 or 2003, I had a run in with that same drug dealer. I was back in town from Madison, and saw him at a bar. Having no real remorse or guilt, I came over and said hi. We talked a bit, and I gave him another episode of “I’m guilt-free, don’t blame me.” Then we went outside to the parking lot to catch a buzz.

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That’s when things took a turn, for the worse.

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I wound up in the center seat of a pickup truck with the dealer on my right, and his friend on my left. As I was trying to find out which pocket my weed was in, the dealer began to look through the glove box, and asked “Where is it?”

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His friend replied, “I have one right here”, and placed a pistol barrel hard against my left temple.

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As I had previously mentioned, my life was a whole lot of directionless and pointlessness at the time. Honestly, when the cold metal of the pistol barrel hit my temple and I realized what was going on, my only thought was, “Great, now I gotta deal with this #@%* (stuff).” I guess at the time it registered in my brain as an inconvenience, and not as a potentially life-threatening situation.

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I know I was drinking and high, but that’s still pretty bad as far as being aware of the situation goes.

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Well, this situation took a while to get out of. The dealer was dead set on believing that I was his man, and his friend was not letting up. I switched from just claiming to be “not guilty” to now being an “innocent victim”, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. My temple was already scraped and bruised, and then the pistol was shoved into the socket of my other eye, cutting the flesh open under my eye as the metal of the pistol barrel pressed the thin skin under my eye into the bone behind it. Obviously, these guys were getting frustrated with my lack of cooperation.

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Then the gun was rammed into my mouth.

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I initially thought that it had tipped my tooth back, simply knocking it backward at an angle. In reality, it had broken the tooth off. I never did find the other piece. I’m not sure how long they worked me over for, but I know that it went on for a ridiculously long time in my opinion

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In the end, they got nothing from me. No confession, no money, no weed.

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Once they finally turned me loose, I began to slowly walk back towards the bar. For the first time, I feared that they might shoot me. Of course, they could have earlier, or the gun could have accidentally went off and shot me in the head, but this was the first time that I really feared they might.

I was alone in the parking lot, walking back to the bar. They were in a vehicle already, with a gun in their hands. How easy would it have been to just fire off a few rounds and take off?
Well, I made it back inside, and the bouncer started freaking out. He asked if I was alright and what had happened. I told him that I just needed to wash my face, and went to the bathroom.

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When I looked into the mirror in the bathroom, I knew why the bouncer had freaked out. I was a bloody mess.

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I started to rinse the blood off and examined what was left of my tooth. Once I had done a half-hearted job washing myself off, I walked back out into the bar to get another drink. I was promptly invited into an office, and the man saying something about calling the cops. I told him that was unnecessary, and that it wasn’t that bad. He repeated and clarified his message.

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“We’ve already called the cops.”

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With that being the case, I knew my time was short. I told him that I had to go talk to my friends quickly, and immediately exited the office so that I could get rid of whatever illegal substances were on me. It struck me as odd that the whole time we were in the truck outside, I couldn’t find my weed either to smoke at first, or to give them when they were trying to get something off of me.

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Now that the cops were coming, I found the marijuana right away; no problem.

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I had to talk to the officers for a bit, and I even went for a ride with one of them in an attempt to show them where the perpetrator lived. They never did find him or his friend, and nothing more ever happened to me that night.

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The lie that I was living did not end that night though.

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I HOPE YOU ENJOYED PART 1.

STAY TUNED FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, COMING TO A STEEMIT NEAR YOU.

As, always, I'm @papa-pepper, and here's the proof:

proof-of-pistol-whipped-papa

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