THE LIONS DEN

(THE CURSE OF KNOWING) THE ADVENTURES OF THE LONESOME STRANGER.
THE BIOGRAPHY OF JERALD MURPHY

All I ever really wanted to do was tell my story. The things I'd seen. The injustices, the tragedies, the triumphs. When I was a child I started to read everyday, everything I could. Every book I could find no matter what, the dictionary, the encyclopedias, books on love, books on war, psychology, sociology, witchcraft, voodoo, transcendence.
I knew I was not Christian and would never be. I didn't know what I was but I knew I wasn't going to find what I was looking for in any church.
To much man mixed up in something that they were selling as pure.
By the time I was a teenager I was formidable in any situation. An anomaly in the project's I came from, able to make a motherfucker pick up a gun or put one down.
There wasn't a woman who could resist me if I wanted her. Divorced, separated single or married, at one time I kind of based my existence on that fact. It made me a hated man at a very early age. It also didn't help that I really didn't give a fuck, that I didn't care if I lived or died.
I think I was around 15 years old when the Empire Strikes Back hit the movie screen. I was hanging out with my crew from the projects and we scrapped up the money for one of us to get into the theater and open the back door for the rest of us to get in.
By the scene where Yoda raised the X Wing from the swamp my friends had decided that would be my nickname. I was kinda pissed off and I was like "I ain't no lil green motherfucker." My crew was like "You like Yoda cause you magic nigga. You be walking in places and fucking up white folks minds. You know everything."
I was blown. My name has been Yoda every since. If you ever go around people who actually know me and say Jerald Murphy they will ask you who the fuck that is.
I have done things that I'm not proud of till this day. Life sentence shit.
By the time I was 15 my mom used to always say if you call me I know you're in trouble cause I would disappear for long periods of time. Be in other cities and shit.
I was running drugs and had a run to Jacksonville every week as well as numerous drops in Tallahassee. Older dudes trusted me cause I grew up in the bars and alleys of Tallahassee, I had been around everything, kilos, hoes, murder and mayhem and I knew one thing, I ain't seen shit. At most times I had a girl around my age but I was fucking grown women for perks, clothes and money.
Even the older men I hung around knew of my reputation.
I was trusted in the nightclubs and even helped run one in Frenchtown, I was ordering thousands of dollars worth of liquor and beer by the time I was 16, paying the beer distributer in cash.
I was on top of the world, I was loved, I was hated. An inch away from the penitentiary and didn't give a fuck.

If you would like me to continue this story please let me know in the comments.

JERALD HAMZAHFARUQ MURPHY