B33FC4K3

Introduction by Amber Sharp

“Fucking pigs.”
“What was that?”
“NOTHING.”
I’m surprised I actually had the balls to say that. Maybe one more shot, and I would’ve had the balls to run.
I sat there on the cold concrete curb with my arms crossed behind my back and cuffs to make sure they stayed that way. I squinted one eye as I attempted to stare at the police officer and give him the worst glare I could. Of course, I was so intoxicated at that point I probably just looked more like a drunken fool.
The officer stood there writing down what was to me a bunch of bull shit as he waited for further police cars to arrive.
I spit out blood on the concrete, I tried to get as close to his shoe as I could, but the swaying of my body kept my aim off balance. He stopped writing and looked where I had spit, then shifted his eyes towards me.
“So kid, what the hell happened here?”
“Do you even really care? We got in a fight. I’m drunk. That’s all that really matters.”
He stared at me then gave out a sigh like he had given up. All I could do was sit my haze, and attempt to keep myself from falling over and passing out.
My eyes were slowly closing. I figured my only option of staying awake, was to talk.
“I fucked his girlfriend.”
“You fucked his girlfriend..?”
“Am I speaking English here? Yes. I fucked his girlfriend. He found out. Then found out where I was. I was just postin’ it with some homies and drinking. Then the next thing I know, I’ve been bashed in the face with a rock.”
I spit out another collection of blood.
“I refused to take it. So I got up and decked him in the face. Then an elbow to the stomach. And threw him to the ground. Then his friends showed up, and I got a few more blows to the face. And as soon as my friends showed up, so did they.”
He kept along with what I was saying and wrote it down, giving me strange stares every so often.
“So what did the both of your friends have to do with this?”
“Nothing. They are my friends. They have my back. They are the closest thing to blood that I have.”

This is the story of a group of kids in a big town called San Jose. There’s a small collection of no more than 50 or so kids that can call themselves “Beefcake”. There are hundreds that claim to be, but we all know who belongs and who doesn’t. Before I met them, I had no idea what this gang was, nor had any interest of affixing myself with them, however once I saw the brotherhood, the devotion, the manpower, and was welcomed, somewhat, by the group, how could I say no.

The story I’m writing is about the music scene in San Jose, and the story behind it. It’s not as much the music that matters as the people themselves encompassed in this black hole that occupies our entire lives. I’m a change man thanks to you all, and you know who you are. I did my stay and I was lucky to get out, but I wouldn’t trade those days for anything in the world. This is dedicated to Beefcake. I am beefcake.
I dedicate this to everyone I’ve ever relied on. Any person I’ve put full and complete trust in regardless of what I’ve seen them say or do. It amazes me that the whole thing started out one day with a bunch of fucked up kids watching South Park. Little did we know one day your drunken joke would turn into a legacy. Now, Beefcake is dead, there’s no more tagging, no more parties, and no more group of friends. But I’ll tell you what there is still, an agreement, one that says no matter what happened in the past, present, or future, we always have each other’s backs. Here’s to the past guys, hope my memories were as good as yours..
It was a long lonely day in September of 2006, every day for the past month my friend had been raving about this new music he found. Personally, I liked Sublime and Switchfoot, which was typical for most 15 year old kids that I’d known. We listened to it constantly. He’d play it nonstop at his house, I was always there, and I started getting into it. The events where bands played this kind of music were called shows. Shows were in the simplest sense, loud music, people hurting each other, drugs, drinking. I was still young and undereducated in the beauty of the world through cocaine, shrooms, weed, alcohol; I thought it was a dump. It was the only venue in town and happened to be inside a Church, how that place stayed open still puzzles me. People getting thrown through windows, smoking, drinking, doing drugs, selling drugs, you name it, it happened there. It was a whole new world to me. It encompassed me and it made me long for the next show to come around, after the first I never missed a show. I walked up to a sea of bleached, long hair, glass bottles and piercings. I was the chubby little kid walking around in basketball shorts and a white t-shirt. I stood out like a sore thumb and instantly looked for a welcoming. I had seen a couple of kids sitting against the pillars that caught my attention, all black long hair with shitty bleach jobs done on them, all pale white and sitting down like they couldn’t move. It took me a couple time of seeing them like this to find out what they were on, Coricidin Cough and Cold, Triple C. Triple C was the beefcake drug of choice for just about everyone. (It was free, easy to steal, and could be bought if need be, with someone else’s money of course). Their eyes approving, comforting, warming, it may have been all the cough medicine they took minutes prior, but I think they want to be my friends. Little did I know this first meeting was the start of something beautiful, the start of something vile, putrid, and fucking disgusting, but beautiful nonetheless. I met these kids, found out their names, and honestly, kind of got a good vibe from them. I could, however, tell that I needed something of value to be able to get in with them. I didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs, and didn’t even smoke cigarettes at the time. Over the next few weeks I went to a few more shows, started talking to them more, and eventually one of them came over. By this time I had started smoking with my friends that I had met before, I had a way in with them. We smoked at my house, standard stuff like that and then we went to Los Gatos, where all these kids hung out. It was amazing, nobody had cell phones, or any way to get a hold of each other, but somehow they all met up in the same place. Any time of the day that you’d come here there would be at least 3 people you knew. On a Friday or Saturday, there’d be at least 100 of us. It was amazing, the friendships, there were no smaller groups throughout, everyone knew each other, everyone hung out together, I could go from one group to another, even being the new kid, and everybody knew my name and talked to me. It wasn’t uncommon for someone who had been in the group to bring around someone new. He took me under his wing. Some lasted, most didn’t, I’ve never had a better friend than him even to this day, never had so much respect for a kid, he took a chance on me and I succeeded. However I have to compare him to the person who gives you your first cigarette. If you’ve smoked you know what I mean, if not, it’ll take too long to explain. Faster than I knew it, I was in. I thought the hard part was over, but it had just begun.

Life is born at conception, though what god fails to tell us is that along with life, pain is born at conception. We are born into this world predestined to be hurt. We may have happy weeks or years however when it comes down to it, there will ultimately be more sorrow than splendor in our short lives. however true this statement is does not change the fact that the reason our happiness feels so damn good is because of the pain we fight through in our days on earth. Our pain may outnumber the glee but the feeling of year’s worth of sadness can all be erased by one terribly happy moment. The happiness is multiplied tenfold and will fill our hearts and minds with a feeling unmatched than even I am unable to put into words.
Along with the beating, physical and mental, was a different aspect of the group. They used you. It’s like paying for a frat, you’re treated like shit for a while, but once you pay your dues you get to treat others like shit and live the good life. At first it just seemed like they were being assholes, but who were we to complain, once I got accepted I found out why they did it. Who wants to get a job to support yourself when you could just make other people pay for you? We had very few necessities, weed, cigarettes, alcohol, and occasionally food. We had people to support each of these things. If you had something that they needed, they called you. It works the same the other way around, if I had something of value, such as weed, money, alcohol, or a party, I called them. When you first meet them, it doesn’t as much feel like they’re your friends as their cash cow. Now this isn’t to say that they’re all like this, but the majority was. They were all broke, and to fulfill their addictions they used the younger kids. Once I got up higher on the food chain, I’d have weed for the day, have a good buzz, cigarettes, and any other drugs or necessities that I needed for the day on someone else’s tab. It was easy, we were practically begging for it. Later I’d get calls from kids saying they just got 100 dollars from their mom. If we’d have gotten a bill from our parents, we’d call each other, not the younger kids, but they called us. We called someone with a car, called another kid we were good friends with, picked up the noob and went on our way until we had no use for him. We would use them for bartering, get alcohol in exchange for someone else’s weed, cigarettes, maybe even make the kid, who just paid for us all day, buy us food. Maybe the mentality was that if we were fucked up it’d numb our emotions towards them, or maybe that was just how shit works. Never a thanks for smoking me out all day, it never crossed our minds. They gave…we took, I gave they took, that’s just how shit works. This pain and suffering doesn’t go without effect. For most of us it starts to build addiction, at least in my case. I started smoking weed more, which was our go to drug. It numbs, it relaxes, it gives you a million things, other than your problems, to think about. It’s beautiful, and abundant as hell. I was in the weed capital of the United States, right in the middle of California, and I was smoking so much that’s I lost memories of over half my life, memory that will never come back to me, but maybe that’s for the best. Eventually weed loses its vigor, its flare, and its effects. We still smoked it multiple times a day; we still made other kids pay for it and spent what little money we had on it. But eventually harder drugs started working their way into our group, first came ecstasy, then were the psychedelics like shrooms and acid, and lastly, my personal favorite, coke. Each different drug had a different background when we’d do it, we had apartments and small areas for coke. There were bigger, more heavily populated places that we used for shrooms and acid. And E was usually done at parties inside houses where everyone was on one. As the amazing feelings from each drug start to set in, so does addiction, coke is especially addictive and extremely hard to get off.

Addiction has hit each and every one of us in different ways, some of us by choice other’s were predestined for it. We come from families with their own favorite poisons, some alcohol, weed, coke, meth, Abuse, adultery, regret, depression, obsession, whatever the fuck it was, it took it’s toll. However a couple of drugs have swept the scene and left a lasting mark on a few of us. -Weed: weed has always been incorporated in everyday activities; when you wake up, smoke. When you can’t think of anything to do, smoke. When you’re bored, smoke. If you can’t sleep, smoke. The cycle always revolves.

Before Life’s Over, W.in.
My poison of choice. Captivating, exhilarating, outgoing, irreplaceable. She brings me fulfillment in the form of confidence. Unequaled ability. Intangible sensations. She is heartwarming, and lovable. I will undoubtedly be in debt to her my entire life and will never be quite alive until I see her face. The feeling of eternal bliss graces me with each touch, though she fucked me, so I cannot see her again. We used to talk, but now I can’t reply. We used to laugh and play on long summer nights but no longer will her sultry kiss grace my veins, and no longer will she crawl into my life. She just torments me until I fall asleep into her dreams.

There are a lot of reasons as to why kids or adults for that matter use drugs. It’s our escape from the reality we live in. The world we’re born into fucking sucks. Every one of us has our demons; some are dealing with abuse, shitty parents, past abortions, and lost loves. We release our pain by finding a medium where we can all connect and leave all of it behind. It’s beautiful, actually, the fact that a man made substance can bring such happiness and closeness between such fucked up individuals.

Growing up as teenagers we reach out to those older and wiser. Truth is we are all lonely and sick, and out of our minds and no amount of friends we have, or girls we fuck, or drugs we take will ever cure us. There is no end to this spiral, and in the end we all run out of steam. Life as we know it will last no more.

YOU GET ACCEPTED

One day, like any good student, you question your authority. Anyone would get tired of being beaten up and fucked with by the kids you call your friends. Everyone eventually gets tired of being used, some still let it happen afterwards, but they certainly can’t like doing it. This is your breaking point. Either you stand up against them and show your dedication or you decide to wait and see if they’ll still call you and want to be your friends. The latter is when you fall out of the group, you get forgotten and they move on, simple as that, but once you fight back against them, you’re accepted. This doesn’t work in all cases, but in most of them it does. I got hit one day and I swung back, I proved that I wasn’t going to take shit anymore. This shows them that you’re willing to fight for them, to fight with them. Being in the position that the group was, having our style, and our background, we took a lot of shit from a lot of people. It wasn’t that we acted like little kids and needed to be put in our place, it was that we wore tight pants, had long hair, and were known as the druggies. Everyone wanted to be us, to have our power, collectively (without the drugs taking their tolls on our mental capacities), we had the knowledge and willpower to get anyone we wanted to say or do anything. Nobody in their right minds would find asking people for money and sleeping in the streets the cool thing to do. Nobody would envy us for getting kicked out of school after school for violence and drug charges. Not a single person I can name would have wanted those things. But the perks that came with it were what everyone was after. The kids who were at high-level positions in our group had it all, in our eyes at least. Money, girls, drugs. These were the things we envied. Being fucked up isn’t something you write on your resume or your college application, but if you told anyone who knew of us that you were in beefcake, they’d know who you were, what you were capable of, and what you’d been through to call yourself by that name.

THEY REBUILD YOU

It’s a quick process, compared to the torture you’ve just endured. It’s the most invigorating experience, finally being welcomed, finally feeling welcomed. At least for me, there was a completely new air of confidence and comfort. Comfort as in it was fun, being able to pick fights and have backup, to not need anything of value to them to hang out, and to be fucked up with an entire group without worry. I’ve seen everyone at their worst points, and they’ve seen me at mine as well, along with all of our best points too. The day I felt like one of the group was the best day in my entire life, they made me who I am today.

YOU GET IN

It wasn’t that we had labels like any normal gang, but it worked almost exactly the same. We had the prospects, the ones who wanted to become us. They got beaten and bruised, we made them do what we wanted, if someone with higher seniority wanted something, they got it. If we needed gas money to get home, the younger kids would go get it. Me and another of my friends were the only exceptions. We were young, maybe 14 when we got in, hell I’m 18 now and celebrating my friends 20 and 21st birthdays. My sophomore year in high school I was with all kids 2 and 3 years older than I was. It was invigorating, it gave me confidence, and if I could fit in with them and be called one of them I was happy. That’s how much I was brainwashed into believing in them, that’s why I gave them everything. They fed my addiction. Before I met them I was nobody, I was a lonely kid with nothing to call mine. Beefcake is mine. I share in it the gifts and the pain that accompanies it.

I lay down, trying to forget my existence, trying to drift off into a beautiful world where I’m wanted, where I can be myself. I slowly fall into the depths of another world, I’m lost, suddenly, I’m greeted by a figure. Not one that I could name or describe except for that it had a soothing voice that told me that everything would be alright. I follow her and she leads me to a room where all my friends are. I’m sitting in the room too with all of my friends, I remember this memory. It was the first time I tried coke and it was in a room underneath the parking lot down the street from my house. It was the first time I’d overdosed on coke as well. Everything starts getting hot and cramped; I start spinning in circles, looking for comfort. I take my shirt off, my pants off, my hat, shoes, everything. Sweat starts pouring from my head, it blinds me, I wipe my eyes. I feel my stomach churning, trying to expel this demon, trying to save me from what I now have become, I start vomiting, crying, screaming. My friends are trying to help, but nothing they do can stop this from happening. More puke, more tears, I fear for my life. The sickness settles, I sit down, dress myself back up. I look over to my friends as they all give me looks of utter fear for my life, I shoot them a smile and laugh at it as if it happens all the time. That’s one of the things I was always good at, making everyone else feel comfortable with me fucking myself up. They saw me at my worst point and all I could do was smile and shrug it off. I search for words to describe what had just happened, or to offer some words for my friends. The only thing that I can get to come out of my mouth is, “what the fuck are you all staring at get me another fuckin’ line”.
I wake, sweating from my nightmares. I jump out of bed and walk towards the sink to wash the perspiration from my eyes. I look up, face wet with water, only to see the words “addiction never sleeps” carved into my chest.

YOU GET OUT
The writing on my stomach is slowly dripping off my faded skin. Family sucks. Well who am I kidding? Everybody sucks.
Fuck you. I go back to my can of duster and try and realize who my true friends are.
Friends come first, it’s a part of life. I need to do something with my life. Fuck being home, fuck school.
I need to go somewhere where I can be myself and just fuck around all day. I need to scream.
When I finally leave this place with my backpack filled with clothes, that’s what I want to do with my life.
Just go wherever, whenever.
We drift onward and outward into either serenity or uncertainty, there is no in-between. It’s getting harder and harder to wake up in the mornings without the comfort of a clan behind me.

When I was young, I read a book. It taught me how to see
And once I grew, I met a man. Who taught me who to be.
And halfway through, I felt that love. It filled my heart with glee
Soon after that, my reflection showed, that man, was really me.
Sitting here, I realize I’ve ruined my life already.

As I sit and wonder
Where have those days gone?
Lost along translations
Waiting for that time to come

When we’ll all feel at home and not alone
Following footsteps broadening horizons
Feeling the same but feeling alright
About the places where we’ve been

Longing to be held and longing to be seen
Hearing our language but coming out in screams
Don’t try to understand the words we say
If you can’t understand we’re all okay

Leaning closer
To the ledge
Walking along
That razors edge
When we’ll all feel at home and not alone
Following footsteps broadening horizons
Feeling the same but feeling alright
About the places where we’ve been
“And I find it kinda funny I find it kinda sad the dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had.”

don’t ever look back
just keep on moving
with no remorse, no regret
‘cause the last thing I see
before I go to sleep
is the sight of you sitting next to me
in the car ride to destiny
sadness is for the weak
it’s not every day you lose a friend
it’s not your fault that it did end
so don’t look back you know it’s true
it’s what he’d have wanted you to do.
so do me one last favor
just hear my humbled cry
don’t shed a tear tomorrow
as I lay here and tonight
just keep on moving onward
and never forget this
just scream your fucking heart out
and clench your fucking fist
I stand here with the world
placed upon my hands
every single loving being
all are within my grasp
so do me one last favor
and never say goodbye
I’ll never let you die.

The word haunts me, it’s tagged on my walls at home, written on my calculator, books, backpack, scarred into my flesh. I bleed it. I hate it. I love it. I dream about it. This isn’t my portrayal of the group, it’s my release in getting it of my chest. I have this demon living with me and people ask me why I am who I am and I’ll tell you why it’s because of the fucked up past I had. Don’t get me wrong. I had both my parents, sure. But I neglected them, I didn’t come home for days even weeks at a time. I took 100 dollars from my mom and spent it on coke, lied to her about it, and slept in the home she gave me for 24 hours while I slept off the comedown. I went from being a perfectly happy 14 year old who loved playing basketball and watching WWE wrestling to a pierced up, long haired, druggie, stoner, alcoholic fuck of a child. I hate myself for what I’ve done to my family and I hate how I fucked up my childhood the beat is low, grungy, grimy, dirty. It pulses through my veins, drowns out emotion, or good emotion rather. I see the dancing; the movement brings a smile to my lips, a smile of happiness,

ENDING:
These letters don’t make a word but rather a meaning, they’re faded, blurred, smeared, but they still stay. They represent a life’s worth of giving and taking, along with the battle we’ve all had to fight in order to wear this word. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but this word’s worth a thousand pictures. Every drunken night, every fight, all the shows and smoke breaks. From experimenting to addiction, and from addiction to sobriety, sobriety to relapse. Ending up in hospital beds with broken bones, ripped ears, bruised egos, and hurt feelings. These are the days of our lives; those were the days of our lives. I’ll never stop living the way these letters taught me to live, and I’ll never quit breathing for the next day we’ll all be together again. I wear this word across my stomach with honor that I was a part of something big. Every kid we knew wanted to be in, every kid we knew tried, only a few could stay through till the end and that’s why I’m glad I can wear the word beefcake with pride.

. We are a select few, hand chosen, tried and tested we will not break. No matter the opposition, the consequences, the risks, we will not break. We will stand true to these few simple words. “These are my friends, I have their backs, they are the closest things to blood that I have.”

Here’s to the past
Here’s to late nights
to not being able to sleep without a hit.
Or wake up without a cig.
Here’s to flashbacks, heart conditions, and lost memory.
Overdoses, hangovers, and comedowns.
Here’s to knowing too much,
and “not fucking with that shit anymore”
disapproving looks, lost reputations, harmful stories.
this one’s for the broken hearts, severed spirits, and the rebounds
for irreversible piercings, unforgettable tattoos
and having “one life”
here’s to not being able to see straight,
and having to call someone your “old friend”
to sketchy friends, who you stick by
and good friends who you don’t
here’s to talking shit, and getting shit done.
And not being able to do anything at all.
broken bones, lasting injuries, and bruised egos
to hello’s, goodbye’s, and a few hope I’ll see you soon’s
and after sniffling and gritting my teeth,
I wouldn’t change it for the world,
here’s to the future,
and here’s to the past.

It’s a good night, with the best friends I could ask for, on the 4th of July in Santa Cruz. Watching the fireworks, just took an eighth of shrooms, and just blazed a bowl. Silence strikes, despite being surrounded by friends, I can’t hear a thing except my heart beating out of my chest, Beat. I try to calm down, I know it’s just a bad trip, but how do I get out now? Beat. I’m deaf, I can’t call for help, can’t find the words to speak, can’t even hear if my friends are still around me. Beat. I sink into my seat, clutch my chest and wait, Beat, Pray for it to end, pray that I can find the strength to calm down. Beat. I sink more. Beat. I feel a tear fall from my eye. Beat. I hold my breath. Beat. Why can’t this be a dream? Beat. I close my eyes. Beat. I fall into unconsciousness. Beat. Beat. Beat.
The next day I’m still worried
Every beating, every name I’ve been called, every time I’ve given my last dollar to someone I knew didn’t deserve it, it all adds up now.
My only refuge, take a drink, no, take two. Drink up Shaun, it’s gonna be a long life and you know the only way you’ll make it through is to throw back this bottle and numb the feelings you’ve been holding on to. Two steps closer to the end, I see it, I feel it, I embrace it. Two more drinks down, two more drinks closer to not waking up from this fucking nightmare. I gag, my body wants to stop but I want to keep fucking going, just keep fucking going. I start fading slowly, breathing slows, thinking slows, everything slows, I slow. I sit back in my chair and smile, a smile of accomplishment. I set up two more shots, one for the good times and one for the bad times. I take my first shot and I wish I’d have taken the other one first, I guess it’s always a mistake to drink to the bad times first. I drop back in my chair, I’m guessing, it’s too bad nobody was at my house that night to keep me from running out, I don’t know how I made it that far that night, I don’t even know how I made it. My eyes suddenly open slightly, and all I can see is a haze and the outline of bodies. I look down to see the blood pooling at my fingertips, a sharp pain echoes through my skull, opening my eyes completely. I’d only like to say I was sobered up at this point, and before thoughts could stumble their way into my brain I look up and see them.

“Fucking pigs.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing”.

I want to thank everyone who made this book possible, Ambermae for stories and inspiration, KyleCaragio for teaching me how to run shit. JeremyDance for being a big ass teddy bear. Brent for teaching me to be stingy about everything. Goose for showing me how to fuck with people and get other people in trouble for it. Ollie for being so damn tough. JaffyTaffy for always being a voice of inspiration. Brandon for never giving me a day without having some reason to run from the cops. ChrisThizz for the finest buds in town, ALWAYS. NathanThunderthighs for doing the whole thing right by my side. Josh Shuster for bleeding all over my favorite sweatshirt and never giving it back. AlanDank for being a dumbass. MattKush for getting fat. TrevorBeefcake for ditching us and then appearing out of nowhere. LindsayMarie for getting me drunk when I was 14. KristaCouture for being a lasting friend that I can always count on. BlaneyJohn for moving into my house when I told you not to. And Troy for putting up with all of our fucked up shit. There’s a million others that I’d love to thank for this and if I had another 20 pages I’d write down every one of you. But thank you all for everything you’ve done. Whether tough times came our ways or good times graced us, there will always be a place in my heart for you, Beefcake, always.