I remember the night I joined. A bunch of local skinheads invited me out to a club and made me feel like part of the group. After we got kicked out (because we were fighting everyone within punching distance), we picked some guy on the street and immediately got in his face. "You got something to say?" one of us asked. "No," he said. And, like any person would be after being surrounded by a bunch of angry-looking kids at night, he was scared. That detail was important to me. I can see his face, clear as day, right now. I can see the fear in his eyes, and I can remember loving it.
Understand that up to that point, I had grown up scared of everything -- but when I was with these other kids, I was a source of fear. This guy was afraid of me. And I loved it.
So no, it had nothing to do with race. I didn't grow up thinking the white race was hot shit; I was taught that I was just normal, room-temperature shit. My stepdad spent most of his time telling me I was so stupid that if I spoke at the dinner table, I'd ruin his appetite. I spent my childhood absolutely terrified of everything: some of the black gangs at my new school, running out of money, clowns ... In short, I was a textbook case for a kid who ends up an addict, ready to fall into any stupid thing that would give me purpose.
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Decoupage, for example.
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