Cell 2455, Death Row: A Condemned Man's Own Story by Caryl Chessman

Author:Caryl Chessman [CARYL CHESSMAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Criminals & Outlaws, General
ISBN: 9780786735839
Google: Z5ZjGcUHBzoC
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2009-03-25T00:13:25.778523+00:00

• 21 •

The Game Grows Grimmer

We were continually on the move.

Incident piled upon incident.

I drove myself and my friends toward a mirage, an impossible goal. If you knew your way around, if you knew how to look out for yourself, nothing was impossible, I insisted.

You had to know, though, what you wanted and then you had to have the guts and the savvy to go after it. You took the violent, the savage, the macabre, the humorous, the fantastic in stride. Soon you would go off to war and you didn’t expect to return; you didn’t give a damn if you returned. So you occupied yourself with cramming a lifetime into a few months.

You got around. You robbed. You hijacked. You snatched a pimp here; you knocked over a bookie or gambling joint there. You sat at your paralyzed mother’s bedside and talked the night away. You saved.

You had friends. And enemies. You loved one girl—your wife—more than life. But you knew that for you, love and life were exquisite instruments of torture.

You met gay, sophisticated young things who bestowed their favors liberally, who, for a moment, shared their physical selves with you. And you knew that they were as lost as you were. Behind their laughter was not a tearful melancholy but a terrifying emptiness. Unable to fill the void, they fled from it. They made flight their goal. Briefly you fled with them.

Occasionally you dreamed still, and laughed mightily at yourself when you did. For you knew that only hopelessly innocent fools dared dream.

And you were beyond innocence. You had convinced yourself that you were a knowledgeable young cynic who knew all the answers, all the angles. And you were so positive that only the impossible, and the unattainable, would satisfy you.

Oh, you were a clever young man, all right.

No doubt of that.

A clever young man and a busy one. . . .

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