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violent dreams and fantasies because I’ve seen so much violence in my life.
    “You dream about killing and eating black guys,” he said, “because, in American society, black men are the metaphoric embodiment of rage and fear and pain.”
    What the hell is a metaphoric embodiment? And why do I want to eat it?
    The kid shrink told me I was programmed for violence.
    “You can get better,” he said. “But your first response will always be to fight. To hurt. To cause pain and fear.”
    Doesn’t that just give you hope for me?
    The shrink also told me I have attachment issues. “All you know about is absence,” he said. “And you’re always looking to fill that absence.”
    And do you know what I said to him? “You can stick your head up your hairy puss-filled absence.”
    Ha, ha, ha, ha. Isn’t that funny? I threw a pun in his face. Of course, it was a violent pun, so maybe that doctor was right about me. Maybe I’m doomed to fill my empty life with fires and fists. Maybe I’m doomed to spend the rest of my life in jail cells like this one.
    So I’m mulling these things, feeling double-dip-doomed, when Officer Dave visits me.
    “Hey,” he says.
    “Hey,” I say.
    “Aren’t you getting tired of spending all your time in jail?”
    “Jail here, jail there, it’s all the same.”
    “You’re too young to be talking like that,” he says.
    “Whatever,” I say.
    Dave shakes his head. He looks disappointed. Depressed, even. I figure he’s going to walk away and never return.
    “You’re running out of chances,” he says.
    “What chances?” I ask.
    “The chance to change your life.”
    “Whatever,” I say.
    “Well, listen up, Mr. Whatever,” Dave says. “I got you one more chance. Instead of more jail, I talked the judge into sending you to a halfway house.”
    “Halfway to where?” I ask.
    Officer Dave laughs and leaves me to my jailers. And those dang bullies take me out of my cell and ship me to a halfway house for juvenile offenders. I hate group homes even more than I hate foster homes.
    I’ve had some nasty counselors and supervisors in group homes. Mean people, ugly people, and those sick bastards, those Uncle Creepy types, who try to stick their hands down your pants. I got sent to jail once because I punched one of those pedophiles in the crotch. I wanted to break his dick in half.
    So I’m lying awake in a ground-floor bedroom of this juvie halfway house, where all the counselors are Uncle Creepy types who want to give you candy, and I’m thinking about running away when there’s a knock on the window.
    I pull back the curtains and see him, the beautiful white kid, my new best friend.
    I don’t know how he found me. But there he is. My hero.
    He smiles and breaks the window.
    I climb out and we escape together.
    We run to an abandoned warehouse in SoDo, an industrial section of Seattle down near the waterfront.
    We climb the dangerous stairs to the top floor where the white kid has made a home out of garbage and abandoned office furniture. We sit on chairs made out of newspapers. I laugh.
    “What’s so funny?” he asks.
    “I don’t even know your name,” I say.
    He smiles, walks over to the corner, pulls something out of a sack, and walks back to me.
    “This is my name,” he says, and hands me two pistols. One of them looks like a regular gun and the other one looks like a Star Wars laser.
    “That one is a thirty-eight special,” the pretty boy says, “and the other one is a paint gun.”
    I’ve seen paint-gun competitions on ESPN, those fake fights where fat white guys run around fake battlefields and shoot each other with balls of Day-Glo dye.
    They like to fight fake wars because there aren’t enough real ones.
    I’ve seen real people get shot by real guns. But I’ve never held a real gun. I’ve always heard and read that guns are cold metal. But not this one. It feels warm and comfortable, like a leather recliner sitting in front of a sixty-inch HDTV.
    I laugh