Moriah Ulinskas

Dwayne Adams

 

I was born in New Orleans on April 1, 1957.  I first came to San Francisco in 1960 with my father- he was running from the cops.  He had been at Angola Prison, and when he got out he smashed me up and took me to San Francisco with him.  I have older brothers and older sisters, on my father’s side, and younger brothers and younger sisters on my mother’s.  

 

He only brought me to San Francisco because I looked just like him.  There were good intentions, but it was the wrong way to raise a boy. I was being groomed for street life.

 

I’m not sure when it was, we came when the streetcar used to go over the bridge. I was so fascinated by it.  I found out later my father came here to take care of his drug business.  We went to Magnolia, Mississipi the following year, but I remember we did Christmas here. We have a lot of family in Hunter’s Point and Double Rock.

 

We didn’t stay in Mississippi that long. Then we (me, my mother, my father) moved to San Francisco.  I went to Burnett Elementary School, over by the jail on Third Street.  At the time my own mother was bruising me because Pops wasn’t always home and she took it out on me.  At school I was always fighting. I couldn’t read or spell because of my mama, but at math  I was a WHIZ because I was being groomed to sell drugs by my father.  I learned how to use the scale and I kept the score while they played dominoes.

 

But my mama, she was a cold piece of work. She gave me transistor radio.  I remembered the word radio, but I couldn’t remember the word transistor. I asked her while she was washing dishes and she told me that if I didn’t remember by the time she finished washing dishes she would whoop me. And she did.

 

I didn’t learn how to read until the third time I went to prison. I wasn’t tripping on it the first time, I was young.  I was 18 and was in prison for guns and robbery.

 

That’s what I was doing then. I was selling drugs, robbing people, shooting guns.  I learned this in Hunter’s Point. I didn’t have any brothers, so I had to learn myself. I had to man up. Be a done man.  I took it on myself to live suicidal when I was about 10.  I stopped going to school when I was 14.  Actually, I stopped going to classes when I was 12, but I kept going up there because of my girlfriend.  They couldn’t teach me anything. I was making more money than the teachers. I couldn’t read and I just didn’t care.

 

I was highly dangerous as a teenager.  I was in a gang and I would do anything they wanted me to do. Some of them were even crazier than me.  They’d just shoot up anyone who got in their way. They’d rob anything, they didn’t care.  Mom knew better than to stop me.  I pulled a shotgun on her for trying to whoop my sisters and she knew better than to pull on them what she did to me.

 

Aw, I was stupid. I was drunk. One day, instead of going across the street to the house I was staying at, I went home to my house where my sisters were. I was high, the cops were searching for me hard.  I went to my house and went to bed and they got me in my own bed. I heard the door sound off and I looked out the window and there were cops all outside and I looked out the other window and there were cops all out there, I said “Aw!”  So I just sat down and lit a cigarette.

 

I was thinking about my sisters. I didn’t want them to start shooting with my sisters in the house.

I was sentenced 5 to life, with a 90 day observation at first. I kept getting in trouble because I was young and wilding out. I was in a dangerous place. I served 8 years in San Quentin and at Soledad.

 

When I was released I went right back to my ways.  This time I was an affiliate with the Black Guerilla family. I was a good candidate to be recruited and I was.  I stayed out of prison for maybe 7 months and I robbed everything that I saw.  I was giving money to my girlfriend.  I was smoking weed and snorting cocaine, but that wasn’t why. I was mad. I was still living suicidal.

 

The police snuck up on me downtown and got me again. Nobody told me they were coming.  A lot of people were scared of me, so they were glad to see me go.  I got two years, but turned it into eight with bad behavior.

 

I fought hard. I still haven’t learned my lesson.  I was in Tracy (DBI) and I got out and hooked up with some different people. They were smoking crack and I got involved in that.  The hustle wasn’t as strong as it was before because I became a dope fiend. My mind wasn’t set on big money, it was on any kind of money.

 

I was out for about 3 years, living in the Alemany projects with my younger sister.  She had a son and at first it was good, but she got strung out so I took my nephew to my mother’s house. I couldn’t stand that woman, but I knew she would take care of him.  She was a private nurse, she cared for this one woman who was a millionaire.

 

For me, life was do or die. The environment was dog eat dog. Just about everyone was smoking crack. If it wasn’t crack, they were shooting heroin. It was so that the children didn’t come out at night. We let it be known not to have the kids out at night. People would come in from Sunnydale, Hunter’s Point and do drive bys.  People would be up on the hill shooting down at people. Every time the police came through we shot at them.  This was in the late 80s.

 

I met this young toss up in Hunter’s Point. She was my favorite prostitute (I was sometimes a pimp). She had my youngest son in 1990. His name is Dwayne Remy Martin. I had altogether 7 boys, but 6 of them died. Shot up. Dwayne is still alive, but I don’t know where he is.

 

I was on the streets during the 1990s. The only thing that kept me afloat was that I had a gun. I would take people’s stuff. Drugs from drug pushers. If a homeless person had dope I’d take that too.  I stayed mostly in Hunter’s Point.

 

I transported prostitutes out of state, which was a federal offense.  We were at 18th and Mission and she jumped out with a trick and heard screaming.  I grabbed a pistol and went to find her. She was bleeding and the cops came. Turned out she was 17.  I was convicted of spousal rape- 6 ½ years.  I was in jail 2003- 2008.  CMC in SLO.  It’s Disneyland over there. We were playing golf and laying in the grass sunbathing.  I worked in the boot factory, I started learning to read. I took a good look at my life and said, “There’s got to be something better than this” and I took it on myself to make a change. I ain't looked back.

 

When I got out from CMC I was staying with this girl who was getting high too much in the house.  I was paying her $200/ month. I was clean- no program or nothing, I just said enough is enough. My SSI got approved, but she stole my money because I had made her my payee. One day the mailman came and I was alone and I saw the mail and there was a statement that said I was $1500 overdrawn.  I took it to the health center and they determined she had been stealing my money. She wasn’t on drugs, she was just one of those sanctified Christians that wasn’t worth nothing.

 

I moved out and moved into a motel in the Tenderloin. I was there about 6 months, then I transferred here.

 

I got tired. I didn’t go to know program, I didn’t get down on my knees and pray for help.  I knew if I didn’t quit I was going to get my head blown off or spend the rest of my life in prison.   I just came here last year. I still have the same reactions and tendencies as I did when I was young, but I keep that on a leash.

 

I haven’t got plans yet. I’m just trying to be cool. Be my authentic self. Something that was taken from me as a kid.  I’m at peace with myself now.  I forgave myself.  The ones that I saw, the ones whose lives I messed up I tried to sincerely apologize.

 

There’s only one sister left here and I don’t know where she is.  My sons? They were pitbulls and rottweilers. They were doing their thing, trying to be like me.  I tried to tell them they couldn’t do that, they weren’t insane enough. You have to not care about not living or dying to survive.