Moriah Ulinskas

Jonathan Sousa

 

See these tattoos? My family was involved in a theater group in Connecticut called the Nutmeg Players. When I was a child I was in a children’s theater called the Pickle Players.  A friend in prison tattooed these for me. They’re the tragedies.

 

I was born in Frankfurt, Germany on January 10, 1960 in a military family.  I’m the middle of five children. I’m the problem child.  We left Germany when I was three years old, then we moved to Waterford, Connecticut until I was 12, then we moved outside of Buffalo, New York.  I never finished high school because I got arrested for robbery.  I was with a friend and we wanted money for pot, so I took my dad’s rusty service revolver and we held up the Cumberland Farms.

 

We took a bag and had the girl at the counter fill it with money, twinkies, and snacks. I was a sophomore in high school at the time.  We got pot and got high and ate the twinkies.  We were so stoned we didn’t realize that the girl we robbed was in our class at school.  When she called the police she said, “I just got robbed by Jonathan Sousa and XXX XXXXX”.  When I got home the police were waiting in my driveway.

 

I was tried as an adult because of the gun and because it was Connecticut.  I was sentenced to six years and served four. I was a math tutor while I was in prison. I tutored other prisoners.  I took the GED and passed in the top 1% of the state.  I was book smart, but not street smart.

 

I was at Chester Academy first, then transferred to Somers State Prison.  I had a lot of family there: cousins and an uncle.

 

I came to California in 1984 or 1985 when I got out of prison.  My dad picked me up when I got out and he had my bags packed and a bus ticket in his hand to sent me to California to stay with my brother. He said I couldn’t stay home because I’d get into trouble again.

 

My brother was in the Air Force and we lived in Atwater, near Merced.  I got a job in a fast food joint. That lasted a couple years.   But I wanted to go to San Francisco, so I went out hitchhiking.  I got dropped off at the Sixth Street exit and went to the Crystal Hotel and got a room.  The first friend I made was a drug dealer.  I started shooting up crystal meth and probably contracted the HIV right away.

 

I stayed in the Tenderloin for four or five years, doing tons of crystal meth.  I started selling because I got a job working the front desk of a hotel. I never got busted because I didn’t have to go out on the streets, I was selling out of the hotel.

 

Then I did something stupid.  I had learned off-set printing while I was in prison.  I started stealing mail, finding checks, and I knew how to wipe the ink off and reprint  them with my name on them.  Around that time I met Edie, who later became my wife.  We met in the Tenderloin. First she was a customer, but then we started dating.  Then I got busted for the checks (and stealing bikes) and I got sent to San Quentin.  I married Edie while I was in San Quentin.

 

One time I got arrested for stealing a car near San Luis Obispo.  Since I was down there they sent me to the California Men’s Colony.  My first day on the yard there were all these pockets of people and I was trying to figure out which one I belonged in.  There were the child molesters (I didn’t belong there)... the burglars, the car thieves.  And there was Charles Manson, all by himself, in a cage.  And then this one guy was like, “Come here, come here, I want to introduce you to some people!” And it was the Menendez brothers!  They were famous!

 

After I got out I was trying to clean up, but Edie was high all the time.  Even after I came here to Leland House she would come here high all the time.  Edie passed away about six years ago of pneumonosis from the AIDS. I told her I couldn’t be with her anymore because I was trying to clean up, and another friend of mine got together with her, but I didn’t mind.  We were still married when she died.

 

I came to the Leland House quite a few years ago.  I had been living on the streets on and off for years. For many years I stayed in an old abandoned pool hall on Market Street, between 6th and 7th Street.  It was full of people. There must have been 40 or 50 people staying in there- all panhandling and selling drugs.  I was in a haze of crystal meth, plus the occasional hit of acid.

 

I ended up here after a stay at the Center for Recovery at Treasure Island.  I also was at Laguna Honda for three or four years and in Ward 86 at SF General.  It was Jim, a drug counselor at Laguna Honda, who applied for me to come here.

 

When I got here I met my best friend: Michael AKA “Ace” Boyd.  When I learned he had multiple sclerosis we immediately bonded.  My mother had MS.  She lived with it and worked with it. She was the head nurse in the long term care ward at New Haven Hospital.  When I was a kid I would leave school every day and take the bus to her hospital and spend the afternoon with her.  All the people in her ward took care of me.  I loved my mom so much. I spent all my free time with her.

 

When I was in high school she got too sick to work and went into the hospital.  She eventually got so sick they transferred her to a convalescent home.  There was a path in the woods between our house and the convalescent home and I went to see her every day.

 

100% I lashed out because of her sickness.  The sicker she got the worse I behaved.  I went to prison while she was in the convalescent home and I never got to talk to her the whole time I was in prison.  When I got out I got to see her right before she passed away.  I haven’t thought about this in so long.  I really loved her.

 

“Ace” (Mikey) was the first friend I made at the Leland House. And we had an instant bond because of the MS.  Both he and I are Portuguese.  We had a good time.  

 

Man, I miss Mikey.  I called him my Ace boy.  We called it wake and bake. We would wake and bake every morning. “It’s Wake and Bake time!” we’d say every morning.  We did everything together.  Mikey’s mom lived in Bermuda and she would come visit and she would take us all out to restaurants. I had sucha special bond with my mom and he had such a special bond with his mom, it made us close.

Eventually Mikey got too sick and they transferred him to Laguna Honda.

 

For a while when I got here I was still shooting speed, smoking crack, but I’ve been clean five- going on six- years now.  I’m diabetic now.  People don’t understand that diabetics crave sugar the way heroin addicts crave heroin.  You should see my drawer after pay day. It’s full of junk food.  But I quit drugs and I quit smoking.  I’ve tried to explain to Mildred she should quit smoking.  When you smoke, you’re body can’t heal. And I’m trying to heal.