Chapter 1: Kickoff

My name is DJ Twittle. Can you believe DJ is also a girl’s name? I mean Jesus...DJ?? Then you put a funny fucking last name on top of that like “Twittle”, and boom, there I am. I was born in Thousand Oaks, California on March 1st, 1972. It’s a town full of old fucks and burger joints, I hated it. I don’t remember what day I ran away, but I remember it was 6:45 and I didn’t pack. I made it all the way to Palo Alto. I was just 19 when I left, and 20 when I started selling.

It was late February of 1992.

Martin and Lee Twittle were great parents in pictures, they always looked so happy, and so caring. Usually in stories like these, you hear of an absentee father, or an abusive mom, something you’d see coming with someone in my line of work, but in fact neither of them had an issue with that, and I’m sure they’re very much alive and well today. No, they’re problem was that they were just plain old junkies. (Any sober person doesn’t name their daughter DJ.) Not on heroin though, mom and dad preferred coke. The drug AND the soda. Dad had a running joke as I grew up, (actually it was more of a riddle) and though he was probably high when he thought it up, it still gave me something to ponder while they rode the nose candy express:

“Pepsi is cool, but there’s nothing half as good as a soda you can snort.”

That always made me giggle, though it never made sense to me. Dad was always like that, a teaser and a clown. When I was nine I walked in on them doing a few lines on his birthday; June 6th. He picked me up and smiled.

“What’s up Red?”

He called me Red cause I was a natural ginger. As he cradled me in his arms, I remember hearing mom say “She’s such a good kid.” She then snorted what looked like an ounce and a half of cocaine. I guess my dad didn’t want my mom hogging all the blow, so he sat me down by the carpet in their room, and joined her in setting another line.

“Look Red, it’s snow!” he’d say.

Watching my parents do drugs was fascinating, even at a young age, It showed me how far one would really go to scratch their itch, which inspired me to start selling. I figured every addict would crawl on their belly just to get a fix, as my parents did. They sold most of the family jewels in 1990, just to be able to pony up as much dough possible for more drugs. It’s not like we were rich or anything, but when I say “family jewels”, there was some pretty valuable shit, including mom’s wedding ring and grandpa’s pension. Then came the truck. It was older then hell, but if I’m not mistaken they got at least a thousand for it. They weren’t picky, money was money. Whatever they got their hands on was worth selling. A few days before I left, they called the landlord of where we lived to see how much the house was worth and then spent all day doing the math to see just how much coke he could buy with the possible profits of re-selling an already rented home. It was then I realized, the human need for any kind of source, whether that’s drugs, food, or a hug, is unstoppable.

When it come to addiction though, that need is tripled, at least in my family.