I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Central Avenue, which is technically Route 66, so I like to tell people that I was born on Route 66. I know it’s corny, but it is true. I spent the earliest years of my life just south of Santa Fe, New Mexico in the mountains near Madrid and Cerrillos which are very small villages in New Mexico with very interesting and long histories. The first confirmed human presence in the area that is the town of Cerrillos was just over 10,000 years ago. One of the coolest exports from Cerrillos is turquoise that is mined nearby. The other most famous part of Madrid is the Mineshaft Tavern which is in many movies filmed in the area. One of the most famous movies filmed in the area was the movie “Young Guns” which was being filmed while I was in 2nd grade. The Black Bird Saloon is featured in the movie and was coincidentally where my school bus picked me up in the morning. I did not know why I had to be picked up in a different spot during filming I just knew that they were doing something really cool. 

Growing up in the mountains for the first 8+ years of my life was scary for 2 reasons. The first one because the mountains are just scary, I actually had a neighbor who used to let tarantulas crawl up her arm – I used to have nightmares about that. The second reason was my semi-abusive step father. I say semi-abusive because I do remember being “spanked” by him but I don’t really consider that abuse towards me, maybe just overly excessive punishment—like just barely over the line but not to have me in total fear everyday like some abused children are. Not to defend him, he was very violent and abusive, I just feel like I got off easy when compared to how he treated women, specifically my mother. I learned what a “bloody nose” is though from how many times he gave one to my mother. 

My mother, Mary Elizabeth (Hise, then Brecheisen and then Jenkins – which she ended up keeping as her last name even after her third divorce (third divorce to two men, she actually re-married my father before divorcing him again). So, Mary Elizabeth Jenkins, was a very beautiful woman and even though I was mostly raised by her as a single mother, her life really was shaped by the men in it – most of which me.

When I was 18, we both became addicted to cocaine which led to many other addictions that tore us apart from most of the rest of our family for many years.  We were the outcasts in our uber-religious family. My mom herself was very religious, actually when she was alive we used to fight about it a lot. I used to call myself agnostic, but mainly atheist because I didn’t like the hypocrisy that I saw from most Christian churches. I still have very deep problems with people who claim to follow Jesus but still preach hate against others they don’t understand. It was the vileness and bigotry of the church that led me to hate myself when I was younger for being gay. That was a big trigger for a lot of my drug use when I was young.

He would do everything he could do to avoid telling me he loved me. I know he did though, just not in healthy ways, it was just more for what I did for him and my money gave him and spent on him. He used to say things that would make me believe it too, but he was terrified about saying the actual words. He was damaged, but the funny thing is he would never admit his damage, he was more into trying to project his problems onto me. To this day he lies about what he did to me, and he has never been the type to take accountability for anything he does. He truly is the biggest mistake I ever made, he was a narcissistic creep and I have nightmares about the abuse he put me through almost daily and it’s been 5 years.  I am not going to let these things stop me from being who I am. I am a professional community advocate and that goes with me everywhere.

While I was my mom’s caretaker in the five years before she died; she had cats, Aries was my special cat who was born in her closet at my grandmother’s house when she lived there and he was born on my birthday in April and that is why we named him Aries We had another very special cat who just kind of moved herself in, literally.  My downstairs neighbor who was pregnant and already had a toddler in her house had bought her as a kitten for her sister who never was able to take her. She hated living in the same house as a toddler, so she used to sneak in and hide in my house.

It was so cute; I would find her and take her home and within 24 hours she would find a way to run into my house again. She would hide and sneak into the kitchen and eat and then go right back to her hiding place. She liked it in my house because it was welcoming and there was always food, anyone who knows me knows that is just how my house always is – a welcoming place where literally anyone can come and eat and have peace.  It was the funniest situation because we did not want another cat when she decided that she wanted to live with us. And one thing about it was Aries himself, he hated other cats and dogs too.

But he loved her, he saw that she was afraid of her home, and she just wanted to feel safe, and she felt safe with him. The cutest thing that she would do is when she wanted his attention she would walk over to wherever he was laying and sit on his head. He wouldn’t get mad or anything, but he would just do the cat version of a sigh.  Eventually I talked to my neighbor to explain that I kept having to throw he cat out of my house and that is when I found out about the baby, and I learned her name was Lucy (a name we kept). Well, the presence of a toddler in the house explained the fear this little kitten had, she was not abused just very roughly loved by a baby who was much bigger and not very careful (toddlers and kittens actually aren’t a very good pairing, bigger cats yeah but kittens no).  Eventually we gave in and just stopped throwing her out of the house and she just never left, she was home.

Aries was a cranky cat with other animals but very loving with me and my mom. He was really my cat because he would follow me everywhere. He would follow me to the store when I would walk to it. We were very well known at the store, he would wait right outside the doors of the store until I was done and then we would walk home. In a small-town people get to know you really fast when you have a spoiled cat like that.  When I would go to my friend’s house in the same apartment complex, he would stand on the steps outside her kitchen window and meow for hours until I came out of her house. She was a retired schoolteacher and we used to work on computers and do different art projects together so we would hang out for a lot of hours sometimes and this would drive us crazy. Eventually even though she was not a cat fan, he would be let into her house and even got his own food bowl in her kitchen for his visits. 

He really was a special cat; it was because of him that I made other friends in the apartment complex that lived one building over from us. They had a retired police dog as a pet. His name was Duke and he was a German Shepherd and a very big dog. He startled me one night while he was outside his building because I didn’t see him as I was walking by to my building and he barked to let me know that I was near his house, not threatening or anything just letting me know he was there, and he wasn’t scary or anything because I am used to animals and I know their boundaries. He was a good dog.  I met my neighbors who owned him and eventually became friends with them though when I was checking the mail one time and my Aries was with me as usual and when I was talking to him my neighbor said, “so his name is Aries, huh?” and I said “Yeah, he is very spoiled and he follows me everywhere when I leave the house.”

That is when they told me how they knew my cat, apparently Duke, who just like my Aries was NOT a fan of other animals, was friends with my cat. They told me that my cat was kind of a running joke in their house, I guess he used to just walk right into their house all the time with Duke like he was coming to visit the dog and like Duke was bringing a friend over to introduce him to the family.  They used to joke about it because like I said, Duke was not a friend to other animals – just my Aries. It was the funniest thing I had ever heard, and I could not believe it. These two animals could not be more different but they were buddies, like real buddies. It was so cute. Aries would even go right up to Duke’s bowl while he was eating and grab one piece of his food and sit right next to the big old police dog and eat it. That is friendship when it comes to animals, most of them will not share food in such a way.

It was such a cute story, and it meant that now when I saw Duke I could say hi and he would know who I was, and they could say hi to Aries when he would visit too. It was so cute.  Those were just a few of the neighbors that were my friends but really the whole neighborhood knew my house. Everyone knew that it was the house you went to if you were hungry, or if you needed food for your pets. I used to volunteer for the ASPCA and about once a month or so a truck would pull up to my house and drop off hundreds of pounds of pet food and supplies. I had a giant silver bowl, like the silver bowls you see chefs use in a kitchen but mine would hold like 15-20 gallons, it was huge. I would pour giant 50-75 pound bags of dog or cat food into this bowl and separate it into smaller bags to distribute through the neighborhood and obviously saved what I needed for my cats.  They really were the most spoiled cats in the neighborhood, and they knew it, but they had friends too probably because they were the food pimps of the neighborhood. Animals are a lot smarter and more social than we give them credit for. That is one of the things that got me totally addicted to helping other people, to make life better, animal and human and to make friends.

I have been in recovery now for some time, and since I came to Utah about 12 years ago I have been in and out of recovery and dealt with many more trials in Salt Lake City. For more than 20 years I have been a professional community advocate, that is one of the things that drew me to the team a Salt Lake City Mission. That was one of the most horrible places I have ever been, and one of the worst experiences I have ever been through. First of all they run it like a cult. Even as the operations director (which was a joke of a job since I had too much responsibility and not nearly the pay-scale I should have had, but what can I say I was in a cult) I was subjected to some of the strangest rules – which I won’t get into.

I developed a relationship there with the volunteer coordinator that worked with me.  His name is Cameron James Harris and he is a sex addict and compulsive liar who eventually ended up kidnapping me one morning and forcing me out of a moving vehicle in attempt to murder me (it was a fight that started because I had started seeing other people, I did not lie to him about it but he knew that I was pretty much done with him and he was the jealous type and did not want me to leave him, he did not really love me though, he just loved the money that I spent on him and the things I was able to do for him).  He is a psycho and a disgusting human being who does not care who he hurts with his dangerous lies.  Not only did he kidnap me and try to kill me, but he also gave me HIV.

I swear it seemed like he had sex with everyone I know behind my back. He could have been honest with me but that is not what compulsive liars do. He was a very controlling and jealous person who would accuse me of cheating on him if I even talked to other guys, which is really stupid if he really knew me (which he never really tried to), because I am more likely to be celibate than to cheat on someone. I was actually celibate for almost 2 years before I hooked up with him, and even before then I was not very sexually active other then maybe like a couple years after I turned 18. But even that was mild compared to most. I’m not really celibate, but I don’t just hook up with people either. I have never seen the appeal in casual sex. I am just not that into meaningless sex with people I don’t care about. 

I have never really been good at making friends, even though I have always had some of the best people as friends my whole life.  I look forward to this journey that I get to take at this time in my life, whatever it brings. For the first time truly doing it alone too. That is the start of my little auto-biography here, but I plan on sharing much more as the years go by and I will always be looking for ways to expand the ways I can help the community I live in. I am nervous, excited and a little scared.  When God inspires you to do something though, you don’t say “but I’m not sure God!”  I prefer to say “Okay God, I only have this much and it’s all yours, what will you have me do Lord?” I am definitely totally unprepared and out of my element but that I hope I can at least make something in the community better.  That would be my best return on investment!

Sorry, I am not a good story writer…