Risen From Prison. Bosco H. C. Poon

and look at your hair! You’ve changed for the worse! Wake up, please. Don’t waste your time on useless things.” My mom cried every time I headed outside to party.

      “Blah blah blah. Whatever, Mom. I know my future ain’t becoming a boring nerdy accountant like you always wanted me to become. I hold my own future, not you, not Dad, not anyone else! I’m heading to my future right now as I speak: to live LIFE!” I would slam the front door as I stormed out of my house in anger.

      Naturally, I ignored them and proceeded to spend every weekend partying and getting high with friends from all over the city. Popularity was no longer a problem. When it came to the decision to pursue my grades or my social life, I always chose the latter. I kept hanging out with the same gang of guys, and I was very content to do so. But as time passed, I understood more and more that it was not just a gang of guys; it was actually a gang.

      That fall, Blade revealed to me that he was a member of an Asian gang called the Cat-Walk, a branch of a well-known local organization called the Lotus. For reasons inscrutable to me at the time, he made a decision to introduce me to his boss, Fury, a local underground Chinese boxer. He was one of the very few Asians who could hold their own in the underground boxing tournaments that went on in British Columbia. The tournaments were really just an excuse for illegal gambling—like dog fights or cock fights. Fury’s followers were bidding high money on him every time he was in a match. At the time I figured Blade just wanted to show me how much he trusted me.

      It never gets terribly cold in the fall in Vancouver. It’s not like other parts of Canada. Most of the trees here are evergreens, so we don’t have the beautiful fall colours of the east. But in the city parks, isolated stands of deciduous trees create the familiar sound of dry leaves crackling in the breeze before they are shaken free and drift to the ground, blanketing walking trails and filling them with the scent of their gradual return to the earth.

      It was a typical fall day, an overcast Friday afternoon, when Blade decided to fill me in on the details of his extracurricular activities.

      The car speakers were blasting hip-hop. I was crammed into the back seat of a white two-door Mustang GT. Blade was in the front passenger seat, having a cigarette, flicking the ashes out the window intermittently, as another friend drove us down Barnet Highway. We were on our way to the headquarters of Lotus. Gradually the scenery of the North Shore mountains was swallowed by the concrete of Vancouver’s east end, the griminess of the downtown east side, and eventually Chinatown. We parked on the sidewalk in front of a two-story building with a huge yellow sign displaying two red Chinese characters: 天下 “Tian Xia” (Dynasty).

      “This is the home base of many major players in this city. Don’t say anything stupid. I want you to leave in one piece! I’ll handle all the talking,” Blade warned me sternly.

      His comment sent a chill down my spine. As we entered the front doors, I heard the pounding of a heavy bag coming from the left. Pumph … thump … pump-thump! I turned to the left and saw couple of guys sparring in a ring—sweat beading up on their faces only to fly off in a spray when each blow connected. We walked past and continued our way up the stairs to the second floor. The upper floor was separated into two spaces by a bar counter in the middle of the room. Half of the room was devoted to a half dozen snooker tables, and the other half was a dance floor, with multiple private meeting rooms at the very end. The lights were dimmed because we had arrived during off-hours.

      Blade led us to a corner of the room, where I could see the silhouette of a man seated by the window. He bowed his head in deference and respectfully addressed the man as he turned toward us. “Boss, we’re here!”

      I could now make out his face with the help of the track lighting behind me. Fury was a five-foot, eleven-inch man in his late thirties who had broad shoulders and looked like he could bench press 300 pounds. He was wearing a black muscle shirt and tight jeans. I don’t quite know how to put this, but he gave off an angry and wrathful vibe—you could just feel the cloud of menace around him, and I knew immediately that he was not one to mess with.

      “Welcome, boys! I’ve been hearing excellent reports from Blade about your team in Coquitlam.”

      Team? I thought. Am I part of a team that I didn’t know about?

      “I’m well pleased with the expansion of our territory in that area,” he continued. “Well done.”

      “Thanks, boss.” Blade seemed pleased with the affirmation.

      “Come on, let’s have a shot! It’s on me!” Fury snapped his fingers, and a waitress brought a half dozen shots of tequila.

      As I downed the tequila and reached for a lemon wedge, I listened intently to the conversation, carefully trying to infer what exactly was going on. It seemed to me that I was in the middle of a strategy meeting of sorts. I turned to Blade and gave him a subtle “Why am I here?” look. He stared back and whispered, “Just keep your calm, everything is fine. You’re with me. We’re gonna party hard later tonight, all right? But let me deal with some business first.”

      They spent another hour discussing how to recruit more members and increase membership dues. I was not in any way interested in the topic of conversation, and, probably to my own peril, I didn’t keep that fact a secret, constantly gazing out the windows.

      How did I end up in this place? I thought. I didn’t think that being popular would have anything to do with ending up at a gang headquarters in Chinatown.

      After their meeting was over, Fury called a troop of five guys to escort him out of the building to his vehicle, a heavily modified street-racing silver Honda. The others gave me a cue to bow my head until he disappeared down the stairs. Though I was somewhat resentful about it, I didn’t have any other choice. I bowed my head, all the while feeling extremely uncomfortable.

      Then I took Blade aside. “Blade, did I miss something? Am I being forced to join this gang?”

      “Well, not forced, really,” he said, “but I will need you to assist us in a few things.”

      “So, I am being forced.”

      “No, no, no … relax, man. Just chill out for a sec. Look, if we’re going to get access to Fury’s people and money, I’m going to need you to play along. You don’t need to go through any initiation or anything. I don’t need you to be ‘official,’ but I need you act like a member of the Cat-Walk.”

      “But I’m not technically a member, right?”

      “No, not technically, but if anyone asks you about it the last thing I need you to do is say you’re not one of us. Just act like you fit in, and no one will start wondering.”

      While I was relieved on the one hand, I wondered what the implications of “playing along” were, exactly. Even though I was never pledged to be part of the Cat-Walk, most of the members thought that I was. Only Blade and I knew the truth, but I wasn’t sure that it made a great deal of difference. The expectations of me seemed more or less the same.

      As the evening wore on, more and more people appeared on the dance floor as the lineup around the bar counter gradually grew. Blade introduced me to all kinds of people. Fortunately, there were enough girls there that I actually maxed out my phone’s memory (ahh, the flip phone) gathering their phone numbers. So I selectively deleted the old girls from my phone and put the new ones in. In those days, there was only one thing on my mind: fun. The concept of faithfulness didn’t even cross my mind. I didn’t care about hurt feelings, lies, broken promises, or betrayal. I just did what made me happy, and as long as I was happy, nothing else mattered.

      In the middle of the dance floor with my new friends, I was totally revelling in the moment. The DJ was spinning hot, and laser light filled the room. The mixture of booze and the smoke coming out of the fog machine created a very sensual, almost pornographic, mood. When the high came down at the end of one party, I’d just go to the next one, seeking another high. In quiet moments, I knew I had changed. I was not the same person I once was. I didn’t care about my school, my future, or even my family. Consequently, everything except the party scene was coming apart at the seams. Problems were piling