Lost Boys and Forgotten Men
No one gives a fuck about men and boys
What’s up man, welcome back to The Dream Lounge.
The above picture is one very few people have ever seen. Pictured is my younger brother Devin Johnson at 18 years old, on his way to spend a few days in the ICU with several gunshots to his neck and shoulder.
He ended up spending three days in the ICU only because the doctors were in disbelief about the specific bullet to his neck. It went in one side and out the other, clean all the way through, without damaging any vital tissue.
He could have easily been killed or paralyzed for life from that one bullet, and yet, it was nothing more than a flesh wound in the end.
I went to visit him in the ICU with my wife Medusa at the time. It was seeing him laid out in 2015 like this that made me finally wake up to the severe degree that my parents - and everyone else - had failed him.
He was a legal adult sure, but barely. Still a teenager, years out from being able to buy a beer. And here he was riddled with bullets.
That wasn’t even the last time he got shot. The same people tried finishing him off in a drive by a few months later.
I had been trying to get my brother away from my parents and his friends leading up to this point with minimal success. Medusa and I lived across the county about 45 minutes away, and I was able to get him to come visit maybe once a month or so, if that.
We’d go for walks, workout, have dinner, play Gears of War. I’d show him what I was doing with 21 Studios and The 21 Convention (he did briefly attend the 2014 event in Tampa Florida).
As much as Medusa is hated by my fans, we had discussed at times him moving in with us. We had the space, it was possible, just never on the table. Getting Devin away from my mom and dad was like pulling teeth even once a month or less often.
His reasoning was he refused to leave my mom alone with my dad for long, for fear of him abusing and beating her when he wasn’t around. He was correct, that the likelihood of this was always way higher without a third party around.
My counter was always: that’s not your responsibility. She needs to flee regardless of what you do, and you need to take care of your own future. Aka run.
It’s also difficult to articulate to a reasonable person the insane degree of toxic, co-dependent relationships my family of origin had. My brother was hooked to my mother and father both. My mother even more so.
Devin was an extreme mamma’s boy. My mother basically used him as a shield against my father. More and more as the years rolled by, with the violence and madness escalating as both my mother and father suffered from cognitive decline, gambling addictions, and the non-stop alcoholism of my father.
They just spiraled and spiraled. This alongside a total collapse from being solidly middle class - even wealthy for a while - to destitute poverty. They would have been homeless had my aunt Robin not paid all of their bills for years.
Still this image of my brother in the hospital is an iconic moment in our family history. It was my baby brother tumbling down the rabbit hole. Beaten, abused, neglected, overlooked and forgotten by the world.
Born and raised in a country that doesn't care one bit about the suffering of men, boys, and fathers.
He had it even worse than me with half the strength, resources, and tenacity to survive and escape.
The public and the government are out for blood with him now. It’s quite deluded and naïve.
He wasn’t born a monster. I would know. I was there the day he was born in 1997 at Health Park in Fort Myers.
My brother became a monster. He was every bit as innocent and kind as a kid, the same as my own daughter now.
His innocence was slowly beaten out of him by our father. Both with fists flying at him once I left for college, and fists flying at our mother. No one cared.
This family saga of violence was deeply entrenched and aggressively hidden from friends and extended family. Even now, in spite of a paper trail a mile long, I am routinely harassed, defamed, slandered, stalked, hated, and reviled for telling the truth about these issues.
Like my mother, my brother’s life and suffering are a genuine tragedy. The difference is, she was a parent, and few seem to care one bit about how much men and boys suffer like my brother.
No state prosecutor would dare pursue the death penalty for a young woman who killed her mother this way - having suffered this much abuse.
The government would bend over backwards with legal gymnastics to minimize the charges and sentencing outcome. Your honor, this poor baby.
With him in the same situation? Off with his head.
I’m left wondering to what degree the final act of his life outside of prison was simply the ultimate fuck you to a system and family that abandoned him so much. The amount of emotional pain and suffering he’s endured is extreme.
Our mother never once let our father beat our two sisters. Not a scratch.
But she allowed him to beat her, myself, and my brother to pieces for decades.
She made a deal with the devil and paid in her own blood.
/s/ Anthony Dream Johnson
P.S.
You can catch a sneak peak of my big announcement here.
Damn, Anthony with Medusa, being a hooker, and your brother getting shot more than once, wouldn’t have occurred to me that 2015 was one hell of a year for you. Great job though with the 2015 21 convention you still pulled through with it