The Musings and Memoirs of a Gila Monster: A Growing Storm by Kevin Wikse.
I won my black belt in Judo at 14 during a Batsugun. A Judo Batsugun is when a tournament's competitors line up, from the lowest-ranked white belt to the top-ranked black belt. The lowest-ranked white belt steps out on the mat and challenges the second-lowest-ranked white belt. The contest winner challenges the next Judoka, and so on until the highest-ranking black belt is called out. I was third in line from the beginning. That night, I took my black belt off the highest-ranking black belt under 18 in Southern California. Later, I discovered it's partly what got me noticed by some interesting people, and my name was "highlighted." I was 17 in the mid-1990s when an organization recruited me to hinder the advance of MS-13, looking to gain footholds in rural areas of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, & Montana. They would train males 15 to 16 years old and "seed" them in small Podunk towns in the Pacific Northwest. These seedlings recruited members, primarily o...