Transcript

#64 Kevin · Heavyweight

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin Hey everyone, today's episode is a special one, but
0:23
Speaker 1: at the same time it does deal with mental illness
0:26
Speaker 1: and children in distressing situations, so take care when listening.
0:38
Speaker 2: You reach Jackie, you leave me a message?
0:40
Speaker 3: Do you plan? Lets you my message?
0:43
Speaker 1: Jackie, I haven't heard from you in a while. I
0:47
Speaker 1: thought maybe the adoration of American candidate isn't enough for you,
0:51
Speaker 1: so I wanted you to hear all the peoples of
0:54
Speaker 1: the world, all over the world who want to hear
0:57
Speaker 1: your voice again. Here are a few of them, Jackie, Jackie.
1:00
Speaker 1: My name is Jngles. I am from Cyprus, which is
1:03
Speaker 1: mega far away from where you're from. Jackie, Jackie, Jackie.
1:07
Speaker 1: This is Tracy recording voice message from London, England, Jackie.
1:12
Speaker 3: Even here in little Switzerland, the despair is great.
1:15
Speaker 1: Did Jackie. This is a song from Istanbul.
1:18
Speaker 3: You are the only person who makes me laugh out loud.
1:21
Speaker 1: You should definitely come back. You are the highlight of
1:23
Speaker 1: the show. It means nothing without you.
1:28
Speaker 3: Onid martez Iva Casine.
1:30
Speaker 1: Love from Alto and New Zealand. Kinny Shelton, you have
1:33
Speaker 1: a lovely rist of your day now. And this is
1:36
Speaker 1: Jonathan from England wishing you Mary Saint peppins that Hello, oh,
1:43
Speaker 1: I thought you picked up from Pushkin Industries. I'm Jonathan
1:53
Speaker 1: Goldstein and this is Heavyweight Today's episode Kevin right after
2:04
Speaker 1: the break. Kevin's email doesn't begin with any small talk,
2:18
Speaker 1: no longtime listener, first time writer preamble. He gets right
2:22
Speaker 1: into it. My little brother and I grew up destitute
2:26
Speaker 1: Kevin Wrights in a public housing project in Sacramento. He
2:30
Speaker 1: goes on to say that life back then was only
2:33
Speaker 1: made bearable by the presence of two boys who live
2:36
Speaker 1: next door, and this is why he's writing. Kevin hasn't
2:41
Speaker 1: seen them in over thirty years, but he still hasn't
2:43
Speaker 1: forgotten them. The two boys his friends, Jason and Gerald.
2:52
Speaker 1: Can you hear me?
2:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can hear you.
2:54
Speaker 1: Can you hear me?
2:55
Speaker 3: Yes?
2:55
Speaker 4: Yes?
2:55
Speaker 3: Great?
2:56
Speaker 1: The path that led him to Jason and Gerald is
2:59
Speaker 1: long and circuitous. Kevin begins the tale back in the
3:02
Speaker 1: third grade, sitting in class reading.
3:06
Speaker 5: I would reading a book on the Kremlins.
3:08
Speaker 1: Based on the movie.
3:09
Speaker 5: Yeah to Cover was the theatrical poster of the movie,
3:13
Speaker 5: and I remember it was during that moment that the
3:16
Speaker 5: teacher just said, Hey, we got to go to the
3:19
Speaker 5: principal's office. And when you're a kid, that's kind of
3:24
Speaker 5: memorable because I thought, initially I was in serious trouble.
3:32
Speaker 1: When Kevin arrived at the principal's office, his mom was there,
3:36
Speaker 1: surrounded by his five siblings. She explained that she was
3:39
Speaker 1: leaving their father and taking them all with her.
3:42
Speaker 5: So, my dad has always been a real imposing, frightening figure,
3:48
Speaker 5: because he would be everybody in the family if you
3:51
Speaker 5: didn't really obey his commands. I never thought that he
3:56
Speaker 5: was malicious, but that he beted us because we screwed
4:00
Speaker 5: up somehow, one way or another. So he would whip
4:02
Speaker 5: us with a metal clothes hangar, for example, or he
4:05
Speaker 5: would pinch us, and when he pinched us, it would
4:08
Speaker 5: go through the clothing and would leave like half dollar
4:11
Speaker 5: sized welt of blue and purple and greenish colors.
4:16
Speaker 1: One day, a neighbor, alarmed by a loud argument between
4:20
Speaker 1: Kevin's parents, phoned the police, and Kevin's father was arrested.
4:24
Speaker 1: He spent several days in jail, and when he returned
4:27
Speaker 1: home he seemed different.
4:29
Speaker 5: We didn't have the word mentally ill back then, but
4:32
Speaker 5: we just talked amongst ourselves that he became crazy, and
4:36
Speaker 5: by crazy, I mean like really crazy. Whatever he endured
4:42
Speaker 5: in jail must have been so traumatic for my dad
4:47
Speaker 5: and he invented a word at the time that everything
4:50
Speaker 5: was dirty.
4:52
Speaker 1: The dirty fixation began as soon as his father arrived
4:55
Speaker 1: back home from jail. The first thing he did upon
4:58
Speaker 1: his return was to ask for a box. He threw
5:02
Speaker 1: every article of clothing he was wearing inside. Then, standing
5:07
Speaker 1: naked before the family, he instructed his eldest son to
5:10
Speaker 1: throw the clothes away.
5:12
Speaker 5: And he goes up, he takes a shower, and when
5:16
Speaker 5: he comes back down, he sees that my older bro
5:20
Speaker 5: brought back the box.
5:22
Speaker 3: He was telling my bro that why do you bring
5:25
Speaker 3: the box back? Because the box is.
5:28
Speaker 5: Dirty, But more importantly, how did you toss out the
5:34
Speaker 5: dirty clothes?
5:35
Speaker 3: And my bro said he.
5:37
Speaker 5: Just grabbed it from the box and tossed it out,
5:40
Speaker 5: basically indicating to my dad that my bro touched the
5:45
Speaker 5: clothing himself. My dad just went cirtain. He just he
5:49
Speaker 5: just beat my bro on the spot right there. But
5:52
Speaker 5: that was the beginning of this crazy phase where my
5:56
Speaker 5: dad just completely lost it.
6:05
Speaker 1: His dad's new obsession only increased the tension between Kevin parents.
6:10
Speaker 5: And every time they had arguments. We have no clue
6:12
Speaker 5: what they were talking about because they spoke in Vietnamese,
6:15
Speaker 5: and although that was my first native language, there was
6:18
Speaker 5: a time where my dad thought that we weren't learning
6:21
Speaker 5: English well enough. He forbade the usage of Vietnamese in
6:25
Speaker 5: the house. Then again, if he heard anybody utter single
6:30
Speaker 5: word of Vietnamese, he would beat us. And so we
6:32
Speaker 5: dropped that quickly. But one of the arguments precipitated with
6:37
Speaker 5: my dad grabbing a cleaver and he throws it across
6:43
Speaker 5: the room and no one in particular, but it larged
6:46
Speaker 5: hisself into the wall.
6:49
Speaker 1: It wasn't long after that that Kevin, his mom, and
6:52
Speaker 1: his siblings found themselves standing in the principal's office.
6:56
Speaker 5: We went from the principal's office straight to what I
7:00
Speaker 5: now know is woman's shelter.
7:03
Speaker 1: Do you remember that first night that you spent there?
7:06
Speaker 2: Oh?
7:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was great.
7:08
Speaker 5: It just felt you wouldn't know anything imposing about the
7:12
Speaker 5: shelter until you leave. That's when you see the eye
7:16
Speaker 5: fences with the barber wire over the top. Almost looks
7:18
Speaker 5: like a prison. But it was great insight. There's a
7:20
Speaker 5: giant playground or tricycles there was a walk in pantry
7:24
Speaker 5: that myself and my brother really loved if because you
7:28
Speaker 5: could walk in and they're all these snacks and instant noodles.
7:31
Speaker 1: But after a few weeks of feasting on instant noodles.
7:35
Speaker 5: My mom just suddenly gathers all of us and she
7:40
Speaker 5: had the paper grocery bag. She just tersely explains to
7:46
Speaker 5: us that two of us, two of the six of
7:50
Speaker 5: us kids, will have to return to my dad. She
7:54
Speaker 5: can't take care of all of us, she cannot keep
7:58
Speaker 5: all of us. And she said, as she wrote six
8:02
Speaker 5: of our names on pieces of paper, and she put
8:05
Speaker 5: all of our names in this paper bag, and she's
8:09
Speaker 5: going to draw two names into two names, will be
8:13
Speaker 5: two kids to have to return to my dad. And
8:18
Speaker 5: I just remember my name with the first name to
8:20
Speaker 5: be drawn, and I was just I was just shocked.
8:26
Speaker 5: I don't know at the time I felt, I mean,
8:28
Speaker 5: there were six of us, two names.
8:30
Speaker 3: Were to be drawn.
8:31
Speaker 5: I just thought that my odds were somewhat reasonable. But
8:36
Speaker 5: looking back at it, I feel like my mom just
8:39
Speaker 5: rigged the whole thing because she couldn't just say outright,
8:45
Speaker 5: I want you Kevin, and I want your little bro
8:49
Speaker 5: to go back to your dad because I feel that
8:53
Speaker 5: the younger ones won't be able to cope. Well, your
8:58
Speaker 5: dad's not going to be able to take care of them,
9:01
Speaker 5: and she wanted to keep my older bro. He was
9:04
Speaker 5: just the oldest one, favored one.
9:07
Speaker 1: The plans lablished by the drawing of names from the
9:11
Speaker 1: paper bag was that Kevin's oldest brother and the three
9:14
Speaker 1: youngest kids would stay with their mom. Well, Kevin and
9:18
Speaker 1: his middle brother, Tony would go live with their dad.
9:21
Speaker 5: At the moment she drew my name, I lost my mom,
9:25
Speaker 5: my siblings, and what hurt just as much was losing
9:29
Speaker 5: my older bro. Dad looked up to him. I would
9:32
Speaker 5: ask him all kinds of questions, everything from life to school.
9:37
Speaker 5: What color you see when you die? And I still
9:40
Speaker 5: remember his answer because he said, she don't see any
9:43
Speaker 5: color when you're dead. But I asked him, what does
9:47
Speaker 5: that mean? What is the color of no color? That
9:50
Speaker 5: black or that white? He said, no, it's neither's no color.
9:59
Speaker 5: To lose him in that one fell swoop when my
10:02
Speaker 5: mom pulled out my name, let alone knowing that you
10:06
Speaker 5: have to go back to your dad, who you're super
10:10
Speaker 5: afraid of. When she drew my name, I remember I
10:15
Speaker 5: wasn't the only one who was crying.
10:17
Speaker 3: We all cried. We all cried.
10:22
Speaker 1: Kevin now has three kids of his own, and in
10:25
Speaker 1: raising them, he thinks back on that moment their hamster died.
10:30
Speaker 5: They were crying, and my partner was telling me, Oh,
10:35
Speaker 5: they're just kids, They're just kids, and they don't really
10:40
Speaker 5: mean it. But when she said that, I remember I
10:45
Speaker 5: cried to say around the same age when my name
10:48
Speaker 5: was drawn from a paper bag, and that cry was
10:52
Speaker 5: still the deepest cry I ever had in my life.
10:55
Speaker 5: So I just remembered, No, I got to tend to
10:58
Speaker 5: my kids. I'm going to bury the hamster in the backyard,
11:04
Speaker 5: set a proper tombstone, and have a good farewell. I
11:09
Speaker 5: don't think their cries are going to be any lighter
11:12
Speaker 5: than their future cries when there adults.
11:16
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
11:23
Speaker 1: For the next several years, Kevin had almost no contact
11:26
Speaker 1: with his mom and siblings. He says his mom would
11:29
Speaker 1: sometimes drop off food at his dad's place, but she
11:32
Speaker 1: was never allowed inside. Kevin was eight and Tony was six.
11:36
Speaker 1: On the night they went back to live with their
11:38
Speaker 1: dad at his apartment in a public housing project.
11:42
Speaker 5: I remember he was drinking he's always drinking. I mean,
11:46
Speaker 5: I've never seen him drink water in my life. He's
11:48
Speaker 5: always drinking beer and eating peanuts. And that was actually
11:52
Speaker 5: what he was doing when we came back in the
11:54
Speaker 5: middle of the living room floor.
11:57
Speaker 1: Although the living room contained a big, fluffy couch and
11:59
Speaker 1: some school desks, their father wanted Kevin and Tony to
12:03
Speaker 1: join him on a piece of cardboard he laid on
12:05
Speaker 1: the cold linoleum floor. It turned out that since they'd
12:08
Speaker 1: last seen him, their father's obsession had only intensified.
12:13
Speaker 5: My dad set some rules. He said that don't ever
12:16
Speaker 5: touch these dusts or to couch because they're now dirty.
12:22
Speaker 5: I mean, we weren't going to question him. We didn't
12:24
Speaker 5: want to get beaten, so we ended up doing exactly that.
12:29
Speaker 5: A lot of these areas around the entire apartment just
12:33
Speaker 5: became dirty, untouchable. Over time, A layer of dust accrued
12:40
Speaker 5: everywhere that we were not allowed.
12:43
Speaker 3: To touch or walk through.
12:52
Speaker 5: I got this pen where a little thick pen with
12:56
Speaker 5: a different colored tabs on the top were change from
12:59
Speaker 5: black to blue red.
13:01
Speaker 3: Remember those It was a really it.
13:02
Speaker 5: Was a prized possession of minds. And I remember my dad,
13:08
Speaker 5: my brother and I were on our living room floor again,
13:12
Speaker 5: and my bro was holding the pen and he was
13:15
Speaker 5: trying to change one of the colors, but it flung
13:18
Speaker 5: out of his hands and twirled around, and it eventually
13:22
Speaker 5: settled a few feet away from him in this dirty zone.
13:28
Speaker 5: And at that moment that happened, as an eight nine
13:32
Speaker 5: year old, I just knew that my pen was gone,
13:35
Speaker 5: even though it's literally just three feet away from us.
13:38
Speaker 5: My bro and I looked at each other. We both
13:41
Speaker 5: looked at my dad, and my dad just gave us
13:43
Speaker 5: that kind of solemn shake of his head like I'm sorry, boys,
13:47
Speaker 5: but that's a terrible loss.
13:49
Speaker 1: So you would just see the pen sitting there.
13:52
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then it would be absorbed by the dust.
13:55
Speaker 5: Over time, it would just become covered with dust itself.
14:04
Speaker 1: Even when their father wasn't home, Tony and Kevin didn't
14:07
Speaker 1: dare step into the dirty zone.
14:09
Speaker 5: I think we were also afraid because if you ventured
14:12
Speaker 5: into one of dirty area, you would kind of leave
14:15
Speaker 5: like literal footprints into that dusty area. It would be
14:19
Speaker 5: pretty obvious. And so I remember one time a policeman
14:24
Speaker 5: entered our home because there was some kind of robbery
14:29
Speaker 5: and the cop was trying to find this person. And
14:31
Speaker 5: I remember his face the moment he stepped in, like
14:34
Speaker 5: holy crap, Like he was asking me, you guys live here,
14:40
Speaker 5: and he was trying to search the house and I
14:43
Speaker 5: was cleading with him. I was like, well, he don't,
14:45
Speaker 5: don't go over there, don't open that door and be
14:47
Speaker 5: that side closet was part of the dirty zone and
14:50
Speaker 5: I didn't want to get in trouble. And thankfully I
14:54
Speaker 5: remember the cop just acquiesced. When Kevin speaks of that
14:59
Speaker 5: time in his life, it says an accumulation of losses,
15:03
Speaker 5: the loss of his brothers and sister, his mom, the
15:07
Speaker 5: loss of all the rules that made reality reality, which
15:11
Speaker 5: is why he still remembers the one real gain from
15:13
Speaker 5: that time.
15:15
Speaker 1: Friends. Those boys, Jason and Gerald.
15:19
Speaker 5: They were a white family living with their single mom.
15:22
Speaker 5: Jason was witty and funny. Jerald was kind of goofy
15:26
Speaker 5: looking but lovable.
15:28
Speaker 1: Gerald was Tony's age, Jason was Kevin's. They had video
15:32
Speaker 1: games and a mom who was nice to them. Every morning,
15:35
Speaker 1: we will wake up, we go outside, just yell out.
15:38
Speaker 3: Jason, Gerald, what are you up to?
15:40
Speaker 5: And he would come back out, groggy eyed, wiping their eyes.
15:44
Speaker 5: We would just hanging out all the time.
15:49
Speaker 1: In a life that was filled with significant, often traumatic events.
15:53
Speaker 1: The time Kevin and his brother spent with Jason and
15:56
Speaker 1: Gerald was notable for just how unknotable it was. It
16:00
Speaker 1: was simple and fun. It was time spent just being
16:03
Speaker 1: a kid, building secret passageways out of cardboard boxes, racing
16:07
Speaker 1: bugs through obstacle courses, and climbing the highway retention wall
16:11
Speaker 1: to watch cars speed by. They swam at the public pool.
16:15
Speaker 1: They played with firecrackers, blowing up snapper bottles in the park.
16:19
Speaker 1: Then there were the comics Kevin made.
16:21
Speaker 4: It might have been a smorgas board of different characters
16:26
Speaker 4: I drew at the time, like one of the teenage
16:28
Speaker 4: mutant Ninja Turtles, or Batman, or Bart and Garfieud or
16:33
Speaker 4: all four of them in the same comic.
16:34
Speaker 3: Who knew?
16:36
Speaker 5: They offered me a quarter for every comic book I drew.
16:39
Speaker 3: And gave it to them.
16:41
Speaker 5: So I did that, and I needed the quarters to
16:42
Speaker 5: buy myself candy. Hanging out with them was always a
16:46
Speaker 5: blast for twelve hours a day.
16:50
Speaker 1: Did you ever have friends like that before?
16:52
Speaker 3: No? No, And it helped.
16:56
Speaker 5: It helped soften I brow a nice plite situation live
17:01
Speaker 5: in with our dad that we could hang out with
17:03
Speaker 5: Jason Gerald.
17:05
Speaker 1: Jason and Gerald were the only people with a window
17:08
Speaker 1: onto Kevin until lives. Quite literally, their apartment window looked
17:12
Speaker 1: directly in on Kevin and Tony's window.
17:15
Speaker 5: And I remember one time my bro and I would
17:17
Speaker 5: take a bath and we didn't have towels, and we
17:19
Speaker 5: were shivering, and we ran back to our bedroom and
17:22
Speaker 5: we were trying to put on our clothing, but it's
17:25
Speaker 5: really hard to put on clothing when your body sweat.
17:28
Speaker 5: And the next day, Jason Gerrold would come up to
17:31
Speaker 5: us and say, Hey, why were you and Tony dancing
17:33
Speaker 5: on your bed naked?
17:35
Speaker 1: Why didn't you guys have towels.
17:37
Speaker 3: I don't know.
17:38
Speaker 5: We just didn't have towels, you know. We didn't have
17:41
Speaker 5: a lot of things that kids. We didn't have a refrigerator.
17:44
Speaker 5: That's a wild one. That's hard to imagine, but the
17:46
Speaker 5: refrigerator would part of the dirty zone.
17:49
Speaker 1: And the refrigerator worked.
17:51
Speaker 5: I think it was plugged in. Yeah, we just couldn't
17:53
Speaker 5: use it. And so whenever we purchased food, we would
17:57
Speaker 5: have to consume it within that day, including a gallon
18:01
Speaker 5: of milk. My dad believed in giving us milk, and
18:06
Speaker 5: I remember my dad thought he had a genius idea.
18:10
Speaker 5: He didn't want to waste any of the milk, so
18:12
Speaker 5: he told me and my bro just jogging place outside
18:16
Speaker 5: so that we would want to drink more milk, and
18:19
Speaker 5: that Jim bowed very well, and we ended up vomiting
18:21
Speaker 5: on milk out there. I imagine if Gerald and Jason
18:25
Speaker 5: had been watching from their window, they'd have seen their
18:28
Speaker 5: little friends looking like they were in some milk sponsored
18:31
Speaker 5: version of boot camp. But no matter what unbelievable things
18:34
Speaker 5: they saw, and no matter what unbelievable things Kevin told
18:38
Speaker 5: them about off limit refrigerators or pens or couches, they
18:42
Speaker 5: didn't belittle him, didn't tease him. They accepted him. They
18:46
Speaker 5: never they never doubted me when I told him these things,
18:51
Speaker 5: I wholeheartedly believed it.
18:53
Speaker 1: At a time when Kevin and his brothers felt so
18:55
Speaker 1: doubtful of their own reality, so isolated, Jason and Gerald
19:00
Speaker 1: were not only allies, but a check on their sanity.
19:03
Speaker 1: They were always there until the day they weren't.
19:11
Speaker 5: Tony and I would go home one day and they
19:14
Speaker 5: were gone. They were just completely gone. Their home was
19:18
Speaker 5: cleared out.
19:20
Speaker 1: Kevin's father said that Jason and Gerald's mom had died,
19:23
Speaker 1: and so that very same afternoon, the boy's grandparents came
19:27
Speaker 1: and took Jason and Gerald away to live with them.
19:31
Speaker 5: Our friendship just suddenly severed. No farewell or anything like that.
19:39
Speaker 5: We just went from hanging out all the time, being
19:43
Speaker 5: best buddies to one day just not even seeing them.
19:51
Speaker 1: People had left Kevin's life before, but Gerald and Jason
19:55
Speaker 1: didn't leave. They vanished. And when someone vanished in the
19:59
Speaker 1: early nineteen nineties, they vanished. No cell phones, no emails,
20:04
Speaker 1: but the boys were always with him. Like in college,
20:07
Speaker 1: when Kevin's father died, his thoughts turned back to Jason
20:11
Speaker 1: and Gerald, how they must have felt losing their mom.
20:14
Speaker 1: Kevin's an adult now with a family and a career
20:17
Speaker 1: in biotech, Yet any time he's introduced to a Jason
20:20
Speaker 1: or a Gerald, his mind always leaps back to his Jason,
20:24
Speaker 1: his Gerald. So now thirty years later, Kevin wants to
20:28
Speaker 1: find them, the two boys who are the only witnesses
20:32
Speaker 1: to the hardest part of his and his brother Tony's life.
20:36
Speaker 5: I've always wondered about them, and what are you up to?
20:38
Speaker 4: You?
20:39
Speaker 3: Are you all right? How are they doing? First?
20:42
Speaker 5: And foremost, did he get over that kind of grief
20:45
Speaker 5: and loss, because I can't even imagine losing your soul
20:50
Speaker 5: parent at that age. Because he always referred to themselves
20:56
Speaker 5: as white trash. They called themselves that he did, yeah,
21:00
Speaker 5: always in a joking way. But every time I read about, like,
21:05
Speaker 5: for example, the opioid epidemic where a lot of rural
21:11
Speaker 5: whites were hammered, sometimes I wonder, are Jason and Gerald Okay?
21:24
Speaker 1: Do you ever wonder if they think about you as well?
21:26
Speaker 1: If they think about you and your brother?
21:29
Speaker 3: I do wonder about that.
21:31
Speaker 5: Yeah, I do wonder about that, but all that is secondary.
21:37
Speaker 5: If they're doing all right, I think that'll warm up
21:40
Speaker 5: my heart pretty well. If they're not doing all right,
21:44
Speaker 5: I want to see if I can help them out.
21:47
Speaker 5: You're at the minimum, maybe just say hi that I've
21:52
Speaker 5: just never forgotten about them, And if they've forgotten about
21:58
Speaker 5: myself with Tony, you know, that's fine, that's fine. I'd
22:04
Speaker 5: just be just happy to find out that they're doing
22:06
Speaker 5: all right with normal friends would probably want right.
22:12
Speaker 1: The problem is they were always just Jason and Gerald
22:15
Speaker 1: from across the way. Kevin doesn't know their last name
22:19
Speaker 1: and their mother's name, has also been lost to time,
22:22
Speaker 1: and although he does know the brothers went to live
22:25
Speaker 1: with their grandparents, I.
22:26
Speaker 5: Don't even know where to grandparents reside, except for one
22:31
Speaker 5: comment that Jason made a long time ago where he
22:33
Speaker 5: said that whenever he visits his grandparents, they would burn
22:37
Speaker 5: pine cones to keep warm.
22:40
Speaker 1: And that's why Kevin has come to me with just
22:43
Speaker 1: the names Jason and Gerald, hoping I can.
22:46
Speaker 5: Help, because I thought that your superpower investigative sleuthing abilities
22:53
Speaker 5: are going to be able to track them down again.
22:58
Speaker 1: After the break, my superpower investigative sleuthing abilities are put
23:03
Speaker 1: to the test. Kevin remembers his own address from back then,
23:23
Speaker 1: and clicking around on Google Maps, he's able to determine
23:26
Speaker 1: which house was Jason and Gerald's. But when my producer
23:30
Speaker 1: Khalila and I start digging, the only records we find
23:33
Speaker 1: are topsy turvy, dozens of people listed under the same address,
23:37
Speaker 1: the timelines overlapping and confusing ways, so without much else
23:42
Speaker 1: to go on, Khalila skims the records, searching for any
23:46
Speaker 1: single women who lived at Jason and Gerald's apartment number
23:49
Speaker 1: in the early nineties. Then using the surname she finds
23:53
Speaker 1: she starts styling.
24:00
Speaker 3: Hi, is this chasing? Hello?
24:03
Speaker 1: Is this chas?
24:04
Speaker 3: You got to watch? You know what to do later? Wow?
24:09
Speaker 3: I really fell for that voicemail. Hi, my name is
24:11
Speaker 3: Khalil Holt. I'm looking for a Jason who has named Jerald.
24:16
Speaker 1: Khalilaphones dozens and dozens of numbers, leaving messages for Jason's
24:21
Speaker 1: and Geralds across the nation. Many of the numbers she
24:25
Speaker 1: tries are disconnected entirely.
24:27
Speaker 3: We're sorry, you have reached the number that.
24:29
Speaker 2: If we're sorry, you have reached the number that we're sorry.
24:32
Speaker 1: We're sorry, We're sorry. And while some Geralds and Jason's
24:35
Speaker 1: do answer the phone.
24:37
Speaker 3: No, I had a dead mean jail, ma'am.
24:40
Speaker 1: To raise the technique, They're never the ones who we're
24:42
Speaker 1: looking for.
24:43
Speaker 3: Let's you're given away millions of dollars and then I
24:45
Speaker 3: can make it pino, ma'am, Mom, I'm sorry. I wish
24:48
Speaker 3: I could help you.
24:51
Speaker 1: One Jason does helpfully text that there's another guy with
24:55
Speaker 1: the same name a few towns over. I've spent a
24:58
Speaker 1: night in jail for a warrant in his name. He writes,
25:02
Speaker 1: Too bad, your podcast isn't about that. I figure the
25:11
Speaker 1: local elementary school might have Jason and Gerald's last name
25:15
Speaker 1: on file, so I give them a call and I'm
25:18
Speaker 1: put on hold. It might give me a chance to
25:21
Speaker 1: do a little bit of freestyling while I'm waiting. Jason,
25:27
Speaker 1: He's got a brother, Gerald, Thanks thankfully. I'm interrupted by
25:32
Speaker 1: the receptionist. She sends me to the district office.
25:36
Speaker 2: Visit our website at h tt ps colon forward slash.
25:43
Speaker 1: Forward slash and all the district office has.
25:45
Speaker 2: To offer EDU One forward slash.
25:49
Speaker 1: Is a web address straight out of the mid nineties.
25:51
Speaker 2: Enrollment hyphen center hyphen tk hyphen.
25:58
Speaker 1: We search obituaries, thinking we might find one for Jason
26:01
Speaker 1: and Gerald's mom. We post in neighborhood facebook groups. We
26:05
Speaker 1: tryphoning neighbors, messaging old classmates, submitting a research request at
26:10
Speaker 1: the public library. Nothing comes of any of it. After
26:19
Speaker 1: two months of dead ends, Kevin returns to the housing
26:22
Speaker 1: project to look for new leads. One of the last
26:25
Speaker 1: times he went back was to show his wife and
26:28
Speaker 1: three kids where he grew up, but the kids were
26:30
Speaker 1: too scared of the neighborhood to get out of the car.
26:34
Speaker 1: This time he goes alone, and it's while walking by
26:37
Speaker 1: his old building that Kevin has a realization. For Jason
26:41
Speaker 1: and Gerald to have seen him and Tony through the
26:43
Speaker 1: window getting dressed without towels that day, their address would
26:47
Speaker 1: have to have been not the one he'd originally told me,
26:51
Speaker 1: but actually one apartment over. And that new fact makes
26:55
Speaker 1: all the difference. Amazingly, we've been able to triangulate who
27:00
Speaker 1: these guys are, Who Jason and Gerroalld are really? Yeah,
27:04
Speaker 1: no way, yes, wow. But just when you mole one
27:09
Speaker 1: problem in this life, a new problem rears its ugly
27:13
Speaker 1: mole head. Even though we found Jason and Gerald, we're
27:16
Speaker 1: not hearing back from Jason and Gerald. After sending both
27:20
Speaker 1: brothers letters, Gerald bounces back and Jason's goes unanswered. I
27:25
Speaker 1: try Jason on LinkedIn, but still nothing. Maybe the name
27:30
Speaker 1: Kevin no longer means anything to them, Maybe they forgot
27:33
Speaker 1: the friendship altogether. I can't find a phone number for
27:40
Speaker 1: Gerald or Jason, but I do find one for Jason's wife,
27:44
Speaker 1: and so I leave her a voicemail. When I get
27:47
Speaker 1: no response, I try texting. Still no response. So I
27:51
Speaker 1: call again and this time the phone doesn't even ring.
27:55
Speaker 1: Fearing my number has been blocked, I ask Kevin to phone,
27:59
Speaker 1: but when he tries to leave a message.
28:01
Speaker 3: My name is Kevin. I've been shoudhood friends with Jason
28:05
Speaker 3: and his brother.
28:08
Speaker 4: Oh. I couldn't even leave a voicemail.
28:12
Speaker 1: It's no longer feeling like Jason is simply forgotten. It
28:16
Speaker 1: feels like he emphatically doesn't want to talk. Although Jason's
28:21
Speaker 1: a no go, I still have one more shot at
28:24
Speaker 1: reaching the younger brother Gerald. He has a Facebook, So
28:28
Speaker 1: this is where I'm thinking, like, maybe the most direct
28:31
Speaker 1: way to do it would be for you to reach out.
28:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't mind.
28:35
Speaker 5: It's just that I don't even have a Facebook account,
28:39
Speaker 5: but I can definitely make an account, I suppose.
28:43
Speaker 1: When we check back in the next day, Kevin tells
28:46
Speaker 1: me that he made a profile and added one single friend, Gerald,
28:51
Speaker 1: and I.
28:51
Speaker 5: Just sent him a message, are you to Gerald with
28:54
Speaker 5: the brother Jason dis It's Kevin with the little bro Tony.
28:58
Speaker 5: We should live right across Meshuther and we were really
29:00
Speaker 5: good friends, and he just replied immediately.
29:22
Speaker 1: It's been an eventful twenty four hours. For the first
29:26
Speaker 1: time in over thirty years, Kevin and his friend Gerald
29:29
Speaker 1: are back in touch. The two have been exchanging messages
29:32
Speaker 1: at a rapid pace since last night.
29:35
Speaker 5: I'm still digesting all of this real time. Apparently Gerald
29:41
Speaker 5: is in the East Coast right now. He's been homeless
29:44
Speaker 5: for three years, but he said that he's got no problems,
29:51
Speaker 5: been staying out of trouble. He only smokes cigarettes and
29:56
Speaker 5: sparingly drinks. He stayed away from the hard drugs. Oh
30:01
Speaker 5: and I wanted to talk to him over the phone
30:04
Speaker 5: because I'm just I'm a big fan of texting, but
30:07
Speaker 5: he said that he doesn't have a cell phone. He
30:09
Speaker 5: lost it while traveling through Maryland. And he only has
30:13
Speaker 5: asked us to Facebook messenger, brought her Internet while at
30:19
Speaker 5: the library. So yeah, it's just quite a bit to digest.
30:22
Speaker 5: Owen he mentioned Jason.
30:26
Speaker 1: One of the first things Jerald did after hearing from
30:28
Speaker 1: Kevin was to message Jason. Gerald shared the message he
30:32
Speaker 1: sent his brother. I can just read it out, He said,
30:35
Speaker 1: how are you, brother? He won't believe this. Remember Tony
30:38
Speaker 1: and Kevin when we were living with Mom and Sacramento
30:41
Speaker 1: as kids. They are reaching out to us to get
30:44
Speaker 1: to know us again and connect. We are catching up.
30:48
Speaker 1: It makes me so happy to talk to Kevin. It's crazy.
30:56
Speaker 1: Jason responded to his brother's message, saying he remembered Kevin
31:00
Speaker 1: and Tony fondly. It turns out he was well aware
31:03
Speaker 1: Kevin had been looking for him. He'd gotten all those
31:05
Speaker 1: messages left for his wife, but he didn't want to
31:08
Speaker 1: revisit that time. In the months to come, Kevin keeps
31:15
Speaker 1: the messenger app on his phone so he and his
31:17
Speaker 1: one Facebook friend can send long messages back and forth,
31:21
Speaker 1: and eventually, five months.
31:23
Speaker 3: Later, hey your old Hey Kevin did.
31:27
Speaker 1: Gerald gets a new phone and a conversation is arranged.
31:31
Speaker 3: The last time we've ever heard each other. We were
31:34
Speaker 3: just kids, also, thirty four years ago. I remember exactly
31:39
Speaker 3: how you look when you were a kid. You were
31:41
Speaker 3: slightly taller than me, with black hair. You had a freckle.
31:45
Speaker 3: I think you had a freckle under your left eye.
31:48
Speaker 3: Yeah I do. I'm actually looking at you right now.
31:52
Speaker 3: It through my mind's eye. Remember when we hung out
31:55
Speaker 3: at your place? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, all we do
31:58
Speaker 3: is play video games. I remember you and Tony were
32:01
Speaker 3: so good at playing video games. Oh. I would watch
32:05
Speaker 3: you guys for hours. One time we had this game Rygar,
32:09
Speaker 3: remember that's right, yea, And for like four or five
32:13
Speaker 3: hours you played it. And you ended up beating it,
32:16
Speaker 3: and my jaw was just floored, you know.
32:19
Speaker 4: Why though we didn't have anything else to do, Me
32:23
Speaker 4: and Tony literally we were just in that place in
32:27
Speaker 4: the at home and we didn't have anything.
32:31
Speaker 3: Oh we knew that too. I remember you guys came
32:40
Speaker 3: over once, right. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy because I actually
32:45
Speaker 3: still remembered the inside of your house. You remember, like,
32:48
Speaker 3: did it look crazy?
32:50
Speaker 6: It looked like it looked like conted house because I
32:55
Speaker 6: remember it was dusty, like not necessarily not necessarily unclean.
33:02
Speaker 3: Unclean's not the work, but it was like nobody lived there.
33:05
Speaker 3: You remember the backyard that we hung out. I had
33:07
Speaker 3: the closed lines. Yeah, we'd swing on them.
33:10
Speaker 5: Yeah they're gone. Yeah, I guess every unit has a
33:13
Speaker 5: dryer now.
33:14
Speaker 4: Wow, And everything seemed a whole lot smaller.
33:19
Speaker 3: It just surprised me. She get it.
33:21
Speaker 5: I just thought everything was way bigger. But I think
33:24
Speaker 5: we were just so small.
33:31
Speaker 3: You know, growing up with you, I always thought that
33:34
Speaker 3: you would have become like a comic book artist, like
33:37
Speaker 3: a professional one. I mean I would pay you a
33:41
Speaker 3: quarter apiece for them because I like them so much.
33:45
Speaker 5: Remember how you would always bug me about what's the
33:47
Speaker 5: next issue coming out?
33:48
Speaker 3: When the next issue? Yeah, yes, Oh my gosh, you
33:52
Speaker 3: have no idea. They were so good. They were so
33:54
Speaker 3: so good.
33:56
Speaker 1: All these decades later, Gerald still remembers the specific Bart
34:00
Speaker 1: Simpson plotlines.
34:01
Speaker 3: There was an electrical monster that bartman would you'd make them. Oh,
34:06
Speaker 3: I just unlocked the old memory. I hadn't thought about.
34:10
Speaker 3: You would use your old tests and papers from school,
34:15
Speaker 3: and you'd pull them in a way where the backside
34:17
Speaker 3: would be the comic book, and I could unfold them
34:20
Speaker 3: and i'd see your work for school. I didn't realize that.
34:25
Speaker 5: Yeah, but that would make sense because I wouldn't have
34:28
Speaker 5: assets of paper anyways.
34:32
Speaker 3: And I held onto those for like fifteen years.
34:35
Speaker 1: It turns out Gerald was out there looking back just
34:39
Speaker 1: as much as Kevin was.
34:41
Speaker 3: I always thought of you too. Making friends with you,
34:44
Speaker 3: guys was just a big breath of fresh air. I mean,
34:47
Speaker 3: at school, I was never able to make real friends.
34:51
Speaker 3: A lot of the kids were actually really meant. I
34:53
Speaker 3: got beat up a lot. But I had Kevin Tony
34:58
Speaker 3: right across from me. I mean those were my friends.
35:01
Speaker 3: Those are the only two friends I actually had growing up.
35:05
Speaker 3: I really really never made that kind of connection again.
35:15
Speaker 3: How you doing, man. Oh, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm
35:19
Speaker 3: happy in life isn't really what I thought it would be,
35:23
Speaker 3: what it turned out to be, but it turned out okay,
35:25
Speaker 3: and I am myself and I'm happy. It's not like
35:28
Speaker 3: I'm living a life where I wake up and go
35:31
Speaker 3: to work and realize I'm unhappy, but just do the
35:34
Speaker 3: same thing every other day. I'm kind of just free
35:38
Speaker 3: and by myself. Now, you seem to be doing pretty resiliently.
35:45
Speaker 3: That's the word resilient. Really. When you first become homeless,
35:49
Speaker 3: it's scary, you know, but it's kind of an adapt
35:52
Speaker 3: or die kind of scenario. And one thing I found
35:56
Speaker 3: out about being homeless is it's a bit easier if
36:01
Speaker 3: you can blend in with other homeless people. If you
36:04
Speaker 3: can find an area that has resources and other homeless people,
36:08
Speaker 3: you're more were likely to survive better and not be
36:12
Speaker 3: a target because it's pretty dangerous being homeless. People don't
36:15
Speaker 3: like homeless people.
36:17
Speaker 1: Did you find yourself targeted?
36:19
Speaker 3: Yes, a lot. I've gotten beat up a few times,
36:25
Speaker 3: but I've also been helped too. I've had a lot
36:28
Speaker 3: of Christians help me, which is something amazing. A lot
36:32
Speaker 3: of people helped me on my way. Good people.
36:36
Speaker 1: Gerald had been living beneath an underpass in DC for
36:38
Speaker 1: about a year, but a few months ago he decided
36:41
Speaker 1: to return home to California.
36:44
Speaker 3: I'd gotten to a point where I had no contact
36:47
Speaker 3: with my kids, and I missed them, and I just
36:51
Speaker 3: needed to see them. And I knew if I if
36:53
Speaker 3: I stay gone, if I'm just out there in the world,
36:56
Speaker 3: I'll never have a relationship with my kids if I
36:59
Speaker 3: don't come back. Now. I need to see my boys.
37:02
Speaker 3: I need to tell them I love them. The strange
37:07
Speaker 3: thing is the very day that they initiated the sweeping
37:13
Speaker 3: of the homeless and DC was today. I had a
37:17
Speaker 3: bus ticket to come back to California, so I was
37:19
Speaker 3: getting on a bus right when the troops were coming
37:22
Speaker 3: into DC. Like the day.
37:25
Speaker 1: Gerald explains he'd started going to church with another friend
37:28
Speaker 1: who was homeless, and that the church helped him scramble
37:31
Speaker 1: together enough money for a ticket back home to his kids.
37:35
Speaker 3: And I'm grateful that I was able to leave, because
37:37
Speaker 3: I don't know what happened to all the homeless people.
37:39
Speaker 3: There were hundreds of homeless people when I was in DC,
37:42
Speaker 3: all in that area, and they were all dealing with
37:45
Speaker 3: the same thing. It was very sad to see some
37:48
Speaker 3: were genuinely crazy, some were playing the system, and others
37:53
Speaker 3: were just emotionally distraught. Something happened in their family, like
37:56
Speaker 3: a kid died, and they just couldn't pull themselves out.
38:00
Speaker 1: Can you say, like, what led you into that situation?
38:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, heartbreak and lack of My wife left me about
38:12
Speaker 3: four years ago now, and honestly, it just got to
38:17
Speaker 3: a point where I realized that if I didn't actually
38:22
Speaker 3: go away for a while, that her heart can't mend,
38:26
Speaker 3: where she couldn't grow and become herself. So I needed
38:30
Speaker 3: to just leave the whole area, and I needed to
38:33
Speaker 3: do something for myself. I needed to go see the world.
38:36
Speaker 3: I needed to go walk.
38:39
Speaker 1: Is that how you traveled? By walking?
38:42
Speaker 3: Mostly? Yeah?
38:43
Speaker 1: From state to state.
38:45
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well I would get rides. Of course, I wouldn't hitchhike,
38:49
Speaker 3: I wouldn't put my thumb out, but I would walk
38:52
Speaker 3: and eventually somebody would pull over and ask me if
38:56
Speaker 3: I needed a ride.
38:58
Speaker 1: Gerald tells me that after his wife left him, he
39:01
Speaker 1: was living in his truck, but when he decided to
39:03
Speaker 1: leave California, he swapped cars with a friend.
39:07
Speaker 3: I traded him straight up for his Gelope car. For
39:11
Speaker 3: my nice Toyota truck. I couldn't find work. I couldn't
39:14
Speaker 3: find a job, I couldn't find money for my gas tank.
39:17
Speaker 3: So I could either leave my truck on the side
39:21
Speaker 3: of the road and have it impounded and lost, or
39:24
Speaker 3: I could give it away somebody I love and try
39:27
Speaker 3: to find my way on foot. So I chose to
39:32
Speaker 3: give it to my friend Josh, and I drove his
39:37
Speaker 3: car up through the Sierra Nevadas into Nevada, and then
39:41
Speaker 3: when it ran out of gas, I just started walking.
39:44
Speaker 1: For the next several years, Gerald traveled all over the country.
39:48
Speaker 1: From Nevada, he went to Kansas, then Oregon, Alaska, Tennessee,
39:53
Speaker 1: and eventually Washington, DC. And now he's back in California,
39:58
Speaker 1: spending most of his time camping.
40:00
Speaker 3: So I'm just sitting up on a mountain right now,
40:01
Speaker 3: looking down at a river. Honestly, even being back here
40:05
Speaker 3: in California, I kind of realized that I may end
40:10
Speaker 3: up staying homeless. I don't have a lot of options,
40:14
Speaker 3: but I realize I'm just happier being halfway out of
40:17
Speaker 3: the system, or one foot in, one foot out. I
40:20
Speaker 3: guess I'm more comfortable just being alone in the crowd
40:24
Speaker 3: of people. So like being up here in the mountains
40:27
Speaker 3: where I'm at right now, it's just wonderful. I mean
40:30
Speaker 3: there's nobody around, nobody.
40:33
Speaker 1: Gerald looks after his kids a few days every week,
40:36
Speaker 1: staying at his ex wife's house. It's a relief to
40:39
Speaker 1: see them again, his two boys, seven and thirteen.
40:43
Speaker 3: And they're fine. And they missed me.
40:46
Speaker 4: I would think that they would miss he. I mean,
40:49
Speaker 4: you can't. Yeah, you can't ever replace the.
40:52
Speaker 1: Parent, something both Kevin and Gerald know all too well.
40:57
Speaker 4: I just remember taking that news that your mom had
41:03
Speaker 4: passed and that you two just gone, that were coming back,
41:09
Speaker 4: and Tony and I we were both.
41:12
Speaker 5: And we cried. We were heartbroken. We lost our two
41:18
Speaker 5: best friends. They didn't even get to say goodbye.
41:23
Speaker 3: It was so suddenly, oh in one day. Yeah, yeah,
41:27
Speaker 3: And we were always wondering what happened? Do your mom?
41:31
Speaker 3: Do you two? I could tell you the story from
41:35
Speaker 3: the start.
41:37
Speaker 1: As a kid, making sense of what happened, Kevin assumed
41:41
Speaker 1: maybe Jason and Gerald's mom had a heart attack, but
41:44
Speaker 1: Gerald says no, that his mom had a heroin addiction.
41:47
Speaker 3: When I was like six. It came across a leather
41:51
Speaker 3: glove with a needle inside the couch. When I pulled
41:55
Speaker 3: up the couch cushion and I brought it to my
41:58
Speaker 3: mom and said, Mommy, what's this And she slapped my
42:02
Speaker 3: hand and took it from me, and she said, never
42:04
Speaker 3: touch that again. Don't dig in there. Okay, that's Mom's
42:08
Speaker 3: that poke you and hurt you. So I knew. I
42:12
Speaker 3: knew about it, but I didn't know what it was exactly.
42:16
Speaker 3: And my mom would she sleep a lot, a lot
42:20
Speaker 3: most of the time. She'd just sleep on the couch downstairs.
42:23
Speaker 3: But when she was awake, she was a very good mom.
42:25
Speaker 3: She always cooked for me and Jason, and we always
42:28
Speaker 3: had food. She was always looking for us. We're out
42:31
Speaker 3: too late. She didn't let nobody mess with us. My
42:36
Speaker 3: mom was good mom. Yeah, that's what I remember.
42:50
Speaker 1: The night his mom died, Gerald remembers hearing a thud upstairs,
42:54
Speaker 1: but he didn't think much of it. He and Jason
42:56
Speaker 1: were busy watching The Simpsons at the time, and not
42:59
Speaker 1: long after that they went to bed.
43:02
Speaker 3: So I went and crawled into bed, and Jason crawled
43:04
Speaker 3: into his bed and he went to sleep, and I
43:06
Speaker 3: was lying there and I'm like to see what I
43:10
Speaker 3: can go curl up to the mom in her bed.
43:12
Speaker 3: So I got up and I went to my mom's
43:14
Speaker 3: room and I opened the door, and she was laying
43:17
Speaker 3: face down on the ground, not moving. But I had
43:21
Speaker 3: seen that before, so I didn't think a lot. I
43:25
Speaker 3: didn't know anything was wrong. I was like seven sixth
43:29
Speaker 3: somewhere in there. So I slowly closed the door, really
43:33
Speaker 3: slowly because I didn't want to wake her up. And
43:36
Speaker 3: in the morning, me and my brother got ourselves ready
43:40
Speaker 3: for school and we walked to school. And while I
43:44
Speaker 3: was at school, at about one o'clock in the afternoon,
43:49
Speaker 3: some cops came to my classroom. I thought I was
43:52
Speaker 3: in trouble because I hadn't been doing good in school.
43:56
Speaker 3: I thought it was about my grades, actually, And then
43:58
Speaker 3: the cops brought me back to the house. And apparently
44:02
Speaker 3: my brother had come home from school early because he
44:07
Speaker 3: was feeling sick, and he found my mom face down
44:11
Speaker 3: on the ground and couldn't wake her up. So he
44:14
Speaker 3: went to a neighbor, Lloyd and Cheryl. They lived up
44:19
Speaker 3: the block, and Lloyd came down and checked her pulse
44:22
Speaker 3: and looked at my brother and said she's dead, and
44:32
Speaker 3: I didn't even realize she was dead. I didn't know
44:35
Speaker 3: even when the cops brought me into the house and
44:38
Speaker 3: the house was filled with cops and my grandparents are there,
44:43
Speaker 3: nobody's told me what's happened. So I'm just looking at
44:47
Speaker 3: everybody and I'm wondering where Mama is. And then a
44:53
Speaker 3: cop comes up to me and says, we're going to
44:56
Speaker 3: take you to Burger King and get you something to eat.
45:00
Speaker 3: So a cop actually took me and my brother to
45:03
Speaker 3: Burger King in his cop car and bought us lunch.
45:09
Speaker 3: And I still didn't know what was going on. So
45:11
Speaker 3: I'm just gabbing to the cop, like my very young
45:15
Speaker 3: seven year old self, just talking, talking, talking, like nothing's wrong.
45:20
Speaker 3: I remember asking the cop did he ever shoot anybody?
45:23
Speaker 3: He said, yeah, she's the bad people when he has to,
45:26
Speaker 3: and he had a shotgun that was mounted along closer
45:29
Speaker 3: to the dash, and I thought it was so cool.
45:32
Speaker 3: And my brother didn't say a word, and the cop
45:35
Speaker 3: starts crying. Then he brought us back, and nobody's talking
45:42
Speaker 3: to me at all. I'm like an insect on a
45:45
Speaker 3: wall or a fly, like I just don't know. And
45:49
Speaker 3: so my grandparents tell us Okay, we got to go
45:52
Speaker 3: get inside the car. Grandpa has some things he has
45:55
Speaker 3: to do, so we're going to take you to Aunt
45:57
Speaker 3: Elizabeth's house for right now, for a few days. So
46:01
Speaker 3: I got happy because I got to see my cousin Brian,
46:05
Speaker 3: who was about my age and like I loved him.
46:09
Speaker 3: And when I get there, my cousin Brian, he knows
46:12
Speaker 3: what's going on, what happened, and he looks at me
46:16
Speaker 3: and he says, Gerald, I want you to sleep in
46:18
Speaker 3: my bed. You kick my bed, I'll sleep on the floor.
46:21
Speaker 3: And I said you don't have to do that, and
46:24
Speaker 3: he said, no, you can just take it, okay, And
46:26
Speaker 3: I could see who was sad. And then I sat
46:29
Speaker 3: down on the bed and that's when it hit me.
46:34
Speaker 3: That's when I realized that Mom had died. And I
46:42
Speaker 3: started crying and crying, and I cried for hours and hours,
46:49
Speaker 3: and I cried myself to sleep. After all that, my
47:01
Speaker 3: brother ended up becoming really quiet. He never really talked
47:04
Speaker 3: to me very much after that. And I don't know,
47:14
Speaker 3: it just seems like the world got a lot colder
47:16
Speaker 3: after that.
47:23
Speaker 1: Jason and Gerald spent the rest of their childhood with
47:26
Speaker 1: their maternal grandparents, living in the mountains. I asked Gerald
47:30
Speaker 1: if they ever had any contact with their dad.
47:33
Speaker 3: No, he died before I was born.
47:35
Speaker 1: Oh, I see, I'm sorry.
47:37
Speaker 3: It's okay. I never knew him, so there's no effect,
47:40
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, but I do know a story my
47:44
Speaker 3: dad right before he died, he asked my grandfather for
47:50
Speaker 3: five hundred dollars because he needed to buy a car
47:53
Speaker 3: so that he could go get this job. And my
47:57
Speaker 3: grandfather didn't believe him, so he said no. And then
48:03
Speaker 3: the next day, apparently a neighbor had come across my
48:09
Speaker 3: father's hanging body from a tree and called my grandfather,
48:14
Speaker 3: and my grandfather cut him down and looked at his
48:18
Speaker 3: body on the ground and said, what a waste.
48:22
Speaker 1: This is the same grandfather who about seven years later
48:25
Speaker 1: would become Gerald's guardian. Gerald says he could be strict,
48:30
Speaker 1: he had.
48:30
Speaker 3: A military attitude, and he was really a gruff on
48:33
Speaker 3: me and Jason, just you not Jason so much. Well,
48:37
Speaker 3: Jason was more like my grandfather than I was. Jason
48:41
Speaker 3: went into the military. He did very good. He was
48:43
Speaker 3: in for about eight eight years and went to Iraq
48:48
Speaker 3: twice and he did really well. Wow.
48:52
Speaker 1: Jason now lives in Arizona, where he works in security.
48:55
Speaker 1: Kevin's happy to hear that his life seems stable, but
48:58
Speaker 1: Gerald and Jason's relationship never recovered from the death of
49:01
Speaker 1: their mom. In contrast, Kevin and Tony have remained close.
49:06
Speaker 1: That Jason and Gerald haven't is hard for Kevin to hear.
49:10
Speaker 4: I hope that you can at least maintain a little
49:13
Speaker 4: bit contact with Jason here and there.
49:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's body, but it is. It just is what
49:19
Speaker 3: it is. Some people. They everybody's different. We all have
49:25
Speaker 3: our own special abilities. We all, you know, are good,
49:28
Speaker 3: our own good things. One thing my brother isn't so
49:31
Speaker 3: good at is dealing with the past memory of my
49:34
Speaker 3: mom's death. He kind of locked it away, I feel.
49:41
Speaker 3: But it's it's his memories to keep, you know. And
49:44
Speaker 3: he doesn't want to dig him back up. And I
49:46
Speaker 3: think that's the big thing.
49:49
Speaker 4: If you ever see him again or communicate with him again,
49:54
Speaker 4: I can't.
49:55
Speaker 3: Let him know that, Yeah, I never I never never
50:02
Speaker 3: forgot about Yeah.
50:06
Speaker 4: He's all right, you didn't want to talk about it.
50:09
Speaker 3: I just want to let him know that, Yeah, Tony
50:13
Speaker 3: and I.
50:13
Speaker 4: Were real sad and I never forgot about him.
50:19
Speaker 3: I'll tell him. I'll tell him.
50:27
Speaker 1: Gerald says he was just never like his brother and
50:30
Speaker 1: grandfather me.
50:31
Speaker 3: I was the complete opposite. I was kind of more
50:34
Speaker 3: like the free bird, the hippie. I guess got into skateboarding.
50:39
Speaker 3: I always wanted to start a skateboarding company and design
50:43
Speaker 3: my own decks, do artwork through that. That's actually what
50:46
Speaker 3: I really wanted to do in life. But I kind
50:48
Speaker 3: of put it on a shelf just because of how
50:50
Speaker 3: everything turned out in life.
50:53
Speaker 1: But he says he did givet skateboards to each of
50:56
Speaker 1: his sons, and now when his younger son goes out
50:59
Speaker 1: to ride his bike, Gerald will use one of the
51:01
Speaker 1: boards to skate alongside him.
51:06
Speaker 3: Honestly, I don't know what it really is to be
51:10
Speaker 3: a proper dad. I never had a dad. I had
51:13
Speaker 3: a grandpa who was kind of a dad, and I
51:16
Speaker 3: learned some from him, But to be a dad is
51:19
Speaker 3: something I gotta learn as I go along. I guess
51:24
Speaker 3: that's my biggest journey now. It's just to stay home,
51:27
Speaker 3: stay in my area, and watch my kids grow. That's
51:32
Speaker 3: what I want to do.
51:33
Speaker 1: Did do you think you're going to stick around?
51:36
Speaker 3: Yes? I'm done traveling now.
51:40
Speaker 1: So it feels like it's the end. Of something or
51:43
Speaker 1: the beginning of something new.
51:46
Speaker 3: When one thing ins, something else begins. I'm forty one
51:50
Speaker 3: and just means I have half my life to live. Still.
52:01
Speaker 3: After my mom died, nobody in the family would talk
52:04
Speaker 3: about it. It was like my old past life and
52:07
Speaker 3: Sacramento had any raised. So having connected with Kevin is
52:13
Speaker 3: it's like validation that I did have a life for
52:18
Speaker 3: my mother died. Like I'm not the only one that
52:21
Speaker 3: remembers my mom. Yeah.
52:24
Speaker 5: Likewise, Gerald means something to me too. That I wasn't
52:30
Speaker 5: too crazy thinking about my shild is so much like
52:34
Speaker 5: someone else was thinking about it as well.
52:39
Speaker 3: That actually happens. Yeah, yeah, it actually happens. It's nice
52:47
Speaker 3: to know I'm not invisible.
52:53
Speaker 4: I'll see you in a bit. We got to Casha.
52:57
Speaker 4: I'll make a visit up there.
52:59
Speaker 3: Yes, you will have to come up.
53:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've never been to that area before, so that
53:05
Speaker 4: it'll be a place. Yeah, it looks like it.
53:08
Speaker 3: You will love it, I promised Vin. I'm sure i will. Okay,
53:13
Speaker 3: all right, Bye bye bye, Joe.
53:23
Speaker 1: Kevin and I stay on the line to talk about
53:25
Speaker 1: everything Gerald shared. We harkened back to what he said
53:29
Speaker 1: about not knowing how to be a dad, And I
53:31
Speaker 1: asked Kevin how he learned to be a dad. A
53:35
Speaker 1: lot of it, he says, comes from his partner, but
53:37
Speaker 1: also he tried to define himself in opposition to his
53:40
Speaker 1: own dad.
53:42
Speaker 5: I didn't want to be feared. I wanted my kid
53:46
Speaker 5: to be able to trust me. I wanted to be
53:48
Speaker 5: warm and open to them and good time with them.
53:54
Speaker 4: Yeah.
53:55
Speaker 5: I guess I just wanted to do everything to opposite
53:58
Speaker 5: what my own dad did.
54:00
Speaker 3: And I know I didn't walk away.
54:03
Speaker 4: I'm scathed, both me and my bro probably with my
54:09
Speaker 4: entire family. I feel like sometimes I sort of like
54:15
Speaker 4: PTSD almost.
54:18
Speaker 1: Kevin tells me how when his kids joined Cub Scouts,
54:20
Speaker 1: he volunteered to be an assistant scout master. He had
54:24
Speaker 1: to go away on this weekend camping trip to be trained.
54:27
Speaker 1: When he got back home, he pulled into the garage.
54:30
Speaker 1: Everything in the house was quiet.
54:33
Speaker 4: I remember unloading the car and calling for my kids
54:36
Speaker 4: because I thought that it could help me set up
54:41
Speaker 4: the tent in the backyard to let the tet properly
54:43
Speaker 4: dry and all that.
54:44
Speaker 3: But there were no response.
54:48
Speaker 4: Noticed that they were like in the living room or
54:51
Speaker 4: something like that, playing board games. It kind of nodded
54:57
Speaker 4: at me like, oh, that us home, and I just
55:03
Speaker 4: remember feeling like like immense we overwhelmed with sadness. I
55:16
Speaker 4: just remember sitting down in another room on the couch,
55:23
Speaker 4: just being super removed and even wondering about why I
55:28
Speaker 4: was feeling that emotion, and it took me a It
55:35
Speaker 4: took me a little wild.
55:36
Speaker 3: It processed like why this black cloud was.
55:39
Speaker 4: Just just hanging around me? And I guess ultimately what's
55:49
Speaker 4: going through my mind was I felt like like my
55:55
Speaker 4: family didn't really want me, and maybe I was envisioning
56:02
Speaker 4: that that it would miss me and it would greet me,
56:06
Speaker 4: and but because they didn't, I got that sensation dad,
56:15
Speaker 4: like I wasn't wanted. And I didn't even know how
56:21
Speaker 4: I was processing it, but it reminded me of that
56:26
Speaker 4: time where like how my mom would draw my name
56:33
Speaker 4: bring a paper bag. She chose me as the first
56:39
Speaker 4: kid that she didn't want, and.
56:49
Speaker 3: I didn't to go yeah yeah, and I thought about
57:04
Speaker 3: how but coming home to my dad and looking at
57:12
Speaker 3: me like.
57:16
Speaker 4: Like he wished he had my older brother come home
57:19
Speaker 4: instead of me, And that was a feeling I got
57:24
Speaker 4: when I just got home from that camping trip, like
57:32
Speaker 4: nobody wanted me. Yeah, yeah, it was this a terrible feeling.
57:44
Speaker 4: I remember my uh my partner. She came back out
57:48
Speaker 4: and she saw me, and I didn't know how to
57:52
Speaker 4: explain it to her, but the guy just told her
57:59
Speaker 4: I wasn't feeling well.
58:01
Speaker 3: And then.
58:04
Speaker 4: Be my family in the herd room and be normal
58:09
Speaker 4: well again and say hey, what's everyone doing the game
58:12
Speaker 4: when you guys playing?
58:17
Speaker 3: And life was just carry on.
58:29
Speaker 1: This weekend, Kevin is planning on driving out to the
58:32
Speaker 1: mountains to see Gerald to go camping and fishing. Gerald says,
58:36
Speaker 1: the fish are jumping. It's the beginning of something new.
58:42
Speaker 1: Life carries on.
58:46
Speaker 7: H now that the Fernitures returning to its goodwill home,
59:36
Speaker 7: now that the last month's rent is scheming with the
59:41
Speaker 7: damage to possit, take this moment to deserve.
59:47
Speaker 1: If we meant it, if we talked.
59:51
Speaker 7: We were felt around for five to.
59:56
Speaker 3: From things that accidentally talk.
1:00:03
Speaker 1: This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Khalila Holt and
1:00:06
Speaker 1: me Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanagain. Our supervising producer
1:00:10
Speaker 1: is Stevie Lane. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon. Special thanks
1:00:14
Speaker 1: to Chris Neary Gretacone, Jake Harper, Lydia, Jane Kott, and
1:00:18
Speaker 1: Kevin's brother Tony Emmamonger mixed the episode with original music
1:00:22
Speaker 1: by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, and Bobby Lord. Additional
1:00:25
Speaker 1: scoring by Blue Dot Sessions and Poddington Bear. Our theme
1:00:29
Speaker 1: song is by The Weaker Thands, courtesy of Epitaph Records.
1:00:32
Speaker 1: Follow us on Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast, or email us
1:00:35
Speaker 1: at Heavyweight at Pushkin dot Fm. We're taking a break
1:00:39
Speaker 1: for American Thanksgiving, but we'll be back in December with
1:00:42
Speaker 1: two more episodes of Heavyweight. Until that time, Happy American
1:00:47
Speaker 1: toy Kie Day, Gobble gobbled to you, and yours a
1:00:52
Speaker 1: wazer we repainted