Transcript

#52 Lenny · Heavyweight

0:05
Speaker 1: Huh.
0:06
Speaker 2: Do you wear shoes with shoelaces? You or you wear Velcrow?
0:11
Speaker 3: Did you come up with these questions by yourself?
0:13
Speaker 2: No, I have a writer's room. No, I'm just curious.
0:15
Speaker 2: I remember you used to like Velcrow. You said that
0:17
Speaker 2: anybody who is foolish enough to have to stoop down
0:21
Speaker 2: and tie their shoelaces deserves what they get. That shoelaces
0:25
Speaker 2: get covered in urine and bile, and that velcro is
0:28
Speaker 2: the fabric of the future. That's what you'd always say.
0:31
Speaker 2: You have shoes with shoelaces, right, shoes shoelaces?
0:34
Speaker 1: Yes?
0:35
Speaker 2: Do you always double not them? No?
0:38
Speaker 3: You don't any other compelling questions, Johnny, that you have.
0:43
Speaker 2: If you showed up to a bowling alley with a watermelon,
0:47
Speaker 2: you think they'd let you bowl. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and
0:58
Speaker 2: this is Heavyweight Today's episode, Lenny, right after the break.
1:18
Speaker 3: Back.
1:18
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, I often carried around a
1:20
Speaker 2: tape recorder and outstretched mic created a buffer between me
1:25
Speaker 2: and the world. Recording was my way of managing life,
1:33
Speaker 2: and so I recorded everything, my parents' arguments, their phone calls,
1:42
Speaker 2: and I'm telling you thro fish my mom pretending to
1:46
Speaker 2: audition for soap operas Amanda Darling, how are you today?
1:51
Speaker 2: Mostly though I recorded myself, I made radio plays.
1:56
Speaker 4: Rich Stone Productions present the Adventures of Nedley with no
2:12
Speaker 4: one to share in my love for a medium do
2:14
Speaker 4: o way since the Truman administration.
2:17
Speaker 2: I put on the plays alone, all the voices performed
2:21
Speaker 2: by me for an audience of zero. Our story opens.
2:25
Speaker 5: Up where Nedley is about to get off.
2:28
Speaker 2: Oh what a lousy day. That's our Nedley. Nedley was
2:34
Speaker 2: an eleven year old spitfire who did as he pleased.
2:38
Speaker 2: Since I myself was an eleven year old rule following
2:41
Speaker 2: nerd Nedley was my id.
2:43
Speaker 5: Here comes boom boom, She's my dream.
2:49
Speaker 2: High Needy Hi he boom boom bom, and the whole
2:58
Speaker 2: psychodrama played out as one man show.
3:01
Speaker 5: This movie was directed by Jonathan Goldstein, screenplay by Jonathan Wilsey.
3:06
Speaker 5: All voices in it are done by Jonathan Goldstein. This
3:09
Speaker 5: is a Jonathan Goldstein production whom.
3:13
Speaker 2: It was all just me and my microphone until the
3:18
Speaker 2: day Lenny came along. I was twelve years old when
3:25
Speaker 2: we were first introduced at a birthday party. Immediately Lennie
3:29
Speaker 2: asked me what blood type I was oh, I said, uncertainly,
3:35
Speaker 2: me too, he shouted, genuinely excited to find some small
3:39
Speaker 2: thing we shared. I was an aloof kid, but was
3:43
Speaker 2: quickly won over by Lenny's goodness and the fact our
3:47
Speaker 2: mothers were already best friends made our best friendship feel faded.
3:51
Speaker 2: Plus that Lenny proved as obsessive about recording as I
3:55
Speaker 2: was sealed the deal. The weekends revolved around our recording
3:59
Speaker 2: radio plays. Lenny and I would sleep in the same
4:02
Speaker 2: foold out in his parents' den. His dad, Izzy, a
4:06
Speaker 2: large man with a thick Polish accent, would make us
4:09
Speaker 2: breakfast in just his underwear, his undershirt tucked into his
4:13
Speaker 2: jockeys like it was some style imported from the Old Country.
4:17
Speaker 2: One time, trying to explain to Izzy how I liked
4:20
Speaker 2: my eggs and having no success with Fried, I described
4:23
Speaker 2: two sons and a Cloud. Lenny loved that so much
4:27
Speaker 2: that he started ordering his eggs that way too, Two
4:31
Speaker 2: Sons and a Cloud. After breakfast, we'd head to Lenny's bedroom,
4:41
Speaker 2: shut the door, and record all morning. We were a
4:46
Speaker 2: gang of two Golden Lennox presents. The Lennox was from Lennie,
4:54
Speaker 2: the gold from Goldstein for the first time, I no
4:57
Speaker 2: longer felt alone. Together. Lenny and I recorded prank phone
5:01
Speaker 2: calls our parents' dinner parties, and we made radio play
5:04
Speaker 2: after radio play, creating characters like Flip and Will, two
5:08
Speaker 2: burned out radio DJs. We take you to Flip.
5:12
Speaker 4: Flip is going to introduce you, Slip is taking you
5:15
Speaker 4: to Will. Okay Will, No Will is taking you to Slip.
5:18
Speaker 4: No Beck, you will.
5:24
Speaker 2: As a part of the Flip and Will radio show,
5:26
Speaker 2: we did live phone outs to our quote unquote listeners.
5:35
Speaker 2: In the eighties, dialing a phone was so arduous it's
5:38
Speaker 2: surprising people even bothered. But without driver's licenses or money,
5:42
Speaker 2: Lenny and I made the effort. The phone brought us
5:45
Speaker 2: a sense of freedom and adventure.
5:48
Speaker 4: Okay you three?
5:52
Speaker 2: Three?
5:57
Speaker 1: Hello?
5:58
Speaker 6: What would you do if you had to move a
6:01
Speaker 6: television survey?
6:04
Speaker 7: Why?
6:04
Speaker 2: Thank you think you need it?
6:08
Speaker 8: Why the Cold War is not over? It never was?
6:21
Speaker 2: This is Lenny now, age fifty two.
6:24
Speaker 8: John, What is not understandable about this?
6:28
Speaker 9: Because I'm getting frustrated.
6:29
Speaker 2: Now I'm in Minnesota and Lenny is in Canada. We
6:33
Speaker 2: haven't spoken in nine years, and at the moment, for
6:37
Speaker 2: some reason, we're discussing Russia's role in Ukraine well.
6:43
Speaker 8: Still there.
6:44
Speaker 2: In our late teens, Lenny and I began to have
6:46
Speaker 2: less and less in common and we drifted apart. Our
6:49
Speaker 2: first conversation in almost a decade is not going well.
6:53
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not sure that I fully get it.
6:57
Speaker 2: You mean that, I mean it's not that complicated.
7:00
Speaker 7: Yeah, we destroyed communism using their communism.
7:03
Speaker 8: Now they destroyed capitalism using our capitalists.
7:07
Speaker 9: I guess about your subject.
7:09
Speaker 2: The last time I saw Lenny was back home in Canada.
7:12
Speaker 2: Our mothers, who were still best friends, thought it'd be
7:15
Speaker 2: nice for the families to get together. Lenny showed up
7:18
Speaker 2: at the restaurant with a shaved head and thin chin
7:20
Speaker 2: strap beard. With the way he kept his arms crossed
7:23
Speaker 2: and his posture erect that evening, Lenny had something of
7:27
Speaker 2: the dictator about him. He was living in the bachelor's
7:30
Speaker 2: apartment and his parents' basement in Chamity Laval, the suburb
7:34
Speaker 2: we grew up in just outside of Montreal. Lenny drove
7:38
Speaker 2: a school bus for Orthodox Jews and said the Hasidim
7:41
Speaker 2: had nicknamed him the Surgeon because of how he zipped
7:44
Speaker 2: through narrow streets with such precision. At the end of
7:48
Speaker 2: the meal, Lenny asked if I wanted to go outside
7:50
Speaker 2: and smoke a joint, a for ole times sake kind
7:53
Speaker 2: of thing. The idea of smoking a joint outside a
7:56
Speaker 2: suburban strip mall restaurant while our aged parents waited in
8:00
Speaker 2: side was unappealing, so I said no, at least stand
8:04
Speaker 2: outside with me, Lenny said, and keep me company. But
8:08
Speaker 2: I dug my heels in and Lenny grew angry. We
8:12
Speaker 2: parted on bad terms that evening, almost ten years ago,
8:16
Speaker 2: and that was the last time I saw Lennie or
8:18
Speaker 2: thought too hard about him until now. The reason Lenny
8:23
Speaker 2: and I are speaking right now is because he has
8:26
Speaker 2: only months to live. Lenny is dying of pancreatic cancer
8:34
Speaker 2: and his undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. He's recently gone through
8:39
Speaker 2: eleven hours of surgery to keep the cancer from spreading,
8:43
Speaker 2: but it was no use. Even though that first conversation
8:46
Speaker 2: went poorly, I continue to spend my evenings talking to
8:49
Speaker 2: Lennie because somewhere in the back of my mind is
8:52
Speaker 2: the memory of the kid from my childhood, the kid
8:55
Speaker 2: who stayed by my side tending to my adult sized
8:57
Speaker 2: depression in the darkest hour hours of my teens. I
9:01
Speaker 2: remember days and nights spent in Lenny's bedroom, just lying
9:04
Speaker 2: in his bed under the black bulb of his light fixture,
9:07
Speaker 2: listening to Pink Floyd and Iron Maiden. Too scared to
9:10
Speaker 2: face the world. Back then, Lennie would reassure me, telling
9:14
Speaker 2: me to think all the bad thoughts I could, to
9:17
Speaker 2: get them out of my system, to exhaust them so
9:20
Speaker 2: that eventually I'd only be left with the good ones.
9:24
Speaker 2: Being with Lennie was one of the few places where
9:26
Speaker 2: I felt safe, and so I call him again and again. Hey, Lenny,
9:36
Speaker 2: how are you doing?
9:37
Speaker 1: H S shit?
9:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. Our conversations usually occur at night, with Lenny still
9:43
Speaker 2: in his parents' basement, the same basement where we spent
9:46
Speaker 2: our childhoods, and me wandering the silent streets of my
9:50
Speaker 2: midwestern neighborhood. During these phone chats, I never know what
9:54
Speaker 2: to say. I struggle to find common ground, but always
9:58
Speaker 2: come up short. When I bring up old mutual friends,
10:01
Speaker 2: Lenny speaks of them resentfully. With jobs, it's the same
10:05
Speaker 2: the idiots at the trucking firm, the anti semites at
10:08
Speaker 2: the refrigeration company. On the rare occasion, I raise something
10:12
Speaker 2: personal about myself, it gets no traction when I tell
10:16
Speaker 2: him how I'm now a father of a five year
10:18
Speaker 2: old Lennie, a bachelor, says that people who have kids
10:22
Speaker 2: only do it for ego reasons. Mostly we stick to
10:27
Speaker 2: the subject of Lenny's pain, which is brutal. He can't
10:30
Speaker 2: eat without pain, stand or even lie down without pain.
10:34
Speaker 2: Sometimes he'll put the phone down and I'll listen to
10:37
Speaker 2: him as he howls from the bathroom. There are drugs,
10:41
Speaker 2: some prescribed and some not, but no matter, there's always pain,
10:45
Speaker 2: and anger at the pain, and anger at what seems
10:48
Speaker 2: like me. On most nights, after a typical conversation, I
10:54
Speaker 2: come home and say to my wife Emily, that maybe
10:56
Speaker 2: this is a bad idea. We drifted apart for a reason.
11:00
Speaker 2: I say, we're strangers, and yet even though Lenny doesn't
11:05
Speaker 2: seem to even want to talk to me, we continue
11:08
Speaker 2: to talk night after night. I'm beginning to get the
11:11
Speaker 2: impression that maybe he has no one else. No no, no,
11:16
Speaker 2: of course not.
11:18
Speaker 9: Well, wish me luck.
11:19
Speaker 2: Lenny says he wants to leave something behind, and so
11:22
Speaker 2: we record, just like we did when we were kids.
11:25
Speaker 2: Back then, we perform different characters. Now, Ostensibly we're just ourselves.
11:33
Speaker 9: I really did my shouffle to rice, lemon, lime, garlic,
11:39
Speaker 9: and pepper.
11:40
Speaker 1: Oh nice, nothing complicated and it is gorgeous.
11:45
Speaker 2: Great? And how's your sleeping?
11:49
Speaker 9: I sleep like shit? What do you think I have
11:51
Speaker 9: to think?
11:51
Speaker 2: I met every two hours?
11:56
Speaker 9: The horrible life when you spend your life, society of
12:02
Speaker 9: the universe punish you all the anger, all the hatred.
12:07
Speaker 9: What do you think you could get away with it?
12:11
Speaker 2: Lenny is no longer the sweet, lonely kid who told
12:14
Speaker 2: me not to squat the house fly in his bedroom
12:16
Speaker 2: because he was his pet, The boy with whom I'd
12:19
Speaker 2: been so close that I'd run my hands through his
12:22
Speaker 2: thick black hair as though it were my own, smoohing
12:25
Speaker 2: it up into the air. I pretended I'd invented the
12:28
Speaker 2: latest in men's hairstyles. The Beethoven that Lenny seems to
12:33
Speaker 2: be long gone. Even though Lenny and I weren't in
12:42
Speaker 2: touch over the years, when I'd ask after him, my
12:45
Speaker 2: mother would always say the same thing. Lenny and his
12:48
Speaker 2: parents were fighting like cats and dogs. Lenny's father died
12:52
Speaker 2: about a year ago. Now it's just him and his mom.
12:55
Speaker 2: Do you see you see your mother every day?
13:01
Speaker 9: Unfortunately, I make an attempt to treat her like a
13:05
Speaker 9: human being, and every day she disappoints me. She's a
13:09
Speaker 9: gross mind. My father too, he was gross, too gross.
13:15
Speaker 2: You loved him, you loved your dad, Yeah, I did.
13:17
Speaker 9: But he was a gross man who did everything that
13:21
Speaker 9: makes his life easier in my life harder.
13:25
Speaker 2: Lenny's parents had had another son before him, but because
13:28
Speaker 2: of profound mental and physical disabilities, he was institutionalized. After that,
13:34
Speaker 2: they adopted Lenny. Both Lenny and I were raised by
13:37
Speaker 2: parents who saw screaming and hitting as the solution to
13:40
Speaker 2: all of life's child rearing dilemmas. But from Lenny's perspective,
13:44
Speaker 2: worse than that was the neglect. Lenny's dad worked a lot,
13:48
Speaker 2: and his mom always seemed to have more time for
13:50
Speaker 2: her friends than for him. It's something Lenny still can't
13:54
Speaker 2: let go of.
13:55
Speaker 9: It's called normal responsibility, you know what I mean? My
14:00
Speaker 9: friends got it? How come I didn't?
14:02
Speaker 2: Yeah?
14:04
Speaker 9: Well, what's so unspecial about me that I get the
14:06
Speaker 9: shitty fucking neglect? You know, I did my best. That's
14:10
Speaker 9: my favorite line.
14:11
Speaker 3: I did my best.
14:13
Speaker 9: You know, if that's the best, maybe you should the boss. Yeah,
14:17
Speaker 9: that's your best way I'll tell you the truth. I'm
14:20
Speaker 9: looking forward having that one last week, knowing that it's
14:23
Speaker 9: finally done, that I could just like yes, because it's
14:30
Speaker 9: been a bitch. This life has been a bitch, and
14:32
Speaker 9: it's most because people have been pitched and they remained bitches.
14:38
Speaker 2: What does one owe a childhood friend, especially when that
14:41
Speaker 2: friend seems to have changed so much over the course
14:44
Speaker 2: of our phone calls. The question that keeps kicking around
14:47
Speaker 2: in the back of my mind is whether all of
14:49
Speaker 2: Lenny's anger has somehow eaten up the goodness. I continue
14:54
Speaker 2: to phone Lenny over the next couple of months in
14:56
Speaker 2: hopes of seeing it, feeling that goodness again, and so
15:00
Speaker 2: we talk about the sex ed books at the Yamha Library,
15:04
Speaker 2: watching The Love Boat on Saturday nights when his parents
15:07
Speaker 2: were out with my parents, raiding his mom's freezer for
15:10
Speaker 2: TV dinners, while playing Calleco vision. Mostly though, I just
15:15
Speaker 2: listen and try to be there, and over time Lenny
15:18
Speaker 2: grows softer with me, and I grow less afraid of
15:21
Speaker 2: offending him, afraid of offending a dying man. And then
15:32
Speaker 2: one night I receive a message. Listening to it now,
15:36
Speaker 2: I'm struck by how much Lenny's voice had mellowed since
15:38
Speaker 2: our first conversations. Instead of Jonathan or John, Lenny calls
15:43
Speaker 2: me Johnny, just like he did when we were kids,
15:46
Speaker 2: like he did when we were best friends.
15:49
Speaker 10: Hi, I'm sorry to call you directly like this, without
15:52
Speaker 10: signaling or anything, but in a development and I needed
15:56
Speaker 10: to talk to.
15:57
Speaker 9: You as soon as you can.
16:00
Speaker 1: Mhm mhmm, Yeah, John, is it too late? No?
16:08
Speaker 2: No, No, it's okay. How are you.
16:11
Speaker 9: Not well?
16:12
Speaker 1: John? You know it's hard to tell you anything else.
16:15
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, what's going on.
16:20
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm weak. I'm gonna go into palliative care.
16:24
Speaker 7: Okay, there's no other recourse.
16:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's getting harder and harder to function at home.
16:33
Speaker 7: Yeah, because I'm not too good with pain.
16:38
Speaker 2: Johns Well, you've been dealing with so much of it.
16:42
Speaker 7: No, I mean my whole life. I've never been good
16:44
Speaker 7: with me. I'm a wider wis. I'm just a big words.
16:52
Speaker 7: It's funny through everything, the pain's still there. Pain never ends,
16:59
Speaker 7: even with drives.
17:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not bad.
17:03
Speaker 4: Job.
17:06
Speaker 1: I don't foresee getting better.
17:11
Speaker 7: If I suddenly disappeared or you know, I can't talk
17:14
Speaker 7: to you.
17:16
Speaker 1: No, I'm probably like you know gone. I had my
17:24
Speaker 1: last drive yesterday. I travel around the the valve. Yeah,
17:30
Speaker 1: just like one last highway ride.
17:34
Speaker 3: It's not a huge deal.
17:35
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of driving my time. I play.
17:37
Speaker 1: Need to remember I'm dying anyway.
17:42
Speaker 2: Bigger things to think about?
17:46
Speaker 3: What?
17:46
Speaker 2: What did? What do you find yourself thinking about?
17:52
Speaker 1: I thing I lived?
17:53
Speaker 7: I lived as well as I could in my capacity.
17:57
Speaker 7: I had good experiences at least. Yeah, it wasn't the
18:04
Speaker 7: best life well lived, but wasn't the worst either.
18:08
Speaker 1: Could have been worse. That's the legacy of my life.
18:13
Speaker 1: Could have been worse.
18:18
Speaker 9: Just gonna.
18:19
Speaker 1: I just want to enjoy looking at the sky, looking
18:21
Speaker 1: at things new.
18:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, reveling and be alive.
18:32
Speaker 1: I remember the last lady, she was scary.
18:36
Speaker 2: Who's this the last lady?
18:39
Speaker 1: Which she has a little pudgy remember.
18:44
Speaker 2: Lenny would sometimes drift into delusions, imaginary flights that would
18:48
Speaker 2: weave throughout our conversation, But other times the delusions were
18:52
Speaker 2: mixed up with childhood memories, like time had collapsed and
18:55
Speaker 2: Lenny was all ages at once dying, but also back
18:59
Speaker 2: to an age when his parents and drove us to
19:00
Speaker 2: the mall and they're cut less supreme.
19:03
Speaker 1: So if you want the front Seaco grabbit.
19:05
Speaker 2: Now, the delusions were tender and vulnerable, and observing them
19:09
Speaker 2: was like standing over his bed watching him dream they
19:12
Speaker 2: should just go home.
19:15
Speaker 1: I'm dead tired for some reason. We're at the Why
19:23
Speaker 1: taking a course.
19:25
Speaker 7: We're at the Why.
19:26
Speaker 1: We're at the hym Tree taking a course.
19:30
Speaker 2: No, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. I'll tell you
19:34
Speaker 2: if I can't follow.
19:36
Speaker 1: Well, that's so weird, though, that I would have such
19:38
Speaker 1: a delusion.
19:39
Speaker 7: Maybe it's a subconscious desire to visit.
19:42
Speaker 1: With you in a normal way, in a normal setting.
19:46
Speaker 2: Yeah.
19:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're visiting for holidays, normal, everything's normal. So or
20:01
Speaker 1: when was it when we're going to see each.
20:02
Speaker 2: Other in a couple of weeks. The plan is for
20:08
Speaker 2: me to see Lenny during a visit back home, my
20:11
Speaker 2: first since COVID that long.
20:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I'm serious. I'm not being facetious.
20:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, say it's.
20:23
Speaker 1: Down to the wire. Maybe the last few weeks of things.
20:31
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Maybe I don't know.
20:34
Speaker 9: I don't get.
20:35
Speaker 1: Depressed or anything.
20:38
Speaker 2: Lenny wasn't just saying I don't want to bum you out.
20:41
Speaker 2: He was one of the few people who knew how
20:43
Speaker 2: fragile I could be even now he was trying to
20:46
Speaker 2: protect me, even as he was dying.
20:49
Speaker 7: It's hard to say that I wish you were here.
20:56
Speaker 2: Yeah. Recently my therapist recommended ketamine to me, a drug
21:04
Speaker 2: sometimes prescribed for untreatable depression. In my case, she thought
21:08
Speaker 2: it might help shift my perspective, which still tends towards darkness.
21:13
Speaker 2: A day after Lenny and I had this conversation, while
21:15
Speaker 2: taking several hits for my ketamine Inhaler and about to
21:18
Speaker 2: go for a Saturday morning run, I was suddenly overcome
21:21
Speaker 2: with sobbing and a feeling of unreality. As a man
21:25
Speaker 2: in newer to epiphanies, I was shaken. Like most, I
21:30
Speaker 2: don't often see my existence on Earth approximating anything close
21:33
Speaker 2: to a quote unquote arc. Instead, things come in flashes.
21:38
Speaker 2: I'm four years old, eating a chocolate bar at my
21:41
Speaker 2: aunt Tilly's house, taking such tiny bites that Tilly calls
21:44
Speaker 2: me the mousey. My theory is that if the bites
21:48
Speaker 2: are small enough, it will last forever. I'm six, regretting
21:53
Speaker 2: having told my father about my kindergarten crush, because he's
21:57
Speaker 2: just told a table full of relatives about it. I
22:00
Speaker 2: will never trust this man again. I think I'm fifteen
22:04
Speaker 2: and seeing a breast for the very first time. European
22:07
Speaker 2: sunbathers are at the same beach as me. The image
22:10
Speaker 2: will clod's way into my thoughts over and over for
22:14
Speaker 2: the next ten years. I'm sixteen getting turned down to
22:18
Speaker 2: prom on a city bus. Lorraine Kaufman is telling me
22:22
Speaker 2: that only I would ask someone to prom on a
22:24
Speaker 2: city bus. Then, for some reason, I'm fifty and moving
22:29
Speaker 2: to Minnesota. While waiting at JFK for the flight that
22:33
Speaker 2: will take me and Emily and our then two year
22:35
Speaker 2: old son Aggi to our new life. Oggi walks up
22:38
Speaker 2: to a stranger and hugs his legs, and I burst
22:41
Speaker 2: into tears. A smell a meal, a day at the beach,
22:46
Speaker 2: and so goes a life without the record button pressed down.
22:55
Speaker 2: Life is fragmented and fast and nearly impossible to make
22:58
Speaker 2: sense of. It helps me to shed light, but always
23:02
Speaker 2: in retrospect. With the ketamine coursing through me, though, I
23:06
Speaker 2: saw the dots illuminate and connect, each handing off with purpose,
23:10
Speaker 2: one to the other, like a succession of dominoes, tracing
23:14
Speaker 2: the seemingly useless years that got me to where I
23:17
Speaker 2: was with the wife, the child, the job. It all
23:20
Speaker 2: felt so precarious, like I was standing on a narrow
23:23
Speaker 2: column of shoe boxes. It filled me with vertigo to
23:28
Speaker 2: the question of what one owes a childhood friend. In
23:31
Speaker 2: my case, I owed Lenny everything. It was through knowing
23:35
Speaker 2: him in those early years that the base of the
23:37
Speaker 2: tower was formed. It was in making tapes together in
23:40
Speaker 2: his bedroom that I discovered a feeling i'd pursue towards
23:43
Speaker 2: a career. Suddenly I could see how everything counted, that
23:48
Speaker 2: Lenny counted, that my love for Lenny counted. I wanted
23:52
Speaker 2: Lenny to know this. I wanted him to know that
23:54
Speaker 2: while our personalities might have driven us apart, a deep
23:57
Speaker 2: rooted love brought us back together. But later that day
24:02
Speaker 2: I got a call from my mother informing me that
24:05
Speaker 2: Lennie had died. In the months after Lenny's death, I'm
24:20
Speaker 2: unable to let go of how I wasn't there for
24:22
Speaker 2: him in his last days. I obsess over what his
24:25
Speaker 2: final moments might have been like. I begin accidentally calling
24:29
Speaker 2: my son by Lenny's name. I do this so often
24:32
Speaker 2: that eventually my son begins to ask, who in the
24:35
Speaker 2: world is Lenny I try to answer him, but never
24:39
Speaker 2: know quite how. We were best friends when I wasn't
24:42
Speaker 2: much older than you, I say, and then I get
24:45
Speaker 2: COVID and I isolate in my basement. I watch all
24:49
Speaker 2: the old movies. Lenny and I used to watch Animal House,
24:52
Speaker 2: Monty Python, any Hall, but instead of laughing after each punchline,
24:57
Speaker 2: I cry. Lennie had an older cousin named Betsy, who
25:04
Speaker 2: had taken on the task of cleaning up Lenny's basement.
25:08
Speaker 2: I reached out to see if Betsy could set aside
25:10
Speaker 2: some of Lenny's art or photos for me, but she
25:13
Speaker 2: said that wasn't something I should pursue.
25:15
Speaker 5: It's not a situation where I don't think he'd want
25:18
Speaker 5: any of his coveted items.
25:21
Speaker 2: That place was a hoarder's paradise. It was filthy.
25:24
Speaker 10: That place has not been cleaned in forty years easily,
25:28
Speaker 10: and there was vermin.
25:29
Speaker 2: It probably could have been condemned. Betsy says that Lenny
25:33
Speaker 2: had taken the baseboards off the walls with an eye
25:35
Speaker 2: towards renovation, but then he let the project go and
25:39
Speaker 2: never put them back, which allowed mice into the house,
25:42
Speaker 2: and the mice got into everything. My dad had stopped
25:46
Speaker 2: by to do an errand for Lenny's mom and had
25:48
Speaker 2: the same kind of report. It was like going into
25:51
Speaker 2: a dark, subterranean world, he said. My father described Lenny's
25:55
Speaker 2: room as cluttered with books and DVDs from floor to ceiling,
25:58
Speaker 2: the windows blocked out so the son couldn't get in.
26:02
Speaker 2: How could anyone live under those circumstances, my father said,
26:08
Speaker 2: How could anyone, and especially how could Lenny. I keep
26:12
Speaker 2: thinking about how when we were kids, winding up in
26:15
Speaker 2: our parents' basements would have been our worst nightmare. How
26:18
Speaker 2: could Lenny have ended up living out his last days
26:21
Speaker 2: in the very place he despised most.
26:23
Speaker 3: That was always this thing that he never wanted to happen.
26:28
Speaker 2: This is Lenny's ex girlfriend, Louise. Lenny and Louise dated
26:31
Speaker 2: in their twenties. I first met her at a bar
26:34
Speaker 2: one night, after having not seen Lenny in years. They
26:37
Speaker 2: were coming from a kiss concert and both Lenny and
26:40
Speaker 2: Louise's faces were painted, Louise as Peter Chris and Lenny
26:44
Speaker 2: as Ace Freely. They both wanted to go as Ace,
26:47
Speaker 2: but Lenny said that would have been ridiculous.
26:50
Speaker 3: I think I was eighteen years old when I met him. Oh,
26:54
Speaker 3: I remember. He just there was this death about him
27:00
Speaker 3: that I recognized immediately, and it just automatically attracted me
27:06
Speaker 3: to him. I remember being on the back of his
27:09
Speaker 3: reorcycle and being scared shitless every time, holding on to
27:14
Speaker 3: him so tight. I remember his dog, Max and how
27:17
Speaker 3: much he loved that dog. Yeah, I mean to know
27:20
Speaker 3: that he did. He finished there in the basement.
27:25
Speaker 2: Why not only did Lenny hate the basement, he hated
27:29
Speaker 2: the whole suburb of Shamedy. We both did. We attended
27:34
Speaker 2: Charmedy High, nicknamed Comedy High because it was so bad
27:37
Speaker 2: it was laughable, pipe bombs in the bathrooms, a geography
27:42
Speaker 2: teacher who was a flat earther, and a music teacher
27:45
Speaker 2: who married a student. I eventually left Chomedy, but Lenny
27:49
Speaker 2: never did, never even left his childhood home. How could
27:53
Speaker 2: our lives have diverred?
27:55
Speaker 10: So he was very unhappy.
27:58
Speaker 2: This is Dimitri, high school acquaintance who Lenny reconnected with
28:02
Speaker 2: on Facebook in the last year of his life. Dmitri
28:05
Speaker 2: was the person Lenny saw most during his illness. He
28:08
Speaker 2: works at a local Greek restaurant and would bring Lenny
28:11
Speaker 2: salads at the end of his shift.
28:13
Speaker 10: He was lonely. I used to talk about how it
28:16
Speaker 10: would have been nice if you had a girlfriend and
28:19
Speaker 10: some kids, or if he had a kids, it would
28:21
Speaker 10: have been nice. She was always alone. I never saw
28:26
Speaker 10: him with anybody ever. Would like She would ask me
28:33
Speaker 10: to hug him a lot. When he was sick. He
28:37
Speaker 10: would always ask me to hug him. I think Leonard
28:42
Speaker 10: didn't feel really much love in his life.
28:44
Speaker 2: Man Dmitri also knew that Lenny didn't want the basement
28:49
Speaker 2: for his home, let alone his final home. When I
28:52
Speaker 2: tell him how I've been trying to make sense of
28:54
Speaker 2: how it happened. He has a.
28:55
Speaker 10: Theory drugs, drugs.
28:59
Speaker 2: When you say drugs, you into a pot.
29:01
Speaker 10: Pot, mushrooms, LSB. Leonard used to like to take acid,
29:08
Speaker 10: a lot of acid and just a trip out in
29:11
Speaker 10: his room in the dark. I'm a tall look for
29:16
Speaker 10: whatever works, for whatever gets the demons away there. But
29:18
Speaker 10: that's a little fucked up.
29:20
Speaker 2: Ending up in the basement solely because of drugs doesn't
29:23
Speaker 2: ring true to me. Well, the drugs might have helped
29:26
Speaker 2: with the demons, they didn't create the demons. Plenty of
29:29
Speaker 2: people smoke pot, take LSD and still leave the house,
29:33
Speaker 2: travel the world, kill You. Among my childhood cassettes is
29:38
Speaker 2: another of my mother's performances, But this one wasn't a
29:42
Speaker 2: soap opera audition. It's of my mother pretending to be
29:45
Speaker 2: her best friend Lenny's mom, Hannah kill you. During those
29:53
Speaker 2: last conversations, Lenny confessed to not only feelings of resentment
29:56
Speaker 2: towards his own mother, but towards my mother too, for
30:00
Speaker 2: taking up so much of his mother's time, time she
30:02
Speaker 2: could have spent on him. As for his dad, Lenny
30:06
Speaker 2: saw Izzy as a constant threat. This is from another
30:10
Speaker 2: flip and will tape o kij lines a rouping now.
30:17
Speaker 2: In the play, I performed the part of Lenny's father,
30:19
Speaker 2: who crashes straight into the flip and will show, oh.
30:25
Speaker 4: Watch it what knock it up?
30:35
Speaker 2: Izzy would get physical on occasion, but our parents weren't
30:38
Speaker 2: so different. My father favored the belt, while Izzy delivered
30:42
Speaker 2: what he called patchka's or slaps. And in terms of
30:45
Speaker 2: our mothers, if Hannah had been so often absent because
30:48
Speaker 2: of her friendship with my mother, that it meant my
30:51
Speaker 2: mother was absent too. So is Lennie just more sensitive
30:54
Speaker 2: than I was? Or was he dealing with more than
30:57
Speaker 2: I knew? Okay?
31:03
Speaker 3: You just jogged in memory.
31:05
Speaker 2: This is Louise again, Lenny's ex girlfriend, with another theory.
31:10
Speaker 2: Louise recalls a day in college when she stumbled upon
31:12
Speaker 2: what felt like a key, A key that predates the
31:15
Speaker 2: drugs me and Lenny's friendship. It even predates the upbringing
31:19
Speaker 2: he received from his parents.
31:21
Speaker 3: It was my class for developmental biology, okay, and we
31:26
Speaker 3: were studying the brains of children at that point between
31:31
Speaker 3: zero and twelve months, and we were looking at separation anxiety,
31:36
Speaker 3: and we were studying that, and I remember being appalled.
31:46
Speaker 1: When I learned.
31:48
Speaker 3: That at seven months that is when a child's separation
31:55
Speaker 3: anxiety develops. That's when they know what their mother's face
31:58
Speaker 3: looks like, and that's when they start crying when you're
32:01
Speaker 3: handed to another person. And I remembered being appalled because
32:06
Speaker 3: I remember Lenny telling me that he was adopted when
32:10
Speaker 3: he was like six months old, and that his mom
32:15
Speaker 3: told him that all he ever did was cry. And
32:20
Speaker 3: I remember coming home that day after school and going, oh,
32:23
Speaker 3: my god, no wonder you cried all the time because
32:26
Speaker 3: you knew that this wasn't your mom.
32:29
Speaker 2: To heal from the loss of his biological mother, to
32:32
Speaker 2: help him deal with just being a sensitive kid. Lenny
32:35
Speaker 2: could have used extra support, but instead he got last.
32:40
Speaker 6: Just before his mother was kicked out of the convent,
32:43
Speaker 6: he was christened Bandy aass felt.
32:48
Speaker 2: Just as I had created the alter ego of Nedley
32:51
Speaker 2: to feed my id, Lenny created an alter ego named
32:54
Speaker 2: Andy that fed Lenny with something I could never put
32:57
Speaker 2: my finger on. But re listening to the news handy
33:00
Speaker 2: tapes we recorded all these years later, Andy feels like
33:04
Speaker 2: an expression of Lenny's vulnerability, his desperate need for more
33:08
Speaker 2: love from a parent.
33:09
Speaker 6: Through the years he was raised with fellow orphans. He
33:14
Speaker 6: never knew the meaning of mother or father. Well, he
33:17
Speaker 6: knew the meaning was of hate. All the kids when
33:21
Speaker 6: nicknamed him, name him.
33:23
Speaker 2: You're a bastard. You have none.
33:30
Speaker 6: Andy was the only four year old child in the
33:34
Speaker 6: orphanage who every day would sit down in his bed
33:39
Speaker 6: and contemplate suicide.
33:42
Speaker 2: Oh no one loves me. Everyone hates me. What did
33:46
Speaker 2: I do? I've gotta wave.
33:48
Speaker 8: I gotta get.
33:49
Speaker 2: Out of it.
33:52
Speaker 9: I gotta get out of here. Somehow, well, I knew
33:59
Speaker 9: by ah I was in trouble. I knew by age
34:02
Speaker 9: twelve that life's going to be a little harder than
34:05
Speaker 9: I thought. And I knew by the time I was
34:07
Speaker 9: eighteen nineteen that I got to get out of here
34:09
Speaker 9: and then stay out, and just you know, I'd already
34:13
Speaker 9: learned helplessness.
34:14
Speaker 2: So I guess I've always wanted to write a book,
34:17
Speaker 2: Lenny said during one of our late night conversations, where
34:21
Speaker 2: everything the hero does is wrong. I think a lot
34:24
Speaker 2: of books are like that, I said. A lot of
34:27
Speaker 2: lives are like that. You don't understand, Lenny said, And
34:31
Speaker 2: maybe I didn't. Perhaps a lot of what we take
34:38
Speaker 2: as a life choice is already encoded in us at
34:41
Speaker 2: a very young age, younger than we can even remember.
34:45
Speaker 2: And by then it's already too late. The moments are
34:48
Speaker 2: already handing off one to the other, like those dominoes
34:51
Speaker 2: that cannot be stopped. Supposedly, Lenny's biological mother was a
34:56
Speaker 2: fifteen year old girl who eventually came to realize she
34:59
Speaker 2: couldn't raise him on her own. Who knows what those
35:02
Speaker 2: first six months were like for Lenny and how they
35:04
Speaker 2: dictated the life to come. Maybe Lenny was wrong, Maybe
35:08
Speaker 2: his paralysis, his inability to leave the nest, wasn't, as
35:12
Speaker 2: he said, learned helplessness. But innate, helplessness, the kind of
35:17
Speaker 2: baby feels. Maybe for Lenny, the feeling just never faded away.
35:23
Speaker 10: I was with him all the way to the end.
35:25
Speaker 2: This is Dimitri again.
35:27
Speaker 10: I remember the lats of day. There she goes to me,
35:30
Speaker 10: he calls me up, he goes, and he goes. Look,
35:32
Speaker 10: he goes, can you come over and be with me tonight?
35:34
Speaker 10: He goes, because I'm going to die. She said it
35:37
Speaker 10: as a shut up my life, where you're gonna die.
35:40
Speaker 10: He goes, No, he goes, I'm gonna die. He goes,
35:42
Speaker 10: I'm going to die night. He goes, Can he just
35:44
Speaker 10: come and be with me? He goes, I don't want
35:45
Speaker 10: to be alone, you know. I'm like, yeah, you know,
35:48
Speaker 10: of course I'm And I stayed with him and we
35:53
Speaker 10: smoked a couple of joints together, had a couple of drinks,
35:59
Speaker 10: a couple of it's a whiskey I did, and I
36:02
Speaker 10: was just telling him, you know, Leonard, I go, it's okay,
36:05
Speaker 10: you know, you can, you can go if you want,
36:07
Speaker 10: you know, don't worry about it, you know, just she
36:10
Speaker 10: need to go.
36:11
Speaker 2: Just go. Because I never made it to Shamani before
36:15
Speaker 2: Lenny died, because I wasn't there to hug him or
36:17
Speaker 2: to just hold his hand. I'm left with a terrible
36:20
Speaker 2: sense of loss. Of the many questions I have about
36:23
Speaker 2: Lenny's last days, the one that weighs on me most
36:26
Speaker 2: heavily is about Lenny's anger and whether it ever subsided.
36:30
Speaker 2: Do you do you remember what his state of mind
36:34
Speaker 2: was on that last day when you went there? Did
36:37
Speaker 2: he Oh?
36:37
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, he was completely at peace. He wasn't worried
36:41
Speaker 10: or scared at all. I think he had accepted his faith.
36:45
Speaker 10: I think he was just honestly, I think he was
36:47
Speaker 10: just tired. I think he wanted to just go. She
36:50
Speaker 10: seemed to really okay, though he wasn't nervous, he was
36:53
Speaker 10: just quite. I have a video of his last words,
36:55
Speaker 10: Oh wow, I go. What message do you want to
36:58
Speaker 10: share with everybody? Girl about you're at the end?
37:04
Speaker 2: Dmitri sends me the video he took, and when I
37:07
Speaker 2: hit play, I gasp. I knew how sick Lenny had been,
37:10
Speaker 2: but I guess irrationally, I've been imagining him on the
37:14
Speaker 2: other end of the phone line, looking more like the
37:16
Speaker 2: last time i'd seen him at the restaurant with his parents.
37:20
Speaker 2: In the video, though Lenny looks cadaverous.
37:23
Speaker 10: If you have one message for the world, what would
37:25
Speaker 10: that be? And he sat for about Ben Saxons. He
37:29
Speaker 10: thought a bit, and he.
37:30
Speaker 7: Goes love more, fight less, fighting desiccation.
37:37
Speaker 2: For love more. Fight less. Fighting doesn't get you far,
37:45
Speaker 2: nor does anger. In one of our last phone calls
37:54
Speaker 2: in the final days of his life, Lenny said that
37:56
Speaker 2: he was so weak he could hardly lift himself from
37:58
Speaker 2: the toilet without his mother's aid. I asked if, in
38:02
Speaker 2: general his mother was being helpful.
38:04
Speaker 1: She's trying, She really is trying. Oh well, how to
38:09
Speaker 1: hear she's succeeding too. She's the only help I got
38:12
Speaker 1: I need her.
38:14
Speaker 2: It was the first I'd ever heard Lenny acknowledge his
38:16
Speaker 2: mother's effort, which is to say, it's the closest I'd
38:20
Speaker 2: ever heard Lenny come to forgiving her. I knew Lenny
38:27
Speaker 2: in the beginning and can only speculate about the middle.
38:31
Speaker 2: But I do see that in the end, in spite
38:33
Speaker 2: of the pain and the delusions, he allowed his sweetness
38:36
Speaker 2: to shine through. Well. I may never know where Lenny's
38:40
Speaker 2: anger came from, I do know where it went. He
38:44
Speaker 2: laid it down at long last to rest.
39:26
Speaker 4: Now that the fernentures returning to its.
39:31
Speaker 2: Goodwill home.
39:36
Speaker 5: Now that the last month's rent is scheming with.
39:40
Speaker 2: The damage to post, take this moment to the solve.
39:47
Speaker 9: If we meant it, if we.
39:48
Speaker 5: Tried, never felt around for far too.
39:55
Speaker 2: From things that accidentally tal This episode of Heavyweight was
40:04
Speaker 2: produced by me Jonathan Goldstein and supervising producer Stevie Lane,
40:08
Speaker 2: along with Phoebe Flanagan. Our senior producer is Khalila Holt.
40:11
Speaker 2: Production assistance by Moheiney mcgauker. Special thanks to Lauren Silverman
40:16
Speaker 2: and Neil Drumming. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon. Bobby Lord
40:20
Speaker 2: mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson,
40:24
Speaker 2: Blue Dot Sessions, Katie Condon, and Bobby Lord. Additional music
40:27
Speaker 2: credits can be found on our website, Gimbletmedia dot com
40:30
Speaker 2: slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Bands,
40:34
Speaker 2: courtesy of Epitaph Records. Heavyweight is a Spotify original podcast.
40:38
Speaker 2: Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight, on Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast,
40:42
Speaker 2: or email us at Heavyweight at gimbletmedia dot com. You
40:46
Speaker 2: can also follow our show on Spotify and tap the
40:49
Speaker 2: bell to receive notifications when new episodes drop. We'll be
40:53
Speaker 2: back next week with a new episode. It don't st