A small number of letters between John and me have survived all the moves and depredations of time and circumstance. Precomputer, preemail, as this era was, I have a few of my brother’s originals and, strangely, a couple of copies of my own letters. One of my missives qualifies as probably the longest letter I ever wrote in my life, about 2,800 words on ten yellow-line legal tablet pages. For some odd, to me, reason I thought to make and retain a carbon copy. It was dated April 14, 1980.
The voice is mine, I can tell, and it’s by me in some early incarnation. At times, I come across a little bit preachy, if not sanctimonious—though I can also see that I am trying hard not to be: “I miss you, brother John. I want you not to give up. I want you to clean up and use this time in prison. Stop reading this if it sounds like bullshit to you.” But then I really go off the rails: “If you’re living in a hell, it’s only another version of hell that most people live in every single day of their stinking, useless, rotten lives… USE this time, don’t do this time, don’t let it do you.” I wrote it, and I’m not proud of it.
I express my pained interest as to life inside. At the time I was a grad student, and I was under the influence of philosophers like Michel Foucault, who were all the rage in the academy I lamely aspired to inhabit. I might have been reading Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, which I thought brilliant. His insights into the panopticon and surveillance and the modern state system were provocative. But I was dealing with my brother, who knew the scoop firsthand.
Mostly, I am curious about him on the inside, and him before he was on the inside. As ever, I afflict him with a lot of questions:
It all seemed like whatever was happening to you was happening in the world you had been creating—for how long now? Months? Years? Since the time we were growing up in Brooklyn? Since the imaginative time you broke away from some thing—what was it?—the old man? Me? What I or everybody in our sick family represented? I don’t know when it all began. I tend to think that it had something to do with Kit [his best friend killed before his eyes in a motorcycle crash], or something to do with [the restaurant where he was the manager], or probably something to do with our father.
Hey, did they tell you I tried to visit you a few weeks ago, on a Thursday? They wouldn’t let me, it wasn’t visiting days. Jerks. Barred. And then I got barred at the Park Tahoe. I was using Revere [a card-counting system]—not badly either but, damn it, the same pit boss that barred me at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas must have recalled me, because right after he noticed me I got the heave ho. The guy goes, “Please take this as a compliment, sir. You are an excellent 21 player, please don’t come here anymore.” Idiots.
I will start writing to you very often if you want me to, & I hope that you do. Please write back soon, since I worry for you & care very much for you.
With love,
Your brother
•
John’s letter from Nevada State Prison, Carson City, Nevada; found inside an envelope postmarked 20 August 1980; composed by hand on lined paper, the cursive elegant; as with all his missives quoted below, usually no paragraph breaks and no margins, each page numbered consecutively at the top; spelling and punctuation are, as they appear below, various and inconsistent. He is weeks away from his twenty-ninth birthday. Other letters quoted below are from San Quentin or Santa Rita Jail.
Brother Joe,
Hows life in the fast lane? I got your letter. Its been the same old grind in the place. I havent been going to work lately. I guess my attitude has been bad. But I take as much shit as I can take from these pork chop eating mother fucken police. My close friend got stuck yesterday he aint hurt too bad Both his lungs got punctured. But they say he will be short winded for a while but will soon be good as new. He aint saying who hit him so it must be personal. I dont know who did it or I 'd be knocking at his door myself. I cant say anymore about that cause I dont know if the crazy police read my mail or not. Hey, Brother Im gonna go to the Chow Hall right now I 'll be back in a flash OK! Here I am back to say the food stunk. Brother Joe this place is getting on my nerves. I am trying to keep my sanity but it goes deeper than you could imagine. Hey enough of that talk. I won a TV. in a poker game a few days ago so the time has been better for me at night. Now I can watch my own tube. I scored a radio and head phone 2 weeks ago So I guess you could say Im cadillacing or other words living it up. What a joke Huh? Right now Im listening to the Rolling Stones singing emotional rescue. Last night I watched that show about Rock + Roll. It was pretty good. I guess your wondering how Im scoring these luxuries. Me and a couple paissanos are running a black jack game Prison style. The house turns both cards up and the house wins pushes. You cant help but take everybody for what they got. So far things have been good anyway. We started backing the game on our ass (NO BANKROLL) but if someone would have stuck us for any bread I would have been all about boxing for it. But since then were in OK shape on the bread side. Well big Brother I love ya and miss you Say hello Father Shane for me OK
Love,
John
•
Postmarked the same day as that letter to me, there is another communication of his, not to me, but to our favorite very bad girl, the charismatic and sexy Sandy. She had her own drug and alcohol problems starting from early adolescence and was in and out of prison herself. The reason this letter is in my possession is that my father photocopied some of it and mailed it to me. How he came upon it, I have no information or recollection. But my father’s objective is transparent enough. He wanted me to see how incorrigible John was; the proof, to him, was found in his letter to Sandy. If someone wanted to make that case, John’s words furnished support. There are numerous unreadable passages, and his ragged state of mind might have contributed to the unintelligibility.
Hey girl what’s going on? I got your letter today. I’m glad to see that your heart is back where it should be. Ha! So your fuckin up a little. Hey don't let it get you down. I 'm in prison and I say to myself that when I get out I’m going to be clean. But I 'm fixing every day in this mother fucken place. I don't want to tell anybody that but I'm telling you because so what if [illegible] will is a little weak that don't make you a bad person and fuck [illegible] in the neck if they hassle you in your life and you should want [illegible] Sandy Im not gonna lie to you or to myself. But Im always going to go and get loaded. Im gonna get [illegible]to get strung out and I probably will get strung. If that was the case I wont last long and I know it. got to put your mind over your [illegible] desires. I always did pretty good. I could chip with the best of them… I’m gonna get out of this place cause believe me Sandy this place aint where its at. Looking forward to spending time with you when I get out. Who knows maybe we do eachother good. Wow! I know [illegible] but you got to keep an agreement with me and that is you promise me stay out of jail. That would be crazy if I get out and you get slammed [illegible]. OK sweetheart Im gonna get this letter to you. Take care of yourself.
Love,
John
•
Saturday, 9/27/80
Brother Joe, Hey Whats going on? I got myself in some trouble brother. I am sitting in the hole right now. I went to court yesterday. Its a disciplinary court. No matter what your charged with your automatically found guilty cause these police sit on the board as judges. Well anyway I got charged with disobeying a direct order, obstructing a search, and assault on an officer. I was found guilty and Monday they are transporting me over to Max. I think this probably is going to fuck up my parole but What can I say its over and done with now. Your probably wondering What happened Well I wake up it was Sunday morning All I had on was my bathrobe. I was walking down from one tier to another wing when these two bulls stopped me and asked what was under my robe I told them nothing but a big dick. Anyhow a human being can only take so much brother It comes to point when you are pushed up against a wall and your tired of getting shaken down, searched 10 times a day. You can only take so much humiliation and I guess I felt I ate enough humble pie. So as I said I didnt have any clothes on underneath. So I was not going to stoop to thier silly little game. I told them that if they wanted to search me we could go back to my area and search me there at my house No they insisted on doing it right there so that 30 other people could see them play their game. The deciding point that got me mad was they said If I didnt take off the robe that we are going to rip it off you B-O-Y! I guess I hate being called a boy and I wasn’t going to be humiliated anymore. So I started walking back down to my hose they these two red neck fat crew cutted pork chop eating no good dogs jumped on me. One guy grabbed my hair and another twisted my arm to make a long story short I dropped both of them with a couple of assorted kicks and went down to my pad. Sure enough the goon squad came all 15 of them handcuffed me and leg shackled me and drug me over to the hole. When I was in the hole where none could see they kicked me in the stomach around 20 or 30 times I dont know exactly cause I couldnt breathe and that’s the end of the story. Im OK now my ribs feel pretty bangedup but other than that Im OK…
It would be good if I could get the Old Man to write [a letter to the Parole Board] for me but I wouldnt ask him in a million years. But the main letter is from you Joe about me having a place to live. Look at it this way If I dont get paroled at least we all tried. OK! I personally think you would have done the same thing I did with these punk police. Im just tired, tired, tired of their fucken mickey mouse bullshit. Well anyway. OK Brother. Remember. Im gonna get out sooner or later so dont feel bad if they dump me at the parole board.
Love,
John
PS these punk police confiscated my TV and stereo because when they rolled up all my property they claimed that a TV and stereo were never mailed to me and therefore if it wasn’t mailed to directly from an appliance store that it was now considered an unauthorized item end of story FUCK THEM PUNKS
I have no recollection of his being paroled around this time, but it’s possible.
•
Wend. Oct, 15
Brother Joe, You ask me What movie do I think I’m in. Well have you ever seen seen the movie Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman, it shows the way of prison life and how bad the porkers treat convicts. I aint trying to copy no movie or actor. And I aint going to snivel about how bad the conditions are here in prison its very obvious that they are fucked. But What I will say about my situation on how I got here was because of drugs…
Its hard for me to explain to you all the things I feel Joe. But I sure have been doing a great amount of thinking lately. I sincerely wish I could leave this whole farce behind me and be able to be on the streets to try and earn some respect and promise some good results and get something more out of life than What I’m experiencing here. I love you Joe and appreciate everything youve done for me.
John
•
From a letter postmarked 21 September 1981, Alameda County Jail, Santa Rita:
Friday, Night
Brother Joe,
Hey I guess your pretty well fed up with me. I can say Im fed up with myself But Im also ready to cut the whole family loose, only cause I dont want to hurt anybody anymore. This drug program is my last chance and I know it. I would be lying to you if I told you I didn’t need some professional help. Heroin is the boss. Its too strong a temptation for me. I aint going to sit here and snivel to you. Im an asshole for not being strong enough to overcome it by myself. Its other people who sit in their high positions and look down at me for being addicted to a narcotic. Hey If I become famous some day I can say that I too was a once addicted drug addict. But my problem sure aint the lone ranger either. and I won’t be the first one who has gone to a drug program and failed and I am going to try and put all my energy behind getting clean, and If I dont I havent hurt anyone but my-self. I guarantee you that big brother. You got to excuse me for having a bad attitude cause I certainly do have one at the present time. You dont seem to understand the problem is bigger than the world seems to you, and until I’ve got it under control and have had time to mentally overcome my desire for stuff I aint changed a bit. And at this point I need to get into a drug program quick fast and in a hurry. Prisons, jails, are the biggest backbone and thriver of dope phenes. This aint whats happening here at Santa Rita. Im eligible on Nov. 18th as long as Nevada drops its hold on me…
[He goes into intricate detail on the pending proceedings in various jurisdictions, and expresses the hope to get into drug diversion.]
Once I make bail I go directly into the custody of Walden House. So Brother Joe there is a whole lot at stake for me and Im still really up in the air about where I actually stand. I’ll try contacting you in the next week or two I sure would like you to come and visit me Michelle comes up once a week. OK Big Brother I send my love to Mario.
John
I never did visit him in Santa Rita. He was eventually released to a program. The court appearances, the bail hearings, the conferences with drug counselors, the prison visits, the refusals to visit San Quentin, the collect phone calls from inside—it’s all jumbled in my head, all these markers and events blend. The years of waiting for something positive to happen wore me down, and I had problems of my own to confront. That’s not a defense, merely my miserable explanation.
•
This is from a nine-page letter of unknown origins and date; internal clues suggest it could be from San Quentin:
Friday 18,
Brother Joe,
Hey well you know I wasnt mad at you. But I certainly wasnt going to write to you until I first got a letter from you. But by God I got your letter today So here I am writing to my big brother. Seriously it was good hear from you. That’s too bad that you got barred from that casino. You know we got one thing in common I got barred from the streets. You know brother Joe these jails and prisons seem to be 20 years behind the times. [He details black and white violence inside the prison, and his frequent fights.] If they know your a crazy white boy they arent going to keep fucking with you. I guess your probably thinking to yourself Joe that there has got to be another more sensible way to stay out of trouble. Yeah there is. I can go and tell the bull that I want protective custody (PC) and they will take me and lock me up with all the misfits and perverts and mother fuckers. No Brother Joe I’ll hang in there and I’m going to walk this prison yard and come and go as I please until my parole date and then Ill get out of this mother fucken place. I know you would understand my position better if you were to see these conditions for yourself. So try and get off that crazy subject. I have been staying in good shape I weigh about 180 and have been working out everyday. You know I have been learning alot of karate while I have been in jail…I’d be more than happy to show you everything I know I’m gonna learn. In the last letter I got from Roberta included inside was a couple of space ships that Mario had drawn. They were real nice…You asked me if I would like to read that book by Norman Mailer. [I believe it must have been The Executioner’s Song.] Yes I would… Since I am out in the middle of the desert It gets pretty hot and that sun is overbearing I could definitely use a good pair of sunglasses preferably Ray Bann (Aviator Style) the kind with the plastic forhead guard and the cable that looks around your ear… But I would appreciate some good novels to read. You dont have to go out and buy any just send some of the ones you already have. Also in your letter you asked about my sentence. I got 4 years… Maybe the Old Man could work something out for me [once I get paroled]. Well Brother Joe. I’m gonna get this letter in the mail. Say hello to Father Shane for me… Thanks Again, Big Brother
Your baby brother
John
•
Father Shane, these days a Catholic priest for fifty years and a monsignor, once visited him in Nevada State Prison, wearing his blacks with Roman collar. He said it was an unremittingly scary place, but John made him feel welcome and safe. Shane was trained as a psychotherapist, and he always liked him. As the priest said, my brother looked like a bad ass but he could not hide the little boy inside.
John battled the typical grave junkie diseases: pericarditis, endocaritis, phlebitis. His scabbed legs and arms resembled moonscape. He did two or three stints at various stages of his addiction in Walden House, San Francisco, a drug diversion program. It was a tough love, no bullshit sort of operation, and he cleaned up for stretches, and he cultivated strong connections with a couple of well-meaning counselors, who hung with him, never giving in to his crap, but also never giving up hope for him. This is the hard line anybody who ever loved him walked at one point or another. His greatest advocate, and his friend, was the magnetic director Alfonso Acampora.
2003-03-25 San Francisco—The apparent suicide of Walden House CEO Alfonso Acampora came as his leadership at the nationally renowned drug and alcohol rehabilitation program was under threat from a state attorney general’s investigation into alleged financial irregularities.
The criminal probe, which has been under way for six months, was prompted by a whistleblower complaint from a former Walden House board member who has alleged widespread fiscal mismanagement at the nonprofit. The complaint included allegations that Acampora padded the payroll with family members, doled out business to members of the Walden House board and billed the agency for his own questionable and sometimes lavish perks.
—sfgate.com
•
I find it difficult to read much less understand prison memoirs. Perhaps the material is too hot for me. Once at Cal I taught Jack Henry Abbott’s In the Belly of the Beast, but I don’t think I ever got emotionally past what the man did upon being released, that is, stabbing to death a waiter he felt had disrespected him. People are still talking about Piper Kerman’s Orange Is the New Black, and her story truly makes for terrific television. Then there’s also Joe Loya, a onetime bank robber, who writes powerfully and authentically of his time behind bars without excusing himself.
For my money, nobody compares to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a genuinely heroic man who was imprisoned and executed at thirty-nine for resisting the Nazis. A trailblazing theologian and pastor, he wrote heartbreakingly clarion prose, including these words from his great Letters and Papers from Prison:
We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer…
There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve—even in pain—the authentic relationship. Furthermore, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.
This speaks to me about my brother.
•
Nobody is going to argue that prison in the United States is a path to rehabilitation. To be clear, of course the community is probably safer for the incarceration of hardened criminals. But just as obviously, prisons are overcrowded with low-level drug offenders, banished there due to the minimum sentencing madness of the eighties, prisoners who are easy pickings for the gangs who fearlessly roam the yard.
Yes, prison writings make for a distinct, often potent genre. The problem with reading my brother’s letters is they don’t read like a genre to me. My brother is part of no genre, he is sui generis. His words are the only words left that belong to him. As I pore over these letters, John’s indignation feels real, his agony palpable. His voice is alive. His words curl around in my head like the omnipresent concertina wire above his prison walls, every bit as entangling, as restraining, as wounding.
What is the purpose of a memoir? Or this memoir? Is it to exhume the memories? Is it to bring back the dead? Is it to make sure the living never perish? If so, it’s a doomed project. That doesn’t mean it must be a failure. People die, their stories do not. And their pain persists as well, but as it was when they were alive we can do very little to assuage that unassuageable pain.
Reading my brother’s letters rocks me decades after he penned them. He’s fixing every day, I have to assume, and he’s fucked up, and playing me, and he is hopeless, but since he was once alive, maybe he isn’t hopeless, and he feels alive. Which he always will be.
At the same time, I will always fail him because he will never be here in the world again.
If Bonhoeffer is right, I should regard John in the light of all he suffered.
Ghosts. I don’t believe in them. But sometimes they seem to believe in me.
He was hospitalized at least three times I am aware of, not counting prison infirmaries. At least once I was there on his death watch at Highland Hospital in Oakland, a death that didn’t materialize then, or during his other hospital stays. His death occurred later, when he OD’d and died, alone on the tiled bathroom floor of his San Francisco apartment. Coroner’s terse determination: acute drug toxicity. He was fifty-one years old.
There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort.
•
This is what I said on January 25, 2003, to the almost two hundred people who had gathered to say goodbye to Johnny:
In times of mourning people speak of how someone touched their lives. I understand what they mean, but Johnny did more than touch our lives.
Johnny was a storm. Johnny is a storm. A storm of truths, a storm of confusion. A storm of rose petals, a storm of steel. A nonviolent man who was a man of violent self-contradictions. A man who infuriated us, a man who made us laugh. A man we wanted to scream at, a man we wanted to put in our pocket for safekeeping.
I guess this is a way to say that he was a human being with his weaknesses and his strengths. With weaknesses and vulnerabilities that were his strengths.
So I have one intention here today. To honor my little brother Johnny by being as honest as I can be about him. And if I can, to speak a few words that wouldn’t embarrass him too much.
I can’t speak for the Johnny you knew—the Johnny you gave birth to, or were married to, or loved, or rode with, or worked with—the Johnny you cherish and miss so much today. I’m not sure I can really speak for the Johnny I think I knew. There were so many Johnnys.
Thousands of years ago somebody wrote a book that is read by millions of people everyday. It is one of the most famous books of all time and it ends like this: “But there were many other things which he did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
That book has a title that is very fitting. You will find it in the Bible. It is called the Gospel According to John.
The world cannot contain all the stories that could be told: The Gospel According to Johnny. There were many Johnnys. Maybe too many Johnnys. Some of them were hard to take, some of them too beautiful to be believed. I don’t know everything you know, but I know there were Johnnys you never knew, just as there were Johnnys I never knew.
Still, I myself can only begin by remembering the good times, the hilarious times, the sweet times. His great dogs—Thomson and Renzo. His Harleys. His generous Christmas presents. Trips to Tahoe. Thanksgiving Dinners. Working at Giovanni’s—where John was easily the best restaurant manager you could imagine. And what a cook and bartender and waiter. The best. And the football games. Blackjack. The parties. More than anything, the heartbreaking kindnesses he routinely performed for all of us.
If he was your waiter—at Scoma’s, at Eugene’s—you would have given him a 30 percent tip or more—and asked for him the next time you came to the restaurant. If you were his nephew and two years old, like Mario once was, he would have put a big Raiders hat on your little head and big leather gloves on your tiny hands and set you on his Harley where you would be beaming with joy about being lucky enough to have him for your uncle. If you were any one of his loyal dogs, you would protect him against anything and everyone. If you met him when he was straight, which he was for eight precious years, he spoke to you from his heart and made you feel that you mattered—and you never walked away from him without knowing you had been in a rare presence. If you were his tapped-out graduate student older brother, like I was in 1975, he would have gotten you a job so you could pay the bills. And if you were his brother at five years old and fifteen months older than Johnny, as I was, you would be—I can see it now—side by side on the couch watching with hushed breath The Wizard of Oz and hoping along with him for a happy ending somewhere over the rainbow.
Yes, a happy ending. I’m still hoping for John to have a happy ending. And as an old friend of his, Father Shane, said, “When I think of Johnny I see a beautiful wild stallion.” And then he added that Johnny is now enjoying his greatest thrill—the greatest high of all—in heaven, where his sufferings are now fulfilled.
But I need to remember how much John suffered—and in ways I will never completely understand.
Yes, a man of contradictions.
We knew this day would happen, and that it would come too soon, as it did. And as clearly as we knew it, we still cannot believe it. Johnny broke our hearts while he was alive, he is breaking our hearts now that he is not. We are helpless before this experience—but maybe not.
Maybe not. Maybe Johnny is leading us, but the problem is I can’t tell where. To be honest, I never knew where he was leading me when he was alive. Maybe there’s a chance he is leading me to a little bit of wisdom, maybe to a measure of peace. If you’re like me, you could use a lot of both right now.
In Psalm 139, I find something I can use. This is the song that begins, “Lord, thou hast examined me and knowest me. Thou knowest all, whether I sit down or rise up.” And he goes on: “Where can I escape from thy spirit? Where can I flee from thy presence?”
It’s an interesting question, and a strange one. I mean, why would someone want to flee from his presence, to flee from being known?
But the answer is obvious. We all want to escape. Life is hard. We live in a vale of tears. And yet, of course, we also live in a world of wonders. What an ordinary contradiction.
Here’s another one. We know we must die. Yet we find the idea personally incredible—how can we possibly die? So what is it? Are we crazy? Or are we immortal? Or are we both crazy and immortal?
Reason I mention this: Doesn’t that sound like Johnny? Crazy and immortal. Crazily immortal. Immortally crazy.
Johnny is all-too-human. He wanted escape—but he also wanted freedom and a new life.
Let’s go back to Psalm 139: feeling sad and confused, the speaker in the psalm comes to an insight:
“If I say, Surely darkness will steal over me,
[and] night will close around me,
darkness is no darkness for thee
and night is luminous as day;
to thee both dark and light are one.”
To God both dark and light are one. To God both dark and light are one.
That’s the sort of God who will welcome with open arms Johnny, a man of self-contradictions, a man acquainted equally with the light and the dark.
I believe that Johnny did the heroic best he could with his life. And the best he could is far better than most of us can contemplate.
We can lament the loss of everything that Johnny was, but let us not stop there. When we are honest with ourselves—when I am honest with myself—I know the existence of the deepest darkness even in the most dazzling light. And I know—I believe—I hope—I trust—that for Johnny that darkness somehow right now is shining with an unimaginable light. He was and is a world of wonders unto himself.
When Johnny telephoned my office or house, he would guess sometimes I would be screening my calls, and he always rambled and rambled on and on till I picked up: “Brother Joe, pick up the phone. It’s your brother John. Brother Joe, pick up the phone.”
Brother John, I don’t know how this happened, but I’m still here.