* * *
—
After a couple of weeks at the halfway house, I get my first home pass, to spend the weekend at Mom’s. Her town house, on the Upper East Side, is as different from prison as I can imagine. When I walk in, I’m greeted by Pasha and Blanca, Mom’s pair of albino Dobermans, and by Namaste, her Italian greyhound. In the foyer, I see the 6´ x 4´ birthday card on canvas, “to Dia,” painted for Mom when she was a child by Joan Miró, who also lived on Mallorca. I sleep in the room where Viviane has been living for the past couple of months. It’s beautifully decorated, and has a huge, comfortable bed with a padded headboard and a comforter and lots of pillows.
I take a shower. It’s so opulent. The floor is marble. After years of wearing shower shoes, this is the first time I’ve touched a bathroom floor with my bare feet since I can’t remember when, and it’s such a nice feeling. The shower has a rain showerhead, and I let the spray flow down over me. After years of showers that were too hot or too cold, and which shot out a stinging jet or an ineffectual mist, the biggest luxury is just having some control over the experience.
On Mom’s patio after my release.
There’s a full-length mirror. It’s the first I’ve seen in years and also, because prisons have only polished metal versions, the first clear one I’ve seen my reflection in. It’s weird to see my entire body at once—naked, cut, tattooed. It’s a map of the damage done. The scarred finger from the bone-deep cut I got in Idaho when I was a teenager. The faint, bowl-shaped line on my brow, from driving my car into a tree next to the highway in Santa Barbara. The hairline crack along my jaw, made by Amanda’s mini–morning star, which has never fully healed: I can still feel the break with my finger, I can only open my jaw so wide, and it sometimes locks open. The red puncture mark on my elbow from being stabbed in Las Vegas. The ugly bump on the finger I broke playing football at Loretto. The surgical scar from the base of my thigh to the top of my calf bone, from my knee injury at Loretto, and another scar on my hip, where they put some more screws in.
I’m still working out five days a week, and I’m as fit as I’ve ever been. I feel lucky not to have track marks or scarring or abscesses from my years of addiction. Especially the cocaine years. That year and a half of shooting coke—typically trash product from delivery dealers that had been stepped on who knows how many times—was far more damaging to me than my half-decade on heroin. Amazingly, I have no obvious long-term health issues from those years of using. I do worry about less visible impacts. Can I still get a woman pregnant? What have I done to my memory? I don’t know how my overdoses affected me, what exactly that loss of oxygen did to my brain. I’m unsure of the toll of sleep deprivation during my benders, or of the years of stress and burnout and paranoia.
In Mom’s kitchen after my release.
When I’m at Mom’s, the halfway house calls her landline every three and a half hours, day and night. When I answer the phone, a recorded voice says “Contact,” and I respond with my register number: 70707-054. No one in the house gets a full night’s sleep.
* * *
—
In prison, people used to say things to me like “It will be hard getting out” and “It’s a hell of an adjustment.” I’d laugh at them. I’d say, “This isn’t my life, that’s my life,” and “I’ll fit back in like I didn’t skip a beat.” I was sure of that.
But it is difficult. Sometimes, at the halfway house, marshals take someone away in chains, and I get a small shiver, aware of how precarious my freedom is. Prison bars have given way to a straitjacket of restrictions and obligations. While I have more family support than most, I have to contend with many of the same workaday challenges all inmates reentering society face, like building credit, and I open a card with a tiny limit to begin the process.
As I reacclimate to the normal world, I feel the same queasiness that comes from surfacing too quickly when you scuba dive. Riding the subway is jarring. I watch everyone with their heads lowered, staring at their phones like zombies, and feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone. Having become programmed to be on high alert around people, I have trouble with the crush of bodies, the jostling, the lack of personal space. A few times, I start sweating so profusely that I ask Dr. Kaminski about it. He says I’m having panic attacks.
It’s a lot, and it’s hard on Viviane and me. We’re both fiery, and our relationship has its ups and downs. Everyone else is getting the best I have to offer. She’s getting the excess steam I have to blow off. After a few months, when I start settling in and finding my routine and relaxing a bit, I realize just how stressed I’ve been.
It’s hard not to have one foot back in prison. I’m still in the convict mindset of I do for you, you do for me; you fuck me, I fuck you. I’m grateful for the loyalty of old friends who stuck by me through my seven-year ordeal, writing and calling and visiting, and I remember those who didn’t. I remember people I wrote to who didn’t write back. People who say, “I didn’t know where to reach you” must not have tried very hard. The BOP’s Inmate Locator makes it very easy, or that’s what I tell myself anyway.
Out on the street, if you have an hour with someone, you get the best version of that person. It takes a long time to see what they’re really about, how they act in different situations, what they’re capable of and what they aren’t. In the joint, that stuff comes out in a matter of weeks. When you spend three months with someone, you really get the measure of that person, so the bonds come quickly and feel more solid.
Apart from the other residents of the halfway house, I’m prohibited from having contact with any current or former prisoners, but I hear from friends from time to time. I learn that Mike Bridge got his last offensive tattoo, the outsize swastika on his chest, covered up and that his mother is really happy about it. I run into a few guys just while I’m going about my business. In Tribeca, I see Jerry, an Italian guy I liked who was Jackie D’Amico’s sidekick at MCC. On the subway, I run into Peter, a bunkie from MCC, and Black, a friend from Lewisburg. I see Dimitri, from Loretto, and he says, “Holy shit, dude, what the fuck?” I’m 190 pounds, as bulked up as possible, and look ridiculous; my head looks small on top of my body. It will take me a few months to get back to a more natural weight.
* * *
—
One day, Dad invites me to have lunch with him and Dylan. Dad wasn’t around when I was released from Danbury, and he hasn’t made much effort to see me since then. Maybe he doesn’t trust my sobriety, or my relationships with other cons and ex-cons, or my resolve to stay on the right side of the law. I don’t want to say no to his lunch invitation, but my halfway-house restrictions make the logistics tough for me. I start thinking out loud how I could make it work.
“Forget about it,” he says.
“What do you mean, I want to come.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it, it doesn’t make sense.”
He hangs up. My feelings are really hurt. He can’t send a car for me, so I can spend the day with him? If he did, I’d be able to get back to the halfway house in time, and I know it’s an option he would consider, so the fact that he doesn’t suggest it feels intentional. Like he doesn’t really want to see me. I’m angry.
A week later, I go over to his apartment to see him, and I mention our last conversation. He says, “Nah, I didn’t say ‘Forget about it.’ ” I say, “You did say ‘Forget about it,’ and you know you did, so don’t sit there and tell me you didn’t.” I think he feels bad about it, and when I sense my anger getting the better of me, my eyes are opened: for an instant, on his face, I glimpse the effect of my outburst on him. I know I’m not going to do anything to escalate this. I know that I’m of sound mind. But given where I’ve been, and how recently I’ve come home, I can’t expect other people to know that. He’s starting to get to know me again, and I’m starting to present myself to him again. He’s visibly unsettled. I don’t want to make people feel that way. I’m still relearning how to express my feelings appropriately in my new real
ity. Clearly, I need to learn to temper my emotions.
After a few months, Dad starts warming up to me. We talk a few days a week and get together two or three times a month. I think he’s seeing that I’m on the right track, and he feels safer exposing himself to me. One day, we’re hanging out and he says, “I don’t know how you did it. How you went through the things you did.” It’s the first time he’s ever acknowledged it quite like that. I say, “Well, I’m home now.”
We never really became friends, as many fathers and sons do at a certain point, but now we’re starting to do that. We’re forming the relationship I’ve always wanted. Someone tells me there’s a tabloid story suggesting that Dad’s closeness to me is causing tensions between him and Catherine, but the truth, as far as I can tell, is the opposite: I credit Catherine with pushing him to extend his paternal love to me.
He becomes more generous. On my birthday, I show up at a restaurant in the West Village for what I think is dinner with Mom and Viviane and my brothers and sister but turns out to be a surprise party with some of my oldest friends, including Serebe and Eyal, from DJing. Dad is in L.A. for Pappy’s birthday, but he had reached out to Viviane to suggest this party, and has paid for it and helped to organize it. For a gift, he’s gotten me tickets to Hamilton. It’s a great evening, though I have to rush out of there, like Cinderella, to be back at the halfway house by my 9 p.m. curfew.
* * *
—
I have to live at the halfway house for six months. Then I can move into my own place. I’ve been looking forward to this, after so many years without privacy or solitude or quiet or any control over my environment. Dad feels strongly that after being in prison for so long, I should have my freedom. But I love Viviane, and we decide to move in together.
Finding a landlord willing to rent to an ex-con is a major problem for inmates reentering society. Even with all of my advantages, including parents willing to cosign my lease, several buildings reject me before I find an unfurnished one-bedroom rental in a building in Tribeca. While we’re waiting to move in, I live at Mom’s house for a month. Finally, Viviane and I move into our apartment with Phoenix, her white Maltese.
It’s incredible to be in my own place. Dad gives me a framed cartoon by Jules Feiffer of Dalton Trumbo soaking in his bathtub, which I hang on the wall. From our small balcony, I can see across Lower Manhattan to the gold figure that caps the Municipal Building, right next to the federal courthouse where I was sentenced and the jail where I lived for nearly a year. Every day, taking the 4 or 5 train to the halfway house or the Furthur Films offices or Mom’s, I glide beneath those buildings.
Dog-breeding history has passed me by. There are now Mastadors, which are pretty much like the Boerbadors I envisioned. Instead, I get a chocolate Lab puppy, a solid little ball I name Truck. I get a kick out of simple novelties, like using emojis in my text messages. Shopping feels new. I can’t believe the array of breakfast cereals now, and I buy several. Kashi Vanilla Pepita? In prison, I saw ads for all these amazing new video games that I wanted to try, so I go to Best Buy and get a PlayStation 3 and a bunch of games. The gameplay could be better, but the graphics are amazing. I don’t play much. I have too much else to do.
You forget what a luxury dentists are until you don’t have access to them. Now that I have six-month checkups, I really appreciate them. I also have a near-religious experience at my first post-release teeth cleaning. My mind is so pure and clear and chemical-free. They put the nitrous gas on me, and keep it on the whole time they’re cleaning my teeth, and I go into a celestial realm with angels.
Then I come back down to earth. In prison, it was easy to imagine that when I got out, everything would be beautiful. And that’s not always the case. I’m so conscious about time lost and don’t want to waste any more of it. I want to act. I want to vindicate Granny’s belief in me and her steadfast encouragement. I meet with an agent and go on an audition and am convinced I’m going to get the part. Of course, I don’t. I want to see Pappy before it’s too late, and when the rest of the family celebrates his 100th birthday in California, I hope to join them, only to be denied permission by my case manager.
My impatience and frustration and overall stress affect my relationship with Viviane. I know when things are off between us. I don’t doubt that Dad and Mom loved each other, but they didn’t like each other. Because of their example, I’m hyper-attuned to interpersonal conflict. If there are any issues in my relationship, I go immediately to: Wait, I can’t do this. But I’m trying to let myself go with the flow this time. I’m happy to find that I’m able to keep things in perspective. When I’m getting carried away or letting something affect me negatively, I can keep the feeling in check.
Viviane is a huge part of why I’m on the right track and focused. She teaches yoga at Jivamukti, and she really does have a Zen personality, most of the time. She’s been a rock, and so loving and supportive and attentive. If I weren’t with her, I might be out on the prowl, staying out late, sleeping late, hanging in nightclubs, living a lifestyle not conducive to what I’m trying to accomplish. I want to grind and focus. As Dad sees her effect on me, and her devotion to our relationship, he starts to come around a bit on our cohabitation.
* * *
—
I’m taking a longer view of my acting goals. Dad asked if I was planning to take any acting classes, and I realized that if this is something I’m really serious about, I need to put in the work and time. I’ve joined a class that meets for five hours twice a week, on West Fifty-Fourth Street in the Theater District. The teacher is Wynn Handman, a legend who taught Dad as well as Denzel Washington, Christopher Walken, Mia Farrow, and many others. Wynn is ninety-four and still teaches four of these five-hour classes every week, and is present for all of them. The class is limited to professional actors, and Wynn can be blunt and critical. If I’m going to be exposed as a fraud, this is where it will happen.
The roles Wynn assigns me tend to be poetic soldiers or troubled artists. After all my concerns about frying my brain, I’m heartened to find that I can memorize lines well. My vocabulary is there for me when I need it. And though I haven’t been making TV or movies for the past seven years, to survive prison I was acting day in and day out. This feels like a natural fit for me, like it’s what I’m meant to do, and I get generally positive feedback.
At a class in May, I’m reading a scene from Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending, in which I play a drifter from New Orleans who’s had a lonely life and isn’t welcome in his new community. We’ve been working on the scene for two months, and I’ve been playing the part with a N’awlins accent. This time, Wynn says: “Let’s leave the accent out of it.” I’m embarrassed, because I know he’s right. I’ve been focusing more on nailing the accent than on the text and subtext.
Running the lines without the accent is hard. It keeps wanting to come back. I feel my face burning and am really self-conscious. All I want to do is take off and leave the class. I hate when people feel bad for me. It makes me feel weak. I cut out five minutes early to avoid having to talk to anyone. The next day, I have to run the scene again. It’s humbling, but I know that as an actor you have to have a thick skin. I think what I can do is dig really deep and offer a certain level of genuine emotion, of less-is-more naturalism.
I appreciate the art form in a much less superficial way than I did before. Now I understand what a rare and great thing it is to be able to use your persona and your body and your experiences as if they were an instrument to tell a story that inspires and touches people. When it’s done right, that’s what happens. There are different approaches, but the one that makes the most sense to me, and informs the techniques I work on, has to do with understanding a character and putting myself in their shoes. And what gives it authenticity is drawing from a real place inside you. The performances by other actors that I appreciate most have that quality.
I spend a lot of my time outside of class rehearsing. I’m hungry. I want to b
e fully immersed in this, pushing and working to make something happen. It feels really good to see, four or five months after my release, that the drive and determination and discipline I nurtured in prison are still with me. I’m going to keep plugging away until I get a break, until someone’s willing to take a risk on me. My plan is to move to L.A.—that’s where the work is—when Judge Berman permits it.
I’m also looking into getting some of my tattoos removed. The whole process is long and painful: as many as nine sessions for a single tattoo, over as long as two years. But I’m concerned some of my tats could deter directors from hiring me for certain roles. The ugliest ones I have I got before I went to prison. Tick and Tock, which run the length of my forearms, definitely have to go. They’re eyesores and don’t mean anything to me anymore, and with tats in such a visible place, it’s going to be hard not to get typecast. I also like the idea of being able to wear short-sleeve shirts without any ink showing.
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