Maybe so. But before the Vast Explorer departed from Martha’s Vineyard, Captain Gray put young Mr. Kennedy to the test. John was given the onerous task of swabbing out the lazarette, a nauseatingly filthy storage space at the extreme stern of the ship that is often referred to as the “glory hole.” The cesspool smell emanating from the lazarette was so powerful that it caused even seasoned sailors to retch. John did the job perfectly, in record time, and—as always—without uttering one word of complaint. “John never complained about anything, ever,” Clifford said. “He just did whatever he was told to do, period—and with a smile.”
It was hard to imagine anything more perfectly suited to John than hunting beneath the sea for buried treasure. All the things he craved were there: danger, excitement, camaraderie, the thrill of discovery, and—during moments alone on deck or in the silent depths of the sea—solitude.
Diving six hours a day, unwinding with his mates at local Vineyard pubs, and then bunking with the rest of the crew belowdecks, John quickly became one of the most valuable members of the salvage operation. He was also the Vast Explorer’s resident cutup, imitating Gray’s squint and teasing Clifford for violating ship rules he himself had laid down (“Hey! Who left personal belongings in the dive room? Let’s throw them overboard!”).
“John was someone we all liked and appreciated,” said Clifford, who would take two more years to finally locate the Whydah—the only pirate ship ever found. “I had the highest respect for him.”
With good reason. At one point, Clifford’s team decided to explore the inside of a World War I freight vessel that had sunk off the Vineyard. They were deep inside the bowels of the ship when one of the divers, John Beyer, suddenly couldn’t breathe. Beyer’s regulator had broken, Clifford remembered, and John “immediately gave him his regulator and they buddy-breathed.”
The experience was similar to the time years earlier when John’s breathing apparatus malfunctioned and Peter Duchin led him slowly to the surface—but with an important difference. This time the two men had to find their way through the decaying passageways of the ship. “It was like going through a maze to get out of the ship,” Clifford said, “but John didn’t even blink. There was no panic. It was just cool, calm, collected, business as usual.”
(Incredibly, it was John who first spotted the Whydah’s cannons, but at the time his reports were discounted by experts. In 2007, divers found John’s weathered, plastic compass with the initials “J.F.K.” attached to one of the cannons—precisely where he said it would be.)
John’s “cool, calm, collected” side masked a roiling inner turmoil over who he really was, where he fit in, what he really remembered about his father. One reason John kept in more or less constant motion—working out, running, biking, skiing, waterskiing, kayaking, swimming, roller-skating, hiking, even skydiving—was to avoid having to dwell on the historic events that shaped his young life, and where it all might lead in the future. “If I stop to think about it all,” he told Rob Littell, “I would just sit down and fall apart.”
Yet he did stop to think. There was an introspective side to John unknown to the public and even some of his friends. This was the side of John that found comfort in heading into the wilderness alone for days, or spending endless hours paddling a one-man kayak off the shore of Cape Cod. With college now behind him, John took more solitary walks at night atop the narrow breakwater that extended from Hyannis Port into Nantucket Sound. The wind was often howling and waves crashed against the rocks—it was often not the safest place to be. “What the hell were you doing out there by yourself?” Noonan would ask his friend.
“Pondering,” John would answer.
It did not help that his birthday was just three days after the anniversary of Dallas (Caroline’s November 27 birthday was also too close for comfort, and the proximity to Thanksgiving added to the jumble of emotions). “I just wish the two dates weren’t so close,” John would say to Littell and others. “The press just never lets up.”
This year—the twentieth anniversary of JFK’s murder—promised to be especially trying. Jackie dreaded the inevitable media frenzy, and what impact it might have on John at a time when he needed to focus on what direction he wanted his life to take. She was determined to take bold steps to remove John from the line of fire.
It had been twenty-one years since millions of Indians lined the streets of New Delhi shouting “Jackie Ki Jai! Ameriki Rani!” (“Hail Jackie! Queen of America!”) during her visit to India and Pakistan as first lady. Now Jackie, who had always claimed a spiritual connection to the subcontinent, was sending John to India. There he would travel the country doing research on rural development—a nine-month stint under the auspices of the University of New Delhi.
Jackie’s friend, the writer Gita Mehta, praised this bold move as an example of how “subtle and intelligent a parent she has been.” John Kenneth Galbraith, who as U.S. ambassador to India had been Jackie’s host during her famous visit, agreed. “She wanted to get away from the circus atmosphere at home, certainly,” he said. “But that was a small part of it. India was worlds away from anything he had ever known—a place where he would be left alone to focus on the things that really matter in life.”
There was an obvious element of risk—John no longer had his Secret Service protection, and would be traveling the remotest, most undeveloped regions of the country. As alien and daunting as it all seemed, Jackie still felt John would be safer there.
In another unexpected yet shrewd move, Jackie did not resist when John asked if he could bring his girlfriend, Sally Munro, along. “Why not?” she said with a shrug. “India is a very romantic place. Best to enjoy it with someone.”
John, as was his habit, worked hard at making the most of his time in India. In addition to his studies and the research work that took him to villages in the most remote corners of India, John clambered over temple ruins, climbed mountains, made side trips to Sri Lanka and Nepal, hit the beaches with friends, bathed in the Ganges—and sampled the hashish that was in plentiful supply.
He also met Mother Teresa, and was surprised when she scolded him for walking in the street. “It is very dangerous. Did you not hear what I told you?” she barked. “Why don’t you listen?”
Returning to New York in June 1984, John moved with his friend Robert Littell into a two-bedroom, two-bathroom sublet at 309 West Eighty-sixth Street. John went straight to work as deputy director of the 42nd Street Development Corporation, which his mother had co-founded, collecting an annual salary of just twenty thousand dollars. He also helped get two fledging charities off the ground: Reaching Up and the East Harlem School at Exodus House.
On any given day over the next fifteen years, John could be spotted weaving in and out of traffic on his $1,500 Univega bike as he headed to the next place he had to be. Sometimes he’d be wearing an Armani suit, other times only shorts and running shoes—wherever he ventured in the city, said a neighbor, “people might point, or even call out his name, but usually they just paid no attention.” Either way, “John just looked straight ahead and kept right on going.”
As dependent as he was on these expensive bikes, John made little effort to hold on to them. Out of impatience and absentmindedness, he seldom took the time to lock his bike or chain it to a stationary object. The results were predictable: John had a bike stolen every two or three months. “He could spend thousands for a bike,” Billy Noonan said, “and have it stolen an hour later.” Littell believed his friend “set some kind of record” when it came to bikes—and wallets. Once, John and Littell drove an hour back to a rest stop on Interstate 95 because John had inadvertently flung his wallet into a trash can at McDonald’s. (Scores of frustrating incidents like this finally led John to chain both his wallet and his keys to his pants.)
As always, John left plenty of time for play as he weighed his long-term career options. He continued to frequent the clubs where he gained instant entree (“Doormen bowed and velvet ropes fell,” Littell said). Mo
nday nights were usually spent at sports bars around the city watching football with his friends, and he had courtside seats for Knicks games at Madison Square Garden.
And then there was the time John invited a dozen friends and their dates over to watch a World Series game, turned on the remote—and a XXX porn scene lit up the screen. Realizing that he’d left one of the many porn videos he owned in the VCR, he scrambled to turn off the set and then sheepishly offered to freshen everyone’s drinks.
For a short time John, who made a special visit to see the erotic carvings at Konark and Khajuraho when he was studying in India, seemed fascinated by pornography. One midtown video store owner accused him of owing more than a thousand dollars in fines for neglecting to return dozens of X-rated tapes. Wearing shorts and carrying a backpack, John went unrecognized as he strolled through Times Square, stopping to sample the live sex shows that proliferated there at the time.
During this hedonistic phase of his life, John was also acquiring a reputation as a bit of an exhibitionist. He had already posed for a series of provocative, seminude photographs taken by a female friend at Brown—including one apparently making imaginative use of his mother’s sable coat.
“He loves to walk around in the nude,” said Couri Hay, who worked out at the Aspen Club in Colorado when John was there. “He walks around in the gym with his bathrobe open, and when he takes a shower he leaves the curtain open.” On Cape Cod, Hay said, John was equally cheeky, skinny-dipping at a Hyannis Port pool party, then strolling around naked while waiters served guests drinks. In Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, locals claimed he walked around town wearing only a towel, giggling when he coyly let it slip. Hay’s verdict: JFK Jr. “could have been a porno star.”
Several years later John caught the attention of vacationers at St. Barth’s in the French West Indies. This time, New York travel agent Shelley Shusteroff captured John swimming and walking along on the beach in the altogether. Shusteroff, presumably mindful of John’s privacy issues, turned down a six-figure offer to publish the photographs.
In 1984, Jackie was still doing everything she could to prevent John from being swallowed up by Ethel’s unruly tribe. That became even more imperative after August 25, when Bobby and Ethel’s heroin-addicted son David was found dead in a Palm Beach hotel after injecting himself with the painkiller Demerol, the tranquilizer Melaril, and cocaine. David was twenty-eight.
That Christmas eve, Jackie and John suffered another blow. After decades of alcohol and drug abuse, Peter Lawford died at sixty-one. Jackie, who remained close to her former brother-in-law, called Pat Seton Lawford and wept over the phone. John was upset, too; he had counted on Lawford’s support in convincing Jackie that he belonged on stage and not in a courtroom.
John spent Christmas with Caroline and Jackie at 1040, then flew to Los Angeles the next day for Lawford’s funeral. “Jackie was grief stricken—very emotional, and very kind,” Pat Lawford said. “John was so sweet, and a little lost. Peter was one hundred percent behind his wish to become an actor. With Peter gone there was really no one else in the family who would back him.” Indeed, all the Kennedys—including Caroline—agreed with Jackie that he should go to law school. Most of Jackie’s friends felt that way, too, with the notable exception of Rudolf Nureyev. “Show some balls!” Nureyev told John with his usual Russian flair for the dramatic. “Do what you want!”
John found a new accomplice in his old Benefit Street housemate, Christina Haag. The daughter of a wealthy marketing executive, Haag, like Caroline, had attended Manhattan’s exclusive Brearley School. Growing up in the same Upper East Side circles, Haag had actually known John since they were fifteen. In March 1985, they both signed on to play the lead roles in Winners by Brian Friel, the Irish playwright who would go on to win a Tony for Dancing at Lughnasa. The drama, about star-crossed lovers named Mag and Joe who drown in a boating mishap, eerily foreshadowed events in John’s own life.
Christina, who had spent a year studying acting at the Juilliard School, was taken aback by John’s talent for mimicry—although, given his background, it seemed only logical that he’d be able to deliver a flawless Irish accent. When they got into a fight over the correct way for an Irishman to pronounce the word God, it was left to the Dublin-born director Nye Heron to decide—and he ruled in John’s favor. “Humbled, I was grateful he didn’t gloat,” Haag recalled. “His ear, the gift of any actor, was superb.” After that, Haag added, “I took my pointers from John.”
Unfortunately, the play’s opening was postponed a month after John somehow managed to fracture his right ankle while working out at the gym. It was one of many such mishaps that plagued the accident-prone John throughout his life. He actually embraced these minor failings that led to the broken bones, the lost keys, the stolen bikes. These were the shortcomings, one friend said, that “he knew made people feel more comfortable around him, that made him seem a little more like the rest of us.”
Around the same time, Jackie was dealing with another family tragedy—one that the press paid very little attention to. John’s aunt Janet—Jackie’s half sister Janet Auchincloss Rutherfurd—had been undergoing treatment for lung cancer for six months. Jackie even donated bone marrow in a vain attempt to save her.
“Jackie really came through for our sister,” Jamie Auchincloss said. “Jackie pushed aside everything else to be there for Janet. I think that was one of Jackie’s finest moments, really.” Yusha Auchincloss agreed. “The strength and concern and love she showed for Janet were inspiring. When the chips were down, Jackie was that kind of person. Totally loyal to her friends and to her family.”
Jackie was holding her sister Janet’s hand in March 1985 when Janet, thirty-nine and the mother of three, died at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital. Jamie was equally impressed with the way Jackie swung into action to handle Janet’s funeral. “Jackie was so acquainted with death . . . When it came to funerals, she understood ritual better than anyone. She was like a priest.”
John was among the mourners at his aunt’s memorial service in Newport. Yet his focus was more on the cumulative effect all this grief was having on his mother. “Janet was so young,” Yusha said, “and even though there was a big age difference she and Jackie were very close. She was devastated, of course. We all were.”
John made his professional acting debut on August 15, 1985, at Manhattan’s seventy-five-seat Irish Arts Center. Jackie had permitted him to do the play only if critics were barred from seeing it. “Jackie was terrified,” her cousin John Davis said, “that the critics would come and see John in Winners, since rave reviews might encourage him to continue a career in acting.”
To minimize the publicity, Jackie and Caroline boycotted the show entirely. It was just as well, John said. Their presence, he told the cast, would only “cause a fuss”—and guarantee front-page headlines in the next day’s New York Post. “John just wanted to see if he could measure up as a professional,” Davis said, “in something other than a college production.”
John was hardly likely to get booed off the stage. This production of Winners would be performed only six times, and before an invitation-only audience of family and friends. Yet the words of praise from those involved in the production were effusive: “John is the best young actor I’ve seen in twelve years,” proclaimed Nye Heron, who went on to produce such films as In the Name of the Father, In America, and The Boxer. The Irish Arts Center’s Sandy Boyen called John “an extraordinary and very talented young actor. He could have a very successful stage and film career if he wanted it.” But, Heron added, “evidently that’s not going to happen.”
Not unaware of John’s star power, several producers offered to take Winners straight to Broadway if John stayed in the cast. John declined. “This is definitely not a professional acting debut by any means,” he asserted. “It’s just a hobby.” (Five years later he would flex his acting muscles for the first and only time onscreen, delivering just two lines as a “guitar-playing Romeo” in the indie film
A Matter of Degrees.)
Winners did mark a turning point of sorts for John, who by this time had broken up with Sally Munro. He fell hard for the lushly beautiful, blue-eyed Christina, and after taking her home to Brooklyn on the back of his new motorcycle (which was stolen days later), told her so. Unfortunately, Haag had decided—for the time being at least—to stay with her longtime boyfriend, the actor Bradley Whitford. (Whitford would go on to fame playing Josh Lyman in TV’s The West Wing.)
Not accustomed to rejection, John tried to make sense of why anyone would choose a struggling young actor with a pretentious name like Bradley Whitford over him. Not that he lacked for female companionship. Littell recalled the day six-foot-tall Sports Illustrated cover model Ashley Richardson showed up at their Eighty-sixth Street apartment looking for John, wearing nothing but a mink coat and Prada booties. On another occasion during this period between serious girlfriends, John failed to hang up the phone properly when he was in bed with one girl, giving an earful of noisy sex to another. The girl on the phone remained on the line long enough to scream at John, but forgave him the very next day.
“Is he sexy?” asked Clic model Audra Avizienis, who homed in on John’s seldom-recognized capacity for introspection. “Oh yes, he has this quiet sadness. There’s something pensive and sad about him.”
John’s mother, meanwhile, was having a difficult time trying to come to terms with the senseless death of her sister. “She was such a happy person, so much fun and just so alive,” John said of his aunt Janet. “Watching her suffer like that was just too much for my mother.”
Emotionally drained, Jackie decided to visit the place she had come to regard as her spiritual wellspring: India. By all accounts her fascination with all things Eastern—particularly Hinduism, Buddhism, and the mystics—bordered on the obsessive. She now made pilgrimages to the subcontinent on an annual basis. John joined her in India that fall, staying in the glittering palaces of Delhi, Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Hyderabad. It became clear to John on this journey—the first time he visited India with Jackie—why she kept returning to the region. “The people of India,” John Kenneth Galbraith said, “revered her.”
The Good Son_JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved Page 25