The Night of the Gun
Page 34
In reductive psychoanalytic terms, I have achieved a measure of integration, not just between That Guy and This Guy, but between my past and my present. Carl Jung suggested that until we express both our masculine and feminine sides, we can’t be made whole. For all the testosterone I have deployed in my affairs, I experienced salvation in expressing common maternal behavior. You are always told to recover for yourself, but the only way I got my head out of my own ass was to remember that there were other asses to consider.
I now inhabit a life I don’t deserve, but we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn’t end any time soon.
62
TRUE STORY
When I started trying to remember who I was, I bought an external hard drive, a piece of technology that is designed to preserve the past. But the clerk at Best Buy asked how big it needed to be. How big?
19.3 gigabytes.
That’s how much my life came out to be, measured in bits on that drive. Over the course of two years of reporting and writing, the data accumulated and began to tell a story that I thought I knew, but didn’t.
The video of Donald, a combination of angel and ghost, swigging out of a bottle of Old Grand-Dad telling me, yes, there may have been a gun that night, but no, he did not have it? 166,631 kilobytes.
The video of the interview with Chris suggesting that he was probably right? 205,375 kilobytes.
The PDF of the police report involving the assault of one William C. Mikhil, aka the cabdriver I never knew? 1,025 kilobytes.
The DDS audio file—there is no video—of Doolie talking about how I sat on her chest and hit her? 7,098 kilobytes.
The JPEG file of Meagan as a newborn, surrounded by all manner of machines, fighting for a life that would turn out to be splendid? 773 kilobytes.
The video of my wife in our cabin, looking into the camera and saying matter-of-factly that she knew every single day of her life would be an adventure and a fine one at that? 230,032 kilobytes.
The music I listened to all summer to write the book, to hear something besides the voice of regret from me and others in those long nights of writing? (Songs most frequently played: “Chillout Tent” by the Hold Steady, “Bastards of Young” by the Replacements, “You Love to Fail” by the Magnetic Fields, Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, by Beethoven, “Whatever Happened to the Girl in Me?” by Ike Reilly—2,836 songs, all listened to at least once.) 6.94 gigabytes.
The typed interview with Bob, the guy who ran Hennepin County treatment programs and who told me that I had one thing in my favor: a “soft piece of the statistical end of this business”; what he called the “ability to be hopeful”? 27 kilobytes.
The book that folded all of it—the audio/video interviews, the lies, the true stories, the scans, the pictures, the arrest reports, the medical documents, the amends, the accusations, the promises of love, forgiveness, and vengeance—into one not-so-tidy package? 37,586 kilobytes.
At the end of the night, when I would finish writing, I would plug the hard drive into the computer, always caught by the symbolism of my own need for an external memory. I would transfer the data from the computer to the little box and then hold it by the cord, staring at the shiny metal exterior and gaping in wonder at a box that knew more about me than I did.
The box knew that I had the gun, that I did not steal my children, but that I was not an obvious choice for a custodial parent. It noticed that my first counselor lost his license, my criminal attorney was disbarred, and my mentor went to prison, while all the while I was held more or less harmless. The memory card knows that I stiffed every attorney who helped me but paid every drug dealer I owed. It knows that David Bowie did not sing to me and that cancer hurt me, even though I pretended it didn’t. The box knows the real name of the cabdriver I beat up, and somewhere amid all the 1s and 0s, that others corrupted me as I corrupted them. The box did the math and found I went to treatment five times, not four, and narrowly avoided a sixth. The box is aware that I was a rotten coke dealer and a serious journalist. The data in the box surmised that God did not forsake me, perhaps because nuns prayed for me.
The hard drive was sitting on the car seat next to me on Monday, June 4, 2007, filled with everything I had learned about a story I thought I already knew. I was heading up to our cabin, and I was in a hurry. I got caught speeding outside Saratoga Springs. It was the day I was to begin writing the book, and I took it as an omen that the halo of flies I used to wear could be summoned as needed.
I sat there holding my license out the window with my seat belt securely fastened. The cop asked me if I had my belt on when I flew by him.
“I can’t help you with that, officer.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t remember, I just didn’t want to say it.
“Oh really,” he said, leaning in. “Is there anything I should know about your history?”
Ummmmm, no. I squirmed a bit, swallowing the urge to crack wise. Maybe you could check the database, sir, and tell me, did Donald have the gun or did I? I already knew that if he dialed me up on the computer, he wouldn’t find much. Twenty years is a long time, and even my face-plant a few years earlier was in a different state. So really, what did he need to know, apart from the fact that I wasn’t wearing a belt when I went by him, a fact that he could ascertain without my assistance?
The cop, who was young and friendly, was still standing there as I was running all that history in my head. I heard myself open my mouth, speaking about the recent past instead.
“I did not have my seat belt on when I went by you.”
He went back to the car, wrote me up a ticket for no seat belt and said he was going to let me slide on the speeding. I thanked him and went on my way.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BOOK: Flip, David, Ruth, Cynthia, DonJack, Michelle, Peter, Jonathan, Phil, Jaime, Carolyn, Alexis, Sharon
WEB: Nick, Jigar
REPORTING: Anna, Donald, Chris, Doolie, Tommy, Brett, Marion, Barbara, Phil, Mickey, Peter, Todd, Pat, Terry, Deborah, Brian, Frank, Cathy, Barb, Emily, Rose, Daniel, Scott, Scotty, Seth, Mim, Bob, Dave, David, Annie, Steve, Lizzy, Nancy, John, Tony, Paul, Cute Michael, Peter, Emily, Julie, Zelda, Patrick, Steve, Dan, Tak
WORK: Sam, Bruce, Lorne, Bill, Jill, John, Dave, Danielle, Scott, Larry, Campbell, Randy, Tim, Anne, Julie, Chip, Rick
LIFE: Bill, Eddie, Erik, Kurt, Dave, Claude, Brett, Seth, Tommy, John, Burl, Oats, Bill W.
FAMILY: Joanie, John Sr., John Jr., Joe, Jim, Coo, Lisa, Missy, Diane, Linda, Mary, Mary, John, Don
BUT FOR: Jill, Meagan, Erin, Madeline
The story belongs to me, but the book does not. Sincere thanks for guidance, indulgence, and truth-telling.
THE NIGHT OF THE GUN ONLINE
A companion site for this book can be found at www.nightofthegun.com. It contains video and audio interviews, documents, transcripts, and pictures, along with a blog, an excerpt, and additional narrative elements not contained in this book. The site is a digital expression of this book and a reminder that the past continues to evolve.