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Heavyweight Podcast Episode #64: Kevin - Summary and Key Takeaways
Episode Overview In this poignant episode of *Heavyweight*, host Jonathan Goldstein delves into the life of Kevin, a man haunted by memories of his childhood friends, Jason and Gerald, who vanished from his life over thirty years ago. With themes of trauma, memory, and the quest for reconnection, Kevin’s story highlights the profound impacts of childhood friendships and the scars left by familial dysfunction.
Key Themes
- Trauma and Childhood: Kevin reflects on his harrowing upbringing in a Sacramento public housing project, characterized by poverty and a mentally ill father.
- Friendship as Refuge: The friendship with Jason and Gerald provided Kevin and his brother Tony a reprieve from their difficult home life, serving as a vital source of joy and normalcy.
- Loss and Abandonment: The story underscores the sudden loss of these friends and the lasting impact of their departure on Kevin's life.
- Quest for Connection: As an adult, Kevin's desire to reconnect with Jason and Gerald serves as a testament to the enduring bonds of childhood.
Detailed Summary
Kevin's Upbringing
- Harsh Environment: Kevin describes his childhood in a public housing project, marked by neglect, abuse, and the terror of living with a father who exhibited violent behavior.
- Escape through Friendship: The arrival of friends Jason and Gerald offered Kevin comfort and companionship. Their shared experiences of childhood innocence provided an escape from their grim realities.
The Vanishing of Jason and Gerald
- Sudden Disappearance: Kevin recounts the day when Jason and Gerald abruptly left without explanation after their mother passed away from a heroin overdose.
- Emotional Impact: The abrupt end of their friendship left a profound void in Kevin's life as he grappled with feelings of abandonment.
Adult Life and Reflection
- Lasting Memories: Throughout his life, Kevin regularly reflects on his past relationships with Jason and Gerald, especially during significant life events, like the loss of his own father.
- Desire for Reconnection: Driven by a yearning to understand his childhood friends' lives and their wellbeing, Kevin reaches out to Goldstein, hoping to reunite.
The Search for Jason and Gerald
- Investigative Journey: Goldstein and his team embark on a search for Kevin’s childhood friends, employing various methods from online searches to contacting old neighbors.
- Challenges of the Search: The quest is hampered by the lack of concrete information, highlighting the difficulties of reconnecting after decades apart.
Reconnection
- Breakthrough: After an arduous search, Kevin finally reconnects with Gerald through Facebook Messenger, leading to an emotional exchange of memories and current life situations.
- Gerald’s Experiences: Gerald shares his struggles with homelessness and family reconnection, emphasizing the challenges he has faced since childhood.
- Jason's Response: It’s revealed that Jason remembers Kevin and Tony fondly but is reluctant to revisit the past, preferring to keep those memories sealed.
Reflections on Fatherhood
- Kevin’s Parenting: Kevin contrasts his parenting style with that of his father, emphasizing warmth and open communication with his children, in stark contrast to his own upbringing.
- Gerald’s Journey: Gerald expresses uncertainty about his role as a father, revealing his struggles to connect with his children and the lessons he's learned along the way.
Closing Thoughts
- Hope and Healing: The episode concludes with Kevin planning to visit Gerald, symbolizing the potential for healing and the rekindling of a meaningful friendship.
- The Cycles of Life: Both men reflect on their pasts and the significance of their friendship, acknowledging that despite their struggles, they are grateful for their shared history.
Key Takeaways
- Childhood friendships can have a lasting impact, serving as a refuge during difficult times.
- Trauma can shape adult relationships and perspectives, yet the desire for connection remains strong.
- The journey to reconnect with one's past can be complex and fraught with emotional challenges, but it can also lead to healing and understanding.
- Personal growth often involves confronting past traumas and redefining one's role as a parent and friend.
Conclusion In episode #64, *Kevin*, the *Heavyweight* podcast poignantly illustrates how the threads of childhood experiences and friendships weave into the fabric of our adult lives, leaving lasting impressions that shape our identities and relationships. Through the lens of Kevin’s search for his childhood friends, listeners are reminded of the importance of connection, memory, and the enduring nature of friendship.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:06Pushkin.
0:10Hey, everyone. Today's episode is a special one, but at the same time, it does deal with mental illness and children in distressing situations. So take care when listening.
0:29You've reached Jackie. You leave me a message. Please, let me know. Jackie, I haven't heard from you in a while. I thought maybe the adoration of America and Canada isn't enough for you. So I wanted you to hear all the peoples of the world, all over the world, who want to hear your voice again. Here are a few of them, Jackie. Jackie, my name is Yangos. I am from Cyprus, which is mega far away from where you're from. Jackie, Jackie, Jackie. This is Tracy recording a voice message from London, England. Hello, Jackie. Even here in Little Switzerland, the despair is great. Dear Jackie, this is a son from Istanbul.
1:09You are the only person who makes me laugh out loud. You should definitely come back. You are the highlight of the show. It means nothing without you. Come back. Ohne die macht das einfach krass ihn. Love from Aotearoa, New Zealand, Kenny Charlton. You have a lovely rest of your day now. And this is Jonathan from England, wishing you a Merry St. Pippin's da... Hello? Oh, I thought you picked up.
1:41From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Kevin.
1:54Right after the break.
2:17Over six feet tall, I can filter for this religion, but not a filter to turn on to say, how kind am I? How loyal am I? This Valentine's season, the Happiness Lab is digging into what really shapes our closest connections with smart, practical insights from experts on love, intimacy, and belonging. Listen to the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, wherever you get your podcasts. Kevin's email doesn't begin with any small talk. No long-time listener, first-time writer preamble. He gets right into it. My little brother and I grew up destitute, Kevin writes, in a public housing project in Sacramento.
2:55He goes on to say that life back then was only made bearable by the presence of two boys who live next door. And this is why he's writing. Kevin hasn't seen them in over 30 years, but he still hasn't forgotten them. The two boys, his friends, Jason and Gerald. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes, yes, great. The path that led him to Jason and Gerald is long and circuitous. Kevin begins the tale back in the third grade, sitting in class, reading. I was reading a book on the gremlins. Based on the movie. Yeah, the cover was the theatrical poster of the movie. And I remember it was during that moment that the teacher just said, hey, we got to go to the principal's office.
3:46And when you're a kid, that's kind of memorable because I thought initially I was in serious trouble.
3:57When Kevin arrived at the principal's office, his mom was there, surrounded by his five siblings. She explained that she was leaving their father and taking them all with her. So my dad has always been a real imposing, frightening figure because he would beat everybody in the family if you didn't really obey his commands. I never thought that he was malicious, but that he beaded us because we screwed up somehow one way or another. So he would whip us with a metal clothes hanger, for example, or he would pinch us. And when he pinched us, it would go through the clothing and would leave like half-dollar-sized welts of blue and purple and greenish colors.
4:41One day, a neighbor, alarmed by a loud argument between Kevin's parents, phoned the police, and Kevin's father was arrested. He spent several days in jail, and when he returned home, he seemed different. We didn't have the word mentally ill back then, but we just talked amongst ourselves that he became crazy. And by crazy, I mean like really crazy. Whatever he endured in jail It must have been so traumatic for my dad. And he invented a word at the time that everything was dirty. The dirty fixation began as soon as his father arrived back home from jail. The first thing he did upon his return was to ask for a box.
5:26He threw every article of clothing he was wearing inside. Then, standing naked before the family, he instructed his eldest son to throw the clothes away. And he goes up, he takes a shower. And when he comes back down, he sees that my older bro brought back the box. He was telling my bro that, why do you bring the box back? Because the box is dirty. But more importantly, how did you toss out the dirty clothes? And my bro said, he just grabbed it from the box and tossed it out. basically indicating to my dad that my bro touched the clothing himself. And my dad just went berserk and he just beat my bro on the spot right there.
6:17But that was the beginning of this crazy phase where my dad just completely lost it.
6:30His dad's new obsession only increased the tension between Kevin's parents. And every time they had arguments, we had no clue what they were talking about because they spoke in Vietnamese. And although that was my first native language, there was a time where my dad thought that we weren't learning English well enough. He forbade the usage of Vietnamese in the house. Then again, if he heard anybody utter a single word of Vietnamese, he would beat us. And so we dropped that quickly. But one of these arguments precipitated with my dad grabbing a cleaver, and he throws it across the room, and no one in particular, but it lodged itself into the wall.
7:14It wasn't long after that that Kevin, his mom, and his siblings found themselves standing in the principal's office. We went from the principal's office straight to what I now know as a woman's shelter. Do you remember that first night that you spent there? Oh, yeah, it was great. It just felt exciting. You wouldn't know anything imposing about the shelter until you leave. That's when you see the high fences with the barbed wire over the top. It almost looks like a prison. But it was great inside. There was a giant playground. There were tricycles. There was a walk-in pantry that myself and my brother really loved because you could walk in and there were all these snacks and instant noodles.
7:57But after a few weeks of feasting on instant noodles... My mom just suddenly gathers all of us, and she had a paper grocery bag. She just tersely explains to us that two of us, two of the six of us kids will have to return to my dad. She can't take care of all of us. She cannot keep all of us. and she said that she wrote six of our names on pieces of paper and she put all of our names in this paper bag and she's going to draw two names and the two names will be two kids that have to return to my dad. And I just remember my name was the first name to be drawn and I was just, I was just shocked.
8:51I don't know, at the time I felt I mean, there were six of us, two names were to be drawn. I just thought that my odds were somewhat reasonable. But looking back at it, I feel like my mom just rigged the whole thing because she couldn't just say outright, I want you, Kevin, and I want your little bro to go back to your dad because I feel that the younger ones won't be able to cope well. your dad's not going to be able to take care of them. And she wanted to keep my older bro. He was just the oldest one, the favored one. The plan, as established by the drawing of names from the paper bag, was that Kevin's oldest brother and the three youngest kids would stay with their mom, while Kevin and his middle brother Tony would go live with their dad.
9:46At the moment she drew my name, I lost my mom, my siblings, and what hurt just as much was losing my older bro. I looked up to him. I would ask him all kinds of questions, everything from life to school, what color you see when you die. And I still remember his answer because he said, you don't see any color when you're dead. But I asked him, what does that mean? What is the color of no color, that black or that white? He said, no, it's neither, it's no color.
10:24to lose him in that one fell swoop when my mom pulled out my name, let alone knowing that you have to go back to your dad, who you're super afraid of. When she drew my name, I remember I wasn't the only one who was crying. We all cried. We all cried. Kevin now has three kids of his own, and in raising them, he thinks back on that moment. Their hamster died. They were crying, and my partner was telling me, oh, they're just kids. They're just kids, and they don't really mean it. But when she said that, I remember I cried around the same age when my name was drawn from a paper bag, and that cry was still the deepest cry I've ever had in my life.
11:20So I just remembered, no, I got to tend to my kids. I'm going to bury the hamster in the backyard, set a proper tombstone and have a good farewell. I don't think their cries are going to be any lighter than their future cries when they're adults. I don't think so.
11:48For the next several years, Kevin had almost no contact with his mom and siblings. He says his mom would sometimes drop off food at his dad's place, but she was never allowed inside. Kevin was eight and Tony was six on the night they went back to live with their dad at his apartment in a public housing project. I remember he was drinking. He's always drinking. I mean, I've never seen him drink water. in my life. He was always drinking beer and eating peanuts. And that was actually what he was doing when we came back in the middle of the living room floor. Although the living room contained a big fluffy couch and some school desks, their father wanted Kevin and Tony to join him on a piece of cardboard he laid on the cold linoleum floor.
12:32It turned out that since they'd last seen him, their father's obsession had only intensified. My dad set some rules. He said that you'll never touch these desks or the couch because they're now dirty. I mean, we weren't going to question him. We didn't want to get beaten. So we ended up doing exactly that. A lot of these areas around the entire apartment just became dirty, untouchable. Over time, a layer of dust accrued everywhere that we were not allowed to touch or walk through.
13:17I got this pen, a little thick pen with the different colored tabs on the top. Yeah. Where you can change from black to blue to red. Yeah, I remember those. It was a really, it was a prized possession of mine. And I remember my dad, my bro, and I were on our living room floor again. and my bro was holding the pen and he was trying to change one of the colors, but it flung out of his hands and twirled around and it eventually settled a few feet away from him in this dirty zone. And at that moment that happened, as a eight, nine-year-old, I just knew that my pen was gone, even though it's literally just three feet away from us.
14:03My bro and I looked at each other. We both looked at my dad, and my dad just gave us that kind of solemn shake of his head, like, I'm sorry, boys, but that's a terrible loss. So you would just see the pen sitting there? Yeah, and then it would be absorbed by the dust. Over time, it would just become covered with dust itself.
14:29Even when their father wasn't home, Tony and Kevin didn't dare step into the dirty zones. I think we were also afraid because if you ventured into one of the dirty areas, you would kind of leave like literal footprints into that dusty area. It would be pretty obvious. And so I remember one time a policeman entered our home because it was some kind of robbery and the cop was trying to find this person. And I remember his face the moment he stepped in like, holy crap. He was asking me, you guys live here? And he was trying to search the house. And I was pleading with him. I was like, please don't go over there.
15:11Don't open that door. And this side closet was part of the dirty zone. And I didn't want to get in trouble. And thankfully, I remember the cop just acquiesced. When Kevin speaks of that time in his life, it's as an accumulation of losses. The loss of his brothers and sister, his mom The loss of all the rules that made reality, reality Which is why he still remembers the one real gain from that time Friends Those boys, Jason and Gerald They were a white family living with their single mom Jason was witty and funny Gerald was kind of goofy looking but lovable Gerald was Tony's age Jason was Kevin's They had video games and a mom who was nice to them.
15:59Every morning we would wake up, we'd go outside, just yell out, Jason, Gerald, what are you up to? And he would come back out, groggy-eyed, wiping their eyes. We would just hang out all the time.
16:14In a life that was filled with significant, often traumatic events, the time Kevin and his brother spent with Jason and Gerald was notable for just how unnotable it was. It was simple and fun. It was time spent just being a kid, building secret passageways out of cardboard boxes, racing bugs through obstacle courses, and climbing the highway retention wall to watch cars speed by. They swam at the public pool. They played with firecrackers blowing up Snapple bottles in the park. Then there were the comics Kevin made. It might have been a smorgasbord of different characters I drew at the time, like one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Batman or Bart and Garfield or all four of them in the same comic.
17:00Who knew? They offered me a quarter for every comic book I drew and gave it to them. So I did that and I used the quarters to buy myself candy. Hanging out with them was always a blast for 12 hours a day. Did you ever have friends like that before? No, no. And it helped soften my bro and I's polite situation, living with our dad, that we could hang out with Jason and Gerald. Jason and Gerald were the only people with a window onto Kevin and Tony's lives. Quite literally, their apartment window looked directly in on Kevin and Tony's window. And I remember one time my bro and I would take a bath, and we didn't have towels, and we were shivering, and we ran back to our bedroom, and we were trying to put on our clothing, but it's really hard to put on clothing when your body's wet.
17:54And the next day, Jason and Gerald would come up to us and say, hey, why were you and Tony dancing on your bed naked? Why didn't you guys have towels? I don't know. We just didn't have towels. You know, we didn't have a lot of things at kids. We didn't have a refrigerator. That's a wild one that's hard to imagine, but the refrigerator was part of the dirty zone. And the refrigerator worked? I think it was plugged in, yeah. We just couldn't use it. And so whenever we purchased food, we would have to consume it within that day, including a gallon of milk. My dad believed in giving us milk. And I remember my dad thought he had a genius idea.
18:35He didn't want to waste any of the milk. So he told me and my bro just jog in place outside so that we would want to drink more milk. And that didn't bode very well, and we ended up vomiting all the milk out there. I imagine if Gerald and Jason had been watching from their window, they'd have seen their little friends looking like they were in some milk-sponsored version of boot camp. But no matter what unbelievable things they saw, and no matter what unbelievable things Kevin told them about off-limit refrigerators or pens or couches, They didn't belittle him, didn't tease him. They accepted him.
19:11They never doubted me when I told them these things. I wholeheartedly believed it. At a time when Kevin and his brothers felt so doubtful of their own reality, so isolated, Jason and Gerald were not only allies, but a check on their sanity. They were always there, until the day they weren't.
19:37Tony and I would go home one day, and they were gone. They were just completely gone. Their home was cleared out. Kevin's father said that Jason and Gerald's mom had died. And so, that very same afternoon, the boys' grandparents came and took Jason and Gerald away to live with them. Our friendship just suddenly got severed. There was no farewell or anything like that. that we just went from hanging out all the time, being best buddies, to one day just not even seeing them.
20:17People had left Kevin's life before, but Gerald and Jason didn't leave. They vanished. And when someone vanished in the early 1990s, they vanished. No cell phones, no emails. But the boys were always with him. Like in college, when Kevin's father died, his thoughts turned back to Jason and Gerald, how they must have felt losing their mom. Kevin's an adult now with a family and a career in biotech, yet any time he's introduced to a Jason or a Gerald, his mind always leaps back to his Jason, his Gerald. So now, 30 years later, Kevin wants to find them, the two boys who were the only witnesses to the hardest part of his and his brother Tony's life.
21:01I've always wondered about them and what are they up to? Are they all right? How are they doing first and foremost? Did they get over that kind of grief and loss? Because I can't even imagine losing your sole parent at that age. Because they always referred to themselves as white trash. They called themselves that. They did, yeah. Always in a joking way. But every time I read about, for example, the opioid epidemic where a lot of rural whites were hammered, sometimes I wonder, are Jason and Gerald okay?
21:49Do you ever wonder if they think about you as well, if they think about you and your brother? I do wonder about that. yeah I do wonder about that but all that is secondary if they're doing alright I think that'll warm up my heart pretty well if they're not doing alright I want to see if I can help them out and at the minimum maybe just say hi that I've just never forgotten about them and if they've forgotten about myself or Tony you know that's fine that's fine. I'd just be just as happy to find out that they were doing all right. That what normal friends would probably want, right? The problem is, they were always just Jason and Gerald from across the way.
22:42Kevin doesn't know their last name, and their mother's name has also been lost to time. And although he does know the brothers went to live with their grandparents... I don't even know where the grandparents reside, except for one comment that Jason made a long time ago where he said that whenever he visits his grandparents, they would burn pine cones to keep warm. And that's why Kevin has come to me. With just the names Jason and Gerald, hoping I can help. Because I thought that your superpower investigative sleuthing abilities were going to be able to track them down again. After the break, my superpower investigative sleuthing abilities are put to the test.
23:44On June 11th, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing. Hey, if they'll kill a cop and bury them, what are they going to do to me? What really happened to the missing deputy? Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Listen to Valley of Shadows wherever you get your podcasts.
24:15Kevin remembers his own address from back then. And clicking around on Google Maps, he's able to determine which house was Jason and Gerald's. But when my producer Kalila and I start digging, the only records we find are topsy-turvy, dozens of people listed under the same address, the timelines overlapping in confusing ways. So without much else to go on, Kalila skims the records, searching for any single women who lived at Jason and Gerald's apartment number in the early 90s. Then, using the surname she finds, she starts dialing.
24:53Hello? Hi, is this Jason? Hello? Is this Jason? Oh, snap. You got the voicemail. You know what to do. Later. Wow, I really fell for that voicemail. Hi. My name is Kalilah Holt. I'm looking for a Jason who... Kalilah phones dozens and dozens of numbers, leaving messages for Jasons and Gerald's across the nation. Many of the numbers she tries are disconnected entirely. We're sorry. You have reached a number that has... We're sorry. You have reached a number that... We're sorry. We're sorry. We're sorry. And while some Gerald's and Jason's do answer the phone... No, I had a dad named Jason. No, ma 'am.
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25:34I was born and raised in Texas. They're never the ones we're looking for. Unless you're giving away millions of dollars and then I can make it be... No, ma 'am. I'm sorry. Wish I could help you. When Jason does helpfully text that there's another guy with the same name a few towns over, I've spent a night in jail for a warrant in his name, he writes. Too bad your podcast isn't about that.
26:06I figure the local elementary school might have Jason and Gerald's last name on file. So I give them a call and am put on hold. It might give me a chance to do a little bit of freestyling while I'm waiting. Jason, he's got a brother, Gerald. Thanks for holding. Thankfully, I'm interrupted by the receptionist. She sends me to the district office. Visit our website at https colon forward slash forward slash. And all the district office has to offer. Dot edu one forward slash. is a web address straight out of the mid-90s. Enrollment-center-tk - We search obituaries thinking we might find one for Jason and Gerald's mom.
26:57We post in neighborhood Facebook groups. We try phoning neighbors, messaging old classmates, submitting a research request at the public library. Nothing comes of any of it.
27:14After two months of dead ends, Kevin returns to the housing project to look for new leads. One of the last times he went back was to show his wife and three kids where he grew up, but the kids were too scared of the neighborhood to get out of the car. This time he goes alone, and it's while walking by his old building that Kevin has a realization. For Jason and Gerald to have seen him and Tony through the window getting dressed without towels that day, Their address would have to have been not the one he'd originally told me, but actually one apartment over. And that new fact makes all the difference.
27:52Amazingly, we've been able to triangulate who these guys are, who Jason and Gerald— Really? Yeah. No way. Yes. Wow. But just when you whack a mole one problem in this life, a new problem rears its ugly mole head. Even though we found Jason and Gerald, we're not hearing back from Jason and Gerald. After sending both brothers' letters, Gerald's bounces back, and Jason's goes unanswered. I try Jason on LinkedIn, but still, nothing. Maybe the name Kevin no longer means anything to them. Maybe they forgot the friendship altogether.
28:33I can't find a phone number for Gerald or Jason, but I do find one for Jason's wife, and so I leave her a voicemail. When I get no response, I try texting. Still no response. So I call again, and this time, the phone doesn't even ring. Fearing my number has been blocked, I ask Kevin to phone, but when he tries to leave a message... My name's Kevin. I've been childhood friends with Jason and his brother. Oh. I couldn't even leave a voicemail It's no longer feeling like Jason is simply forgotten It feels like he emphatically doesn't want to talk Although Jason's a no-go I still have one more shot at reaching the younger brother, Gerald He has a Facebook So this is where I'm thinking maybe the most direct way to do it Would be for you to reach out Yeah, I don't mind It's just that I don't even have a Facebook account, but I can definitely make an account, I suppose.
29:38When we check back in the next day, Kevin tells me that he made a profile and added one single friend, Gerald. And I just sent him a message. Are you to Gerald with the brother Jason? This is Kevin with the little bro Tony. We used to live right across from each other and we were really good friends. And he just replied immediately.
30:15When it comes to love these days, we like to think that we've got it all figured out. We have this false sense of, I have control over this. I can filter for someone who's over six feet tall. I can filter for this religion. but not a filter to turn on to say, how kind am I? How loyal am I? This Valentine's season, The Happiness Lab is digging into what really shapes our closest connections with smart, practical insights from experts on love, intimacy, and belonging. Listen to The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, wherever you get your podcasts. It's been an eventful 24 hours. For the first time in over 30 years, Kevin and his friend Gerald are back in touch.
30:56The two have been exchanging messages at a rapid pace since last night. I'm still digesting all of this real time. Apparently Gerald is in the East Coast right now. He's been homeless for three years. But he said that he's got no problems, been staying out of trouble. He only smokes cigarettes and sparingly drinks. He stayed away from the hard drugs. Oh, and I wanted to talk to him over the phone because I'm just not a big fan of texting. But he said that he doesn't have a cell phone. He lost it while traveling through Maryland. And he only has access to Facebook Messenger, broader internet, while at the library.
31:45So yeah, it's just quite a bit to digest. Oh, and he mentioned Jason. One of the first things Gerald did after hearing from Kevin was to message Jason. Gerald shared the message he sent his brother. I can just read it out. He said, how are you, brother? You won't believe this. Remember Tony and Kevin when we were living with mom in Sacramento as kids? They are reaching out to us to get to know us again and connect. We are catching up. It makes me so happy to talk to Kevin. It's crazy.
32:21Jason responded to his brother's message saying he remembered Kevin and Tony fondly. It turns out he was well aware Kevin had been looking for him. He'd gotten all those messages left for his wife. But he didn't want to revisit that time.
32:38In the months to come, Kevin keeps the Messenger app on his phone so he and his one Facebook friend can send long messages back and forth. And eventually, five months later... Hey, Gerald. Hey, Kevin. How you doing? Gerald gets a new phone, and a conversation is arranged. The last time we've ever heard each other, we were just kids. That was over 34 years ago. I remember exactly how you looked when you were a kid. You were slightly taller than me with black hair. You had a freckle. I think you had a freckle under your left eye. Yeah, I do. I'm actually looking at you right now through my mind's eye.
33:19Remember when we hung out at your place? Oh my gosh, yeah. All we do is play video games. I remember you and Tony were so good at playing video games. Oh, I would watch you guys for hours. One time, we had this game Rygar. Oh, I remember Rygar. That's right. And for like four or five hours, you played it and you ended up beating it. And my jaw was just blured. You know why, though? Huh? We didn't have anything else to do, me and Tony. No. Literally, we were just in that place, at home, and we didn't have anything. We knew that, too.
34:04I remember you guys came over once, right? Yeah, yeah. It's crazy, because I actually still remember the inside of your house. you remember like didn't it look crazy it looked like it looked like a haunted house because i remember it was dusty like um not not necessarily not necessarily unclean unclean's not the work but it was like nobody lived there you remember the backyard that we hung out it had the um the clotheslines yeah we'd swing on them yeah they're gone now i guess every unit has a dryer now wow And everything seemed a whole lot smaller. It just surprised me. I just thought everything was way bigger, but I think we were just so small.
34:56You know, growing up with you, I always thought that you would become like a comic book artist, like a professional. I mean, I would pay you a quarter apiece for them because I liked them so much. Remember how you would always bug me about, oh, what's the next issue coming out? What's the next issue coming out? Yes, yes. Oh my gosh. You have no idea. They were so good. They were so, so good. All these decades later, Gerald still remembers the specific Bart Simpson plot lines. There was an electrical monster that Bartman would bite. You'd make them, oh, I just unlocked. old memory that I hadn't thought about.
35:35You would use your old tests and papers from school and you'd fold them in a way where the backside would be the comic book and I could unfold them and I'd see your work for school. I didn't even realize that. Yeah, but that wouldn't make sense because I wouldn't have assets to paper anyways. I held on to those for like 15 years. It turns out, Gerald was out there looking bag just as much as Kevin was. I always thought of you two. Making friends with you guys was just a big breath of fresh air. I mean, at school, I was never able to make real friends. A lot of the kids were actually really mean.
36:19I got beat up a lot. But I had Kevin and Tony right across from me. I mean, those were my friends. Those were the only two friends I actually had growing up. I really, really never made that kind of connection again.
36:40How are you doing, man? Oh, I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm happy in life. Life isn't really what I thought it'd be, what it turned out to be, but it turned out okay. And I am myself and I'm happy. It's not like I'm living a life where I wake up and go to work and realize I'm unhappy, but just do the same thing every other day. I'm kind of just free and by myself now. You seem to be doing pretty resiliently. That's the word resilient, really. When you first become homeless, it's scary, you know, but it's kind of an adapt or die kind of scenario. And one thing I found out about being homeless is it's a bit easier if you can blend in with other homeless people.
37:29If you can find an area that has resources and other homeless people, you're more likely to survive better and not be a target because it's pretty dangerous being homeless. People don't like homeless people. Did you find yourself targeted? Yes, a lot. I've gotten beat up a few times, but I've also been helped too. I've had a lot of Christians help me, which is something amazing. A lot of people helped me on my way. Good people. Gerald had been living beneath an underpass in D.C. for about a year. But a few months ago, he decided to return home to California. I got into a point where I had no contact with my kids and I missed them and I just needed to see them.
38:17And I knew if I stay gone, if I'm just out there in the world, I'll never have a relationship with my kids if I don't come back now. I need to see my boys. I need to tell them I love them. The strange thing is the very day that they initiated the sweeping of the homeless in D.C. was the day I had a bus ticket to come back to California. So I was getting on a bus right when the troops were coming into D.C. like that day. Gerald explains he'd started going to church with another friend who was homeless, and that the church helped him scramble together enough money for a ticket back home to his kids.
39:00And I'm grateful that I was able to leave because I don't know what happened to all the homeless people. There were hundreds of homeless people when I was in D.C., all in that area, and they were all dealing with the same thing. It was very sad to see. Some were genuinely crazy. Some were playing the system. And others were just emotionally distraught. Something happened in their family, like a kid died. and they just couldn't pull themselves out. Can you say what led you into that situation? Yeah, heartbreak and lack of family. My wife left me about four years ago now. And honestly, it just got to a point where I realized that if I didn't actually go away for a while, that her heart couldn't mend, where she couldn't grow and become herself.
39:54So I needed to just leave the whole area, and I needed to do something for myself. I needed to go see the world. I needed to go walk. Is that how you traveled, by walking? Mostly, yeah. From state to state? Yeah. Well, I would get rides, of course. I wouldn't hitchhike. I wouldn't put my thumb out. But I would walk, and eventually somebody would pull over and ask me if I needed a ride. Gerald tells me that after his wife left him, he was living in his truck. But when he decided to leave California, he swapped cars with a friend. I traded him straight up for his jalopy car for my nice Toyota truck.
40:38I couldn't find work. I couldn't find a job. I couldn't find money for my gas tank. So I could either leave my truck on the side of the road and have it impounded and lost, or I could give it away to somebody I love and try to find my way on foot. So I chose to give it to my friend Josh. And I drove his car up through the Sierra Nevadas into Nevada. And then when it ran out of gas, I just started walking. For the next several years, Gerald traveled all over the country. From Nevada, he went to Kansas, then Oregon, Alaska, Tennessee, and eventually Washington, D.C. And now he's back in California, spending most of his time camping.
41:25So I'm just sitting up on a mountain right now looking down at a river. Honestly, even being back here in California, I kind of realized that I may end up staying homeless. I don't have a lot of options, but I realize I'm just happier being halfway out of the system. Or one foot in, one foot out, I guess. I'm more comfortable just being alone than in a crowd of people. So like being up here in the mountains where I'm at right now, it's just wonderful. I mean, there's nobody around. Nobody. Gerald looks after his kids a few days every week, staying at his ex-wife's house. It's a relief to see them again.
42:05his two boys, seven and 13. And they're fine, and they miss me. I would think that they would miss me. I mean, you can't... Yeah. You can't ever replace a parent. Something both Kevin and Gerald know all too well. I just remember taking that news that your mom had passed and that you two were just gone, never coming back. and Tony and I, we were both, man, we cried. We were heartbroken. We lost our two best friends. They didn't even get to say goodbye. It was so suddenly. Oh, in one day. Yeah. Yeah. And we were always wondering what happened to your mom, to you two. I could tell you the story from the start.
43:02As a kid, making sense of what happened, Kevin assumed maybe Jason and Gerald's mom had heart attack. But Gerald says no, that his mom had a heroin addiction. When I was like six, I came across a leather glove with a needle inside the couch when I pulled up the couch cushion. And I brought it to my mom and I said, Mommy, what's this? And she slapped my hand and took it from me and she said, never touch that again. Don't dig in there, okay? That's mom's. That could poke you and hurt you. So I knew about it, but I didn't know what it was exactly. And my mom would sleep a lot, a lot. Most of the time, she'd just sleep on the couch downstairs.
43:48But when she was awake, she was a very good mom. She always cooked for me and Jason. And we always had food. She was always looking for us. We're out too late. She didn't let nobody mess with us. My mom was a good mom. Yeah, that's what I remember.
44:15The night his mom died, Gerald remembers hearing a thud upstairs, but he didn't think much of it. He and Jason were busy watching The Simpsons at the time, and not long after that, they went to bed. So I went and crawled into bed, and Jason crawled into his bed and he went to sleep and I was lying there and I'm like, I'm gonna go see if I can go curl up to mom in her bed. So I got up and I went to my mom's room and I opened the door and she was laying face down on the ground, not moving. But I had seen that before. So I didn't think a lot. I didn't know anything was wrong. I was like seven, six, somewhere in there.
44:56So I slowly closed the door really slowly because I didn't want to wake her up. Then in the morning, me and my brother got ourselves ready for school and we walked to school. And while I was at school at about one o 'clock in the afternoon, some cops came to my classroom. I thought I was in trouble because I hadn't been doing good in school. I thought it was about my grades actually And the cops brought me back to the house And apparently my brother had come home from school early Because he was feeling sick And he found my mom face down on the ground And couldn't wake her up So he went to a neighbor, Lloyd and Cheryl They lived up the block And Lloyd came down and checked her pulse And looked at my brother and said she's dead
45:56and uh and i didn't even realize she was dead i didn't know even when the cops brought me into the house and the house is filled with cops and my grandparents are there nobody's told me what's happened so i'm just looking at everybody and i'm wondering where mom is and then a cop comes up to me and says, we're going to take you to Burger King and get you something to eat. So a cop actually took me and my brother to Burger King in his cop car and bought us lunch. And I still didn't know what was going on. So I'm just gabbing to the cop like my very young seven-year-old self, just talking, talking, talking like nothing's wrong.
46:45I remember asking the cop, did he ever shoot anybody he said yeah he shoots the bad people when he has to and he had a shotgun that was mounted on close to the dash and i thought it was so cool and my brother didn't say a word and the cop starts crying and he brought us back and nobody's talking to me at all i'm like an insect on a wall or a fly like i just don't know yeah and so my grandparents tell us okay we got to go get inside the car grandpa has some things he has to do so we're going to take you to ann elizabeth's house for right now for a few days so i got happy because i got to see my cousin brian who was about my age and like i loved him and when i get there my cousin brian he knows what's going on what happened and he looks at me and he says, Daryl, I want you to sleep in my bed.
47:44You take my bed, I'll sleep on the floor. And I said, you don't have to do that. And he said, no, you can just take it, okay? And I could see he was sad. And then I sat down on the bed
47:58and that's when it hit me. That's when I realized that mom had died.
48:07And I started crying and crying and I cried for hours and hours and I cried myself to sleep.
48:24After all that, my brother ended up becoming really quiet. He never really talked to me very much after that. And, uh, I don't know. It just seems like the world got a lot colder after that.
48:48Jason and Gerald spent the rest of their childhood with their maternal grandparents, living in the mountains. I asked Gerald if they ever had any contact with their dad. No, he died before I was born. Oh, I see. I'm sorry. It's okay. I never knew him, so there's no effect, you know? Yeah. But I do know a story. My dad, right before he died, he asked my grandfather for$500 because he needed to buy a car so that he could go get this job. And my grandfather didn't believe him, so he said no. and then the next day, apparently a neighbor had come across my father's hanging body from a tree and called my grandfather and my grandfather cut him down and looked at his body on the ground and said, what a waste.
49:47This is the same grandfather who about seven years later would become Gerald's guardian. Gerald says he could be strict He had a military attitude, and he was really a gruff on me. And Jason? Or just you? Not Jason so much. Well, Jason was more like my grandfather than I was. Jason went into the military. He did very good. He was in for about eight years and went to Iraq twice, and he did really well. Wow. Jason now lives in Arizona, where he works in security. Kevin's happy to hear that his life seems stable. But Gerald and Jason's relationship never recovered from the death of their mom. In contrast, Kevin and Tony have remained close.
50:31That Jason and Gerald haven't is hard for Kevin to hear. I hope that you can at least maintain a little bit of contact with Jason here and there. Yeah, it's spotty, but it is. It just is what it is. Some people, everybody's different. We all have our own special abilities. we all are good at our own good things. One thing my brother isn't so good at is dealing with the past memory of my mom's death. He kind of locked it away, I feel. But it's his memories to keep, you know? And he doesn't want to dig him back up. And I think that's the big thing. If you ever see him again or communicate with him again, can you let him know that yeah I never I never never forgot about him yeah it's alright if you didn't want to talk about it that's fine I just want to let him know that yeah Tony and I were real real sad and I never forgot about him I'll tell him I'll tell him
51:52Gerald says he was just never like his brother and grandfather. Me, I was the complete opposite. I was kind of more like the free bird, the hippie, I guess. Got into skateboarding. I always wanted to start a skateboarding company and design my own decks, do artwork through that. That's actually what I really wanted to do in life. But I kind of put it on a shelf just because of how everything turned out in life. But, he says, he did gift skateboards to each of his sons. And now, when his younger son goes out to ride his bike, Gerald will use one of the boards to skate alongside him. Honestly, I don't know what it really is to be a proper dad.
52:36I never had a dad. I had a grandpa who was kind of a dad, and I learned some from him. But to be a dad is something I got to learn as I go along. I guess that's my biggest journey now. It's just to stay home, stay in my area, and watch my kids grow. That's what I want to do. Do you think you're going to stick around? Yes. I'm done traveling now. So it feels like it's the end of something or the beginning of something new. When one thing ends, something else begins. Yeah. I'm 41, and it just means I have half my life to live still.
53:26After my mom died, nobody in the family would talk about it. It was like my old past life in Sacramento had been erased. so having connected with Kevin it's like validation that I did have a life before my mother died like I'm not the only one that remembers my mom yeah likewise Gerald means something to me too that I wasn't too crazy thinking about my childhood so much like someone else was thinking about it as well That actually happened, yeah. Yeah, it actually happened. It's nice to know I'm not invisible.
54:19I'll see you in a bit. We got to cash up. I'll make a visit up there. Yes, you will have to come up. Yeah, I've never been to that area before. It's beautiful. It'll be a new place. Yeah, it looks like it. You will love it. I promise, Kevin. I'm sure I will. Okay. All right. Bye. All right. Bye, Gerald.
54:49Kevin and I stay on the line to talk about everything Gerald shared. We hearken back to what he said about not knowing how to be a dad, and I ask Kevin how he learned to be a dad. A lot of it, he says, comes from his partner. But also, he tried to define himself in opposition to his own dad. I didn't want to be feared. I wanted my kids to be able to trust me. I wanted to be warm and open to them. And good time with them. Yeah, I guess I just wanted to do everything opposite of what my own dad did. And I know I didn't walk away unscathed. both me and my bro, probably my entire family. I feel like sometimes I, sort of like PTSD almost.
55:43Kevin tells me how when his kids joined Cub Scouts, he volunteered to be an assistant scoutmaster. He had to go away on this weekend camping trip to be trained. When he got back home, he pulled into the garage. Everything in the house was quiet. I remember unloading the car and calling for my kids because I thought that they could help me set up the tent in the backyard to let the tent properly dry and all that. But there was no response. I noticed that they were in the living room or something like that playing board games. They kind of nodded at me like, oh, that is home. And I just remember feeling like...
56:32Like immensely overwhelmed with sadness. I just remember sitting down in another room on the couch, just being super removed and even wondering about why I was feeling that emotion. and it took me a little while to process why this black cloud was just hanging around me.
57:10I guess ultimately what was going through my mind was I felt like my family didn't really want me And maybe I was envisioning that they would miss me and they would greet me. But because they didn't, I got that sensation that I wasn't wanted. And I didn't even know how I was processing it. but it reminded me of that time where how my mom would draw my name from that paper bag. She chose me as a first kid that she didn't want.
58:10And it didn't go...
58:26And I thought about how coming home to my dad and looking at me like he wished he had my older bro come home instead of me. and that was a feeling I got when I just got home from that camping trip.
58:57Like nobody wanted me.
59:02Yeah, yeah. It was just a terrible feeling.
59:09I remember my partner, she came back out and she saw me and I didn't know how to explain it to her, but I just told her I wasn't feeling well. And then me and my family in the other room and be normal again and say, hey, what's everyone doing? What game are you guys playing?
59:42And life would just carry on.
59:54This weekend, Kevin is planning on driving out to the mountains to see Gerald, to go camping and fishing. Gerald says the fish are jumping. It's the beginning of something new. Life carries on.
1:00:16Thank you.
1:00:52Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damaged deposit Take this moment to decide If we meant it, if we tried Or felt around for far too much From things that accidentally tried
1:01:28This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Kalila Holt and me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanagan. Our supervising producer is Stevie Lay. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon. Special thanks to Chris Neary, Greta Cohn, Jake Harper, Lydia Jean Cott, and Kevin's brother Tony. Emma Munger mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, and Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by Blue Dot Sessions and Poddington Bear. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on Instagram at heavyweightpodcast or email us at heavyweight at pushkin.fm.
1:02:03We're taking a break for American Thanksgiving, but we'll be back in December with two more episodes of Heavyweight. Until that time, happy American Twiky Day. A gobble gobble to you and yours. On walls that we repainted white. Sun in an empty room. Sun in an empty room
1:03:01This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
From the publisher
Kevin's childhood was a hard one. But it was made bearable by his neighborhood friends, Jason and Gerald. Then, one afternoon, the boys just vanished. Over thirty years later, Kevin still hasn't forgotten them.
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