What It Was Like

Part I

The Summer

≁

My excellent new lawyer told me to write everything down exactly as it happened, so that's what I'm going to do. I didn't testify at my trial and that didn't work out so well, to put it mildly, so I'm going to write down everything that I wanted to say – and should have said – on the witness stand. I know people think that they know what happened, but I'm here to tell you that “the whole truth and nothing but the truth” has not been heard…until now.

All kinds of stories floated around for months, before, during, and after the trial, all kinds of lies. The whole Romeo-and-Juliet-Leopold-and-Loeb-Bonnie-and-Clyde thing that all the newspapers and TV stations made such a big deal over: most of it lies. On the one hand, I really don't care what other people say about me. So many people hate me now who don't even know me that it's already completely absurd. (I'm not saying that I'm the nicest person in the world; I am far from that. But I'm no monster.) On the other hand, deliberate fabrications and distortions have hurt my family. They've been through enough; they don't need any more pain. My life is already ruined; let's just leave them alone.

I'm going to try to tell things in the order that they happened, but I can't guarantee anything. Sometimes I'll have to move around in time. My intention is to be clear and to tell the full story, as it relates to the Incident. I'm going to try to leave out anything extraneous. Everything that I say here goes to what I've learned to call “state of mind at the time.”

OK, I'm going to try to make this fast. It's really a very simple story. What happened was this: I met this girl and did a very stupid thing. I fell in love. Hard. I know that to some people that makes me an idiot and a loser. What can I say? They're right. I did some extremely foolish things; I'm the first to say it. And they've left me in jail and alone. What can I do? These things really happened.

It began with a pure and deep passion, and ended in obsession and violence. In heartbreak and shame and the personal destruction of many lives. But it wasn't like the James Dean movie or the epic rock-and-roll song that the newspapers made it out to be. (Some jerk
did
write a song about it.) It was simple, at least at the beginning, and personal and real. Let me say right now that I deeply regret my part in everything bad that happened. How what started so innocently became so … un-innocent . . . how things became twisted – even now, after so much time has passed, my mind can't quite grasp all the events; even over time. Time: which is what I'm doing now. We'll see what happens. My new lawyer tells me that I have reason to hope. Why am I suspicious of “hope?” All I know is that it's breaking my mother's heart for me to be in here. I can stand it; I don't know if she can.

Also, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be in my own cell, “for my own protection,” so I'll try to finish this up fast. I know people have only so much patience with teenage angst, myself included. So my first rule is: No Whining. The last thing anyone wants to hear is some loser whining about how life and love all went wrong for him.

While I'm thinking about it, let me establish some other ground rules. As far as my parents, I'm not going to go into too much detail about them. It's not their story. They deserve their privacy after what they've gone through. It's one thing to go through some kind of difficulty yourself; it's quite another to have to stand by and watch someone you presumably love have to endure it. I shouldn't say “presumably.” They
do
love me. That parental love; it's crazy. Crazy primal. Because, if you look at the people in this world, many of them couldn't possibly be loved by anybody
but
a parent. But I guess all kinds of people are loved. Serial killers on death row get marriage proposals all the time.

Also, I'm not going to use any curse words (though, God knows, my inner monologue is pretty much one continuous, indiscriminate stream of profanity). So once I start, I might never stop. So, No Swearing. And, to tell you the truth, I don't want to get bogged down in too much nastiness or put people off unnecessarily. There's plenty there already to put people off. Also, No Religion, No Politics, and as little as possible about The War.

I'm almost afraid to begin this. I don't know why. Nothing can happen to me that's any worse than what's already occurred, so why not just go ahead and say it all? Everything: just as it happened. It is deeply embarrassing and shameful that I have to do this at all. To be a justifier, a self-defender, an alibier: just another “innocent” skeeve in prison, looking for a way out. But circumstances have forced me to do this. I didn't think I'd have to take a last stand, this young. But let's face it: adults really have no respect for the thoughts and feelings of teenagers, so I pretty much didn't stand a chance from the get-go. I should be out living my life, not rehashing a few episodes from several months ago that happened to lead to some unfortunate consequences. Already I sound defensive, and I don't want to be. “
Unfortunate consequences??
”

It's noisy, even in this protected wing. Lots of slamming doors, metal-on-metal. Yelling, and then more yelling to stop the yelling. It makes it hard to concentrate. I won't lie and say that I'm not scared and lonely. I get visits occasionally and can make phone calls, but I know I'm in this alone. And I'm going to get through it, alone. Sure, my life is ruined, but maybe I can salvage something from this disaster. It's a terrible thing to admit, that one's life is ruined, especially because I'm still pretty young. But even if I ever get out of here, I'll always be that kid from Long Island, the Ivy League Killer, the Kid Who dot dot dot. From all the newspaper and radio and TV coverage, everyone thinks that they know me. “Experts” were certain that I was “using” her; other “experts” were just as sure that she was “using” me. They were all fools who knew nothing about love and how it works. But, in a way, it doesn't matter anymore – everyone now knows my name (which is precisely why I'm not going to use it anywhere in this testimony). So let me tell you right now, right up-front:
no one knows me
.

There's this guard in my section who lets me write under the covers after lights-out. I think he has a son my age. He looks at me with that “what a jerk” expression that I sometimes get from my Dad. He knows that I shouldn't be here. Everyone knows that I shouldn't be here. So how did it happen? How did I get here?

≁

I can tell you when it started. It was the summer before my first year of college, the summer of 1968. (You remember “Mrs. Robinson” and “Tighten Up” and Janis Joplin's “Piece of My Heart” and “This Guy's in Love with You”? See, it really wasn't so long ago.) And if I was smart enough to get into Columbia with a decent scholarship, I was smart enough not to stay home living with my parents all summer. Oh, we got along fine and all, but after my mother suggested that I work another summer in her rich cousin Ralph's printing company and my father offered to get me a job in the stock room of the furniture store where he worked, I knew that I had to find a better way.

My solution was not too imaginative, I admit – a job as a counselor at a sleep-away summer camp in Upstate New York, taking care of a bunch of kids – but it fit my requirements: it got me out of the house and into a decent job that would give me a good chunk of money by the end of August. And it was two months in the country – that had to be a good thing. I was used to spending my summers at home, working at the printing company and taking some extra courses. So there was nothing wrong with having an easy summer before starting Columbia.

“Energetic, positive young people needed” said the flyer on the bulletin board in the student union at Hofstra where I had gone with my friend Paul to see this bad band his cousin was in and to futilely try to meet some college girls.
That could be me
, I remember thinking, looking at the little pictures of happy, healthy summer people on the flyer – water-skiing, playing baseball, sitting around a campfire. It was already April, and I had to make a decision soon. So the next day I called the number on the flyer and set up an interview for that very evening.

That was when I first met Stanley Marshak, one of the three Marshak brothers who owned Camp Mooncliff, near the town of Boonesville in the mountains of Upstate New York. Two of the Marshak brothers were doctors, but Stanley was the brother who ran the camp. He was the person who interviewed me at his home in Roslyn in an office that he had in his basement. The house was a nice split-level in a very nice neighborhood. Evidently, owning a camp was a good business.

Stanley welcomed me at the front door with a firm handshake, as if he were testing my character or something. He was a tall man, broad and balding, with a bushy moustache that curled a little at the ends. I smiled and held his grip, just as firmly. He walked me downstairs to the basement, all done in green and white: Camp Mooncliff's colors. Stanley told me all about the camp and its illustrious three-decade history, how he and his brothers founded it, and how he, Stanley, a life-long bachelor, was “married to Mooncliff.” It was sort of amusing, how enthusiastic and how proud of the place he was. (I had never been to a sleep-away summer camp like Mooncliff before, only some local day camps when I was little, but I kind of knew how things worked.) But I liked that he liked the place so much.

Stanley showed me an endless carousel of slides of Mooncliff, projected on the white basement wall, and told me what the job entailed: watching/babysitting/counseloring a bunch of ten- and eleven-year-old kids for all of July and August for X number of dollars. (I don't really want to say how much I made. My mother always told me that it's vulgar to discuss money, and she's probably right. But I'll say it was good money and would help set me up for the fall.) My job was Junior Counselor in the Intermediate group, which meant that there would be an older counselor in the bunk who was really in charge, so my responsibilities would be limited.

Stanley and I talked for about forty-five minutes, an hour tops, and he hired me on the spot. I signed a contract right then and there. In those days, I could impress adults fairly easily.

The night before I was to leave for Mooncliff for the three-day Counselor Orientation, I made a last-minute check of everything I was going to take on the bus. I had sent a trunk full of clothes and other stuff up to the camp two weeks before, as directed. I'd used my Dad's old army trunk, which he got a big kick out of. You need a lot of clothes for two months, plus it apparently got really cold up in the mountains at night, so I had to pack all kinds of clothes. To carry on the bus with me, I had one small suitcase with some extra clothes and toiletries, and a little thrift-store knapsack I used to carry books and other things, figuring that maybe I'd have some time to read and hang out. I made sure that I had the packet of information for incoming freshmen that Columbia had sent me. And I took my address book – not that I had anyone in particular to write to – just in case.

“You have everything?” asked my Mom, who was washing dishes when I came downstairs to the kitchen for my last dinner at home. “Did you take extra Q-Tips?”

“Thank you, but I
have
Q-Tips,” I said, controlling my annoyance. “I know how to pack.”

“Those mountain lakes can be very chilly, and you don't want to get a cold in your ear.”

“A cold in my
ear
?”

“Don't laugh,” she said. “You have to be careful in the mountains.”

“You have to be careful
everywhere
,” I teased, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her playfully away from the sink.

“Hey, I'm all wet!” she cried, grabbing a dishtowel and trying to dry her hands as I roughhoused with her.

“Stop!” she giggled, twisting away from me. “What are you doing – !”

I let her go, making sure that she wasn't hurt or anything.

“You can't wait until tomorrow to get rid of your mother?” she gasped as she composed herself, drying her hands and smoothing the front of her housedress.

“Oh,” I said, changing subjects. “Did you remember to do that last blue pinstripe shirt I asked you – ?”

“It's hanging in the hall,” she said, having turned back to the sink.

“You're the best,” I said, giving her a little kiss on the back of her head. She was smaller than me now – I was eighteen and an “adult” – but it still felt kind of odd to be kissing
down
at my mother.

The next morning, I was up at 5:30 a.m., woken by the sound of my Sony clock radio set to WNEW-FM. Too early for Hendrix. I clicked it off.

“You up?” my father asked as he cracked open the door in the dark.

“Yeah,” I grunted.

I had told my Dad that I would take a cab or get a friend to drive me since it was so early in the morning, but he wouldn't hear of it. (“It's my job to take you,” he'd said simply, without any resentment. “No big deal.”) It wasn't just saving me the cab money; he wanted to do me one last favor before I left. He even had fresh coffee made when I got downstairs.

It was still pretty dark when we got into my Dad's old gray Chrysler and drove to meet the Mooncliff bus.

“If you need anything,” my Dad said as we drove along in the very light traffic, “call.”

“I will,” I said. “It's not like I'm going a million miles away.”

“You wish,” he joked back. My Dad likes to joke and tease, but in a gentle way. Sometimes we fight, like all fathers and sons, especially since I'm an only child and fairly strong-willed anyway, but I don't think there's a mean bone in his body. Of course, he could be tight with a buck. We weren't the richest people in the world, but still, in winter, he would refuse to turn on the furnace until you could almost see your breath. Mom and I would tease him, calling him “
Heat-
ler.” He did not like that one bit, but we still called him that because it was funny. All through everything that's happened to me, through every horrible downturn, he has been my rock.