NOTES FROM THE OTHER SIDE

Marcus Garvey Park

Notes From the Other Side

JANUARY 2018

In early October of 2017 I completed a four month sentence at Rikers. Over the following weeks, I’d tried to write something to post, but I never got beyond a few sentences (plus I didn’t really have any place of my own on which to post). It turns out that writing, in addition to everything else that would fall into the category of functioning, felt a bit harder than usual. 

I will say here upfront that if you’ve stumbled upon this and are wondering what landed me in jail, it’s too long a story to cover here. There is way too much to say and a lot I’m still sorting out. But I’d like to say (and write) as much as I can one day soon, in a way that I hope will help people, mostly women. As in: Let me describe as best I can this landmine that I stepped on—what it looks like and what it feels like—so when one appears in your path you will more likely recognize it for what it is, and step over or around it instead of right on it, like I did. And also: If you did step on one, hopefully my story makes you feel less alone, less stupid, less freakish, maybe a little less awful. 

Anyway. This photo above was taken about a week before I went in, on June 21st of 2017 (the summer solstice!) to serve out my fifteen weeks at Rikers. I’ve been living in Harlem with Leon in my own place, and I fucking love Harlem. It has felt good to live in a neighborhood where the same people are hanging out on the same stoops and everyone knows Leon’s name and no one cares what I do or don’t do for a living, or knows anything about my past, and by the time they do, they don’t judge me for it. They know I’m not an asshole, which is all that matters. And they’re all fond of Leon, which is the only other thing that matters.

After I came back home from my time away, my “summer at the Island” so to speak, I received lots of congratulatory messages like “time to celebrate!” and “you must be so relieved!” and so on. Well no, it’s not like that. It certainly was, in many ways, a huge relief to come home, seeing Leon first and foremost. Also privacy, fresh food, nature, dental floss, being able to shave my armpits, and so on. But what was there to celebrate? My life’s work and the hard work of so many good people is gone, so many people I care about were hurt financially and otherwise, I’m humiliated, and still somewhat confused, along with sad, angry and more. The debts for which I’m responsible are so big they feel surreal. So the question is, now what?

I get that question a lot. As in, “So what’s next? How will you reinvent yourself? Come to LA! Fresh start! Clean slate!” First, it’s not a clean slate, it’s a messy-as-fuck slate. Second, I don’t want to reinvent myself, I want the self (and business) back that I had before. If you tell me to open a food truck, I’ll want to punch you in the face. (Sorry). I want the big brand back, the restaurant back. Not for me, but so they exist again, for those who loved them and those to come who would. Also, I want them to exist again for all the people who had contributed so much of their time, love, and/or money to make them as special as they were. But how in the world could that happen? I have no clue. If I think too hard about how messy the slate is, I end up wanting only to burrow under the covers in the dark and take a nap that lasts forever. 

So, I don’t have any plans or answers. But I do want to say Thank You. While I was in jail, a lot of people wrote me letters. If you know anyone incarcerated, write them letters. And send books! (But not hardcovers for those are not allowed). I was overwhelmed, in a good way, with books. The officer in the package room (bless you, Miss Abrams!) was, in the end, very patient with me. I think I was technically not allowed to receive so many books. How many is one allowed? Who knows! Figuring out the rules at Rikers is a Sisyphean task, for they differ depending on who you ask, and just when you think you have it figured out, they change, and so on. And you’re treated as if you’re supposed to know, you should have known. Yet no one knows. Anyway. 

Letters and books were everything, and I replied to every letter to which I could, except the international ones I didn’t think I could reply to given we could only purchase pre-stamped envelopes, and I didn’t know until just before I left that indeed there were loose stamps one could purchase. Oh well. Thank you to the 16-year old girl in Australia who sent me a letter that made me cry. And to the sweet guy in Thailand who runs a dog shelter who wrote me a letter I never received (he told me later). If you wrote to me or sent me books and think me ungrateful for not replying, well there was a lot I did not receive. Some packages—I found out later—were returned to sender, unopened. No reason given. Just returned. I think someone in the main Rikers Island receiving room was like: oh this lady again, fuck her. Because it was a crap shoot what got through to the Rose M. Singer women’s facility and on to me. But a lot did get through and, of the very many books that did, I read 58. Yes I counted. In jail, you count everything. Or I did. I wrote lots of things down. For example, the number of days passed vs. the number of days to go, and then the daily math to sort out the exact fractions and percentages and various milestones they represented. I also wrote down everything we were served at mealtimes and tried to sort out the various patterns to try to decipher a predictive model. Anything I could write down and analyze I did. And thus I know that, by the time I left, I’d received 224 letters, 56 packages and over 250 books. Thank you. I couldn’t read them all but I did get some cred for being a librarian of sorts in the dorm and loaning out or giving away books to anyone who wanted to read.

Also thank you for all the mostly private notes via IG, Twitter, facebook and so on I came home to. I thought I’d get out and, maybe after a day or two of adjusting, be fired up to fire away thank you notes and write a lot and start figuring things out. Except it hasn’t really worked out that way. Instead, everything is overwhelming, and I’m mostly tired all the time. E-mails overwhelm me, and the “ping!” of texts make me jump, never mind when the phone rings and I want to throw it out the window and hide under the covers. Small problems or minor inconveniences feel like the end of the world.

People generally assume that jail, and Rikers of all places, is incredibly dangerous. Well, it can be. But in other ways, it can also feel incredibly safe. You have no responsibilities, other than not being an asshole. There is no email, no texting, no expectations, no deciding what to wear or worrying about how you look. Of course there is plenty about it that sucks hard, but in many ways it was the easiest few months of these past few years. I was there for a pre-determined amount of time. I did really well at remaining as grateful as I could always, trying to make myself useful, and breathing and observing and going with the overall flow. Which sometimes meant stepping out of the way when two women are about to throw down because one took too much grape jelly at breakfast, never mind that it’s 5:30 in the morning and most of us aren’t even fully awake. But such was the flow. There is a lot to see while counting down the days at Rikers. Some of it heart-breaking, some of it inspiring, some of it hilarious, much that was gross, and after a while, nothing was surprising. 

I also knew I was one of the lucky ones. I had family support, my apartment in Harlem to go home to, knowing when I was going home, letters and books, good health, and more. Most housed in my area were either waiting on bail that may never come, waiting for court dates, waiting to get accepted into a drug program, and not knowing when or whether any of that would happen. That was stressful for them, and in so many cases painful to witness. It’s easy to be theoretically aware of the injustices, inefficiency, and tragedy of the bail system as it currently functions. Another to be there seeing it up close; women feeling stuck and more desperate day after day as they may lose their job, then lose their apartment, and worry about who is taking care of their kids, especially if it’s their shitty alcoholic abusive ex or whatnot. Meanwhile they’d been arrested for who knows what, perhaps guilty perhaps not at all, and stuck there because of money, sometimes for months and in some cases even a year or two. Really. This is a whole separate issue but anyway, I was very aware of how fortunate I was to at least have certainty about when I was getting out and a home and my dog waiting for me and more. I have lots more to say and write about my time there but, another time. 

Being away and inside the world of Rikers was for me a bit like being in an alternate reality, and that was something I was somewhat used to. Getting out meant facing the actual reality and the aftermath of all that had happened. Now the real work begins. And I have no idea what to do. There’s too much to do. I’m not ready. I’m not ready for the pressure, the expectations, and the overall weird and bad feelings. It will take at least a book for me to even partially convey things that happened in a way that may make some sense, as much sense as something that doesn’t make sense can make sense. (If that makes any sense.) I feel uniquely humiliated and it doesn’t feel good. Also misunderstood. And guilt, that too. Guilt for causing harm, even if I know in my core that not in a million years would I have intended that harm, or any harm, to these people, and to myself and my brand. 

I was humiliated in ways that no one knows except the person who was behind those humiliations. For example, (and now you’ll know one of the ways) there are a handful of people out there who, just after my “disappearance,” received emails from me. Except they weren’t from me. And I did not know they existed until I was finally back and out on bail and hacked back into my gmail which I’d not been able to access for the prior year. Looking in the “sent” folder and reading what was contained therein was among the more mortifying moments of all this. There were very likely a lot of texts too that were not from me, but I never did get my phone back and so will never know, at least from my end, what they said. If you received correspondence from me after around, I think, very early June of 2015 until before I came home post-arrest, well that was not me. So. Given everything that happened, it feels a bit lame reaching out to these people and trying to explain, “that wasn’t me!” I worry they won’t believe me. I worry I sound crazy. I worry no one wants anything to do with me anymore. I worry I’ll never be able to explain. But I need to. 

Also… I’m sorry. My stomach tightens up and starts turning over and I feel queasy when I think about all the destruction, hurt and confusion. Mostly the destruction. What was lost, and who was hurt. This is all pretty much the opposite of what I’d ever have wanted to happen, of course, but how do I explain that I didn’t think it was real. How do I explain that I’m not sure what I thought, except I know I was afraid, and it was dark. While I’ve gotten used to it and things are starting to change, waking up everyday felt like waking up into a nightmare. Oh, that really happened? Maybe like Hillary Clinton the morning after. I’m guessing she didn’t want to get up and out of bed. But of course she did and got up and faced everyone like the badass she is, and of course my situation is totally different, but still, I bet she felt that queasy feeling many mornings and for quite a while. 

Letting down so many people who believed in you is not a good feeling. In my case it’s all wrapped in a mystery and doesn’t seem to make sense. I badly want to turn it all right side up. Except I’m terrified that there’s no future, nothing left, it’s all over. Game over. In which case, what is the point of waking up? Besides walking Leon and feeding him his breakfast? Leon, you save me, every day. Also, I can’t overstate the comfort from messages—so often from people I’ve never met—that contain some variation of “you’ll come back stronger than ever” or else telling me that something from what existed before—the restaurant, books, brand—helped change their life in some positive way. I love that. The latter makes me feel like at least I accomplished something good, even if it’s gone, blown up in a fiery crash with lots of collateral damage to others.

Thank you for all notes of encouragement. The ones I cling to in particular are those that say something like I don’t know how I know but I just know something wonderful and big will come, something better than ever. OK yes, thank you! I don’t know how you know, but that gives me a lifeline to grab onto. I need to believe something good. And I hope it’s not just another example of what the forensic psychiatrist who evaluated me for my defense cited as my tendency toward “magical thinking”? Which made me wonder, was my ambition that I could help change the world all those years long ago as the brand was being built just magical thinking? Fuck me. I am very confused. 

I miss everything. I miss the people I worked with, who made all the good things we did possible (and were left hurt and confused). I miss having a purpose, something to strive for and something to defend and protect. I miss the brand so much, which currently only exists as a permanent tattoo on my arm. Since I’m baring it all I may as well tell the story that I rarely told anyone about that tattoo and just after I got it. I was on the subway coming back from Brooklyn in a sleeveless summer dress with my new One Lucky Duck tattoo, gooey clear gel and saran wrap over it making it obvious it was brand new, and a guy looks at it and says, “What’s that?” And I look at him and pause while I not saying what immediately appeared in my head which was: one day you won’t have to ask me that question. That’s how much I believed in my brand. I quietly believed deep down that one day people would just know, like they know the Nike swoosh. Yes of course, that’s the duck that helps make the world a healthier place. Instead I explained to the guy about the brand and logo and what it was. Onward. But that was one of those moments that’s forever stored in my readily available memory. I remember what it felt like, and it felt like certainty. It felt good. And I’m embarrassed to admit that, but insecurities and all, I did believe in myself deep down, and in that brand in particular.

I remember someone telling me we were changing the world, one mallomar at a time. So I guess that’s how things happen. Brick by brick. Or, cheezy quackery by cheezy quacker, and so on. I don’t know what will happen now but I’m focusing on being grateful and working my way towards repairing things, and taking more steps forward than back. Getting up and out more than down and in. Can I believe that I can somehow get out from under this and not only repay debts but rebuild something big? It’s not easy but I’m going to try to choose to believe that it may happen, magical or not. Fuck it. I believe in love.