Electroboy (29 page)

In my journal I keep track of the days as they pass. I break my sentence down into all different types of units—weeks, months, percent of sentence served, blocks of ten-day units, anything to make things seem to move faster. I track the change in seasons by the holiday displays at the Duane Reade drugstore on the corner. These are motivational because they run so far in advance of the actual celebration: pumpkins, witches, and goblins start appearing
the first week in September; snowmen, reindeer, and Santa Claus the first week in November. The street vendors are hawking their wares on the street—“Nintendo games for Christmas” in November. I’m thrilled that December is right around the corner. I’ll be out of here in January!

November 10, 1994
.

I am approaching the halfway mark of my time at Esmor—two and a half months—and I write to Judge Nickerson asking him to consider releasing me early so that I can begin my community service and put the remaining two and a half months on the house-arrest side of my sentence. In my letter I tell him that “I feel as though I have been adequately punished.” I mail it off and patiently wait for a response.

November 15, 1994
.

The crazies are coming back. I tell Dr. Fried during our weekly appointment today about my fantasies of committing a mass murder or shooting at Esmor. The target of the murders is usually the staff, but most of the time it doesn’t matter and I think of killing anyone in the building. These feel a lot more like well-thought-out plans than fantasies. Dr. Fried increases my Risperdal, which seems to alleviate some of the problem. I’ve also been walking on the curb to avoid the sidewalk as much as possible because I’m scared of wearing out my heels on the sidewalk and I’m frightened of looking into the eyes of strangers.

November 18, 1994
.

Judge Nickerson rejects my request for a reduction of my sentence. It was a long shot.

November 22, 1994
.

Several months before I am to leave, I start looking for a full-time job that pays a real salary that I can begin immediately and continue post release. I interview for a job with a nonprofit organization called the Center for Alternatives to Sentencing and
Employment Services (CASES), in a public relations and fund-raising capacity. The organization provides educational and employment opportunities to young people in lieu of serving time. I get the job and work with a dynamic group of dedicated people, including many young lawyers, who feel strongly about the mission. I am forced to leave my waitering position at the Cake Bar.

November 24, 1994
.

It’s Thanksgiving Day, and I travel with my family to my aunt and uncle’s in Connecticut. The day confuses me, as I’m not confined to either Esmor or the café. It’s entirely strange to be eating a civilized Thanksgiving dinner with linen, silverware, china, and crystal with my family after three months of Salisbury steak and peas on Styrofoam plates. Of course, everybody is curious about this “prison” to which I am confined, and I choose to tell them lighter and funnier anecdotes about residents like Hank, who braids his long silver hair like an Indian chief and walks around with a sullen face, or Georgie, the black transvestite who is obsessed with Diana Ross and has posters of her plastered all over his room and a library of books about her on his dresser.

November 28, 1994
.

I’m watching CNN and see that Jeffrey Dahmer has been killed in jail today. For some reason I start fantasizing that I’m going to be killed, too.

December 8, 1994
.

I wait in line for an hour to call home to tell my parents that my sentence is officially two-thirds complete. They’re thrilled.

December 15, 1994
.

I’ve become popular as the community advocate and letter writer. I help other residents write to their attorneys and judges and do my best to help explain the system. Residents line up outside my room after dinner. I’m paid with cigarettes and Diet Pepsis.

December 20, 1994
.

I walk up Fifth Avenue to see the big Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. I only have about an hour to get back, but I stand there and watch all of the tourists and the skaters circling the rink, listen to the music, and realize how pathetic my situation is. In the cab ride back, I pass store windows magnificently decorated with gold and silver trimmings, toy soldiers, and Disney characters. I know that I’m not going to be buying any gifts this year or going to any parties this season. When I turn onto Esmor’s block, I think about telling the driver to keep going downtown, but I know that I have to sign in by 7:00
P.M.
I walk through the dimly lit lobby with the shabby, musty carpeting and into the smoking lounge. It’s loud and smoky and smells like sweat. They’ve Scotch-taped a torn reindeer to the vending machine.

January 27, 1995
.

I hear on television that it’s the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It’s also my release date from Esmor and my thirty-third birthday—such a special one for me. I have packed up my suitcases the night before and stay up all night waiting to go through the release procedures at 6:00
A.M
.—signing my name in a hundred different places. When I’m finished, I thank the administrator and walk out the door and down the stairs, feeling perplexed about being officially released. I’m relieved to see my father waiting in his car. That night there’s a very small celebration with just my parents and Lucy, who has been a constant voice of reassurance and support during my confinement at Esmor. I didn’t want a welcome-home party the way I wanted a going-away party. The dinner is at Patria on Park Avenue South, and it’s a peculiar feeling knowing that I’m celebrating blocks away from Esmor. Part of me feels that I need to make some sort of transition—first be fumigated and detoxified and then given two weeks’ rest. Knowing that I’ll be spending the night at the apartment I’ve recently found for myself on the Upper West Side and
never having to sleep on that awful mattress again is strange. I haven’t been out to a real restaurant in five months, and it feels odd to be having choices and ordering dinner that doesn’t come with a gift or prize. I’m a bit paranoid, wondering if anyone can tell where I’ve just come from, and the conversation is a little difficult at first for me because I really just want to cry. The theme for the night seems to be liberation. My father makes a toast: “To health, happiness, and the future.” I can’t believe it’s over. I’m looking around the restaurant at all of the smiling patrons eating and drinking, contrasting this scene with what’s going on blocks away. That night, when I return to my new home, I double-lock the door. I’m immediately struck by the quiet. I can only hear the humming of the refrigerator, which I have filled with Diet Coke, orange juice, cream cheese, milk, butter, and eggs, and the freezer with two pints of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. It’s a start. I line up my pills and take them one by one. I wait for someone to shout out my name. I get into the shower and stand under the hot water for a half hour. My phone starts ringing, and I am talking to Lauren in Denver. I’m thrilled that people can reach me at home now. It seems miraculous. I’m naked on my bed, eating Häagen-Dazs rum raisin ice cream from a pint container and watching television. I am a free man with HBO and Showtime.

February 1995. Upper West Side
.

W
orn out and tired from my experience at Esmor, I’m pained to think that my sentence is not yet over. I still have to serve a five-month term of house arrest. The feds call it home detention, a name that seems much too kind and gentle. It isn’t quite incarceration, but it isn’t freedom either.

I’m restricted to my one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side for twenty hours each day, with a beeper-sized electronic monitor continuously strapped to my left ankle, for 152 days. On the first day of my house arrest, Mr. Henry, my probation officer (P.O. in prisoner jargon), arrives exactly at 9:00
A.M.
He’s a strong black man in his midthirties, perfectly dressed in a jacket and tie. He shakes my hand with a powerful grip. He’s carrying a canvas bag with the equipment—the ankle bracelet and a stationary monitor called a Home Escort, which looks like a simple cable television box. In fact, Mr. Henry’s not too much different from the average cable guy. In a matter of minutes he installs the Home Escort near my front door. It’s connected to a central station in Boulder, Colorado, operated, I like to imagine, by a bunch of middle-aged, female crossing-guard types. The Home Escort tracks my movement and lets “Boulder” know when I’ve gone out of my apartment. I’m asked if I want the bracelet on the right or left ankle. It’s an easy decision. I choose the left, because I want it on the same side as my heart—I think they will work well in unison. Mr. Henry adjusts the bracelet on my left ankle so that it’s comfortable but secure. I feel like he’s a
tailor hemming my pants as I stand looking down at him fidgeting with my ankle. It’s a simple procedure, and when he’s finished he takes out a booklet and reads to me. The rules are straightforward and few. I am allowed outside to see my doctors, and, in addition, for four consecutive preestablished hours each day. I can have visitors, as long as they are law-abiding citizens, and I will be allowed time during the day to complete my court-ordered community service. I have chosen to work with dying AIDS patients at St. Clare’s Hospital because it has a well-structured volunteer program, and it turns out to be a welcome relief from being trapped inside, as well as providing me with some real perspective on suffering. Mr. Henry smiles, wishes me good luck, and squeezes my hand again. I’m all wired up and ready to go. I feel like a contestant on some silly British game show that I think I’ve seen before on cable.

At first the ankle bracelet is a novelty with which I entertain my friends. Soon, though, it makes me feel kind of strange, like a life-sized action figure with a battery pack. Then it feels like a growth. I am forever fiddling with it. Wanting it off. When I’m inside, it reminds me of my confinement and I just want to take it off for a few seconds to hold my naked ankle, and when I’m outside, it reminds me of my curfew.

The device goes everywhere I do, like a sinus condition. I sleep in it, eat with it, have sex in it. But it is showering that underscores the humiliation of house arrest: even after the last article of clothing is off and I am standing under hot water, there is still a black metal contraption soldered to my body. Even naked I can’t feel completely undressed. My clothes don’t hide the thing. When I go out, people stare, point, and whisper. Some approach me and ask point-blank if I am under house arrest; others ask me if it’s an odometer. It becomes a great conversation piece for my strolls down Broadway and Riverside Drive, almost like a rare breed of dog or a baby carriage with triplets. Strangers ask me out for drinks, coffee, and even dinner. I never thought the ankle bracelet would become a topic of conversation, much less a dating service. A pretty young lawyer from Miami drinking a cup of
coffee next to me at Zabar’s is fascinated by it. “Do you mind if I ask you how you earned that piece of equipment?” she says. “Conspiracy to defraud—counterfeiting art,” I say. “Do you want me to get you another cup of coffee?” she asks. “Sure,” I tell her, and we chat for forty minutes.

Because I am confined to my apartment, my manic world comes inside. I am like a butterfly trapped beneath a glass dome. I devour information, reading newspapers and magazines and watching the news on television for most of the day, keeping myself current in my isolated world, the grown-up version of my childhood spaceship.

I’m obsessed with masturbating; I spend hours watching videos, looking at pornographic magazines, and talking on phone-sex lines. Sometimes I can actually miss a whole night’s sleep—inducing a tremendous high from the adrenaline rush—only to experience sleeplessness and tremendous depression the following day. The mania is fueling this intense sex drive that I cannot control. Dr. Fried increases my dosage of Risperdal, which seems to help, but, as before, the side effects are unbearable. I start getting day and night confused; they seem to run into each other. I’m a prisoner trapped and paralyzed with a supply of porn and fantasies big enough for an entire fraternity house. Masturbating with the ankle bracelet feels like an invasion of my privacy, as if the ladies in Boulder are watching on a remote camera.