0:00

How do we even talk with one another about

0:02

the violence and the pain that the world is

0:04

witnessing in the war between Israel and Hamas,

0:07

and about our role in it? This week on Notes

0:09

from America, we try. Listen

0:11

wherever you get your podcasts.

0:15

Hello. Hello. Hi. Thanks

0:18

for being right on time. Oh, that's all I got

0:20

really is punctuality. I can't

0:22

be guaranteed to say anything interesting.

0:27

This is Death, Sex, and

0:29

Money. The

0:32

show from WNYC

0:34

about the things we think about a lot and

0:38

need to talk about more. I'm

0:41

Anna Sale, and with me this week

0:44

is Jonathan Goldstein, who you

0:46

may know, I hope you know from the show

0:48

Heavyweight. It's one of my very,

0:50

very favorite things that

0:53

is made, Jonathan. I just want to tell you,

0:55

welcome.

0:55

Thank you. Jonathan

0:58

Goldstein has long been one of

1:00

my heroes in audio from This American

1:02

Life, Wiretap, and since 2016

1:04

with Heavyweight.

1:07

If you don't know the show, the idea is

1:09

that Jonathan helps his guest, or sometimes

1:11

himself, do the necessary reporting

1:14

to track down the answer to some

1:16

question

1:17

or lay down some burden or regret,

1:20

usually from years ago, something

1:22

that's been a heavy weight. The

1:26

episodes can be quite serious or not. There's

1:28

a lot of Jonathan calling strangers out of the

1:30

blue to ask them a question about something that

1:33

you never expect to get a call from a journalist

1:35

about. And you never know where an episode

1:38

is going to take you. But

1:40

they all start the same way,

1:42

with Jonathan making a random phone call

1:45

to his childhood friend, Jackie. Yeah. I

1:47

was thinking of you last night. You know why? Why?

1:51

I couldn't sleep. Yeah. I

1:53

can't count sheep. I counted the toilets in

1:55

your house, and I fell asleep after

1:57

six or seven. But then I—

1:59

I couldn't remember. How many toilets

2:02

is it again? I

2:06

guess the immediate image that comes

2:08

to mind is of,

2:10

I remember when I used to go to the YMHA swimming pool,

2:13

the older Jews would kind

2:15

of dip their toe into the water before

2:19

fully submersing themselves. And

2:22

they would kind of pat themselves on the

2:24

pulse points, on the wrists and the neck with

2:26

the cold water, and say, oh, it's a makaya, just to kind of acclimatize

2:29

themselves. And I feel like

2:31

that's what the call to Jackie is.

2:33

I'm getting suited up and ready to

2:35

be hung up on, as an act of play. And

2:40

then, I'm all inoculated, I'm all

2:42

set to really get hung up on.

2:48

And I sort

2:50

of wondered, I feel like I've gotten to know your

2:52

approach to

2:55

kind of tackling these hard

2:57

questions by listening. We have

2:59

hard conversations on this show all the time,

3:01

and I've sort of wondered sometimes

3:04

what it's like for you when you're

3:06

doing a reporting call. And

3:09

you're about to dial the phone to call someone

3:11

who either knows nothing about

3:13

your podcast, who you are, or

3:15

it's a conversation that you know you're going to

3:17

have to just ask that really

3:20

tough thing. What's

3:24

the thing that you feel and the thing that you tell

3:26

yourself before you dial that phone number

3:29

or click on that video

3:30

Zoom call? What do you find yourself feeling?

3:34

Well, for one thing, I have a lot of – I have like about

3:36

a decade's worth of experience in telemarketing.

3:39

So I've become a little more inured

3:42

to getting hung up on than a lot of people.

3:45

But I guess what I tell myself too is that I

3:49

take some solace in just

3:51

life's absurdity. And I feel like

3:54

if I were to get a phone call like this, it would be a story.

3:56

It would be a surprise. in

4:00

the day, so I try

4:02

to keep that in mind. And I have been

4:04

so surprised time and again by people's

4:07

responses that I've learned that I cannot

4:09

predict how they're going to be

4:11

when they pick up the telephone. There

4:13

was one episode where I

4:16

became obsessed

4:18

with this old therapist

4:20

that I had in my 20s, and

4:23

I had so many questions about her that I was just too

4:25

young to afford really ask at the

4:27

time, but then as I grew older, I

4:29

was like, wow, that was strange behavior that she exhibited.

4:33

And I had no one to ask about it, except

4:35

I had this one memory of a guy in

4:37

the waiting room coming out

4:40

just before I went in, and he was a professor of

4:42

mine, weirdly. And

4:44

so I couldn't even remember his

4:46

name, but eventually I tracked him down and he was living

4:48

in Jamaica, and I just cold

4:51

called him on his cell

4:53

phone. I don't want to make you uncomfortable

4:55

or anything. I want you to be comfortable answering

4:58

this, and if you don't want to, totally fine. I

5:00

used to see this therapist, and

5:04

I have this memory, and I might be misremembering

5:06

even, is

5:09

being in the waiting room and

5:11

seeing you leave her

5:13

office. It was Dr. Mueller. And

5:18

he was just sitting outside and I thought, even

5:20

for me, this is a weird call to make,

5:23

to ask this guy that I have not

5:25

spoken to in decades about his

5:28

therapist, and he was just completely

5:30

cool about it. Why does anybody wear two pair

5:32

of glasses unless they're an alien

5:34

with six eyes? Is she just

5:37

off a UFO? You know?

5:41

Yeah, and go figure, you

5:44

know? So you just don't know.

5:46

Yeah,

5:47

and just kind of generally,

5:50

as you think about all these episodes of Heavyweight

5:52

and all these stories you've told about other people,

5:56

about yourself, what do you think?

5:59

What do you think, like making a podcast

6:02

episode, exploring something that's

6:04

this kind of unresolved

6:05

question from the past,

6:08

what do you think it releases for people

6:11

to do this exercise? I

6:14

don't know. I'm somewhere between like a life

6:16

coach or just a friend

6:18

or a nudge, I

6:20

guess, you know, a kind of gadfly

6:23

type. And

6:25

you know, we're helping people to do this thing that

6:29

they've been deferring for a very long time.

6:32

I think once they sign on, it's sort of like it gives

6:34

them a deadline, you know, it's like for the same

6:36

reason why we join writers

6:39

groups or running clubs, it

6:41

just sort of gives us community and kind

6:43

of forces us a little bit to do the

6:45

thing. Yeah. You

6:47

know, I hadn't really realized how much of a pulse

6:50

of every episode that is this idea

6:52

of like, I can't face this. I'm not going to I'm

6:54

not ready to face it today. And

6:56

how much of

6:56

the sort of narrative tension comes from that you

6:59

pushing them? Yeah, I mean, there was one episode

7:01

where my friend's mom put

7:05

her

7:06

daughter up for adoption and hadn't

7:08

stopped thinking about her for like 50 years,

7:11

every day practically. But

7:14

she just couldn't bring herself to write that letter. You know,

7:16

she needed a context,

7:19

she needed some sort of forum, she needed

7:21

someone to be sitting down at the table with her, pushing

7:23

the piece of paper over to her, handing

7:26

her the pencil and sitting with her

7:28

and that was it. You know, I don't I don't think

7:31

I have a special talent, really,

7:33

you know, I think a lot

7:35

of it is just just being there. That's all.

7:39

Your punctuality. Punctuality.

7:41

You know, you show up on time

7:44

and you don't let people put it off. Yeah.

7:47

That's Jonathan Goldstein, host of Heavyweight.

7:50

Their latest season has just started and there are

7:52

new episodes every Thursday for the rest

7:54

of the year. And I'm really excited

7:56

to share the first episode of that season

7:58

with you.

7:59

The heavyweight is Jonathan's.

8:07

Do you wear shoes

8:09

with shoelaces or you wear

8:12

Velcro?

8:13

Do you come up with these questions by yourself?

8:15

No, I have a writer's room. No, I'm just curious.

8:18

I remember you used to like Velcro. You said that anybody

8:21

who is foolish enough to have to stoop

8:23

down and tie their shoelaces deserves what

8:25

they get. The shoelaces

8:27

get covered in urine and bile

8:30

and that Velcro is the fabric of the future.

8:32

That's what you'd always say. You

8:34

have shoes with shoelaces, right? I have shoes with shoelaces,

8:36

yes. Do you always double

8:38

knot them? No. You

8:41

don't? Any other compelling questions, Johnny, that you

8:43

have? Hmm.

8:45

If you showed up to a bowling alley

8:48

with a watermelon, do you think they'd let you

8:50

bowl? I'm

8:59

Jonathan Goldstein, and this is

9:01

Heavyweight. Today's episode,

9:04

Lenny. Back

9:16

when I was a kid, I often carried around

9:18

a tape recorder and outstretched

9:20

my created a buffer between me

9:23

and the world. Recording

9:29

was my way of managing life, and

9:31

so I recorded everything. My

9:34

parents' arguments... Their

9:35

phone calls...

9:38

My

9:43

mom pretending to audition for soap operas...

9:49

Mostly, though, I recorded myself.

9:52

I made radio plays. Which

9:54

in production prevent...

10:01

Well, I'm sure you're... ...noddling!

10:09

With no one to share in my love for

10:11

a medium DOA since the Truman

10:14

administration, I put on the plays

10:16

alone, all the voices performed

10:18

by me, for an audience of zero.

10:21

Our story opens up where

10:24

Nuggly is about to get off. Oh,

10:27

what a lousy date! That's

10:30

on Nuggly.

10:32

Here

10:42

comes Boom Boom. She's

10:44

my

10:44

dream girl. Hi,

10:47

Nuggly! Hi, hi, hi, boom, boom,

10:49

boom.

10:55

And the whole psychodrama played out

10:57

as a one-man show. This movie

11:00

was directed by Jonathan Goldstein,

11:01

screenplay by Jonathan Goldstein.

11:04

All voices in it are done by Jonathan Goldstein. This

11:06

is a Jonathan Goldstein production. He

11:09

became a David Doododododo.

11:11

It was all just me and my microphone.

11:15

Until the day Lenny came along.

11:21

I was 12 years old when we were first introduced

11:24

at a birthday party. Immediately,

11:26

Lenny asked me what blood type I was.

11:30

Oh, I said, uncertainly. Me

11:33

too, he shouted, genuinely excited

11:36

to find some small thing we shared. I

11:40

was in a Louvre kit, but was quickly

11:42

won over by Lenny's goodness. And

11:44

the fact our mothers, who were already best friends,

11:46

made our best friendship feel faded. Plus,

11:50

that Lenny proved as obsessive about recording

11:52

as I was, sealed the deal. The

11:55

weekends revolved around our recording radio

11:57

plays. Lenny and I would sleep in the morning.

12:00

in the same fold out and his parents' den. His

12:02

dad, Izzy, a large man

12:04

with a thick Polish accent, would

12:07

make us breakfast in just his underwear. His

12:09

undershirt tucked into his jockeys like

12:11

it was some style imported from the old country.

12:15

One time, trying to explain to Izzy how

12:17

I liked my eggs and having no success

12:19

with fried, I described two

12:22

sons in a cloud. Lenny

12:24

loved that so much that he started ordering

12:26

his eggs that way too. Two

12:28

sons in a cloud.

12:36

After breakfast, we'd head to Lenny's bedroom,

12:39

shut the door and record all morning.

12:43

We were a gang of two. Golden

12:46

Lenox presents. The

12:50

Lenox was from Lenny, the gold

12:52

from Goldstein. For the first

12:54

time, I no longer felt alone. Together,

12:57

Lenny and I recorded prank phone calls, our

13:00

parents' dinner parties, and we made radio

13:02

play after radio play, creating

13:04

characters like Flip and Will,

13:06

who burned out radio DJs. We

13:09

take you to Flip. Flip

13:11

is going to Instagram, and Flip is taking you to Will,

13:13

okay? Will. No, Will is taking

13:16

you to Flip. No, back to you, Will. Back to you,

13:18

Flip.

13:19

Okay. As

13:22

a part of the Flip and Will radio show, we did

13:24

live phone outs to our quote unquote

13:26

listeners.

13:32

In the 80s, dialing a phone was

13:34

so arduous, it's surprising people

13:37

even bothered. But without driver's

13:39

licenses or money, Lenny and

13:41

I made the effort. The phone brought

13:43

us a sense of freedom and adventure. Okay,

13:46

you're tiny.

13:50

You too.

13:52

What?

13:55

You know, what would you do?

13:59

I'm going to give it all to you. I'm

14:02

going to tell you. Hey!

14:06

Bye.

14:16

The Cold War is not over. It never was.

14:19

This is Lenny now, age 52. John,

14:23

what is not understandable about this? Because

14:26

I'm getting frustrated now.

14:28

I'm in Minnesota and Lenny is in Canada.

14:31

We haven't spoken in nine years. And

14:34

at the moment, for some reason, we're

14:36

discussing Russia's role in Ukraine.

14:39

What? Still

14:41

there?

14:42

In our late teens, Lenny and I began to have

14:44

less and less in common, and we drifted apart.

14:47

Our first conversation in almost a decade

14:50

is not going well. I mean, I'm not

14:52

sure that I fully get it. You mean

14:54

that? It's really simple. I mean, it's not that complicated.

14:57

Not. Yeah. We destroyed

14:59

communism using the communism. Now they're

15:01

destroying capitalism using our capitalism.

15:04

Okay, I'm sorry, John, I guess it's not your subject.

15:07

The last time I saw Lenny was back home in Canada.

15:10

Our mothers, who were still best friends, thought

15:12

it'd be nice for the families to get together. Lenny

15:15

showed up at the restaurant with a shaved head

15:18

and thin chin-strapped beard. With

15:20

the way he kept his arms crossed and his posture

15:22

erect, that evening, Lenny had

15:24

something of the dictator about him. He

15:27

was living in the bachelor's apartment in his parents'

15:29

basement in Chomedy-Laval, the

15:31

suburb we grew up in just outside of Montreal.

15:35

Lenny drove a school bus for Orthodox Jews

15:37

and said the Hasidim had nicknamed him the

15:40

Surgeon because of how he zipped through

15:42

narrow streets with such precision. At

15:45

the end of the meal, Lenny asked if I wanted to go

15:47

outside and smoke a joint, a for-old-time-sake

15:50

kind of thing. The idea of

15:52

smoking a joint outside a suburban

15:54

strip mall restaurant while our aged

15:57

parents waited inside was unappealing. I

16:00

said, no, at least

16:02

stand outside with me, Lenny said, and

16:04

keep me company. But

16:06

I dug my heels in and Lenny grew

16:08

angry. We parted on bad

16:11

terms that evening, almost 10 years

16:13

ago. And that was the last time

16:15

I saw Lenny or thought too hard about

16:17

him until now. The

16:20

reason Lenny and I are speaking right now is

16:23

because he has only months to live. Lenny

16:31

is dying of pancreatic cancer and is

16:33

undergoing chemotherapy and radiation.

16:36

He's recently gone through 11 hours of surgery

16:38

to keep the cancer from spreading, but

16:41

it was no use. Even though

16:43

that first conversation went poorly, I

16:45

continue to spend my evenings talking to Lenny

16:48

because somewhere in the back of my mind is the memory

16:51

of the kid from my childhood, the kid

16:53

who stayed by my side tending to my adult

16:55

size depression. In the darkest

16:57

hours of my teens, I remember days

16:59

and nights spent in Lenny's bedroom just

17:02

lying in his bed under the black bulb of

17:04

his light fixture, listening to Pink Floyd

17:06

and Iron Maiden too scared to face

17:08

the world. Back then

17:11

Lenny would reassure me telling me to think

17:13

all the bad thoughts I could to get them

17:15

out of my system, to exhaust them, so

17:17

that eventually I'd only be left with the good

17:20

ones. Being

17:22

with Lenny was one of the few places where

17:24

I felt safe. And

17:28

so I call him again and again. Hey

17:33

Lenny, how are you doing? Yeah.

17:38

Our conversations usually occur at night

17:40

with Lenny still in his parents basement, the

17:43

same basement where we spent our childhoods

17:45

and me wandering the silent streets of

17:48

my Midwestern neighborhood. During

17:50

these phone chats, I never know what to say. I struggled

17:54

to find common ground, but always come up short.

17:57

When I bring up old mutual friends, Lenny

17:59

speaks. of them resentfully. With

18:01

jobs, it's the same. The idiots

18:04

at the trucking firm, the anti-Semites

18:06

at the refrigeration company. On

18:08

the rare occasion I raise something personal

18:10

about myself, it gets no tracking.

18:13

When I tell him how I'm now a father of a five-year-old,

18:16

Lenny, a bachelor, says that

18:19

people who have kids only do it for

18:21

ego reasons. Mostly,

18:24

we stick to the subject of Lenny's pain, which

18:27

is brutal. He can't eat without

18:29

pain, stand, or even lie down without

18:31

pain. Sometimes he'll

18:33

put the phone down, and I'll listen to him as

18:35

he howls from the bathroom. There

18:38

are drugs, some prescribed and some

18:40

not, but no matter, there's always

18:42

pain, and anger at the pain,

18:45

and anger at what seems like

18:47

me.

18:49

On most nights after a typical conversation,

18:52

I come home and say to my wife, Emily, that

18:54

maybe this is a bad idea. We

18:56

drifted apart for a reason, I say, we're

18:59

strangers. And

19:01

yet, even though Lenny doesn't seem to

19:03

even want to talk to me, we continue

19:06

to talk night after night, I'm

19:08

beginning to get the impression that maybe he

19:11

has no one else. You'll mind if

19:13

I eat for a while? No, no, no, of course not.

19:16

Oh, wish me luck. Lenny

19:18

says he wants to leave something behind, and

19:20

so we record, just like we did when we

19:22

were kids. Back then, we

19:24

performed different characters. Now,

19:27

ostensibly, we're just ourselves.

19:29

Mm, I really

19:32

outdid my shovel to rice.

19:35

Lemon, lime, garlic and pepper. Wow,

19:38

nice. Nothing

19:40

complicated, and it is gorgeous.

19:43

Great, and how's your sleep in?

19:46

I sleep like shit, what do you think? I

19:48

have to take a minute every two hours. Hmm.

19:54

A horrible life.

19:56

Can you spend your life vainly?

19:59

the universe like to punish

20:02

you.

20:04

All the anger, all the hatred, what do you think?

20:06

Did you get away with it? Lenny

20:09

is no longer the sweet lonely kid who told

20:12

me not to squat the housefly in his bedroom

20:14

because he was his pet. The boy

20:16

with whom I'd been so close that I'd run

20:18

my hands through his thick black hair as

20:21

though it were my own. Smooshing

20:23

it up into the air, I pretended I'd invented

20:25

the latest in men's hairstyles, the

20:28

Beethoven. That

20:30

Lenny seems to be long gone. Even

20:39

though Lenny and I weren't in touch, over

20:41

the years when I'd asked after him, my

20:43

mother would always say the same thing. Lenny

20:45

and his parents were fighting like cats and

20:48

dogs. Lenny's father died

20:50

about a year ago. Now it's just him

20:52

and his mom.

20:53

Do you see your mother every day?

20:59

Unfortunately, I make

21:01

an attempt to treat her like a human being. And

21:05

every day she disappoints me.

21:07

She's gross, my mom.

21:09

My father too, he was gross.

21:11

Too gross for me. But you loved him. You

21:14

loved your dad. Yeah, I did, but he was a

21:16

gross man.

21:18

Who always did everything that makes his life easier?

21:21

It was my life harder.

21:23

Lenny's parents had had another son before

21:25

him, but because of profound mental and physical

21:28

disabilities, he was institutionalized.

21:31

After that, they adopted Lenny. Both

21:34

Lenny and I were raised by parents who saw

21:36

screaming and hitting as the solution to

21:38

all of life's child-rearing dilemmas. But

21:41

from Lenny's perspective, worse than that

21:43

was the neglect. Lenny's dad

21:45

worked a lot, and his mom always seemed to have

21:47

more time for her friends than for him. It's

21:51

something Lenny still can't let go of. It's

21:53

called normal responsibility.

21:57

You know what I mean? All my friends got it.

21:59

How come I didn't?

22:00

No

22:02

Well, what's so unspecial about me that

22:04

I get the shitty fucking neglect, you know, I Did

22:07

my best that's my favorite wine. I did

22:09

my best You know if

22:11

that's the best Maybe it's

22:13

a boss Yeah, that's your

22:15

best Where I'll

22:17

tell you the truth. I'm looking forward having that one last

22:20

week knowing that it's finally done and

22:22

I could just like rest

22:27

Because it's been a bitch this life has been

22:29

a bitch and it's mostly because people have been

22:36

What does one owe a childhood friend Especially

22:39

when that friend seems to have changed so much over

22:42

the course of our phone calls a question that

22:44

keeps kicking around in the back of my mind

22:47

is whether all of Lenny's anger has Somehow

22:49

eaten up the goodness. I Continue

22:51

to phone Lenny over the next couple months in

22:54

hopes of seeing it feeling that goodness

22:56

again And so we

22:58

talked about the sex ed books at

23:00

the YMHA library Watching

23:02

the loveboat on Saturday nights when his parents

23:05

were out with my parents Rating his

23:07

mom's freezer for TV dinners while

23:09

playing Coleco vision Mostly

23:12

though I just listen and try

23:14

to be there and over time Lenny

23:16

grows softer with me and I grow

23:18

less afraid of offending him afraid

23:21

of offending a dying man And

23:30

then one night I receive a message Listening

23:33

to it now. I'm struck by how much Lenny's

23:35

voice and mellowed since our first conversations

23:38

Instead of Jonathan or John Lenny

23:40

calls me Johnny just like he did when

23:42

we were kids Like he did when

23:45

we were best friends

23:47

Hi John, I'm sorry to call you directly

23:49

like this without signaling or anything, but

23:51

the been a development

23:53

and I needed to talk to you As

23:56

soon as you can

24:04

Yeah, but John, is it too late? No,

24:06

no, no, it's okay. How are you? Not well,

24:08

John.

24:09

It's hard to tell you anything else.

24:13

I'm sorry. What's

24:16

going on? I'm just, I'm

24:17

weak. I'm going to

24:19

go into palliative care. Okay. There's

24:23

no other recourse.

24:25

Yeah.

24:25

It's

24:27

getting

24:29

harder and harder to function at home.

24:32

Yeah. I'm

24:35

not too good with pain, John. Well,

24:37

you've been dealing with so much of it.

24:39

No, I mean my whole life I've never been good

24:41

with pain. I'm a whiner, I'm

24:44

a wis.

24:46

I'm just a big wench. It's

24:50

funny, through everything, the pain still there.

24:54

Everything never ends,

24:57

even with the drugs.

25:00

It's not bad, John.

25:03

I don't foresee getting better here.

25:09

If I suddenly disappear or I

25:11

can't talk to you,

25:14

no, I'm probably like, you know, gone.

25:21

I had my last tribe yesterday. I

25:24

traumered around the little bowels.

25:27

Yeah, just like one last highway

25:29

ride.

25:31

It's not a huge deal. I don't want

25:34

to drive into my time. That's what I need to remember.

25:39

I'm dying anyway. I have bigger things

25:41

to think about.

25:44

What do you find yourself

25:46

thinking about? Nothing.

25:50

I lived. I lived

25:52

as well as I could in my capacity.

25:54

I had good experiences at least.

26:00

You know, it wasn't

26:02

the best life of all lives, but it wasn't

26:04

the worst either. Could

26:06

have been worse. That's

26:09

the legacy of my life. Could have been worse. Just

26:16

got out now. I just want to enjoy looking at

26:18

the sky, looking at things. Yeah.

26:22

We're rolling and being alive.

26:30

I remember the last lady she

26:32

was scaring from.

26:34

Who's this?

26:36

The last lady, which

26:38

she was a little perky. Remember?

26:41

Lenny would sometimes drift into delusions,

26:44

imaginary flights that would weave throughout our

26:46

conversation. But other times

26:49

the delusions were mixed up with childhood memories.

26:52

Like time had collapsed and Lenny was all

26:54

ages at once, dying, but

26:56

also back to an age when his parents drove

26:58

us to the mall and their cut list Supreme.

27:01

So if you want the front, see, go grab it.

27:03

The delusions were tender and vulnerable and

27:06

observing them was like standing over his bed,

27:09

watching him dream. Maybe we should just

27:11

go home.

27:13

I'm getting tired.

27:19

For some reason we're at the Y taking a

27:21

course. We're

27:23

at the Y, we're at the YMHA taking

27:26

a course. Fuck, I'm really

27:28

deluging. No, it's okay. It's okay.

27:30

It's okay. I'll tell you if I can't follow.

27:34

So weird though, that I would have such a delusion.

27:37

Maybe it's a subconscious desire

27:39

to visit with you in a normal way,

27:42

in a normal setting. Yeah.

27:45

Yeah. No, we're visiting for holidays,

27:47

normal, everything's normal.

27:56

So, um,

27:59

when we should remember.

27:59

Are we gonna see each other?

28:03

In a couple weeks, the

28:05

plan is for me to see Lenny during a visit back

28:08

home, my

28:08

first since COVID. Hope I

28:11

lost that long.

28:17

No, I'm serious, I'm not going to see she. Yeah,

28:20

yeah.

28:21

Since down to the wire.

28:24

Maybe the last few weeks of things,

28:29

maybe, I don't know.

28:32

Don't get depressed or anything.

28:36

Lenny wasn't just saying, I don't want to bum

28:38

you out. He was one of the few people

28:40

who knew how fragile I could be. Even

28:43

now, he was trying to protect me, even

28:46

as he was dying.

28:47

It's hard to say that, but I

28:49

wish you were here. Yeah.

28:53

Yeah.

28:58

Recently, my therapist recommended ketamine

29:00

to me, a drug sometimes prescribed

29:03

for untreatable depression. In

29:05

my case, she thought it might help shift my perspective,

29:08

which still tends towards darkness. A

29:11

day after Lenny and I had this conversation, while

29:13

taking several hits from my ketamine inhaler

29:16

and about to go for a Saturday morning run, I

29:18

was suddenly overcome with sobbing and

29:20

a feeling of unreality. As

29:22

a man inured to epiphanies, I was

29:24

shaken. Like

29:27

most, I don't often see my existence

29:29

on Earth, approximating anything close

29:31

to a quote unquote arc. Instead,

29:34

things come in flashes. I'm

29:37

four years old, eating a chocolate bar at my

29:39

aunt Tilly's house, taking such tiny

29:41

bites that Tilly calls me the mousy.

29:44

My theory is that if the bites are small enough,

29:47

it will last forever. I'm

29:50

six, regretting having told my father about

29:52

my kindergarten crush, because he's just

29:55

told a table full of relatives about it.

29:57

I will never trust this man again, I think.

30:01

I'm 15 and seeing a breast for

30:03

the very first time. European

30:05

sunbathers are at the same beach as me. The

30:08

image will claw its way into my thoughts

30:10

over and over for the next 10 years. I'm 16,

30:15

getting turned down to prom on a city bus.

30:18

Lorraine Kaufman is telling me that only I

30:21

would ask someone to prom on a city bus.

30:24

Then, for some reason, I'm 50

30:27

and moving to Minnesota. While

30:29

waiting at JFK for the flight that will take

30:31

me and Emily and our then two-year-old son,

30:33

Augie, to our new life, Augie

30:35

walks up to a stranger and hugs his legs

30:38

and I burst into tears. A

30:41

smell, a meal, a day at the beach,

30:43

and so goes a life. Without

30:51

the record button pressed down, life

30:53

is fragmented and fast and nearly

30:55

impossible to make sense of. Narrating

30:58

it helps me to shed light, but always in

31:00

retrospect. With the ketamine

31:02

coursing through me, though, I saw the

31:04

dots illuminate and connect, each

31:07

handing off with purpose, one to

31:09

the other, like a succession of dominoes.

31:12

Tracing the seemingly useless years that

31:14

got me to where I was, with the wife,

31:16

the child, the job, it all felt

31:18

so precarious, like I was standing on

31:20

a narrow column of shoeboxes. It

31:23

filled me with vertigo. To

31:26

the question of what one owes a childhood friend,

31:29

in my case, I owed Lenny everything.

31:32

It was through knowing him in those early years

31:34

that the base of the tower was formed. It

31:37

was in making tapes together in his bedroom

31:39

that I discovered a feeling I'd pursue towards

31:41

a career. Suddenly, I

31:43

could see how everything counted, that

31:45

Lenny counted, that my love for Lenny

31:48

counted. I wanted Lenny

31:50

to know this. I wanted him to know

31:52

that while our personalities might have driven us

31:54

apart, a deep-rooted love

31:56

brought us back together. But

31:58

later that day, I was

31:59

I got a call from my mother informing

32:02

me of learning how to act.

32:16

Death, sex, and money is supported by Regain

32:18

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slash DSM.

33:27

In the months after Lenny's death, I'm unable

33:29

to let go of how I wasn't there for him in his

33:31

last days. I obsess over

33:33

what his final moments might have been like. I

33:36

begin accidentally calling my son by Lenny's

33:38

name. I do this so often

33:41

that eventually my son begins to ask,

33:44

who in the world is Lenny? I

33:46

try to answer him but never know quite how.

33:49

We were best friends when I wasn't much older than you,

33:51

I say. And then I

33:53

get COVID and I isolate in my

33:55

basement. I watch all the old

33:57

movies Lenny and I used to watch.

36:02

I remember he just,

36:05

there was this

36:07

debt about him that

36:09

I recognized immediately.

36:12

And it just automatically attracted

36:15

me to him.

36:16

I remember being on the back of his motorcycle

36:17

and being scared shit with every time.

36:19

Holding

36:22

on to him so tight, I remember

36:24

his dog Max and how much he loved

36:26

that dog. I mean, to

36:28

know that he finished there

36:31

in the basement. Why?

36:35

Not only did Lenny hate the basement, he

36:38

hated the whole suburb of Chomedy. We

36:40

both did. We attended Chomedy

36:42

High, nicknamed Comedy High,

36:45

because it was so bad it was laughable. Pipe

36:48

bombs in the bathrooms, a geography

36:50

teacher who was a flat earther, and

36:52

a music teacher who married a student. I

36:56

eventually left Chomedy, but Lenny

36:58

never did. Never even left his childhood

37:00

home. How could our lives

37:03

have diverged so?

37:04

He was very unhappy.

37:06

This is Dimitri, a high school

37:08

acquaintance who Lenny reconnected with on

37:11

Facebook in the last year of his life. Dimitri

37:14

was the person Lenny saw most during his illness.

37:17

He works at a local Greek restaurant who

37:19

would bring Lenny salads at the end of his shift.

37:22

He was lonely. He used to talk

37:24

about how it would have been nice if

37:26

he had a girlfriend and some kids, or

37:28

if he had a kid who would have been nice.

37:31

She was always alone. I

37:34

never saw him with anybody, ever.

37:38

He would

37:41

ask me to hug him a lot when

37:44

he was sick. He would always ask

37:46

me to hug him. I

37:49

think Leonard didn't feel really

37:52

much love in his life, and…

37:55

Dimitri also knew that Lenny didn't want the

37:57

basement for his home, let alone his final

37:59

home. When I tell him how I've been

38:01

trying to make sense of how it happened,

38:03

he has a theory.

38:05

Drugs.

38:06

Drugs. When you say drugs, you mean pot.

38:10

Pot, mushrooms, LSD,

38:14

um, lennage used to like to take acid,

38:17

a lot of acid,

38:18

and just trip out in his room

38:20

in the dark. I

38:23

don't know how the total, whatever works, whatever

38:25

gives the beaver's away, that's a little fucked

38:28

up.

38:29

Standing up in the basement solely because of drugs

38:31

doesn't ring true to me. While the

38:33

drugs might have helped with the demons, they didn't

38:36

create the demons. Plenty of people

38:38

smoke pot, take LSD, and

38:40

still leave the house, travel the world.

38:45

Among my childhood cassettes is another

38:47

of my mother's performances, but

38:49

this one wasn't a soap opera audition.

38:52

It's of my mother pretending to be her best

38:54

friend, Lenny's mom, Hannah.

38:57

I'll kill you. I'll take that bloody

38:59

kid.

39:01

During those last conversations, Lenny confessed

39:03

to not only feelings of resentment towards his

39:05

own mother, but towards my mother too,

39:08

for taking up so much of his mother's time, time

39:11

she could have spent on him. As

39:14

for his dad, Lenny saw Izzy as a

39:16

constant threat. This

39:18

is from another flippin' wheel tape.

39:20

Okay, the lines are whoopin'

39:22

now.

39:25

In the play, I performed the part of Lenny's

39:27

father, who crashes straight into

39:30

the flippin' wheel show.

39:43

Izzy would get physical on occasion, but

39:46

her parents weren't so different. My

39:48

father favored the belt while Izzy delivered

39:50

what he called pachkas or slaps. And

39:53

in terms of our mothers, if Hannah had been

39:55

so often absent because of her friendship

39:57

with my mother, then it meant my mother

40:00

was absent too. So

40:02

was Lenny just more sensitive than I was or

40:04

was he dealing with more than I knew?

40:12

You just jogged in memory.

40:14

This is Louise again, Lenny's ex-girlfriend

40:16

with another theory. Louise

40:18

recalls a day in college when she stumbled

40:21

upon what felt like a key. A key

40:23

that predates the drugs, me and Lenny's

40:25

friendship. It even predates the upbringing

40:27

he received from his parents.

40:30

It was my class for developmental

40:32

biology.

40:34

And we were studying the brains

40:37

of children at that point between

40:39

zero and 12 months. And

40:42

we were looking at separation anxiety.

40:45

And we were studying that. And

40:48

I remember being

40:52

appalled when

40:55

I learned

40:57

that at seven months that

41:00

is when a

41:02

child's separation anxiety

41:04

develops. That's when they know what their mother's

41:06

face looks like and that's when they start crying

41:10

when you're handed to another person. And

41:13

I remember being appalled because I remember

41:15

Lenny telling me that he was adopted

41:19

when he was like six months old. And

41:23

that his mom told him that

41:25

all he ever did was cry. And

41:28

I remember coming home that day after

41:30

school and going, Oh my God, no wonder

41:32

you cried all the time because

41:35

you knew that this wasn't your mom.

41:38

To heal from the loss of his biological mother,

41:40

to help him deal with just being a sensitive kid,

41:43

Lenny could have used extra support. But

41:46

instead he got less.

41:48

Just before his mother

41:50

was kicked out of the convent, he

41:52

was christened by

41:53

Andy Asselt.

41:56

Just as I created the alter ego

41:59

of Nedley to my id, Lenny

42:01

created an alter ego named Andy that

42:04

fed Lenny with something I could never put my finger

42:06

on. But re-listening to the numerous

42:08

Andy tapes we recorded all these years

42:11

later, Andy feels like an expression

42:13

of Lenny's vulnerability, his desperate

42:15

need for more love from a parent. Through

42:18

the years he was raised with

42:20

fellow orphans. He never

42:23

knew the meaning of mother or father, all

42:25

he knew the meaning was of hate. All

42:29

the kids would nickname him,

42:32

you're a bastard. I'm

42:34

a bastard. I'm

42:37

none. Andy was

42:39

the only four year old child in

42:42

the orphanage who

42:45

every day would sit down in his bed

42:48

and contemplate suicide.

42:50

No one loves me, anyone

42:53

hates me. What did I do?

42:55

I've got to leave. I've got to get

42:57

out of here.

43:00

I got to get out of here somehow, you

43:02

know.

43:07

I knew by age six I was in trouble. I knew by

43:10

age 12 that life's

43:12

going to be a little harder than I thought. And I

43:14

knew by the time I was 18, 19 that I got

43:16

to get out of here and then stay

43:19

out. I just, you know, I'd

43:21

already learned helplessness, I guess.

43:23

I've always wanted to write

43:25

a book, Lenny said, during one of our late

43:27

night conversations where everything

43:30

the hero does is wrong. I think

43:33

a lot of books are like that, I said. A

43:35

lot of lives are like that. You

43:37

don't understand, Lenny said. And

43:40

maybe I didn't. Perhaps

43:46

a lot of what we take as a life choice is

43:48

already encoded in us at a very young

43:50

age, younger than we can even remember.

43:53

And by then it's already too late.

43:55

The moments are already handing off one

43:58

to the other like those dominoes that

43:59

cannot be stopped. Supposedly,

44:03

Lenny's biological mother was a 15-year-old

44:05

girl who eventually came to realize

44:07

she couldn't raise him on her own. Who

44:10

knows what those first six months were like for Lenny

44:12

and how they dictated the life to come. Maybe

44:15

Lenny was wrong. Maybe his paralysis,

44:18

his inability to leave the nest, wasn't

44:21

as he said learned helplessness, but

44:23

innate helplessness, the kind a baby

44:26

feels. Baby for Lenny,

44:28

the feeling just never faded away. I

44:31

was with him all the way to the end.

44:33

This is Demetri again. I remember

44:35

Nelas today there. He

44:37

goes to me, he calls me up, he goes,

44:40

he goes, he goes, can you come over and

44:42

be with me tonight? He goes, because I'm gonna die. He

44:44

said it. I said

44:46

shut up, I'm not like I'm really gonna die. He

44:48

goes, no, he goes, I'm gonna die. He goes, I'm gonna

44:51

die. He goes, can you just come and be with me? He

44:53

goes, I don't want to be alone. I'm like,

44:56

yeah, of course not. Then

44:58

I stayed with him and we

45:01

smoked a couple of joints

45:03

together. Had a

45:07

couple of drinks, couple shots of whiskey I

45:09

did and I was just

45:11

telling him Leonard, I go, it's

45:14

okay. You can go if you want. Don't

45:16

worry about it. Just go,

45:19

just go.

45:21

Because I never made it to Shambhadi before Lenny

45:23

died, because I wasn't there to hug him

45:26

or to just hold his hand, I'm left

45:28

with a terrible sense of loss. Of

45:31

the many questions I have about Lenny's last days,

45:33

the one that weighs on me most heavily is about

45:36

Lenny's anger and whether it ever subsided.

45:38

Do

45:40

you remember what his state of mind was on

45:44

that last day when you went there? Did he? Oh yeah,

45:46

yeah, he was completely at peace.

45:48

He wasn't worried or scared at all.

45:51

I think he had accepted his fate. I

45:53

think he was just, honestly, I think

45:56

he was just tired. I think he wanted to

45:58

just go. He seemed to really open. He

46:00

was nervous. He was just quiet. I

46:02

have a video of his last words. Oh, wow. What

46:06

message do you want to share with everybody, bro, now that

46:08

you're at the end?

46:12

Dimitri sends me the video he took. And

46:15

when I hit play, I gasp. I

46:17

knew how sick Lenny had been, but I guess,

46:20

irrationally, I'd been imagining him

46:22

on the other end of the phone line, looking more

46:24

like the last time I'd seen him, at the restaurant,

46:26

with his parents. In the video,

46:29

though, Lenny looks cadaverous.

46:32

You had one message for the world. What would

46:34

that be?

46:35

And he sat for about 10

46:37

seconds. He thought of it, and he goes, Love

46:41

more, fight less.

46:44

We're fighting a desiccation for it.

46:49

Love more, fight less. Fighting

46:52

doesn't get you far, nor

46:54

does anger. In

47:01

one of our last phone calls, in the final days of his life, Lenny said

47:05

that he was so weak, he could hardly lift himself from

47:07

the toilet without his mother's aid. I asked if, in general, his mother

47:09

was being helpful. She's

47:12

trying. She really

47:14

is trying. Oh. I

47:17

have to hear, and she's succeeding, too. She's

47:20

the only help I got. I need her. It

47:23

was the first I'd ever heard Lenny acknowledge his mother's

47:25

effort, which is to say, it's

47:28

the closest I'd ever heard Lenny come to forgiving

47:30

her.

47:36

I knew Lenny in the beginning and can only speculate

47:38

about the middle, but I do see that,

47:40

in the end, in spite of the pain

47:42

and the delusions, he allowed his sweetness

47:45

to shine through. While

47:47

I may never know where Lenny's anger came from,

47:49

I do know where it went. He

47:52

laid it down, at long last, to

47:55

rest. Now

48:32

that the furniture is returning

48:35

to its goodwill home. Now

48:37

that the room was rested in the darkness

48:39

from each moment

48:40

inside. If

48:55

we could get it sweet home.

48:59

We could help around to find

49:01

new mine. If

49:05

we could meet.

49:11

Heavy Weight is produced by Jonathan

49:13

Goldstein with supervising producers

49:15

Stevie Lane along with Stevie

49:16

Flanagan. Their senior producer

49:18

is Kalila Holt. Production assistance

49:20

by Mohini Mogalkar. Editorial

49:23

guidance from Emily Condon with help from

49:25

Lauren Silverman and Neil Drumming. Bobby

49:27

Lord mixed the Heavy Weight episode with original

49:30

music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Bluedot

49:33

Sessions, Katie Condon and Bobby Lord. Zoe

49:36

Azulay produced this for us at Death,

49:38

Sex and Money. The rest of our team is

49:41

Liliana Maria Persuis, Andrew

49:43

Dern and Lindsay Foster Thomas. You

49:46

can catch

49:46

new episodes of Heavy Weight every Thursday

49:49

through the end of this year or go back and

49:51

listen to their whole back catalog. It's

49:53

available on Spotify

49:54

or wherever you get your back.

49:58

I'm Anna Corral and this is it for today. Solar