Criminal That I Am (25 page)

One night, I am resolute in my desire to try. And so, while the television blares on, I decide to sit on the rug and attempt to begin a quilt that I had planned on making before this mess began. Maybe if I just cut out the pieces, I tell myself. That will be a decent-sized achievement.

But like everything as of late, it goes horribly wrong. Either because
I am not paying attention or because I am experiencing sloth-induced atrophy, I don't cut the fabric as much as I do the corner off my left index finger.

I stare at the gap in skin. It stares back at me. And then my hand is covered in blood.

I'm not sure what to do about this. The tally of consecutive days in which I have not left my apartment is in the double digits, and I have no interest in breaking this streak, least of all in pajamas that reek of french fries and are now bloodstained.

I decide to stuff my hand into a bath towel and then peruse the contents of my medicine cabinet for anything that might be of assistance. I uncover a small package of gauze and a roll of medical tape.

When I place my finger under the tap, the falling water turns crimson. For a moment I consider suturing the thing myself but suspect that this is better achieved with something other than sewing thread. I wash the wound as best as I can, tie and tape the gauze around it, and sit on the edge of my bathtub with my hand held high above my head.

This situation is not ideal, not only because I am losing prodigious amounts of blood, but also because I am left in a cold bathroom without the sustenance of The Couch. I can feel emotions creeping in.

Wanting more than anything The Couch's welcoming embrace, I continually bring my hand down and peek under the gauze to see if there is still blood. There is. I lift my hand for a few more moments. When I check it again, the blood oozes at such an alarming rate that I decide I should change the medical dressing altogether.

I rewrap and wait. I raise my hand over my head, as though I am waiting for someone to call on me. This has to stop, I tell myself. At some point, the bleeding has to stop.

I
spend so much time on The Couch that it seems like everyone else is living in a parallel universe. Sometimes I am up on The Couch so late into the night that I witness the sunrise. When law-abiding people are getting dressed and packing lunches and fulfilling their purpose, I contemplate whether this is the day I should change pajamas and if I want fried chicken or macaroni and cheese.

I hold steady to not leaving the apartment. However, one day, when there is a ring at my door accompanied by the voice of my mailman, I am forced into a human interaction.

My mailman, Stanley, is holding a huge pile of mail that he shoves into my hands.

“It seemed like you were dead,” he says. He looks me up and down, and quite possibly sees that he isn't too far off.

“I'm sorry,” I say. My voice is groggy from nonuse. “I've . . . Things have been a little crazy.”

I try to maneuver myself in front of the door so he can't see that my living room is blanketed with takeout containers. I am not sure if I'm successful.

“Well, all right. Make sure the box doesn't get full like that again.”

“I will, I promise.”

I watch him make his way to the elevator. Once he's gone, I walk to the garbage chute and throw all of the mail I am holding into it.

An exchange like this one is the exception rather than the rule. I'm otherwise ensconced in a fortress of fleece blankets and pajamas and junk food, impervious to the realities of the outside world. The only thing I'm diligent about is answering the buzzer for food delivery, each time reminding the delivery person to “Please remember to leave it at the door.” Sometimes this is the only thing I say out loud all day.

But then one day the outside world breaks through. It happens when I least expect it, when I'm watching a rerun of the MTV reality program
Jersey Shore.

On this season of
Jersey Shore
, the castmates have apparently left their natural habitat of New Jersey for Italy. In this particular episode, one of the house's more outgoing members, Snooki, is excited because her boyfriend Jionni is traveling from New Jersey to visit her. This itself is an interesting plot point for the viewer, because we have learned at the outset that Snooki may or may not have cheated on Jionni with another castmate, Mike. Jionni's visit will thus present the first opportunity in which all three sides of the love triangle will be together. It is a scene from
Anna Karenina
, except with hair gel and spray tans.

We the viewer are led to believe that the love triangle will consume
the bulk of Jionni's visit. Snooki has already noticed that Mike might be plotting to spill the beans about their interlude, something that she vehemently denies having happened yet seems worried whenever Mike brings it up. Snooki plans to go on the offensive; she tells the audience at home that if Mike even alludes to the possibility of having slept with her, “I'm legit going to punch Mike in the face.”

Jionni arrives. Snooki is over the moon. In honor of his arrival, she dons a hot pink leopard print mini-dress that leaves little to the imagination. Indeed, a castmate remarks to Snooki that her dress is so short that he can “basically see her kooka,” and perhaps she should change. But Snooki is steadfast in her sartorial choices and the gang heads out for a night on the town.

Trouble soon strikes. Snooki consumes a considerable amount of alcohol, as she is wont to do, and takes to the dance floor with a little too much gusto. As she dances before Jionni, she pulls up her dress. Though the exposed area is blurred to the viewer, we are told that Snooki has declined to wear underpants and thus has displayed her vagina to the entire club.

Jionni is aghast. He storms out of the club, onto the street, and away from the various castmates who run after him, pleading for him to come back. Snooki is too distraught—and possibly too inebriated—to run after him. Instead, she crumples into a hot pink leopard print ball on the sidewalk, sobbing.

After holding a small debate about the merits of dancing with one's vagina in full view, the castmates decide to scrape Snooki off the sidewalk and take her home. Mike, especially, is quick to point out that Jionni's departure is unwarranted. But Snooki is too upset to listen. Utterly bereft, breathless from crying, she insists that she does not deserve any of this.

In the critical scene, Jionni returns to the house, but not to make amends. He marches past Snooki, locks himself in the bathroom, and retrieves his belongings. Unmoved by Snooki's pleas, his judgment is swift. As he leaves the house for good, he speaks to Snooki in a tone so icy that a chill reverberates from the television set. “See ya,” he says. “You're single.”

It is a devastating moment for Snooki, one in which she begins to
cry uncontrollably, tears pouring over hot pink leopard print. She yells at Jionni as he prepares to make his exit: “What did I do?”

“What did I do?” At first it sounds like Snooki asks this in search of an answer, as though to say: What's the big deal?

“What did I do?” But when I hear it again, I wonder if she might be asking this of herself, as though to say: What on earth have I done?

It is a subtle shift in tone, perhaps even something that I've imagined. But the difference occurs to me all the same.

And so here is where Snooki's pain meets my own. As I watch her howl with regret, I suddenly find that I am sobbing, too. I sob because Snooki has done an awful thing, a thing that she regrets, a thing that she can never take back. I sob because she has lost everything that's important and has in the course of a day changed her life for the worse.

I sob for Snooki. I sob for me. I sob for us both, for all that's been lost, stopping only to ask my television set and myself: What did I do?

I
t isn't too long after this that I make the decision to come off The Couch altogether. This decision is not planned. I need to temporarily leave The Couch because my remote control is not working and requires new batteries.

(In fact, I later find out that the remote is not in need of batteries, but has broken altogether, presumably from overuse.)

Because watching television is integral to The Couch experience, I reason that it will not hurt too much to rejoin society for a few brief moments before returning to The Couch and its comforts.

The proposition seems easy enough, to get dressed and walk a block and a half to the drugstore and back. But I'm unprepared for the reality that meets me.

The first harsh encounter is in getting dressed. When I try to pull on a pair of jeans, I notice that these have stalled somewhere in my mid-thigh area and do not seem to be able to move farther without suffering calamity. Indeed, the pant legs are so tight against my lower thighs that I think I might be losing circulation. It takes considerable effort to peel them off.

For the first time in weeks I think to consider my reflection. When
I look in the mirror, I am hard pressed to find myself. My body is unrecognizable to me, its surface area so large that, as though by hating the skin I'm in, I've tried to make more that I might like better. It has not worked.

I consider my bloated face for a moment, press my cheeks to see if I can deflate their puff. My hair is misshapen from constantly being pressed against the armrest of The Couch. My eyebrows have joined forces into a single, unified brow. And though I have slept plenty over the past few weeks, there are deep dents underneath both eyes.

I grab a bath towel and throw it over my mirror. It's not that I cannot stand the sight of myself, I think. It's that I am sitting shiva for my old appearance.

I dig out a pair of oversized sweatpants and pull on a T-shirt and fleece jacket. When I exit my building, my eyes must adjust to the sunlight. As I walk, I can tell that my center of gravity has shifted. I can feel my excess weight with each step.

I slowly drag myself along the sidewalk. I am relieved to reach the crosswalk, the drugstore well within my sights, the first half of this journey almost over.

And then I hear this: “Excuse me?”

The words sound as though they might be directed at me, and so I instinctively move away from them.

“Excuse me?” I hear it again, a woman's voice.

I slowly turn and look. An elderly woman stands before me. Her long white hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Dark glasses consume most of her wizened face.

“Could you help me walk across the street?” she asks. “I am blind in one eye and the traffic comes so fast.”

I feel bad for having tried to avoid her. “Yes, no problem,” I say. I extend to her a chubby arm, and she eagerly latches on to it.

The light signals that it's time to walk. “Okay,” I say. “Here we go.”

I take small strides so that we can walk in sync. She is talking about the weather—it is a bright, crisp day outside—and I'm nodding along until I realize she may not see me, and so I say “Uh-huh” at every pause in conversation.

As we make our way across the street, I can see why she felt the
need to ask for help. The traffic surrounding the crosswalk is a nightmare: cars pushing past the red light, cars making illegal turns, cars swerving to the curb. There is often a tap dance involved in negotiating New York sidewalks, one that is hard enough to master with an able body and two functioning eyes. I imagine it must be next to impossible for someone suffering from a disability. I notice that as the cars come closer, the woman's grasp on my arm becomes tighter, as though I am all that stands between her and tragedy.

I am struck by this woman's predicament, how she must confront this every day, having to depend on the generosity of self-involved citizens such as myself. I tell her as we approach the other side of the street, “It's remarkable that you are able to manage this each day.”

Since we have made it across, she unhooks her arm from mine. Then, somewhat unexpectedly, she turns and faces me. Standing in the sunlight, I can see her eyes through her dark glasses, one that is fixed on me, the other that appears to have found something more interesting behind me to the right.

She pats my arm, the one that has provided assistance. “All you can do is keep going,” she says. “You just have to move forward.” She thanks me and walks away.

For the briefest of moments I wonder if she is somehow talking about me. That she is not a woman in need of my assistance, but quite the opposite, she is some blind seer sent by the gods to guide me off The Couch and back into life.

As soon as I form the thought, I have enough common sense to dismiss it. Still, after I return from the drugstore, I decide to throw out the takeout containers, launder my pajamas, clean my apartment, and pluck my eyebrows. Whether or not she is heaven-sent, the woman's advice is sound. And so that's what I do. As best as I can, I move forward.

*
Portions of this transcript have been reordered.

CHAPTER 10

Jewel of Denial

M
y life after The Couch is really two: one of what I say I'm doing, and one of what I actually do. I claim that I'm putting everything behind me, that I'm moving forward. In reality, I spend most of my days in various states of lounge, avoiding reality and devising methods of dress that cloak the excess weight I'm now carrying.

“It's good that this has happened,” I insist. “Now I can find my true purpose.” But I don't even try.

For the first time in my life, I remark how often it is we are asked “What do you do?” What
do
I do? With the fate of my license pending before a disciplinary committee, to identify myself as a lawyer seems only to tempt fate. And now that my teaching career is over, there is no basis in fact for me to claim to be a law professor. I am left to mumble some answer containing the words “used to” or “did.”

I try to avoid the question altogether, but this is impossible. Our society seems to operate on the principle—not unlike that espoused by my mother's archaic List—that what you do is who you are. I'm asked to account for an occupation at environs as varied as the doctor's office (on the admittance form, I enter “?”), upon disembarkation at JFK (on the customs form I enter “TBD”), and, incredibly, at the place where I get a facial (by this time, I am so fed up with being asked that I enter “Really?”).

I devise a survival plan. It consists of two indispensable elements: denial and victimhood. Denial sprinkles each thought with the delusion that none of what seems to be happening is actually happening. Victimhood convinces me that I've been done wrong, a victim of entities and phenomena far more nefarious than myself.

I remain in denial that the article that has been published about me holds any real truth. I point out that of the hundreds of news articles that are published about Cameron's testimony, the
Post
is the only one that mentions what I've done. And while this article is in turn picked up by a plethora of online gossip sites, the story is ignored by reputable news agencies.

“I mean, the article is in the
Post
,” I say to anyone who will listen. I draw out the “o” in “Post” such that it resembles a groan. “Who really cares what they have to say?”

When this does not evoke the enthusiastic responses I'd hoped for, I turn to victimhood. I note the evils of tabloid reporting, how it relishes the demise of others, how it encroaches on people's privacy, spreads the disease of celebrity obsession. I am its most unjustified victim.

No one seems to get too worked up about this either. Instead, I notice that the only thing anyone wants to talk about are the details of my crimes, how I was capable of doing what I did. While these queries are couched as questions, they come across as something much closer to statement:

“I just don't think I would have been able to get past the guard without losing it.”

“You really told no one? I don't know if I could do something like that and keep it to myself.”

“Just the thought that I could get caught . . . I don't think I would be able to sleep at night.”

I do not much enjoy these conversations. They make me feel as though I am alone in my compulsions, unique in the evils of which I am capable, defective in my design. That I almost certainly stand apart.

This is where the twin forces of denial and victimhood swoop in to rescue me. Denial cuts the lights, turning off these disturbing thoughts. Victimhood convinces me that to ask such questions when I am going through so much—it draws out the “o” in “so” such that it resembles a
groan—is insensitive. Victimhood tells me that even among the people who claim to care, I am a victim.

On the outside, I try to hold my head up high. But in discreet moments, I feel a creeping fear that normalcy cannot be had. That for all my proclamations that the
Post
article is tabloid malarkey, its publication creates a line of demarcation. On one side is my old life, a life in which all of my sins are hidden. On the other side is what is becoming my new life, a life in which the exposure of my crimes makes me someone who may not belong.

I
don't notice it at first. I'm so preoccupied with maintaining the outward delusion that my life will return to normal that I don't acknowledge that it's happening.

It starts out small. A fleeting thought. A flash of remembrance.

The crossword puzzle demands a seven-letter word with the clue: “Own up to one's sins.”

In a romantic comedy that my friend and I rent, the protagonist tells his love interest: “I am currently unemployed; I'll soon run out of money; and I am the target of a federal investigation.”

A television doctor discusses the possible dangers of Xanax.

These are just dumb coincidences, I think. But in the weeks and months following my exodus from The Couch, I notice a pattern. The more I tell others that I'm standing on solid ground, the more events transpire to shake my foundation, and in turn the more I fear that my crimes have come to define my life.

I first begin to realize that these are not coincidences when a news article is brought to my attention about Mother Goose, Cameron's heroin house arrest accomplice and head of the gaggle. In addition to creating a drug-laden electronic toothbrush, Mother Goose also had some involvement in the underlying drug conspiracy and thus has appeared as a government witness against David Escalera. She testifies to falsifying a UPS account that allowed for cross-country shipment of drugs, picking up cash from drug sales, and packaging drugs for shipment. She also admits that when she was confronted with the toothbrush debacle, she lied to DEA agents about what she had done.

While none of this is particularly upstanding, it should be noted that all of this took place while Mother Goose was high in the sky. I meet her after she has cleaned herself up and have a difficult time picturing her doing any of it. She is smart and accomplished—she attended college on a basketball scholarship—and personable. After she is released from a seven-month stint in prison in March 2010, I interact with her frequently over the phone and find her to be engaging and kind.

When I peruse the article—replete with a photo of Mother Goose smiling as she enters the courthouse sporting a lime green shrug—I see that it does not discuss her testimony against David Escalera. The article is about her testimony regarding me.

The article, entitled “Douglas Girl Falls For ‘Con,'” relates that Mother Goose is asked on cross-examination if she ever knew about my relationship with Cameron. This evidence has some relevance because in her testimony she has described herself as Cameron's girlfriend. She apparently avers that she did not know about the “admitted jail relationship” but that she remains committed to Cameron, writing him a letter for each day he is in prison.

When I first read the article, I scrunch my face in annoyance. I'm galled at the suggestion that I have disrupted some unassailable union. Mother Goose has always been a featured member of the gaggle, a fact confirmed not only by my repeated interactions with the other geese, but also by Mother Goose herself, who more than once during the case would call me to subtly inquire as to the identity of other women who have been asking after Cameron.

It's not my problem that Mother Goose has chosen to cast her connection to Cameron as something that it is not, I think angrily. I don't owe this woman anything.
She
should apologize to
me
for making me out to be a home wrecker when I most certainly am not.
I'm
the victim here.

But then, a few days after reading the article, I begin to sort of feel bad.

I at first attribute the small guilt I feel to what I suppose was a lack of candor. In all the times I speak to her during Cameron's case, I never mention my own developing feelings for Cameron or his invitations to me to visit him at his facility. I suppose these omissions are significant
enough to constitute dishonesty. Actually, as I think about it more over the months that pass, I start to think it might have been fairly disgusting.

The feeling becomes strong enough that a few months after the article is published, in late 2011, I feel compelled to dig out her cell phone number and text her to say that I've been thinking about her and I hope she is well.

really
, she texts back,
cuz u r a fuckin whore.

I don't expect this. I expect to be called a fuckin [
sic
] liar, or perhaps a fuckin [
sic
] phony. I don't think of myself as a fuckin [
sic
] whore, but I suppose no one ever does. Either way, the message makes me feel relieved, as though in opening myself up to this response I don't have to feel bad about my dishonesty.

But even after this, something still feels out of place. It doesn't rankle me daily, but every time I encounter someone who looks like Mother Goose or, oddly enough, is wearing a shrug, I feel a twinge of mysterious discomfort. Each time, I cannot determine what sin of mine remains in need of atonement.

I don't fully realize the exact nature of my transgression until more than a year later. It presents itself in a vivid dream. I dream that Mother Goose approaches me, carrying a baby. She tells me that this is her son, that Cameron is his father. I look down at the baby. He looks exactly like Cameron but with Mother Goose's brunette coloring.

Mother Goose asks me if I could watch the baby for her. I say yes. She hands him to me, and he is an absolute delight. I feed him and change him and play with him, and he giggles and smiles at every turn. I am completely enamored.

Mother Goose comes back at some point to retrieve the baby. As I hand him back to her, the baby starts to wail. He does not want to go. He clings to me, grabbing my shirt with his small hands. He cries so much that I begin crying, too. I decide that I am not going to give back the baby. I am going to keep him for myself.

I inform Mother Goose that I will be keeping her baby. Her face is frozen, almost indifferent. She does not say or do anything.

But somehow my brother shows up. “Give back the baby,” he tells me in no uncertain terms.

“No,” I insist. “I want the baby,” I tell him. “And the baby wants me.”

My brother is unmoved. “That doesn't matter,” he says. “That baby does not belong to you.”

This realization causes me to sob, so much so that I actually wake up crying. But before I do, I place the baby into Mother Goose's arms. “I'm sorry,” I tell her. Her face remains expressionless, and so I explain. “He isn't mine,” I say. “He should not be with me.”

I
push past the Mother Goose drama only to encounter that of the Escaleras. I learn that a jury has found David Escalera guilty of drug conspiracy, holding him responsible for a drug weight that subjects him to a five-year mandatory minimum. His sentencing is scheduled for the following spring.

I am presented with this news of David Escalera's conviction as though it is grounds for celebration, or, at a minimum, vengeful relish. But any initial twinge of schadenfreude almost immediately dissolves. My own misfortune looms so large that there is little pleasure to be had in that of someone else. Victimhood is at Level Orange, and I lament becoming what I consider to be a casualty of David Escalera's poor decision making.

Of greater note to me is that Eduardo Escalera's trial remains in the distance. Cameron is once again the government's putative star witness, and I am to prepare myself for more testimony, more press. I feel as though I have already been punched in one eye and am now bracing for a blow to the other.

For a brief moment I consider writing to Cameron at MCC to remind him that his testimony about my bra makes no logical sense. But I quickly abandon the thought, fairly certain that this could be construed as witness tampering. The only thing that I would like less than further public discussion of my underwear is another criminal case, and so I let the matter go.

The trial date of October 24 arrives and nothing happens. The trial is postponed. Then it is postponed again. And then again. The trial judge grants Eduardo Escalera two additional requests for counsel, bringing
the total number of court-appointed attorneys assigned to work on his case to five. Then, in February 2012, he is found guilty of drug conspiracy. Like his brother, his sentencing is scheduled for spring.

By the time of his guilty verdict, I have stopped paying attention to Eduardo Escalera. This is because the government has elected to drop Cameron as a cooperating witness. This in turn is because Cameron has violated the terms of his cooperation agreement. This in further turn is because Cameron has committed a new crime, subjecting him to a new charge in an entirely new criminal case.

M
y foundation is rocked once again when I learn that shortly after delivering his testimony against David Escalera, Cameron is discovered by an MCC corrections officer to be in possession of narcotics.

At least this is what is reported. Having failed to deactivate the Google Alert bearing his name, I find in my inbox dozens of e-mails announcing that Cameron has agreed to plead guilty to possessing “a user quantity” of “a heroin-like substance” while awaiting Eduardo Escalera's trial. He is reportedly discovered holding them in his hand. When confronted, he allegedly tells the corrections officer that he serendipitously found the drugs on the floor and picked them up. The corrections officer is (perhaps reasonably) unconvinced, and the matter is referred to the government.

The prosecutors in Cameron's first drug case announce that they will charge Cameron with contraband drug possession, a felony that will carry a recommended sentence of up to twenty-four months. Their decision to bring charges is somewhat notable because behavior of this kind is often handled internally by the prison. In Cameron's case, he is punished twice. He pleads guilty to the contraband charge in federal court and while he is awaiting sentencing, the Bureau of Prisons administers its own punishment: Cameron is placed in solitary confinement for twelve months, his personal visits are suspended, his commissary account is closed.