My stepfather died. He died, and my sister called in the middle of the night to say, “Mike is dead.” Then I went on tour a month or two later, and stuff started to crack open. It was really amazing. I started to feel free with my feelings. I tell people, I tell survivors when they come up to me in the merch line and say, “I survived abuse.” I ask, “Has your abuser died yet?” and they will say, “No.”
I say, “I want you to be ready because I hate to say this because you don’t wish death on anybody: It’s wonderful when your abuser dies, it’s wonderful. It’s like nothing in the world. It’s like you are free.” There’s a feeling that you will never be free of what you were, but then there’s this. Even though my stepfather was helpless at the end of his life, to know that the person who used to hurt you no longer can is very, very, very deep. It’s unbelievable.
Marc
You forgive him?
John
No. Which I hate about myself, but I don’t.
WYATT CENAC
My biggest fear, and it was a fear that I had as a kid, because there would be times my mother might show up somewhere or she would have somebody spy on me and do shit like that. It was a really paranoid house growing up.
I remember, one time I was supposed to leave my car at a certain place. I was picking up this girl that I was seeing at the time; we were going to go to Six Flags Amusement Park. I was supposed to leave my car on one side of town; Six Flags was on another side of town, both far from where my folks live. I go pick up the girl. She’s like, “We should drive to Six Flags together. It’d be romantic,” because we were supposed to ride with her sister. I was like, “Well, I don’t know. My mom says—” Then she touched my leg, and it was like, “Okay, let’s do it.”
We drive, and I had to take the highway and my folks didn’t want me on the highway. My mother used to make me carry around this cell phone, one of those big-ass car phones. Phone’s ringing nonstop, the girl answers it, and I immediately hang it up, and I’m like, “What the fuck are you doing?” Then I eventually answer it, and my mother’s like, “Why didn’t you pick up the phone?” I was like, “I don’t know if you called the right number. This is the first time it rang.” I dropped the girl off, and I get home, and as I’m pulling into the driveway I see my stepfather has been tailing me at some point, and his car’s coming behind mine. He picked me up somewhere on the road, followed me back to our house.
What I learned is that my mother sent somebody to go see if my car was where it was supposed to be. When it’s not, she calls the police. Knowing I took it, she calls the police, thinking that the police’ll pick me up, and I’ll learn a lesson.
When I get home, she has opened up all my papers, anything that I had locked up. I used to keep a briefcase where I could lock things up. All that stuff is spread out on her bed and on the kitchen table. It’s almost like the police have come in and raided the place, and they’re just going through everything. Violating in a way that was like, this doesn’t even have anything to do with the crime at hand. The crime was that I took a car on the highway; you’re now looking at this as like, “Let’s basically just go through all this shit.” There was always that sense of violation. I never knew who was my real friend. There was a girl I grew up with. She, at one point, told me that my mother had asked her to befriend me just to report information.
Halfway through my first semester of college, I was failing out and they would send a midterm report to your house. I’m in the shower, and my roommate comes knocking on the door of the bathroom, and he’s like, “Hey, your folks are on the phone.” I was like, “I’m in the shower. I’ll call them back.” He goes back, and a minute later he’s like, “They’re not getting off the phone. They’re saying, ‘Get out of the shower.’” I’m just like, “Oh, shit.” I’m thinking, “Did somebody die? What the fuck is going on?”
I go in and I don’t even have to put the phone next to my ear. My mother and stepfather’s screaming so loud about my grades, at that point, like, “You’re failing out of everything! We will come down there!” My roommate and his girlfriend can hear the whole thing. I’m thinking, “Oh, shit. I have to get my act together, because I don’t want to go back there.”
That house was, there was a lot of distrust, there was a lot of yelling. It was like, “Oh, right, I don’t want to go back, but I’m also not this student that she wants me to be. I have to figure out who I am, and I’ve got to figure out the classes I need to take to make this work so I never have to go back to that house.”
LESLIE JONES—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
I got a scholarship to Colorado State at Fort Collins, which is not only the very whitest town, it’s the very purest. They have only the purest air there. The sun was killing me and I was still the best basketball player on the team because I was the only black player. Yes, I was the only black player. There was a light-skinned girl, but she really didn’t count, and she didn’t come to school the next year.
I didn’t know that I was going to be the only black girl on the team. I walked in and I don’t know how this is going to work out because I’m very militant too, so I’m very outspoken. When I walked into basketball practice, I walked in with a radio, so I’m the stereotype. Some of them girls had never even met a black person before. It was an adjustment for me and I was very lonely.
I was rebelling on all levels. My coach knew that I was at the point where I wanted to go home because he came to my apartment. I had my mattress in the living room because this was so new to me. If I could go back with my mind now, oh God, I would have run that place. I would have run Colorado. Do you understand me?
Marc
Why did you have your mattress in the living room?
Leslie
Because I was scared, I didn’t want to sleep in the room. There was nobody in the apartment with me. I was fucking alone and I’m scared. I’m a kid. I was like eighteen. When he came to the apartment he was like, “Oh my God, you’ve got to meet people. You’ve got to meet other black people.” He brought up the BSU on campus, the Black Student Union. “Yes, there is a building for the black people on the campus and I’m sending you there.”
If you were to talk to him today, he would say that was the worst thing I ever did because I completely became a party animal.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
My folks left me in 1969, which was a little unusual. Usually you’re leaving them, but they left me in New Jersey and went to California. That sort of leaves you on your own to continue parenting yourself as best as you can. You know, your life is yours from that point on. That suited me. I was independent already. I had the band. I had my own little community that I was part of. I was making a few bucks on the weekend so I could survive. I was happily independent.
Of course, you’re only making twenty dollars. But anybody could live on twenty dollars or forty dollars in 1969, having no dependents. Anybody could do that. You ate for three dollars a day, four dollars a day was all you needed. It was just enough money to get by and have a good time on.