The Pope of Brooklyn

by Joseph Di Prisco

  Love,

  John

  •

  Postmarked the same day as that letter to me, there is another communication of his, not to me, but to our favorite very bad girl, the charismatic and sexy Sandy. She had her own drug and alcohol problems starting from early adolescence and was in and out of prison herself. The reason this letter is in my possession is that my father photocopied some of it and mailed it to me. How he came upon it, I have no information or recollection. But my father’s objective is transparent enough. He wanted me to see how incorrigible John was; the proof, to him, was found in his letter to Sandy. If someone wanted to make that case, John’s words furnished support. There are numerous unreadable passages, and his ragged state of mind might have contributed to the unintelligibility.

  Hey girl what’s going on? I got your letter today. I’m glad to see that your heart is back where it should be. Ha! So your fuckin up a little. Hey don't let it get you down. I 'm in prison and I say to myself that when I get out I’m going to be clean. But I 'm fixing every day in this mother fucken place. I don't want to tell anybody that but I'm telling you because so what if [illegible] will is a little weak that don't make you a bad person and fuck [illegible] in the neck if they hassle you in your life and you should want [illegible] Sandy Im not gonna lie to you or to myself. But Im always going to go and get loaded. Im gonna get [illegible]to get strung out and I probably will get strung. If that was the case I wont last long and I know it. got to put your mind over your [illegible] desires. I always did pretty good. I could chip with the best of them… I’m gonna get out of this place cause believe me Sandy this place aint where its at. Looking forward to spending time with you when I get out. Who knows maybe we do eachother good. Wow! I know [illegible] but you got to keep an agreement with me and that is you promise me stay out of jail. That would be crazy if I get out and you get slammed [illegible]. OK sweetheart Im gonna get this letter to you. Take care of yourself.

  Love,

  John

  •

  Saturday, 9/27/80

  Brother Joe, Hey Whats going on? I got myself in some trouble brother. I am sitting in the hole right now. I went to court yesterday. Its a disciplinary court. No matter what your charged with your automatically found guilty cause these police sit on the board as judges. Well anyway I got charged with disobeying a direct order, obstructing a search, and assault on an officer. I was found guilty and Monday they are transporting me over to Max. I think this probably is going to fuck up my parole but What can I say its over and done with now. Your probably wondering What happened Well I wake up it was Sunday morning All I had on was my bathrobe. I was walking down from one tier to another wing when these two bulls stopped me and asked what was under my robe I told them nothing but a big dick. Anyhow a human being can only take so much brother It comes to point when you are pushed up against a wall and your tired of getting shaken down, searched 10 times a day. You can only take so much humiliation and I guess I felt I ate enough humble pie. So as I said I didnt have any clothes on underneath. So I was not going to stoop to thier silly little game. I told them that if they wanted to search me we could go back to my area and search me there at my house No they insisted on doing it right there so that 30 other people could see them play their game. The deciding point that got me mad was they said If I didnt take off the robe that we are going to rip it off you B-O-Y! I guess I hate being called a boy and I wasn’t going to be humiliated anymore. So I started walking back down to my hose they these two red neck fat crew cutted pork chop eating no good dogs jumped on me. One guy grabbed my hair and another twisted my arm to make a long story short I dropped both of them with a couple of assorted kicks and went down to my pad. Sure enough the goon squad came all 15 of them handcuffed me and leg shackled me and drug me over to the hole. When I was in the hole where none could see they kicked me in the stomach around 20 or 30 times I dont know exactly cause I couldnt breathe and that’s the end of the story. Im OK now my ribs feel pretty bangedup but other than that Im OK…

  It would be good if I could get the Old Man to write [a letter to the Parole Board] for me but I wouldnt ask him in a million years. But the main letter is from you Joe about me having a place to live. Look at it this way If I dont get paroled at least we all tried. OK! I personally think you would have done the same thing I did with these punk police. Im just tired, tired, tired of their fucken mickey mouse bullshit. Well anyway. OK Brother. Remember. Im gonna get out sooner or later so dont feel bad if they dump me at the parole board.

  Love,

  John

  PS these punk police confiscated my TV and stereo because when they rolled up all my property they claimed that a TV and stereo were never mailed to me and therefore if it wasn’t mailed to directly from an appliance store that it was now considered an unauthorized item end of story FUCK THEM PUNKS

  I have no recollection of his being paroled around this time, but it’s possible.

  •

  Wend. Oct, 15

  Brother Joe, You ask me What movie do I think I’m in. Well have you ever seen seen the movie Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman, it shows the way of prison life and how bad the porkers treat convicts. I aint trying to copy no movie or actor. And I aint going to snivel about how bad the conditions are here in prison its very obvious that they are fucked. But What I will say about my situation on how I got here was because of drugs…

  Its hard for me to explain to you all the things I feel Joe. But I sure have been doing a great amount of thinking lately. I sincerely wish I could leave this whole farce behind me and be able to be on the streets to try and earn some respect and promise some good results and get something more out of life than What I’m experiencing here. I love you Joe and appreciate everything youve done for me.

  John

  •

  From a letter postmarked 21 September 1981, Alameda County Jail, Santa Rita:

  Friday, Night

  Brother Joe,

  Hey I guess your pretty well fed up with me. I can say Im fed up with myself But Im also ready to cut the whole family loose, only cause I dont want to hurt anybody anymore. This drug program is my last chance and I know it. I would be lying to you if I told you I didn’t need some professional help. Heroin is the boss. Its too strong a temptation for me. I aint going to sit here and snivel to you. Im an asshole for not being strong enough to overcome it by myself. Its other people who sit in their high positions and look down at me for being addicted to a narcotic. Hey If I become famous some day I can say that I too was a once addicted drug addict. But my problem sure aint the lone ranger either. and I won’t be the first one who has gone to a drug program and failed and I am going to try and put all my energy behind getting clean, and If I dont I havent hurt anyone but my-self. I guarantee you that big brother. You got to excuse me for having a bad attitude cause I certainly do have one at the present time. You dont seem to understand the problem is bigger than the world seems to you, and until I’ve got it under control and have had time to mentally overcome my desire for stuff I aint changed a bit. And at this point I need to get into a drug program quick fast and in a hurry. Prisons, jails, are the biggest backbone and thriver of dope phenes. This aint whats happening here at Santa Rita. Im eligible on Nov. 18th as long as Nevada drops its hold on me…

  [He goes into intricate detail on the pending proceedings in various jurisdictions, and expresses the hope to get into drug diversion.]

  Once I make bail I go directly into the custody of Walden House. So Brother Joe there is a whole lot at stake for me and Im still really up in the air about where I actually stand. I’ll try contacting you in the next week or two I sure would like you to come and visit me Michelle comes up once a week. OK Big Brother I send my love to Mario.

  John

  I never did visit him in Santa Rita. He was eventually released to a program. The court appearances, the bail hearings, the conferences wi
th drug counselors, the prison visits, the refusals to visit San Quentin, the collect phone calls from inside—it’s all jumbled in my head, all these markers and events blend. The years of waiting for something positive to happen wore me down, and I had problems of my own to confront. That’s not a defense, merely my miserable explanation.

  •

  This is from a nine-page letter of unknown origins and date; internal clues suggest it could be from San Quentin:

  Friday 18,

  Brother Joe,

  Hey well you know I wasnt mad at you. But I certainly wasnt going to write to you until I first got a letter from you. But by God I got your letter today So here I am writing to my big brother. Seriously it was good hear from you. That’s too bad that you got barred from that casino. You know we got one thing in common I got barred from the streets. You know brother Joe these jails and prisons seem to be 20 years behind the times. [He details black and white violence inside the prison, and his frequent fights.] If they know your a crazy white boy they arent going to keep fucking with you. I guess your probably thinking to yourself Joe that there has got to be another more sensible way to stay out of trouble. Yeah there is. I can go and tell the bull that I want protective custody (PC) and they will take me and lock me up with all the misfits and perverts and mother fuckers. No Brother Joe I’ll hang in there and I’m going to walk this prison yard and come and go as I please until my parole date and then Ill get out of this mother fucken place. I know you would understand my position better if you were to see these conditions for yourself. So try and get off that crazy subject. I have been staying in good shape I weigh about 180 and have been working out everyday. You know I have been learning alot of karate while I have been in jail…I’d be more than happy to show you everything I know I’m gonna learn. In the last letter I got from Roberta included inside was a couple of space ships that Mario had drawn. They were real nice…You asked me if I would like to read that book by Norman Mailer. [I believe it must have been The Executioner’s Song.] Yes I would… Since I am out in the middle of the desert It gets pretty hot and that sun is overbearing I could definitely use a good pair of sunglasses preferably Ray Bann (Aviator Style) the kind with the plastic forhead guard and the cable that looks around your ear… But I would appreciate some good novels to read. You dont have to go out and buy any just send some of the ones you already have. Also in your letter you asked about my sentence. I got 4 years… Maybe the Old Man could work something out for me [once I get paroled]. Well Brother Joe. I’m gonna get this letter in the mail. Say hello to Father Shane for me… Thanks Again, Big Brother

  Your baby brother

  John

  •

  Father Shane, these days a Catholic priest for fifty years and a monsignor, once visited him in Nevada State Prison, wearing his blacks with Roman collar. He said it was an unremittingly scary place, but John made him feel welcome and safe. Shane was trained as a psychotherapist, and he always liked him. As the priest said, my brother looked like a bad ass but he could not hide the little boy inside.

  John battled the typical grave junkie diseases: pericarditis, endocaritis, phlebitis. His scabbed legs and arms resembled moonscape. He did two or three stints at various stages of his addiction in Walden House, San Francisco, a drug diversion program. It was a tough love, no bullshit sort of operation, and he cleaned up for stretches, and he cultivated strong connections with a couple of well-meaning counselors, who hung with him, never giving in to his crap, but also never giving up hope for him. This is the hard line anybody who ever loved him walked at one point or another. His greatest advocate, and his friend, was the magnetic director Alfonso Acampora.

  2003-03-25 San Francisco—The apparent suicide of Walden House CEO Alfonso Acampora came as his leadership at the nationally renowned drug and alcohol rehabilitation program was under threat from a state attorney general’s investigation into alleged financial irregularities.

  The criminal probe, which has been under way for six months, was prompted by a whistleblower complaint from a former Walden House board member who has alleged widespread fiscal mismanagement at the nonprofit. The complaint included allegations that Acampora padded the payroll with family members, doled out business to members of the Walden House board and billed the agency for his own questionable and sometimes lavish perks.

  —sfgate.com

  •

  I find it difficult to read much less understand prison memoirs. Perhaps the material is too hot for me. Once at Cal I taught Jack Henry Abbott’s In the Belly of the Beast, but I don’t think I ever got emotionally past what the man did upon being released, that is, stabbing to death a waiter he felt had disrespected him. People are still talking about Piper Kerman’s Orange Is the New Black, and her story truly makes for terrific television. Then there’s also Joe Loya, a onetime bank robber, who writes powerfully and authentically of his time behind bars without excusing himself.

  For my money, nobody compares to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a genuinely heroic man who was imprisoned and executed at thirty-nine for resisting the Nazis. A trailblazing theologian and pastor, he wrote heartbreakingly clarion prose, including these words from his great Letters and Papers from Prison:

  We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer…

  There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve—even in pain—the authentic relationship. Furthermore, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.

  This speaks to me about my brother.

  •

  Nobody is going to argue that prison in the United States is a path to rehabilitation. To be clear, of course the community is probably safer for the incarceration of hardened criminals. But just as obviously, prisons are overcrowded with low-level drug offenders, banished there due to the minimum sentencing madness of the eighties, prisoners who are easy pickings for the gangs who fearlessly roam the yard.

  Yes, prison writings make for a distinct, often potent genre. The problem with reading my brother’s letters is they don’t read like a genre to me. My brother is part of no genre, he is sui generis. His words are the only words left that belong to him. As I pore over these letters, John’s indignation feels real, his agony palpable. His voice is alive. His words curl around in my head like the omnipresent concertina wire above his prison walls, every bit as entangling, as restraining, as wounding.

  What is the purpose of a memoir? Or this memoir? Is it to exhume the memories? Is it to bring back the dead? Is it to make sure the living never perish? If so, it’s a doomed project. That doesn’t mean it must be a failure. People die, their stories do not. And their pain persists as well, but as it was when they were alive we can do very little to assuage that unassuageable pain.

  Reading my brother’s letters rocks me decades after he penned them. He’s fixing every day, I have to assume, and he’s fucked up, and playing me, and he is hopeless, but since he was once alive, maybe he isn’t hopeless, and he feels alive. Which he always will be.

  At the same time, I will always fail him because he will never be here in the world again.

  If Bonhoeffer is right, I should regard John in the light of all he suffered.

  Ghosts. I don’t believe in them. But sometimes they seem to believe in me.

  He was hospitalize
d at least three times I am aware of, not counting prison infirmaries. At least once I was there on his death watch at Highland Hospital in Oakland, a death that didn’t materialize then, or during his other hospital stays. His death occurred later, when he OD’d and died, alone on the tiled bathroom floor of his San Francisco apartment. Coroner’s terse determination: acute drug toxicity. He was fifty-one years old.

  There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort.

  •

  This is what I said on January 25, 2003, to the almost two hundred people who had gathered to say goodbye to Johnny:

  In times of mourning people speak of how someone touched their lives. I understand what they mean, but Johnny did more than touch our lives.

  Johnny was a storm. Johnny is a storm. A storm of truths, a storm of confusion. A storm of rose petals, a storm of steel. A nonviolent man who was a man of violent self-contradictions. A man who infuriated us, a man who made us laugh. A man we wanted to scream at, a man we wanted to put in our pocket for safekeeping.

  I guess this is a way to say that he was a human being with his weaknesses and his strengths. With weaknesses and vulnerabilities that were his strengths.

  So I have one intention here today. To honor my little brother Johnny by being as honest as I can be about him. And if I can, to speak a few words that wouldn’t embarrass him too much.

  I can’t speak for the Johnny you knew—the Johnny you gave birth to, or were married to, or loved, or rode with, or worked with—the Johnny you cherish and miss so much today. I’m not sure I can really speak for the Johnny I think I knew. There were so many Johnnys.