For as long as I can remember
I've wanted to be a writer. Looking back now, it's as if much of my life was
mapped out with author in mind, having spent my childhood growing up in places
like Mexico City, Beirut, Stockholm and Mallorca. So many collected
memories.
My father worked for the State Department, so between
countries Washington, DC was always home base. It was there where I got the
idea to write my first book. I was sixteen. The book was about Armageddon. I spent
most of my summer vacation days locked away in my bedroom pounding away on an
old typewriter that belonged to my dad. I didn't have time for showers.
I let the peach fuzz on my face grow. And two months later, I finished what in
my mind was a masterpiece, the book I was destined to write, even at such a
young age. And so, dewy-eyed and green and based on strong family member
praise, I sent it to Little Brown. A few months later I got a letter.
Little Brown didn't agree with me. Words like, "Highly unbelievable",
"Predictable", "Missed the point" and "childish", come to mind. I was
devastated. That rejection letter was enough to do me in for the next few
years.
It was
around 1981. Another Summer vacation, but this time from Cal State University
in Long Beach, California. I was on a plane and headed to Washington, DC to
spend the summer break with my father. Inside my carry-on shoulder pack
was a screenplay I just completed for a
class assignment. I was a film major. On my lap was a class textbook (can't
remember the title) on film.
Sitting
in the window seat beside me was a scruffy, Lee Marvin-like older man. He had two cigars in the breast pocket of his
white short-sleeved shirt. He was gaunt, with unkempt white hair and had the
appearance of a man whose age could go one way or the other. The weathered look
and lines on his face storied the possibility of a rough life. He looked
familiar, but I just couldn’t place the face.
You
cannot measure the influence someone can have by time spent together. The contact might be seconds, minutes, hours
or spans of moments over great lengths of time. There's always something
significant that comes with a genuine encounter. Such was the encounter I had
with the man sitting next to me. After the plane had leveled out and the
stewardess was beginning to make her rounds, he pulled out one of the cigars
and lit it. A waft of thick smoke was immediately drawn upward, sucked into the
planes filtration system. I was reading my text book. The stewardess appeared.
“You
can’t smoke cigars on the plane, sir,” she advised him.
The
scruffy man looked up, smoke easing out of his mouth like air. He muttered
something like a huff for the word horse and then the following expletive.
“Only
cigarettes. We don’t allow cigar or pipe smoking on the plane, sir. I’ll have
to insist you put that out.”
“All
the cigarettes these people are smoking on this damn plane right now don’t
equal the smoke I’ll exhale out of this single cigar,” he said without looking
at me. “I hate putting the damn thing out.”
He
tilted the cigar in the tiny armchair ashtray, his index finger barely touching
it like he was trying to prevent the heavier moist end from teetering down and
flipping the cigar to the floor under his seat. He mumbled and huffed for a
while and after a moment I believe he felt that it was safe enough to leave the
cigar on its’ own.
He
faced me, looked briefly at the book I was reading and said, "I'm
mentioned in that book. A few times as a matter of fact."
I
looked at the book sitting in my lap and then at him. He had a genuine smile.
“You’re
in this book,” I said with a suspicious smile.
He
asked if he could have the book. I was doubtful, but I played along and handed
it over to him. He turned to the index,
stopped when he reached the Fs. His index finger followed the names and
stopped.
“Samuel
Fuller,” is all he said. He handed the book back.
I
didn't believe him, of course. Why would writer/director Samuel Fuller, whose
many films such as Steel Helmet were essential viewing in film school, and
whose last film, The Big Red One starring Lee Marvin, I had seen two times, be
sitting beside me on a plane headed to Washington, DC?
The
future cop in me became evident as my line of questioning seemed more like an
interrogation. I even asked to see some identification. He smiled a crooked
smile and pulled out a Passport. It did indicate that he and Samuel Fuller
shared the same name. At that time I was only familiar with the name and the
movies behind the name so even though he looked like someone I may have seen
during the course of my film studies, I still doubted that I was seated next to
a legend. That is, until he started talking about his latest film, “White Dog”.
He
told me that he had a lay-over in Washington, DC before hopping another plane
that would eventually land him in Paris.
“They
banned the film in the United States,” he said with contempt. “They think it’s
a racist film.” He explained that was
the same as calling him a racist, something, he said, he is far from. According
to him, the film dealt with a difficult subject and obviously one that the U.S.
was not ready for. He admitted with more than a crooked smile this time that
Europe loved it. He was a hero in Paris.
Over
the next few hours, he shared stories, he even read a little of my screenplay
and encouraged me to keep writing. "You've got talent," he told me.
After
that flight, I was reenergized. I knew what it was I had to do in life.
Over the years I would have so many more encounters and
relationships with legends - John Cale, Timothy Leary and Hunter S. Thompson
come to mind. I did eventually make a film, but it was only based on a story of
mine. Roadside Prophets. I was signed on as a co-producer and it was released
in 1991by New Line Cinema. It starred Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys, punk
legend, John Doe, John Cusack, Arlo
Guthrie, David Carradine and my friend, Timothy Leary, whose home the story for
the movie was conceived at. It was a film that sadly left a bad taste in my
mouth with respect to the industry.
After the end of a disastrous, long term relationship and
the even more painful realization that the film business, a career I worked
toward for years, was not fulfilling me, I dropped out of the scene. After
months of sitting around, contemplating life and feeling sorry for myself I
remembered that I was a writer at heart. I thought about Samuel Fuller and all
the real life adventures that he must have had. So many of those adventures and
tragedies coming across in his work. So after realizing that, what do I do? I spend the next year getting in shape and
then I join the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC. After long eight
months in the police academy, I hit the streets with a badge and a gun. Maybe
it was a romantic notion, something I thought about doing in the past, but my
mind back then was too focused on another kind of success. The writer in me had
this naive idea that it'd be great adventure, something I’d do for a few years
then write about it. But the job got into my blood. It became something more
than just a career. It was a responsibility, a way of life, or as Simeon, my
protagonist in A Detailed Man puts it, “a bond created by fraternity, years and
years of sodality engrafted in us through the installation of some magical
oath.”
Being a detective on a large Metropolitan Police
Department, has allowed me to see humanity at its best and its absolute worst. Something
I never would have otherwise realized. Definitely not something you can
research. More than anything else in my life, it has made me the writer I am
today. A Detailed Man, was a book that took its early form while I was on the
department. Whatever off duty time I had, was usually spent writing it. It is a
book that could not have been written without the life experience. When I
finished I didn't think "masterpiece", or feel that it was the book I
was "destined" to write. I just felt satisfied.
