“And you really believe that? You’re not just saying that?” I asked.
“I believe it,” he said. He told me to stay in San Antonio for a while so that his family, Devon and I could take care of each other in the aftermath. He told me to stay off the heroin. He told me he loved me one more time, and then there was silence at the end of the line. That was the last time Johnathan Bryant Moore heard my voice.
A knock on the door. “Lily, it’s time,” the chaplain said. We shuffled into the van and rode back toward the death chamber prison. Johnathan’s brother held my hand. Devon looked back at me. “Let’s not say anything out there,” she said. “Let’s not give these reporters anything more to talk about.”
“Think Jackie O,” John’s brother Walt said. And so I thought of Jackie O with her dark sunglasses and calm demeanor after Kennedy was assassinated. How she never showed her emotion, even when paparazzi stalked her.
I felt nauseated when we arrived. I walked past reporters, cameras and dozens of police officers who were there, thinking this was justice. The SAPD had chartered a bus to stand outside for Johnathan’s execution. On the other side of the road there was a small vigil of anti-death penalty activists.
There were two rooms for witnesses to the execution: One where the victim’s family could watch and one where we could be. A phone rang. A false hope came over me: Maybe it was the governor, calling to put a stop to this madness. Instead it was the warden, saying they were ready for us.
I never could have prepared myself for what I saw. My man’s arms were strapped down and stretched out, a tube already in his vein, a white sheet covering him up to his chest. It hurt me to see him so dehumanized, unable to move but still shaky. His last moments recorded and watched. He turned his head and looked into my eyes. I knew he couldn’t hear me, but he read my lips as I said “I love you” one last time, and he said it back. I unzipped my hoodie to show him I was wearing his prison shirt in solidarity. He nodded at me. They asked if he had any last words.
“Yeah,” he said, speaking into the microphone positioned above his mouth. He looked to the other side of the glass. “Jennifer, where you at?” he searched for the eyes of the woman he had left widowed 12 years ago. His lip quivered. “I want you to know that I’m deeply sorry for your loss. It was done out of fear, stupidity and immaturity, and I didn’t know the man but for seconds before I killed him and I didn’t realize what I had done until years later in prison. I am sorry for all your family and my disrespect. He deserved better.”
Then he looked at me. “Lily, you stay off the heroin,” he said. “That’s what you do.” He told his family he loved them. “Quit the self-destruction, Lily,” he said again. A single tear slipped from underneath his glasses and then he said, “OK, warden, I’m ready.”
I felt faint. Devon held me tightly as I worried that maybe I couldn’t stand. She was whispering the Hail Mary incessantly. First was the anesthesia. He started to say something again and then his mouth froze as the drugs took over his body. The second drug collapsed his lungs, and we all heard a harsh exhale. The third stopped his heart.
It lasted 10 minutes, but it took an eternity for him to die. I pressed my hand against the glass and cried “no” over and over again. His eyes were still open. Blood filled the tube, and we gasped as all color faded from his flesh. I felt an amazing energy come over me in a wave as he died. I felt him die.Like all predators, Scotty had refined his vision to sense weakness so as to flip it to his advantage. He was a lightly gym-toned guy in Lee jeans and film company Polo shirts whose film star cheekbones were the gift of a mother he despised and whose shock of glistening black hair a genetic hand-me-down from a cruel, long-gone father. (Scotty’s name and some identifying details have been changed.)
He’d listen intently when I talked about Roxy Music, Krautrock, Harry Partch and whatever else was obsessing me about music — my only refuge — at the time. I couldn’t afford to think it odd that a top-tier, 30-ish film/music tech like Scotty should strike up a conversation with a 15-year-old like me.
I was too starved for validation, too isolated in a lonely new struggle with the symptom onslaught of what would, 20 years later, be diagnosed as bipolar disorder with its abrupt panics, hammering melancholies, and dizzying sense of bodily dislocation. More than anything, I was an attractive target.
He gave me a tour of the station — at the time, “alternative” was not the ossified corporate format we now associate with the word. It was more an adjective encompassing a plethora of non-Top 40, post-counterculture stations trying out all manner of oddball approaches to programming and content.
We explored the on-air studio, a new and towering antenna, the musty analog-cool repair rooms. His breezy affect was soothing and worldly at once. As if sharing a deliciously secret joke, Scotty told of how he’d bamboozled the station into paying him top dollar for freelance maintenance duties even as he prepped for a new high-tech R&D gig for a major studio.
By midnight of our first day, Scotty, understanding that the best way to my heart was through my ears, encouraged me to rifle through the station’s breathtaking record library.
Then we smoked hash and weed. Snorted lines. I got so wasted I said the Derek and the Dominos sleeve was melting. He laughed. A few days later he said I could work on a radio show.
I never did.
“And you really believe that? You’re not just saying that?” I asked.
“I believe it,” he said. He told me to stay in San Antonio for a while so that his family, Devon and I could take care of each other in the aftermath. He told me to stay off the heroin. He told me he loved me one more time, and then there was silence at the end of the line. That was the last time Johnathan Bryant Moore heard my voice.
A knock on the door. “Lily, it’s time,” the chaplain said. We shuffled into the van and rode back toward the death chamber prison. Johnathan’s brother held my hand. Devon looked back at me. “Let’s not say anything out there,” she said. “Let’s not give these reporters anything more to talk about.”
“Think Jackie O,” John’s brother Walt said. And so I thought of Jackie O with her dark sunglasses and calm demeanor after Kennedy was assassinated. How she never showed her emotion, even when paparazzi stalked her.
I felt nauseated when we arrived. I walked past reporters, cameras and dozens of police officers who were there, thinking this was justice. The SAPD had chartered a bus to stand outside for Johnathan’s execution. On the other side of the road there was a small vigil of anti-death penalty activists.
There were two rooms for witnesses to the execution: One where the victim’s family could watch and one where we could be. A phone rang. A false hope came over me: Maybe it was the governor, calling to put a stop to this madness. Instead it was the warden, saying they were ready for us.
I never could have prepared myself for what I saw. My man’s arms were strapped down and stretched out, a tube already in his vein, a white sheet covering him up to his chest. It hurt me to see him so dehumanized, unable to move but still shaky. His last moments recorded and watched. He turned his head and looked into my eyes. I knew he couldn’t hear me, but he read my lips as I said “I love you” one last time, and he said it back. I unzipped my hoodie to show him I was wearing his prison shirt in solidarity. He nodded at me. They asked if he had any last words.
“Yeah,” he said, speaking into the microphone positioned above his mouth. He looked to the other side of the glass. “Jennifer, where you at?” he searched for the eyes of the woman he had left widowed 12 years ago. His lip quivered. “I want you to know that I’m deeply sorry for your loss. It was done out of fear, stupidity and immaturity, and I didn’t know the man but for seconds before I killed him and I didn’t realize what I had done until years later in prison. I am sorry for all your family and my disrespect. He deserved better.”
Then he looked at me. “Lily, you stay off the heroin,” he said. “That’s what you do.” He told his family he loved them. “Quit the self-destruction, Lily,” he said again. A single tear slipped from underneath his glasses and then he said, “OK, warden, I’m ready.”
I felt faint. Devon held me tightly as I worried that maybe I couldn’t stand. She was whispering the Hail Mary incessantly. First was the anesthesia. He started to say something again and then his mouth froze as the drugs took over his body. The second drug collapsed his lungs, and we all heard a harsh exhale. The third stopped his heart.
It lasted 10 minutes, but it took an eternity for him to die. I pressed my hand against the glass and cried “no” over and over again. His eyes were still open. Blood filled the tube, and we gasped as all color faded from his flesh. I felt an amazing energy come over me in a wave as he died. I felt him die.Like all predators, Scotty had refined his vision to sense weakness so as to flip it to his advantage. He was a lightly gym-toned guy in Lee jeans and film company Polo shirts whose film star cheekbones were the gift of a mother he despised and whose shock of glistening black hair a genetic hand-me-down from a cruel, long-gone father. (Scotty’s name and some identifying details have been changed.)
He’d listen intently when I talked about Roxy Music, Krautrock, Harry Partch and whatever else was obsessing me about music — my only refuge — at the time. I couldn’t afford to think it odd that a top-tier, 30-ish film/music tech like Scotty should strike up a conversation with a 15-year-old like me.
I was too starved for validation, too isolated in a lonely new struggle with the symptom onslaught of what would, 20 years later, be diagnosed as bipolar disorder with its abrupt panics, hammering melancholies, and dizzying sense of bodily dislocation. More than anything, I was an attractive target.
He gave me a tour of the station — at the time, “alternative” was not the ossified corporate format we now associate with the word. It was more an adjective encompassing a plethora of non-Top 40, post-counterculture stations trying out all manner of oddball approaches to programming and content.
We explored the on-air studio, a new and towering antenna, the musty analog-cool repair rooms. His breezy affect was soothing and worldly at once. As if sharing a deliciously secret joke, Scotty told of how he’d bamboozled the station into paying him top dollar for freelance maintenance duties even as he prepped for a new high-tech R&D gig for a major studio.
By midnight of our first day, Scotty, understanding that the best way to my heart was through my ears, encouraged me to rifle through the station’s breathtaking record library.
Then we smoked hash and weed. Snorted lines. I got so wasted I said the Derek and the Dominos sleeve was melting. He laughed. A few days later he said I could work on a radio show.
I never did.
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