#64 Kevin

Summary

Heavyweight Episode #64: Kevin

Date: November 20, 2025
Host: Jonathan Goldstein
Podcast by: Pushkin Industries

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Episode Overview

In this deeply affecting episode of Heavyweight, host Jonathan Goldstein helps Kevin, a man haunted by a traumatic childhood, reconnect with the two neighbors who brought him and his brother solace during one of the hardest periods of their lives—thirty years after they vanished. The episode is an exploration of childhood trauma, loss, friendship, and the lingering ache of “what ever happened to…” as Jonathan and his team use every investigative trick to find the answer.
Note: The episode discusses child abuse, parental mental illness, and the challenges faced by children in distressing situations (listener discretion advised).

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Kevin’s Story: Childhood Trauma and Loss

[04:29 – 13:37]

• Kevin, as a child, grew up in poverty within a public housing project in Sacramento, with a violent and mentally ill father and a mother stretched to the breaking point.
• Childhood event: After a physical altercation, Kevin’s mother leaves their father, taking all six kids to a women's shelter.
• Turning point: Unable to care for all six, she decides—by a traumatic drawing of names—which two must return to their father. Kevin is chosen.
• “At the moment she drew my name, I lost my mom, my siblings, and what hurt just as much was losing my older bro... In that one fell swoop when my mom pulled out my name, let alone knowing that you have to go back to your dad, who you're super afraid of... We all cried.”
  — Kevin [11:37]

2. Life With Their Father: Rules, ‘Dirty Zones,’ and Isolation

[13:37 – 20:38]

• Kevin’s father’s mental health deteriorates: he becomes obsessed with the idea that large parts of their apartment are irredeemably “dirty”—untouchable zones where objects (even a prized pen) are lost forever.
• The boys adapt by not questioning rules for fear of beatings, further isolating them.
• Humiliating details such as not having even towels or a functional fridge are recalled with matter-of-fact clarity.

3. The Refuge of Friendship with Jason and Gerald

[17:12 – 21:25]

• Jason and Gerald, two boys in the next apartment, become Kevin and his brother’s daily companions and anchors to normalcy.
• Their time together, though unremarkable in childhood activities (drawing comics, playing outside, video games), becomes a cherished oasis in a harsh world.
• “Did you ever have friends like that before? —No. No. And it helped. It helped soften my bro and I's plight...”
  — Kevin [19:04]

4. Sudden Loss: The Disappearance of Jason and Gerald

[21:08 – 24:26]

• One day, Kevin and Tony find Jason and Gerald’s apartment empty. Their father explains their mother died suddenly, and the boys were taken away by their grandparents, with no goodbye.
• This unexplained vanishing becomes a deep, unresolved loss for Kevin.

5. The Long Road to Reconnection

[24:26 – 36:03]

• Now an adult, Kevin contacts Jonathan hoping to find the brothers—armed only with their first names and fragmentary memories.
• The Heavyweight team embarks on a laborious search: public records, obituaries, Facebook groups, library requests, even Kevin returning to the old neighborhood. A crucial memory about apartment windows finally leads them to the correct address and, eventually, to Gerald.

Notable Moment:

• “We’ve been able to triangulate who these guys are. Who? Jason and Gerald.”
  — Jonathan [31:37]

6. Making Contact and the First Conversation in 30+ Years

[35:51 – 43:04]

• Gerald, who has been homeless and living on the East Coast, immediately replies via Facebook: the connection is instant, emotional.
• Long asynchronous exchanges lead to a real-time conversation months later, full of memories and mutual recognition.
• "I'm actually looking at you right now through my mind's eye."
  — Kevin to Gerald [38:22]

7. Piecing Together the Past: What Happened After

[43:04 – 54:58]

• Gerald explains his mother’s death (heroin overdose, not a heart attack as Kevin assumed) and recalls the day with vivid sadness and confusion.
• Both brothers move in with their grandparents; no more contact with their father, who had died by suicide before Gerald was born.
• The relationship between Jason and Gerald never fully recovers after their mother’s death; Jason serves in the military, now lives in Arizona.

8. Reflections on Resilience, Homelessness, and Parenthood

[54:58 – 58:06]

• Gerald describes his years spent traveling the country, often by foot, after heartbreak and separation from his own family.
• Now back in California, mostly homeless by choice, but reconnecting with his own children.
• “I guess I'm more comfortable just being alone in a crowd of people... being up here in the mountains, it's just wonderful.”
  — Gerald [46:28]

9. The Shared Search for Meaning

[58:14 – End]

• Reconnecting offers both men “validation that I did have a life before my mother died” (Gerald) and a way for Kevin to feel less invisible, less crazy, less alone.
• The episode closes with hope: the two planning to meet in person, go camping, and continue rebuilding a friendship that helped them survive.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I didn't want to be feared. I wanted my kids to be able to trust me. I wanted to be warm and open to them, spend good time with them. Yeah, I guess I just wanted to do everything the opposite what my own dad did.”
  — Kevin [60:10]

• "When one thing ends, something else begins."
  — Gerald [58:17]

• “After my mom died, nobody in the family would talk about it. It was like my old past life in Sacramento had been erased. So having connected with Kevin, it's like validation that I did have a life before my mother died.”
  — Gerald [58:14]

• “It's nice to know I'm not invisible.”
  — Kevin [59:07]

• “If you ever see him again or communicate with him again, can you let him know that? Yeah, I never, I never, never forgot about you?”
  — Kevin about Jason [56:17]

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Important Timestamps

• 04:29: Introduction to Kevin’s email and childhood.
• 07:06 – 09:45: Father’s “dirty” obsession begins.
• 11:21 – 12:37: Traumatic decision: two kids must return to father.
• 17:33 – 19:19: Kevin and Tony’s friendship with Jason and Gerald.
• 21:25: Jason and Gerald disappear, no goodbye.
• 24:55: Kevin asks Jonathan for help to find them; Jason’s one comment about burning pine cones.
• 31:37: Breakthrough—identifying correct apartment, real names.
• 36:03: First Facebook contact made with Gerald.
• 38:00 – 43:04: Kevin and Gerald’s first phone conversation in over 30 years.
• 49:07 – 53:18: Gerald details the aftermath of mother’s death.
• 55:02 – 56:47: Discussion of family, memory, and coping differently.
• 60:10: Kevin discusses his own approach to fatherhood.
• 64:57: Episode winds down; plans for real-life reunion.

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Tone & Style

The episode maintains Jonathan Goldstein’s empathetic, gently humorous but unflinchingly honest tone. The conversations are candid, laced with pain, longing, and moments of lighter recall. Both Kevin and Gerald are reflective and sometimes matter-of-fact about trauma, with the weight of lived experience palpable throughout the episode.

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Conclusion

“Kevin” is an episode about the enduring importance of friendship formed in hardship, the lifelong reverberations of childhood trauma, and the power and pitfalls of reaching into one’s past for answers and healing. Through a bittersweet but ultimately hope-filled reunion, Heavyweight demonstrates that memory, connection, and kindness are never truly lost—even when decades and hardship intervene.

Transcript

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Pushkin. Hey everyone. Today's episode is a special one, but at the same time it does deal with mental illness and children in distressing situations. So take care when listening.

[Kevin]

You've reached Jackie.

[Gerald]

Please leave me a message.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Die Claire Les c' est moinesage. Jackie, I haven't heard from you in a while. I thought maybe the adoration of American Canada isn't enough for you. So I wanted you to hear all the peoples of the world, all over the world, who want to hear your voice again. Here are a few of them. Jackie.

[Kevin]

Jackie.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

My name is Jangos. I am from Cyprus, which is mega.

[Kevin]

Far away from where you're from.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Jackie. Jackie. Jackie.

[Kevin]

Jackie.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

This is Tracey recording a voice message from London, England.

[Gerald]

Hello, Jackie. Even here in Little Switzerland, the despair is great.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Dear Jackie, this is Ehsan from Istanbul. You are the only person who makes me laugh out loud.

[Gerald]

You should definitely come back.

[Kevin]

You are the highlight of the show.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

It means nothing without you. Love from Aotearoa, New Zealand, Kenny Charlton. You have a lovely rest of your day now. And this is Jonathan from England wishing you a merry St. Pippins. Da. Hello. Oh, I thought you picked up. From Pushkin Industries. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Kevin, Right after the break. This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Gerald]

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[Jonathan Goldstein]

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[Gerald]

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[Gerald]

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[Jonathan Goldstein]

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[Gerald]

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[Jonathan Goldstein]

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[Gerald]

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[Jonathan Goldstein]

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[Kevin]

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[Jonathan Goldstein]

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[Gerald]

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[Gerald]

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[Jonathan Goldstein]

Kevin's email doesn't begin with any small talk. No Longtime listener, first time writer, preamble. He gets right into it. My little brother and I grew up destitute, kevin writes in a public housing project in Sacramento. He goes on to say that life back then was only made bearable by the presence of two boys who live next door, and this is why he's writing. Kevin hasn't seen them in over 30 years, but he still hasn't forgotten them. The two boys, his friends Jason and Gerald. Can you hear me?

[Gerald]

Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yes. Yes. Great. The path that led him to Jason and Gerald is long and circuitous. Kevin begins the tale back in the third grade, sitting in class reading.

[Gerald]

I was reading a book on the.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Gremlins based on the movie.

[Gerald]

Yeah, the COVID was the theatrical poster of the movie. And I remember it was during that moment that the teacher just said, hey, we got to go to the principal's office. And when you're a kid, that's kind of memorable because I thought initially I was in serious trouble.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

When Kevin arrived at the principal's office, his mom was there surrounded by his five siblings. She explained that she was leaving their father and taking them all with her.

[Gerald]

So my dad has always been a real imposing, frightening figure because he would beat everybody in the family if you didn't really obey his commands. I never thought that he was malicious, but that he beat us because we screwed up somehow one way or another. So he would whip us with a metal clothes hanger, for example, or he would pinch us. And when he pinched us, it would go through the clothing and would leave like half dollar sized welts of blue and purple and greenish colors.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

One day a neighbor, alarmed by a loud argument between Kevin's parents, phoned the police and Kevin's father was arrested. He spent several days in jail, and when he Returned home, he seemed different.

[Gerald]

We didn't have the word mentally ill back then, but we just talked amongst ourselves that he became crazy. And by crazy, I mean like really crazy. Whatever he endured in jail must have been so traumatic for my dad. He invented a word at the time that everything was dirty.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

The dirty fixation began as soon as his father arrived back home from jail. The first thing he did upon his return was to ask for a box. He threw every article of clothing he was wearing inside. Then, standing naked before the family, he instructed his eldest son to throw the clothes away.

[Gerald]

And he goes up, he takes a shower, and when he comes back down, he sees that my older bro brought back the box. He was telling my bro that why did you bring the box back? Because the box is dirty. But more importantly, how did you toss out the dirty clothes? And my bro said he just grabbed it from the box and tossed it out, Basically indicating to my dad that my bro touched the clothing himself. And my dad just went berserk and he just. He just beat my bro on the spot right there. But that was the beginning of this crazy phase where my dad just completely lost it.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

His dad's new obsession only increased the tension between Kevin's parents.

[Gerald]

And every time they had arguments, we have no clue what they were talking about, because they spoke in Vietnamese. And although that was my first native language, there was a time where my dad thought that we weren't learning English well enough. He forbade the usage of Vietnamese in the house. Then again, if he heard anybody utter a single word of Vietnamese, he would beat us. And so we dropped that quickly. But one of these arguments precipitated with my dad grabbing a cleaver and he throws it across the room at no one in particular, but it lodged itself into the wall.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

It wasn't long after that that Kevin, his mom, and his siblings found themselves standing in the principal's office.

[Gerald]

We went from the principal's office straight to what I now know as a woman's shelter.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Do you remember that first night that you spent there?

[Gerald]

Oh, yeah, it was great. It just felt exciting. You wouldn't know anything imposing about the shelter until you leave. That's when you see the high fences with a barbed wire over the top. Almost looks like a prison, but it was great. Inside. There was a giant playground. There were tricycles. There was a walk in pantry that myself and my brother really loved. You could walk in and there's all these snacks and instant noodles.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

But after a few weeks of feasting on instant noodles, my mom just suddenly.

[Gerald]

Gathers all of us, and she had to paper grocery bag. She just tersely explains to us that two of us, two of the six of us kids will have to return to my dad. She can't take care of all of us. She cannot keep all of us. And she said that she wrote six of our names on pieces of paper, and she put all of our names in this paper bag, and she's going to draw two names, and the two names will be two kids that have to return to my dad. And I just remember my name with the first name to be drawn. And I was just. I was just shocked. I don't know, at the time, I felt. I mean, there were six of us, two names were to be drawn. I just thought that my odds were somewhat reasonable. But looking back at it, I feel like my mom just rigged the whole thing because she couldn't just say outright, I want you, Kevin, and I want your little bro to go back to your dad. Because I feel that the younger ones won't be able to cope. Well, your dad's not going to be able to take care of them. That she wanted to keep my older bro. He was just the oldest one, the favored one.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

The plan, as established by the drawing of names from the paper bag, was that Kevin's oldest brother and the three youngest kids would stay with their mom, while Kevin and his middle brother Tony, would go live with their dad.

[Gerald]

At the moment she drew my name, I lost my mom, my siblings, and what hurt just as much was losing my older bro. I looked up to him. I would ask him all kinds of questions, everything from life to school. What color you see when you die? And I still remember his answer because he said, you don't see any color when you're dead. But I asked him, what does that mean? What is the color of no color. That black or that white. He said, no, it's neither. It's no color. To lose him. In that one fell swoop when my mom pulled out my name, let alone knowing that you have to go back to your dad, who you're super afraid of. When she drew my name, I remember I wasn't the only one who was crying. We all cried. We all cried.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Kevin now has three kids of his own, and in raising them, he thinks back on that moment.

[Gerald]

Their hamster died. They were crying, and my partner was telling me, oh, they're just kids. They're just kids, and they don't really mean it. But when she said that, I remember I cried around the same age when my name was Drawn from a paper bag. And that cry was still the deepest cry I've ever had in my life. So I just remembered, no, I gotta tend to my kids. I'm gonna bury the hamster in the backyard, set a proper tombstone, and have a good farewell. I don't think their cries are gonna be any lighter than their future cries when they're adults. I don't think so.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

For the next several years, Kevin had almost no contact with his mom and siblings. He says his mom would sometimes drop off food at his dad's place, but she was never allowed inside. Kevin was 8 and Tony was 6. On the night they went back to live with their dad at his apartment in a public housing project, I remember he was drinking.

[Gerald]

He's always drinking. I mean, I've never seen him drink water in my life. He's always drinking beer and eating peanuts. And that was actually what he was doing when we came back in the middle of the living room floor.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Although the living room contained a big fluffy couch and some school desks, their father wanted Kevin and Tony to join him on a piece of cardboard he laid on the cold linoleum floor. It turned out that since they'd last seen him, their father's obsession had only intensified.

[Gerald]

My dad set some rules, he said, that don't ever touch these desks or the couch because they're now dirty. I mean, we weren't going to question him. We didn't want to get beaten. So we ended up doing exactly that. A lot of these areas around the entire apartment just became dirty, untouchable over time. A layer of dust accrued everywhere that we were not allowed to touch or walk through. I. I got this pen where. A little thick pen with the different colored tabs on the top.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Gerald]

Where you change from black to blue to red.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah, I remember those.

[Gerald]

It was a really. It was a prized possession of mine. And I remember my dad, my bro and I were on our living room floor again, and my bro was holding the pen, and he was trying to change one of the colors, but it flung out of his hands and twirled around, and it eventually settled a few feet away from him in this dirty zone. And at that moment that happened as a 8, 9 year old, I just knew that my pen was gone. Even though it's literally just three feet away from us. My bro and I looked at each other, we both looked at my dad, and my dad just gave us that kind of solemn shake of his head, like, I'm sorry, boys, but that's a terrible loss.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

So you would. You would just see the pen sitting there.

[Gerald]

Yeah. And then it would be absorbed by the dust. Over time, it would just become covered with dust itself.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Even when their father wasn't home, Tony and Kevin didn't dare step into the dirty zones.

[Gerald]

I think we were also afraid because if you ventured into one of dirty areas, you would kind of leave, like, literal footprints into that dusty area. It would be pretty obvious. And so I remember one time a policeman entered our home because it was some kind of robbery. And the cop was trying to find this person. And I remember his face, the moment he stepped in, like, holy crap. Like, he was asking me, you guys live here? And he was trying to search the house. And I was pleading with him, I was like, please don't. Don't go over there. Don't open that door and be the. This side closet was part of the dirty zone. And I didn't want to get in trouble. And thankfully, I remember the cop just acquiesced.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

When Kevin speaks of that time in his life, it's as an accumulation of losses. The loss of his brothers and sister, his mom, the loss of all the rules that made reality reality. Which is why he still remembers the one real gain from that time. Friends. Those boys, Jason and Gerald, they were.

[Gerald]

A white family living with their single mom. Jason was witty and funny. Gerald was kind of goofy looking, but lovable.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Gerald was Tony's age. Jason was Kevin's. They had video games and a mom who was nice to them.

[Gerald]

Every morning we would wake up, we'd go outside, just yell out, jason, Gerald, what are you up to? And he would come back out groggy eyed, wiping their eyes. We would just hang out all the time.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

In a life that was filled with significant, often traumatic events, the time Kevin and his brother spent with Jason and Gerald was notable for just how unnotable it was. It was simple and fun. It was time spent just being a kid, building secret passageways out of cardboard boxes, racing bugs through obstacle courses, and climbing the highway retention wall to watch cars speed by. They swam at the public pool. They played with firecrackers blowing up Snapple bottles in the park. Then there were the comics Kevin made.

[Gerald]

It might have been a smorgasbord of different characters I drew at the time, like one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Batman or Bart and Garfield or all four of them in the same comic. Who knew? They offered me a quarter for every comic book. I drew it and gave it to them. So I did that, and I used the quarters to buy myself Candy hanging out with them was always a blast for 12 hours a day.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Did you ever have friends like that before?

[Gerald]

No. No. And it helped. It helped soften my bro and I's polite situation, living with our dad, that we could hang out with Jason, Gerald.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Jason and Gerald were the only people with a window onto Kevin and Tony's lives, quite literally. Their apartment window looked directly in on Kevin and Tony's window.

[Gerald]

And I remember one time my bro and I would take a bath and we didn't have towels and we were shivering and we ran back to our bedroom and we were trying to put on our clothing. But it's really hard to put on clothing when your body's wet. And the next day Jason and Gerald would come up to us and say, hey, why were you and Tony dancing on your bed naked?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Why didn't you guys have taps?

[Gerald]

Towels? I don't know. We just didn't have towels. You know, we didn't have a lot of things at kids. We didn't have a refrigerator. That's the wild one. That's hard to imagine. But the refrigerator was part of the dirty zone.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

And the refrigerator worked.

[Gerald]

I think it was plugged in. Yeah, we just couldn't use it. And so whenever we purchased food, we would have to consume it within that day, including a gallon of milk. My dad believed in giving us milk. And I remember my dad thought he had a genius idea. He didn't want to waste any of the milk. So he told me and my bro just jog in place outside so that we would want to drink more milk. And that didn't bode very well. And we ended up vomiting all the milk out there.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I imagine if Gerald and Jason had been watching from their window, they'd have seen their little friends looking like they were in some milk sponsored version of boot camp. But no matter what unbelievable things they saw and no matter what unbelievable things Kevin told them about off limit refrigerators or pens or couches, they didn't belittle him, didn't tease him, they accepted him.

[Gerald]

They never doubted me when I told them these things. I did wholeheartedly believed it.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

At a time when Kevin and his brother felt so doubtful of their own reality, so isolated, Jason and Gerald were not only allies, but a check on their sanity. They were always there until the day they weren't.

[Gerald]

Tony and I would go home one day and they were gone. They were just completely gone. Their home was cleared out.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Kevin's father said that Jason and Gerald's mom had died. And so that very same afternoon the boy's grandparents came and took Jason and Gerald away to live with them.

[Gerald]

Our friendship just suddenly got severed. There's no farewell or anything like that. We just went from hanging out all the time being best buddies, to one day just not even seeing them.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

People had left Kevin's life before, but Gerald and Jason didn't leave. They vanished. And when someone vanished in the early 1990s, they vanished. No cell phones, no emails. But the boys were always with him. Like in college, when Kevin's father died, his thoughts turned back to Jason and Gerald, how they must have felt losing their mom. Kevin's an adult now, with a family and a career in biotech. Yet anytime he's introduced to a Jason or a Gerald, his mind always leaps back to his Jason, his gerald. So now, 30 years later, Kevin wants to find them, the two boys who are the only witnesses to the hardest part of his and his brother Tony's life.

[Gerald]

I've always wondered about them and what are they up to? Are they all right? How are they doing? First and foremost, did they get over that kind of grief and loss? Because I can't even imagine losing your sole parent at that age. Because they always referred to themselves as white trash.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

They called themselves that.

[Gerald]

They did, yeah, always in a joking way. But every time I read about, like, for example, the opioid epidemic where a lot of rural whites were hammered, sometimes I wonder, are Jason and Gerald okay?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Do you ever wonder if they think about you as well? If they think about you and your brother?

[Gerald]

I do wonder about that. Yeah, I do wonder about that. But all that is secondary. If they're doing all right, I think that'll warm up my heart pretty well. If they're not doing all right, I want to see if I can help them out. And at the minimum, maybe just say hi. I just never forgotten about them. And if they've forgotten about myself or Tony, you know, that's fine. That's fine. I'd just be just as happy to find out that they were doing all right, that what normal friends would probably want, right?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

The problem is they were always just Jason and Gerald from across the way. Kevin doesn't know their last name, and their mother's name has also been lost to time. And although he does know the brothers went to live with their grandparents, I.

[Gerald]

Don'T even know where the grandparents reside, except for one comment that Jason made a long time ago where he said that whenever he visits his grandparents, they would burn pine cones to keep warm.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

And that's why Kevin has come to me with just the names Jason and Gerald. Hoping I can help because I thought.

[Gerald]

That your Superpower investigative sleuthing abilities are going to be able to track them down again.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

After the break, my Superpower investigative sleuthing abilities are put to the test. Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water? Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold butter. Yep. Chocolate ice cream. Sure thing. Barbecue sauce. Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean.

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[Jonathan Goldstein]

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[Kevin]

Hi, is this Jason? Hello, is this Jason? Oh, snap.

[Gerald]

You got the voicemail. You know what to do later. Wow, I really fell for that voicemail.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Hi, my name is Kalila Holt. I'm looking for a Jason who has.

[Kevin]

A brother named Gerald.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Khalilah phones dozens and dozens of numbers, leaving messages for Jason's and Gerald's across the nation. Many of the numbers she tries are disconnected entirely.

[Gerald]

We're sorry. You have reached a number that has. We're sorry. You have reached a. We're sorry.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

We're sorry. We're sorry. And while some Geralds and Jason's do answer the phone, no.

[Kevin]

I had a dad named Jason. No, ma', am, I born and raised in Texas.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

They're never the ones we're looking for.

[Kevin]

Unless you're giving away millions of dollars and then I can make it be no, ma', am, I'm sorry. Wish I could help you.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

When Jason does helpfully text that there's another guy with the same name a few towns over. I've spent a night in jail for a warrant in his name, he writes. Too bad your podcast isn't about that. I figure the local elementary school might have Jason and Gerald's last name on file. So I give them a call and am put on hold. It might give me a chance to do a little bit of freestyling while I'm waiting. Jason, he's got a brother. Gerald.

[Gerald]

Thanks for holding.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Thankfully, I'm interrupted by the receptionist. She sends me to the district office.

[Gerald]

Visit our website at HTTPs.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

And all the district office has to offer.

[Gerald]

Edu1forward slash is a web address straight out of the mid-90s enrollment center.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

TK we search obituaries, thinking we might find one for Jason and Gerald's mom. We post in neighborhood Facebook groups. We try phoning neighbors, messaging old classmates, submitting a research request at the public library. Nothing comes of any of it. After two months of dead ends, Kevin returns to the housing project to look for new leads. One of the last times he went back was to show his wife and three kids where he grew up. But the kids were too scared of the neighborhood to get out of the car. This time, he goes alone. And it's while walking by his old building that Kevin has a realization for Jason and Gerald. To have seen him and Tony through the window getting dressed without towels that day, their address would have to have been not the one he'd originally told me, but actually one apartment over. And that new fact makes all the difference. Amazingly, we've been able to triangulate who these guys are. Who? Jason and Gerald.

[Gerald]

Really?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Gerald]

No way.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yes.

[Kevin]

Wow.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

But just when you whack a mole, one problem in this life, a new problem rears its ugly mole head. Even though we found Jason and Gerald, we're not hearing back from Jason and Gerald. After sending both brothers letters, Gerald bounces back and Jason's goes unanswered. I try Jason on LinkedIn, but still nothing. Maybe the name Kevin no longer means anything to them. Maybe they forgot the friendship altogether. I can't find a phone number for Gerald or Jason, but I do find one for Jason's wife. And so I leave her a voicemail. When I get no response, I try texting. Still no response. So I call again, and this time the phone doesn't even ring. Fearing my number has been blocked, I ask Kevin to phone. But when he tries to leave a message.

[Gerald]

My name's Kevin. I've been childhood friends with Jason and his brother. Oh, I couldn't even leave a voicemail.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

It's no longer feeling like Jason has simply forgotten. It feels like he emphatically doesn't want to talk. Although Jason's a no go, I still have one more shot at reaching the younger brother, Gerald. He has a Facebook. So this is where I'm thinking, like, maybe the most direct way to do it would be for you to reach out.

[Gerald]

Yeah, I don't mind. It's just that I don't even have a Facebook account. But I can definitely make an account, I suppose.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

When we check back in the next day, Kevin tells me that he made a profile and added one single friend. Gerald.

[Gerald]

And I just sent him a message. Are you the Gerald with the brother Jason? This is Kevin with the little bro, Tony. We used to live right across from each other and we were really good friends. And he just replied immediately.

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[Gerald]

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[Jonathan Goldstein]

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[Gerald]

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[Jonathan Goldstein]

It's been an eventful 24 hours. For the first time in over 30 years, Kevin and his friend Gerald are back in touch. The two have been exchanging messages at a rapid pace since last night.

[Gerald]

I'm still digesting all of this real time. Apparently Gerald is in the east coast right now. He's been homeless for three years, but he said that he's got no problems, been staying out of trouble. He only smokes cigarettes and sparingly drinks. He stayed away from the hard drugs. Oh, and I wanted to talk to him over the phone because I'm just not a big fan of texting. But he said that he doesn't have a cell phone. He lost it while traveling through Maryland and he only has access to Facebook messenger, broader Internet while at the library. So yeah, it's just quite a bit to digest. Oh, and he mentioned Jason.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

One of the first things Gerald did after hearing from Kevin was to message Jason. Gerald shared the message he sent his brother.

[Gerald]

I can just read it out, he said. How are you brother? You won't believe this. Remember Tony and Kevin when we were living with mom in Sacramento as kids? They are reaching out to us to get to know us again and connect. We are catching up. It makes me so happy to talk to Kevin. It's crazy.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Jason responded to his brother's message saying he Remembered Kevin and Tony fondly. It turns out he was well aware Kevin had been looking for him. He'd gotten all those messages left for his wife, but he didn't want to revisit that time in the months to come. Kevin keeps the messenger app on his phone so he and his one Facebook friend can send long messages back and forth. And eventually, five months later.

[Gerald]

Hey, Gerald.

[Kevin]

Hey, Kevin. How you doing?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Gerald gets a new phone and a conversation is arranged.

[Gerald]

The last time we've ever hurt each other. We were just kids.

[Kevin]

Was it over 34 years ago? I remember exactly how you look when you were a kid. You were slightly taller than me with black hair. You had a freckle. I think you had a freckle under your left eye.

[Gerald]

Yeah, I do. Yeah.

[Kevin]

I'm. I'm actually looking at you right now through my mind's eye.

[Gerald]

Remember when we hung out at your place?

[Kevin]

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. We. All we do is play video games. I remember you and Tony were so good at playing video games. Oh, I would watch you guys for hours. One time we had this game, Rygar.

[Gerald]

Oh, I remember. That's right.

[Kevin]

Yeah, that's right. And for, like, four or five hours, you played it, and you ended up beating it. And my jaw was just floored.

[Gerald]

You know why, though? We didn't have anything else to do. Me and Tony. No, literally, we were just in that place in the. At home, and we. We didn't have anything.

[Kevin]

Oh, we knew that, too.

[Gerald]

I remember you guys came over once, right?

[Kevin]

Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy because I actually still remember the inside of your house. You.

[Gerald]

You remember? Like, didn't it look crazy?

[Kevin]

It looked like.

[Gerald]

It looked like cobwebs everywhere.

[Kevin]

Yes. Haunted house. Because I remember it was dusty. Like, not, not, not. Not necessarily. Not necessarily unclean. Unclean's not the work. But it was like nobody lived there.

[Gerald]

You remember the backyard that we hung out? It had the. The clothes lines.

[Kevin]

Yeah. We'd swing on them.

[Gerald]

Yeah. They're gone now. I guess every unit has dryer now.

[Kevin]

Wow.

[Gerald]

And everything seemed a whole lot smaller. It just surprised me because I just thought everything was way bigger. But I think we were just so small.

[Kevin]

You know, growing up with you, I always thought that you would become, like, a comic book artist, like a professional one. I mean, I would pay you a quarter apiece for them because I like them so much.

[Gerald]

Remember how you would always bug me about, oh, what's the next issue coming out? When's the next issue coming out?

[Kevin]

Yes, yes. Oh, my gosh. You have no idea. They were so good. They were so, so good.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

All these decades later, Gerald still remembers the specific Bart Simpson plot lines.

[Kevin]

There was an electrical monster that Bartman would fight. You'd make him. Oh, I just unlocked an old memory that I hadn't thought about. You would use your old tests and papers from school, and you'd pull them in a way where the backside would be the comic book, and I could unfold them and I'd see your. Your work for school.

[Gerald]

I didn't even realize that. Yeah, but that wouldn't make sense because I wouldn't have access to paper anyways.

[Kevin]

And I held onto those for, like, 15 years.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

It turns out Gerald was out there, looking back, just as much as Kevin was.

[Kevin]

I always thought of you too. Making friends with you guys was just a big breath of fresh air. I mean, at school, I was never able to make real friends. A lot of the kids were actually really mean. I get. I got beat up a lot. But I had Kevin and Tony right across from me. I mean, those were my friends. Those were the only two friends I actually had growing up. Up. I really, really never made that kind of connection again.

[Gerald]

How you doing, man?

[Kevin]

Oh, I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm happy in life. Life isn't really what I thought it'd be, what it turned out to be, but it turned out okay. And I am myself, and I'm happy. It's not like I'm living a life where I wake up and go to work and realize I'm unhappy, but just do the same thing every other day. I'm kind of just free and by myself now.

[Gerald]

You seem to be doing pretty resiliently.

[Kevin]

That's the word. Resilient, really, when you first become homeless, it's scary, you know, but it's kind of a adapt or die kind of scenario. And one thing I found out about being homeless is it's a bit easier if you can blend in with other homeless people. If you can find an area that has resources and other homeless people, you're more likely to survive better and not be a target, because it's pretty dangerous being homeless people. Don't like homeless people.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Did you find yourself targeted?

[Kevin]

Yes, a lot. I've gotten beat up a few times, but I've also been helped, too. I've had a lot of Christians help me, which is something amazing. A lot of people helped me on my way. Good people.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Gerald had been living beneath an underpass in D.C. for about a year, but a few months ago, he decided to return Home to California.

[Kevin]

I gotten to a point where I had no contact with my kids, and I missed them, and I just needed to see them. And I knew if I. If I stay gone, if I'm just out there in the world, I'll never have a relationship with my kids. If I don't come back now, I need to see my boys. I need to tell them I love them. The strange thing is, the very day that they initiated the sweeping of the homeless in D.C. was the day I had a bus ticket to come back to California. So I was getting on a bus right when the troops were coming into.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

D.C. like the day Gerald explains he'd started going to church with another friend who was homeless and that the church helped him scramble together enough money for a ticket back home to his kids.

[Kevin]

And I'm grateful that I was able to leave because I don't know what happened to all the homeless people there. There were hundreds of homeless people when I was in D.C. all in that area, and they were all dealing with the same thing. It was very sad to see some were genuinely crazy, some were playing the system, and others were just emotionally distraught. Something happened in their family, like a kid died, and they just couldn't pull themselves out.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Can you say, like, what led you into that situation?

[Kevin]

Yeah, heartbreak and lack of family. My wife left me about four years ago now. And honestly, it just got to a point where I realized that if I didn't actually go away for a while, that her heart couldn't mend, where she couldn't grow and become herself. So I needed to just leave the whole area, and I needed to do something for myself. I needed to go see the world. I needed to go walk.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Is that how you. You traveled? By walking?

[Kevin]

Mostly, yeah.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

From state to state, yeah.

[Kevin]

Well, I would get rides, of course. I wouldn't hitchhike. I wouldn't put my thumb out. But I would walk, and eventually somebody would pull over and ask me if I needed a ride.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Gerald tells me that after his wife left him, he was living in his truck. But when he decided to leave California, he swapped cars with a friend.

[Kevin]

I traded him straight up for his jalopy car, for my nice Toyota truck. I couldn't find work, I couldn't find a job. I couldn't find money for my gas tank. So I could either leave my truck on the side of the road and have it impounded and lost, or I could give it away to somebody I love and try to find my way on foot. So I chose to give it to my friend. Josh and I drove his car up through the Sierra Nevadas into Nevada, and then when it ran out of gas, I just started walking.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

For the next several years, Gerald traveled all over the country. From Nevada, he went to Kansas, then Oregon, Alaska, Tennessee, and eventually Washington D.C. and now he's back in California, spending most of his time camping.

[Kevin]

So I'm just sitting up on a mountain right now, looking down at a river. Honestly, even being back here in California, I kind of realized that I may end up staying homeless. I don't have a lot of options, but I realize I'm just happier being halfway out of the system or one foot in, one foot out. I guess I'm more comfortable just being alone in a crowd of people. So like being up here in the mountains where I'm at right now, it's just wonderful. I mean, there's nobody around. Nobody.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Gerald looks after his kids a few days every week, staying at his ex wife's house. It's a relief to see them again. His two boys, 7 and 13.

[Kevin]

And they're fine. And they missed me.

[Gerald]

I would think that they would miss you. I mean, you can, yeah, you can't ever replace a parent.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Something both Kevin and Gerald know all too well.

[Gerald]

I just remember taking that news that your mom had passed and that you two were just gone, never coming back. And Tony and I, we were both, man, we cried, we were heartbroken. We lost our two best friends. They didn't even get to say goodbye. It was so suddenly.

[Kevin]

Oh, in one day.

[Gerald]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

Yeah.

[Gerald]

And we were always wondering what happened to your mom, to you two.

[Kevin]

I could tell you the story from.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

The start as a kid making sense of what happened. Kevin assumed maybe Jason and Gerald's mom had a heart attack. But Gerald says no, that his mom had a heroin addiction.

[Kevin]

When I was like six, I came across a leather glove with a needle in it inside the couch. When I pulled up the couch cushion and I brought it to my mom and I said, mommy, what's this? And she slapped my hand and took it from me. And she said, never touch that again. Don't dig in there, okay? That's mom's. That could poke you and hurt you. So I knew, I knew about it, but I didn't know what it was exactly. And my mom would she sleep a lot? A lot. Most of the time she'd just sleep on the couch downstairs. But when she was awake, she was a very good mom. She always cooked for me and Jason and we always had food. She was always looking for us. We were out too Late. She didn't let nobody mess with us. My mom was a good mom.

[Gerald]

Yeah, that's what I remember.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

The night his mom died, Gerald remembers hearing a thud upstairs, but he didn't think much of it. He and Jason were busy watching the Simpsons at the time. And not long after that they went to bed.

[Kevin]

So I went and crawled into bed and Jason crawled into his bed and he went to sleep. And I was lying there and I'm like, let me go see if I can go curl up to mom in her bed. So I got up and I went to my mom's room and I opened the door and she was laying face down on the ground, not moving. But I had seen that before, so I didn't think a lot. I didn't know anything was wrong. I was like 76 somewhere in there. So I slowly closed the door really slowly because I didn't want to wake her up. Then in the morning, me and my brother got ourselves ready for school and we walked to school. And while I was at school, at about one o' clock in the afternoon, some cops came to my classroom. I thought I was in trouble because I hadn't been doing good in school. I thought it was about my grades actually. And the cops brought me back to the house. And apparently my brother had come home from school early because he was feeling sick. And he found my mom face down on the ground and couldn't wake her up. So he went to a neighbor, Lloyd and Cheryl, they lived up the block. And Lloyd came down and checked her pulse and looked at my brother and said, she's dead. And I didn't even realize she was dead. I didn't know even when the cops brought me into the house and the house is filled with cops and my grandparents are there. Nobody's told me what's happened. So I'm just looking at everybody and I'm wondering where mom is. And then a cop comes up to me and says, we're going to take you to Burger King and get you something to eat. So a cop actually took me and my brother to Burger King in his cop car and bought us lunch. And I still didn't know what was going on. So I'm just gabbing to the cop like my very young seven year old self. Just talking, talking, talking like nothing's wrong. I remember asking the cop, did he ever shoot anybody? He said, yeah, he shoots the bad people when he has to. And he had a shotgun that was mounted on close to the dash. And I thought it was so cool. And my brother didn't say a word. And the cop starts crying. Then he brought us back, and nobody's talking to me at all. I'm like an insect on a wall or a fly. Like, I just don't know. Yeah. And so my grandparents tell us, okay, we got to go get inside the car. Grandpa has some things he has to do. So we're going to take you to Aunt Elizabeth's house for right now, for a few days. So I got happy because I got to see my cousin Brian, who was about my age, and, like, I loved him. And when I get there, my cousin Brian, he knows what's going on, what happened. And he looks at me and he says, gerald, I want you to sleep in my bed. You take my bed. I'll sleep on the floor. And I said, you don't have to do that. And he said, no, you can just take it. Okay. And I could see he was sad. And then I sat down on the bed, and that's when it hit me. That's when I realized that mom had died. And I started crying and crying, and I cried for hours and hours.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

And.

[Kevin]

I cried myself to sleep. After all that, my brother ended up becoming really quiet. He never really talked to me very much after that. And I don't know, it just seems like the world got a lot colder after that.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Jason and Gerald spent the rest of their childhood with their maternal grandparents living in the mountains. I asked Gerald if they ever had any contact with their dad.

[Kevin]

No. He died before I was born.

[Gerald]

Oh, I see.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I'm sorry.

[Kevin]

It's okay. I never knew him, so there's no effect, you know?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

But I do know a story. My. My dad, right before he died, he asked my grandfather for $500 because he needed to buy a car so that he could go get this job. And my grandfather didn't believe him, so he said no. And then the next day, apparently a neighbor had come across my father's hanging body from a tree and called my grandfather. And my grandfather cut him down and looked at his body on the ground and said, what a waste.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

This is the same grandfather who, about seven years later, would become Gerald's guardian. Gerald says he could be strict.

[Kevin]

He had a military attitude, and he was really gruff on me.

[Gerald]

And Jason or just you?

[Kevin]

Not Jason so much. Well, Jason was more like my grandfather than I was. Jason went into the military. He did very good. He was in for about 8.8years and went to Iraq twice, and he did really well.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Wow. Jason now lives in Arizona, where he works in security. Kevin's happy to hear that his life seems stable. But Gerald and Jason's relationship never recovered from the death of their mom. In contrast, Kevin and Tony have remained close. That Jason and Gerald haven't is hard for Kevin to hear.

[Gerald]

I hope that you can at least maintain a little bit of contact with Jason here and there.

[Kevin]

Yeah, it's spotty, but it is. It just is what it is. Some people, they. Everybody's different. We all have our own special abilities. We all, you know, are good at our own good things. One thing my brother isn't so good at is dealing with the past memory of my mom's death. He kind of locked it away, I feel. But it's. It's his memories to keep, you know, and he doesn't want to dig him back up. And I think that's the big thing.

[Gerald]

If you ever see him again or communicate with him again, can you let him know that? Yeah, I never. I never, never forgot about you?

[Kevin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gerald]

It's all right. If he didn't want to talk about it, that's fine. I just want to let him know that. Yeah, Tony and I were real, real sad. And I never forgot about him.

[Kevin]

I'll tell him. I'll tell him.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Gerald says he was just never like his brother and grandfather.

[Kevin]

Me, I was the complete opposite. I was kind of more like the free bird, the. The hippie, I guess. Got into skateboarding. I always wanted to start a skateboarding company and design my own decks, do artwork through that. That's actually what I really wanted to do in life, But I kind of put it on a shelf just because of how everything turned out in life.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

But he says he did gift skateboards to each of his sons. And now when his younger son goes out to ride his bike, Gerald will use one of the boards to skate alongside him.

[Kevin]

Honestly, I. I don't know what it. It really is to. To be a proper dad. I never had a dad. I had a grandpa who was kind of a dad, and I learned some from him. But to be a dad is something I gotta learn as I go along. I guess that's my biggest journey now. It's just to stay home, stay in my area, and watch my kids grow. That's what I want to do.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Do you think you're going to stick around?

[Kevin]

Yes.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I'm done traveling now, so it feels like it's. It's the end of something or the beginning of something new.

[Kevin]

When one thing ends, something else begins.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

I'm 41 and just means I have half my life to live still. After my mom died, nobody in the family would talk about it. It was like my old past life in Sacramento had been erased. So having connected with Kevin, it's like validation that I did have a life before my mother died. Like I'm not the only one that remembers my mom.

[Gerald]

Yeah, likewise. Gerald means something to me, too, that I wasn't too crazy thinking about my childhood, so much like someone else was thinking about it as well.

[Kevin]

That actually happens. Yeah. Yeah, it actually happens. It's nice to know I'm not invisible.

[Gerald]

I'll see you in a bit. We gotta cash up. I'll make a visit up there.

[Kevin]

Yes, you will have to come up.

[Gerald]

Yeah, I've never been to that area before, so.

[Kevin]

It's beautiful.

[Gerald]

It'll be a new place. Yeah, it looks like it.

[Kevin]

You will love it, I promise, Kevin.

[Gerald]

I'm sure I will.

[Kevin]

Okay. All right, bye.

[Gerald]

All right. Bye, Gerald.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Kevin and I stay on the line to talk about everything Gerald shared. We harken back to what he said about not knowing how to be a dad. And I asked Kevin how he learned to be a dad. A lot of it, he says, comes from his partner, but also he tried to define himself in opposition to his own dad.

[Gerald]

I didn't want to be feared. I wanted my kids to be able to trust me. I wanted to be warm and open to them, spend good time with them. Yeah, I guess I just wanted to do everything the opposite what my own dad did. And I know I didn't walk away unscathed. Both me and my bro, probably my entire family. I feel like sometimes I sort of like PTSD almost.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Kevin tells me how when his kids joined Cub Scouts, he volunteered to be an assistant scoutmaster. He had to go away on this weekend camping trip to be trained. When he got back home, he pulled into the garage. Everything in the house was quiet.

[Gerald]

I remember unloading the car and calling for my kids because I thought that they could help me set up the tent in the backyard to let the tent properly dry and all that. But there was no response. Noticed that they were in the living room or something like that, playing board games. They kind of nodded at me, like, oh, that's home. And I just remember feeling, like, immensely overwhelmed with sadness. I just remember sitting down in another room on the couch, just being super removed and even wondering about why I was feeling that emotion. And it took me a. It took me a little while to process, like, why this black cloud just. Just hanging around me. And I guess ultimately what was going through my mind, what I felt like. Like my family didn't really want me. And maybe I was envisioning that. That it would miss me and they would greet me and. But because they didn't, I got that sensation that, like, I wasn't wanted. I didn't know how I was processing it, but it reminded me of that time where, like, how my mom would draw my name from a paper bag. She chose me as the first kid that she didn't want. And it didn't go. And I thought about how. But coming home to my dad, him looking at me like he wished he had my older bro come home instead of me. And that was a feeling I got when I just got home from that camping trip. Like nobody wanted me.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Gerald]

Yeah. It's just a terrible feeling. I remember my. My partner, she came back out and she saw me and I didn't know how to explain it to her, but. And I just told her I wasn't feeling well. And then meet my family in the other room and be normal again and say, hey, what's everyone doing? What game are you guys playing? And life would just carry on.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

This weekend, Kevin is planning on driving out to the mountains to see Gerald to go camping and fishing. Gerald says the fish are jumping. It's the beginning of something new. Life carries on. Sa.

[Gerald]

Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home, now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damaged deposit, Take this moment to decide.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

If we.

[Gerald]

Meant it, if we tried or felt around for far too much.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

From things that accidentally touch.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Kahlilah Holt and me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanagan. Our supervising producer is Stevie Lay. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon. Special thanks to Chris Neary, Greta Cohn, Jake Harper, Lydia Jean Cott, and Kevin's brother, Tony. Emma Munger mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellowes, John K. Sampson and Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by Blue Dot Sessions and Poddington Bear. Our theme song is by the Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on Instagram @H heavyweightpodcast or email us @H heavyweightushkin FM FM. We're taking a break for American Thanksgiving, but we'll be back in December with two more episodes of Heavyweight. Until that time, happy American Toiki Day. A gobble, gobble to you and yours. This is an I heart podcast.