Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 187

“I grew up in a small town in Canada. I was never the type who...

“I grew up in a small town in Canada. I was never the type who had a lot of friends. I was more the type that had ‘a friend.’ It would usually be a girl. So I never really felt connected with the larger group of kids. I was intimidated by social gatherings. I think music was my way of connecting with human emotion in a way that I wasn’t getting in everyday life. We had an old upright piano in the living room. I’d practice for five or six hours every day. I spent a lot of time alone. Music was my escape at first. But in the end it gave me a confidence that made it easier to relate to other people.”

“I feel like when you’re young, you change every day. But I...

“I feel like when you’re young, you change every day. But I feel like now that I’m fifteen, I’m becoming a person. Everything is slowing down and I’m starting to dry like a mud statue. And it’s scary. Because I’m realizing the way that people are going to see me. And I’m learning the things that people are going to think about me.”
“But that’s not necessarily true. Change may slow down, but it becomes more deliberate. At this age you get to experience different things and try different personas, just like an actress. But it makes me proud how much you’re thinking through these things. You’re very good at managing complex emotions. Only thing I’m worried about is your learner’s permit and the dogginess of boys.”

“I knew a girl in high school that always complained about...

“I knew a girl in high school that always complained about having anxiety. I used to make fun of her a little bit. It looked like nothing to me. So I assumed it was nothing. And I dealt with it by trying to convince her that it was nothing. I called her recently to apologize. I’ve had really bad anxiety ever since my father died. And it’s definitely not nothing. It’s the indescribable fear of nothing.”

“We walked all around this big museum. A museum is a place...

“We walked all around this big museum. A museum is a place where you can see art or animals. This museum has stuff like Jesus and I saw a statue of somebody cutting a head. I’ve been drawing the statues but I’m not good at drawing lips, and the hands have three fingers instead of five because that’s easier. I probably shouldn’t show you this one because… I don’t want to say it. You can see their… their… their…. BUTTS.”

“He lets me paint his nails and put make-up on his eyes...

“He lets me paint his nails and put make-up on his eyes and he plays with me in my Barbie house which is like twenty feet tall.”

“I’ve been teaching the GED course for 21 years. I’ve helped...

“I’ve been teaching the GED course for 21 years. I’ve helped over 300 students get their certificates. I had one student recently—he was 50 years old and only had a 6th grade education. He sat in the back of the class and didn’t say anything. He just watched. But then one day there was a tough algebra problem that nobody could figure out. He volunteered to come up and tried it on the board, and he got it. In front of everybody. The next day when I arrived, he was sitting in the front. After class I handed him a huge study guide, and told him: ‘If you’ll give 25 percent, I’ll give you 75 percent.’ I told him he could interrupt me at any time to ask me questions. And he did. It seemed like he was coming up to me every few hours– in the cafeteria, while I was playing cards, while I was watching movies. After nine months he took the test and passed. He was so proud. He said he couldn’t wait to tell his daughter. A few months later I was sitting here in the visiting room, and this young woman kept looking at me. So much so that my girlfriend was starting to get upset. Eventually she walked over to me, and said: ‘Thank you so much for helping my father get his GED.’ It was the best feeling in the world.”

(Federal Correctional Complex: Hazelton, West Virginia)

(4/4) “When Donald finally got caught, they offered him a plea...

(4/4) “When Donald finally got caught, they offered him a plea deal so I wouldn’t have to go to jail. But he refused it. He told my cousin: ‘If I can’t have her, nobody will.’ They arrested me at the courthouse on the same day Donald refused his deal. The public defender told me to sign a plea bargain. He told me no jail time. But at the sentencing, I heard the judge mention jail and I panicked. When the judge asked me if I’d been promised anything in exchange for the deal, I said: ‘Yes!’ The prosecutor was so mad. She thought I made her look bad. She pushed for a life sentence at trial. The jury never heard about the abuse. They only heard about the drugs. They didn’t realize that the true victims were me, my children, and my brother. I’ve been in prison for twenty years now. But this has a happy ending. And I swear, when I agreed to this interview, I didn’t even know this yet. But President Obama just granted me clemency. And I’m going home.”

(Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn)

(¾) “One night it got so bad that I got a gun and...

(¾) “One night it got so bad that I got a gun and pointed it at him. I didn’t know how to use it. I didn’t even know if the safety was on. My son walked into the room at the time and tried to stand between us. Donald jumped over him, grabbed the gun, and pistol-whipped me. After that I tried to run away again. While Donald was taking flying lessons, I packed everything into a U-Haul and drove away so fast that the trailer came apart on the highway. When Donald discovered I was gone, he sent some goons to my brother’s house and beat him up in front of his entire family. When they finished beating him, they told him that my mother was next. So I went back. After that Donald didn’t trust me anymore. He made me start traveling with him. He didn’t give me a choice. He’d say: ‘Pack your bags. We’ve got business.’ He involved me with everything. He made me stand there while he dealt the drugs. He made me call people and relay messages for him. He had me make deliveries. I did everything he told me to.”

(Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn)

(2/4) “ One day I walked into Donald’s office and saw him...

(2/4) “ One day I walked into Donald’s office and saw him handing off a package of cocaine. I turned around and left immediately. He came out later and told me that he was just doing it to get his business off the ground. He said he needed to raise $25,000 to cover expenses. I was naive at that point. I even called my mother and asked her to help arrange a small business loan. But Donald started dealing more and more. He kept it from me. He started running a lot of errands. He started taking trips twice a month. The day I went into labor with our first child, he dropped me off at the hospital and went to park the car. He didn’t come back until the next day. The abuse got worse and worse. He’d throw water on me. He’d burn me with a lighter. When I was pregnant with our second child, Donald hit me in the head with a telephone. After I got to prison, we watched a movie one night about Tina Turner, called ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It?’ There’s this one scene where Ike is dragging Tina down the hallway by her hair, and her sons are watching the whole thing and crying. I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I was watching a movie about my life.”

(Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn)

(¼) “I met Donald when I was twenty-six. He...

(¼) “I met Donald when I was twenty-six. He pursued me relentlessly. He’d call me every day. He’d invite me to come to the Bahamas with him. He’d buy me all kinds of things. He would even loan me his vintage corvette for the weekend. I was just starting out in life. I wasn’t used to all that attention. He had his own landscaping company– with his own building and everything. He wooed my whole family. Even my mother liked him, and she isn’t easily persuaded. So I fell for him. The abuse didn’t start until I was pregnant with our first child. We were lying in bed one night and he asked me to get him a glass of water. When I told him ‘no,’ he punched me in the face. He said: ‘When I ask you to do something, I expect you to do it.’ I tried to leave right away. I ran back to my family in New York. But he followed me and begged me to forgive him. He said he didn’t want our child to grow up without a father.”


(Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn)