Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 60

“I’ve had eleven years to put it into words and it’s still...

“I’ve had eleven years to put it into words and it’s still challenging.  Here was someone that loved me and wanted to be with me.  My family liked him.  We shared the same friend group.  All the things that went toward building a life together made sense.  But I just knew in my gut that we weren’t for forever, and it was going to get more painful and messy as time went on.  We hadn’t sent out the wedding invitations yet.  But I’d already picked out a dress.  And that’s when I started having doubts.  Every Friday we’d have the same conversation.  The pressure of the week would be behind us, and we’d be staring down the barrel of a weekend, all that time together.  And I’d tell him I wasn’t sure.  Then he’d always say: ‘We’ll work this out, we’ll fix this, please stay.’  And I’d back down.  It was like an elastic band snapping us back together.  I’d tell myself that there’s no such thing as perfect.  And he’ll be a great father.  And that I would manage to find happiness.  I’d logic my way back into it over and over.  But at night, when he came to bed, I’d never completely relax.  I could never ease into normal.  And that’s how I knew.  Because my mind can get in the way.  But my body very rarely lies.”

“I got us a Peloton for Christmas. It wasn’t like: ‘Hey bitch,...

“I got us a Peloton for Christmas.  It wasn’t like: ‘Hey bitch, you’re fat.’  Nothing like that.  It was my wife who wanted it, for the both of us.  I used it all the time for the first month.  I was on it every morning.  But then I quit, and now it’s turned into a $2300 coat rack.  That’s how it always goes.  Every two years I’ll lose thirty pounds, then it all comes back.  Things will get busy at work and I’ll fall into old habits.  Right now I’m heavier than I’ve ever been.  And I’ll probably be even heavier next time you see me.  I’m stressed out by it.  I wake up sweating in the middle of the night.  What if I can never get to where I need to be?  The doctor’s already told me that my cholesterol is high.  At this rate, I’ll be lucky if I make it to 50.  What would happen to my wife and kids?  We have some money, but not enough.  Every time I fail at a diet, I wonder if I should stop trying.  I think: ‘Maybe this is just who I am.  Maybe I should get comfortable with it.’  And that will make me feel better for a second, but the anxiety always returns.  Because in the back of my mind– I know that comfortable means dead.”

“Stanley’s Pharmacy is based on all the stuff I knew I needed to...

“Stanley’s Pharmacy is based on all the stuff I knew I needed to do, but couldn’t.  Relationships, man.  Empathy.  Stuff that’s been lost in the corporate prescription windmill, flicking out pills per second, where relevance is nothing but geographical convenience at a discounted price.  Their motto is ‘fill everything.’  But not everything is good for you.  The drugs are too potent.  Too poisonous.  I don’t want to discount their potency as a healing modality, but there’s no free ride.  There’s no free ride for any of this stuff.  Anything that elicits a pharmacological response is going to create a cascade effect.  All of your body’s systems are connected.  It’s all tangled up.  Every time you press one button, a whole different set of Christmas lights come on.  There’s no silver bullet.  So you have to be careful.  Don’t listen to the advertising. You don’t need everything, all the time. You need an ambassador.  Somebody in the world of medicine to advocate for your body.  And that’s the true role of a pharmacist.  To be an ambassador.”

“I’ve pretty much lived the ideal pharmaceutical life. I spent...

“I’ve pretty much lived the ideal pharmaceutical life.  I spent several years in the Hollywood Hills, working at a couple pharmacies that were really popular with celebrities.  A lot of these people were drawn to me because I had more of an Ayurvedic approach: eastern healing, stuff like that.  But I was really feeling the debauchery of the hills: beautiful people in beautiful hells, sucked into their mansions, cut off, isolated, addicted, solving problems with pills, everyone on everything.  It’s an emotionally lazy place.  People are thirsting for connection, but they don’t want to sit in traffic to get there.  It wore me down.  Everything climaxed for me on the night that Rick James died.  He was a hero to me.  Best horn arranger that ever lived.  Better than Prince in my opinion.   And he was coming back on the scene.  The Chappelle Show skit had just come out, he had another chance.  But he OD’d in his Beverly Hills apartment, alone.  It really crushed me.  Rick had been no stranger to my aisles.  I just felt like I could have done more for him.  Maybe if I’d had more time, and more liberty, I could have nourished him back to health.  Instead of just maintaining him.  I felt like I had so much more to offer.  So I came back to New York and started my own pharmacy.”

“Everyone living downtown is the black sheep of their family....

“Everyone living downtown is the black sheep of their family.  And I’m no different.  I come from a family full of ministers.  Bible banging, born-again, evangelical hit men.  Let’s just say my grandfathers were largely responsible for the proliferation of Christianity in India.  But I was a New York club kid.  I’d stay out all night, and skip church in the morning.  My old man wasn’t having it.  He threatened to kick me out when I turned seventeen, so I had to negotiate my own survival.  It was either homelessness or seminary.  I chose Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  I actually liked it at first.  I felt a deep connection to the earth.  That’s prairie land out there.  It’s wagon culture.  Miracle makers.  Everyone was so nice and dreamy, man.  I thought: ‘I could get into this.’  But you weren’t even allowed to dance at that school.   And in 1991, the Dallas electronic scene was really starting to spill over into Tulsa.  So one night I’m at a warehouse party, and I feel my body being altered by the music, it’s changing my mood, and my thoughts, and I realize that everyone around me is feeling the same thing.  In that moment we were all connected.  And suddenly I felt The Calling.  I was called to understand the biochemical functions underlying such transcendence.  So I dropped out of seminary and went to pharmacy college in Brooklyn.”

“Nobody knows. I work on a hemp farm in Colorado, and I haven’t...

“Nobody knows.  I work on a hemp farm in Colorado, and I haven’t told anyone.  I probably wouldn’t even have gotten the job if people knew.  I used to lie about it, but that didn’t feel good.  So I just stopped telling people.  Whenever someone asks my age, I’ll just say: ‘I don’t tell people that.’  When people know you’re a ‘kid,’ they look down on you.  And I hate it.  Because really, it’s nothing.  Age is nothing.  All it means is that I was born seventeen years ago.  But whenever someone learns my age, they immediately think of themselves at seventeen.  And that’s how they see me.  They assume that I haven’t experienced what they didn’t experience.  And that I don’t know what they didn’t know.  So I just don’t tell anyone.  I don’t give people that frame of reference.”

“She left me fifteen years ago and took the kids back to Puerto...

“She left me fifteen years ago and took the kids back to Puerto Rico.  I barely talk to them anymore.  I stay at home and I be by myself.  When I get home and open that door everything is dark.  I try to play psychology with myself.  I’ll watch a good movie, or read the Bible, or take two pills and go to sleep early.  But it’s not working.  It’s not reality.  Reality, the reality is, I’m alone.  I need somebody, you know.  Somebody physically with me.  I need my family with me.  Whatever I did, I apologize.  For not listening.  For not taking her seriously.  She’d tell me: I don’t mind if you party some, but you need to pay attention to your family.  And I’d do it for awhile but then I’d forget.  I don’t know why, I was young.  I was bored.  I felt like I was trapped.  But now that I’m this age, I understand.  Those were the best days of my life.  Now I wish I had somebody to take care of.  The way I used to before– back in the nineties: two jobs, nice apartment, buying them everything.  Christmas, holidays.  I want to go to bed with my wife, with the kids in the other room, and tomorrow we go to work.  That’s it.  Normal.  I just want normal.“

“We made a table in art class for our dog Slush. The table is...

“We made a table in art class for our dog Slush.  The table is recyclable art.  'Recyclable’ means it has something to do with trash.  And Slush isn’t a real dog.  He’s a stuffed animal.  Mom says we can’t get a real dog because it poops and our apartment is too small.  We told her that we could get a puppy, and just not feed it, so that it will stay a baby forever.  But she still said ‘no.’”

(11/11) “I got to work. I wrote letters to the governor. I...

(11/11)  “I got to work.  I wrote letters to the governor.  I wrote letters to Obama.  I gathered testimonials from everyone that Bobby ever knew: all the kids he used to coach, all the people at our church, all of our family members.  I testified on his behalf.  I didn’t know a thing about Walter Miller.  But I told them all about Bobby Love.  And the parole board took mercy.  After a year in prison, they let him come home.  The day after he was set free, I sat him down and asked:  ‘What is it?  Are we the Loves?  Or are we the Millers?’  And he said: ‘We Love.  We Love.’  So I had him change his name legally.  And now we’re moving on.  I still have my resentments.  When we get in a fight, I’ll think: ‘This man better appreciate that I forgave him.’  But the thing is, I did forgive him.  And when I made that decision, I had to accept all the territory that came with it.  I can’t make him feel that debt every day of his life.  Because that’s not the marriage I want to be in.  The whole world knows now.  We’ve got no secrets.   But I think this whole mess was for the better of things: better for me, better for the kids, and better for Bobby.  He doesn’t have to hide anymore.  He can look at me when I’m speaking.  Not only that, he’s hearing me too.  My voice is heard.  I used to walk on eggshells.  I used to just go along.  But I told him one thing.  I said: ‘Bobby, I’ll take you back.  But I’m not taking a backseat to you no more.’  Because I got my own story to tell.  I can write a book too.  I might not have escaped from prison, and started a whole new life, and hid it from my family.  But I forgave the man who did.”

(10/11) “My world came crashing down. Bobby’s arrest was all...

(10/11)  “My world came crashing down.  Bobby’s arrest was all over the papers.  It seemed like the whole city was laughing at me.  People at church would pull me aside, and whisper: ‘You knew about this right?  You had to know.’  But I never knew.  Forty years of marriage, four grown children, and I never knew.  How could I be so stupid?  I wanted to hide.  I wanted to disappear.  When I went to work that first day, everyone was gathered around the front desk.  And they got real quiet when I walked in.  But I told them: ‘Don’t just stand there.  I need some love.  Give me some hugs.’  Of course I was embarrassed, but I was more hurt than anything.  Bobby had deceived me for all those years.  There was no truth in our house.  I’m walking past this man every single day.  We laughing.  We joking.  And he’s not telling me anything?  I was so angry.  But I never hated him.  I wanted to comfort him.  I wanted to hold his hand.  I told Bobby later, ‘That’s how I knew I loved you.  Because even in the worst of it, I was thinking about you.’  When I first visited him in prison, he broke down crying.  His head was in his hands, and he told me: ‘I know, you’re going to leave me.’  I told him: ‘No Bobby Love, I married you for better or for worse.  And right now this is the worst.’”