Some people have incredible stories, others tell incredible stories. Robert Ellis Gordon is one of the small number who do both.
A current Real Change vendor, Robert's easy to miss. His ice blue eyes and short, graying hair -- they have the tendency, if you're not paying attention, to almost fade away. He speaks in such low tones you have to lean in close to hear him. But behind the near-invisibility, beneath the quiescent demeanor, there resides a master storyteller.
How much of a master? Well, in 2000, his memoir of teaching in the state prison system, "The Funhouse Mirror: Reflections on Prison" [Washington State University Press, $16.95] received a Washington State Book Award. In 2007, Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed sent Robert a letter claiming the book was one of the five best books on hidden populations in the state library system. His writing garnered enough attention that Robert maintains a coveted position: He writes for the Huffington Post.
Now that his novella "Humping Credenzas with the Late Bobby Kennedy: A Convict's True Account" was reissued last fall, Robert may be getting even more attention. On Fri., Sept. 9 at 7 p.m., Robert will be reading from that book and "The Tale of the Comet" at Elliott Bay Book Co.
There, Robert may share some stories from his life, along with sharing some stories he's written. In advance of that reading, we sat down for a nice talk. For nearly an hour, we chatted about Harvard, classism, the prison system, his diagnosis of the autoimmune disorder lupus, what he's learned selling Real Change and his passion for working with, and among, the people who often go unseen.
Where did you grow up? In the Boston area. Was born in '54, came of age in the '60s. When I was growing up, I thought the Kennedys were the state religion. Played a lot of sports. It was a fine place. But I had wanderlust.
Where did you wander to? I wandered away from what my parents wanted for me: law school and the conventional. They were children of the Great Depression, looking forward to security. But I was young and immortal: I knew better. And I don't think it would have stopped me anyway, if I'd had some sense.
So I travelled through class and really spent the last 35 years, most of them, getting the Harvard out of my system, that upper middle-class elitism. My [Harvard] education meant more to me than [it did to] the trust-fund babies. I went to Iowa for a couple of years.
I'm going to stop you for a moment, because you didn't just go to Iowa. You went to the University of Iowa creative writing program. Which is pretty prestigious. What did you think about being in Iowa studying, writing? It was a wonderful experience. What was truly wonderful about it, back then, they had famous people coming to Iowa.
Like who? Well, I just missed the Vonnegut. And Frank Conroy. They were big names at the time. They weren't necessarily good teachers. But I had two classes to hang out and talk about writing all day long. And we were our best teachers. There was much more humility at Iowa than there was at Harvard, among the writers. Most of them had kicked around for while and they knew how damn hard it was to publish fiction, 'How am I going to make a living?' and so on.
After Iowa, you eventually came out here. I came out here in a hurry. I had a '63 Chevy with three on the tree. I came out here to work construction. Anything and everything. I worked as a journalist until the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, and I thought, 'I don't really want to be doing this, and nothing's going to beat it in terms of a journalistic experience.' And of course the whole time I was drawn to fiction. And I turned to Huffington [Post] when my sense of outrage got fired up.
When did your sense of outrage erupt? Well, I suppose it was always erupting given that I was teaching in the prisons and so forth and so on. I was working as a moving man, furniture mover. And they were these invisible people, some of whom were marvelous and wonderful and had to be locked up.
In 2009, to me, Obama was proving to be such a disappointment. He really had tapped into the spirit of sacrifice. He told us to choose during the campaign. And he had the ability to bring out our better angels, given the magnitude of his victory. Then I saw him squandering it. He wasn't responsible for worldwide economic collapse, but he was putting his credibility on the line. I wrote a few more [for the Huffington Post]. One did go viral. I didn't even know what viral meant. I found out what it meant within an hour.
Now I think he's in a corner where he has no choice but to use the 14th Amendment, seize emergency powers, give us the stimulus package we need and at least go down for the right causes. We have to save ourselves from ourselves and bring out our better angels. And no matter how much or how little someone makes, I've never met anybody who feels they have enough to be secure. Maybe a few multimillionaires. Maybe.
What I fear is Michele Bachmann. I'm confounded by her: Has enough love in her heart for five, 10 foster children, but as a congresswoman, has so much hate for people she doesn't see. [Actually, Bachmann and her husband have taken in 23 foster children.]
What you said about Michele Bachmann, about the ones that she doesn't see. The people who don't get seen happen to be in prison. What did you see that motivated you to teach in prison? They were my people. It was visceral. I'd had a lot of difficulty, in [teaching in school]: The kids were lovely and fun and cute, laughed at my jokes -- but so many of them were not wanted. And I thought, 'What is going on here?' We spent a lot of time going to the guidance counselor, because the law says, if there's a sign of abuse, you go. It's a good law. But this is happening every day. And that part tore me up. In the prisons, at least I was with adults who had to deal with all that and whatever else.
The first day, I was petrified. I had a roomful of murderers and rapists and robbers and what have you. The second day they had faces. The third day they had souls. And I called my principals in Olympia and said, 'Please leave me here to the extent possible.' I just felt, 'This is my mission. This is what I want to be doing.' So I did for 11 years.
That sounds like a great gift, to be able to find your mission, to find what you want to be doing. Yes. Joseph Campbell said it quite concisely: 'Follow your bliss.' Yeah, I'm a very fortunate man. A very fortunate man, in that respect. I see many people who want to do this, who want to do that, but they put golden handcuffs around themselves.
Did your bliss come with any hardships? I was amused to find out one day that I'd been living at the poverty line all my life. [Laughs.] They didn't pay us much. I worked weekends and summers as a furniture mover. But that, of course, was eye opening. I was teaching a lot of Vietnam vets, I was working with a lot of Vietnam vets and the working poor, who are not seen. And it grounded me to writing.
So I suppose there were economic challenges, but I always had a roof over my head, I always had food. I wasn't where I was right now. But illness intervened. That's been a teacher. At the same time, I'm seeing a bankruptcy lawyer at the end of the week. So I think that's the hardship, really. But that economic hardship gives me a visceral empathy.
Can we talk about your illness? Sure.
When did you first realize that something was changing? I became aware in 1989. 'It's all in your head, it's all in your head, it's all in your head.' And I finally figured it out after six years and asked to be seen by the best diagnostic rheumatologist. My doctor, he was a nice man, but he did not think outside the box at all. He said it was what's called the 'yuppie flu' or whatever. Took him 20 minutes to tell me.
It's an autoimmune disease; it's very, very difficult. It's highly unusual, the nature of it. Lupus has shown up once or twice with connective tissue disease, vasculitis [inflammation of the blood vessels] of the brain.
Is it a test? Oh, my lord, it's a test. Of course it is. Why am I late today? Because I'm on a new medication and though I was actually up at four in the morning and took all my pills, this one treats the worst symptom, and also knocks you out. And I'm not used to it yet. So even though the alarm was reset for six a.m., that's why I'm here now. I'm a seasoned enough patient to really not be living in terror of the test results I get today. And I'm also 57. I was supposed to be dead back in 1998, and again in 1999, and again in 2003. So, I keep getting spared for some reason and if this is it, or if I die of something totally normal, I intend to embrace life. No matter what.
I remain fundamentally political in my writing. [Shuffles through bag and looks through books and grabs hold of "The Tale of the Comet."] Do you have children?
No I don't. I've found that sixth graders through convicts alike liked it.
Sixth graders and convicts are a lot alike? No, they liked it. But I would say middle school children and convicts have something in common.
Like what? Energy. Ask the tough questions. Nah, that's not fair to sixth graders.
Convicts give you about five minutes. Part of the survival mechanism. The secret, and one of the great joys, of teaching inside is they don't want you to act tough: They are. They'll shank one another and do horrible things outside of class. You have a gift for them. They can't sign up for it at the junior college. And so, they'll shoot some questions at you and the key is: Be honest. 'I am who I am and I don't want to get in a fistfight with you because I'm gonna lose. Now let's get down to work.' I've seen other teachers, with the best of intentions, wash out in five minutes.
So you have a reading coming up. I do. At Elliott Bay. It's very nice.
How do you feel about reading in public? I'm petrified of public speaking, like most Americans. What's pathetic about me is that it's probably 15 or 16 on my list of phobias. It's not number one, but it's bad. So I play the guitar and I may warm up playing a little Woody Guthrie song. I'll get through it.
The novel is very high risk. People tend to love it or look at me with strange offense. One couple, very well intentioned, said they were concerned about my vivid imagination and thought perhaps I should seek some help. I wasn't going to tell them I was seeing a therapist. I knew what scene they were thinking of, but I asked them just to be polite. And it's a scene with Bobby Kennedy, and [corrections officers] drag him into a room, shackle him and do a rectal -- a digital rape, essentially. And the truth is, I stole that story from a convict. They were doing that out at Walla Walla. They were looking for contraband, but of course they never pat the guys down. They shackle them and rape them. I really didn't want to say anything because I would've had to confess that I stole this story. But I thanked them for being so solicitous, but I never saw them again.
I'm reading at Elliott Bay and it's an honor, and it's a little self-serving to be interviewed by you, Real Change, at this juncture. But we haven't talked about [selling the paper].
Yeah, let's have a chat about that. Well, what I've found is selling Real Change is as radicalizing an experience as teaching in the prison. It's one thing to work on behalf of. It's quite another to be among the invisible people. I've been spared the worst financially, but I've lived beyond what I've been expected to. I wanted a job and I couldn't get it. Are you kidding? In this environment, 57 [years old]. Though I still keep applying.
I wasn't selling many papers. And one day I was standing with a guy who did, but he didn't have any [papers] at the moment, and he was giving me all sorts of tips: This one uses her walker, she doesn't need it. Sort of scams to sell it. And I was hiding my cane: I just think there's no integrity in that. I wouldn't throw out Huffington Post or Harvard or anything like that, because A: It has nothing to do with the job, and B: I just feel that's one of the problems with our culture [abusing credentials].
But here I am [selling], and doing it badly, and he's just making all these recommendations. And it makes sense to me to have a ploy, something that distinguishes me. And I thought: How can I do that and be true to myself? I'm not particularly gregarious or outgoing. But one thing I've noticed, outside of Whole Foods, with wealthy liberals -- because I am of those bloodlines -- they know what's going on. They know. But what they do not know maybe is that more than 2,000 sleep out in the streets under bridges and cars, each night. You have to make a lot of effort to not see those people.
I love dogs and I pet [customers'] dogs. If I went so far as to say, 'Oh, I used to be a dog trainer,' the conversation ended very quickly because I couldn't possibly have been something. I sort of felt like, 'You can't be selling Real Change and have a brain in your head.' Now one of the things I know about the prison guys is that they are burning to write their stories. And I started to ask some of the other vendors, 'Do people treat you as if you're stupid?' And everyone said, 'Oh, of course. I don't say anything. Anything.'
So I had an old jacket, it said, 'Harvard' on it. A sweatshirt too. I used it. And here's the bittersweet part: It worked. It didn't work enough to cancel $72,000 in medical debt. But suddenly I went from two or three papers, to $10 to $15 to $20, because people would come out to me, they'd look at the sweatshirt or the letter jacket and if they were really interested, I'd say, 'Well, I wouldn't lie to you.' And we'd talk a little bit about whatever. And that was engagement. And it's a bittersweet ending. I do need the money. But why am I legitimate because I went to an Ivy League school? Why am I seen? And what does that say about us as a culture?