Criminal - A New Show from the Makers of Criminal: Episode 1

Episode Date: February 14, 2018

In 1971, David Alexander went for a run in Central Park and started talking to a stranger. For our first episode of This Is Love, a story about what's possible when we bet everything on each other. We speak with David, Jody, and Julienne Alexander. Listen to other episodes of This is Love at https://thisislovepodcast.com/. If you haven't already, please follow the show and review us on iTunes! https://apple.co/2BmMZr5 Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, FDA approved for over 20 years. So, talk to your specialist to see if Botox Cosmetic is right for you. For full prescribing information, including boxed warning, visit BotoxCosmetic.com or call 877-351-0300. Remember to ask for Botox Cosmetic by name. To see for yourself and learn more, visit BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series

worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey

involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hi, my name is David Alexander.

I grew up in Brooklyn, and I'm here to answer a few questions and tell my story. One day in the early 70s, David Alexander decided to go for a run in Central Park. And so I drove up there and parked the car and walked down in the meadow still holding my key ring, my big key ring. And I wanted to put it down. And there I saw Jessie sitting on a blanket a Wednesday afternoon in the spring, and she had the Times Sunday Arts and Leisure section, a bottle of water, a sketch pad, and she had a men's hat with a ribbon tipped to one side.

And I said, ah, perfect. May I leave my keys here while I go for a run? Sure, she said. And so I was gone for 15 minutes and came back. And we had a natural conversation. And I sat down. And then some time went by, and I offered her a ride home, which she accepted. It was a different time in New York then.

Will you describe what she looked like? 5'8", straight posture. At the time, had long hair and green eyes. Athletic and slender. Not really slender, muscular slender. And she had a face that was full of character, and was both smart-looking and lovely. And I asked her for a date. I said, would you like to go to the ballet? That's quite a, that's a great first date to pull out.

It was the Joffrey Ballet at Lincoln Center. Wow. So she said, okay. It's easy to tell this part of the story. The rest isn't so simple. Nothing good ever is. I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is love. What was that first date like at the ballet? Well, I ran out of gas on the way.

And I said, oh, here's a ticket. You know, I can get some gas and I'll join you soon. And she said, oh, no and I'll join you soon. She said, oh no, I'll stay with you. And we came in a little bit late and then I was taking her home and I stopped in front of her apartment building and she said, would you like to come up? Of course. And we were together ever since. It sounds, when you hear it, like a movie. It sounds right out of a movie.

I've told the story to other people, and when you tell it to other people, you know how unbelievable it sounds when you're telling it? We can't prove that this is what happened. Also, the ease of asking a stranger to hold your keys, which you just can't bear to hold in your hand while you go for a run. He said he had a gigantic key ring. He said, I just had so many. It was this big ring.

I just, again. Janitor keys. She had a different upbringing than you did. Of course she did. When did that first become clear to you? Right away. Well, Tessie and her best friend lived together in this large apartment on the west side of the park. And they would have, during the week, sometimes several dinner parties and salons, as they are known, where someone would be singing while dinner was being prepared.

There would be hors d'oeuvres, and there would be wine flowing. And this, of course, was brand new for me. And there would be artists and writers and some famous and semi-famous people that passed through. So you walk into this world of salons and wine. Yeah, definitely a fish out of water. And when you met her family for the first time, tell me about that experience. Did you go to the family home? Well, I remember being invited for dinner. I was on my best behavior, of course.

Certainly I was not her dad's idea of the ideal choice. Yeah. My grandparents were very traditional. You had to wear specific clothes for different events and everything was just so. Jodi and I were sent every year the Tiffany's table book of manners because we continued to not learn. And then upon our arrival at our grandparents' house, we would be tested and always fail. David and Jessie wanted to make their own kind of life. So they left New York and moved to San Francisco.

For money, they opened a lasagna truck. This must have been the first generation of food trucks. They called it Jessica's Moveable Feast. They also started studying Eastern religions, transpersonal psychology, and Sanskrit. And when they decided to get married, they asked their teacher to perform the ceremony. He said, sure, he'd be honored.

And he set it all up at Golden Gate Park right near the gardens. He created a traditional marriage there. We were painted with henna. We had traditional garb on. And my mother and stepdad and Jesse's family came. How'd Jesse's family do with that? Well. Well, they were, at best, it would have been very, very difficult for them.

Bowing to the astrological deities, making offerings of ghee and rice and other things, and circumambulating the fire pit. Very, very difficult. There's pictures of them. Dad looks fantastic. He has the largest beard i've ever seen and mom looks great also she's wearing a sari and he's wearing a punjabi i think he is wearing a punjabi my grandparents they they're pictured there but they sort of look a little bit uncomfortable in the scenario.

Hugely uncomfortable. And they're being asked to, like, pour ghee into a fire ceremony in their, like, white suits. I could have sworn he was wearing seersucker. He might have been wearing seersucker. Are there lots of flowers that appear... Garlands, many garlands, and bindis. Flowers all over the ground. Both parents in ecstasy, and that is capture. It is. That is what they look like. Yeah, they do

look sort of like they're hovering above the earth. But also a slight relief. David says it was a good life they'd created, a life that seemed natural. One of those lives where you can't really remember anything before. They lived in an ashram, they lived in India, and eventually found an old farmhouse in the mountains of North Carolina. Wherever they landed, David would set up a studio so Jessie could paint. She would spend hours painting and drawing people and landscapes, sometimes small paintings she might give you as a gift.

And then, Jessie was pregnant. Jessie never felt that she was going to have children. She was told in a reading, actually, one time that she'd had that it might be very dangerous for her. And she was very happy to be becoming a mother, totally happy, as it was something that she never felt was going to happen within her lifetime. How did having a baby change your relationship as a couple? Don't think it did. See, we were older.

We had known each other for 12 years. We had our lives in order, and to manage the extra capacity and the newness of it was just wonderful and exciting. Three years after Julianne was born, Jesse was pregnant again. I remember going to the hospital, and the baby's nurse handed me Jodi. She said, oh, Mr. Alexander, congratulations. You're a grandfather again. How old was he? I was 40. And how old was Jesse?

43. 43. Jesse was a happy mother. The happiest. It was six months after Jody was born. She had a lump on her breast. It was analyzed. And she was told that she might live for three and a half years on average. I can't even imagine what that day might be. Who could?

Who could imagine that? I was crushed. For three years, they sought the best care they could find. Then she began treatment at a hospital in Virginia. Two of her friends invited her to live with them. As much as she wanted to see the children all the time, she wanted to change the pivot for the girls over to me. And so the children would begin to look to me for all of their needs.

We would visit regularly, but we did not live together. So it was like she was kind of like training wheels. It was like she was giving a ramp-up period to when you'd have to do this all alone. Oh, yeah. I was still thinking she was healing. She held herself together very well, but the illness progressed.

And she was unable to get around as well. And it was obvious that it was going to be soon. And she called one of our best friends, who was godmother to the girls, and asked her to come. And our friend, Gabriela, came and took charge of the situation. I went to sit with her on the last day for her last four hours.

She was no longer speaking. And then there was the out-breath. It was just a graceful exit. Gabriella created for the children a great way to say goodbye to their mother. She asked our friends to gather up some children that they knew in the neighborhood, some families with small children, and we had them over. Her husband built a little boat, a little sailboat about two feet long. Simple.

A little wooden boat that Jody and I were encouraged to fill with little gifts or letters, notes to Mom as sort of a send-off. And then we took it down to a stream in sort of a parade, mostly adults, me and Jodi, the lead, in formal dresses that were very starched. I remember that.

And we pushed it off. It went down the stream, around the bend, And we pushed it off. It went down the stream, around the bend, and out of sight. All the adults were just weeping and also smiling. And I think we were both pretty confused about what was happening. Do you remember anything of that, Jodi? I only know from the pictures that I commemorate. There are pictures from every stage. Walking, me holding the boat.

Yeah. And then getting to the edge of the creek that we put it in. And both Julianne and I standing at the edge of the water in those dresses that seemed slightly out of place. Why were we so fancy? I don't know. They'd stayed in close touch with their friends from the ashram, spending many summers with them in upstate New York.

And after Jesse died, David and the girls were invited back there as special guests in order to give them time to get on their feet. They were there for a little over a year, and when it was time to go back into the real world, David took the family back to North Carolina, to Chapel Hill. So you arrive in Chapel Hill with these two little girls. And now it's you. It's dad. Oh, yeah.

What'd you do? It was all about managing. It was not about getting ahead. It was hold down the process and be there for them when they came home. Stability. Yeah. I managed okay. Hold down the process and be there for them when they came home. Stability. Yeah. I managed okay. I think from the outside looking really worked out for us.

I remember him dressing up a lot in costumes of various kinds to pick us up from school like not full costumes but he would put on like a paper mask and just like waltz in and you never knew when he was going to take like a koosh out of his pocket and just toss it to you across a room that is in public we have we both have very good hand-eye coordination because you're always ready to go up serious seriously julianne and i sort of like to think we looked you know how kids these days look really put together everything's coordinated they're girls with bows in their hair and the moms have done so much to make them look wow look i could take a picture and this would last and this would be like oh i'd like to have that for my collection.

Where when I think about when Julianne and I were dressed up as a kid, we just grabbed whatever looked clean. I'd sometimes like to think, oh, we got to have a trash can. It wasn't a trash can. But your father probably said when you came downstairs, well, that looks good. Yeah, I think we wore things

that were definitely too small. I mean, sort of straightforward stuff. We probably both looked a lot like miniature fathers. And we still sort of are. It was easy to have two beautiful girls who were vibrant and having the opportunity to be dad, you know. And I continued to feed them every bit of their mother that I could.

I mean, she's not very far away. She's sort of, like, vague, but she's close, you know. For a number of years after she died, one of our various godparents, we'll call them, would be asked to call us on her birthday and tell us a story from their lives before, when they were young, cools in California, which I thought was a really nice way of getting at

maybe what she would have been telling us. You know, she wouldn't be telling us stories of our life with her. She would have probably over the years told us about what it was like before. You know, she was an amazing woman. An amazing, great woman. Who had such strength and such great virtues and such artful living as well as the art. You're still in love with her?

Sure. I can't really remember a time when Dad wasn't talking about Mom in general. I think she just is part of his daily existence. When was the last time each of you talked to your father? Jodi? Saturday. That's not true. He came over to your house on Monday.

Is that Monday? That's what I mean. I don't see the sun it was monday so you saw him in person on monday yes how about you i also saw him on monday and how but different times different so he's making the rounds on monday he really was and he was saying that and like really congratulating himself about it he quite likes to do that make the rounds one step and then the second having us both in one day, it feels like a success. Does he show up at your homes or workplaces unannounced?

Yes. So he would come in, you'd be working, and there would be your father. Right. Recently, my boyfriend Chris got a job, and my dad was super proud of him. And he took the opportunity to go to his place of work with a bag filled with ice cream, ice cream boxes. He showed up at Chris's work. Yeah, on his first day looking for Chris. You have to like press a doorbell, get invited in, and then he just immediately is like, have you seen Chris? I need to bring this to Chris. There are like a hundred people who work there and nobody knows who Chris is because it's his first day. But he spends maybe most of an hour looking all over, meeting everyone, glad-hand glad handing meanwhile just dripping ice cream all

over the office before he finally finds someone who shows him where a freezer is where he can deposit the ice cream i don't think he even encountered chris i think chris was in a meeting or being like hr'd somehow and so he only heard about it when he got back to his desk and everybody in the office had met my dad who was looking for him so yeah it was a good way for chris to be introduced to his new scene but also yeah he's great my dad's great and sometimes he misreads a situation but seems to always tumble out on top. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials.

This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. out for. And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. I asked the girls how they would feel if I looked out and maybe looked for some company. Oh, yeah, go ahead. Sure, yeah, I'll do it, you know, fully encouraging me, you know.

How did you do? I didn't know exactly how I was going to go about doing this, and eventually placed an ad in the Independent, which was very popular at its time. The weekly news, alt news. The Independent. And I placed some expansive ad in there, and I got a lot of responses. I mean, a lot of responses. I mean, a lot.

I think in the first two days, I had 30 calls. He chose to start dating at a pretty challenging time for us insofar as we were discovering what pranks were. And so we played a lot of pranks on women who would come over. What he told me is that the ad went out in the indie. Yep. And that he got a lot of response. He did, yeah. It was too much.

Was that hard? Well, we have like a love-death grip on each other in general, the three of us. So we're all very protective, too protective. So you didn't think that someone was good enough? Julian and I didn't care for one of them, yes. Did you tell your father that? Oh yeah. I feel like we vocalized it at least

half a dozen times. And also we put saran wrap on the toilet before she went in there. So like not always verbal communication. We chickened out of a few really harsh ones. Like we put tacks in her shoes once. And then we went and pulled them out.

Are you dating now? I'm not. Are you interested in dating now? Oh, look at you. The phone's going to be ringing. This is just like that ad in the paper. I tell you, I am ready to date. Are you online dating? I have. What's online? How are you good at online dating? I don't know. I'm me. It'd be nice to have, for him to have someone. He's spent a long time, and the more time I feel like he spends without someone,

the more he sort of gets too comfortable with himself, if that's possible. That's right. And structure is more needed than anything else, I think. Not that he doesn't know what to do. It's just that he says things like, I could really use some woman kindness. And what he's saying is that he can't take care of himself as much as he thinks he probably should be doing.

Yeah, he's existing and he's doing a good job and he's healthy, but... Yeah. He doesn't see things that i i point out and i feel bad and i don't want to be mean that i'm pointing out but she means like ear hair to be clear um i think you're totally right jody the more time he spends by himself the more i mean it sort of seems like the pool of candidates is shrinking both in actual numbers but also just because people become more and more jaded in their own ways and so then they're less eligible for my dad who I think really more than anything wants like an open-hearted person. So, yeah, finding a partner of any kind,

even if it's just someone to pal around with, would take a little of the pressure off of us. You know, that love grip that I was referring to is real, and having someone else who could listen to some of the stories and give the haircuts. And I think he would really thrive. What has he taught you about relationships? If you don't have this same deep like, deep heart, like, heart sense of each other,

then why are you wasting your time, kind of? Oh, yeah, he's a real cut-your-losses kind of guy when it comes to love. He's, like, either it's there or it's not, and there's no sense in trying to build it. It's just, that's not how it works. This Is Love is produced by Lauren Spohr, Nadia Wilson, and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to Ian Chilog and Katie Davis.

Julianne Alexander creates original illustrations for each episode of This Is Love, and her father is very proud of her. We'll be back with a new episode next Wednesday. Here's a preview. I think that's normal to be scared. I mean, when you can't see anything below, but you can feel something, and you can also not just feel the motion, but the presence of something. North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around.

Special thanks to Adzerk for providing their ad-serving platform to Radiotopia. I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is love. Radiotopia. from PRX. is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk.

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