finished, I turn to him and speak for the first time since stepping inside.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
We sit across from each other at the table, his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee while I flip my Moleskine open to my notes and questions. My gut twists nervously and I try to keep my voice steady when I ask him how the Vice interview went so wrong.
“They told me it would be about potential game changers,” he says. “But that wasn’t as interesting an angle as potential cult leaders. So much of your profession hinges on likes, shares, retweets, click-bait. How do you maintain integrity in the face of that?”
“You’re not interviewing me and I’m going to push record now.”
He nods and I state the date and time, my name and who I’m sitting across from. I ask Lev to state these same things, to say that I’m recording this conversation with his consent and for what purpose. Listening to him say it—I am allowing Lo Denham to interview me as part of SVO’s profile on The Unity Project—overwhelms me, everything I’ve ever wanted made more real by the sound of his voice. I get lost in it.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he says, lightly mocking, bringing me back.
I flush and clear my throat. “I want to start at the beginning.”
“Which one? I’ve had many.”
I look at what I’ve written in my notebook. “Why don’t we just go from when and where you were born, what your upbringing was like.”
“1980, Indiana. Small town called Almer.”
“Your mother abused you.”
I look up from my notes. His expression is neutral, but the silence between us serves as punctuation enough for what he really thinks of my opening.
“She did,” he finally says.
“Describe your childhood.”
His eyes drift away from me, to the ceiling. “I lived in an apartment above a launderette with my mother until I was about eight, then we rented a house far outside of town, no neighbors. I had to walk a couple miles just to get to the bus to go to school.”
“What’s your earliest memory?”
“Standing at the window of the apartment. I was watching people walk by … I was waiting for her. I was watching for her. She wasn’t there with me. I don’t remember where she was, but later, I’d look back on that memory and realize two things: the first was that I was too young to be left alone—and the second was that I wasn’t fearful of her return. I was anticipating it, I wanted for it, even. That’s the only time I ever remember not being afraid of my mother.”
“When did the abuse start?”
“I was four, maybe a little older.” He smiles a small, bitter smile. “I remember the first instance vividly. Not the why of it. She’d hit me in the face. My nose bled all over my favorite Thundercats shirt and I was devastated when the stain ruined it. It’s amazing the details you retain … that was the beginning. When we moved to the house, it got much worse. There was nowhere to go. I was constantly afraid, all of the time.” He pauses. “And that’s how I’d describe my childhood.”
He watches as I absorb the information and this is the part I was unprepared for—the expectation of response. How do you respond to information like this? There’s nothing in my notes for something like this. I finally settle on a question I don’t think anyone could answer:
“Why was she like that?”
“Because of me. Or so she liked to say.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“She passed away a few years ago.”
“So there’s nothing you can offer to corroborate what you’re telling me?”
He presses his lips together and stares down at himself, and then he rises from his seat and moves to mine, standing very close, waist-level, in front of me. His long fingers grasp the edges of his shirt, and he pulls it slowly up, revealing his abdomen, a stretch of what should be perfect, untouched muscle and skin but instead hosts a smattering of scars, puckered circles like the ends of cigarettes, deep lines that begin above his pelvic bone and disappear below his jeans. One scar looks like a very large landmass on his left side; a burn. Part of me wants to reach out and touch them to make sure they’re real. The rest of me is left speechless and nauseous.
These happened to him when he was a child.
I try not to show my relief when he lets his shirt back down.
“What were