The Raw, Bold Truth: The Memoirs of Johnny B.

By Joan Hammersmith

When John B. died on January 26, 2001, he died sober. That was his greatest desire. In The Raw, Bold Truth, author Joan Hammersmith, Johnny B.s widow, finishes the story John himself started in the late 1990s before he passed away prematurely. In this memoir, Hammersmith narrates the real story of the real Johnny B.the man he was and the man he became.

Johns goal was to tell the story of his life: his childhood, filled with abuse, grief, and dysfunction; his struggles with mental health issues; his prison experiences; his addictions; and the journey of his recovery, including the tragic episodes of his relapses. The Raw, Bold Truth tells of Johns legacy as a leader, teacher, father, grandfather, friend, and husband.

Hammersmith then shares the story of her relationship with Johnny B., a multi-racial, ex-con biker who struggled to find final recovery from his past and his addictions before he took his last ride to seek his Creator. A compelling story of love and redemption, The Raw, Bold Truth communicates that recovery from addiction is possible, but it requires rigorous honestysomething John found only in death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475999648

Joan Hammersmith

Joan Hammersmith is a writer, blogger, and consultant who earned a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Saskatchewan. Hammersmith and her present husband live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and share a large blended family.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE:

THE JOHNS I KNEW

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At times, living with John was an exhausting experience. It could be exhilarating, exciting, sometimes highly charged and filled with a million conflicting emotions. Other times, I would feel compassion, spirituality and love flow from the deepest part of him. He was my playmate, my partner, my lover and my friend. All these characteristics were played out by personas that might appear at a moment’s notice, keeping life ever interesting.

Sometimes he was Johnny B, a street-wise, bad little kid who loved speeding; bread n butter sandwiches squeezed tightly in his hand; corny pranks and human touch. An embrace would soothe him and provide immediate comfort if he was troubled or sad.

Other times, when he was addressing a large crowd or speaking in meetings or schools, and most often when he was with his family, he became John, the teacher; strong, wise and charismatic. People clung to this John, depended on him and held him in great respect. He was leader, teacher, Dad, Papa, friend and husband, and it was his most common persona. There were rare times when those few who knew him well called him Jonathon, because he could be academic and well-spoken, with little of the original Windsor twang; Jonathon loved TV documentaries and daily newspapers, and regularly kept journals and notes about his thoughts. No learning disability was evident in Jonathon.

Seldom making an appearance, but always memorable was a cool, macho guy, Kurt, the protector, whose job was to guard the others. I first met him when John was in hospital, after surgery. He lay dozing quietly, not yet out of the anesthesia. Suddenly he shifted and sat bolt upright in the bed, staring at me though slits of ebony. His voice was chilling; it was deceptively soft and completely devoid of any ‘Johnisms’. He gazed at me with an icy penetration that scared me deeply, I couldn’t move, just sat dumbly staring back at my husband, so familiar to me moments ago, and speaking now in a different voice; emotionless, and bearing no facial resemblance. This new John self identified to me as Kurt, and told me I could relax, he had Johnny ‘covered’ and no one would hurt him. He was alert, responsive and very menacing! After half an hour, he slowly quit staring and faded into a now awakening John. Later, when he was recovering, I asked John who Kurt was, but he had no memory of the name.

After that, I didn’t see Kurt again, until near the end of John’s life as he lay dying in the hospital. Coming briefly out of an induced coma state, the stranger surfaced several times to tell me that John needed to eat, or to wash the bike. It amazed and shocked me to think that a need to protect him had brought Kurt to John’s aide even from an unconscious state.

All of these personalities were quite separate and distinct, and appeared without John calling them up volitionally. It took me years to learn that John was a complex, remarkable man who might become one of several totally different people as the situation required. Once I understood that all those fractured personalities were really the same man, the John I loved, I was able to adjust and accept him. The transitions were so fluid, they were almost unnoticeable, and one might think he was just moody or distracted or that he experienced periods of forgetfulness. When he first got sick with hepatitis C, and began to see health professionals, they thought he suffered periodic episodes of depression. Apparently that is quite common with chronic illnesses. Later, bipolar disorder was considered but the doctors decided neither condition actually fit the symptoms John was showing.

Eventually, in 1995, quite by accident when John was hospitalized with an acute episode of something that would later be diagnosed as Hep C, John’s behavior prompted the physician to once more call for a psychiatrist consult. The psychiatrist floated the idea of Dissociative Identity Disorder and worked with John for the month he was on the ward. He pointed out that John displayed almost all of the symptoms of DID.

There seemed to be different ‘Johns’ and they presented themselves uniquely to the world. In almost every aspect, they appeared to be different people; appearance, speaking style, habits, even grooming were distinct. A change was often signaled when John came downstairs with his head shaved, or goatee and moustache shaved off!

I realized that the psychiatrist might have found an explanation for the Bros, John’s ‘committee of assholes’ who regularly met with him in his head. John had started to talk to me about them over the years because he thought he was insane. He thought it might be the result of childhood trauma or his long standing issues of alcoholism and addiction. He was often depressed, experienced severe mood swings, struggled with an eating disorder, self-sabotaging behavior, and at times, had suicidal tendencies.

The psychiatrist explained to us that John most likely began the process of partially integrating these personalities when he was in the Regional Psychiatric Centre, Pacific Region. Therapy would have facilitated communication between his alters, instead of keeping them totally separate. But the doctor also told us that, when he was under stress, John’s old patterns could reappear to ‘keep him safe’. It explained to me why John could tell his life story with such conviction and passion that even those closest to him never doubted it was the truth. To John, it was the truth; at least the truth as he remembered it. Was he just linking together a history that he had glimpses of through the eyes of his alters?

At first, John didn’t want to talk about the Bros with anybody except me. He said he was ashamed and embarrassed about it and worried people would think he was really mentally ill. He refused to think of his learning disability as anything but ‘retarded’ and this new condition seemed even worse to him. It was only as he began to achieve some success in life that he accepted it at all, and at last, he began to talk about it when he spoke publically. He thought it might help others understand some of their own behavior.

My own research, (DSMIV, 2000, code # 300.14) tells me that DID is a continuum of symptoms, from mild to severe and is often overlooked during regular health care. It is conceivable that people with traumatic histories might experience anything from simple dissociation to complete alternate personalities. We were both overwhelmed by the many listeners who came up to him after hearing him speak and gratefully told him he had connected the dots for them. They said his story offered at least a possible explanation of why they acted the way they did. His condition puzzled many of his friends, but they loved him.

John’s dear friend, Rev Dr. Don Misener, who had known him since the old Kingston Pen days in the seventies, talked about him some time after John’s funeral. He was addressing his congregation about Restorative Justice in a church service one Sunday, and spoke of John in this way:

I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m not lost. That’s one of the favorite expressions of a friend of mine by the name of John B. For many years, John was lost in a raging sea of grief, addictions, violence and imprisonment within himself and within the Correctional Service of Canada. But John didn’t stay lost, and that’s the key measurement of his life. To be found, he had to go through an incredible journey of self-discovery, interpersonal development and spiritual healing. It was my pleasure to accompany John for a way on that road to transformation. He became for me a walking miracle of human courage, perseverance and grace."

Don loved John without condition. He knew him over their adult lifetimes, and he’s one of the few people I know who, both professionally and personally, has been able to explain how reality had taken on different meanings for the con he had grown to love.

"I met John in 1978 when I served as a Protestant chaplain in Kingston penitentiary. As cons went, Johnny B seemed to be a happy-go-lucky sort of fellow, tall and obviously well fed, at one time topping 400 pounds of outlaw biker. He had the reputation of a con who did good time. He was in high demand on the work crews because he took pride in his work. But he also told a lot of lies. I asked him many years later whether something he had told me in the Kingston Pen days was true or not and he said he really didn’t know. In those days, he couldn’t tell the lies from the truth. Nor did it matter because in those days the truth was whatever it took to get a con what he wanted. When you live like this over an extended period of time there comes a point when you can no longer tell what the truth is, either.

John had reached that point. As he later described it, prison was his concrete womb. It wasn’t all that comfortable, but he had found a place there and some stability and that was more than he could say for life on the outside."

This loving and perceptive man of God had seen through John’s changing ‘realities’ and loved him anyway. Don spent many of John’s later years with him, as a friend and a colleague, and though he couldn’t arrive to deliver the eulogy at John’s funeral because of a wild winter ice storm that kept him socked into Toronto, he came out west the next summer. He spoke of it as he continued his sermon on Restorative Justice.

I did a sweat with John’s adopted Cree family, held in his honor. I took into the sweat with me a necklace John had given me. It reminds me of sunrise and that is who John was for me, in my own longing for friendship and my brokenness as a prison chaplain. He helped me find value in my eighteen year struggle as a prison chaplain and also to know some healing from my own inner imprisonment. John made me aware that restorative justice can be achieved if there is determination on the part of the ex-offender to pay the price of freedom. But there must also be room for him in the community. Folks like John make it clear that there are those who are ready to make the difficult transition from being a user and abuser to being a constructive citizen. He may not have known where he was going, but he was not lost.

John saw himself as an alcoholic who would not be loved if people truly knew his real self. There was a hole in him that he just couldn’t seem to fill up or heal. It was only towards the end of his life that he truly accepted that his addiction was life-long and that he might be able to find sobriety again before he died. I remember our conversation one night near the end of his life, as he talked to me between gasps for air.

"Joanie, I haven’t used any drugs or booze for a while now and I think maybe I’m gonna be able to stay clean and sober for the rest of my life. In his usual self-denigrating manner, he made a joke about it. But thank God I don’t have long to live. I don’t think I could make it for another fifty years."

John did make it to the end. He fought his addiction every minute of every day and never gave up. In the end, he won the battle.

CHAPTER TWO:

HE’S MY BROTHER

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At first, I thought John’s request of me in his Last Will and Testament meant that I should try to capture his voice with all its inflections and dialects, maybe even the dramatic expressions he used to describe the biker lifestyle or prison life. His words were imbedded into my heart and I knew I could do that with ease. Later, I realized he wanted me to tell his life story with all its blemishes and boils, instead of trying to make him a hero.

So, about ten months after his funeral, I decided to interview some of his friends to find out what he’d meant to them. I headed out to Alberta and met with those who had known him long before I had. I videotaped each interview. After three days of taping, I was grateful, overwhelmed and tearful; I was amazed that I had lived with the man these people spoke about, and yet had no knowledge of the intense relationships they had with him.

Towards the end of his life, John had become very dependent on me, and frightened of dying. His disease, his relapses and his manic flight from death had made living with him very difficult. As I listened to his friends speak of him with love, it helped me come to terms with his passing, and to accept his humanness. Later, as I watched those videos, I saw good people share their wounds and speak of the man who had filled them with hope and healing.

One story stands out to me in particular. It took a long time to figure out what it meant, and remained a mystery to me until long after I had begun to write about John. I’ve since learned that it reveals a John who spent his life trying to be a bad biker, while hiding his tender heart. A biker who had known John as a bad ass back in Ontario when he was a kid, told me how he’d run into Johnny B. again years later.

Gordy 240, (named to distinguish him from Gordy 140, who weighed much less), sat in the afternoon sunlight streaming in a Calgary hotel room, smoking and slouching in an armchair. He spoke in the lingo of the eastern biker; I could hear the whiskey and smoke in his voice although it had been a long time since he’d had a drink. He began:

I first met Johnny B. back east. He was part of a club that had a rep for being bad. I thought he was a real tough guy. In fact, I wanted to be just like him, but I was too young to be a real biker. Then, he got in some trouble and I didn’t hear about him for a long time. Eventually, I came out West and started riding with a bunch of guys who partied and lived hard. This would have been around the late seventies or so and we all lived on the edge of the law.

Gordy 240 slips into the present tense unconsciously, like he’s reliving the memory.

"One night, a bunch of us gets together at a party. It’s a rowdy time in an apartment on the second floor of a run-down apartment building, and bikers and their ladies are goin’ in and out steady, drinkin’ and smokin’ joints with abandon. I can’t believe my eyes when I look over to a corner of the dingy living room and see Johnny B., beltin’ back whiskey and talkin’ with another biker. He looks like the same ole Johnny B. Huge chest and shoulders, beer belly, narrow hips and that big head of curly, black hair. Of course, he’s decked out in the uniform of the street; leather vest, saggy-assed jeans and black Daytona boots. Tats ride his arms like snakes and he’s bare chested under the vest. I never realized how dark his skin was before.

I’m about to go over and say ‘hi’ when Johnny suddenly jerks the other guy into the air with one fist and quick-steps him out onto the balcony. As if in slow motion, the two grapple for a minute, then fall over the balcony railing and a story down, onto the grass below. I run to the patio door and look out as I see Johnny grab a knife from the sheath on his belt and start to stab the other guy repeatedly. My first thought is, I gotta get outta here fast before the cops come and start wantin’ to know what I saw. No way am I gonna be a witness to a murder of one biker by another. They’re gonna think it’s a gang war. I run out the door and never look back, even when I hear police sirens screamin’ towards the