This story was originally published in the Dec. 11, 1997, issue of Rolling Stone. IN LATE JUNE 1997, I arrive at an address in a working-class suburb in the North American Midwest.
On the front lawn, a child’s bicycle lies on its side; an eight-year-old secondhand Toyota is parked at the curb. Inside the house, a handmade wooden cabinet in the corner of the living room holds the standard emblems of family life: wedding photos and school portraits, china figurines and souvenirs from family trips. There is a knockoff-antique coffee table, a well-worn easy chair and a sofa — which is where my host, a wiry young man dressed in a jean jacket and scuffed work boots, seats himself.
He is 31 years old but could pass for a decade younger. Partly it’s the sparseness of his beard — just a few blond wisps that sprout from his jawline; partly it’s a certain delicacy to his prominent cheekbones and tapering chin. Otherwise he looks, and sounds, exactly like what he is: a blue-collar factory worker, a man of high school education whose fondest pleasures are to do a little weekend fishing with his dad in the local river and to have a backyard barbecue with his wife and kids.
Ordinarily a rough-edged and affable young man, he stops smiling when conversation turns to his childhood. Then his voice — a burred baritone — takes on a tone of aggrievement and anger, or the pleading edge of someone desperate to communicate emotions that he knows his listener can only dimly understand. H.