Wish I could blame nuclear weapons, a mutant virus or Hitler for the malformation in my Russian Jewish bloodline, but my theory is a suicide gene. That coupled with an inability to bond during difficult times. We held our sorrow separately, a silent pact—if we didn’t put words to it, nothing was awry. With a child’s vocabulary I tried to convey the dark storms in my head, but felt my efforts swept aside. “What the hell does that kid have to be depressed about?” Dad asked. Mom shushed him. I was unglued and my family found me exhausting.

But, I wasn’t the only spooked member of the herd. June 1973, my sister Jenny was fifteen, I was twelve. At dinner, Mommy said, “Please pass the peas.” As Jenny picked up the bowl I stared at her white-bandaged wrists.

“Does it hurt?” I asked softly.

She turned her head down to her plate, her lip quivered.

“A little,” she whispered.

 “Anybody want another Tab?” Mom asked. Before anyone answered, she disappeared into the kitchen.

In our Long Island home generations of ancestors marched in photo display up the foyer walls. I spent hours staring at what a perfect family we appeared to be—Ma, a bestselling self-help author, who looked like Jackie O in jeans, Dad, a radio man with Sinatra’s angular cheekbones and straight white teeth. People often said, “None of you look Jewish.” It was a backhanded compliment meaning we had nice noses and frizz-free hair.

Later that same year, 1973, I stepped on the third rail of the Long Island Railroad and nothing happened. So I stepped on it again. I was under the impression it would electrocute me instantly.

“Hey Kid.” a station worker called out. “You could get yourself killed.”

Next day in Science I asked a classmate, “Hypothetically, what would happen if I accidentally stepped on the third rail?”

“Nothing.” he said. “You’re wearing sneakers. Rubber can’t conduct electricity.”

At fifteen, in 1975, I ran away via the same train rails. Back to my native Manhattan, I’d absconded to escape despair and shake off suburbia. In Greenwich Village I found my Mardi Gras and became a street urchin. One day at West Fourth Street, I jumped a turnstile. While I fled from a cop, the subway tunnel summoned me. The iron rails promised an instant solution to loneliness—death. I looked back to see who or what I was running from. Then, magnetically pulled toward my dead heroes, Jimi and Janis, I jumped down onto the subway tracks in front of an oncoming train. Steel hurtled at me with the promise of ramming, crunching, killing. At the speed of that E train, it hit me I could be maimed and live. Existence would be far worse as an amputee. I squeezed tight against the wall. Blast of horn and screech of metal blew out my eardrums while manic swirls of grit choked off my breath. After the train passed, I followed the rails to the nearest exit and kept running.

Years later, shrinks attributed my morbidity to low levels of serotonin and poor impulse control. My dopamine receptors didn’t light up. That is, until I poured drugs and alcohol on them. Too bad Mom’s bestselling parenting books didn’t have all the answers. Both of us wished she knew what to do. I was missing the brain piece that signals enough. I might have learned to compensate for my genetic predisposition if anti-depressants had been the Tic-Tacs they are today.

In 1977, when I was seventeen, Mom’s brother Carl shot himself in the heart. He died before he fell back on his bed. Ma was angry. Words like selfish and thoughtless circled the air until she put the kibosh on that topic.

Last night, I googled my gene theory—if one family member tried to off themself were others more likely to try? The overwhelming proof shone on my monitor like a spiritual white light. I’d never known how to explain my self-destruction before. Questions regarding my suicidal tendencies seemed as cockamamie as asking me why was I allergic to cats.

At seventeen I was in a car crash. Three died and I almost did too. For years I’d prayed to God to get me the hell out of here, but clearly he’d aimed and missed. Apparently, my envy for the three dead was a peculiar response. Along with other deficiencies, I was told I lacked gratitude. Mom and Dad took me to doctors who fixed my broken bones. My reaction to this miraculous recovery was to guzzle Quaaludes, Valiums and vodka, then I laid down and waited to exit in repose. With no note it would appear accidental, nobody could ever label me selfish. But after two days I popped up again like the egg-shaped toy in a popular commercial, Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down. My response? I took to shooting up coke.

In 1983, more family woes. Dad’s sister wrapped a plastic bag around her head. Her sons were livid but relieved they found her in time. When we got the news, Dad slammed the Arts section down and said, “Jesus H. Christ.”

But it wasn’t all a grim deathwatch waiting for who was going to drop next. There were happy times. Dad worked in radio and cracked us up with on-air bloopers like the Princeton cheerleaders making a big “P” on the field. Ma framed my artwork and gave great birthday parties. At Broadway plays we all sat in orchestra seats.

I remember Ma’s soft hands against my forehead when I was sick. But more vivid is how our hard heads rammed into each other. Brutal words we couldn’t take back, scenes we could not rewind. My rebellion became predictable. I found life and everyone in it unacceptable. It wasn’t a fear of death that disturbed me, it was being stuck here endlessly spiraling down. I ached for a connection more intimate than my Washington Square dealer, but alcohol, amphetamines and acid consumed all of my trust and devotion. 

At 26, in a typical drunken haze, I wept. In my MacDougal Street apartment I cried for Jenny’s scarred wrists, poor Uncle Carl and my own failed attempts. I groped in the dark through ashtrays and bottles, dialed the phone and woke up in rehab. Too late for a do-over, I trudged through twenty years of therapy, the twelve steps and countless chocolates. I sold my first painting, opened a business, got my first dog. In 1994, I bought a one bedroom in Chelsea. By 2003 I’d paid it off. I treated Ma and Dad to dinners and orchestra seats. After years of breakups and a heart like ground chuck, I stopped picking what-was-I-thinking men and finally fell in love. Mine was a quick success story, it only took forty years.

Watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes recently, my adrenalin pumped at the thrill from bloodshed. I laughed at my continued fascination with death—bookshelves packed with true crime, OD’d rockers magnets on the fridge, prayers for the new season of Dexter to start—and the occasional urge to poke a bobby pin into the wall socket just to see what would happen.

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As a native New Yorker, I have practically zero attention span, yet I read Face to Face in one sitting. The opening line grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Casey’s book tells the harrowing tale with no self-pity or whining. It is straightforward storytelling. When I spoke with Casey she said, “I wanted to tell what happened and how people can survive and even thrive after a thing like that.”

In November it will be 16 years since the incident. Chris is now a happy and likeable wisenheimer. During our interview, when I asked how he felt about his mother’s book, Chris said, “I told her if it didn’t do well I wasn’t going to shoot myself again.” Involuntarily, I burst out laughing. “It hurt too much the first time,” he said. “Anyway, the doctor told me I was too hard-headed to die.”

Humor and willfulness is what got him through his long, painful recovery. On that fateful night Chris had gone to his soon-to-be ex wife’s house and they’d had a fight. She’d yelled, “I could care less whether you live or die.”

“I thought, I’ll show her.” Chris said. He and his wife had a two-year-old son at the time, and he had a three-month-old daughter with his girlfriend, Megan.

“I grew up without a father,” Chris told me. “If I had only thought it through I wouldn’t have done it. I would’ve realized that I’d be leaving my kids—who I loved so much—without a father. But that night I felt like I was no good to anybody and they’d all be better off without me. I went to my Step-Dad’s gun cabinet and grabbed a 12-gauge hunting rifle. I was a big guy, hard to control, so when my Mom tried to stop me, I pushed her to the floor.”

Chris said he then drove to a store, bought shotgun shells, went to his estranged wife’s backyard and shot himself. He said the blast went in a vertical line through his chin and missed his brain. His eyes and hearing were spared but his face was gone. The chin, jaw, mouth, teeth, nose, and part of his tongue were all destroyed and he’d lost three quarters of his blood by the time the paramedics arrived. He was assumed dead until one paramedic saw he was still breathing.

“I found out later,” Chris said, “that the shotgun never should have gone off. The round I bought was too big for that gun. Ballistically speaking, it can’t happen. But it did. And my face collapsed.”

Chris had a total of 17 painful surgeries over a five-year period. His mom and girlfriend, Megan (who is now his wife of 15 years) were there through the entire odyssey.

In the book, Casey described  her arrival at the scene. The police wouldn’t let her go near him. “I knew from the way everyone was acting, the situation must be grave.” My heart broke for her all over again every time we spoke.

One thing about the story made no sense to me. I couldn’t understand how his girlfriend, Megan, had made the choice to stay with him. When I asked her she said, “I had no idea until that night that he still wanted to be with his wife. At the time, we had a three-month-old daughter and we’d already planned to marry. After he shot himself I was full of disdain. Lots of anger. I felt like he’d killed my boyfriend,” Megan said. “But I stayed for the sake of our daughter. It took a couple of years before I was healed enough to love and trust again. But after those first few years, I fell in love with this ‘other’ man, who looked nothing like the man I’d fallen in love with.”

Chris still has prominent scars on his face. After studying old photos, I commented on how handsome he’d been. “I’m still damn handsome!” he said.

“You’d be surprised how common these types of injuries are,” said Upper East Side plastic surgeon, Dr. Thomas Romo, III. “In the past, a patient with devastating damage to the midface would go through 15–20 operations, then endure enormous pain for long periods of time.”

That was Chris’s route. His first surgery lasted thirty hours. Then he had 16 more. I wondered how his mother could have afforded all of the medical bills. Chris told me that the first six weeks were covered by his insurance. After that he received disability from the State. Insurance paid to build him a mouth but then refused to put teeth in it—they said dentures were cosmetic. Casey was saddled with the bills that weren’t covered.

After waking up in the hospital, Chris said, “I felt embarrassed but learned to deal with it. The nurses wouldn’t let me have fingernail clippers or anything. I wanted to go home and had no idea why I couldn’t. I was on so many painkillers I didn’t understand what was happening. After six weeks in the hospital, they let me see what I had done.”

Chris said, “I never felt as bad as I did that night.” Being constantly laid up and recovering he had a lot of time to think. “I saw how many people really loved me. It was then I made up my mind to stop living a selfish life.” The self-will that nearly destroyed him was transformed into a determination to help others.

“It’s been a rewarding life, maybe not financially but emotionally. I’m happily married, my wife and I laugh all the time. I love my kids and I coach wrestling and baseball. I’m more than just coach, I’m part Dad to all the kids. I make sure they keep their grades up and they know I’m there when they need me. I never focus on the past, only the future.”

Because the shooting didn’t affect his ears and eyes he said, “I hear and see better than most people. But I’ll be 40 this year so I need reading glasses.”

The memoir left me with the feeling that there is almost nothing a person cannot rise above. It made my daily “problems” of short deadlines, inflation, lousy subway service and bad cab drivers seem frivolous.

To order the book Face to Face visit the author’s website.

This story appeared in the New York Resident magazine, August 2011.

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