A. Ralph Tremonte and We Re in New Rochelle, New York
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Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 1
Subject: Ralph Tremonte
Location: Dimensions Rye, New York
Date: April 26, 2001
Interviewer: Steven Periard
A. Ralph Tremonte and we’re in New Rochelle, New York.
Q. Ralph, where and when were you born?
A. I was born January 17, 1949 in St. Joseph Hospital in Yonkers.
Q. Brothers and sisters?
A. Ah, yes – ten.
Q. Ten.
A. One deceased. Two deceased. One was OD’d in 1986 and one died with hepatitis in 1974.
Q. Are you still in contact with them?
A. I have no contact with anybody with the family. I make that my business.
Q. You mentioned in the pre-interview that you were put up for adoption –
A. Yes –
Q. - at age four?
A. I would say in – yes, I would say at the age of three or four, yes.
Q. What were the circumstances? Why were you put up for adoption?
A. The Welfare Department were taking the children away from my mother and father because at that time they weren’t using the pill. This was early 1949 when I was born and they had a population of about nine children or ten by 1960. Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 2
Q. What about the other kids?
A. The other ones were put into catholic homes such as St. Gilson’s(?) and other places throughout the state of New Jersey and the state of New York. None of them were currently systematically put into foster homes. The only child in our family who was systematically had a family was Sharon Tremonte – she was taken in by my Aunt Angelina who lived in Mount Vernon until 1991 – I don’t know if she’s deceased or not. I have not laid eyes on her since 1991 – but currently she lived in Mount Vernon in the Senior Citizen’s Building. She then was married to a businessman and owed a house in Pelham Manor in Pelham. So, she raised only one of the children. Sharon was the only child in our family that really got a free life. Until this day she hates my guts for interfering into her business and asking the guy downstairs, who was selling the butter in the delicatessen, if she owned the house. That was 1971. She is to this day hated my guts for it and despised me.
Q. Why did your parents give up their kids? Why do you think your parents gave the kids away?
A. Well, the Italian families that in the twenties and thirties and forties and fifties, the husband was the very demanding part of the marriage. My mother, psychologically, was not mentally really that much in confidant – she was incompetent in many ways and so woman that were basically incompetent in the forties and thirties and possibly in the twenties and as far back – men were dominating and when they didn’t have such medications as the pill and things like they have today to prevent pregnancies and, of course, abortions – which are more frequent today than was then – man was dominating and when the woman was totally dominated, he could take advantage of his wife, even though they were married, so psychologically I think most of the births in my family were psychological abuse. My mother was forced to have the sex and be pregnant and have ten children by a dominating man who also was psychologically, mentally incompetent in his own ways. He did not go to college. He did not get a high school diploma. He got an ordinary job and yet he continued to – I would say sexually abuse a woman. When you continually get a woman pregnant and have child after child and knowing you don’t have the education or the psychological background and job to support them, there’s something mentally incompetent about you. Would you not say so?
Q. I could not - Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 3
A. There are other ways of sexually coming to arousement without ejaculating completely in the vagina all the time. I mean there’s foul play and all that, right?
Q. Right.
A. So, many, many, many, many families – many, many, many men were dominated over the woman in those days. You’ve heard these stories before and I believe the total domination over my mother is the reason why all these children came into her life. Because you can see by the background neither one of them could ever support any – the amount of children they had. Is that a good answer?
Q. That’s a very good answer. You, you were adopted by a family.
A. Yes, the family was called the Derouchers. They lived in Dobbs Ferry up in Westchester County. They recently died. Mr. Deroucher recently died in 1984. Mrs. Deroucher lived to be eight-five years old. She died in 1991. They were very nice people. They had a beautiful house on King Street and I believe in my heart and soul – and I’ll say this as I always said it – there are many children who act out a lot of things but the parents stick with them and they never go to any psychiatric institutions or anything like that. Children in the ages of two and three and four and five and six years old act out a lot of things that are basically un-understandable to any psychiatrist, let alone any grown-up. But, if you do it and you don’t have a stigma of blood and you’re with someone who was in an adoptive agency and was suppose to report back on a monthly basis when you’re getting systematically income from the Public Assistance Department, and if it’s something you don’t understand about the child – right away you get scared and you want to remove that child, whatever the circumstances might be. And so this really what happened in my case. And, so, I was moved on.
Q. And where were you moved?
A. I was moved to Rockland State Hospital in 1956. I was still having contact with my mother and father at the time. My mother was still making an attempt to visit me. By 1958, we did not see her on a regular basis every Sunday anymore.
Q. She stopped coming.
A. Absolutely on a yearly basis till I moved to the teenage department in Rockland State Hospital in Building 37 – she began coming on a yearly basis. They lived in Mount Vernon, New York in Westchester County. Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 4
She lived on the welfare and he lived in a furnished room. But if you could look at the lifestyles that they lived and if you could look at the educational backgrounds that both of them have, you could see that basically she was forced to have sex with him and he was just busting his balls when he was horny – another way of using a psychological advantage. She’s my wife. I screw her when the fuck I feel like it – which basically you can’t do that to a woman today. She won’t take that shit. You know, I mean, that was, was abuse. You have no right to jump on a woman if she doesn’t want sex because you’re married to her. But that’s what Angelo did. But Angelo was mentally incompetent also – so. Does that suit that question?
Q. Yes it does. You were seven years old?
A. Yeah, that’s correct. It was 1956.
Q. How much do you remember about that first day going into Rockland?
A. It’s very hard to remember that first day, but I’ll always remember this as long as I live. The social worker’s name was Mrs. Baines. She was an elderly woman about seventy-four years old – that I could remember clearly – and as we were driving on the highway, I kept opening the door of the car and when she finally got me there, I didn’t know exactly the details of what I was going to go through. A child at the age of seven years old doesn’t really know what they’re going to go through. But, psychologically, you’re like a little tree – or a little kitten. You have to be nursed up, you know what I’m saying? Now, I got a cat that eats out of garbage cans, right? When I found him, I brought him over to the Youngers who were good friends of mine. They’re trying to feed him cat food and what not. He’s still not used to it. You follow my scenario?
Q. Yeah, yeah.
A. My scenario is that I didn’t know what I was coming into, so everything that was scary and abusable to me, I was unexpected or unaware of it coming – like I was unaware of the fact that Mrs. Mapstone would put me in the hallway between the doors when the other kids went to church on Sunday because I used to laugh in church. But then what are you going to do with a seven year old child when he laughs in church? Crucify him? Go on.
Q. When did your mom stop coming to see you?
A. I would say she stopped coming in the year of 1958.
Q. And you were moved into – there was a teen unit? Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 5
A. Yes, we were moved into the – well, we went from – well, I was on, I was on Cottage 2 and then I moved from Cottage 2 to Cottage 6 and then from Cottage 6 I went to the teenage unit, yes.
Q. How was that?
A. Oh, it was a lovely unit. This is the unit of sodomy, sexual abuse –
Q. You were abused?
A. The black race dominated over the white boys. They didn’t do much dominating in society back in those days, but they sure did in the jails and in the State Hospital systems and what not.
Q. They were the majority?
A. Oh, definitely. They had a lot of freedom – the people’s assholes in those days including the employees.
Q. And were you a victim of some of that?
A. No. No.
Q. How long were you in that part?
A. We moved from the children’s unit. We stood in the children’s unit – children’s unit from the age of seven to twelve. At the age of twelve years old, we were considered a teenager and moved to – well, taken on the teenage years, they were coming – so, psychologically from 1956 to, let’s see, five years, till about 1961, we were in the children’s unit and then moved to Building 37, which, by the way, had a research unit on one side of the area. We went to school in Building 35. We began our day at nine o’clock in the morning with school, recreation, lunch – then, if we were lucky and we were good boys and we were on the parole ward – we had a parole card – we could go out for an hour. And a lot of the sexual activities took place in the woods.
Q. So, where would they let you go?
A. You could go on the hospital grounds. Rockland is very big. You ought to know that.
Q. Is it all closed in or – I’ve never been to Rockland. Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 6
A. No. You couldn’t go off the hospital grounds, but it’s – it’s, I mean this hospital is as big as all the way up to the end of New Rochelle, I mean. This is a very big state institution. I mean, it’s two or three miles to walk across it.
Q. I’m going to have an opportunity to see it tomorrow.
A. It’s a very big state institution. Believe me, very big. It’s probably the biggest state institution you’ve every seen in your life.
Q. So, they would give you an opportunity to go outside.
A. Give you opportunities to go outside. Wednesdays the visitors came. You could go to the bus terminal and panhandle and then you could have sex with the grown men, the ages of fifty-five and sixty because they were the ones that had the money in their pockets and they were the ones who give you fifty cents. You sure as hell couldn’t get fifty cents from the boy you slept with next door because he didn’t have any money. So, what would happen is on Sunday all the weak minded boys would give all their candy and all their money and all their packages to the Negro boys. They dominated. I hate to use that word. But, they dominated. You know about that yourself, right? But the most sexual desired boys were Puerto Ricans. Are they desirable in your –
Q. Oh, yeah.
A. - homosexual desires. They looked like girls. They had jet black hair, blue eyes, brown eyes – bodies that would terrify you and they’re the most dangerous because they would kill you with no understanding. See, blacks will beat you half to death, but a Puerto Rican, they kill you.
Q. So there was a lot of abuse and a lot of –
A. Yeah, yeah. One time we were playing dodge ball and I had sticks in my mouth and all seven of them went in my throat and I had to get an operation – on up until twelve years ago, I had a lot of sore throats, then I went to the doctor and he fixed it up.
Q. So, how long were you in – was it Building –
A. Building 37. I went to Building 37 in 1961 and stood there until 1965, May the fourth – then was transferred to Building 17 and let me tell you about Building 17. Now, it’s interesting how your record can go from one person to the next and the doctor can criticize your record. Get a psychiatrist who can criticize what you do when you’re an innocent boy in a psychiatric Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 7
institution, and not like you, and really try to stick it up your ass, is something you can’t understand. In fact, you don’t even know why you should understand that and that was Dr. Griffin.
Q. This guy was out to get you?
A. Yes. He couldn’t understand why I would be involved with homosexuality, which I was.
Q. What did he say about it?
A. His total objection was to it that it didn’t seem normal in his eyesight. It was kind of a low life, ah, a low life – ah – threat to the other boys, or the other men in the institution. So, I simply told him and quote, “I’d rather be in Building 58 than here. Are you transferring?” He had a football for me. I went to Harlem Valley – this ends the Rockland story although there’s plenty more of it. You’re ending the Rockland story too quick, because that’s when I go to Harlem Valley.
Q. This is a lot of years here.
A. That’s why you’re ending – when you’re ending the Rockland story too quick because you’re moving from 37 to 17. I didn’t stay in 17 long – three months.
Q. And that was the last building you were in.
A. That was the last building in Rockland State Hospital. I then moved to Harlem Valley State Hospital in Wingdale.
Q. What was the – what was Building 17 like?
A. Building 17 was a men’s building. Once you became sixteen years old, you became a piece for the wolves and you were transferred into the building with the grown men. You didn’t go to school no more. You didn’t attend recreation any more. You just stood in the building with locked men seventy years old, forty years old, fifty years old – any one could have busted your asshole open.
Q. No activity?
A. No activity at all. Basically laying on benches all afternoon looking at naked, dirty men. People shitting all over themselves. Pissing all over themselves. You know, these stories that you see in the movies are nothing compared to total reality. Nothing whatsoever of total reality. The Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 8
weak patients get beat up. Stomped by the black patients. The black employees will let the black patients smoke, but not the white patients in the – ah, then you have the situation of homosexual employees.
Q. Right.
A. Homosexual employees who play favoritism. They will mascurise(?) a – let’s look at the scenario of a homosexual mind and the scenario of a homosexual mind is that basically if you ain’t cute baby, and you don’t look good and I have got an advantage over you, I’m coming to stomp your ass to death like any straight man. That’s total victory and power for the homosexual. And the homosexual employees were sodomizing kids from left and right. You realize how many of these mother fuckers have gone to prison? In those days if people knew exactly that it was against the law – kids at thirteen and twelve don’t know what’s against the law. They don’t know what sodomy is. You take a ten dollar bill and put it in a kid’s pocket who hasn’t seen that much money in all their fuckin’ life, they’ll roll over and fuck all day long, these guys.
Q. This is why things like this are important cause you know that any record that comes out of Rockland Psychiatric, there isn’t going to be one report of abuse because they’re not going to report it and this is what we need to talk about.
A. Many of the kids never really reported it and basically when you get down to brass tacks, the employees that were paying the kids, the kids were glad to do it. You know what you could buy with ten dollars in 1964?
Q. Yeah.
A. You know how much candy you could buy in 1964 with a ten dollar bill?
Q. How would you spend it? Do you go out on recreation –
A. Yeah, you go down and you get soda, you get ice cream. That last you two, three weeks. Soda was a dime back then. A candy bar was a nickel. A cheese sandwich was fifteen cents. A hamburger was fifteen cents and they took all the taxes off everything in the exchange and fifty percent for every – they didn’t get charged a lot of money. If somebody didn’t rob your ass at night and take that twelve dollars if you couldn’t hide it – you could live on that for a month.
Q. And it was probably a rare treat to be able to get some – Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 9
A. Sure, it was and these employees made two and three hundred dollars every – they made about three hundred dollars every two weeks. Six hundred dollars a month in 1964 was fantastic pay. These guys were driving new cars. Had nice clothes. These homosexuals could seduce and sodomize any boy they wanted. What was ten dollars to them? In the street they’d have to pay forty. In the street they’d have to give away their car. In the street they’d have to put their lives on the line if they went messing with somebody out in the street. It was easy to sodomize the boys.
Q. Right. Easy pickings.
A. Easy, very easy. And it was done on a complete, total basis constantly. But, not every employee did it.
Q. Well, during your whole stay there – and this is a question I asked you for and I’ll just ask it again – you were diagnosed at some point.
A. The words schizophrenia is something that I have been dealing with for almost all my life. If you know what my basic problem – I’m hyper-tensed, because schizophrenia is a bullshit word. You go into the corporate world – stock market, corporate world, corporation world, big companies and you go and interview anybody and tell me if you don’t come out with half of the whole United States schizophrenic.
Q. So your feeling is –
A. Hyper-tension is put into a perspective schizophrenia in every walk of life, but it’s total bullshit and a total word that a psychiatrist has to use to earn his salary or her salary and all it is in general perspective. Anybody in the field whose trying to move directly forward, will tell you the same thing I’m telling you. It’s all bullshit. Make sense to you?
Q. Absolutely. And at one point during your stay were you given this diagnosis?
A. Ah, it’s hard to really understand what stage of the game in your life you come to understand the word. You have to come to understand what the word means. Many fourteen year olds and fifteen year olds cannot understand what that word means. Even sixteen year olds and grownups can’t understand that word.
Q. That’s fairly young when – Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 10
A. Yeah – if you get together with a bunch of people whose on the same ward with you and they say doctor so and so says I’m schizo, I’m getting better and the other one will say I’m malanomic(?) and all that other shit – you’ll find in the archives of mental health news and words such as, ah, medications and what not – how they describe medications and whatnot.
Q. Speaking of medications – do you remember when you were first prescribed medications?
A. Yes, Thorazine in 1957. There was this woman by the name of Mrs. Wiggs. She was a lovely half black Puerto Rican woman, fat and chubby, she was cute. She had orange hair – no, mixed orange/blond hair. She hugged me and kissed me and sucked on me like a little baby boy – like I was her little baby son. But when I wanted to go home with her, I used to scream and holler and to crazy, so they had to put Thorazine in me and lock me in a room. It’s against the law to – it’s against the law to want a mother.
Q. You were eight years old.
A. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a psychiatric, stupid, fucking bunch of bullshit to call someone schizophrenic at the age of seven years old when a woman is giving him love as a little boy should get from any mother and he now wants it and she’s running away and he’s hollering. Does you know any normal child in America that doesn’t do that – when abondonship – unless they’re being violently beaten and abused to the point where they don’t know what’s going on – or sexually assaulted. Do you know any child in America who wouldn’t cry? Is that a good enough answer for you?
Q. Sure is.
A. Make good sense? Okay.
Q. How long – were you given Thorazine throughout your whole –
A. Thorazine was not a drug that was given to me throughout my whole life. Thorazine was a – as a matter of fact, when we move on to Building 37, I took no medication at all. The boys in Building 37 never got any medication.
Q. Well, what were they doing for you?
A. Well, psychologically in Building 37, we were boys, we didn’t use camisoles. We didn’t use straight jackets. We didn’t use medication. We were active, young boys. I mean, we were dealt with by being put on the Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 11 closed ward if we didn’t act right and we were being dealt with – we were on a closed ward or we were on an open ward. We got a card to go out at three-thirty every afternoon, Monday through Friday for one hour after school. We had lunch at eleven o’clock in the morning. We had school began at nine o’clock. We had gym at eleven o’clock. We got up in the morning and I want to point out this – and I want you to get this into your report here – because here’s a story I want to always say it – I’ve told this story to Gary a thousand times and I’m going to tell it to you and listen to this good. There was this black kid. His name was Cannonball. He weighed about two hundred and sixty-four pounds. The biggest boy you ever saw in your life. Now Cannonball was a favorite of an employee by the name of Mr. Coleman who ran the workshop, but Friday they needed staff employees to run the wards because a lot of people wanted the weekends off – Friday, Saturday and Sunday and Nick Lucetti, who was in charge of Ward 49, was of course, off on Friday and Saturday. So, Cannonball was going home for a weekend visit and they had buffers – you know, I’m not talking about the electric machines – I’m talking about hard wooden buffers with metal steel, ten times stronger than these, where a kid would have to take a hundred and fifty pound buffer where the floor – the blanket, and polish the floor with wax – you follow me. So, Coleman threw one of those at me on a Friday morning. In the meanwhile, I had a portable radio, six transistor, twenty-four packages of Doublemint Gum and a dollar and a quarter in my room. Cannonball was allowed to go around into the rooms and steal everything. But I had God on my side that day because I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. I heard it and I cried by losing my portable radio and my Doublemint Gum and dollar and a quarter. So we had a big stereo system where we had about two hundred forty-five records in it, so we knew Cannonball was going home. I snuck in the office and took the fifty records that he was going to take home to enjoy his dance party. So, when Friday night came around seven-thirty when his father came to pick him up, he went in looking for the records and he couldn’t find them. So, he went crazy and what not. So, I turned around and said to him, “I have the records, but you’re not getting them until I get my Doublemint Gum back; a dollar and a quarter, my radio with a new battery in it and I want it now.” So, Mr. Lee turned around and said to me, “Well, why did you do this now?” I said, “I had no alternative. Mr. Coleman hated white faggets. He hated Puerto Rican faggets. He loved Negro faggets and could not stand anyone white except Anthony Mariano, who he was screwing up the asshole up in his workshop.” Anthony Mariano was a beautiful white Italian boy, brown hair. Had a body that looked like this kid who was on television on Silver Spoons, Ricky Schroder, when he was about twelve or thirteen. He was raping the hell out of Mariano. So Cannonball’s father gave me two dollars and twenty-five cents, two batteries and a dollar and twenty-five Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 12
cents for the gum and radio back and Cannonball never forgave anybody when he came back on Sunday.
Q. He never retaliated?
A. He never retaliated.
Q. Before we move on to Wingdale.
A. Yes, move on to Wingdale. Wingdale is not as interesting at Rockland.
Q. Let me ask you this – while you were in Rockland, what about counseling?
A. Counseling was not something that you got. Counseling came from the boys that were favorited(?). If you got a visit every week, you got counseling. If you had some interest in the outside world, that’s when they would give you counseling because that’s when they would know if you would be qualified enough to go home. If you didn’t have nobody, they didn’t give a fuck about you because they knew you weren’t going home, so why waste the staff of counseling on you when you were going from place to place. They were only interested in counseling people who were going home. No had no fucking interest in anyone not going home.
Q. Because you didn’t have anywhere else to go, they wouldn’t give you the time of day.
A. The State didn’t waste their time.
Q. What happened when you got released from Rockland? Where did you go?
A. I was released from Rockland on May 4th, 1965 and went to Harlem Valley State Hospital in Wingdale.
TAPE 1, SIDE 2
Q. Was there any place that you stayed in between or did you go right from Rockland into –
A. There was no in between. They transferred you from one State institution to the other. But Harlem Valley was better in a lot of ways. It was much better than Rockland in many ways.
Q. How old were you? Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 13
A. Sixteen.
Q. How was it better?
A. It was much better because I had more in Harlem Valley. I had a lot of experiences in Harlem Valley, but I had more. In Harlem Valley I could go caddy on the golf course and make eight dollars a day. On Sunday I could wash cars in front of the Administration Building and make eight or nine dollars a day. In Harlem Valley I had ways of making money. I’d gamble some times and I’d lose or win, but it was much more better in Harlem Valley as far as money goes instead of Rockland. There was no way to get money in Rockland cause you couldn’t do anything, but in Harlem Valley you could. Harlem Valley you could wash cars and you didn’t have to sexually have to give yourself away for money.
Q. Right.
A. And in Harlem Valley, it’s a different set up. Harlem Valley State Hospital was different from Rockland State. You see, Rockland State had units where they could little children, where they could put teenagers. Harlem Valley State Hospital in Wingdale did not have that type of set up. You went with all grownups and that was the way it was psychologically pulled out. You had Building 27. You had Building 26. You had Building 25. Then you had the buildings on the top of the hill were recently built in the early sixties.
Q. What about counseling there?
A. Counseling at Harlem Valley was much better. There was a social worker that did come to see me on a regular basis. I never understood why. He was a blond headed guy named Mr. Savage. He came on a Tuesday afternoon when I first came to Harlem Valley State Hospital in the early 1965 and 1966. I was in Building 27 on Ward 19.
Q. Was there ever any group therapy?
A. We never had any group sessions with all, ah, with all of the patients on the ward at all. This social worker came. I haven’t to this very – and I’ve often thought about this in my lifetime about why this social worker did come to see me in those early days.
Q. What’s your, what’s your –
A. My total opinion is that it was possibly to get to know more about me other than what they had on record. See, in the old days they never took people Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 14
as human beings. All they had to do was go to the record and that was it. They drew their – they drew their own opinion from the well, if you understand what I mean and so, therefore, there really wasn’t any other side to these human beings we were dealing with. It was just basically drawing from the well, which is always a one sided bunch of bullshit. There’s never two or three sides to another human being except themselves. So, psychologically you’re built up into a system of bullshit. But what can you do?
Q. Were they giving you medication there?
A. In, in, in – I don’t usually stutter, I’m doing more thinking instead of stuttering. In Harlem Valley State Hospital there was no medication. The Stelazine actually came in Building 17 which I didn’t stay long. The Thorazine came in Rockland in the Children’s Unit and the Stelazine came in Building 17. But there is a story about medication, but we haven’t gotten to it yet.
Q. Was this a story from Harlem?
A. Harlem Valley.
Q. Can we talk about that?
A. Yes, we can move up to Ward 42 where every patient was on medication – liquid medication – from Trilafon to Mellaril to Thorazine. Medication was excuted (issued) three times a day and four times a day. There were patients who got medication twice a day. There were patients who got medication four times a day. Four times a day was considered QID. Three times a day was considered TID and I don’t know what two was. I probably would know, but I forgot.
Q. How many times did you take it?
A. I did not take any medication. I spit it out and they reached a point where they knew I wasn’t going to take it, so you got shots. But then the shots were not as half as – not as strong as the consumption of 200 milligrams of liquid medication and 50 milligrams of Thorazine in a syringe. In those days they didn’t use the syringes where you could throw it away. They didn’t come to the invention until the early 1964 or 1965. Stick the syringe in, throw the piece out. In those days they were still sterilizing. Are you aware of that? Do you know what that means?
Q. Yeah. Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 15
A. Okay. How are you – how are you so fully aware of everything? You’re so young.
Q. Paying attention.
A. Oh, okay.
Q. Listening more than I talk.
A. Okay.
Q. So, when they found out that you weren’t –
A. Is my story more interesting than the other seventy-five?
Q. Yours is definitely one of the more interesting, yeah.
A. Let’s go ahead.
Q. When they found you weren’t taking the medication –
A. Well, they would put you on shots. But then Mr. Willims came to find out I wasn’t a crazy nut. Willims was a very smart man and Willims believed in respect. He was a dotty looking man. He looked like Fred Flintstone. You would swear he was Fred Flintstone if you seen him.
Q. Who was he?
A. He was the staff employee on the ward. He came to realize I was not psychologically crazy or anything like that. See, the people they wanted to give medication to were the ones that went crazy and tried to kill other patients – rape them or sodomize them, get them up against the wall – ones that would put their hands through windows, cracks their head open and stuff like that.
Q. So it was a form of control?
A. Well, most – ninety-eight percent of the medication they used in those days was a form of control. If anyone’s on medication outside today, it’s not a form of control – it’s a form of helping. There’s a difference between a form of helping a person to survive at their level points where they can survive and then a form of what your point was just. Many people were used that way. Thorazine was the most powerful drug they used in the early days and it was a form of drying up your sexual system, making you dry. If you were on Thorazine, you could psychologically never – you Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 16
could get a feeling of an orgasm, but no semen would ever come out of your penis. You dried up.
Q. I’ve many –
A. You’ve heard that?
Q. I’ve had medication like that. Mellaril did that to me.
A. Okay. So, you’ve had some psychological experiences then.
Q. Trilafon, Mellaril –
A. Trilafon is not as powerful as Mellaril. Your sexual status would come back in two weeks with Mellaril and it would do the same thing with Stelazine, but not with Thorazine. Thorazine and Mellaril are two of your powerful drugs. But Thorazine is not used on the market any more that much. They basically use Prolixin today and we basically use the one that my – that Gary Younger is taking, ah, I can’t think of the name of it right now. It’s very popular.
Q. So, how many different buildings were you in at Harlem Valley?
A. At Harlem Valley I was only in three buildings. I came from Building 27. Then I went to Building 26 which is the worst building in the whole hospital and Ward 42 is the worst ward in the whole hospital. I don’t know how many times Val Johnson beat the shit out of me and I don’t know how many times he tried to sexually abuse me.
Q. Staff?
A. Who, Val Johnson? I’ll tell you a story that’s very interesting. We had a guy by the name of – and listen to the story very clearly – we had a guy by the name of Bill Fenton, you follow me?
Q. Ah huh.
A. Bill Fenton weighed about three hundred and thirty pounds. He was a very heavy set, fat man about the age of fifty-three or fifty-four years old. Now he worked in Building 27, but they transferred him from Building 27 to Building 26. Now, Bill Fenton was the most loved and abused human being you’ve ever met in your whole life. He would come on the ward, make up the medication, sit on his fat ass till dinner time came, then he would get the slow eaters and go down to the dining room. He would eat nine to ten hot dogs, ten hamburgers, get himself all stuffed up and then Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 17
we would go down to eat and Bill Fenton would wave his finger out like this and he would call certain patients on the ward. If you were big and strong and could whip anybody’s ass, that’s the guy he wanted and he would use you to beat the shit out of any patient on the ward you wanted to. You could go in the bathroom and sexually abuse anybody you felt like it. So, one time they got this young kid named Billy Piano, he was twenty years old, blue eyes, blond hair. He had come from Building 35. And Baccas was working with Bill Fenton this night. Baccas weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. He was thirty-one years old. He was a strong, healthy alcoholic. He drank on a continuous basis. The same thing with Bill Fenton, but I’ll tell you how Fenton’s life ended. Any way, they came in on a Saturday night and Baccas was drunk and patients were in the bathroom raping Billy Piano, screwing the living shit out of him and Baccas just beat him to death. He broke his face. He broke his nose. He busted his eyeball open, but he didn’t kill him. When Mr. Willims came back on Sunday morning and they found Billy Piano in the bathroom, he couldn’t even move, but he wasn’t dead. And Fenton denied everything that ever happened and when Mr. Zink asked Mr. Fenton what were you doing when this was going on. If you denied everything that happened, you must have been sleeping or not on the ward. Baccas done ten years in prison for this and Fenton was fired with no pay. On February 29, 1968, Fenton was drinking at the local bar down the street outside the hospital. He was driving a ’68 yellow Chevelle when he smashed it into a tree and was instantly, immediately killed. Anything else?
Q. How long were you at Harlem Valley?
A. Harlem Valley State Hospital was a very interesting place. They tried to help. You got to give Harlem Valley State Hospital credit. And the think that I want to say is that Harlem Valley was a hospital that was not psychologically bunched in like Rockland, but then again you have to realize the younger you are the more you think they’re protecting you, which they really don’t give a fuck, but it’s a protective procedure where you can’t really be as far away from them as possible. Harlem Valley was not fenced in like Rockland. It was open and Harlem Valley was a state hospital that you could go out all day long with your parole card – from eight o’clock in the morning until eleven o’clock and then eleven o’clock go to lunch and come back and you were out all day up until four. If you were one of the privileged people who had been in the hospital as a stand up patient for thirty years – I would have rather been fucking dead, if that had been me. You follow what I’m saying – then you could go out at four thirty and stay out until eight o’clock at night.
Q. So, you had a lot more freedom? Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 18
A. Yeah. Harlem Valley gave us more freedom. The thing about Harlem Valley – I could not deal with people forty-five and fifty years old. I was sixteen – eighteen. I liked baseball. I liked football. I didn’t know how to deal with people like that so I was getting in fights with them and kicking them and punching them and all that and they put me upstairs. Well, how do you expect a teenager to deal with people that are not of your age status? Does that make sense to you?
Q. You had no one around?
A. No one. No one. We were not situated in group like we were at Rockland. Rockland we were situated in a group as age categories. In Harlem Valley we weren’t.
Q. Everybody was grouped together?
A. Right, right.
Q. It was mostly old guys?
A. Mostly – ninety percent of the people in Harlem – but, we had freedom in Harlem Valley. You could – Harlem Valley wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t all that bad. You made money. It felt good to have money in the pocket. It felt good to go to the exchange and buy your own coffee and rolls. It was good to have your own portable radio with batteries. It was good to get your own pipe and smoke it. Get your own cigars. Walk around – Harlem Valley was much better, but the only thing is they didn’t have set up for a young unit of people. But, much better than Rockland.
Q. And for you in particular – for someone who is not used to – who has gone through most of your life with no, little to no freedom, that had to be something that was truly wonderful.
A. Well, the freedom – freedom is – I learned one thing in this life. Freedom is always money no matter where you go. Whether it be in a psychiatric institution or in jail, money you can buy what you want. Money is freedom in a lot of these places. When I made money, I did good. When I went to the golf course and made eight dollars every Wednesday, it was good. When I made nine dollars washing cars on Sunday, that was good. When I went to the sheltered workshop and made twenty dollars a week, that was good. Harlem Valley let you make money. Money was something you could make in Harlem Valley and believe me, if you walked around with fifty dollars in your pocket in Harlem Valley, you were a millionaire and you felt good about it. Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 19
Q. Did you ever worry about getting it stolen?
A. Oh, many times it was stolen. I’ll give you a complete story of what happened. I had just gotten my pay from the sheltered workshop. I had a hundred and six dollars in cash on me on November 23rd, 1968. I think it was the day before Thanksgiving or the day before or after Thanksgiving. A black guy by the name of Morris, who was on 38 – he and I was on 38B. He managed to get over to my bed from his ward and stole a hundred and six dollars from me. He ran away from the hospital and for one solid month I was psychiatrically off base. I went crazy completely. Would have killed him in any way I could have had a gotten my hands on him. I couldn’t whip him – face to face I could never whip him. This was a two hundred and fifty pound man as strong as George Foreman and Mohammad Ali – but if his back was turned, I could take a chair and crush his skull open if I got the chance. I never saw Morris again and in those days I was psychologically out of it. See, when they couldn’t comfort you, they had to punish you. See, do you understand the psychological analysis what I’m saying here? If you’re going to cry like a baby and suffer and whatnot, they’re not your parents. They’re not going to come and sit on your shoulder. So, either you got to cough it up and take it like a man, or you’re going upstairs. And I just couldn’t. But I learned my lesson and I learned it good and no one ever took a dime from me again. I learned my lesson. I learned a trade and the trade was always get bills, never have much change and put the shit under the legs of the bed. In order to get the shit, they’d have to lift the bed up and any God damn time they lift the bed, they’d have to wake me. Never lost a fucking cent again. But there’s a way you have to pack the shit. You don’t take the money and put it under the piece – you had to pack the money properly so that it would not rip. Does that make good sense?
Q. It makes perfect sense.
A. Is this interesting?
Q. Very interesting.
A. Have you not ever heard that before?
Q. Let’s talk about the day you left.
A. The day I left Harlem Valley, that would be April the seventh, 1969 – my first time. I went to live in White Plains, a beautiful house owned by a woman by the name of Ruth Merritt on Mamaroneck Avenue. She had women living in the place. She had people with psychiatric disabilities. She also had people with compulsion disabilities like handicapped. There Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 20
was a guy named Larry and a girl named Lynda and they both had cerebral palsy and it was nice living in the Merritt residence but the problem with the Merritt residence was she was running around with the Cadillac and we were getting all the instant meals. Instant milk, cheap sandwiches – so I turned around one day and I said to the case worker – he came to the house to interview me – I said the food in Harlem Valley is not all that God damn good, but it’s damn sure better than instant milk and shit. Either you move me some place else or take me back to the God damn hospital, but you’re starving me to death and she’s running around in a fucking Cadillac.
Q. How old were you?
A. Oh, twenty. 1969.
Q. So, how long did you stay with –
A. Ruth Merritt, I stayed with her for six months. I finally had a nervous breakdown. I believe we were going into November of 1969, I had a breakdown. They put me on every kind of medication. Oh, I got to tell you about this medication they put me on. Imagine taking Librium, Thorazine and Nitroglycerin and Luminal(?) all at the same time. Well, that’s what I was.
Q. What happened with the breakdown? What occurred?
A. Well all the medicine psychologically fucked up every nerve in my system after three or four months and I just broke down. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sit no where. I couldn’t do nothing. I was going crazy and I mean that’s the worst shape I’ve ever been in my life.
Q. Isn’t that ironic.
A. Definitely ironic because once you have those medications wearing off your nerve system and your nerve system comes back to reality, you’re not going to be in reality for a while. It’s like a heavy drug addict. He don’t get his fix – your nervous system has full control over your whole body and if that system is not totally relaxed or totally in its own functionality – if that’s out of function, forget it.
Q. So, what happened after the breakdown?
A. Well, I managed to finally get well.
Q. How did you do that? Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 21
A. You’re getting close to now. Now you’re getting close to 1971. Well – let me use the bathroom. Got well and I then came to live in Yonkers. They released me on September the 13th, 1971 and I came to live in Yonkers in a furnished room.
Q. When you say they released you –
A. I would say the hospital. You couldn’t release yourself, I mean, you couldn’t go to the supervisor’s office and say I’m leaving.
Q. So living with the woman with the Cadillac, that was an outpatient type of –
A. Ruth – no, that was not an outpatient program. That was a, a, a – what did they call that – they called that a boarding house that they put you in and they took care of your room and board. You got fed three meals a day and you had a bed to sleep in. Of course, this woman was rich. She had money. So she had a nice outside place where you could sit down and, you know, it was a bunch of bullshit because it was psychological she – it was a set up where she wanted people who would suck into her shit and take her bullshit – evaporated milk, you know.
Q. So, the hospital was covering the cost of the boarding?
A. No, the county was covering it. It was public assistance coming from the county. She would get like four or five thousand dollars a month. She had twenty-three people in the house. Five thousand dollars a month in 1969, you were a fucking millionaire.
Q. And she fed everybody powered milk.
A. Powered milk, rotten apples, you know, and bullshit.
Q. And probably socked the rest away.
A. Well, yeah, she had like two or – about forty or fifty thousand dollars worth of statues and furniture in her place and whatnot. So, she was pretty well to do. Ruth Merritt is dead now. She died in 1989 at the age of 94. She was running this house and she was somewhere in her eighties, seventies and eighties before she finally got sick and couldn’t run it any more.
Q. So, after six months of living in that situation – Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 22
A. Well, then I went back to the hospital for three years and then I went to Yonkers. But, you’re moving away from the important part of this – you’re not staying on the hospital long enough. You’re jumping back and forth.
Q. Tell me what I’m forgetting.
A. Because once you move from there you’re not going to be in the hospital and there’s nothing more to talk about. Then there’s only this – the only thing we’ve got to talk about is this system. This system from 1971 to 2001.
Q. There are experiences that you’ve had in the hospital that we haven’t gone over yet. Please –
A. Well, jump on them.
Q. Any other instances at Harlem Valley that stand out in your mind that –
A. Well, there are many incidents in Harlem Valley – Wallace Washington was one incident where he stole my big, large Hershey bar out of my drawer and I busted his head – busted a chair over his head, broke his neck and so they were going to send me to prison for it. They did send patients to prison from Harlem Valley State Hospital. One of the patients that they sent to prison was a guy named Walter King. He attempted to murder Loise Cobb. He had cut his chest open, but they saved him and sent Walter King to prison. Me they were going to do, too for trying to kill Wallace Washington, but they didn’t do it. They kept me on Ward 42 for six months.
Q. Ward 42 –
A. Ward 42 is the ward where you get up in the morning at six o’clock for breakfast, come down, spend the whole day in the day room all day long, go to lunch at eleven o’clock, spend the whole day in the day room looking at television, playing ping pong, smoking and you never went no where.
Q. You weren’t allowed to leave the ward.
A. Weren’t allowed to leave the ward. You were in two places. You were in the day room and the – the bathroom, but that’s not the word we used. We used the word “water section.” Are you familiar with that word?
Q. No. Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 23
A. That was the word that was used, “water section.” In other words, the bathroom was considered the area – the water substance area of the sinks, the shower and the toilet bowl – so that was the water area called the “water section.” People were sleeping on the floor and fucking and doing every other thing.
Q. And this was at Harlem Valley?
A. Plenty of fucking going on.
Q. And where was staff while this was going on – or was staff involved?
A. Oh, yeah, staff was involved. Bill Willims was always down stairs in Mr. Zink’s office. He was a fat Irish, Polish pig. He weighed four hundred pounds. Went out with a Negro woman. He was trying to impress us at a time when blacks and whites weren’t to sticking it together and – but, Mr. Zink was not a bad guy. I’d be making a bad impression about Mr. Zink if I was to say he was bad. Because when Zink came up to the ward and you want a closed ward and you would grab him aside, I’d say, “Look, you know, I’m kind of sorry for the things I did. Do you think I could go back outside again?” Four hours later I’d be put down and go outside. He wasn’t a vicious man. He believed you should be punished for what you did wrong, but he didn’t persecute you like a lot of those sons of bitches did. And Zink didn’t mind you having money and he didn’t mind you making money, but the biggest mistake with Zink was – is that you never talked back to him. Cause when you did that you fucked yourself in the ass good. That was the worse guy to talk back to.
Q. Because then he would persecute you?
A. Oh, yes. And I never did it. I learned how to – I learned how to get along with Zink and I didn’t have it so bad.
Q. To jump ahead again, you left Harlem Valley. You stayed six months with – I’m sorry, I forgot her name again –
A. When I left Harlem Valley State Hospital in Wingdale for the first time, I was released, I stayed six months in White Plains at Mrs. Merritt’s house and then I went back to Harlem Valley for three years because I had a nervous breakdown with the medication thing I told you.
Q. Okay. Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 24
A. And from – the next time Harlem Valley released me, they released me in the community of Yonkers. That was September 13th, 1971, thirty years ago.
Q. And where were you staying?
A. I stood in a man’s house by the name of Hopkins. In those days you got a furnished room for twenty dollars a week and a kitchen and it was a full rooming house and they gave you a budget of two hundred and fifty-five dollars a month. You paid the rent, you bought your food, you got your clothes and whatever else you could get out of that money – which is not very much.
Q. No.
A. No.
Q. How long?
A. I stood in Mr. Hopkins’ house until Easter of 1972 until I fell back on the rent and he threw me out in the street. I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know that you were suppose to pay the rent. I thought you could take the money and spend it any way you wanted to spend it. I didn’t know that I had to give him such and such – so, the case manager came down and I says, “Well, why did you put me here? Now he’s throwing me out. I don’t understand it.” So the guy turns around and tells me you got to give him money. I says, “What money? I mean, what I got to give him money? I didn’t have to pay nobody any money.” So a little institutionalisim(?) was in me, if you noticed that. The psychological point of view, if you’ve been there that long, you didn’t know this system at all. I didn’t feel I had to give Hopkins money because I didn’t know why you should give him money. I didn’t know what the system was all – you bring me out – now here it is 56, 61, 71 you bring me out to this system and I’m giving this guy money and I don’t know what for because at the hospital I didn’t give any money to stay there for food and room and board and shelter. Is this making any sense?
Q. Absolutely. It’s all where you’re coming from. It’s based on your life experience. This was something totally foreign to you.
A. So, on Easter Sunday, 1972 he put me out and I called, I called the Salvation Army guy and the guy came down and he picked me up and I said I don’t know why this man is putting me out in the street. I haven’t got any idea. They released me out of the hospital – they put me in this house. So when the guy came out and told the guy I wasn’t giving him the Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 25
money, they understood that part of it, but they did not understand the other psychological part of it that I didn’t understand he was suppose to get money. I thought the check was for me to go buy my clothes and buy my food and they were paying – a lot of people thought that way in those days and if you were institutionalized, along went the – I’m not the only one who thought that way, do you understand?
Q. It’s understandable why you would think that way. Completely.
A. And then another thing that was very crazy that I didn’t understand which I did right. The Bohack Supermarket – remember Bohack – no, you never heard of Bohack – well, it went out of business about fourteen years ago. There was the Bohack Supermarket in Yonkers, right. So, I went into Bohack and I took two steaks and I took a box of potatoes and some donuts and I walked out of the supermarket. So, the black guy came up to me and said to me, “You have to pay for this stuff. You can’t –“ I said, no, my hospital counselor will pay for this. See, I didn’t know how to live out here in this world. Again, I was never persecuted for any of these things I did. I straightened them out because I didn’t know. So, they called the police in, right, and I told the police, “I got a counselor here, he’s suppose to – my counselor, here’s the phone number. He’s suppose to pay for the food. Well, what could the cop do? He was looking at a young man with a psychiatric disability more than the fact that he was being a thief because actually he was not knowing better. He wasn’t trained in society to understand the system he was in.
TAPE 2, SIDE 1
Q. I hate to jump ahead too far, Ralph.
A. Go ahead.
Q. I know that you and I had discussed that you have years and years of experience that we could talk about and you have a lot of valuable information, unfortunately we’re pressed for time.
A. Okay.
Q. There is one question that I wanted to ask you.
A. Shoot.
Q. In your pre-interview you talked about the problem of children being thrown into the mental health system. Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 26
A. Yes. Ah, yes, I talked about the rape of children in the mental – in the, in the mental disabilities system in the years 1940’s on the way up to the fifties. What happened, many of these cases – after the war in 1945, many young spouses were getting together and having children, but then as the war years went by, you know, we moved from ’47 to ’49, the population in America was increasing by mid-1949 going into 1950. We had moved from a population of 130 million people since 1944 to 1949, we picked up approximately almost 150 million people in the United States. So the population rate was growing and many children were not able to be placed in foster homes because there were none out there. So you had to drop these children and you had to call them out of wedlock children and you had to put them somewhere. You see, we didn’t have shelter systems in the early 1950’s. You had the Bowery in New York City which was, you know, which was the only system, but they could only hold so many people and that was it and they couldn’t take children and we’re talking about minors – minors, babies. So the system raped the children by putting them into State institutions all across America because that was the only place they had for these kids.
Q. Do you think that if the system could have placed you somewhere other than Rockland that you would never had been given the diagnosis or never been part of the mental health system?
A. That would depend on where you were placed. That would depend on the person if they were accepting welfare or if they had to report back every six months how you were doing. If they were looking for a diagnosis of how you were doing, that would depend on what type of family would have took you in or adopted you. And in those days, ninety percent of the cases that were adopted were basically going with people that were going to receive public assistance. Very few rich people would adopt kids.
Q. Do you think that if there was a place where your welfare was truly being look after, that if you were placed with that, that you would never have been involved in the mental health system?
A. Oh, definitely. Definitely. If I was placed in a family – no, I never would have been – I don’t think to this very day, I would ever had needed any kind of psychological or psychiatric treatment. Many of these kids are basically in fear. It has nothing to do with mental illness. It’s total fear. What does a child do? How does a child react at eight, nine and five when they’re scared half to death? The same way anyone else’s children does act out here. When there’s a scenario of fear, there’s no telling how you’re going to act. Fear is a very powerful, psychological thing. It is total control of life ninety percent. That is the whole human structure. How do you act it out when you’re four and five? Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 27
Q. Like a four or five year old kid.
A. Right. So where do you get a diagnosis of schizophrenia when you’re acting out any normal thing? It’s just that you have no mother and father raising you up. What makes you mentally incompetent and schizophrenic and psychologically unbalanced because two fucking people fucked and had you and can’t raise you? Explain that? What makes you mentally imbalanced because two people can’t raise you up?
Q. Nothing.
A. Okay. And ninety percent of those children who went to those institutions were born out of wedlock.
Q. Is there anything else that we haven’t covered? I know there’s probably a lot we haven’t covered, but if there’s anything that sticks out in your mind that we haven’t covered in this interview that you –
A. Well, the Cannonball incident was one of the – You didn’t come back on a comment about that.
Q. Well, it’s not my job to comment.
A. Well, you should have come back because I was being bullied on constantly. I was the one kid who had less guts than any other kid in the place and for me to have the guts to come back and fight a two hundred and fifty pound boy back when all the rest of them didn’t and I had less guts than any of them, you should have came back for comment.
Q. Was that the first time you had ever defended your rights?
A. I was defending what belonged to me because I wasn’t getting any visits. I didn’t have anybody coming to bring me things like other kids did. Other kids had parents that would give them a portable radio – and you know I never, you know I never had no – you know, you got to talk – you have to put this into reality. I never ate a slice of fucking pizza in my life until 1971. I never had a McDonald’s hamburger until 1971 and rarely had Coca Cola. Is that stupid? Does that make sense?
Q. I think it’s tragic.
A. We never had pizza. We never had meatball wedges. We never had – I had French fries when I had hamburgers and cheese sandwiches – they didn’t sell pizza. They didn’t sell, you know, Italian food like I liked very Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 28
much because I was Italian. I am Italian. Um, ah – the thing that really bothers me so much about when you talk about all about these directors of the State institutions. The doctors that they gave the salary of one hundred and ten thousand dollars a year, and gave them a two hundred and fifty, three hundred, four hundred thousand dollar home on the hospital premises, and they lived on the State like kings, and if you spoke out of turn to one of them, you were up on the closed ward. You had to bow down and kiss these mother fucking asses and be scared half the fucking day, while they were raping the fucking system worst than Milken was working the stock market and you’ve heard of Milken.
Q. Michael Milken.
A. They. They were just raping and raping and raping and you had to kiss their ass like Eva Perone.
Q. They were essentially kings, weren’t they?
A. Yes, they were. Stanley had a fucking house that was a million dollars. Stanley got a salary of a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year. Do you know what a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year was in 1963? You know how much income that was in 1963?
Q. A king’s ransom.
A. They knew how to take care of themselves, the top dogs. It’s the same way with the son of a bitch in Albany, but Cuomo was all right. Mario was okay. He was good to us and I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Mario was very good to us. He was the best governor this state had since Rockefeller. Believe it or not as rich as he was and as rich as the conservative that he was, he was good to us.
Q. Do you think about –
A. You didn’t know that, did you?
Q. Well, we want to talk about you, Ralph.
A. All right. Let’s go.
Q. Do you think about your future?
A. There isn’t any future at fifty-two years old. There’s no future.
Q. Why do you say that? Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 29
A. Well, a future is when you’re, you’re like completing college, completing high school, you’re getting ready to drop into something. Unless you’re really going for something at fifty-two, there really isn’t any future. If I hit the lottery, I’d make my own future. Right now, I live a lot comfortable than some middle class people that work, but do you want to know something – take no sit downs for it. I’ve done a lot of suffering my life. I deserve a hundred times more than what I got. I don’t feel no guilt. I don’t give a fuck and Jim always says I deserve a hundred times more than what I got. Although I’m better off than a lot of people who work nine to five, I deserve more. I take no guilt and I take no passion about it. I have six rooms and I don’t care who rots in the street. I didn’t have one room – I only had one room for many years. I’m not the type of person who is going to refuse to help somebody, but I mean, if it’s someone in the system whose going to make me drop, feel guilty – no, that’s what I mean. So, it’s two different angles that you look at that. I am a caring individual. I will help another person. I do care about other people. But if it’s somebody whose systematically in the system, fuck them I don’t care. And don’t you think that makes good sense?
Q. I do.
A. The best things in my life came later in my life.
Q. What are some of those things?
A. People. I never believed in people. What’s your first name?
Q. Steve.
A. Steve, I never believed in people. The best thing that came into my life were people. People that were not family, but they showed you they could be family – that was Dr. Carol Headman. That was Jim Rye. That was Gary Younger. That was Diane Caruso when she told me about the apartment. Pastor Usher, a black man in Mount Vernon who came to the jail almost every two weeks and brought money up there when I needed it. Patrick Case who now lives up in Hudson Valley now – far away. People who can take you for who you are and accept you for who you are and not push you away. Because I am very easily – I will push people away right away. I don’t really allow myself to get too pushed in with people. I feel that you have to be able to trust somebody in this life or you don’t get no where. See, I used to do an awful lot of fighting. I used to do an awful lot of pushing, but now there’s no reason for me to push, but the problem that I’m pushing because somebody’s playing the stool pigeon game and I don’t like it. Denise Malloy came on the scene a couple of years ago. Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 30
She got a job working for MAHA for Dr. Headman, my best friend, and now Carol wants to know everything I’m doing. But you see the psychological point here is, no one’s putting a gun to Denise’s head and no one’s threatening Denise’s job. So, Denise really don’t have to open up her little bitchy mouth all the time. Carol’s ears are open, right? So, don’t turn around and tell me that it’s your job because if you were told to do that to one of your fucking colleagues, you wouldn’t do it, right? Why do it to me?
Q. And that’s –
A. That’s a problem I have to deal with on a weekly basis cause she comes to my house every Monday and I have to deal with her and I told her straight up last week and I really don’t like her and I don’t like her in my place. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it because she works for Carol and that’s it. She comes in – starting this week, I got nothing to say to her. That’s it, because I don’t like stupid. See, I was born in a, in a, in a way of life where you didn’t fucking squeal on anybody. You didn’t squeal on anybody. You didn’t stool pigeon and those kind of people, I don’t care whether they’re frail, fat, skinny or whatever, I don’t like them. I came up in a world if you squealed, you fucking died or almost got killed and this bitch is up in Carol Headman’s ears every fucking time and it makes me sick. And the worst thing about it is she helped me a lot in many ways. She did things to help me on her own in many ways, and it’s unforgivable what she’s doing – with all the help she’s given. It’s unforgivable. How would you feel about that? Wouldn’t that be unforgivable in your opinion?
Q. I would wonder why it was going on. I mean, if Carol wanted to know anything about you, why wouldn’t she just come to you directly?
A. Well, we’re having lunch on May 2nd. She’s my best friend. We have lunch every month and I’m asking myself why does she really want to know so much.
Q. I hate to cut us off here, Ralph, but I’m going to have to end the interview, but I’d like to thank you for your time and –
A. Tell me something which is very important. Now you said you went to a bar and you took all your clothes off. Why did you do that?
Q. I think it was a part of me that needed to be free – the real me needed to be free. I was twenty-one years old and as a form of liberation, removing all your clothes is very liberating because it defies convention.
A. And how old are you now? Ralph Tremonte April 26, 2001 Page: 31
Q. I’m thirty-three.
A. Were you thin like this or more heavier?
Q. I was about this thin.
A. So, you weren’t actually doing that good?
Q. Not that day, no – all the way up to that point. A lot of it was denial of being gay. It took me a long time to deal with it.
A. Most gay people don’t do good unless they have somebody. You can’t live alone.
Q. Yeah, that’s true and it’s a lot harder to do it alone, but for the most part, that’s what I did.
A. But you have to have a partner. You can’t masturbate for ever and fantasize. Nobody could do that, right?
Q. No, no, it’s good to have somebody. Thanks Ralph.
A. You’re welcome.