The Bridge

It was sort of a weird day.

The wind was lightish, and I was just kiting there.

I cut over to the south tower and some stuff fell,

so I cut back the other way,

and I just saw a mass falling towards my kite

and I thought it was the same thing.

So I turned the kite back, and then I looked over,

and before they hit, I realized it was a person that had jumped.

So then I cut over just to see, or maybe possibly help.

The current just sucked him under, and I stayed in the tide

because I knew that the Coast Guard would come.

That's when it became more of a surreal experience to me

because I've seen the Coast Guard boat a million times,

and they've helped us out and rescued us when we have problems,

but they're all wearing the white hazmat suits,

and that's when I realized that there was definitely a person and...

I never knew the real scale of the problem.

I don't know, the whole thing is crazy to me.

I mean, I just don't even understand it really.

When I was riding back after that time,

I was thinking about how that person was

at the lowest of the low of their life, obviously.

And how the whole day all I could think about,

"It's going to be a good day to go out and kite

and pack my passion sport."

And here, at the same time, you know,

I am reaching, you know, for what I love to do.

And this person is ending their life.

So that was unreal.

Yeah, exactly. Kiting is, to me, a real celebration of life.

It's exhilarating. It's thrilling.

It's just awesome.

So, it's a real juxtaposition

of celebration of life and ending of life.

It was one of those epic days in San Francisco,

driving across the Golden Gate Bridge.

It was crystal clear, the bay was calm,

there were tourists walking across the bridge.

And usually on those types of days I always soak in the beauty of the bay

and look over to Alcatraz.

And on that particular day, I looked over.

I was probably a little bit more than mid span

when I saw this gentleman on the railings.

And, at first glance, I thought,

"Wow, this guy looks like he's going to bungee jump."

Because of the way that he was standing on the railing,

and then common sense kicked in and said, "You can't."

My thoughts were,

"You couldn't jump off the bridge. Bungee jump off the bridge."

And then he just kind of held his arms out and disappeared.

And I wasn't sure if I was imagining this.

And so I drove for a few seconds and looked in my rearview mirror.

And my heart rate went up,

and I almost felt like I wanted to start crying

because I thought to myself, "Wow, I might be one of the last people

that have ever seen this person alive."

When I went into the tower,

and I talked to the highway patrolman,

I asked him, blatantly, I said,

"Is this a rare occurrence or does this happen often?"

And he looked at me and kind of smiled and just said,

"It happens all the time."

It's hard to define Gene as a person.

He was...

...just not of this world, I think, is really the truth of it.

Not of this world, as we know it.

His mother was a woman who said, "Oh, I never want children."

And then...

...a few years later, she found herself pregnant...

...and decided...

...to have the child rather than leave the country for an alternative.

And she was looking forward to it.

And so came my friend Gene,

who was always referred to as my little brother, Thump.

He was born an old man.

And all their lives, it was just the two of them, pretty much.

People came and went in their lives, as in relationships of various sorts.

But it was mostly just always the two of them,

dependent on each other for...

...that stability that...

...one thinks of as,

"Tomorrow is coming, and we will do this and we will do that."

Growing up with Lisa in Marin,

she was just, like, completely normal until she was, like, 14.

I'm 4 years older, and I moved away. I lived in Alaska.

And my mom would write me and say,

"Hey, Lisa's acting strange and doing these things."

And I kept telling her it was typical teenage stuff,

and I came back 10 months later, and there was a big change.

Our upbringing was...

...was fabulous, I would say, until my father suddenly died when I was 14.

Well, that was a shock. That threw all three of us...

But didn't make Jeff and I mentally ill,

but Lisa had a different personality.

She wasn't as outgoing as my brother or I.

- And she was just... - She was more angelic.

We went through all the counselors

and finally got her to go to a psychiatrist.

And he said,

"Lisa is a paranoid schizophrenic, and she will never recover."

That was a terrible thing to tell a mother.

He says, "You have to take her right now

to the Crisis Center at Marin General."

She immediately, when we got there,

got on the pay phone and started calling her friends

and telling them how terrible I was to bring her to this place.

Well, they brought her into the Crisis Unit, and, you know,

for all the bad things she did when she was home,

she straightened up, acted as if she was perfectly normal.

And they discharged her.

We went through that several times.

She had her own style.

She liked to wear headbands. She liked to wear black.

Black leather headbands with rhinestones.

- And matching gloves with no fingers. - And she always wore bicycle gloves.

No, Harley Rider gloves.

- You know, leather. - Leather.

- Leather gloves, yes. - She was a leather queen.

I met Gene at a comic-book convention

in Oakland.

We just hit it off immediately.

By looking at us, you wouldn't think

that we would become such tight friends, but we did.

You know, he looked like the cool rocker type.

You know, long hair, you know, everything about him is,

you know, just cool, and the ladies like it and...

And I was Mr. Hip-Hop. Other side of the spectrum and stuff.

Everything was black.

His clothes were black. His hair was black.

The curtains were black. The walls were black.

The sheets were black.

He just wanted...

It's as though he wanted no contrasts.

He mostly just wanted to be in his room with his computer.

Me and Gene had long talks

about love and where he's trying to find it.

And I told him he's not going to find it on the Internet.

A lot of times he didn't want to hear it.

He just wanted what he saw.

He would send me pictures of these girls, and I'm like...

"Dude, what are you doing?" You know?

That's not...

That ain't it, you know.

I'm like, "Take time, get to know this person.

You don't know this person from nothing.

Just because you read a bio about this person,

and this person wants to turn around and have sex with you,

that's not love, you know.

I noticed early on...

...that Lisa was very interested in romance.

And I saw her go through some very painful rejections.

She met a guy, this was just before Christmas.

She took off with him on a bus.

She was gone for a week. We had no idea where she was.

She was off her medication, and I was wrapping gifts.

All of a sudden, I looked up, and there was Lisa outside

just really in a bad state.

She thought our dogs were devils.

And she broke a clock because she thought it was a time bomb.

I had to have the police come out.

But before they would admit her,

she had to have a court order to get in,

because she'd been in and out of the Crisis so many times.

Being a schizophrenic is like watching TV

and having 44 channels on at the same time.

And that's her environment 24-7.

You know, there's just little noises here, something there.

And I'm trying to talk here,

but that's distracting me, that's distracting me,

and it's all equal.

That would freak anybody out.

She graduated from house to house

to a home where there was constant care.

And finally to independent living

for about 15 years.

- That place was great. - And she had her own room.

She had a very nice situation there. She liked it there.

But one of her roommates there, right, jumped off the bridge, too?

- Well, no. This was a friend. - A friend.

- A friend of hers. - Two years ago?

- No, it was longer than that. - Longer than that.

Much longer.

As far as pills and other forms of suicide,

I haven't personally experienced that in my houses.

It's like, the last three people, I think,

who I was kind of close to in Buckaloo were all bridge jumpers.

After she settled in Marin...

- She did well there. ... she was pretty stable.

Then all of a sudden, this past year,

she just felt she needed more support for some reason.

Do you think that was the medication change?

No, I think it was because she was ill.

Oh, because she wasn't feeling good.

Her teeth were just so rotted, and they felt it was from medication,

and from drinking a lot of Coke.

So she had to have all her teeth removed.

So she looked kind of funny walking around with no teeth.

That was a problem, too.

Just from then on downhill.

The Golden Gate Bridge was designed by Joseph Strauss.