232: What if you committed a hate crime?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. The feeling of unknowing while you're going through that is probably the strongest, most terrifying feeling I've ever felt. I don't know, it's just like a blackness, like a hole inside of you. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening.

Episode 232. What if you committed a hate crime?

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I was born in Jonesboro, Georgia, 1984. Grew up in a house in the woods, probably about an hour south of Atlanta.

And I kind of had an idyllic southern nature based upbringing, very stable home, loving parents. I have two wonderful siblings, an older brother and a younger sister. And, you know, a lot of my early days were spent stomping through the woods with our dogs and, you know, army backpacks, you know, kind of going on adventures.

My mom is a wonderful librarian, retired, an English teacher. And my dad is an efficiency guy for a big corporation, which I guess made him very popular at work. He would basically time people to do tasks, which they probably hated. And I, for years, didn't know what he did. I think I even went to one of those take your kid to work days. And I left not really being sure what his job was.

I remember we went to Alaska and I took photos of this glacier had basically tore up the whole landscape. And there was a giant rock on one side of the frame and kind of like this little icy river meandering through the left side.

and my dad took it to work and put it up in his office. And he said that someone came by and saw that picture and it was a, you know, hobby photographer and said, that's a really good picture. There's a great composition there with the rock and the river. And I think that was my first experience with photography. That kind of started me on a path of pursuing cameras and capturing images and trying to make exquisite things that reflect life.

But then probably around 12 or 13, I got into middle school and I discovered a joy and a love for music. And I played the tuba, which is pretty hilarious. Jazz band, marching band, solo ensemble. I was in the symphony. And I call myself like the only high school tuba player in Georgia to care.

I was nice, courteous, mild-mannered, yes ma'am, no ma'am. But I think even at a young age, I liked to kind of cause mischief. I was kind of a smartass, for lack of a better word.

I even remember in second grade being taught in Sunday school about David and Goliath. And I would raise my hand and say, "Where are the giants now?" And turns out they didn't like that. And I was very skeptical and just kind of a smart ass. And then I told my mom in the second grade, I didn't want to go to church anymore. And bless her heart, she said, "Good, because you're a behavior problem."

But my parents were great. I got along really well with my mom. My dad definitely had less patience for my tomfoolery, kind of a law and order guy. I do have an early memory of him. He was waking me up one morning and he had his cologne on and his suit and everything. And I was probably in like the fourth grade. And I said, I don't want to go to school. I hate school.

And I'll never forget this. He looked at me and he said, you think I want to go to my job? I hate my job, but I go to feed you guys. And I just remember being floored by that and thinking, wow, I don't ever want to say that to my kids. But I am very thankful the sacrifices they made. I would have other friends that had divorced parents or parents that were drunks, you know, and so I always felt like I've got it good, even if we don't see eye to eye, like our family life's great.

Grew up loving movies. I remember at about age 15, I think my brother probably showed me Taxi Driver and 12 Monkeys within the same week. And those movies just floored me. And I remember just like after watching them staring out the back sliding door into the woods and just being like, what the heck was that? Like I'd never seen movies like that and heard people speak the way they spoke.

And I think led me to have this singular focus where like, this is probably my purpose. I'd always carried a little disposable camera around in high school. I actually got some notoriety from it in my area by going to fights and like documenting people fighting or crazy events or just ridiculous things. I kind of photographed everything. I even put one of the photos on a t-shirt of two girls fighting from the basketball squad.

I wore it to school and it basically caused, for lack of a better word, a riot in the school because people were just swarming me to see it. I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but this is pre-social media and everyone knew about the fight on Friday. So come Monday, everyone wanted to see it. I was like, there's something very powerful about this. Like if I can get this whole cafeteria jumping because of a shirt with a photo on it that I took, like what else can you do with this?

And then I visited my brother at art school in Savannah, Georgia. And I was just amazed and enamored that his roommates were shooting their thesis film. Just like, wow, this is a whole world I never knew that existed. That's what I want to do. And got accepted to an art school in Savannah. Where I'm from is kind of a very specific, interesting place. And I'm thankful I'm from there. The south side of Atlanta. So it was mostly black people.

but I really enjoyed it. And I got to meet so many incredible people. I remember when I went to band camp, I heard Nirvana blasting from this room. And I walked into the room, two black dudes in there reading Wolverine comics, listening to Nirvana. And I was like, who are you guys? I want to be friends with you. And I'm still friends with them to this day. And like,

I knew white guys that went bow hunting and listened to Three Six Mafia and black guys that loved the Beatles. And, you know, so it was a very dynamic, interesting environment to grow up in. So when I went to college, it was kind of a shock. I'm like, wow, I'm meeting straight up white people for the first time. Like, I think it was more just they weren't exposed to other people, you know, and they weren't exposed to black culture.

I remember I used to never dance at things in high school just because like why embarrass myself? And I went to college and I remember dancing at a party and this girl comes up to me. She's like, you're the best dancer I've ever seen. And I'm like, no, I'm not. What are you talking about? But it was all very fun. And I got to meet a lot of different people I never met.

And going to art school is very cool because I'm messing with a Bolex camera that shoots film and we're collaborating with people from all over the world. And I really enjoyed it. I had a really close group of friends.

My roommate, the first day I met him, he's like, "Oh, I brought these shot glasses." And I'm like, "I brought this Cavasier, let's drink it." And then he taught me how to use Photoshop. And we had a clandestine fake ID making company out of our dorm room where we would take their photo in front of a blue backdrop, composite them into a fake ID. We had a laminating machine.

And so we would finance our drinking with making fake IDs for people. And we'd have like a line outside the dorm room doing this. So then it's like, well, we got this money easy. Let's just go get wasted and spend it out at the bars, which is what we did. I remember looking over once and this guy in my dorm room was eating ramen noodles out of a Frisbee with a screwdriver. And I was like, that is the stupidest, most college thing I've ever seen in my life.

We would go to class and make our projects, but we would also go out and drink heavily. I remember like falling asleep on the floor of a bathroom somewhere, tearing things up on the street. Some guy didn't let us into a bar because of our fake IDs and I kicked his motorcycle over. Not proud of that, obviously, but there kind of was an element of darkness, I feel like, to us and our little group.

you're kind of pushing that boundary of like what is reasonable until it breaks and trying to like not lose yourself. And, you know, peer pressure is a real son of a bitch. So I feel like once people kind of knew me as that, I kind of had to keep up that image. And then, you know, people want to hang out with you, but then it's like, well, you got to do something crazy, you know, because that's what they're here for.

I think I was working towards my goals in my classes, making a short film in one of them. I had a girlfriend. She was a wonderful person. I was in a women's literature class, which was really cool. But on the side, doing this kind of crazy, self-destructive type partying, I remember, I believe it was a Friday night.

We were in some dinky underground bar and it was bottomless drink night, which is just a terrible idea. And the only thing stopping you from getting a bottomless drink that they would just fill up again was some goofy plastic cup. Well, we just dig them out of the trash can after people had left them, wash them off in the bathroom or maybe didn't and brought them to the bar. And we were just drinking them back to back.

And then we kind of came out of this bar, walk up the steps and then across the main street. And one of our crazier friends from the dorms is laid out on the ground and he's getting what you could call the ground and pound from some guy who's sitting on him and just pummeling him in the face while he's on the ground. And we all kind of run over, you know, mind you, we're art school students. We're nerds as well. We don't want any trouble. We just kind of tell the guy, get off him. What is going on? You know, leave him alone.

We kind of separate them. I don't even remember what the other guy looked like who was punching him. We pull him up. As we're separating them, somewhere emerges a girlfriend of one of the guys. And she is actually physically assaulting us as we're leaving. She's trying to fight us. She's very heated up. I do recall calling her a bitch. I said, you're being a bitch. Fuck off. Leave us alone. She kind of disappears. And then we start walking back to the dorms.

Then behind us, I notice a kind of crowd is kind of following us through the square. They're getting closer and I realize it's like some of the people from the scuffle earlier. And so I figure, let's just neutralize this. I turn around and one of the guys is saying to this other guy, he says, you got it on you.

And he goes, yeah, I got it on me. And as they're walking closer, now they're like 20 feet, 10 feet. He's like, you got it on you? He says, yeah, I got it on me. Then the guy says, you're going to use it? And he goes, hell yeah, I'm going to use it. I see his hand is under his shirt covered. So I immediately think he's got a gun.

And I grew up around firearms and shot, many of them being from Georgia. So I think, what should I do? Assume the most non-threatening pose possible. I put my hands up and I'm saying something like, we don't want any... As he pulls his hand out from under his shirt and punches me in the face, everything went black. I basically lost vision. Like I don't remember seeing anything after that. I heard screaming, running,

More screaming. I heard tires screeching. I heard my roommate saying, "That way, that way, it went that way." People yelling, feet running on the pavement, on the cobblestones. And I did hear sirens. I remember sirens and I remember that kind of classic car slamming on the brakes sound.

My roommate who was with me later said he couldn't even recognize me because I had so much blood on my face. And it sounds really painful, but I don't, I think that was definitely like that shock kicked in, that adrenaline kicked in. And I really just had like hyper-focused hearing abilities, almost like a Spider-Man or something. The sounds are very vivid. It was shocking. It happened so fast and I didn't even really have time to realize what was happening.

I didn't have any time to process what he had pulled out, but I found out later he punched me with brass knuckles. Eventually, I did get into an ambulance. I don't remember coming out of the ambulance, but I remember them pushing me into the ICU feet first. And that kind of classic movie visual of like, boom, the door's opening is like kind of when I start remembering things.

I'm assuming they gave me morphine or something because I was like on cloud nine when they pushed me in there. I was giving thumbs up to everybody, but being in ICU was very troubling to say the least. That was really scary because I was there all night for maybe a couple days. And this is where it gets hard to talk about. You're not in like your own room. I don't know what other hospitals are like, but this is like an open floor room.

And you can hear everything. This whole thing was like a nightmare of sounds. So like I'm in there and whatever drugs are wearing off, people are coming to maybe check on my signs and stuff. They were really concerned that my brain was swelling. So they were giving me drugs for that.

But all the time that was happening, I could hear this terrifying sounds of them working on other people who some of them definitely died while I was in there. And it's a sound I'll never shake because it's like total chaos with the doctors and the nurses are like, give me this, give me this, turn this on, you know, and it's very, you could tell it's almost like another language. And then when they lose the person,

It just goes silent. And they have like a moment where they are like thinking about this person. You could tell it's like, it's not like a prayer, but it's like, it's just like they tried their best, you know? And that person got away and they don't say anything. They're just silent. And then you can just kind of hear them kind of like wrapping up their stuff and their tools and things.

And they leave that person in there and someone comes and collects them, you know. I was in there for three or four days hearing that like non-stop all around me. It was the scariest thing because I'm like, is that going to be me? And I've always been an emotional person. Like I feel things, you know, really strongly. Like when I'm happy, I'm like super happy. And when I'm, you know, something bad happens, like I feel it in my soul.

That was just pure insanity and just the feelings of just wanting to scream, but I couldn't. I didn't want to distract the doctors working on someone else. Like I remember wanting to like shove my hand in my mouth. I've noticed this weird thing I have where in movies I cry when, not when sad things happen, but like when characters work together.

I think something about these selfless people hearing these doctors like trying to save someone's life, you know, and they do that every day. Every day. It's so selfless. And it's like, I go to work and I make my silly videos and things. But these people are just like putting people's bodies back together all day. And they do it quietly, you know, so it just really gets me when I think about that.

the people that just did that, they don't even know me, you know, and they were helping me and like saving my life. And that's just so devastatingly amazing. Another really weird, scary moment was I call it like my Quasimodo moment where there's a scene in like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Yeah, I had there's some moment where he like looks in the mirror at his face

And I had that in the middle of the night. They were like, don't look at your face. But I kind of got out of bed and there was a metal paper towel dispenser, but it was like warped and distorted and like kind of fuzzy. The image reflected in it. And I remember just like trying to look at my face in this warped, you know, metal surface and

And my face is already warped and swollen. And that was very sad and just disturbing, thinking like, am I going to be disfigured? Like, what exactly has happened to me? It's just this sinking feeling of like, what's going to become of me? What's my life going to be like? You know, my hopes and dreams, are they dashed?

Am I gonna be the one to flatline over here next? Is my face gonna be forever destroyed? Like, will I ever go back to college? Like, will I be able to see? I didn't know. And that's just a really heavy feeling to try to make sense of. I mean, it just makes no sense. One day you're goofing around and drinking with your friends, and then the next day you're in this, like, tomb situation, you know?

deaths all around you and you don't know how you're going to come out. The feeling of unknowing while you're going through that is probably the strongest, most terrifying feeling I've ever felt. I don't know. It's just like a blackness, like a hole inside of you. People who've gone through similar things, they know that feeling, but people that haven't, I don't know if you can articulate it.

And that feeling is kind of like under the skin with Scarlett Johansson. She plays this alien that kind of lives in this murky, dark, liquid world. Those shots of her kind of descending into that is kind of what I felt like. You know, it's just, there's just a void. What is happening? What has happened? There's no other emotion than just like confusion. Because that's like kind of your first feeling as a human.

Like you're born and you're confused. And then if you get to live long enough, you probably get confused before you die. You're not used to peeking into that world when you're 19. You're not supposed to see that. When this sort of thing happens, it's like all that gets peeled away and you're just like a blob in space. A helpless little blob.

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My family did come immediately, but they're like four or five hours away. They got there like later the next day in the afternoon. But even then, like they can't stay with you through the night. My heart goes out to them for what they had to go through and getting that call from my roommate, telling them what happened and just not knowing and being so terrified. And I got out of there a couple of days later.

I thought, you know, my face is healing up, feeling better. Some of my friends came and visited me. So I started to think, you know, this is going to be okay. Like I have a major black eye and my face is swollen, but I'll be okay. And all the while the doctors were like, okay, well, you're going to go into surgery in three days. Then I go into surgery and I didn't really realize how invasive it would have to be and shocking to my body.

They went in through my cheek and he pulled out all those bone fragments and he put in two titanium rods and like a titanium mesh. So my cheekbone is made out of a titanium mesh, kind of Terminator vibes. A day or two later, a nurse gave me a shot of something, but I think she gave me way too much of it. I've heard that some of the painkillers can create an itching feeling.

and the itching feeling went over my back and over my scalp and over my face and ended up taking over my whole body and was just like my skin felt like it was on fire and i remember like grabbing onto the chair and looking at the lady and just being like what did you do like now i'm like in this extreme excruciating pain basically when i came out of the surgery it was like i've been through a meat grinder or something

Then they put me in kind of this outpatient thing, which was like a little duplex apartment, like next to the hospital. In there, I got some crazy sinus infection and I was like sweating bullets every night, you know, shivering, shaking. I remember feeling very sad, maybe starting to feel angry. I was in an insane amount of pain.

And then, yeah, that sort of crippling, what's my life like now? You know, am I broken? Am I going to have joy? So it was weird. I think it was almost worse being in this like outpatient thing because I could start to actually think about stuff, which is sometimes scarier than the actual thing. And that's when the detectives started coming and talking to me.

They didn't think I was well enough to go do the lineup thing, but he had it printed out on paper, like eight photos of guys. I couldn't narrow it down past two of the guys on the sheet. And I told him that I said, look, it's either him or it's him. He was like, it was one of the guys you picked. And I think that was enough to identify him. Apparently the guy, after he punched me, he threw the brass knuckles into a bush and ran.

But they had arrested him, and I think they were charging him. And I found out, too, during that time that he was a student at the college, which was kind of mind-blowing. The college kind of took me over and put me up in, like, their fanciest bed and breakfast that they bring, like, you know, celebrities and dignitaries to. And I think there was definitely some, like, buttering me up of, like, you're not going to tell anyone about this, right? Or, you know, and I didn't want to because I didn't blame them.

While I was there, the guy that punched me had been bailed out. Back on the scene, two or three days later, he gets arrested again when he shoots a blow dart out of his apartment window and hits a cop across the street from his apartment.

And they rush the guy to the hospital to check on him. They come back with a warrant, I guess, and raid the guy's house. And he has all these stupid martial arts gadgets laying around, blowguns and ninja stars and swords and other brass knuckles and things. The one thing I didn't want to do was just like cower away and disappear. And, you know, I'm not one to like mope. So I said, let's go back to college. So I did.

My face still has stitches in it. And I remember going to the cafeteria and every head just turns and looks at you. There was an outpouring of help and support and people checking on me. But there's also an element of like kind of being this like black sheep. It seemed to be going well, but there's definitely an element I started discovering of an anger and a fear inside of me.

At first it was like shock and I felt glad that I was okay, glad I was going back to school. And once the kind of danger element subsided, it started to be replaced with anger. And that kind of turned into a rage. In Princess Mononoke, they shoot that boar thing with that bullet and it like festers inside of it and it turns it into a demon, you know?

And I started to feel like that. Like, I remember going to the post office or something and you're standing in line and you're just like, who's going to hit me in the head with a pipe while I'm not looking? And what can I preemptively grab and like stab them in the eye with? And those are the feelings I started to not only get, but like, I feel like they started to kind of take over.

Everywhere I went, I'm looking over my shoulder, analyzing threats and things. And like that anger would kind of manifest itself. And the slightest trigger, it will just engulf you. Like your body gets flushed, your hair stands on end. And you're just like, what is this thing trying to hurt me? And how can I completely neutralize it? How can I not only protect myself, but like obliterate any threat?

You know, it was almost like I want someone to jack my car so I can kill them was kind of like where that feeling started to go. I kind of teamed up with my old buds and how did we cope with this sort of thing? We were drinking again. I started to feel angry at the world. Pour booze on that feeling and it's like a recipe for disaster.

I started getting written up at school a lot by my RAs in the dorms. I remember one time, three weeks after I got out of the hospital, I was drunk on the roof of my dorm in my underwear, lighting fireworks off the roof. I was still going to classes. That's kind of like the Clark Kent Superman thing, you know, but I think the Superman was turning into like the bizarro version, like the bad Superman, you know, and I was still trying to keep this appearance of like, I've got my shit together, but I didn't.

And I kind of became a master at faking it. Yeah, I remember being out at the bars one night and there was some kind of air vent hanging on the side of this building that was like three stories tall. And I just took it upon myself to like rip it off and like watch it crash onto the ground. And like could have hit a person. It could have hit a car.

It was almost like I lacked any self-awareness. You know, it was kind of just like, I'm going to do whatever I want to do. And I wasn't thinking like, I'm really angry. It was just like, fuck this. I'm mad at the world because this happened to me. So I get to take it out on the world.

From the kind of moment I went to college, you meet a lot of interesting characters and you're all partying together and you're running around in these circles. And there were two girls who kind of were in the party circle together. So I'd see them out. They were both Korean. And I don't know if we had a rivalry, but it was like a healthy kind of banter. It felt like at the beginning. But I think it got a lot darker once I got out of the hospital and came back to college.

I don't know who started it, but people started calling them a racial slur, which developed in the Vietnam War, I guess. Horrible thing. People would refer to these two as that. They were kind of inseparable. They were roommates, I think. That stage was set before these things happened to me. But as I started lashing out and everything, maybe it became more pronounced because I was just angry and I wanted someone to be mad at.

We started going to this deserted island across the river in South Carolina, and it's by a paper mill. It smells bad, but we found it as like a little wooded area that we could go drink and have a bonfire and hang out. We wouldn't be at a bar. No one could tell us what to do. It was kind of like our party spot in the woods. Well, the two girls ended up finding out about it.

and they started going out there and having parties out there. When we kind of felt like we discovered it and we had some kind of bogus ownership over this like stinking pit out in the forest. I had been back in school maybe two or three weeks and we kind of, our little group got annoyed that they went out there and were having parties. So one day I woke up, you know,

still in a lot of pain, feeling these anxious rage feelings in public that I didn't know what they were at the time. I wake up, I'm getting food at the cafeteria and my friends who were kind of in our little crew pull up in their Jeep. And they're like, the blanks came out and fucked up our campsite. They had a party last night. Do you want to go clean it up? Hop in the Jeep, cross the river,

There's cans of beer and stuff there. We're cleaning it up. And then I realized someone has a can of spray paint in their Jeep. I take out the spray paint and I just spray paint no blanks on a tree. Didn't really think anything of it, but the two girls drive up as we're doing this. We see their car. We know it's their car. We didn't even talk to them. We got in our Jeep and drove away and left them at the site.

And they knew our car too, so they knew who we were. We immediately are like, oh shit, why did we do that? Bad timing, huh? Drive back to the dorms. On the way, we threw the spray paint away in some trash can. I go to my class. I come back to the dorms and the security team is like waiting for me.

The guy, he was like the head of security. You could tell he knew what he was doing. The first thing he said was, don't bullshit me. And I proceeded to bullshit him and tell him we didn't go out there and all this. And apparently he used that tactic where you tell them information that isn't true in order to get them to confess. So the guy was like, we found the spray paint can. And he's like, your fingerprints are on it. And I'm just like, oh man, well, they must've got me, you know? And so I told him what happened.

And their reaction was swift and severe, as it should be. We all got kicked out of school, all four of us that were out there doing that. And I went back home. I broke up with my girlfriend at the time. I remember sitting on a sidewalk in some parking lot talking to her. And she's just like, there's no way we can be together. I went back home, disgraced, crawled back into my childhood bed and cried myself to sleep.

These weren't even people that I disliked. They were in our same circle. And I was just extremely ignorant of the power of that word. I had no idea what I had done, really. And I just was embarrassed and sad. But I just really felt mad at the world. And I was like, let me do another stupid thing. Let's just keep pushing the limit. But I don't think I understood the gravity of what I had written and what I had said and how it would hurt people's feelings.

I really had time, you know, it was almost like being under house arrest to really, really, really consider what I had done and how I had just fucked up really bad. I just slowly started realizing, you know, it's kind of like those moments where you change from like a child to an adult. And this was finally the moment where I kind of woke up and realized what I had really been going through and I need to course correct.

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So then I'm like, okay, what do I need to do? I need to find a job. And I started looking around the town and there wasn't very much, but I had worked in like fast food restaurants in high school. So I was like, I can get a job in a restaurant. So I went around and applied to all these different restaurants. And one of them was a hibachi restaurant.

They hired me to be a kitchen helper. Complete, total Asian cast of employees. The owners were Asian. They were from Korea. Charlie was the manager who was probably in his 50s. But his dad, Mr. Lee, was an elderly man. And Mr. and Mrs. Lee owned the restaurant. I don't think there had ever been a white guy working in the kitchen. So I felt very lucky to have a job and that they had taken me in.

A month or two in, we're getting closer to the holidays at this point. One of the chefs gets fired and I was like, you can try to find a replacement or you could start training me to be like the backup chef. And sure enough, they did. They started me on this training program and I swear it was like the Karate Kid.

I would show up early for lunch. Mr. and Mrs. Lee would sit at the grill. I would be behind the grill and I would start the meal and I would try to get as far through it as I could. And whenever I messed something up, he would put his napkin on his plate and he would be like, that's it. And I think it took me a week or two just to get through the rice.

I would cook it, put it on his plate. Him and his wife would eat it. He would say, it's too salty. And he would get up and leave. So I'd say, okay, less salt, less soy sauce. Got to work on that, you know? And over the weeks, I worked up to where I got to cook the steak and the chicken. And then finally the lobster and, you know, make the volcano. And then I had to audition my show. And I've been practicing with the chefs in the back and they helped me. And so eventually, I think before Christmas, I became the backup hibachi chef there.

Some people will be very skeptical. And I knew that because if you go to a hibachi chef and the white dude messes up your food, they're definitely going to complain. You know, that's probably like you've got to shape up or you're out.

And so I realized thinking about immigrants in America, they probably feel the same way. Like they have to do the job better. They have to work harder. My food's got to taste better. I've got to be funnier. I have to have a cooler show. And like every time someone tried to stump me or said something that I didn't have a joke for, then I would sit on it and I'd say, ah, it got me. Okay. I'm going to go back in the kitchen. And when I take a shower tonight, I'm going to think of the perfect response.

I kind of built up this rapport of being, you know, the funny guy. And I think people like that. It became like kind of a novelty there. And all the while I'm working there, I don't know when my college is going to let me back. So I kind of screwed myself over at this first Sibachi restaurant. I told them that I was going back and then I found out I wasn't, but they had hired a replacement. So then I transferred to a different restaurant that was way more stringent

I thought I knew how to do it and they broke me down. Like this one guy was from Vietnam and they're just like the coolest dudes. They got the holsters with like knives in them and these leather belts and the apron and they're kind of sauntering around. And the one guy broke me down. He literally told me at the new place, he's like, you think, you know, you don't know anything. He's like, you want to learn? I'll teach you. If not, fuck off. Okay. This is like a bocce bootcamp. Let's do it. You know, what do I have to lose?

People started calling me the Caucasian Sensation and like little kids would come in and ask for me by name. I cooked for Big Boy from OutKast. That was pretty cool. It was just a whole different thing and it was exactly what I needed.

All the chefs and waiters lived in a house together. So I would go over there and watch movies with them or at the restaurant. We'd smoke these cigarettes and sit on these like five gallon soy sauce buckets. And they would ask me about American culture. And I'd ask them about their country and what it's like. And I could just like learn from them and see the beauty of these people and think about what I had done and just feel so humbled that they were able to like take me in.

The whole company would sit together and eat dinner before the restaurant opened. And each chef cooked dinner for the whole company once a week. So there were seven of us. So we rotated. Eventually, I'm cooking food for 20 or 30 people before we open. The boss is talking to people and seeing how things are going. And it was really like a family. I went to nightclubs with these guys. I held people's babies. I went to church with some of them.

It was like fully the opposite of the situation I had been in in college. To see these people and have them accept me unquestionably, considering what I had done, it was like so shocking and moving. I felt so disconnected from the world. And like, what's the best way to connect with people? Cooking food.

You know, you come out, you slice up the meat, you do a show, you're making people laugh, you're watching them eat and they're smiling, they're having fun. And it was like the perfect therapy. And it gave me something to be proud of. It was so different from how I was coping with this originally, which was like lashing out, doing destructive behaviors, drinking, kind of like letting that rage flare up in like an explosion. But

Through cooking and working at these hibachi restaurants, I was able to take that kind of frantic energy, you know, where you're pent up, you know, but like now I'm literally playing with fire. I'm flinging knives around and that's kind of dangerous, you know, but it appealed to me because of that danger, you know, and I was able to harness that, but like in a positive way.

During my time as a chef, I mean, I didn't even think I had PTSD for years until I finally went to therapy. I do think it subsided. I was in a much safer environment. You know, I go to work. I didn't have any friends really other than the chefs and I go home. And so there was no option to be in these like dark and creepy kind of places that I used to find myself in and in Savannah. And I think that's when I really started healing.

I was the Caucasian sensation for a little over a year. Finally, they said, you know what? You can come back now. So I went back. The three other people I got suspended with not only didn't go back to that college, they didn't go back to any college. And so I just said, all right, I'm going to do this right. I'm going to roll up my sleeves. And I became like the perfect student. I think I had a 3.8 GPA and I just worked incredibly hard on every project.

I was like a caged lion that was just like ready to explode and do something good for once, you know, and make up for what I had done. And I ended up making a short film for my senior thesis that kind of in a roundabout way dealt with all this. I made it without any dialogue because I wanted it to be understood to anybody.

Well, sure enough, the college liked it and I won some artistic achievement award. And then I got it into like 20 film festivals around the world. I got to go to some of them to watch it screen.

Graduated with honors and I felt like I kind of put all that stuff behind me and I had changed my life and moved to Los Angeles in 2009 to follow my film career, my passion. Kind of hot on the heels of this film, going to film festivals. And then I started working in Los Angeles in the film industry and having a blast, but also kind of workaholicking myself to not really deal with things.

Part of PTSD is like you want to distract yourself from it. And that can be very therapeutic. It can also keep you from actually dealing with it, which is kind of the pattern I went into for the next six or seven years after this happened. I was just kind of like, let me work so much that I don't think about this or really proactively doing something and getting help for it.

Eventually, I dated several different ladies and they all independently over time said, I don't feel like I know you. You don't show who you really are or like you're never fully open. I think it was a defense mechanism. If you never let someone get close to you, they can't stab you in the back.

You won't be sad when they leave if you never really connected with them. So it was just like a way of kind of like walking through life, like, I don't know, as a ghost, you know, where nothing touches you. And that was my way. And I was like, it's my little secret and it's my way of dealing with everything. And I'll be funny, you know, and wacky and everyone will like it. But like deep down, I don't want you to really know me.

I don't want you to get close to me because you could hurt me. I had a friend recommend a therapist and I went. The PTSD was identified. I learned how to not only deal with it, but talk about it.

She gave me these real tools. It wasn't just like, tell me about your childhood. It was like, you feel this flaring up at this moment, try this. And one of them was like laying in a bed and like tensing up your feet and releasing and tensing up your knees and releasing and doing that through your whole body every night. So that when you feel yourself tense up, like you go into that hypervigilant state, your body is already used to like relaxing. That was huge. Even to just identify that I had a real problem.

There are times when it gets the best of me and I kind of go into like a spiral of anxiety about things or something sets me off or I ruminate on something too much. But at least now I have kind of the tools to adjust accordingly and know that I don't have to be like this all the time. This is a moment I can get through this. It's a scary feeling, feeling vulnerable. You know, it's one of the scariest. It's kind of like that black void.

But if you want to heal, you have to become comfortable with it. You have to be vulnerable. You have to reach out to people, let them know so that you're not just carrying this thing around. You think it's helping you by not telling people, but it's actually hurting you. If you can push through that vulnerability, it does become very freeing. I was assaulted. That's hard to say.

Even if you try not to be, I think there's some kind of macho-ness in every man, you know? And so even just like, "I got beat the fuck up." That's hard to say, but then it's equally hard to say, "I committed a hate crime." I'm definitely more embarrassed about the hate crime, but it's kind of this dynamic of like, how did they influence each other, you know? Like, what I spray painted on that tree didn't happen in a vacuum.

Yoda, the greatest movie quote entity of all time, you know, hate begets hate, violence begets violence. And I had this burden of being humiliated and I've got to get that burden off of me by any means necessary. And I don't have the tools to do it in a positive way. Let me just write something hateful on this tree. All hate starts as self-hate. That is the world's worst problem.

I feel really whole now, you know, which is a good place to be where something bad happened to me, but I also did something bad and they both influenced me every day and they kind of drive who I am. And no one is broken, you know, you can do something incredibly stupid and not be defined by it the rest of your life. Does that person need to be known for the worst 20 minutes of their life, their entire life? Is that what defines them?

I try to think of that every day and see both sides to every story, you know, and even the guy that punched me, I'm like, he was obviously going through some shit too. And I hope he's got a wonderful life and learn how to grow and change as well. And it's just like holding that stuff in. It's not going to help anybody.

People don't like complex answers. They want the simple, boom, lock, key, throw away, done. But it's like the harder part is to try to transcend that. Not try to delete what happened, but learn and forgive. Utilize it and understand that it's a part of you and it actually can make you stronger and it can make you better. It can influence you and your craft or your passion. I bought this Mustang from the 80s, a convertible, like six years ago, right around the time I was having this like awakening phase.

I feel like working on that car is a really great therapy for me because no one can bother me. It's only me and what I want to do. And it's like me versus that bolt or screw that I'm trying to loosen. You kind of get into that flow state. There's no money involved. It's not a job. It's just like you and that beautiful thing that you can do and relax your mind. It's been very helpful for me.

Even though it happened 12 years ago, there's not a day that doesn't go by where I don't think about it and feel totally ashamed of what I did. You know, even though it happened in a matter of seconds, the waves that this created, I'm sure reverberated in their lives for years.

I think about what their family went through, who probably struggled with discrimination and then having to tell their mom and dad and grandma what happened to them at school. Yeah, it just feels awful to imagine that and looking at things that are happening in the news and saying, wow, I did that too. It's just, you know, it's a very dark and terrible feeling.

I've never spoke to the two girls about this since. I mean, they're grown women now. They have kids. I looked them up on Facebook when I started this process to be like, what are they up to? You know, and they seem happy and lovely people with wonderful lives. And if there is a silver lining to this, it's like I learned what these words can do. It's made me more keenly aware of what people go through, you know, who don't look like me.

I've been to that dark side and I have keen insight on how it can hurt people. So now I just try to live my life in the light and help and love people and we can't delete what we did. We can only try to improve and you can try to avoid mistakes and be smart about things but they're gonna happen. We're gonna falter. We're imperfect creatures and I think as long as you can not only

reconcile what you did and apologize and try to do better, but use that as an opportunity to like really push yourself. You can come out of it personally almost as a stronger being and like a better force for change.

Today's episode featured Matt Bowman. You can find out more about Matt on Instagram at Studio Bowman. That's Studio B-O-M-A-N. Or on his website, studiobowman.com. If you'd like to contact him directly, you can email him at mattatstudiobowman.com.

Thank you.

I'm your host, Witt Misseldein. Today's episode was co-produced by me and Jason Blaylock, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper. You can join the community on the This Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook, or follow us on Instagram at actuallyhappening.

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Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast, Against the Odds. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who live to tell the tale. In our next season, it's July 6th, 1988, and workers are settling into the night shift aboard Piper Alpha, the world's largest offshore oil rig.

Home to 226 men, the rig is stationed in the stormy North Sea off the coast of Scotland. At around 10 p.m., workers accidentally trigger a gas leak that leads to an explosion and a fire. As they wait to be rescued, the workers soon realize that Piper Alpha has transformed into a death trap. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.