Something about John

John Clear walked out of a jail two years ago, declared that he found religion and went home, to Point Pleasant, N.J., where he thought he could find a new life in an old place.

Maybe he could patch things up with his father, he thought, even though the two of them never really got along.

Maybe he could find old friends, the ones he left behind long ago, because the drugs got too big even for them.

Maybe he could find a job, and hold it for longer than a month this time. Maybe that brain power that was locked up long ago, the same smarts that made him the funniest guy I ever knew, could be put to good use for once.

John tried. But, like everything with John, it didn't last. Forty-two years old now, the funniest guy I ever knew can only sustain a life as a purse snatcher and drug addict.

At 42, the only thing that's long is his rap sheet. The only thing that's consistent is his drug use, usually heroin.

The only thing that's funny is that there were some of us who thought he could clean himself up this time, after trying many times. Now we play the fools.

You've heard this story before. Smart kid gets into drugs, and finds himself going through the revolving, recidivism door of jail.

For me, however, the old people from the old life never get old. I told his father the other day that no one inspired my sense of humor more than him. When I hear of this kind of thing, I feel like I could be looking at myself.

If I stuck with him, I could have followed the same path. I had a mother who was an alcoholic, too. I had a need to make others like me, too. I had a need to make others laugh. I got into trouble, too. I had the same issues of need, attention and gratification.

I asked his father if he was mentally ill. He paused for a few seconds. "He now says he's bipolar," his father said. "I don't know what to think."

Maybe we need to know that, I told him. Because that could explain everything.

Maybe I'm the fool, again, but maybe it could be the one thing that's needed to get him the right care.

Maybe it's the one thing that can turn him in the right direction, because his future looks far from the kind of life he knew growing up at the Jersey Shore.

Unless he gets a plea bargain, his life before he turns 60 will be concrete walls and bars, the same life that did little for him before, other than teach him how to become a 42-year-old man who snatches purses from people at children's stores.

John faces 10 to 15 years, possibly, in state prison. Last month, he grabbed a pocketbook from a baby carriage in the parking lot of Babies R Us on Route 36 in Eatontown, N.J., according to The Asbury Park Press.

As the woman put her child in her vehicle, John grabbed her pocketbook from her carriage. She began to struggle with him, and the handle of the purse broke. John escaped with the pocketbook, and left in a four-door Saturn, driven by his girlfriend.

By the time the woman managed to cancel her credit cards, John and his girlfriend - his father called her "the wheel" - had charged cartons of cigarettes and gift card purchases at Rite-Aids in nearby Neptune and Asbury Park, police said. Then they tried to buy the same items at a Walgreens in Neptune, but were denied.

The next day, in Wall Township, N.J., the girlfriend grabbed an 84-year-old woman's pocketbook from her shopping cart inside a Foodtown, police said. Some witnesses stopped her and managed to retrieve the victim's purse, but the girlfriend ran from the supermarket and got into a four-door Saturn driven by John.

Police said they sent out an alert to surrounding communities, and Bradley Beach police stopped the vehicle. After their arrest, police found the hold-up note. Now he's in jail, with bail set at more than $100,000.

This time, no one is rushing to get him out.

Two years ago, I got a call from John. We talked about how he wanted everything the way it was, sitting in my house, watching the Mets on T.V. , just like we did in seventh grade.

Or maybe we could watch the Mets at a bar, he said, and talk about running wild in music class, getting Miss Mason upset and getting tossed out in the middle of a square dance.

Two years ago, John was just out of jail, and he was on the phone, talking to me. He didn't want to get off. He wanted to stay on, his deep, husky voice bellowing through the speaker so much that I had to turn down the volume.

He wanted to meet face-to-face. But the more we talked, the more I realized: He needed more than talk. He needed something. He needed help.

He wanted his kids back. He wanted his ex-wife out of his life. The more he talked, the louder he got. By the time we signed off, I had the volume on the cell turned down to nothing.

This was John excited. maybe even manic. This was a man going through an extreme high, or at least acting like it, who had just lived a life of many downs and, apparently, was heading toward an even bigger fall.

This was a man with mental illness, I thought, because many people with mental illness just don't straighten out. Many people with mental illness lie to themselves, and to others. If they find a way to heal themselves, they realize they're never cured. They just find a way to manage.

And if they ever do find peace, they find it through honesty and truth, not deception, false hopes and lies.

But this was John, talking a good game, saying he wanted to straighten his life out. This was John, trying to get people to forget the state prison mugshot that's still on the Internet, a dark, fading picture that adds 15 years to his age.

John wanted me to write about his life, and everything that was wrong with it. He wanted me to write about it all. In the ensuing weeks, he sent me the letters he sent to the Ocean County Prosecutors Office, demanding a hearing that would address his desire to see his kids.

He didn't do this to himself, he said. He wanted me to blow the lid on the judicial system, and bring down all the people who, he believed, did this to him.

He wanted me to do it so badly that he tried to get others involved, getting one of them to send me a large envelope filled with documents that was a paper trail of the guy's criminal history.

"Let me see what I can do," I kept telling him, though I knew I couldn't do much.

I thought of things I could do. I thought of things I could write. Little came to mind, however. Work, school and family life always seemed to get in the way, of course.

But those excuses were easy. There was something else, something more that bothered me. It wasn't the drugs or his shattered family life. It was the jail or the mugshot.

What I wanted to tell him was, geez, John, I don't remember sitting down in my house, watching the Mets.

I don't remember John ever sitting down.

Whenever we did anything, it was usually a prank or something that 12 or 13-year-old kids shouldn't do in department stores.

It involved water balloons going "splat" against somebody's car windshield, with my hands covering my face in embarrassment. "Oh, no, we're going to get into trouble!" I'd say, and John would just laugh.

Back then, John didn't care. He didn't need to impress. He joked, and he joked often. But he didn't really lie.

Now the John Clear I know tells stories. He's in jail after telling his family and friends the same thing, over and over. I'm going to get it right, he'd say. I'm not going to do any more drugs.

He told another friend he had Hepatitis C. He had to be driven up to Asbury Park at 5 a.m. every day to get a shot.

The friend obliged, and this went on for weeks. But after a while, the friend caught on. Nobody gets shots at 5 a.m. for Hepatitis C. Nobody has to wait in the parking lot and wait for them to come out to get a shot.

"It was probably methadone," the friend said, the drug heroin users take as a cleaner substitute.

This was the same time as our phone conversation, when he told me he was done with drugs, that they were just some short, stupid phase of his life.

There's just something about John.

Bruce Springsteen — Nebraska lyrics

I saw her standin on her front lawn just twirlin her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died

From the town of lincoln nebraska with a sawed-off .410 on my lap
Through to the badlands of wyoming I killed everything in my path

I can't say that Im sorry for the things that we done
At least for a little while sir me and her we had us some fun

The jury brought in a guilty verdict and the judge he sentenced me to death
Midnight in a prison storeroom with leather straps across my chest

Sheriff when the man pulls that switch sir and snaps my poor neck back
You make sure my pretty baby is sittin right there on my lap

They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my sould
Be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world