“Computer geek.n. 1. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living. One who fulfills the dreariest negative stereotypes about hackers: an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater.” – Eric Raymond, The New Hacker’s Dictionary, third edition.
Friday was a day of heartbreak and shock and bewilderment for me, I was simply lost. Thursday night, Ben Fractenburg, a reporter for Dnainfo.com, a news site in New York City e-mailed me to say that a Jesse Daily had been arrested in Park Slope Brooklyn after a chase in which a police officer was injured and a bystander chased him down the street and took a photo of his ID. Jesse had been charged with molesting two young girls, 10 and 11 years old, and with groping an ll-year old in a separate incident. He was arranged Thursday evening on charges of stalking, assault, obstructing government administration, endangering the welfare of a child, forcible touching and sex abuse.
Ben asked if he could call me, and I said yes, I was a reporter, I know what it means to be on deadline with a powerful story. The one he told me sent me into shock and heartbreak.
I was stricken by this news, utterly bewildered. I told Ben Fractenberg it was unfathomable. At one time, I felt as close to Jesse as my own child, we were close in only the way and author and a subject who spent years together can be close. I sat at my computer for hours, I could not write a word, I had no philosophy for dealing with this, I felt as if I had fallen off a cliff and the bottom was nowhere in sight, I had no response for this, no way of comprehending it.
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In my other life, in the 90’s, I was a media critic sometimes writing for Wired and Rolling Stone Magazines and other publications about the rise of the Internet, when the Web as we know it now was not yet a mainstream thing, and so much of it was the province of what people had come to call the computer geek, a sometimes angry, rebellious and persecuted sub-culture, mostly male. The geeks were soon to rise out of the shadows, but back then, in the age of Columbine, they were in so many ways an outcast universe, they were feared, even despised. I loved writing about them, they fascinated me, they were soon to be one of the most important sub-cultures in our world, but not yet.
I got an e-mail one day from the poor and remote town of Caldwell, Idaho responding to my writings about the Columbine tragedy: “It makes no sense to try, or even to want, to fit into a place where you don’t belong..it’s not going to happen, and if it ever did, it’s not what you would want anyway..it’s a delusion. The trick is to take something that’s painful, and to make it so trivial that it’s inconsequential. Just walk away and make it trivial. My advice to geeks? If you don’t like it, leave, leave fast, make it trivial. Come to terms with who you are.” It was the first of a number of exchanges that told me the sender was a gifted writer and very smart human being.
The e-mail was from Jesse Dailey, a self-described gaming and computer geek living in a ratty apartment, working on computers, yearning for a different and better life. Jesse’s life had been hard, he grew up poor, he remembered climbing into supermarket trash bins looking for food, and, like so many people who called themselves “geek,” he lived outside the tent. He had a lot of brains, but few social skills. He built his own computer when he was a child, he spent hours lost in mind-bending online games, navigating school and the world seemed beyond him. Jesse’s English teacher loved him, and gave him the use of his classroom for lunch every day as a safe haven from the taunting and conflict of the world beyond.
The e-mails brought me to Caldwell to profile Jesse and his friend Eric for the magazine, to talk to his friends, teachers and family. The experience led me to write a book about him – it was called “Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rose The Internet Out Of Idaho.” The book, a far cry from my writing about dogs and rural life, remains in print, and although it never sold well – not too many people wanted to read about geeks in the pre-Steve Jobs world, it is still my favorite book, a work of the heart before I understood what the term meant.
I identified with Jesse in many ways, I admired his grit and character, his dark humor, his rebelliousness and independence. He wanted a better, more meaningful life, he wanted love and purpose. Does this sound familiar? Jesse’s whole world was the Internet, the Web marked the boundaries of his life, long before Google and Facebook and Twitter and the rise of the Silicon Valley we know today.
He decided – I encouraged this every step of the way – to move out of Idaho with his friend Eric, he rented a truck, saved his pennies – he had about $50 in his pocket to make the trip, he ate fries and tacos on the way, slept in the truck – and moved to Chicago, enduring a series of mishaps (he first rented an apartment online, sight unseen in Gary, Indiana by mistake. He had seen few blacks in his life, he was now the only white face in his new apartment, it was fine with him), he got to Chicago. I remember riding with him to downtown Chicago, to his first job interview, he was terrified, soaked in sweat. He got the job, did well in it. But Jesse was ambitious, he was on fire to learn, to go farther.
One day on a visit we were riding towards downtown together and the train rumbled through the University of Chicago campus and Jesse looked at me and said “I want to go there.” Impossible, I said, it’s the Harvard of the Midwest, you barely survived high school, the principal wanted to strangle you, it can’t be done. Would you help me?, he asked. I said yes, and I did help him. But Jesse did it. He wrote essays, argued with deans, was accepted with financial aid against the most overwhelming odds. We celebrated at a fancy downtown restaurant, I still have the phone message I got up on the cabin in Kenyon Hill Road: “Hi, Jon, it’s Jesse. I got the big envelope. I got in.” Jesse got in, the geek went from the outside in. Jesse Dailey had a fierce drive and will, I saw his depth of character.
Jesse’s struggles to get through the school – it was wrenching to see the yuppies arrive with their parents, wondrous bedding and expensive computers. Jesse and I had to dash downtown to get soap and towels and a blanket and sheets. It was hard to leave him, and I often returned in that first year to check on him, feed him, and cheer him on. He always had friends, always had a girlfriend, was always maneuvering through the academic bureaucracy.
Jesse got through the University of Chicago, against the most overwhelming odds. He moved to New York, works there as a programmer, his passion and skill. I lost touch with him then, I don’t really know why, he suddenly seemed uncomfortable talking with me. There were some occasional e-mails, some exchanges on Facebook, I had the sense Jesse need to establish himself in his new life, and I didn’t fit there. He is, after all, a geek, they are not known for social niceties or explanations.
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I don’t know what happened in Brooklyn, I was not there, I told the New York reporter – he was impressive tracking down Jesse’s connection to me and confirming Jesse’s identity, the other New York reporters had missed the book, none of them went to the arraignment – that what I was reading about Jesse was in no way representative of the Jesse I knew and wrote about in “Geeks.” Fractenburg said the whole story seemed strange to him, it didn’t quite add up, I hope he is right. I remember those instincts when I was a reporter, I lived by them.
If there is a silver lining to this awful day, it was that I heard from Jesse, he got a message to me. He said nothing about the charges, as I am sure he was instructed, but he relayed the experience of being held in an interrogation room for eight hours while the accusations against him were leaked to the press before he had a chance to even speak to a lawyer. His lawyer says the arrest is a case of mistaken identity, Jesse did not know the undercover officer chasing him was a police officer when he ran. I hope this is so, and I will remember to think of the children who were molested in this awful sequence of events, there needs to be justice and safety for them.
Sometimes, the world is beyond me, I often write that life happens, but this happening was beyond my imagination, and it shook me to the center of my very being. I can barely remember this day, Maria was so worried about me, she said she knew I was in trouble when I told her I could not sit down and write for the first time in my memory. She called me a dozen times throughout the day to see if I was okay. I am definitely not, I kept telling her.
Jesse’s story is not my story any longer, it is his. It is not my tragedy, it is his. He is responsible for his life. Thinking of him, I can only stand by my knowledge of him as a complex, ethical, brilliant and determined human being who – with virtually no resources or help from anyone – clawed his way out of that sorry and depressing town, got into one of the best universities in the world, got through it with only the clothes on his back, made his way to New York where he is in a new life in a relationship that seems so happy and full.
Clarity and perspective are important to me. I can’t say what happened, I do not know if Jesse is guilty or innocent, that is not for me to say. Any reporter or former reporter knows that friends and family members of people in trouble are always shocked and disbelieving accusations against the people they love. But I am heartbroken for Jesse, I felt so close to this intense young man, his life is on the line again, what I read about him in Ben Fractenburg’s story does not in any way square with the person I spent so much time learning and writing about and getting to know. Jesse worked so hard to get his life I cannot imagine why or how he would throw it away in so awful a way if he were in his right mind.
I was spinning this morning, the world just wouldn’t steady, I called a friend. I can’t make sense of it, I said, have I missed something? Is there something I can’t see? He told me I needed to stop trying to make sense of this news and to be patient, I will know more how to think and feel about it in a few days. It is good advice, I will try and take it.
