Salon.com > Stephen Elliott

My interview with murderer Hans Reiser

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:00:00 +0000

I showed up at the Santa Rita Jail during visiting hours to meet Hans Reiser, the Linux programmer found guilty of killing his estranged wife. He was being held in Santa Rita awaiting sentencing and I knew if I was ever going to talk with him, I had to do it before he was transferred to state prison, where the rules regarding media visits are much more strict and it can take months for even relatives to get approval.

The Hans Reiser trial was big news in the San Francisco Bay Area and high-tech community, with both Wired and the San Francisco Chronicle live-blogging the proceedings and the Oakland Tribune assigning a reporter to it full-time. "48 Hours" and "20/20" both did TV specials. Hans was considered a genius, a minor celebrity in the high-tech community. His filing system was considered by some to be a milestone in computer science. His wife, Nina Reiser, was a gorgeous Russian bride studying to be a doctor in America. Hans and Nina had two children together and a fantastically contentious divorce.

How hard is it to write honestly about war?

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:45:00 +0000

Recently, a critic in the Guardian lamented the lack of serious fiction concerned with modern warfare. Where, he wondered, was the great modern war novel?

He was wrong. There are tons of books dealing with the "war on terror," 9/11, and the new American engagement with the world. I edited two anthologies of fiction dealing with those very issues.

Or maybe he wasn't wrong. Maybe we just haven't seen the right book. As Norman Mailer wrote in "Advertisements for Myself," "Major war novels are not difficult to write -- it is just difficult to find writers of sizable talent who come close to war."

I just finished reading a truly great war novel by a writer of sizable talent who has come close to war. The writer is Matthew Eck, a soldier who served in Haiti and Somalia. His novel, "The Farther Shore," is a haunting portrait of modern warfare set in an African city governed by warlords robbing the population of international aid. The war Eck writes about is conducted in covert missions -- small groups of soldiers guiding bombs from a hidden rooftop -- rather than full-scale engagements between uniformed forces.

Impressions of Paris’ last night in jail

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 20:00:00 +0000

"I hope she's not crying," Nick Ut says. "I want pictures of a happy lady. I feel very sorry for her." It's night and we're waiting for Paris Hilton to get out of jail. The journalists are flanked along the walkway leading from the main entrance, kept back by yellow tape. Nick was 15 years old when he started taking pictures for the Associated Press. His brother had been killed in the Mekong Delta while shooting for the AP and Nick took his place.

In 1972 Nick took a picture of a 9-year-old girl named Kim. She was naked, running with her arms spread, 80 percent of her body burned by napalm. The picture won the Pulitzer Prize and hastened the end of an unnecessary war. Thirty-five years later to the day, he took a picture of Paris Hilton crying in a police car, returning to jail. "You look at the pictures," he says, "they're very similar. Her hair falls over her brow, both crying, open mouth. Also different. Kim was very poor, 80 percent of her body burned by napalm. Paris was in jail for three days."

My day at the Porn Palace

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Next to a double mirror surrounded by large round bulbs sit Tupperware boxes stacked two and three high, each with its contents marked on white stickers: eyelashes, hair accessories, brushes, empty enema bottles (of which there are two). This is the dressing room for the Kink.com building, also known as the Porn Palace, in downtown San Francisco. This is where people get ready to be filmed for the Web sites Men in Pain, Wired Pussy, Hogtied, Water Bondage, Ultimate Surrender, Fucking Machines, Sex and Submission, and Whipped Ass.

I'm spending the day on Wired Pussy. It's a Wednesday. I know the people who run Kink.com and I thought it would be an interesting thing to do.

I'm with Satine Phoenix, a model who flew in for the day from Los Angeles. The makeup woman called in sick, so Satine is doing her own makeup. She has skin the color of sand and long, thick black hair. She's exotic, extraordinarily beautiful. She's excited to be here, excited that I'm writing about her, excited about life and filled with manic energy.

Nude awakening

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 12:23:00 +0000

First there was Toni in his sparkling cocktail dress, serving drinks at Neo on Clark Street. The bar was dark, there were no windows, only a blue-lit clock. Toni had thin legs covered in track marks beneath his fishnet stockings. He brought me elegant looking drinks on a silver tray. I hid in the corners or in the middle of the dance floor. I went to Neo alone and Toni sensed my loneliness and wanted to mother me to health but it didn't happen. Toni died at three in the morning in a stranger's apartment in Humboldt Park lying next to a broken needle, blood streaming from his nose, emerald skirt riding in waves across his hips, tights ripped, a slipper dangling from his toe, eyes wide open.

Then there was Toni's friend Tony. Tony worked at Berlin, had tribal tattoos covering half his body, long, thick black hair like a horse's mane, and every year the free weekly paper voted him best bartender in the city.

Tony didn't charge me for drinks either and I hovered near his bar, an oasis next to the entrance. I danced close to Tony. I never wanted to go home. I had friends but they were sleeping, and they weren't real friends. I said, "What kind of boys do you like?" and he said, "Straight boys" and I smiled.

A city in ruins

Mon, 05 Sep 2005 19:56:00 +0000

I drive into New Orleans with a note from the Louisiana State Police public information officer. The highways are empty past the checkpoints, as is the city. Highway 10 ends at a barricade in uptown. I follow relief vehicles through cleared thoroughfares. Most of the streets are blocked by fallen trees. On the roads that are open, cars -- almost exclusively police and relief vehicles -- drive in whatever direction they want. Some locals ride by on bicycles. The sense of emptiness in the city is overwhelming. I pass a Whole Foods with its door propped open, alarm still ringing, panes of glass intact.

I stop when I see two men and a woman on a porch off Magazine Street. "You a reporter?" one of the men asks me. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know." He tells me about the conspiracy: people with a lot of money flooded the city on purpose. "You want some wine?" he asks. "I've got a hundred dollar bottle of wine." They say they've been getting supplies from the Whole Foods and using water from a neighbor's pool to operate the toilet. But now the food at the grocery store is gone. The woman's legs are bitten, covered in bright red welts. I leave them a gallon of water and continue toward the Convention Center.

Gimme shelter

Sun, 04 Sep 2005 21:24:00 +0000

The New Orleans Airport sits on the north side of the city, removed from the bulk of the disaster that struck nearly a week ago when Hurricane Katrina battered the buildings, smashing through the levees and flooding the town. The highway leading into the airport is deserted, open only to official vehicles. The giant concrete overpasses are surreal empty loops, though nothing compared to the images inside the city itself.

I arrive at the airport Saturday afternoon with a convoy of three air-conditioned buses, two SUVs, and a state police escort. I'm with U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, her husband, Ambassador Sydney Williams, chair of the Louisiana Black Caucus Cedric Richmond, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and State Sen. Cleo Fields. Cleo Fields has a plan to bring people to England Air Force Base, a decommissioned base in Alexandria, La., four hours northwest of New Orleans. The idea is to show up with hundreds of disaster victims and force the federal government to open the empty buildings. They did not receive permission from anyone to take the evacuees there. On Saturday a U.S. Army spokesman said bases, including England, were being considering as shelters.

“I want to keep living here, but I can’t”

Sun, 04 Sep 2005 01:19:00 +0000

It's only at the Gulf that one gets a full sense of Katrina's devastation. The Gulf of Mississippi is destroyed. As far as one can see in any direction the beach is filled with wreckage, twisted docks, trucks turned over, trailers impaled on cement barriers. The parking lot at the Copa Casino in Gulfport is broken in pieces, littered with beams long as houses, tires, glass and odd fabric straps. Steel pylons wrenched from the concrete, which is cracked like plaster.

Casinos in Mississippi are not allowed to be land based, so the casinos are actually boats. The six-story Copa is a barge as large as a city block. It sits unmoored 300 feet from its dock. Several holes have been ripped in the side of the Copa. The slot machines sit in rows next to the opening, tops covered in black plastic bags. Split wires lay across the floor and dangle from the roof. The nearby Grand Casino has also been lifted from the sea and thrown ashore. Bricks lie peeled from the face of the adjoining hotel.

“They’ve got to open the base”

Sat, 03 Sep 2005 23:15:00 +0000

I got on a bus with California Rep. Maxine Waters Saturday afternoon, not sure where we were going, just knowing we were headed to New Orleans to pick up Hurricane Katrina victims. Even as television news is showing pictures of people being rescued by military helicopters and chartered buses, local and national black leaders are seething at the mismanaged evacuation, as well as the haphazard way even the rescued people are being handled. So they've come up with their own plan: to load the remaining residents on buses they've chartered and bring them to England Air Force Base, a shuttered military installation in Alexandria, La.

"My soul wouldn't let me sit and watch this on TV," says Waters, who represents South Central Los Angeles. "I'm just shocked that people have been living for five days, and dying, on the streets of this country. So I came down here, and my friend Cleo Fields came up with this wonderful possibility."

That wonderful possibility, hatched by state Sen. Cleo Fields and the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, is to house the displaced residents at the Air Force base instead of shelters and sports stadiums like the Astrodome, many of which are full anyway. They haven't gotten permission to do that, but that's not stopping them. The black leaders say racism is behind both the late response to the emergency and the dispersal of rescued residents far away from New Orleans.

Darkness falls in Florida

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 21:00:00 +0000

I was in the voting equipment center in Broward County, Fla., on the night of the election. The streets were blocked off and they were counting votes in the back room of the building. Brenda Snipes and the other election officials were sitting behind a large oak table and occasionally arguing over a challenged ballot. There were 30 to 40 journalists and politicos watching a black-and-white screen as the numbers from the county slowly trickled in. The Democrats took 65 percent of the county, which is about what everybody expected. But only 60 percent of the county turned out to vote. People had been hoping for 70 or 75 percent.

Larry Davis, one of the head lawyers for the Democrats, left early to have a beer and I decided to leave with him. But I got lost on the way, turning into the airport, and driving around the streets surrounding it for an hour. By the time I had my beer things were pretty much done.

The repercussions are obvious. There will be no unifying our divided country. Unification is for Democrats and the Republicans control everything. Mandate is what Clinton had when he beat Bob Dole by 10 percent. That was our chance to declare evangelical churches political organizations, take away their tax status, jail their leaders, and send the rest of them off to reeducation camps.

“I love you, man”

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 20:00:00 +0000

I run into John Edwards' press secretary, Jennifer Palmieri, in the basement of Holloway Hall at the University of New Hampshire just before the debate is about to start. Outside it's cold as hell, but there's a snack tray set up here with coffee and brownies. "You're with GQ," she says.

"I'm with Harper's now," I reply. (1)

"It's down to Dean, Clark, and Edwards," she tells me, and I feel like we're picking up an old conversation, except last time we met Clark wasn't in the race, and maybe he still isn't. I'm going to need to meet the general soon, figure out where he's really at. The Washington Post has a quote from him talking to a counter woman at a Dunkin' Donuts -- "Do you make your donuts here?" "No." "So how do they get here?" I talk with Jennifer for a while and at some point she narrows her eyes on me, like she's suddenly seen deep into my soul. "You're smarter than you look," she says, and I realize that before this election is over she will tell me lies and I will repeat them, because she is strong and I am weak, and now that she's found me out I won't have much of a chance against her.

Swimming with the online card sharks

Thu, 02 May 2002 19:30:00 +0000

"Italians come to ruin most generally in three ways, women, gambling, and farming. My family chose the slowest one."

-- Pope John XXIII

I have a poker table that dominates my studio apartment in a seedy neighborhood in San Francisco. I have clay chips that were given to me as a present last Christmas. The difference between the clay chips, which go for $10 a pack, and the cheap Walgreens plastic numbers is palpable.

I grew up playing spades in state homes for wayward youth. In college I won the dorm euchre championship (we cheated, but that's how you play euchre). My compulsive card playing reflected disastrously on my college transcripts. My friend Louie got me into blackjack laying around our squat in Chicago's notorious Cabrini Green while the men rolled dice on the sidewalk out front. I lost my last $600 the first time I played poker in West Yellowstone on the way to see my girlfriend in Seattle. Our relationship never recovered.

Grandfather was a cardplayer. The Nazis killed off his entire family and all anybody knows of him is that he worked hard and played cards every day until he died, whittling away his final years playing pinochle for pennies down at the Levy's center in Chicago. One time he smacked another man in the teeth over 20 cents. Old age made him cheap, but he could still smell a rat.