letter to a new old friend
Did you know an estimated ninety-five percent
of correspondence to the convicted comes from women?
Some statistics show that percentage increasing relative to
the inmate's capacity for violence. It's a psychological phenomenon that
mystifies most professionals.
But then again, some people just enjoy being mystified.
Me, I can't stand it.
I think all human behavior is explainable, if you're willing to accept
certain explanations; if you're willing to accept some very stark truths about
other people—and some about yourself.
I
know, intellectually, that my brain can't figure out everything. Nonetheless, I continue to plod along as if it could. That I
survived certain events from childhood left me with an admittedly false sense
of bravado. Tell me what you believe to
be evil, I boasted, and I'll tell you firsthand of something which surpasses
it—Come on. I dare you.
That was me, in a nutshell.
When I was 8, I was sexually abused by my grandfather; it
went on until I was 10. My parents were hippie-types, and they would send me to
Grandaddy's house some weekends, while they had pot and acid parties. I dealt
with the situation as long as I could, but finally I told my mom I didn't want
to go to Grandaddy's anymore, hoping we could leave it at that. Instead, she
stopped in her tracks, and didn't look at me for what seemed like an eternity.
Then she turned around with her face on fire, and said, "What did you
do?"
I dropped it. She and I never spoke about it again, and I finished
out my sentence at Granddady's.
At 12, I started drinking, at 13-14, I started using drugs, I
was promiscuous, you know, everything you read about: I was pissed off, and I hoped
I was pissing off someone else as well. Then Grandaddy died when I was 12, and I found out later he did the same
thing to some of my other cousins.
He was a sick man. Sick men do sick things.
My mom, on the other hand, knew why I didn't want to go to
Grandaddy's, and sent me anyway. Trust me, though, you will shut up about it if your mother
implies it's your fault.
I left home in December, when I was 16; I've never
lived there again.
All my life I wanted to be a criminologist; that goal's been
usurped by certain medical concerns. But having survived from age eight to age ten what no child should even
be aware of, the study of aberrant and criminal behavior seemed a proper fit
for me. Thanks to Grandaddy, I'd been
tutored in the ways of men already. I
also learned a few things from my mother, who let me know in no uncertain terms
that whatever it was I was trying to tell her happened at Grandaddy's
house—never happened.
Or, if it did, the
adult, intellectual thing to do was to see but not see, slam reality in reverse
and go gently into that not-so-good night. Now I understood the hearts of men and the hearts of women, and between them,
men were a snap; you know what they
expect so you know where you stand.
Women were subtler, and trickier.
I couldn't quite isolate it, but there was something worse in what my
mother did than in what Grandaddy did.
They were both guilty of violation; one of them didn't double the insult
with a lie. If the choice was between an honest violator and a dishonest one,
the choice was clear.
So what had I to fear from the evil that men do—even with
the particular men I wanted to study, their basic motive, their driving force,
led back to familiar territory for me.
No mystery, no enigma; whatever they did, it was a variation on a
theme. From the start I took on the
worst of the worst, my studies ranged from Bundy to Bianchi; I wanted to
"profile" before "profiling" existed, because, as you'll recall, not only could
I handle it, I could figure out anything.
For a while, I wasn't too bad at it, either. For a while, I was so good, I could explain
to you how Jeffrey Dahmer could drill holes in people's skulls and still maintain
he never wanted to hurt anybody. I
understood it, and I could explain it to you.
As long as you were willing to accept certain explanations. As long as there was nothing you were afraid
to behold, yourself included.
So naturally I had no fear, no hesitation, at wading
waist-deep into the story of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka—what, half of this
serial killer team is...a woman? Please,
I've de-mystified Jeffrey Dahmer, for God's sake. I'm pretty sure I can handle a couple of Canadian yuppies. Bring Ken and Barbie on.
Yeah, well...
Eight sleepless months from the time I picked up the first
book about the deadly duo I was still mired in the primordial mess of it
all. I felt all the time like I had
locusts in my ears. This story held
some special cacophony which arose only for me.
The center of the storm kept shifting to and fro from Paul
Bernardo to Karla Homolka, back to Paul Bernardo, rushed on to their victims,
crashed into the shameless investigation and 'round to the shameful and useless
courtroom drama that was the Bernardo trial.
But as always, I could explain it. I could put my finger right on the pulse of this thing, and I was
prepared to throttle it all down if I had to.
I was going to write a book about it.
The one that hadn't been written; the book that explained why everyone
else had it backward. She killed those
three girls; Homolka I mean. I knew it, as surely as I heard the voice that
night. I knew the hearts of men and I
knew the hearts of women, and between them, I knew which was worse.
But it's all very well and good to write papers and books and
to do research, to cite this study and these statistics and that source; after
a while I realized what resonated with me in this story was something I hadn't
thought of, for many, many years, something shameful, and painful, that I
didn't want to think about, and certainly, didn't want to tell.
Have you read Camus' The Fall ? Do you know about
"the little ease" ? A torture device, a box of sorts, not high enough to stand
up in, not long enough to lay down. I thought I was free of it, for good, some
20 years ago. Now those three dead girls
haunted me, but there's a difference between wanting justice for their deaths,
and merely wanting punishment for, or worse, revenge upon, their killer. What was I prepared to do--how far was I prepared to go ?
I would need to be precise to be convincing, and just like
with the betrayal I committed at 18, I
would have to come clean. There was no
other way out of "the little ease". To do the story justice, I would have to tell
my own.
***
When I was four, I had a urinary tract infection; whenever I
went to the bathroom I screamed as if I'd been set on fire. Mr. Bubble was the likely culprit the doctor
said, and gave my mother a tube of the likely antidote.
The first time she applied the contents of that tube, it
burned worse than the infection did, the cure was worse than the disease. I
screamed again, and then I caught my mother's eye...
and she was smiling...
I knew the hearts of women, and I knew the hearts of men; I knew which was worse.
And I knew why.
--for d.c.