Monday 26 May 2014

Still Reading about Psycho Single

Oh dear. I have been reading and writing about Psycho Single's autobiography. The blasted thing is that he was a good writer. The Psycho Single of the health club was not. I am left thinking, "You are a shameless, selfish whiner now"---I'm up to his 20th birthday--"and you'll be a cold-blooded killer in two years, but you can write, you little bast*rd."

He certainly has a phenomenal memory for names, games, places, dates, and his foreshadowing actually works. It's a moral struggle determining if it works because it works or because he stabbed or shot two dozen people. It's like the "Can I watch a Polanski film knowing what I know" issue on a GRAND SCALE.

I'm not saying the kid was a Polanski. (He's a good writer, not great. He definitely needed an editor and to drop some cliches, plus the manosphere garbage, but he had serious potential.) I'm saying that he could write, which is a rarer skill than you might think. The horrible and damnable irony is that the devil (my word, not his) told him the only way he could have value was to get a lot of money so as to attract girls If only he had stopped thinking about sex, money or himself for a moment to enjoy writing. He was good at it.

When bad people have talent, how do you talk about it? For this was a bad kid. This was a kid who cried to get what he wanted from his mother when he was seventeen years old and got it. And saw no shame in it when he wrote his autobiography.

This was a writer who could unstintingly admit that he was envious as a child, envious as a teen, envious as a young adult. He could admit that he was afraid of the dark. He could write about every time he cried, and that he cried every time a joyful time came to an end, and that visiting an even richer boy in France made him cry out against the injustice of the world, because this boy was so much richer than he, and had such cool friends, and so much sex. (But there would not have been any point sending him to El Salvador to count his blessings, for he was taken or sent to Morocco on occasion, and he despised it as a backwater instead of feeling fortunate not to be a poor kid there.)

But I will tell you what I hate even more than feeling conflicted over Psycho Killer's autobiography. It's seeing newspapers refer to him as "the virgin killer" as if they were making fun of him, not for being a killer but for being a virgin. This was the exact kind of anti-virgin sniggering that fuelled his hatred of the women who wouldn't give him sex and the men who "got" sex.

He was a spoiled selfish young man who wickedly stoked his hatred of the world until he was ready to begin killing as much of it as he could. He is not a poster child for modesty, to say the least. But since there is a major push against teenagers bullying teenagers with homosexual inclinations, how about a major push against anyone bullying people who are suspected of not having yet had sex? Bulling people because of their lack of sexual experience is a form of sexual harassment, and I'd like to see that written about more often!

Update: I am at the point where he is whining that HE is the half-white descendant of British aristocracy and this black guy he has met is the descendant of slaves, so he, not the black guy, deserved to lose his virginity to a white blonde girl. On the one hand, I want to throw up. On the other hand, this is the kind of honesty that makes for good writing. Damn it!

Update 2: I have finished reading the whole thing. He concludes that he is "the true victim in this" and "the good guy". Meanwhile, I have just noticed that my baby toe is cut and my foot is stained with blood. How did that happen without me noticing? That's how compelling the whole horrible story is.

Someone needs to write a Catholic blog for Single men. There has got to be someone to tell men like Psycho Single that the be-all and end-all of life is not attracting women.

10 comments:

Aquinas' Goose said...

Some say that the world would be better without 'religion' (whatever that word means). Some say that they aren't 'religious.' Some think that 'religious' and 'religion' are only applicable terms if the 'religion' looks just like American Evangelical Protestantism.

And then there's Rene Girard who talks about how violence and religion are intertwined and how religion is what keeps violence from spiraling out of control. And then there are the Ancient Greeks whose 'heroes' were mortals whose lives had gone awry in such horrible ways that they were worshiped in order to keep such things happenings in the life of the worshiper.

And then there's our Psycho Killer, who was obsessed with sex and goes on a murderous rampage because what he desires he can't have. And now everyone's reading his writings and watching his video blogs.

I think I sense a new 'hero' being born.

Seraphic said...

No. I hope not. He was not a hero. He was a spoiled brat who picked at a psychic scar until it festered took over his whole brain.

Psycho Single is probably in hell repeating the same thoughts and feelings he had on earth, suffering them over and over again. His hell started here, but my guess is that it didn't end here.

Sheila said...

He sounds like a guy who was really desperate for unconditional love. Maybe he never got enough growing up, because his parents thought their money was the same thing as love. Or maybe he got plenty but never grew up enough to realize that adults need to give love if they want to get it.

Some people go to a therapist, some people hire a prostitute, some people have friends and girlfriends whom they do things for and who do things for them. But very few people do things (whether love or sex or just listening) for people who never do anything for them. It's very sad, because someone's got to start the love going. So many people suffer, they do stupid things like staying with a terrible person for years just because they think that's the closest to unconditional love they're ever going to get.

But -- BUT -- most of these people harm only themselves. They don't choose to kill. That's all on this evil man.

Still, it brings me to think of how only religion can really make us happy, because only the knowledge that we are unconditionally loved BY GOD makes life worth living when you haven't yet earned the friendship of anyone else. That can move you to offer love to others, some of whom might love you in return, and it all keeps going. But it starts with God. It has to.

Seraphic said...

I agree. And although this kid was briefly in a Catholic school, he seems not to have been evangelized at all. He talks a lot about "heaven" (a guy having a pretty girlfriend) and "hell" (his reality), but never about God. There is no hint that he has ever for a moment considered that he has a transcendent Maker who loves him. And you are right about him never giving. His life was take-take-take. He never lacked for money, treats...even designer clothes!

Jen D said...

I just finished reading it too...absolutely riveting to have a look inside the mind of the man who committed such a horrific crime. He made an idol out of sex and women, both of which he ended up despising by the end.

I agree that him knowing of God's love could have changed everything.

Jen D said...

Also, I find it interesting that he never mentions asking for dates and getting turned down, or even approaching women at all - he seems to assume that girls should approach him...

Julia said...

"Psycho Single is probably in hell repeating the same thoughts and feelings he had on earth, suffering them over and over again. His hell started here, but my guess is that it didn't end here."

That's my guess too.

Jen, I think he definitely would have assumed that women should have been throwing themselves at him because he saw himself as such a great catch etc. But I guess he didn't know (or care) that he would have been giving off some seriously creepy, scary, angry vibes, and that women pick up on those and become very uneasy.

Brigid said...

Re a blog for single men, I'm a fan of http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/ and http://www.orthogents.com.

By the way, there's an exquisite post on celibacy and virginity here: aqueercalling.com/2014/05/26/redefining-sexual-ethics-redefines-celibacy/

Aquinas' Goose said...

Internet has been down. I used 'hero' in terms of cult worship of the ancients. Remember: Clytemnestra was worshiped as a hero by the Greeks since she ruthlessly murdered her husband. Oedipus, Jocasta, Hippolytus... the list could go on.

I agree with every thing you have to say about him, Seraphic, but the point I was trying to make concerns the way in which the media and the "internet community" has started interacting with the Psycho Killer since his demise. The fascination and obsession with his 'works' since his killing spree strikes an eerie chord with the focal point of violence and deification of mortals as seen in the Western world prior to the spread of Christianity.

Human beings are 'religious' by nature (whether we want to admit that or not is something else altogether), and when there is no cultural 'religion' (e.g. Shinto, Christianity, Judaism, etc.) something else will come to fill the void... it's the 'what' filling that void that is worrisome.

Seraphic said...

Thanks, Brigid!

Aquinas' Goose, that is very interesting! But on the other hand, with the internet, it would be hard to make a mythic story out of a murder the way oral tradition does. On the other hand Psycho Single's autobiography has been disturbingly compared to "Catcher in the Rye."

I do hope that it is made very clear to the young that he was not rejected or treated cruelly by women: identifying being pushed by an 11 year old after he stumbled into her as cruelty from women is LUDICROUS. There's no evidence that he ever actually had a relationship with any young woman who might have treated him in any way whatsoever. He seems to have taken just the existence of a pretty young woman as an insult.

Something that is bothering me this morning is the idea he was a friendless loner. Actually, he mentions many friends in his autobiography, particularly a very long-suffering, very loyal young man who only broke off the friendship once and for all because he was so shaken by his old pal's rages and violent fantasies. His is the story I am interested in, though the only person talking to the press so far is that poor Moio girl, speaking through her father. And really it is not in any of the named people's best interests to be interviewed, so for their sake, I hope they keep quiet.