My Dark Places

chisel.

The image was subjectively viewed. The image made me the killer.

The Dahlia was always with me. Real girls vied for my heart. A killer was stalking all the schoolgirls I grooved on. Jill, Kathy and Donna lived in great peril.

My rescue fantasies were richly detailed. My intercessions were swift and brutal. Sex was my only reward.

I stalked Jill, Kathy and Donna around school. I lurked near their homes on the weekend. I never talked to them.

My father was getting real action. His pal George told me he was fucking two check-stand girls at the Larchmont Safeway. I came home unexpectedly one day and caught him in the sack.

It was a hot afternoon. Our apartment door was open. I walked up the outside stairs and heard groaning. I tiptoed inside and peeped through the bedroom doorway.

My father was pouring the pork to a zaftig brunette. The dog was on the bed with them. She was dodging legs and trying to sleep on a bouncing mattress.

I watched for a while and tiptoed back outside.

I was wising up to my father. If he really won all those medals, he’d be as famous as Audie Murphy. If he had real drive and talent, we’d be living fat in Hancock Park right now. He was too proud to hand-sell his ten thousand Tote Seats—but not too proud to scam money off my mother’s insurance policy.

My teeth needed straightening. I hit my Aunt Leoda up for orthodontic treatment money and overquoted the amount required. My father paid the dentist’s initial bill and pocketed the balance. He fell behind on his maintenance payments and paid a cut-rate oral surgeon 20 bucks to cut the hardware off my teeth.

Aunt Leoda was easily conned. I snow-jobbed her regularly. I was trashing my college education fund. The thought didn’t faze me one iota.

I hated Ed and Leoda Wagner and my cousins Jeannie and Janet. My father hated the Wagner clan big-time. My hatred was his hatred carbon-copied.

Leoda thought my father killed my mother. My father got a kick out of the notion. He told me Leoda suspected him from the start.

I dug the Dad-as-killer concept. It subverted my awareness of my father’s passive nature and gave the man some panache. He killed my mother to gain custody of me. He knew that I hated her. He was a killer and I was a thief.

My father harped on Aunt Leoda’s suspicions. He enjoyed the implicit drama. He pushed me back to that stack of newspaper clippings.

I reread them. I matched my father’s face to a police sketch of the Dark Man. There was no resemblance whatsoever. My father did not murder my mother. He was with me when the crime occurred.

Spade Cooley beat his wife to death in April ’61. He was hopped up on amphetamines. Ella Mae Cooley wanted to ditch Spade and join a free-love cult. She wanted to screw younger men.

I followed the case. Spade Cooley copped a plea and beat the gas chamber. Ella Mae got fucked out of a just vengeance.

I was 13 years old. Dead women owned me.

9

I lived in two worlds.

Compulsive fantasies ruled my inner world. The outside world intruded all too often. I never learned to hoard my thoughts and hold them for private moments. My two worlds clashed continually.

I wanted to crash the outside world. I wanted to wow the outside world with my sense of drama. I knew that access to my thoughts would make people love me. It was a common teenaged conceit.

I wanted to take my thoughts public. I possessed exhibitionist flair—but lacked stage presence and control of my effects. I came off as a desperate clown.

My performing repertoire mirrored my private obsessions. I liked to spiel on crime and Nazi fiends in hiding. “Kiddie Noir” was my metier.

My forums were classrooms and schoolyards. I ran my spiels to doofus kids and exasperated teachers. I learned an old vaudeville truth: You hold an audience only as long as you make them laugh.

My fantasies were dark and serious. My audiences had a low tolerance for vivisected women. I learned to topically digress for yucks.

The early ’60s were good comic fodder. I took contrary stands on the A-bomb, John Kennedy, civil rights and the Berlin Wall brouhaha. I yelled “Free Rudolf Hess!” and advocated the reinstatement of slavery. I did wicked JFK imitations and stumped for the nuclear annihilation of Russia.

A few teachers took me aside and told me my shtick wasn’t funny. My classmates were laughing at me—not with me. I caught their implied message: You are one fucked-up kid. They caught my message up-front: Laugh at me or with me—just laugh.

My fantasies made for marginal stand-up routines. My fantasies were a schizoid bridge between my two worlds.

I fantasized endlessly. I got up a head of fantasy steam and rode my bike through red lights. I sat in theaters and ran fantasy riffs off the movies I was seeing. I turned boring novels into enthralling ones by adding extemporaneous subplots.