by M. E. Thomas
“Ha, I didn’t until just now. But we can, you know. Do you want to?”
Of course she wanted to. She thought she was going to win. She wanted to see me humiliated for once. We invented elaborate rules and came up with some reward (I knew the more complicated the “rules” seemed, the more it would seem like a legitimate and fair endeavor when really it was just me setting her up for embarrassment and feeding her insecurities). Of course I won, but only after dragging it out as long as possible, and only after she had thrown herself at him and had been soundly rejected. It was doubly delicious knowing that not only had I crushed Sarah’s newfound confidence, but Dave had given up his religious beliefs for me only to be spurned the next day.
Despite my bad intentions, for the most part everything I did was relatively tame, at least when you consider that there are children shooting up schools. I never thought of myself as a predator because I never raped or killed anyone. But looking back, I wonder if my essential understanding of my outsider status, combined with the instinctive sense that I had to carefully observe other people in order to both survive and thrive, is how the human predator thinks.
If I’m a predator, do I prey for sport or to survive? I learned how to be this way to survive, but it’s also true that I do it when it’s not necessary. Many predators engage in similar behavior, so-called “surplus killing,” or attacking prey without an immediate need or use for the animal. Have you seen videos of killer whales batting around their prey only to kill and abandon them? Scientists assure us that they aren’t actually killing for the fun of it (how would they know?), but rather that surplus killing is a survival mechanism—those who engage in surplus killing are the most aggressive, and the most aggressive predators are the ones who survive and procreate.
Predators who engage in surplus killing are constantly at the ready, always willing to make the kill. Similarly, I am always ready to play to win, no matter whom I am playing against or how innocent or nonthreatening they are to me in that moment. It makes sense. If I were only ruthless when I needed to be or only toward particular types of people who “deserved” it, I don’t think I could be as effective. I would be constantly questioning myself—is this person worth it? Do I really need to be going after them in this particular way? Instead, my natural inclination is to be aggressive to everyone. Nowadays I put a lot of effort into suppressing this urge. I’ve allowed myself to be tamed by people in order to have longer-lasting relationships, but the animalistic urge to destroy is always bubbling underneath the surface. For many I’m a beautiful and exotic pet but inherently dangerous—like a white tiger to my family and friends’ Siegfried and Roy.
This natural aggression was always the biggest obstacle preventing me from having a normal social life. All through growing up, I could try everything to hide my true nature, but it would always find ways to seep onto the surface in the form of unveiled aggression. When someone invoked my wrath—a tattling schoolmate or an insipid teacher—my eyes turned into dark simmering pools, the roiling of revenge plots apparent just below the surface. I tilted my head forward, my hands curled into fists and my eyes narrowed, as if to focus all my malignant energy on my antagonist for optimum destruction. I glowered like villains do in the movies, shattering the illusion of normalcy I tried so hard to project. Often it felt as if, at least socially, it was always one step forward, two steps back.
It was in my preteen years that I realized how crucial it was to actively cultivate attractive personality traits. I would study my peers to discover what made them seem likable to each other, and I became all of those things. That’s when I picked up surfing, played in rock bands, and became a social climber. In addition to getting good grades, I started watching indie films and listening to underground music, did alternative sports like BMX biking and street luging and wore thrift-store clothes. I became so uniquely accomplished, talented, and charming that I was naturally included on everyone’s list of people to know and like (or fear). Not only could I wear any number of masks to suit any situation, I had learned how to wear them with consistency.
I didn’t stop behaving outrageously, but I made it a point to perform well in school so that any slipups would be overlooked as quirks. My mother’s love of music—her view of it as her salvation—was passed on to me. I played the drums in the school band and in rock bands with other kids. When I was in junior high and high school, music masked a lot of my antisocial behaviors. Musicians are expected to be narcissistic and outrageous; it would be disappointing if they behaved normally. So the things I did seemed appropriate in the context of my rock star ambitions. When you’re holding a guitar or banging on drums, you’re supposed to scream and dance wildly, to be aggressive, to bully crowds into going crazy in mosh pits, to elicit the love and attention that they are all too willing to give.
I was fortunate that Jim continued to include me in his social life, even though I was his kid sister. In high school, all of his friends were older—not exactly edgy, but energetic and committed to ska music. They dressed in vintage suits and skinny ties. Every weekend they went to clubs and house parties to hear their favorite bands play, and my brother and I would go with them. It was my introduction to mosh pits and crowd surfing, knives, broken bottles, and crowd fights where people got dragged off in stretchers and cop cars. It was thrilling.
In high school I would get into elaborate feuds with people. Once I fought with one of my teachers over who should be in charge of the class—I thought I should be; for some reason he thought he should be. I bought yards of black fabric and cut out armbands, eventually getting half of the school involved in the “protest” against him. (Teenagers are eager to rebel against any sort of authority, which I was only too willing to exploit.) Another time I wanted to start a competitive drum line that would compete in shows around Southern California. We needed instruments, so, figuring it was better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission, I forged the entrance forms and took the school’s gear on the weekends, when I was sure no one would notice. I picked fights with people much bigger and stronger than I was, but mostly they were at rock concerts as part of a mosh pit, where the violence was tolerated. Cunning and calculating even then, I managed to stay out of serious trouble to preserve my freedom.
In order to avoid complaints and simply because I liked to, I mostly played with the boys as a child. They rarely tattled about injuries. I liked running around and jostling with them, coming in with a thin coat of sweat and grime from my time in the yard. When I was very young, I refused to wear a shirt so that I could be just like the boys. I didn’t understand why anyone would choose to hold baby dolls rather than make war with army soldiers.
I loved contact sports, everything about them. Touch football was classic that way. Especially after it rained and the fields were muddy, it was natural for tackling and black eyes to happen. Or playing tag on the playground equipment, we would fling ourselves off platforms and whip around corners, our bodies colliding in clumsy ballets. It was such a rush to smash my body into someone else’s, such satisfaction when one of my playmates got sent off to the nurse’s office with a bloody nose! In high school softball, I wasn’t the best player, but I’m sure I collided with other players more than anyone else. I stole bases with relish. Even if the ball had been thrown to the baseman by the time I got there, my unmitigated determination in running straight for her often freaked her out enough that she would leap to one side. One time as I was stealing home, I spooked the catcher so much that she clotheslined me though she didn’t even have the ball yet. It’s true that sometimes people are alarmed by my enthusiasm, but usually, I consider it their problem.
Risk taking, aggression, and a lack of concern for your own health or that of others are all symptoms of sociopathy, and my childhood is rife with evidence of them. I think that narrow escapes from death are probably better experienced young than old. They imprint in your mind a healthy sense of your mortality for later use. When I was eight, I almost drowned while swimming in the oce
an. I can’t recall the experience in great detail but I do remember the force of the ocean overcoming me, water as invisible as air swallowing me alive. My mother tells me that when the lifeguard fished me out of the water and breathed life into me, my first signs of life were gasps of laughter. It was perfect timing. I learned that death could come at any moment but was not so bad, really. I never developed a fear of it. At times I have flirted with it, even longed for it, but never actively sought it.
One Sunday I got very sick. It was a couple months before my sixteenth birthday. I usually kept these things to myself. Even then, I didn’t like involving other people in my personal issues, because it presented an invitation to interfere with the activities of my life. But that day, I relented and told my mother about the sharp pain directly below my sternum. After she expressed her usual exasperation, she gave me some kind of quack herbal medicine and told me to rest. Now I felt pain plus nausea.
The next day I stayed home from school, which did nothing but make me feel behind in all of my activities. It took all my challenging classes, music and sports groups, and other extracurriculars, plus toying with the interior lives of my friends, acquaintances, and authority figures, to keep my mind and body occupied. Boredom was my enemy, and thus, so too was illness. The next day, despite still being sick, I went back to school; that week I played softball and hit a double.
Every day my parents would suggest another new remedy. I carried a little bag of medicine with me wherever I went: Tums, Advil, ibuprofen, and various homeopathic cure-alls. I knew that there was pain, but I could not gauge its severity or analyze its meaning. It was an obstacle, like missing a player on the field or being farsighted. I had to play harder, strain my eyes—to contend with this thing growing in my insides, pulsing for attention, and blanketing my body with a reluctance to function.
All the energy that I usually used in social situations to blend in and charm others was redirected into controlling and ignoring the pain. A few days into it, I began to snarl at people, to glower. I ceased engaging in flattery or even polite pleasantries. I stopped reacting to people with nods or concerned facial expressions; instead, I stared at them with the dead eyes I had previously reserved for when I was alone and unseen. I couldn’t be bothered to smile. There was no filter between my secret thoughts and my mouth, so I ended up telling my friends how ugly they were or why they deserved the bad things that came to them. I didn’t have the intellectual ability to properly regulate my emotions or to turn on the charm. Without the mental stamina to constantly calibrate my effect on people, I embraced the raw flavor of my meanness, the mélange of dull sadism and sharp disregard.
I didn’t even know I was doing it, as I hadn’t realized how much brainpower it had taken me simply to maintain my personal relationships, how much was required of me to restrain my natural impulses. Only later when none of my friends stuck around did I realize what had happened. They can only make exceptions for you for so long. I behaved with sufficient meanness that my vile behavior justified many of my friends’ abandonment of me. It was like I had spent my adolescence wearing medieval chain mail under my clothes only to suddenly lose it unawares. Unrestricted by its weight, my movements were outsize and bizarre.
Mornings, afternoons, and evenings passed this way, in silent, growling submission to pain. My abdominal pains migrated to my back at the level of my kidneys. I grew sweatier, clammier, and greener. My dad suggested I had muscle strain. I went back to school and had to go to a band festival about forty miles away. On the bus I was feverish and lay down on the floor on the ride home. All weekend I stayed in bed. Tuesday, I went back to school but was too sick to stay in class, so I spent the afternoon sleeping in my brother’s car. I don’t remember the season, but the afternoons were sunny, and the warm, undifferentiated sunlight streamed in from the windows, turning the car into a greenhouse, an incubator. Curled up in the backseat, I felt the delicious warmth blocking out the mixture of throbbing, sharp, and dull pains now populating every wide expanse and narrow corner of my body. At home I disappeared into bed. When my mother came to wake me for dinner, she unraveled a shivering, hot, wet child from the covers. When my dad got home he stared at me for a while and contemplated his next move. He looked at my torso, saw that something was very wrong, and relented: “We’ll go to the doctor tomorrow.”
The next day, everyone at the doctor’s office was very solicitous, calm, and soothing. They did some tests, and after the results came back, everything changed into rushing and accusations. The doctor said something in outraged tones about my white cell count. I could sense my mother receding into quiet, semicatatonic disavowal, the state she retreated to when my father punched things or screamed at her. The doctor was all questions—if I had felt pain, what I had been doing for the last ten days, and why I hadn’t spoken up sooner—the kind that suggested I had done something wrong, and I stopped answering them. I was bored and restless. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wanted to be free to do my own thing instead of being a passive victim at the mercy of the well-intentioned. Someone asked me if I wanted to lie down; I politely declined and then passed out. When I came to, I heard shouting and my father convincing the medical staff not to order an ambulance. Even in my delirium I could sense their mistrust of him.
My dad would have done anything to get away from the reproachful stares. Behind my own fluttering, half-closed eyelids, I could see the wild panic in his eyes. It wasn’t panic about his daughter dying. Or rather, it was. But it was the moral judgment of his friends and neighbors upon my dying rather than the loss of me that terrified him. That he would allow his daughter to die from neglect. That he and my mother had let me suffer in excruciating pain for more than a week without seeking any medical attention, because—as I discovered later—he had allowed our family’s medical insurance to lapse. To think of it now, I am surprised that he didn’t leave my mother and me there to sort it out ourselves. In a way, my mother was luckier than my father. Her oppression allowed her to escape responsibility; her powerlessness absolved her guilt.
When I woke up following surgery, I saw my dad standing over me with tired anger. He gave me the rundown: The appendix had perforated, spewing toxins into my guts. My insides had become septic with infection, and the muscles in my back had become gangrenous. The surgeons had to cut out chunks of rotted flesh, and a plastic tube was inserted in the wound to drain the pus out. There should be no lasting damage.
“You could have died. The doctors are very angry.” At me, his tone implied. It was as if I should have apologized to everyone.
Hospitals are, of course, dehumanizing places. The worst time of day is predawn, when the floors are especially cold and the daylight peeking through the blinds feels like a reckoning. The night nurses get replaced by the day nurses, fresh in their cheerful cartoon scrubs and eager to inflict their cruel practicalities. The gaggles of interns and doctors make their rounds, pulling curtains to examine and catalog flaccid, damaged flesh connected to tubes and machines—cyborgs in clinical phantasmagoria.
Stripped of your armor, you can embrace the savage that the hospital makes of you, or you can grasp desperately for the human. For me, it was an easy choice. I was well acquainted with the savage in me—the animal that knew no other thing than its will to survive and thrive. I had no trouble turning off my sense of dignity or my need for connection, because I knew that to do so was the most efficient means of getting through the days ahead. There was also a sense of relief that I didn’t have to put on a mask for anyone. It saved me a lot of mental energy. Life was whittled down to the essentials—sleeping, eating, and defecating—interrupted by frequent physical violations that could be predicted and planned for. In this, I was a model patient. I did as I was told, dutifully doing my breathing exercises and taking my laps around the floor, hospital gown flapping open behind me. One nurse thought I was “brave.” I think she was talking about my steely-eyed, grin-and-bear-it kind of attitude. There were no tears, no complaints from me—a tot
al lack of affect. In a victim, it is courage and thus admirable; in a predator, it is a lack of humanity and instills fear.
After about a week, I was scheduled to leave, as long as I maintained my upward wellness trajectory. The nurse told me that my final barrier to departure was the morning breakfast. Too nauseated to eat, I tried nibbling the foods with the highest volume-to-density ratio so it would look like I had downed more than I had, but it still appeared as if I hadn’t touched anything. In this instance, my dad saved me. He showed up an hour before he was due at a meeting, cramming pancakes into his mouth with one hand and flushing scrambled eggs down the toilet with the other.
On the way home, and with minutes to spare before my dad’s meeting, we swung by the music store to pick up a compact disc I had wanted. It was closed, but he pounded on the door until he got the attention of an employee, gestured toward me with hurried explanations, and came back to the car with what I had asked for. People can surprise you.
I do not know how the family survived my hospital bills, but I am sure the same skills my dad used to get me my CD helped in getting out from under our enormous debt. When we got home, he walked me up the stairs and helped me into my bed, assuring me that someone would do something about my soaked bandages. He often said things like that, which were incredibly unlikely to actually happen.
My parents generally weren’t much more attentive to personal safety than I was. My family got into a surprising number of car accidents. When we were kids, we had a very serious accident on a dangerous mountain highway while on our way to visit my cousins. We got rear-ended (by someone who later appeared to be intoxicated), and the force propelled our car across several lanes of traffic until we collided with a concrete wall. Partly because us kids were all crammed into the back of the car, we all got pretty banged up, but for some reason, we didn’t turn back home and instead drove the rest of the ten hours that it took for us to get to our relatives’ house. I suspect we lived on the insurance proceeds from that accident for several years. Even now my first instinct upon being involved in an auto accident (usually not my fault; I’m a great driver) is to take a copious number of photos and solicit incriminating statements from the other driver.