Anyone You Want Me to Be

by John E. Douglas

  The S&M subculture had its own lingo and “safe words.” When those words were spoken, they acted as a signal that things had gone beyond what was agreed on and it was time to stop. Another type of S&M known as Gorean had no safe words and no rules; submission to the dominant was total. The Gorean concept had been laid out in twenty-five science fiction novels about the planet Gor, written by a philosophy professor named John Norman. On Gor, all the women were slaves to men and had to satisfy their every sexual desire. Since the books’ first appearance in the 1960s, the Gorean novels had gained a cult following and were highly valued by book collectors. With the development of the Internet, Gorean adherents also had a strong presence on-line. Cyberspace was the perfect place to meet people with like desires.

  Robinson was naturally drawn to the Gorean realm. He’d always relished being in control, especially in his relations with women. Now he’d found a locale where females willingly put themselves into submissive roles. Some would even go so far as to sign contracts for their “masters,” in which they gave up not only control of their bodies but in some cases their financial assets. The three things that Robinson had pursued so relentlessly and aggressively over the years—money, sex outside of marriage, and power over others—were now literally falling into his lap or, more accurately, his laptop. He no longer had to create complicated baby-selling scams or business fronts that enticed young women who were looking for employment. He no longer had to pretend that he was an enlightened male who was interested in sexual equality, inside or out of the bedroom. Now he could be more of himself. The Internet provided him with a huge new arena in which to ply his trade.

  Through ads in cyberspace and those in an alternative newspaper in Kansas City called Pitch Weekly, he looked for women who were interested in the games he wanted to play. He found one in the “Wildside” section of the paper, an attractive African-American woman in her late twenties named Alecia Cox. She had a velvety voice and what some people would describe as a sassy manner. Her personal ad in the paper read: “SBF [Straight Black Female] looking for mature male to take care of me—I’ll take care of you.” The aspiring radio personality was now working in Kansas City as a receptionist and had a young daughter who lived with her mother in Salina, Kansas. She wanted to get into the entertainment business; she had a professional head shot made up of herself with her résumé on the back. Her on-air name was Lisa Fox. She was ambitious but down on her luck. After Robinson answered her ad, they quickly reached an agreement: he would pay her as much as $2,000 a month, while she agreed to be his mistress. He wanted her available for sex whenever he desired it. When he arrived at her apartment, he demanded that she be waiting for him naked. He only visited during the day. He told Alecia that he was married but not having sex with his wife and he was about to get divorced. He also told her that he was a successful entrepreneur with a pool supply store and a hydroponic business. He bragged about knowing many important people, including President Clinton, whom he’d met during a flight on Air Force One. He also told Alecia that she was a “bright girl” who would make an excellent personal assistant. She was impressed enough by Robinson to join forces with him.

  Their sexual encounters were generally conventional, but he did put clips on her nipples and a dog collar on her that restrained her hands. Underneath her feminine exterior was a tough, street-smart woman, cocky and self-assured, and for once, Robinson had met his match. Alecia wasn’t afraid to ask for what she wanted and she asked Robinson for a lot. He didn’t give her as much money as he’d originally promised and he occasionally reneged on his agreement to pay up, but the relationship lasted for a couple of years. On one occasion, when he demanded that she sign a slave contract, she complied, just to please him. For a while she worked at an athletic club where she had to disrobe in front of other people. Robinson wrote his initials on her hip with a pen, as if this were his private brand. The letters even resembled a brand, with the J and the R connected. He wanted other club members to see that she was someone’s property.

  He offered her gifts of clothing, which struck her as an unusual thing for a man to have. Many of the items weren’t her style or size and looked worn. In the back of his pickup, she once saw an entire rack of women clothes, and in the apartment he rented, he showed her other boxes of women’s clothing. As Alecia sorted through the dresses, looking for something she might like, she wondered where all this apparel had come from, eventually choosing a white camisole, a black velvet shirt, and a green velvet dress. Robinson explained to her that the clothes had been left behind by ex-employees of his businesses. Alecia didn’t ask too many questions and he didn’t offer any more information. It didn’t occur to her that the dresses had once belonged to women who’d gotten involved with Robinson, in much the same way that she was doing now.

  Robinson gave Alecia a gold band and said he wanted to marry her. He also wanted her to tell him how much she loved him, especially when they were making love. He wanted to hear it from her over and over again during moments of passion. The words were as important as the sex. He may have been trying to hook her deeper emotionally, but she was satisfying some equally deep emotional longings within him. Robinson was profoundly entangled with women—a rage of need and desire and weakness and violence. He spent all his time with women, whether he was at home or somewhere else. Male friends did not figure into much of his existence, unless he was hustling them for gain. It was the company of women that he craved. And it was women whom he was always planning to get rid of.

  In the fall of 1998, Alecia wanted Robinson to use his influence to help her get a job in entertainment. She gave him some of her publicity photos and he said he needed some documents holding her Social Security number. She gave up her apartment after he told her that he wanted to hire her to travel overseas on business with him. He wanted her to “schmooze” clients in London, Paris, and Australia. He put her up in a Best Western hotel before the trip commenced and said he’d take care of her passport application. The departure date kept shifting, and Alecia’s family members grew skeptical about the job. Robinson asked her to write travel letters to her relatives on pastel stationery. When she asked why she needed to do this now, he explained that they would be so busy while abroad that she wouldn’t have time for such details. He told her to date them in the future and gave her the actual dates, insistent that she do this.

  The evening before they were supposed to leave for London, Robinson did something unusual, in spite of his decades of infidelity. He spent the entire night outside his home with one of his lovers. When he arrived at the hotel in his white Dodge Ram pickup, Alecia noticed that it had a trailer hitched to the back and a rack of clothing on the bed. The next morning Alecia woke up around five while Robinson was still asleep. She awakened him, which angered him. He was upset because she’d gotten up before him. She didn’t understand why he was so annoyed. He jumped out of bed, showered, and quickly left after saying that he had errands to run. He told her to meet him at a restaurant at ten that morning to make final preparations for the trip. She went there and waited for him but he never arrived or called.

  She phoned him again and again to ask what had happened, but he never responded. She was left without a job or a place to live and was forced to stay with relatives. A few months later, Alecia placed another ad in the same alternative paper and once more Robinson answered it. She was glad to hear from him, eager to resume their affair. Like many other women, she genuinely liked him, even when he wasn’t giving her money. His attraction to women was so strong that some females found him irresistible. He explained to her that he’d bolted earlier because he was embarrassed by her behavior, accusing her of infidelity. He couldn’t travel with someone he didn’t trust. He couldn’t tolerate someone he couldn’t control. They restarted the relationship, and in the summer of 1999, Robinson convinced her to give him Power of Attorney over her affairs. By this time he was seeing a number of other women, so he and Cox gradually drifted apart.

  Only much la
ter did Alecia have a major revelation. She believed that the morning Robinson had angrily awakened next to her in the motel, he was making plans of a sort that did not involve world travel. She felt that he was going to kill her later that same day. That was why he’d wanted her to sign the papers and give him the Power of Attorney. The trailer on the back of his pickup, she realized, could have been used for transporting a body. She’d disrupted his plans by getting up before him, and he’d left the motel in a fury, something she hadn’t understood for several more years. Then it made sense. Her accidental awakening that morning had saved her life.

  XVIII

  By the midnineties, Robinson stayed extremely busy romancing women of different ages, ethnic backgrounds, physical types, and educational and economic circumstances. If he’d seemed in a hurry before, now he was a whirlwind of activity, both on-line and off. He had cyber-affairs going on in, among other places, Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, England, and Canada. He tried to persuade women in the United States and internationally to come to Kansas City and be a part of his life. Some turned down his requests but a few others would willingly and optimistically agree to uproot themselves and travel to meet this charming and persuasive country gentleman. He also asked a number of them to sign “slave contracts” similar to the standard one below:

  SLAVE CONTRACT

  This is a basic contract that may be used between a Master and a Slave.

  Of my own free will, as of this day [date], I [name of slave] (hereinafter called “SLAVE”), hereby grant [Name of Master] (hereinafter called “MASTER”), full ownership and use of my body and mind from now until I am released.

  I will place my sobriety/emotional sobriety first in all considerations in this relationship.

  I will obey my MASTER at all times and will wholeheartedly seek your pleasure and well-being above all other considerations. I renounce all my rights to my own pleasure, comfort, or gratification except insofar as you desire or permit them.

  I will strive diligently to re-mold my body, my habits, and my attitudes in accordance with your desires. I will seek always to please you better, and will gracefully accept criticism as a means for growth and not a threat of abandonment.

  I renounce all rights to privacy or concealment from you….

  I understand and agree that any failure by me to comply fully with your desires shall be regarded as sufficient cause for possibly severe punishment.

  I understand that for a training period indicated by you all punishment will be given at a 5 to 1 ratio to the offense.

  Within the limits of my physical safety and my ability to earn a livelihood, I otherwise unconditionally accept as your prerogative anything that you may choose to do with me, whether as punishment, for your amusement, or for whatever purpose, no matter how painful or humiliating to myself.

  The contract allowed the slave to use a “safeword” when things became too painful or harmful, either physically or emotionally. The slave agreed to finish any assignment within two full days and to answer all the master’s communications within twenty-four hours. The contract continued:

  I understand that if I use certain words which are deemed by you to be inappropriate for a SLAVE, the punishment will be automatic and then it is my duty to remind MASTER in the case that he fails to remember.

  I understand that at all times I am to be honest with you and communicate my feelings (even if I perceive that you may not approve). I understand that no feeling I have can be wrong, and that they may indicate a situation which needs to be addressed….

  I understand that my MASTER has my ultimate physical, mental and spiritual well-being in mind and will strive to be worthy of his pride in all my endeavors. I will at all times maintain a safe, sane and consensual relationship.

  To Robinson’s delight and perhaps to his amazement, there seemed to be an almost unlimited pool of women willing to let a powerful figure take charge of their lives. For them, the “master/slave” relationship was based more on an emotional dependence than a physical one. None were looking for someone to damage them physically, but all were searching for an emotional escape through elaborate fantasies. They were easy targets for someone like the “successful entrepreneur” and “gentleman farmer” from Kansas.

  Charles Manson, David Koresh, and Jim Jones all had personalities similar to Robinson’s, but none of them had employed their skills in cyberspace. None had had the chance to control the world from a distance just by sitting at a keyboard and luring people in. All three were dynamic and articulate, but more than anything else, they knew how to read and exploit others. Each promised a better life to everyone who joined up with him. (As Manson once said in a prison interview, “Everyone is looking for something to believe in. You just have to find out what it is they’re looking for.”) Robinson quickly found out what these women were looking for, and over the years he was improving his skills as an astute “victim profiler,” adept at speaking their language, whether he was addressing a mayor’s assistant or a prostitute or a stranger on-line. His cherubic appearance, captured in digital photos of himself, made him seem nonthreatening, and he always turned this in his favor. Once he spotted weaknesses—and there are weaknesses inside every human system and every human being—he knew what to do next.

  But what about the women who responded to him? What were they drawn to and why would they expose themselves to such a man?

  Says a female who’s dabbled in on-line romance herself, “In my own life, the more volatile a man was and the more he reflected anger or rage, the more I wanted to comfort and nurse him. Men have elevated aggression and sexuality. Women have elevated nursing and caretaking. The more of a caretaker you are, the more you will be drawn to a predator with aggravated sexual proclivities. Always with the idea of making him better, improving him. You always convey to him, in one way or another, ‘If you can use my time, my skills, my brain, my body, go ahead. Everything I have is yours.’ This is the mechanism of mating, of pair bonding, and you do it in order to make the best life possible together. That’s hardwired into women. This holds true for Robinson’s wife and for the other women, even those involved in the S-and-M world.

  “The latter group wants to walk hand in hand with danger. That’s the highest tightrope you can be on, the biggest thrill. It’s like going to Las Vegas and putting all your money down on one roll of the dice. The risk is that you’ll lose it, but it’s no fun if you don’t bet all of it. Being with a dangerous man is the highest thrill. And the more damaged and unstable you are, the more you will seek the highest thrill of self-endangerment. If a man can understand having all that sexual aggression and all the violent impulses that men sometimes express—but not using those things against women—then maybe he can understand how a woman could put herself in danger but not think that something will go wrong.

  “There’s a denial at work here, of course, and that’s what enables you to take the risk. The denial comes from our relationship with the life force. That’s a very large thing with women—that fundamental connection to giving and nurturing life itself. Some women over-rely on it when they are in very bad relationships. They say to themselves, ‘Something bad won’t happen to me. I will be saved.’ They go into these things knowing they’re putting themselves on the line, but they will somehow be protected and come out of it. The only thing that can really save any of them is their own decision to get out of these circumstances.”

  Says another woman who has engaged in cyber-sex, “For many women, fooling around on the Net is about power. You can create the fantasy and carry it out and stay in control of the situation. You can use your sexuality to have power over the man, but you can do it in the safety and privacy of your home. You don’t actually have to be there with him. You don’t have to have anyone lying on top of you, doing something you might not like. And if it gets to be too much, you can just log off and it’s over. No questions asked.”

  Says another woman who’s flirted in chat rooms, “Many, many women have been in relations
hips they knew were not quite right, because they wanted to be supported or helped out financially. Money caused them to go along with things they never would have otherwise.”

  Robinson was in some ways like a pimp with a stable of women both on-line and off. In the world of prostitution, a pimp has to assess each of his women’s needs and vulnerabilities. Some have to be supplied with the drug of their choice. Others crave an emotional fix and to be told how much someone cares for them. Still others respond most deeply to fear. One way or another, the man must psychologically pinpoint the core desires and fulfill them to keep everything functional and running smoothly. The pimp’s role requires innate intelligence, flexibility, resourcefulness, and a peculiar sensitivity to women. The police believed that Robinson had been involved with prostitution in the 1980s, and he now seemed to be transferring those skills to other realms. In the nineties, he was a father figure to some women, a lover to others, a husband to his wife, and even played the part of a fiancé. Virtually any need he saw in the women around him, he was both anxious and able to fill.

  Robinson met a woman from Tennessee in a chat room and offered her a position working with computers at his new company, Specialty Publications. She was more interested in pursuing a personal relationship with the “Slavemaster” than she was in taking the job. He had her sign a slave contract, and one of his demands was that she turn over to him about $17,000, including all the money that over the years she’d placed into an individual retirement account. She made a check out to Specialty Publications and he promised to reinvest her money, but she never saw the funds again. Later, when she questioned him about this and eventually tried to get her money back, Robinson ignored her inquiries and demands.