Jeff Dahmer and Me

My wife and I found ourselves on the couch watching TV one night, and we were both very tired, so we fell asleep. I woke up hours later, and trying not to disturb her as she was still asleep, I went about doing some things around the house. When I came back around, she was watching a show about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and said she thought that I should watch this. So I sat back down and started watching (She rewound it to the beginning since we have a DVR). It was interesting and fascinating to see the horrors of what a person is truly capable of. I was fascinated that is, until the interview scenes with Dahmer. Nancy Glass, a TV reporter, interviewed Dahmer and the answers he gave her made my inside shiver. Because they were so horrendous? No. Because I knew what he was saying and could identify exactly with his thoughts. I could almost say the words before he had a chance to speak them.

Did that scare the shit out of me? You bet it did. A kind of kick to the gut. Here is a convicted serial killer who murdered 17 people in a brutal, grizzly fashion and I'm sitting there listening to it and understanding - really understanding - what it is he is saying. For instance:

Mrs.Glass asked Dahmer what he wanted form the men he picked up, to which he replied"I had these obsessive desires and thoughts wanting to control them. To..uh...I don't know how to put it...posses them permanently." Did I want to "posses these prostitutes permanently"? No, but I did want control. This was the first red flag.

Another quote of Dahmer's regarding how he became what he was: "It's a process. It doesn't happen overnight. When you depersonalize another person and view them as just an object for pleasure instead of a living breathing human being, it seems to make it easier to do things you shouldn't do."

Did I depersonalize the women I went to? Yes. Not only that, but my raging thoughts were of total control over them, almost to the point of forced rape. These things were kept to my mind and I never hurt anyone physically. My point is, I shared some of the same thoughts as a convicted serial killer. That gave me pause to stop and think about how close I might have been to becoming something like a dahmer, or maybe worse? Red flag number two.

When speaking about if he felt repulsed after he committed a crime he replied "No, at the time it was almost addictive. A surge of energy. I wouldn't have to worry about any of their needs or anything. I had complete control over the situation."

My own mind raged with control. To control a worthless nobody (prostitute) and make them feel like a puppet that had no control over their own lives at the time was my goal. I needed to exude power over another. But not just anyone, over someone I didn't know and didn't care about. They were simply tools to use as I wished, at least in my mind they were. Red flag number three.

Spouses: You might ask yourself "Why didn't they ever touch me? What was wrong with me? Nothing. There was nothing wrong with you. What they needed was a nobody. A blank. Someone who they cared nothing about and could visit the rage and anger held inside them freely upon these women without fear of being thought of as a pervert or nut job. They couldn't do that around you. They loved you too much to think of you as a nothing.

People will ask of SA's if there was a time you asked yourself "Didn't you ever think to yourself that what you were doing was wrong and grotesque?" I'm guessing most will reply "Certainly, but that didn't stop us. It wasn't enough to stop us from doing what we were doing".

Here is Dahmer's response to that same question: "There were times {I thought it was grotesque} but the compulsive obsession of doing what I was doing overpowered any feelings of revulsion." Red flag number four.

The same basic thought patterns exist in both him and I, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say any SA who has a history of being molested at an early age. To that point, what about Dahmer? Was he molested? An interesting thing happens on this point:

Dahmer, in the interview, vehemently denies ever being molested and actually says his early home life was almost idealistic. This is in stark contrast to his own father, Lionel, who says that his son was sexually abused by a neighborhood boy when Dahmer was 8 years old. So who is telling the truth here? I'm positive in my own mind the father is correct. Dahmer simply didn't know, didn't accept, or simply repressed the memories of it. Is this alone reason to become a murder machine? No. But the signs were all there in his youth. The problem seems to be the parents were on their own planet. His mother was psychotic and never touched her son physically except to change his diapers. His parents were at each others throats most of the time, culminating in their divorce in 1978 that left him alone almost all the time. He developed feelings of abandonment and I believe this is the time he developed a need to keep lovers with him forever. He experimented later in life with making "zombies" of his victims by doing a home-lobotomy type procedure with drills and hot water. This way, his victims would never leave him like his parents did when he was young.

There is many, many more parallels in his thoughts between he and I. I must admit I was pretty upset watching the interviews with Dahmer. It's not everyday you're made to feel like you have a lot in common with a serial killer. Had you asked me prior to D-Day if I had much in common with a serial killer, I would have said "Yes, certainly" and really believed it. Problem is, it wouldn't have bothered me like it should. It would have been just another statement of how horrible I was. Now, it scares the shit out of me to listen to Dahmer talk. Maybe people might hear him, but they will never understand his thoughts the way I do. And probably the people who are out there like me, who did what I did and felt the way I did, they understand too. And it probably scares the shit out of them as well.

Click here for the interviews with Dahmer.