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| John Backderf via CNN |
Leo Crowley went to my high school. I hope he isn't talking about me in this piece about potential serial killers we all knew in school, because if so he is so fucking dead when I get my hands on him.
In my ongoing attempt to read the entire internet, I stumbled across this article, My Friend Dahmer yesterday. That's the only explanation I can offer for having read an article on CNN's blogs page. For those of you who lack the attention span to follow the link (pretty much all of you), it's an article bout John Backderf, aka Derf, a somewhat famous comic strip writer who happened to be high school chums with the much more famous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, a profession only slightly less respectable than "comic strip writer." The headline and the subject matter piqued my interest, and it's always thrilling to live vicariously through someone else's brush with depravity, right? But one quote in particular set my mind a'spinning:
"It didn’t surprise me that he became a serial killer, but he wasn’t my first choice from our class. When I heard the news that a classmate was accused of being a serial killer, Dahmer was my second guess in terms of classmates."
Whoa. This cat went to high school with a necrophiliac cannibal serial rapist/killer, yet Dahmer was his second guess? Who was dude's biology lab partner, Rick Santorum? But then I started thinking, which of my high school classmates would I have fingered as would-be serial killers? At first, I came up empty. Growing up in a Wonder Bread suburb of Boston in the 90s, I was prone to view the "outsiders" in my school as soon-to-be millionaires. In a culture of conformity ("Culture of Conformity" has to be the title of at least 20 shitty hardcore songs, amiright?), the outsiders were, in my mind, the most sane. Of course I was the type of whiny pussy who wore his long hair in a bun held in place by a scrunchy I sewed myself and spent many a night alone in my bedroom listening to the Doors/Nirvana/the Smiths (JK, I wish I was that cool) dreaming about having a life so painful that I'd need a heroin addiction just to make it through the day. So my perspective is more than a bit suspect.
While fumbling through these hazy memories of lunchroom antics and pep rally fervor, it suddenly struck me! In a flash I realized who the Silver Lake Serial Killer Class of '94 was! It was Colt Gonson (name changed to protect the identity of a person who is no doubt an insurance salesman married with 2.5 kids, but more so to protect me from becoming his next victim).
As Derf says about Dahmer, "We sat together in the Cafeteria, he was my lab partner....He didn't have a lot of friends and he wasn't one of my close friends..." That pretty much sums up my relationship with Colt. We weren't exactly friends, but he existed in my social sphere. We were "friends" in a manner that is typical of a small town school. We attended the same social events, we were in the same classes, we probably high-fived one another in the hallway and played Sega NHL against one another once or twice.
Colt was Ken Doll handsome. His teeth were extremely white. His skin always looked tan. He was fit. In a school where soccer reigned supreme, he was a varsity forward. The collars on his pink polo shirts were always popped. He could have been the generic asshole in a John Hughes film, except he was always smiling. A big goofy smile that never touched his eyes. I never trusted that damn smile.
Still, he possessed all of the traits that should have made him a chick magnet/most popular man about town. But he wasn't. He wasn't unpopular, but pretty much everyone held him at arm's length. He never got along with the ladies, they'd refer to him as "creepy." He was prone to making remarks, that to my ears sounded like someone pretending to be human. His humor, a social device I often use as a yardstick for measuring individuals, was at times misogynistic, off-putting, and incomprehensible. I remember one day he handed me an iced cream sandwich, looked me in the eye and told me it was from "someone else" with a spooky solemnity, before erupting into a fit of laughter. Apparently, that was a joke?
Although I was far from alone in my innate avoidance of Colt, oddly no one ever discussed the discomfort his presence created. Maybe we were all afraid of becoming a skin trophy in the secret room he no doubt had in his mother's attic.
"He was a real quiet guy," Backderf explained. "A lot of people portray him as this weakling who was picked on, but he was a big guy. He worked out with weights, and he was built like a linebacker. He was occasionally picked on a little by the jocks, but even they got wary of him. He kind of moved through the school without raising any notice from teachers. I don’t think any of the adults noticed him, despite how shocking his behavior was. He was able to sink into the shadows, but we noticed him in the way that kids often see things adults don’t see."
That sounds a lot like Colt. It probably sounds like a lot of people you went to school with too, right? Thank god we have blogs now to keep all the real social misfits distracted.
-LEO CROWLEY
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11 comments:
Don't remember who mine was, although I'm sure there were a few. What's that they say though, if you don't remember who the potential serial killer candidate in your high school is then it was probably you?
Had this one friend "Jerry" around age 12,13 who was weird, adopted & lied about shit constantly. Also talked about his parents (the ones who adopted him) having sex all the time. Multiple times walking down the street with "Jerry" he'd pick up a rock and smash a car window, at like noon on a Saturday in the middle of a neighborhood. Ran up to this dude waxing his car and threw a handful of sand on the car. Dude chased & caught him and kicked his ass. I ran the other way. Fuck that shit. Another time we were heading in to the "woods" where we "drank" and this homeless guy that bought us beer was there naked, just chilling. Was like "hey guys (it was all dudes btw) let's all get naked like we used to in the 70s". Weird & bad, no doubt. "Jerry" was like "let's kill this guy, he's homeless & he's faggot, we have to kill him". Anyway, we didn't kill him but sortof threatened to kill him if he came back. So yeah, "Jerry" was my top serial killer bro from way back.
Woh, are you sure the serial killer wasn't naked party bro in the woods? Or maybe Jerry was in on it.
Some weird shit went down in those woods. Got chased by a helicopter with a spotlight one time. There was this one area with a glowing stream/cave deal. Every bird I felt up in there immediately turned into a frumpy blob. Trippy magic shit.
Yeah man, the woods were magic in my day. Where all boners were birthed loose upon the world. Do kids still go to the woods?
i've spent my time in the woods, but this anonymous guy/gal is obviously the ptsotl serial killer!
always figured my downstairs neighbor to be likely to kill someone. just has that dead look in his eyes like the craigslist killer guy or something. like there's no one there. anyway, he moved to cali. phew.
Is it racist and sexist to immediately eliminate anyone who isn't white and male from my potential serial killer list?
@James Probably but I'd say it's fair game.
@Mustard Was the dude blasting 90s era Boston-based girl-fronted power pop at all hours by any chance?
LULZ. comb-over, etc.
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