Confessions of a Sociopath (16 page)

“Thomas! You may have noticed that you received an F. I didn’t even look at your paper, so next time you can save your mommy some time and either come in and turn in your work yourself or don’t bother turning it in at all.” I was instantly angry, but it quickly chilled.

“Screw you, fat man,” I calmly retorted, and minutes later was waiting my turn in the principal’s office.

From that time on we’d engaged in a low-grade power struggle. I wanted to take him down, and since he had such a bad reputation, the easiest way was just to create a paper trail of his inappropriate behavior. I started taking detailed notes of things he said and did in class that were even remotely questionable. I made friends with girls in my class, planting in their heads the total inappropriateness of even some of his more innocuous behavior. He wasn’t that bad a guy, really. He was just old and a bit of a natural chauvinist in the way that men born before 1950 typically are. When we would take quizzes, he would project them up on the board and have everyone move forward, ostensibly so people in the back could see better. He always had the first row move their seats all the way up to touch his desk, and in that row just happened to be a girl who frequently wore the revealing spandex of a dancer. I started a rumor that he had us move like this to get a better view of her ample cleavage. It was a very
plausible story, particularly with the way his face frequently contorted into what looked like a leer. It may have actually been true. In any case, it made good gossip and was accepted as truth shortly after it got started.

That rumor itself was not enough. Nor was it enough when I finally goaded him into making a lewd and demeaning comment about my breasts. The class was talking about a recent music department production.

“How did you like my solo?” I sneered after listening to him go on about everyone else in the class.

“Thomas! You have no class! Up there onstage, flopping all around, letting it all hang out. Not like these other girls,” he said, gesturing to the dancer in front of him. I think he was trying to turn the class against me, but unfortunately for him I had gotten to them first. He didn’t hurt my feelings; he had finally, unequivocally, overstepped the student-teacher boundary in front of witnesses.

After class I asked the dancer if she felt uncomfortable about his thinly veiled harassment. I was the picture of worried concern. She was touched by my sincerity. Yes, she had heard the rumor I started about her and this teacher (unaware that I was the one who started it). Yes, it did bother her. I was the sympathetic ear. She confessed all of her discomfort and I not only listened, I validated and fed the flame of her distress.

I used his behavior that day to paint him as out of control. I needed her to be afraid of him. I needed her to be one of the other voices raised in condemnation against him. I told her that we had to stop him before it got any worse. I told her that I was thinking of filing an official complaint against him for sexual harassment and asked if she would be willing to verify my story if necessary. I made it seem as if her participation would probably not be necessary, based on numerous
contingencies, so she agreed. She would soon find out that she would be my star witness.

When I got home I told my mother about what had happened in class—strictly the facts, nothing about our power struggle or my preparations to get him fired. I told her about how “violated” I felt and about how I was not the only girl toward whom he had behaved in this way. I knew my mother felt bad about all of the times growing up that she had failed me, so she’d be inclined to help here. I told her I had found out that you make sexual harassment claims against teachers directly with the school district. Would she like to come with me to the district office the next morning to start the paperwork? My father was completely opposed to the idea, which I think made it all the more appealing to my mother.

I gave my statement and enlisted a small cadre of loyalists to paint him in as bad a light as they could. He was supervised for several weeks. There was always someone else with him whenever he was on campus, I noticed with delight. Officially he received a “strike,” an official censure; unofficially I believe he was forced into early retirement and had to give up his position as head of the English department, which to me was success. I was never one to be greedy or get caught up in the “principle of the thing.” I wasn’t trying to get him fired to protect future generations of vulnerable young girls. I was trying to get him fired to show him that he was vulnerable, and to me, a helpless little girl.

Still, it was a good lesson in the limits of the formal justice system, one that I would face again shortly in law school. This was not the only time I tangled with a teacher, but no matter what I did and to whom I reported them, none were ever fired or even removed from their positions. And while I gained the satisfaction of causing them pain, I garnered a reputation for
making trouble. Maybe I lied, cheated, and bullied in order to achieve their destruction, but it was nonetheless true that they were bad teachers who should not have been allowed around kids. One teacher was an idiot who favored the popular kids over the unpopular ones, ignoring their talent in order to bask in the social acceptance that he never received when he was a student in high school himself. Another was sexually obsessed with his students and paid special lascivious attention to the ones with large breasts (including me) and low self-esteem (not including me). I wasn’t doing a public service in trying to ruin them. I just couldn’t stand that such unfit people could have authority over me. And that was the double injustice of being a young sociopath and a girl, too.

I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I attended church from infancy with my family, and I continue to be a practicing Mormon. Some people will find this hypocritical or will assume that my religious community will shun me if I am discovered to be a sociopath. They cannot fathom how I can negotiate my faith being who I am. But these people misunderstand the essential nature of Mormon beliefs, which is that we are all sons and daughters of a loving God who only wants our eternal progression and happiness. Mormons believe that everyone has the potential to be godlike, to be a creator of worlds. (This makes the LDS church a sociopath’s dream; it’s a belief that’s well suited to my own megalomaniacal sense of divine destiny.) I believe that “everyone” includes me. And because every being is capable of salvation, I can only conclude that my actions are what matter—not my emotional deficits, not my ruthless thoughts, and not my nefarious motivations. My own adherence to the standards of the church, despite their frequent conflict with my nature, is proof that the teachings of the gospel are for everyone—every
nation, kindred, tongue, and people. I like the idea that there is a creator of all things, including sociopaths. I like having a check on my behavior, a reason for being a good sociopath. And I like the reward for good behavior—the feeling of elation and otherworldliness inherent in prayer, song, and religious devotion.

The church is especially well suited to me, because its rules and standards are very explicit. Throughout my childhood, I was able to make up for my inability to intuit social norms by following the church’s clear set of expectations and guidelines—from detailed lessons on chastity to small pamphlets with handy bullet-pointed rules about what to wear, whom and how to date, what not to watch or listen to, and how much money to give to the church. I liked that these things were written down. I don’t mean to imply that the Mormon church was actually okay with whatever I did as long as I didn’t drink Coke, was abstinent, and tithed. I’m sure the church meant these things merely as guidelines and not as safe-harbor provisions, but having them stated so explicitly helped me to blend in with everyone else.

I was watching television recently, one of these mystery dramas in which the main story arc over the entire season involves people trying to figure out who killed the main character. After many episodes of intrigue and bad behavior, one of the characters remarks in exasperation, “I’m having a hard time figuring out who’s evil and who’s just naughty.” Is there a distinction between being naughty and being evil? Who deserves mercy, and who is beyond hope?

I never felt like I was evil. I was taught in church that I am a child of God. I also read the Old Testament. There is a story
in Kings where God has forty-two children dismembered by she-bears for insulting the prophet Elisha. It was not much of a stretch to believe that that God was my father.

And who doesn’t have flaws? When it counts, most of us think we are basically good people. In Dan Ariely’s book
The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty
, he describes how the gift shop at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was the victim of rampant embezzlement, mainly by elderly volunteers manning an unsecured cash drawer. Interestingly, there wasn’t one person who was stealing tons, but many people stole just a little. Everybody cheats, and if you stay within the realm of what everybody does then you can (apparently) maintain the good image you have of yourself.

In our discussions on religion, my summer intern office mate who diagnosed me would argue that the Christian concept of sin is a state of being, not certain actions. We are all “sinners” and, simultaneously, we are all “saved.” She thinks that evil, “if it has any meaning at all, means more than just ‘I did this right today and I did that wrong today.’ ” According to her, evil doesn’t lie in whether you drink caffeine or whether you do the right number of rosaries. It’s different in quality from the notion of “transgressions.”

Perhaps that is true, and perhaps that is why in the age of “reformed” religion, where the emphasis is more on “saved” than “sinners,” none of those volunteering seniors saw their minor pilfering as evidence of their own inherently evil nature. Where those boundaries lie between being good, being good enough, and being bad is not clear. If modern Lady Justice is blind, it appears it is a selective blindness that is willing to overlook “normal” transgressions that normal people participate in and to readily condemn “abnormal” transgressions that people like me may be predisposed to commit.

I remember one of my first, formative experiences with justice. I have always loved to read. I could spend the entire day reading. When I was young, my parents were always giving us chores to keep us busy and away from the television, but if they saw that I was reading, they would just leave me alone. One summer—I must have been around seven or eight—I would go in the morning with my father to his office, then walk the few blocks to the local library and spend the day there tucked between the stacks.

It was amazing to me that you could check out books for free. It seemed like a scam, and even at that young age I was helplessly attracted to scams. I had gotten to know the librarians, and I tried to convince them that I was such an avid reader, they really should lift the ten-book restriction from my library card. When they told me they couldn’t, I just stole my siblings’ and parents’ cards and loaded up on dozens of books, ostensibly for them. I was so pleased with how well my scheme was going, I lost focus on the reading and fixated on acquiring more and more books. I didn’t want to return them. That would be completely counterproductive. Instead I hoarded them in my room. They were the spoils of my successful intrigue against the unsuspecting librarians, and now there was nothing they could do to stop me.

Maybe a month later, we got several envelopes in the mail from the library addressed to me, my siblings, and my parents. Everyone had overdue library books and the fines were quickly racking up. It didn’t take long for my parents to identify me as the culprit. I hadn’t understood that the library actually had an enforcement provision to get people to comply with their rules.

My parents weren’t mad. I think they just chalked it up to my being so overeager about reading that I had bitten off more than I could chew. They made vague references to how I
would have to do chores to earn the money. Doing the dishes one hundred times at fifty cents apiece didn’t appeal to me, and it didn’t seem really right that I should have to do that for what I felt was essentially an honest mistake (honest in the sense that I thought the rules of the game I was playing were one thing and they turned out to be another). I was sure this couldn’t be the end of my scheme, so I tried one more thing.

“Can’t you just write them a check?” I asked my father. I had seen him write checks for things before. I knew what money was, and checks seemed to be something that substituted for money when necessary—like this magical reprieve from having to use cash. My dad had to explain that it’s still your money, but the bank simply keeps it for you. I was stuck. My seven-year-old brain couldn’t think of any other ways to spin this, except maybe to ask for a dollar for every round of dishes. This was just how justice worked: there are rules and consequences, and if you break the rules you suffer the consequences.

When I say this was one of my first experiences with justice, I should explain. I had been punished before, but there was always an element of moral condemnation in punishments that didn’t make sense to me, so I largely just ignored them as being an unpredictable cost of living life as a child. The library book situation was something new. My parents were not mad at me. There was no moral condemnation. And paying a fine seemed a reasonable consequence of not returning the library books on time. If I had to pay fines, everyone had to pay fines, which meant that books would circulate faster and I would have a better shot of checking out some of the more popular and desirable books. This sort of justice made sense to me in a way that moral judgments never did.

I was also fine with justice because I understood the flip
side: if you do particular good things, you get particular good rewards. Mormon doctrine has a scripture: “There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.” Skeptics may question the objective truthfulness of this statement, but when your parents and everyone else around you believe it is true, it is easy to play the justice card to get justly rewarded for your good exploits.