Confessions of a Sociopath (30 page)

Morgan couldn’t recover. I was winning by too great a margin for her to remain interested in playing the game. I tried to alleviate her nervousness in the same way you’d try to calm an overexcited animal or child—making slow movements, explaining what you are doing, assuring her that there’s nothing to worry about and no harm will come. There was a certain amount of condescension in it, an active effort to shame her into seeing how ridiculous it was to be scared of little ole me. The whole thing was a lot of work. I made things worse by getting increasingly disgusted by how weak and afraid she was. One afternoon, she canceled her dinner plans with me, and I could see that it was for no other reason than that I made her nervous. I sat in her office, staring at her with motionless judgment, unable to let myself let her off the hook. It was too satisfying for me to feed her masochism. I pushed the shame tactic too hard, and she stopped speaking to me. I can’t remember what in particular I did that ended it. Maybe I implied that she was worthless and teased her about the poor quality of her
skin. I was genuinely surprised that she wanted to end things, but I shouldn’t have been—I had inadvertently made it more appealing to forfeit than to surrender.

I knew I had only one chance to get her back, so I let things cool off for a couple of months before I sent her a seemingly heartfelt but factually insincere e-mail confessing my love and apologies. The apologies were profuse but vague, so that she could apply them to whatever thing she perceived I had done to wrong her. The love was dripping with honey-hued affirmation. I named all the things that I admired about her, or rather, the things that she hoped to have admired. I was sure to include confessions of my own “vulnerabilities,” that I thought about her every day—though I thought about her almost every day as a lost object I needed to reclaim. In the e-mail, I said that I loved her several times and made sure to use the past tense, because I wanted her to feel regret for something she didn’t even know she had. There isn’t anything more crushing than lost love, and there are few more compelling motives than to recapture it. Because she never knew I loved her, and because I didn’t, she never even got to savor it. At the end, I threw in a few mild recriminations disguised as insecurities (she made me feel abandoned and bereft) and suggestions that things would be different were we to reunite (though I claimed I had no reason to believe or hope that we would). It was an effective e-mail.

A few weeks later, I heard back from her. She had received my e-mail while on an island vacation with a new girlfriend, the arrival and discussion of which precipitated a minor spat and then a breakup. It gave me satisfaction to know that thoughts of me plagued her while she lay on the beach with her lover. When she came back, we took up again. Her self-devouring weakness hadn’t gone away but seemed to have
grown exponentially. She wanted more and more hurt from me, and because I was sufficiently disgusted with her and wanted to oblige her wishes, I was happy to deliver.

After a few months we drifted apart. Morgan quit or was fired from her job and fell into an abyss of eating disorders and substance abuse. I was shocked by how quickly she fell from excelling in her career as a successful trial attorney to jobless dysfunction—it was really only a matter of months. It’s a wonder that she’s still alive. I cannot take all of the credit for this extreme decline. It was inevitable in her life, due to her desire to be abused. She has almost managed to kill herself so many times you would think she would have succeeded by now if she really set her mind to it. But I guess if she died she would lose any further opportunities to suffer, and the prospect of experiencing more vast and varying shades of pain is what keeps her alive. I guess that made our relationship mutually positive: She wanted to be hurt and I liked to hurt and watch her sink further into depravity. I was only sated when she hit absolute bottom.

I still see her sometimes, but the thrill of the chase disappeared a long time ago. I never loved her of course, but she loves me in her twisted way. I made her believe that I understood needs and desires that she had kept hidden from most everyone else out of fear and shame, that I looked at everything about her and wasn’t scared of what I found. It’s true that I did. People always say to be careful not to confuse sex and love, but I think they should be more wary of confusing love and understanding. I can read every word of your soul, become deeply engrossed in the study of it until I’ve comprehended every nuance and detail. But then when I’m done, I’ll discard it as easily as if it were a newspaper, shaking my head at how
the ink has stained my fingers gray. My desire to know every layer of you isn’t feigned, but interest isn’t love, and I make no promises of forever. Perhaps I do every so often, but you have no business believing me.

One of the manifestations of sociopathy in me is an ambivalence in regards to sex and sexual orientation. Sociopaths are unusually impressionable, very flexible with their own sense of self. Because we don’t have a rigid self-image or worldview, we don’t observe social norms, we don’t have a moral compass, and we have a fluid definition of right and wrong. We can also be shape-shifters, smooth-talking and charming. We do not have an established default position on anything. We do not have anything that we would call conviction. This extends, at least in some degree, to our sexuality.

Indeed, the characteristic of asexuality or sexual ambiguity is noted as one of the symptoms of sociopathy under many of the diagnostic criteria. For example, Cleckley’s criteria for psychopathy include sex lives that are “impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated.” I would say that this accurately describes mine. But I feel pretty okay about it.

A friend tells me that what she dislikes the most about my religious values is the ban on premarital sex. Of course I still manage to do a lot of things, but she worries that because sex is so much fun, it’s a shame for me to be missing out on any of it. She’s a deeply emotional person, though, and I am not at all. I can’t help but think the emotional component of sex for her is what makes it so great, whereas the emotional connection I have from physical intimacy is roughly the same as I have while eating junk food (cheeseburgers are great, too!). This is
true even when I am in a serious relationship. And because it’s that way with me, being physical with someone is pretty fun, but it doesn’t mean anything to me in the way it
means
things to other people, and it never leads to tears (for me). This is also why seduction for me is more about the chase and less about the final act.

My lovers, if you can call them that, can sometimes be put off by this nonchalant attitude. I am shockingly comfortable with my body, which I think is a turn-on for a lot of people. I try not to be too reckless, but my indiscretion with things like nude photos must seem unusual since I’m neither a stupid teenager nor a drug-addled stripper. But then again, I have always related better to people who feel they have nothing to lose. Once it becomes clear that I just have no sense of shame or emotional attachment to physical intimacy, though, I suspect I just seem damaged, in the way of teenagers and strippers, or women with sexual hang-ups or abuse in their background. If anything, you would think that my religious beliefs would have encouraged me to think of sex as a special communion of souls, rather than the emotional equivalent of a massage.

My cavalier attitude toward sex extends to my choice of gender in partners. I was not always sexually attracted to women. I was always open to it, always was attracted to certain people for their strength or for their unique worldview, but I didn’t feel much of a sexual pull to members of my own sex—not at first. As an adult I realized that there was such pleasure to be had in expanding my horizons, so to speak, and certainly no point in making fine distinctions based on the equipment people were born with. So I trained myself. I started incorporating members of the same sex into my fantasies, substituting women for men gradually more and more until I could have
a completely same-sex fantasy. Now same-sex attraction is second nature to me, and I am very satisfied with the expansion of my opportunities.

As a sociopath, I feel I have no particular sexual identity. Even the term
bisexual
is misleading as it implies some sort of preference. I think
equal opportunity
is a more apt label in that I see no reason to discriminate. In fact, I like to think of the sociopath as the bonobo of the human world—engaging in frequent, casual, utilitarian sex. I believe that ambiguous sexuality is one of the best identifying traits of a sociopath.

In fact, early in its history as a psychological disorder, sociopathy was thought to be connected to homosexuality or other “abnormal” sexual behaviors. The original
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
, released by the American Psychiatric Association in 1952, listed homosexuality as a sociopathic personality disturbance. By the second
DSM
, the link between sociopathy and homosexuality was abandoned, and homosexuality was removed completely as a mental disorder from the third
DSM
.

In later editions of his book, Cleckley criticized this early association of psychopathy with homosexuality, arguing that homosexual tendencies, “though of course occurring in psychopaths, are not sufficiently common to be regarded as characteristic.” However, he also acknowledged that “[t]he real homosexual seeking an outlet for his own impulses often finds it possible to engage the psychopath in deviated activities, sometimes for petty rewards, sometimes for what might best be called just the hell of it.” Cleckley related several stories of sociopaths engaged in homosexual acts, like Anna, and the story of this wealthy young scion, for whom “any idea that he might be a homosexual seemed absurd”:

Upon being confronted with his crime, the young man laughed it off, remarking, “boys will be boys.”

Even though ambiguous sexuality doesn’t appear in any of the diagnostic criteria, I find it is much more useful as a litmus test for sociopathy than some of the more publicized traits. I have met many sociopaths, in person and from my blog, who all seem to swing both (or any number of) ways: anarchist ex-cons acquitted on a technicality; big macho, married black guys; ruthless Asian American entrepreneurs; fellow academics; impoverished soldiers. In fact, I can’t think of a single sociopath I have met in person or online who has denied having same-sex experiences. This leads me to believe that this is one
of sociopathy’s most consistently present traits. In fact, I rely on it more than any other one trait in making my own opinion about who is and is not a sociopath.

Surprisingly, there are a good number of sociopath wannabes who frequent my blog. I guess it is because sociopaths are often portrayed as ruthless, efficient, and powerful—all desirable attributes to a great number of people both ordinary and deviant. Visitors to my blog sometimes write to me asking whether I think they are sociopathic. I often probe the sexuality issue. I make fun of them a bit. Maybe I ask them how many same-sex partners they have had, as if I was just waiting to insult them. If they turn squeamish or defensive, I usually discount all of the other evidence indicating that they are sociopathic. Usually a sociopath wouldn’t be offended about a challenge to his masculinity or her femininity, since he or she isn’t particularly invested in the cultural norms that draw bright lines around gender roles.

Sexual ambidexterity, although not indicated often in clinical literature, is frequently a feature of fictional sociopaths. The very talented Tom Ripley is bisexual, as is the Joker from
Batman
(depending on who writes him). Real-life examples of murderous bisexuals are Leopold and Loeb, lovers famous for attempting to adopt the Nietzschean concept of Übermensch morality in committing the senseless murder of a young boy, immortalized in the Hitchcock thriller
Rope
. Fictional depictions of vampires, those allegorical sociopaths, often contain prominent allusions to a flexible sexuality, with lesbian vampires being so common that it is almost canonical for mythic vampirism.

An interesting example of a celebrity whose sex life seems to fit the sociopathic mold is Sir Laurence Olivier, who, although married three times, also had many male interests.
One of his male lovers explained: “He’s like a blank page and he’ll be whatever you want him to be. He’ll wait for you to give him a cue, and then he’ll try to be that sort of person.” Olivier may not have been a sociopath, but he illustrates well how a person with a weak sense of self, fully occupied with the stunningly accurate enactment of many other selves, could himself have an amorphous sexual identity.

So it was easy to want to seduce Morgan, who resembled me enough that she could have been a role I had played in another life. But although I love myself, I would never have considered the possibility of loving Morgan. She was always a target for me. Seduction is about reminding myself of my own desirability, not about increasing my acquisitions. It is the fuel I feed my own self-love.