Confessions of a Sociopath (31 page)

I see relationships with people in terms of possessions or exploits. Like the Greeks and their many words for love, I have my own brand of feelings and behaviors for both groups. The former is typically reserved for my family or people whom I call friends. For these people—possessions—I have a sensation of ownership. Also gratitude.

The latter—exploits—is for my seduction or other romantic interests. Seduction has traditionally been an all-or-nothing endeavor; at least I can’t really control it. Seductions are like wildfires: I only get to choose the beginnings and then they take on a life of their own or flame out. So I don’t typically do them with people I hope to keep around for longer than a few months. For the exploits, the pleasure is in gaining and exercising influence over them. I am never infatuated with my possessions, but I am with my exploits. And I can feel possessive of my exploits. I pursue them because they give me a thrill. Will I
win them over? What might that look like? Success is valuable only to the extent that it is evidence of my power. As one blog reader said, “There really is nothing more amusing or exciting or fun than turning a smart, beautiful, resourceful person into a personal plaything.” It is a game, but I am not necessarily interested in the spoils so much as the maneuvering.

The distinction is well illustrated by the literary character Estella, from Charles Dickens’s
Great Expectations
. Miss Havisham raises Estella to break men’s hearts in a form of vengeance for being jilted at the altar, and Estella willingly does so with everyone but the protagonist, Pip, who is in love with Estella. Pip notices that Estella does not actively attempt to seduce him like she does with other men. He complains, and she reprimands him:

Like Estella, I do not seduce my possessions because I don’t want to lose respect for them and because that would be unsustainable long-term. As one blog reader wrote:

I have had a few relationships that have begun as seductions and morphed into something more serious. My last boyfriend
was like that, but due to the way the relationship started, he never could be satisfied that he knew the “real” me.

Both possessions and exploits get to see a special side of me that I do not bother to show others. Sociopaths often have a genius for adoring. Not all sociopaths care to use their talents so generously, and even when they do they can be possessive and fickle—devoting themselves to a relationship as long as they feel in control or benefited, but once they get bored or annoyed they’re gone. Still, when we’re trying, our understanding of your wants and needs matched with our charm and flexible personality means that we can and will literally become the man or woman of your dreams. In fact, when I love, my first step is to gather as much information as possible about every aspect of the person’s life in order to more closely resemble their ideal mate. As one blog reader noted, it can become an addiction:

The closest analogue to a sociopath’s love is probably the love of a child: intense, accepting, selfish. And finally, like a child, the sociopath will be extremely loyal. A sociopath will never put you above himself, but if you’re worth it to him he will readily put you above all others. I confirmed this with my friend, that with regard to being friends with a sociopath, “the pros outweigh the cons.”

This is not to say that my loved ones do not know who I am; most of them know me intimately and are well aware of the particular attributes that set me apart from them and
most of humanity. In fact, many of the people dearest to me are extreme empaths, individuals who—with full knowledge of the tiny blackness of my heart—cannot help but place their soft, fragile hearts in my care. I reciprocate with my own brand of acceptance and devotion. I’ve learned how to do the things that constitute being generous and kind. It’s the ones I love most who are able to see how hard I try.

There’s nothing wrong with the way I approach romantic relationships, but there’s something not quite right about it either. But I guess it also depends on whom you ask. One night, I strangled my “date” in my car. We were returning from dinner, parked on the street outside of my apartment. It was late, and I remember the quiet darkness, punctuated by the brilliant headlights of passing cars. We had talked before about sexual domination, and so by then I felt I had implicit permission to bruise and strike, which is to say that I was reasonably certain that there would be no retaliation for my violence. But I had waited to act. Waited until the time was right, until that moment when I turned off the engine and hesitated. She had reached immediately for her door handle but stopped at my hesitation. I turned toward her and could see the question in her eyes; were we about to kiss?

I slapped first—hard across her face so that I could feel the memory of high, sharp cheekbone on the palm of my hand for several seconds afterward. I could see the shock flash across her face, then turn into fear, finally settling into a soft understanding, and then an open and hungry desire. She later told me that she did not feel out of control until I wrapped my hands around her neck and began to squeeze, because she knew that I was strong enough to really hurt or kill her. She said though that she trusted I wouldn’t hurt her and therefore felt adored. I wonder if this is the kind of thing that all
masochistic empaths feel. If it is, a great number of people would live in silent dissatisfaction if there were no sociopaths to smack them around once in a while. She seemed to enjoy the experience even more than I did.

Her neck is beautifully long, narrow, and muscular, and especially with her short hair, I could get my hands around it with amazing ease. I might have killed her if I thought there would have been no consequences, but there were a myriad of reasons for not hurting her that had nothing to do with my feelings of adoration, not least of which was her prohibiting me from doing it again. I wanted to do it again, and I would several times after that night. I have strong arms, but more important, strong fingers from years of musical training. They are adept at applying equal amounts of steadily increasing pressure, so that the sensation one has under their grasp is of an unstoppable mechanism without regard for the thing inside it.

Erotic asphyxiation is such a sitcom punch line, but people shouldn’t knock it until they’ve tried it. The man I am currently seeing chokes me from time to time. It causes a sensation of even, measured pressure—a kind of touch that is full, solid, and constant. A gradual lightheadedness descends, fluttering sensations emerge from your depths to float up to your surfaces, and there is something like euphoria.

Dating him helps me to appear normal and socially well adjusted. He is of average height and has a respectable middle-class profession. He is handsome and well built, because I would never stand to have someone with whom I am so intimately associated be otherwise. Also, I enjoy his beauty immensely. His smile appears almost as sincere as mine, and he carries himself with a physical strength and self-competence similar to that which I have always admired in myself. We see
each other several days a week, and whenever we go out, he opens doors and pays for meals and does all of the things that a gentleman would do for his lady.

In a lot of ways he looks and speaks and behaves like many of the men I have dated in the past, because I chose them to serve the same function in my life. I do not love him the way that he loves me, but that is not to say that I do not or cannot love him in my way, or that I did not love some of the men who came before him. For the most part, I treat him with kindness and generosity.

I occasionally have liaisons with men or women outside of my principal relationship. Not all of the time or as a matter of course but just when a person happens into my life whom I feel a desire to possess. I do not view these relationships as cheating, but I keep them a secret anyway to avoid drama. In my mind, any extracurricular activities would be classified as exploits, not possessions, so there’s no concern that I’ll become emotionally attached. Because they’re by their nature temporary, I don’t feel like my paramours need concern themselves with them. I understand that not everyone feels this way about relationships, so I just keep quiet. And in return for their devotion, I provide my romantic partners something they can’t seem to get from anyone else; to see a person’s hidden need and to answer it must be some form of public service. In return, they give me whatever I want—attention, adoration, money, good advice, the pleasure of their body, access to more potential targets (their friends and family), or even just someone to carry bulk food items from my car into my apartment. It’s not quite an even quid pro quo, but remarkably, no one has seemed to mind too much.

My first memory of using someone who was romantically interested in me is from kindergarten. I gained the
acquaintance of a Mexican-national kid who spoke almost no English. He had a very serious crush on me and expressed his devotion through daily gifts. My favorite gifts were shiny, decorative pencils that could be purchased out of a machine for twenty-five cents.

After he presumably ran out of quarters, he would give me little Matchbox race cars that must have come from his own toy stash. I would give them to my brothers in exchange for favors or the more desirable items out of their lunch bags. It had been weeks of this when my brother Jim told me that I should tell the Mexican kid I didn’t like him, but I didn’t see why. What kindness would that have been? I would likely lose the steady supply of toy cars and pencils and whatever else he had in store for me. And he would lose whatever mysterious thing it was that he got from me, the hope of reciprocal love or the opportunity to admire me—it was not at all clear to me. Either way, I liked his love. I liked being loved, just like anyone else.

I get something different out of everyone I am involved with, and I have a remarkable tolerance for people’s idiosyncrasies. Many years later, in the twilight of my high-powered job, I met a man whose devotion reminded me of the Mexican-national kid. He was beautiful—chiseled body and features with penetrating blue eyes and short blond curls swept forward like there should have been a laurel wreath framing them. He lived with his brother in a one-bedroom apartment with two twin beds, Ernie-and-Bert style, and had been unemployed for approximately six years. At every meal every day he ate two plain cheeseburgers from the McDonald’s half a block away from his brother’s apartment. As a result, or so he guessed, his hair was falling out, so that when we made out it would regularly end up in my mouth. He spent his days playing first-person shooter games and listening to action movie
soundtracks. He liked that I wasn’t put off by his quirks, although I did once tell him that there were only so many times I could listen to a complete summary of the plot of
K-PAX
.

I sent him a book on confronting life with Asperger’s. He had never been diagnosed, although he readily accepted my armchair diagnosis. To me it was obvious. He would talk about his frustration that relationships were “not logical or patterned” and that it would be impossible to see all of love’s “angles and perimeters.” In some ways he was my damaged twin, and that’s why I had hoped that it would work out.

Like the Mexican boy, he wore his heart on his sleeve. Unlike with the Mexican boy, I was willing to consider the possibility of a long-term relationship with him. He satisfied all of my criteria: beautiful, easygoing, nonjudgmental, malleable. But he was needy, demanding. I needed him to accept me and my needs the way I accepted him and his. Even after I was officially unemployed and didn’t have much going on, I still thought he wanted too much of my time. It was such a small point of contention, but it made all the difference in terms of keeping me happy. And I really wanted to be happy with him. He was the first person I dated seriously after fully embracing the sociopathic label. I’d had so many relationships recently fail and I wanted to believe that I could make a relationship work if I really wanted it. But I had no clue how to go about a sincere romantic relationship.

I finally decided that maybe the best way for us to understand each other was to speak our common language of rationality. I explained to him that our incentives for spending time together were misaligned. He had nothing going on in his life so he always wanted to spend time together. I didn’t feel the same way. In order for him to see my perspective on the value of my time, I told him that he should spend one hour doing
something he wouldn’t otherwise do for every hour he spent with me. I even took the time to devise an eighty-item list of optional activities, which included reading specific books I had selected for him, taking up photography, or listening to NPR. I didn’t really want him to do those things, I just wanted him to see my point of view, which was that my time was roughly twice as valuable as his.

I was surprised that he didn’t take my offer. In retrospect, I gather that his feelings were hurt by my spreadsheet. I guess I had hoped that, as a high-functioning autistic, he would regard it as an effort at saving the relationship rather than an insult to his personhood. I had hoped that the trade-off to dating an Aspie was that his feelings would not be the veritable minefield that empaths’ emotions are. I had hoped that I would be able to have the stable relationship with him that I had been unable to find with empaths. I still wonder whether it is possible to have a normal, long-term relationship with someone. Will I ever be married? For longer than a few years? It seems like all I ever end up with is a string of bad breakups.