Upon graduating from high school, Louis enrolled briefly in Cross River Community College, dropping out in the middle of his first semester after complaining about the assigned readings, which he described as becoming increasingly difficult for him. Books, he often told Frank and others, were best for keeping his tables leveled. As an elementary school student, Louis had loved reading.
As time passed, his posture became more and more hunched and apelike.
Louis’s postcollegiate life consisted mainly of watching television and playing video games, or picking up odd jobs here and there. Later, when his mother no longer allowed him to stay at home during the day, he wandered aimlessly around Cross River. His main focus became clubhopping; he was fast turning into, quite literally, a Party Animal. The club-hopping was an activity he often pursued alone, arriving and leaving unaccompanied. At times he would run into acquaintances from District Central, who would make awkward small talk, mostly about high school.
It has been posited that perhaps the often primal rhythms of the music in the nightclubs awoke something in him. This is an attractive theory oft proposed in cases of Reverse Animalism. People tend to look to outside factors as triggers for the bizarre behavior of BEPs, although external factors ultimately offer unsatisfying explanations. Frank recalled Louis’s nightclub behavior in an interview: “Man, you should have seen him dancing, just thrashing all around. He used to get real lost in the music and then he’d start to feel up on some ass, any female ass around him. He’d be all nonchalant about it and then act surprised that anyone thought he was strange. As if everyone else was off. Sometimes I really do wonder if he knew any better at all. My man A— says dude knew exactly what he was doing, but I’m not sure.”
Louis was banned from The Garden, a nightclub on Cross River’s Southside, after an incident in which he repeatedly inched down his pants while dancing with women.
One wonders if he could control himself at all anymore or if the disorder had completely deranged him. Carson describes Louis speaking in a strange and stripped-down language on the night of his expulsion from The Garden, a language that was choppy and difficult to understand. He spoke in grunts and facial gestures more than words. Just how far along was he?
For those with Reverse Animalism, there is only the present.12 There is no free will, just instinct.
Frank recalls a moment outside Club Illusion in which a shaggy Louis Smith growled like an angry gorilla in recognition of him, as if instinct told him to be wary of Frank.13 In the period after that, Louis most often roamed the streets, soon building a nest for himself in an alley in Downtown Cross River, near the nightclubs.
His mother said she did not know what to make of his sudden absence or his strange silence whenever he was around; this was as he was becoming a rarity in her home.
The night of August 16, 2004, Louis awakened from a long nap in his alley home, stretched his arms, and growled when the dyed golden hair of a passing woman caught his eye. He drew close behind her, though she did not realize he was there, according to a statement she gave to police. Louis reached out and grabbed some strands at the back of her head. The woman panicked, yanking free from his grip, leaving Louis holding a clump of hair. She screamed and ran. A confused Louis bawled after her, a gut-wrenching primal wail the woman said she associated with the fictional hero Tarzan. He lumbered behind her, still howling. But he soon lost interest in the pursuit and settled onto the sidewalk, where he proceeded to loosen his pants. When the police arrived, Louis was still crouched on the sidewalk, defecating.14
Police circled15 him as he squatted on the ground soiling his torn blue jeans. According to onlookers, it seemed he had long forgotten about the woman with the dyed golden hair. At that moment, defecation was his whole world.
Cornered by police who looked at him with disgust while speaking a language he could no longer understand, Louis decided, like any trapped animal, to go on the offensive. As they approached, he flung his warm new feces in their direction. Excrement splattered against the officers as they rushed to subdue the bawling Louis Smith. They wrestled him to the ground, cracking his skull and three of his ribs in the scuffle. Louis Smith, that poor confused creature, must have had no understanding of what was going on.
Having gone through this experience, Louis in captivity rapidly sped through the stages of Reverse Animalism,16 often hooting like the primate he had become. The River Run Mental Health Facility on the Southside of Cross River had — and sadly still has — no procedure for controlling a person who insists on grooming peers who are, no doubt, struggling with mental disorders as serious as his own. Louis often violently attacked other males for supremacy, sexually accosted female patients, and swung through the facility, hopping from wall to wall as if they were jungle trees. Before long he resisted even wearing clothes.
It was a controversial decision to turn Louis Smith loose into the wild to live out his life as a simple primate. Some found this course of action an unnecessarily cruel choice. Many mental health advocates, those with little understanding of the stages of Reverse Animalism, who have often never encountered a BEP, said a round of treatment aimed at bringing Louis back into society or, at the very least, easing some of the symptoms, would have been best. But the decision to turn Louis loose is one we stand by. There is no coming back from this particular descent. Much might have been gained from studying him up close, but was his life created especially for curious researchers? If we were to keep him unhappy and in captivity, how would we be any different from common slaveholders? In addition, we had to think of the safety of the other patients at River Run. Proposals to hold him in captivity at the Cross River Zoo, the Alfred McCoy Museum of Science, or B. J. Arcom’s Traveling Parade of Oddities were quickly rejected. Louis Smith is not the Hottentot Venus,17 and we, it is to be hoped, have moved forward as a society from such gross and primitive displays. If we were to return to such a disgusting spectacle, how could we even call ourselves modern men and women? The authors could not answer that question in a way that we were comfortable with. We took what we believe was the most honorable route and released him into the wild where his current mental state tells him he needs to be.18 Louis Smith, or the man who was once Louis Smith, lives in the Wildlands19 on the edge of Cross River, which is home to all types of creatures, according to myth and urban legend.20 The once erudite young Louis Smith now roams naked, but happy and free.21
1. The disorder is most often called Reverse Evolution. The authors of this study find that term problematic, as it is imprecise and, frankly, politically fraught. We propose the less controversial Reverse Animalism, as evolution, like climate change, is simply a theory and not a unified and complete one. We find it awkward to compare a real condition, albeit one many researchers and psychologists have trouble acknowledging as genuine, to a theory that has hardly been proven. The authors of the study will continue to use the phrase “backwardly evolved person” or BEP when referring to one who is suffering from the disorder, for want of a better term. We find the phrase “reverse animal” condescending and disrespectful, as sufferers of Reverse Animalism are, after all, still human.