• The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers: A Study of the Chilling Criminal Phenomenon, from the “Angels of Death” to the “Zodiac” Killer, by Michael Newton
• Marilyn: A Biography, by Norman Mailer
• The Sexual Life of Catherine M., by Catherine Millet
• The Secret Language of Relationships: Your Complete Personology Guide to Any Relationship with Anyone, by Gary Goldschneider and Joost Elffers
• Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, M.D.
• Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns: The Romance and Sexual Sorcery of Sadomasochism, by Philip Miller and Molly Devon
• A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
• Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds, by Chronicle Books
Some of my favorite books were considered inappropriate reading for a young girl my age. I would read any book on serial killers that I could get my hands on. I was fascinated with the psychology of murderers. I spent a lot of time during recess in the library reading about John Wayne Gacy and Charles Manson. I was fascinated with Gacy because he would dress up as a clown, and I was really terrified of clowns, so I wanted to know more. I wasn’t into the gory details; I was into the “why” of it all. I wanted to know what motivated them. When I would read that their moms were prostitutes or that their parents beat them or that they came from broken homes or were sexually abused, I would look around me and look at the other kids and think, “Are they going to be serial killers?”
Am I going to be a serial killer? I’m from a broken home and, as you will soon read, my mother abused me. I would think, “Can this happen to me?” I was captivated by the thought. I was convinced, and I still am today, that anyone can be a serial killer. I think I could kill somebody if I had to. Well, I did almost kill myself, but we’ll get to that later.
Some of my friends knew I was fascinated by murder. They’d say, “There’s Linda talking about Helter Skelter again.” But I didn’t mind. It made me feel smarter. I might have only gotten C’s and some D’s in school, but if they tested me on serial killers, I would’ve been a straight-A student.
I was also an awkward-looking child and stood out from the rest of my classmates. I was a lot, I mean a lot, taller and thinner than most of the boys and girls at Lincoln. I was naturally thin and extremely fit because I ran cross-country. “Gangly” would be the best word to describe it, but my classmates had other nicknames for me: Spider and Olive Oyl. Oddly, they never made fun of my unibrow or the crooked part in my hair. (Mom wasn’t there to straighten it for me, and Dad wasn’t exactly putting bows and ribbons in my hair.)
“Oooh, here comes Linda, the spider,” boys and girls would taunt every day after school during cross-country practice out on the track. “Look at Linda, the spider. She’s got spider arms. She has spider legs. She’s a Spiderwoman!”
The thing was, I did kind of look like a spider. I was tall and thin, and my limbs stuck out of the awful mustard-and-red uniforms they made us wear for gym class. The knee socks barely touched my knees, despite me constantly pulling them up as high as they would go.
I don’t remember who started the teasing, but everyone certainly joined in, especially Tiffany and Kelly Parisi, twin sisters and head cheerleaders. They were straight out of central casting for pretty, bitchy classmate rivals. They were shorter, with an athletic build; kind of stocky with those thick thigh muscles that dancers or cheerleaders have; and they had short wavy brown hair, making them the complete opposite of lanky me with my long dark straight hair. But they were considered the prettiest girls in school, and we had a mutual hatred for one another.
When they weren’t picking on me during cross-country practice, they would nail me in the hallway at school for what I was wearing. Kelly would say, “Oh God, Linda. You’re too skinny. Who are those jeans by?”
Esprit and Guess were the big brands of the day, but I wasn’t exactly a fashionista in grade school like the Parisis, so I wore button-fly dark Levi’s from the boys’ section of the affordable department store Mervyns. I was more of the hippie girl who didn’t care what she looked like or what she wore. I loved Levi’s because Dad wore Levi’s and Dad was cool, but I also wore them because unlike Guess or Esprit, you could buy Levi’s in different lengths, and I needed a few extra inches than most girls and boys.
The twin twits never understood my comebacks because my wit was informed by my fascination with serial killers. “Oh yeah, well your father is a serial killer. Ever wonder why you have that van with no windows? Serial killer van!” I’d say to the Parisi twins.
“Huh?” was their usual response.
I never cried or backed down at the teasing. Most of the time I would just let my keychain do the talking for me. I got this keychain from a gumball machine that was in the shape of a hand, and I bent the fingers down so the middle finger was the only one sticking up. It was attached to my cardinal red JanSport backpack, so when I turned my back on them they were sure to see it. It was the most direct way I could find to let them know that I didn’t give a fuck.
But I did wonder why I got picked on so much. I didn’t realize until many years later when I was all grown up that the bitchy Parisi twins must have been jealous of my height and figure. At the time, I didn’t consider my looks at all and I certainly didn’t know if I was pretty or ugly. I just knew I was different.
That’s why I wanted to look at those nude photos of other women; because I wanted to see how I compared to them. I wanted to see what a beautiful woman was supposed to look like or simply to know what other women looked like.
So when I saw that Paulina Porizkova Playboy cover that day in my father’s dresser drawer with her long, lean arm framing her face, I thought, Well she’s thin and has skinny arms and legs and she’s in fucking Playboy. I felt more OK with myself after seeing that photo.
Needless to say, I didn’t have many friends. But when I did bring friends home, I was embarrassed about how we lived. We had a nice two-bedroom apartment in Fresno, but it was filled with treasures from my father’s travels when he was a cook in the Air Force as well as lots of strange things from my mother’s homeland of Thailand. When my dad came back to America after being stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam War, he brought back all of these audacious pieces of furniture and accessories. We had green jade elephants and colorful tapestries everywhere and a hideous ceramic rooster that served no purpose but to embarrass me. I was so self-conscious of what my schoolmates thought. And Dad was always cooking up some traditional Thai dish, which filled the small apartment with exotic and pungent smells.
“Oooh, your house smells like fish and you have weird green elephants,” is what I figured everyone thought who came into our house. Deep down, I thought my parents’ exotic style was cool, but I was also embarrassed by it. Being half Thai, though, didn’t embarrass me because so many people in my area of California are of Asian descent. I fit right in on that front.
I think the problem with my parents’ relationship was simply that they were too young to be married. My mother—her name is Preeya—was fourteen and only spoke a little bit of English when she met my twenty-year-old father. She was a busgirl on the base in Thailand where Dad was stationed. She was almost eighteen when they got married in Thailand and left for America together. In Thai culture, a girl who moved out of her house without being married was considered a whore. So she was anxious to get married to move out from under her parents’ control. Dad and she were good friends, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.