Threshold Dances
Growing up, I’d heard about this guy — the serial killer who got away — but we didn’t talk about him much. I think people who were alive during the murders didn’t like to think about it. My mom and dad lived through it, as it was happening, and have relayed that it was definitely a pretty scary time around here. This guy damn near took out a whole family, the Oteros, not even counting the others. Jerking-off on his victim’s corpses and taking pictures of them in various poses, he sent letters into news stations and the police chief, tauntingly, with cryptic messages and clues, and nobody could catch him. By the time I was old enough to know anything about it, years had passed since he had actually killed somebody. So many years, in fact, that most people assumed he was in a different state, or dead, or for some reason or other unable to kill again — everybody had their theories.
2004. It was on every news station, in all the papers. He was back. In fact, he had never even left us. Leaving clues around the city again, too — at Home Depot (a cereal box containing a letter and trophies from his victims), The Wichita Eagle (a letter from one Bill Thomas Killman, a few postcards, etc., all detailing his crimes in grotesque detail), KAKE News (postcards detailing crimes, giving clues, toying around), off the highway up near Park City (another cereal box, this one containing a bound doll, apparently symbolizing the death of an eleven-year-old girl he’d killed). I remember a word puzzle he sent the cops. They published it in The Wichita Eagle hoping somebody would decipher the code or recognize his handwriting. I had a blast trying to solve that thing. I thought I’d crack it, help them put that creep behind bars, but it was clearly just a box of random unsolvable gibberish. I mean, the FBI couldn’t even crack it. It was evident that he liked the attention. It was also evident, if the case went cold, as it had in the past, he’d have one sad killer heart inside him, because that’s what really got him off, the attention — and nobody wanted that. No, he would undoubtedly kill again, if they didn’t catch him sooner or later. That’s the way they left it, the news coverage acting as an incubator for our fears. We were left with a sick feeling when we went outside at night. We’d hesitate in the thresholds of doors, do a little dance there. Our hearts pumped a glaze of adrenaline over the linings of our veins. I know it’s fucked up, but it was one of the most exciting times in my life. It made me feel alive again — and in a way that was healthy.
His name had been BTK for so long that when he slipped up and they caught him, I was disappointed to hear his real name was Dennis Rader. To me, he just didn’t look like a Dennis. But he sure didn’t look like a Richard or a John Wayne or a Charles, either. He just looked like a guy who got up every morning, went to his job, came home to his wife in the evenings, and went to worship his god in a church on Sunday.
And guess what?
That’s exactly who he was.
Transvestite
My dad took me and my friend to the flea market one weekend when we were nine. This was back when you could still smoke cigarettes in public places. So we were in the food court eating chili dogs and my dad was smoking his cigarettes and drinking a cup of coffee. We were into coin collecting, all three of us, so we were looking at our wheat pennies and our buffalo nickels. Then, out of nowhere, my friend started blushing, eyes fixed to his plate, very clearly distraught, so my dad asked him: What’s the problem? And my friend, he said: That lady looks like an old man, pointing his finger. My dad couldn’t hold his laughter. He doubled over the newspaper he was staring at, and when he finished laughing, he patted my friend on his back and said: That lady looks like an old man because she is an old man. Both of us were taken off guard. Why’d he dress like that? My dad laughed again, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray, and whispered loudly: He’s a fairy. That’s what he’s into.
And then I wondered if that’s what I was into. I thought of all the times my older sister put makeup on me. I thought about all the times I’d ever played with Barbie dolls of my own free will. I thought about what my friends might think of me, if they knew I enjoyed it when my sister let me play with her girly toys. I wondered what it would be like to be a man dressed as a woman, especially in a world so clearly dominated by men who dressed like men.
Suicides (A List):
Ian Curtis (hanging)
Ernest Hemingway (gunshot)
Breece D’J Pancake (gunshot)
Kurt Cobain (gunshot)
Albert Ayler (drowning)
Hart Crane (drowning)
Ann Quin (drowning)
Jerzy Kosinski (asphyxiation: plastic bag)
Vincent Van Gogh (gunshot)
Sylvia Plath (asphyxiation: gas)
Mark Rothko (slit wrists)
Anne Sexton (asphyxiation: carbon monoxide, The Awful Rowing Toward God)
Virginia Woolf (drowning)
A Cat Dies
At three years old, with a thick mass of curly hair and a smile that could break your heart in half, my brother shoved his pet cat into the freezer and shut the door. He was watching his favorite TV show and she was fucking everything up because she kept scratching at the screen. The cat fucking died. No one really knows how long she was in there. Long enough to shit everywhere and freeze solid. Long enough for her soul to get out into the air, enter my father’s scrotum and mix with his seed. I was born a year later. Every time I think of my brother I find it difficult to breathe.
Baptisms for the Dead
We took a bus down to Dallas, TX, probably forty or fifty of us, and spent the night praying for our families in a large hotel room. The next morning we drove to the temple. We had to change into all-white clothes when we got inside. There was a large dressing room. Old men of no relation changed their clothes next to teenage boys, not even attempting modesty. We filed into a big room. The light was dim. We all sat in pews, observing the baptisms as they progressed. They went on and on well into the afternoon.
The baptismal was a large basin, about fifteen feet in diameter, elevated atop statues of oxen. Everything was white. Nothing was pure. As soon as I got into the basin and the water hit the shriveled thing I call my penis, I peed my pants. I didn’t feel too bad about it, either, like I thought I would. Then this guy read a few things about the lives of the dead — a few Jews, some Catholics, a crippled agnostic. He dunked me under the water each time he read a new name. It went on like this forever. When I finally got out, I felt like shit. I had water in my nose, inside my sinuses, and bad thoughts all shot through my head. But there I was, the obedient Mormon, newly baptized for twenty poor, dead, non-Mormon souls. Finally, somebody said, these people have been elevated to the gates of heaven.