I like to dissect girls. Did you know I’m utterly insane?

me: I am reading the wiki of Jeffrey Dahmer
Andy: this is what you do to kill time.

Well…yes.   Throughout the years, I would occasionally read the biographies of certain serial killers, then casually tell Andy about them.  And throughout the years, Andy seemed consistently unsurprised by this because apparently his friend April is prone to doing the exact same thing to him.  Evidently we both believe Andy is a little more uneducated than most about the nuances of serial killing history, and we feel compelled to help him rectify this.   Still, I wouldn’t say I’m terribly fascinated by serial killers, although once or twice I stumbled upon a particular killer’s bio only to realize that I’ve read it before.  This time around, I only wiki’d Dahmer because I just finished Klosterman’s essay about what it means to have casual brushes with people who turn out to secretly destroy human beings on a regular basis.

Last night, I had a longish conversation with Lukas about the Zodiac killer.  Because he has never been caught and no one knows of his identity, we started to wonder which of our friends could also plausibly be a serial killer (again, always willing to engage in hypotheticals).  I chose our friend Brendon, in part because he is much more aggressive than the average person and, in my opinion, much more emotionally capable of doing crazy shit.  But also, he is unnaturally meticulous about whatever task he is put on, to the point where I once asked if he was borderline autistic.  Brendon is the type to get away with murder because he properly cut off the fingernails of his victims after any ensuing struggle.  I wouldn’t say he was exactly ecstatic by my answer, but he wasn’t particularly upset either.  He simply seemed kind of pleased that I had called him meticulous–which I found a curious response after someone just accused you capable of murdering for psychological gratification–and then went on to most likely draft his fantasy baseball team.

Lukas, however, focused more on the actual logistics of serial killing, which could only mean he invariably chose Jason.   Who do we know that is capable of covering up any digital tracks (oddly enough, he always claims Jason would know how to do this not because he studied, say, computer science all throughout college, but exclusively because he was the dorm rescon)?  Who has the monetary means, not to mention an enormous house out in the desert?  Who has the free time to plot out his ideas?  And who is much more calculated so as not to end up a spree killer (Garrett) or a mass murderer (Jimmy)?  By these particular criteria, Jason was quite flattered by the designation.

I found it amusing that neither friend seemed offended by their alleged potential for serial killing;  likewise, Klosterman claims there is something innately profound in knowing someone who is unable–or at least unwilling–to adhere to discernible boundaries of wrong and right.  I suppose he’s right in a comic book kind of way; after all, they make for tremendous villains and also reassert how normal our own values are.  But his argument as it applies to real life is suspect, simply because I’m not sure how insightful it is to know someone who would be absurd enough to decapitate, then eat my head (Dahmer), sodomize me then shove my corpse under a crawlspace (Gacy), or attack me with a nail gun before cutting off my limbs (Bateman).  Whenever the idea of serial killers is brought up, I can’t help but think of two things,  the first being James Gandolfini’s resigned soliloquy to a bleeding and tortured Alabama about how he has grown so accustomed to killing that he only does it now to “watch their fucking expression change.” The second is the moment of Kovac’s rebirth into Rorschach, and his realization that there is no deeper meaning at hand when someone is awful enough to kill a little girl then feed her to his dogs:  collectively speaking, we are more than capable of doing fucked up things–it’s just a matter of scale of how fucked up and whether or not we are inevitably caught.

As far as I am concerned, there is nothing actually there to understand.