Zestful Blog Post #212
The other day while shopping at the drugstore another
customer passed by me, and he gave me the deep creeps. Instead of avoiding eye
contact or turning away as I usually do, I took a better look. He seemed not to
have taken particular notice of me; it was just the vibe. This guy’s aura was
dark and flat.
He was an older guy, stubble, carelessly turned out for the
day. Often when I see guys like that I figure them for alcoholics or maybe porn
addicts—you know, more pathetic than dangerous. But this one had a dense stare
and just this opaque malevolence about him, a hatefulness.
And I was reminded of the fact that many crimes, many
murders, go unsolved, and murderers walk among us. Murderers buy groceries and
gas up their cars and go to work and the movies. (I keep baby wipes in my car’s
console, for cleaning my hands after gassing up, specifically because I don’t
want murderer molecules to stay on me. You laugh. But you’ll be lookin’ at your
hand different now, when you put that nozzle back, won’t you, my pet? Yes,
you will.) No doubt most of us have come into contact with murderers without
knowing it. Sometimes we get closer than that.
Marcia’s cousin was murdered, the crime and subsequent
cover-up arranged by the cousin’s estranged husband. (Everybody got nailed, but
it took a lot of time.) One of my brother’s buddies played pickup basketball in
the late 1960s with John Norman Collins, who was soon apprehended for the
torture killing of at least six young women and girls. A co-worker of mine had
a college roommate who went missing on her way to class and was never found. They
both routinely hitched rides to campus… 1970s…
A guy who played the trumpet in my marching band at college
turned out to have murdered his mother and girlfriend by running them over
(separately) with his car. I remember that guy as being weedy and odd,
turning out for practice in dress pants and black leather street shoes, while
the rest of us ran around in jeans and sneakers. I could easily have suspected
him of obsessively collecting bottle caps, but not killing anybody. Cannot
remember his name, or would have Googled him for any recent info.
You may have similar stories. David Buss wrote a fascinating
book on the subject, 'The Murderer Next Door'. The point is, human life is
so profoundly layered. My purpose today is to remind us writers, especially us little
liberal arts majors who have never been arrested, let alone shared a cell with
convicted felons (for instance), to be open to the vibes that swirl around us. We
tend to forget, and maybe even deny, human evil. It’s not just in TV shows and
true-crime books. Our observations inform our work. Good, evil, see it all and
feel it all. Occupy your place in the world deeply.
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