Conversations with the psychopath

[ST, July 26 (2002)] (slightly edited)

The psychopath I'll be referring to is not a real psychopath, as far as I can tell. He may or may not rank high in Hare's Psychopathy Checklist. Psychopath is therefore a mere working name - a handy misnomer - M and I came up with to refer to a guy which, for a start, looks and talks really weird. The psychopath is a dog-walker just like me. That's how I met him, walking the dog. The psychopath is a tall, brown-haired guy in his early thirties, not particularly thin nor fat, permanently unshaven yet never quite reaching a full-size growth of beard. The psychopath is a slightly disabled person. His right hand is oddly turned backward in a ninety degrees angle with his wrist. He also walks the streets with a noticeable limp. I ignore the reason for this but three suggestions spring to mind: perhaps he was born that way, perhaps he suffered poliomyelitis on his early days, perhaps he had an accident. All three possibilities are likely, in particular the latter since the psychopath, for all I know, has a potentially risky job as an unskilled blue-collar worker in the construction business. Go figure.

The psychopath is a tough guy who likes to approach bluntly those female dog-walkers who drop by the empty plot. His small-talk skills are well developed thanks to long weekend hours of practice at countless cheap discos and low-rank clubs. His language is nevertheless rather coarse which, according to my distant and scarce observations, does not seem to matter much to the average femme approached by him. But language coarseness is the norm nowadays, nothing to be scared of. The psychopath's style is not only coarse and raw - he is also sharp and direct with his words, talks dirt and loud, and does not seem to care much about politeness, good manners and education. As a rule of thumb the psychopath doesn't give a damn about anything.

Rumour has it that our chain-smoker psychopath beats his dogs wildly. According to some trustful sources, that is, mere gossip from the most yellowish section of the dog-owners I pseudo-socialize with, he might as well have beaten some of them to death. Currently the psychopath's dog is a huge, beautiful Alsatian - or German shepherd for that matter, I'm not good at recognizing dog breeds - that obeys his orders with amazing submission and docility. The psychopath likes large dogs. He's admitted he likes to feel their strength and power, the nerve and the rage. The psychopath's bare needs are more than fulfilled by playing the master's role. He loves watching the frightened face of the eventual passer-by provoked by a simple request to his dog. The psychopath likes everything big in fact. He likes big women, bodies full of abundant flesh where, he has quite openly confessed, he loves to dive and, in his own words, get lost. The psychopath is an endless source of first-class material to improve my basic knowledge of cheap psychology. I'm certainly indebted to him by that.

Extracting information from this guy is however sort of cumbersome and always far from straightforward. For our conversations are never proper conversations. They are at best a bizarre collection of words which fail to form proper sentences. They are largely polarized by the psychopath's monologues and recurrent attempts at story-telling. Since the psychopath is really a talkative fellow. In addition, our conversations are, as a general rule, kind of furtive, disorganized, chaotic and random, serendipitous, since rare is the time we run into one another in the street. In the course of those scattered interactions I've managed to create a picture, albeit approximate, of such a peculiar subject. M has also greatly contributed by sharing her noteworthy bits of information obtained in her respective casual encounters.

As mentioned above the psychopath is anything but subtle in his approaches to young female dog-walkers. He knows a joke or two which he uses to break the ice, but he's far from being a talented joker, I'm afraid. He offers them cigarettes while invariably leads the conversation toward highlighting the amazing features of his dog, how theirs should take good care of never upsetting his since the reaction could be fatal; how his dogs have always defended him from all sort of attacks by the most dangerous people with dubious intentions. The psychopath is good at telling such self-invented stories his imagination conceives. The psychopath lies in vast amounts. He puts the right emphasis on the dangerous bits, he somewhat succeeds in attracting the listener's attention, in keeping her satisfied. The psychopath also likes to demonstrate what a terrific dog trainer he is. His dog, admittedly, tends to obey him when he stages in the empty plot one of his handful of commonplace demands. Unfortunately, though, it is also possible to see how the psychopath's fury rises on the rare ocassions his dog does not respond to his commands. There down in the street he shows only basic hints, mere traces, of his bad temper. The daily gossip - the doggy tabloid in the shadow - sadly agrees in admitting the ill-fate of the animal in the loneliness of his owner's apartment when the adrenaline runs free and wild.

The psychopath lives alone, for all I know. His current dog is the third he owns. The previous two were also big Alsatians who were also firmly attached to him and submissive to his orders. They died young. Some people claim that the psychopath himself might have had something to do with those early deaths. Some people sustain, secretely, that the psychopath might very well have lost his temper. Once. Twice.

I've witnessed the psychopath lost his temper myself. And what I saw fits perfectly with the well-known behaviour of confused cowardice, that is, disguised as its opposite, bravery, which shows up when a coward suddenly feels momentarily secure by being out of his opponent's reach. Free to abuse by remote control - his dog. He did it once before my eyes, for as long as he wanted, spitting curses to a poor fellow whose dog - chained - had been attacked by the psychopath's - freed. The fellow was leaving the scene while the psychopath kept yelling. His patience ran out and he stepped back. The psychopath's gratuitous clamour turned against him and his real, insecure, meager self emerged. It was only when the other guy had left the scene for good, that the psychopath kept on with the cursing, sotto voce, and with a renewed rage.

The psychopath takes occasional "raids" on dangerous places, full of derelict huts where gypsies live. He gets excited at the possibility of tempting somebody's fate, someone who might get too close to his dog on those lonely nights at the outskirts of town. The psychopath, believe it or not, even emphasizes this point. The psychopath's psycho is far from ordinary. The psychopath hides his primal and abundant fears behind the power of his faithful and scary four-legged companion.

Last time I met him our short and strange conversation helped me decide to write this entry. Notwithstanding its queerness the conversation detailed below is, however, a typical example of the way he interacts with people and with the environment. I was walking the dog during my night shift, getting away from buildings and streets, from civilization, and entering - dangerously, one could think - an isolated area with hardly any street light. There he was, smoking, his dog sat beside him. Another guy, unknown to me, was standing at his left, holding the chain of yet another dog.

"Hi there, walking the dog?", he said in a loud voice. I hadn't yet noticed it was him so his words took me by surprise.

"Er, right", I muttered.

"Your daughter looks pretty grown-up for such a young guy like you, doesn't she?" That was his very distinctive, direct style, in full swing.

"Does she?", I replied. I didn't really want to get into any detail.

"Many times I see her at the empty plot, and I talk to her plenty", he added.

"Do you?", that was me, uneasy.

"Nevermind you look so young, my mom also looks young, hah, hah".

Finding no reply nor comment he went on.

"When I go with her to the supermarket the cashiers always think she is my girlfriend".

Still no reply.

"I can tell from their eyes what they're thinking and then I embrace my mom right there at the supermarket, and kiss her on her lips, and she pushes the trolley around while I let my arm rest on her shoulder. Mom looks pretty young indeed".

The guy to his left was looking at me, oddly, and so the psychopath did, as if expecting a reply from me after his short speech. Unable to provide an appropriate link to sustain the ongoing conversation I just said I had to keep going, tossing no further comment on the matter.