Only The Lonely
Over at Tony's place he has a great blog I just got around to reading. It regards the whole Kevin Underwood tragedy.
Which, if you didn’t know, is about an average-looking guy who kidnaps a normal 10-year old girl and then kills her, rapes her, and cannibalizes her body.
You know, real bedtime story stuff.
Anyway, to focus on something other than the pink elephant in the room, the deeper meaning is what Tony focuses on. He notes that it is more interesting to him that Kevin had a problem relating to people and that behavior led him to what he did to Jamie Rose.
Take this snippet from Kevin Underwood himself on his blog:
Even masturbation sounds boring. Of course, that lost its fun years ago. Now it's basically just a habit.
To once again put it bluntly, I really need some pussy. Actually, it's more than that. I don't just need sex. I need a girlfriend, a real relationship. Love, and shit like that. Even simpler than that, I just need to be touched, and I don't mean in a sexual way. But no one ever touches me, and I don't touch them. Even the simplest touch is the hardest thing for me. I dream of being hugged.
Sad, yes. True? Yes. Honest? To a fault. He boy opens up his heart and deep down he just needs a connection.
Me? I had that exact same problem, almost those exact same feelings, about ten years ago. I was a single, fat, lonely kid who graduated early (so no big school-ending bashes with my friends), went to college early (so I was an outcast and all of my friends were still in high school), and hadn’t been on a date in years and years. I didn’t like to talk to girls much less ask them out.
Tony P. wonders if Kevin ever asked a girl out. My guess is no.
Apparently Kevin had some sort of online relationship with a housewife that fell through, and afterwards he simply gave up and stopped trying.
This is where it gets creepy. When I was sixteen? I did the exact same thing. Allow me to explain.
Her nickname on IRC was “TorpedoGrrl”, a name she derived from her love of the band KISS. She was in her mid-thirties. She had two kids and a husband(!). And she was desperate for the attention and support that I was more than happy to give to almost anyone of the opposite sex.
Now if this sounds kinda pathetic, that’s because it is. But hey, it’s the truth, and the truth is always fascinating. And I’m not like this anymore anyway.
Long story short I ended up getting busted by the husband and he was (to say the least) none too happy about. I got a picture and some letters from the woman whose name now escapes me. I even showed this picture to my parents, telling them my intentions to go see her and perhaps enter some sort of long-term relationship with her. I was somewhat perplexed by the fact that they weren’t for my decision to try and run off with this person. I’m sure they sighed with great relief when I informed them that the relationship had ended.
And of course in hindsight this whole scheme was insanity.
The whole idea with that relationship was to simply get me companionship and sex. Kevin? He didn’t go the next step, which was to keep trying. Apparently the housewife crushed his dreams and from that he got deeper and deeper into skeezy garbage like underage anime porn and the like. That sort of twisted mentality doesn’t help anyone, and being alone with no one to talk to and no one to hold and no one to hug for years on end is usually followed by something horrible.
Me? I thought long and hard about just killing myself. At the time I had concluded three (online) relationships which went exactly nowhere, friends which were lame at best, and no job. I had no responsibilities and was just taking up space on the planet.
Luckily, an online friend talked me out of it. After that I began to look for a job, got one, found some great friends at college, and started dating. I began to open up more and gain confidence in myself. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, right?
I took my freedom and ran with it. Today I have an amazing family, a great day job, an awesome writing gig, the dream job of being a game design/developer, and all that that implies.
I believe Kevin never had the sort of friend who would save him from that fall, who would cheer him up and knock some sense into him. He’s the sort of guy who spirals so far out of control that he doesn’t even think what he’s doing is wrong—his freedom is a dark hole instead of blinding light.
At the bottom of that hole is a cell.
Alone.
With Jamie Rose.
RIP
I say the right thing but act the wrong way
I like it right here but I cannot stay
5 Comments:
You'll have to excuse me if I don't feel sorry for a child killer/rapist/cannibal because he couldn't get a date. I mean come on, if this guy doesn't qualify as evil then we should just throw that word completely out of the English gloss. The word exists because evil exists. Millions of people suffer from all forms of depression, anxiety, mental illness, etc., yet they don't end up doing what this demon in human form did. It's a 1 in a million person who will do something like that and I don't mind calling him by his name and removing him from this Earth in as painful a way as possible.
This kid had options to him and he was weak enough to go the wrong way and do something very evil.
This "1 in a million person" was not born that way. It wasn't his purpose in life to do this. This one kid turned into someone capable of performing an evil act by the inputs that come to him, whether that's depression, abuse or whatever: they are a direct result of the inputs to their life and their inability to deal with their own mental state.
This is one kid who couldn't cope with what life was dealing him. It may seem a weak issue, but this is such an important issue to young guys in society today.
It doesn't make it right and it doesn't make it any less evil. It does mean that this kid wouldn't have probably done this if he'd got into a relationship and got laid two years ago, boosting his confidence, self-esteem, etc.
I don't feel sympathy for him because he did make the choice. However I do feel sorry for all of the things in his life that took him to where he is at right now. Life is so intricate and every single second of the day plots your course in life - just one slight change back down the line may have made this kid completely different.
Evan - great post btw.
The "1 in a million" comment I made was not a reference to a congenital condition, like being a child-killer/rapist/cannibal was a type of birth defect. I was thinking about Ted Bundy's last interview where he described the feelings that went on inside himself as he became the monster he turned out to be. There are very few people ever born who are ever capable of that kind of monstrosity. You could take a million men and subject them to the same "inputs" that Ted Bundy had and out of those million, there might be 1 who doesn't have the ability to restrain their urges and keep them from becoming reality. You can't just dismiss that fact with victim language.
I agree with you when you said, "they are a direct result of the inputs to their life and their inability to deal with their own mental state." It's a marriage between those two things that makes it possible.
I totally disagree though, with saying that if he had just gotten laid then he would probably be fine. Just look at the BTK killer. He was married with kids. I guarantee you this guy had a destructive addiction to pornography as the fuel that drove his whole life. That addiction doesn't stop by just getting into a relationship or regularly having sex. Of course I don't think it was his "purpose in life to do this". Why in the hell would I think something like that? But I do think he was probably destined to do this from the first time he picked up a discarded Playboy off the side of the road and started that inner monster stirring. I would say it was inevitable unless someone stepped in and got him some help. There had to be warning signs.
Just read Ted Bundy's final interview and I think you will see where I am coming from.
http://www.pureintimacy.org/gr/intimacy/understanding/a0000082.cfm
Looks like I may have misunderstood part of your meaning in the original post, so my apologies.
With regards to the "if he'd got laid" comment I made, you are probably right that it may not have made a difference. It certainly would have quelled some of the sexual urges but could well have spurred them on further. I guess whether he did or not, it would have been one of those millions of inputs to his state of being.
So many combinations, so many possible outcomes.
I'm off to read the link.
Ted Bundy's interview with James Dobson was one of the most interesting cons he perpetrated before his death. His claims that he was from a good, Christian home and that he was raised "normally" is a complete fallacy on his part. He told Dobson what Dobson wanted to hear.
Ted Bundy's mother got pregnant, went to an unwed mother's home, gave birth to him, and left him there. For months. No one played with Ted the baby, no one held him, and his mother returned to her abusive father after giving birth as she decided what to do with him. Eventually, she came back and got him and brought him into the same abusive home that had caused her own young, teenage problems - as her brother.
Ted adored his grandfather, who he believed was his father. His grandfather was also particularly fond of Ted. He remembered camping and fishing trips he and his grandfather would go on, yet, other family members describe his grandfather as an ill-tempered tyrant. He was racist, intolerant, and a perfectionist. He expected everyone to meet his demands.
His grandfather was also verbally abusive toward other family members and physically abusive toward his wife. Ted's grandmother (or to him, his mother) suffered from depression. It got so bad that she was eventually treated with electroshock therapy. She also suffered from agoraphobia and never left the house.
When Ted was three years old, his Aunt, age 15, said she awoke to find him slipping butcher knives into the bed beside her under the covers.
Ted's grandfather, whom he believed to be his father for many years, was a violent man who would rant, rave, and was so episodically sadistic that should a cat walk by him, he would reach down, swing it over his head by the tale and throw it into a wall. He was then seperated from his "parents" at the age of four when his "older sister" moved with him for some reason no one bothered to let him know about.
Ted did not find out until his twenties that his older sister was actually his mother. He discovered this on his own by researching his birth records; nobody in his family had ever told him.
This is not a healthy family dynamic, and Ted Bundy being depraved is commonly believed by psychologists to have nothing to do with pornography or violent slasher films.
Ted's interview with Dobson was nothing more than a murderous con man's last stand - it's not my fault that I killed all these women, society, it's yours.
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