M. Thomas - Confessions of a Sociopath

I did however enjoy playing my games with them. With my friends, I’d usually find little ways to prey on their insecurities. Have you ever picked a scab? Or poked at a tender tooth? Probed a sore muscle? There’s something exploratory about it, and I was this way with my friends’ insecurities. They fascinated me. I have never had an insecurity. I know it sounds absurd. It’s not like I think that I am the best at everything. I am well aware of my many failings. I guess it’s just that they don’t bother me, and I certainly don’t identify with them in this bizarre, fixated way that I often see people do.

Often my lack of insecurities would trigger them in my own friends. For instance, a girl I was friends with in high school was shy around boys. She worried that she was undesirable. I happened to be surrounded by boys all of the time: I was a drummer, a surfer, and an extreme-sports enthusiast, all male-dominated fields. Almost all of my friends were male and I never once lost any sleep over whether they found me attractive or not, which I think was actually what made me attractive to them. I knew that she wished she could be more like me in this way. I knew that part of her hated me for it. I knew that more than anything, she wanted to prove one day that she was more desirable than I was. So I set up a little game for us to play.

There was a boy who had a crush on me. We’ll call him Dave. I knew he had a crush on me because he was very open about it but was torn because he was very Christian and I was Mormon. This made him the perfect companion for absolutely everything. I loved teasing him with his attraction to me, particularly knowing that he would never act on it because he equated it with rebellion against God (or something). Frequently I would hang out with Dave with my insecure friend—we’ll call her Sarah—because I knew she had a bit of a crush on him and was oblivious enough not to notice that he was interested in me. Or was she? I wasn’t really sure, but I loved the awkward dynamic that it set up in all our interactions.

One Saturday we were out and about and decided to go together to a party later that evening. We stopped by Dave’s house so he could pick up a change of clothes. While we were waiting for him, Sarah and I got to talking, or more accurately, I got her talking. I could tell that she was thinking that tonight was her chance to prove that somebody liked her better than me. Maybe because Dave had been flirting with her all day in an attempt to give me some of my own medicine? In any case, she wore on her face confidence and a premature sense of victory.

“Why are you smiling?” I asked.

“No reason.” She giggled.

“No, seriously, you can tell me. What is it?”

“It’s nothing. It’s stupid.”

“You want to make a bet to see who can kiss Dave first?”

“How’d you know?!”

“Ha, I didn’t until just now. But we can, you know. Do you want to?”

Of course she wanted to. She thought she was going to win. She wanted to see me humiliated for once. We invented elaborate rules and came up with some reward (I knew the more complicated the “rules” seemed, the more it would seem like a legitimate and fair endeavor when really it was just me setting her up for embarrassment and feeding her insecurities). Of course I won, but only after dragging it out as long as possible, and only after she had thrown herself at him and had been soundly rejected. It was doubly delicious knowing that not only had I crushed Sarah’s newfound confidence, but Dave had given up his religious beliefs for me only to be spurned the next day.

Despite my bad intentions, for the most part everything I did was relatively tame, at least when you consider that there are children shooting up schools. I never thought of myself as a predator because I never raped or killed anyone. But looking back, I wonder if my essential understanding of my outsider status, combined with the instinctive sense that I had to carefully observe other people in order to both survive and thrive, is how the human predator thinks.

If I’m a predator, do I prey for sport or to survive? I learned how to be this way to survive, but it’s also true that I do it when it’s not necessary. Many predators engage in similar behavior, so-called “surplus killing,” or attacking prey without an immediate need or use for the animal. Have you seen videos of killer whales batting around their prey only to kill and abandon them? Scientists assure us that they aren’t actually killing for the fun of it (how would they know?), but rather that surplus killing is a survival mechanism—those who engage in surplus killing are the most aggressive, and the most aggressive predators are the ones who survive and procreate.

Predators who engage in surplus killing are constantly at the ready, always willing to make the kill. Similarly, I am always ready to play to win, no matter whom I am playing against or how innocent or nonthreatening they are to me in that moment. It makes sense. If I were only ruthless when I needed to be or only toward particular types of people who “deserved” it, I don’t think I could be as effective. I would be constantly questioning myself—is this person worth it? Do I really need to be going after them in this particular way? Instead, my natural inclination is to be aggressive to everyone. Nowadays I put a lot of effort into suppressing this urge. I’ve allowed myself to be tamed by people in order to have longer-lasting relationships, but the animalistic urge to destroy is always bubbling underneath the surface. For many I’m a beautiful and exotic pet but inherently dangerous—like a white tiger to my family and friends’ Siegfried and Roy.

This natural aggression was always the biggest obstacle preventing me from having a normal social life. All through growing up, I could try everything to hide my true nature, but it would always find ways to seep onto the surface in the form of unveiled aggression. When someone invoked my wrath—a tattling schoolmate or an insipid teacher—my eyes turned into dark simmering pools, the roiling of revenge plots apparent just below the surface. I tilted my head forward, my hands curled into fists and my eyes narrowed, as if to focus all my malignant energy on my antagonist for optimum destruction. I glowered like villains do in the movies, shattering the illusion of normalcy I tried so hard to project. Often it felt as if, at least socially, it was always one step forward, two steps back.

It was in my preteen years that I realized how crucial it was to actively cultivate attractive personality traits. I would study my peers to discover what made them seem likable to each other, and I became all of those things. That’s when I picked up surfing, played in rock bands, and became a social climber. In addition to getting good grades, I started watching indie films and listening to underground music, did alternative sports like BMX biking and street luging and wore thrift-store clothes. I became so uniquely accomplished, talented, and charming that I was naturally included on everyone’s list of people to know and like (or fear). Not only could I wear any number of masks to suit any situation, I had learned how to wear them with consistency.

I didn’t stop behaving outrageously, but I made it a point to perform well in school so that any slipups would be overlooked as quirks. My mother’s love of music—her view of it as her salvation—was passed on to me. I played the drums in the school band and in rock bands with other kids. When I was in junior high and high school, music masked a lot of my antisocial behaviors. Musicians are expected to be narcissistic and outrageous; it would be disappointing if they behaved normally. So the things I did seemed appropriate in the context of my rock star ambitions. When you’re holding a guitar or banging on drums, you’re supposed to scream and dance wildly, to be aggressive, to bully crowds into going crazy in mosh pits, to elicit the love and attention that they are all too willing to give.