Rion Scott - Insurrections

I’m speechless. C — starts crying, and all I can do is ask Louis to sit down. He glares at me for a few moments before taking his seat and staring out the bus window all calm and docile, but obviously he’s pissed. It wasn’t my finest moment. It’s probably when I lost control of the team. But Louis was only saying what everybody, including me, was thinking.

Louis Smith’s earliest recorded clear symptom of Reverse Animalism, though almost certainly not the first, was an incident in the eleventh grade in which he, out of boredom one day in gym class, fondled the fleshy portion of a young girl’s posterior. 7

Horrified, the young woman screamed and fled the gymnasium. The young man, who had fallen to the ground, feigning a loss of balance, sat on the hardwood floor with what many say was a hurt, almost childlike expression on his face, as if he had just courted this woman and experienced the deepest rejection.

Louis Smith attended District Central Senior High School at the time. The school began drawing up plans to expel him, the default punishment for sexual assault, but Louis and his mother were two steps ahead of District Central and the Cross River Public School System. Instead of fighting his suspension and impending expulsion, Louis’s mother simply withdrew him and enrolled him in another school in Port Yooga, where it appears that he kept his Reverse Animalism in check. He returned to District Central the next year as if the incident had never occurred, thus neatly circumventing the school’s disciplinary procedures

Upon his return, Louis Smith found District Central a cold and unforgiving place. Said one school official: “He really became an outcast at District Central, like he was marked, with a scarlet A on his forehead if you will. Or, more accurately, a scarlet F, for Fondler.” 8

Where there had been friendship, or easy acquaintanceship, according to interviews, Louis now found scorn and cold shoulders. It is reported that he often went entire days without speaking to another person.

Frank, a schoolmate of the same age and racial background, relates an incident that is likely typical of Louis’s high school experience as the cloud of Reverse Animalism slowly descended upon him: 9

So we’re all sitting around the lunch table, me, A—, S—, B—, R—, and Carson. We’re all talking shit, clapping on one another, and here come Louis, lumbering over, swaying back and forth. He was a big dude. Imposing, but he was a pussy. He snatched a seat — and up to this point in the school year I ain’t say shit to him. I know most of the dudes at the table ain’t talk to him neither. It’s not like we was offended by what he did. I know I wasn’t. I guess I should have been, but you know, I was a kid. Shit, I wanted to fondle D— too; she looked good. Everybody wanted to fondle her. But we didn’t, though. That’s the difference between me and him. I guess me and Louis used to be cool. Not really. It’s like we grew apart. But anyway, he sits down and everybody gets quiet, starts looking around to one another. Carson is on the other side of the table. Out of nowhere he’s like: So, grab any girls’ butts lately?

According to Frank and others, there was laughter all around the table, except from Louis, who just sat there humiliated. 10

One of the most frustrating aspects of this case is how little we know about the subject’s progression from man to beast. His family, of course, did not maintain careful records, so we are uncertain, for instance, when he began defecating and urinating in the cat’s litter box. We speculate that he may have done this for years and simply hidden the results. A lack of control of excretory and masturbatory impulses are common signs of Reverse Animalism, and in fact the condition is usually discovered because of an inappropriate public display of such impulses. Many interviewed said that, though they thought little of it at the time, Louis’s enjoyment of public urination should have alerted them to the problem. He often bellowed or howled while the yellow stream trickled through the open air. 11Evidence of public masturbatory phenomena in this case is slim, though it undoubtedly occurred.

Upon graduating from high school, Louis enrolled briefly in Cross River Community College, dropping out in the middle of his first semester after complaining about the assigned readings, which he described as becoming increasingly difficult for him. Books, he often told Frank and others, were best for keeping his tables leveled. As an elementary school student, Louis had loved reading.

As time passed, his posture became more and more hunched and apelike.

Louis’s postcollegiate life consisted mainly of watching television and playing video games, or picking up odd jobs here and there. Later, when his mother no longer allowed him to stay at home during the day, he wandered aimlessly around Cross River. His main focus became clubhopping; he was fast turning into, quite literally, a Party Animal. The club-hopping was an activity he often pursued alone, arriving and leaving unaccompanied. At times he would run into acquaintances from District Central, who would make awkward small talk, mostly about high school.

It has been posited that perhaps the often primal rhythms of the music in the nightclubs awoke something in him. This is an attractive theory oft proposed in cases of Reverse Animalism. People tend to look to outside factors as triggers for the bizarre behavior of BEPs, although external factors ultimately offer unsatisfying explanations. Frank recalled Louis’s nightclub behavior in an interview: “Man, you should have seen him dancing, just thrashing all around. He used to get real lost in the music and then he’d start to feel up on some ass, any female ass around him. He’d be all nonchalant about it and then act surprised that anyone thought he was strange. As if everyone else was off. Sometimes I really do wonder if he knew any better at all. My man A— says dude knew exactly what he was doing, but I’m not sure.”

Louis was banned from The Garden, a nightclub on Cross River’s Southside, after an incident in which he repeatedly inched down his pants while dancing with women.

One wonders if he could control himself at all anymore or if the disorder had completely deranged him. Carson describes Louis speaking in a strange and stripped-down language on the night of his expulsion from The Garden, a language that was choppy and difficult to understand. He spoke in grunts and facial gestures more than words. Just how far along was he?

For those with Reverse Animalism, there is only the present. 12There is no free will, just instinct.

Frank recalls a moment outside Club Illusion in which a shaggy Louis Smith growled like an angry gorilla in recognition of him, as if instinct told him to be wary of Frank. 13In the period after that, Louis most often roamed the streets, soon building a nest for himself in an alley in Downtown Cross River, near the nightclubs.

His mother said she did not know what to make of his sudden absence or his strange silence whenever he was around; this was as he was becoming a rarity in her home.

The night of August 16, 2004, Louis awakened from a long nap in his alley home, stretched his arms, and growled when the dyed golden hair of a passing woman caught his eye. He drew close behind her, though she did not realize he was there, according to a statement she gave to police. Louis reached out and grabbed some strands at the back of her head. The woman panicked, yanking free from his grip, leaving Louis holding a clump of hair. She screamed and ran. A confused Louis bawled after her, a gut-wrenching primal wail the woman said she associated with the fictional hero Tarzan. He lumbered behind her, still howling. But he soon lost interest in the pursuit and settled onto the sidewalk, where he proceeded to loosen his pants. When the police arrived, Louis was still crouched on the sidewalk, defecating. 14