Murder, Music and Mickey D's! Part III: Jeffrey Dahmer
Rock Bottom, Here We Come!
Welcome Friends!
WARNING: I have written some feel good stories, some political satire and some tributes to my mentors; this is not like any of those. This story contains some pretty horrible details of sexual assault, rape, homelessness, drug abuse and theft. I strongly suggest skipping this one, if you think any of those will offend or upset you.
ALSO: To provide a fair level of protection for the people and places mentioned in this piece, I must ask that you subscribe, even at the free level (by clicking none), to continue reading. Thank you for understanding.
Continued from my last newsletter…
While I stayed at Paul’s more frequently, I think the sight of my family at my graduation made him uneasy about letting me move in permanently. I never knew what Paul was going to do. Would he take me home, or would he leave me to fend for myself? Sometimes we would end up at after parties all night with bands, smoking weed, doing coke and popping pills. I wasn’t scared of anything back then except being alone. When you’re alone, you have time to think about what it is and who it is you are running from, and I was not willing to do that yet.
Eighteen Years Old and Lovin’ It!
I loved my McDonald’s job! It was in a neighborhood full of rock clubs, gay bars and crack houses. There was no shortage of characters or drama to keep me entertained. Most of my co-workers were stoners who I enthusiastically worked circles around. I was eager to learn every job, hopeful to move up quickly and make more money, so I helped out wherever I could. Eventually, I found myself being taken advantage of, often working the entire drive-thru by myself if it was slow, while the others got high with the manager in the office, blasting Metallica or Anthrax on a giant boombox.
Rather than voice my resentment, I started to see what I could get away with. At first, I would quickly smash cheeseburgers and french fries into my face, heart racing, scared of being caught. But as time went on, I got more and more relaxed and started getting greedy, making myself chocolate sundaes with lots of chopped nuts and keeping them at the back register, eating them at my leisure and giving away free food to people I knew or people I wanted to know better, mostly musicians!
“To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.” -Abbey Hoffman
After a while, I realized that running the drive-thru alone, provided me the opportunity to steal a shit ton of money! The mobility of wearing a headset, allowed me to bag the order as the customer would recite it into the intercom. I would roughly add up the prices in my head and then take a buck or two off, because I knew instinctively, that customers seldom complain about being undercharged! Whatever dollar amount I told the customer their order cost, it would always be a followed by forty-nine cents and when I’d meet them at the first window, I’d ring up an ice cream cone ,which was 49 cents and I’d pocket everything else. I would then dash down the narrow corridor, to the second window while stuffing cash into my sock, shoe or bra. There, I would make whatever drinks were needed to complete the order, then I would hand the customer their food and watch nervously as they double checked the bags before pulling away, smiling, like the cat that ate the canary, leaving me feeling flushed from the adrenaline rush.
After owning a restaurant myself, I realize looking back, that no one was paying attention to the receipts or inventory those nights. If they had, they would’ve wondered why we never had to fill the ice cream machine after selling so many cones, one order at a time, all night long! I admit, I felt bad about stealing for years, but then I saw the movie, Super Size Me, (Spurlock, Morgan. Roadside Attractions, 2004.) And let’s just say, the pigs profiting on the fattening of America had it coming!
Funny enough, I actually ate more McDonalds than Morgan Spurlock consumed for the experiment (the basis of his documentary), that took his body fifteen months to recover from. Which reminds me, of the time, my older sister came through the drive-thru, out of the blue, with a bag of oranges. She looked a bit frustrated, and said, “I don’t know, mom gave me these to give to you. She said she didn’t want you to die of Scurvy or something.” Neither of us had any idea what Scurvy was, but I was happy to see my sister even though it was just for a minute and extremely awkward. I can’t remember if I ate the oranges, but I probably did, because I definitely didn’t die of Scurvy!
There was a chance customers might be able to see the register, especially if they were driving vans or trucks, so I was always prepared to say that the light was out on the dollar amount. No one ever asked. I would do this eight or nine times a night and walk out with anywhere from $50-$150!
It never occurred to me to save the money I stole and get myself an apartment. I had no idea that I could. I blew the money, getting high or drunk and getting everyone around me, at whatever bar, drunk with me. The gay bar Legends, became my favorite hang out, offering me and everyone who walked in the door, a sweet escape from a world that can be so unkind to those who are different. I discovered the bar’s secret entrance after dropping off some leftover Big Macs & Fries to musicians I met, whose band, The Spudmonsters, practiced upstairs.
After drinking beer, smoking weed and enduring several excruciatingly loud, thrasher punk songs in my friends’ tiny, sweltering music studio, I politely slipped out the door, making my way, clumsily downstairs and into a shared hallway. I was lured into the bar, upon hearing the song Respect by Erasure (Video to follow! You’re welcome!) and feeling an unstoppable urge to dance, forgetting completely that I was still wearing my McDonalds uniform and that I probably smelled like french fries!
Following the music, I pushed open an unmarked door, revealing a crowded smokey bar with a raised dance floor, everything glowing red or gold, lights spinning and reflecting as if they were dancing too. The atmosphere was festive and fun and I was happy I had stumbled in, although I did not have the courage to take to the dance floor, beside so many beautiful, half naked men! The air smelled of sweat and sex and Karl Lagerfeld Cologne. The vibe was as powerfully strong and as intoxicating as the Long Island Iced Teas that the bartender informed me were always on special! I had never in my life, had an easier time making friends than I did all those hot summer nights at Legends.
I had never been told I was beautiful or exotic looking until I started talking to gay men! Grade school kids often made fun of me, calling me fat, ugly and nicknaming me Chinese-eyes, because my fat chubby cheeks would make my eyes disappear into tiny crescents when I laughed or smiled. (They still do!) But these guys praised my cheek bones, loved my eyes, envied my eyebrows, and gently let me know that I really ought to do something about my hair!
I would explain my situation, mostly about being homeless, and the outpour of generosity and compassion was extraordinary. I’d almost always be offered a couch at someone’s nearby place. Occasionally, I’d get an entire apartment all to myself, although I’d have to feed a cat or two and I am allergic to cats! These were wonderful opportunities to take long hot baths, shave my legs, and try all of the latest skin creams and hair products! Heavenly really!
On one incredibly lucky evening, I was welcomed into the home of a gay couple who worked as hair dressers. After sleeping in the next day, they took me to brunch, then offered to help me fix my hair, cutting it quite short and dying it black in an effort to get it all back to one color and texture. They even plucked my eyebrows!
More often than not however, I’d waste my evenings after work, hanging out at The Phantasy Night Club hoping Paul would take me home or to some cool party or after hours club and I’d end up sleeping in a bus stop instead. There was a diner called the Detroiter that was open 24 hours and it would offer a second chance of finding someone to feel sorry for me and let me crash on their couch. If I had the money, I’d order myself breakfast and keep the coffee refills coming till morning and then I’d sleep in McDonald’s break room till my next shift.
One day at work, a really cool looking car came through the drive-thru with a frazzled woman driving it like she was trying to tame a wild horse! The small of her back was halfway up the driver’s seat, as she had to practically straighten her legs to push the brake to the floor with all of her might. There was smoke billowing out from under the hood and the car rattled and shook, even after she wrestled the gear shift into park.
The car was fucked up, flawed and nearly on fire, but it sounded so bad ass and looked so cool! I’d never seen a car like that before! I poked my head out the pick-up window and asked excitedly, “Whoa, what kind of car is that?”
“Dodge Dart”, she said. Her eyes widened when she saw the expression on my face, “Wanna buy it? It needs everything, but it needs brakes immediately.”
When the smoke cleared, all I saw, was something truly unique, old school yet untamed, a wild beast of a thing, deserving to be both loved and feared! I guess you could say, ‘I have a type!’
“How much?” I asked.
“75 Bucks!”
I couldn’t believe my luck and she couldn’t believe hers, when I exclaimed, “I’LL TAKE IT!”
I didn’t know anything about notaries, but she did and she had the title signed over to me by the end of my shift, a few hours after I had agreed to buy it. When she returned with the car, I asked her to back it into the furthest spot, to the rear of the parking lot. When she cautioned me again about the brakes, I said, “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna drive it, I’m gonna live in it!”
And just like that, I had a home, a 1973, cream colored Dodge Dart Swinger Coupe, with a black roof, roomy interior and just, the most beautiful body I’d ever seen! I was in love!
It had plenty of room in the trunk for all of my worldly possessions, which had been whittled down to just a few items of clothing, a backpack and some make up, because by then, everything I owned and everything that had been leant to me, had been stolen, lost or burnt in a house fire of a friend that I’d stayed with off and on. But to be able to walk the streets and not have to carry all my shit, felt amazing!
The roomy interior of the car was black vinyl and the rear bench seat worked well as a bed. With its bouncy springs it was more comfortable than many of the couches I’d been sleeping on, and I was finally able to get a good night’s sleep knowing I wasn’t imposing on anyone. I quickly learned to leave the windows cracked a little bit to quell condensation. It was summer, so I didn’t need blankets and I slept soundly, feeling satisfied with my newly won independence. I never thought about anyone bothering me. There was a very short time between the last person leaving and the first person coming to work at McDonalds and even when it was closed the parking lot was pretty well lit.
When my co-workers and customers realized I was living in a car, many reached out with sympathetic advice. They’d say, “Go downtown and get yourself on welfare.”
“Why?” I would ask. “I have everything I need!”
One morning, I woke to the breakfast manager knocking on my foggy windshield and I worried that I was in trouble, but then she smiled at me warmly, and said there had been a lot of call offs, and she asked me if I would work. I was delighted! I popped the trunk, retrieved my uniform which I laid flat the night before, and headed to the restroom to change after a quick whore bath at the sink! In a matter of minutes from the time I woke up, I was given a cash drawer and put on front register, and was anxiously awaiting my free employee meal! This was a treat, because I seldom made it to McDonalds early enough to catch breakfast!
For a few weeks, I felt like I had it all, but then, after a night of very bad decisions, I decided to show off my new car/apartment to my good friend and co-worker, John. I let him sit in the driver’s seat and told him he could rev the engine, which sounded so bad ass! He wanted to go for a drive, but I told him the car had no brakes and that we had already smoked enough weed and drank enough beer to make it a crime to drive.
We smoked more weed and listened to the radio, all the while he kept begging me to drive saying ‘please’ a million times, longer and more pronounced each time. Suddenly, he noticed the car was nearly out of gas. I had never even thought about gas because I had no intention of driving. He promised to fill the tank if I let him take it out for a drive. Somehow, drunk, high and stupid, the promise of a full tank of gas overtook whatever sense I had left. I let him take my car but I got out before he pulled away. I walked to the Phantasy hoping to catch Paul but I was too late. I sat on the sidewalk and cried, just knowing John was not coming back any time soon.
The last group of trashed concert goers poured out of the club just as the lights on the Phantasy Theater’s marquee went dark and they hung out smoking and talking near me. One girl stooped down toward me and asked if I was okay. I told her that I lived in a car and that I just let someone drive away with it. She said her brother’s looking for a roommate and lives in Lakewood and I could crash there. She wrote down the address and I hopped on a bus that appeared a moment later with the last of my money.
I knew the apartment building well. It was a few blocks from my family’s house, just across the street from my grade school, St. James in Lakewood. I can’t remember if I had to be buzzed in, but I was in this guy’s apartment within 15 minutes of a stranger giving me his address.
I remember seeing a slightly open door at the end of a dimly lit hallway and the glow from a television. I entered without knocking, closing the door behind me. The man who I just assumed was the girl’s brother, was sitting in the dark, in a large chair, watching late night television. He didn’t turn to look at me, or get up to greet me. He didn’t say anything at all, until I sat down on the couch across from him.
He said he was down to his last beer but we could split it and he handed it to me without taking his eyes off of the TV, which gave me a chance to observe him. He seemed tall and fit with wavy sandy blond hair combed to one side. I thought he was good looking, but I couldn’t be sure because of the ugly eye glasses he was wearing.
Perched on the edge of the couch, unable to relax, I took a big swig of beer then quickly handed it back to him. He stood up, pushed the beer away telling me to keep it, then he sat down next to me, held out his hand, and offered me two small pills. When I plucked them out of his hand, he sank back into the couch beside me and slightly behind me, shifting his seemingly stoned stare from the TV, to the back of my head. My heart sank, as it always had, at the realization that there would be a price to pay for this room for the night and the man lifted my shirt up my back and over my head.
I never believed I had the right to say no. Saying no, was a birthright given to pretty girls with skinny bodies, or girls who’s parents taught them their self worth. I was fat and ugly and so I would just have to be grateful for the attention, always, always thinking it could be the last time any man would want me. Hadn’t I been told a million times by my parents, in a misguided attempt to protect me, that “He doesn’t like you Bridget, he’s just trying to get into your pants.”
Unfortunately, having no self esteem or confidence, I interpreted that to mean, the only way to get boys to like me, was to let them into my pants. Obviously, that backfired horribly, because I wanted every boy to like me!
Back then, I popped, snorted, sipped and smoked anything that came my way. I don’t think I had a death wish, I just think I had a very strong desire to escape whatever I was feelings, the cold and pain and loneliness, or to escape responsibility for the situations I often found myself in. So, when the guy next to me on the couch, that I did not know, knelt down in front of me, gently pulled my shirt off of me completely and began to unwind a roll of duct tape slowly, I didn’t run or scream or even budge.
He was good looking, quiet and mysterious, and I was excited to see where this would lead. As he began taping my wrists together I thought ‘I am really fucked up!’ But then he taped my mouth and I realized I was losing my sense of touch, suddenly I couldn’t feel anything at all and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. The last thing I remember, was watching him through blurry eyes, taking off his clothes and laying them neatly on the arm of the chair he had been sitting in, and he just looked at me, waiting there, completely naked except for his socks and those ugly glasses. It was like time stopped.
Sometime later I woke up on the floor, mouth and wrists still bound, the silhouette of a cockroach running across the carpet in front of a snowy tv screen. I was unable to move and my eyes were too heavy to keep open. The next time I woke, it was sunny, my face burned and I had a vision of being held down, my face pushed into the rug as he took me from behind. I was bleeding and burning. The tape was gone. I felt like I’d been hit by a car. The TV was off, the room was eerily quiet and the sun was shining bright from a couple of windows high on the wall. I thought to myself, this must be a basement apartment but I couldn’t remember any stairs.
I could see a note on the TV being propped up by a can of coke, that seemed like it was intended for me. It took some time getting up and I needed a bathroom fast. I could tell I was alone. Even without turning on the bathroom light, I could see all the marks on my face. I had rug burns on my cheeks and sticky lines where the tape had been. The backside of my body was a mess of semen and blood and I washed in a hurry in the tiny sink. I was trembling and I knew I had to pull myself together before going outside. My shorts, t-shirt, underwear and bra were neatly folded on the couch and I took my time getting dressed, feeling pain and examining the areas from which it radiated, the worst of which was impossible to see. I found a small stack of fast food napkins on the kitchen counter and I put them in my underwear in case I continued to bleed.
There was a pack of Marlboro Lights, still half full and a lighter left on a table at the end of the couch. I lit one of the cigarettes, leaning back into the couch, hoping to calm my nerves and stop my hands from shaking, to no avail. I remembered the note and getting up gingerly, I limped over to the TV. There was a can of Coke and a Butterfinger candy bar next to the note. ‘Had he given me his breakfast?’ I wondered. In pretty good penmanship he had written, ‘I’m sorry. I thought you wanted to.’ This devastated me somehow. I opened the can of coke, took a sip followed by a long drag off of my cigarette and just stood there for a while, looking around the sad, sad apartment, hoping to find clues to what it was that had made this man a monster.
The apartment was void of all the things that make a home; photographs, plants, artwork, and it gave me a sense that no one really lived there, or perhaps he had just moved in. There were no clothes laying around and no telephone. The kitchen was pretty clean except for some overflowing ashtrays and a sink full of stained coffee cups and mismatched dirty dishes.
I combined all of the cigarette butts into one ashtray and went to empty it and was struck that there was no liner bag in the trash can. I thought to myself, that he must be out getting rid of all the evidence of his crime somewhere, and I slipped into a waking nightmare of flashbacks. The worry, unable to move, my eyes too heavy to open. The feeling of terror as I struggled to breath when he collapsed on me from behind. Distorted images of him standing over me with a camera, shadowy silhouettes of a cockroach and moments later a mouse scurrying past my head, illuminated by the snowy post programing TV screen, as I lie there, still bound but mercifully alone. When I woke from the terrifying trance, I found myself washing his dishes.
I was powerless to hold back my tears, though they stung my cheeks. I was crying for him, not for me. Crying with pity for this deranged person, trying to imagine what had been so God-awful in his life to make him do this to me, surely some monster had raped him, perhaps when he was a child. When I finished all of the dishes I felt better. I ate the candy bar and drank the soda as if they were a sufficient apology, they too made me feel better.
I have no trouble at all having empathy for monsters, I too am a monster. There is a rage inside me and as a child I had very dark and sinister thoughts. I’ve often wondered if it is genetic, when I think of my father and stories of his father and his grandfather. They were all feared men, quick-tempered men of violence.
Looking back, I was just doing what I’d been raised to do. I was blaming myself. My parents and the Catholic priests and nuns of St. James School and Parish had raised me to be sure that I’d done something to deserve this. God was punishing me, and boy oh boy did I have it coming. While several crimes had been committed against me, the thought of calling the police never even crossed my mind.
I knew I had to get out of that apartment before he came back. There was a dish of change in his kitchen with a five-dollar bill on top. I pocketed the five and a lighter and the cigarettes and took a last look around before leaving. I felt him, nearby, hiding, waiting for me to leave. I looked for a bus, but I realized I could not go to work looking and feeling as I did. I used the first payphone I saw to call off from my McDonald’s job. The manager who answered sounded relieved to hear from me. “Are you alright? The cops are looking for you!” She said frantically.
My battered body went limp as my mind began to picture police looking for me, and the possible reasons why. Did my managers finally catch me stealing? Did the guy who drugged, raped and beat me confess? Did my parents send them?
“John totaled your car!” she said finally. “He flipped it, nearly rolled off a cliff in the Metroparks!”
I was so instantaneously angry, I don’t even remember asking if my friend was hurt.
“So why are they looking for me?” I asked.
“They think he stole the car.”
“No, I let him, but he was just supposed to go buy gas.” I said, before telling her I wouldn’t be in for a few days and then sadly revealing, as I realized it myself, that my uniform, make up and everything I owned was in the trunk of that car.
I now had nowhere to go, and nothing but the clothes on my back, so I walked slowly towards the center of town. It hurt to walk, it hurt to sit and my body was still trembling uncontrollably. I grew very tired when that breakfast of champions I had, wore off, so I tucked into the corner of a sheltered bus stop in front of Lakewood Library and tried to sleep, only to be woken by the honking horn of an eagerly awaiting bus, every 20 to 30 minutes. I would wave them off, before shamefully burying my head once again in the corner of the glass shelter and closing my eyes. Each time, the stains left on my eyes, from the concerned looks of the bus passengers, became harder to erase.
I thought a lot that whole afternoon, and feeling lucky to be alive, like I had truly escaped death’s grip, I decided it was time to go back home. The cost of freedom had suddenly become too great. My luck had run out, just when I thought I had it all figured out.
Feeling utterly defeated and destroyed, I emerged from the bus stop, crossed the street and began to slowly walk towards my parent’s house. As I passed a storefront full of cardboard cut outs of soldiers, military planes and flags, meant to entice people to join the military, two handsome men in uniform stepped out of the doorway and onto the sidewalk. They addressed me as ma’am and respectfully stepped back, to allow me to go ahead of them. It seemed so absurd to me for them to show me, a big fat pile of garbage, any kind of respect, and so absolutely hilarious that they called me ma’am, that I just had to laugh.
I was still laughing when I got to the corner and had to wait for the traffic light to change, before crossing the street. It was just enough time for my laughter to subside, and for the thought to occur to me, hitting me like a bolt of lightning actually, that joining the Army might just be the solution to all of my problems and sounded way better than going home.
To Be Continued!
And Finally…
As the years passed, I managed to drive the memory of that night completely out of my head. I didn’t think of him again, until the movie, Napoleon Dynamite (Hess, Jared. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2004.) came out. The actor who played Napoleon wore the exact same glasses in the movie as the man in that apartment and had similar features, including a large Adam’s apple and sandy blond hair. The only difference, was that he was clearly younger and possibly weaker than me, regardless of the illegal ninja moves he learned from the government! I guessed the man who had done this, was at least ten years older than me.
Shortly after the incident, I would catch myself wondering about the girl that gave me that address. I refused to believe that a sister would assist her brother in rape or that any woman would send another to be violently attacked. It made no sense to me, and so I chose to believe that I entered the wrong apartment.
For all I know and all that’s been brought to light, through recent movies and documentaries, it may very well have been Jeffrey Dahmer in that apartment. I’m serious! I’ve even considered, that Dahmer may have murdered the man I was supposed to meet before I even got there. I mean, I never looked in the bedroom…or in the refrigerator for that matter!
So much of it fits; the way he looked, those awful eye glasses, his build, the way he handed me that beer, said we could share, but never took a sip, then offering me those pills, and photographing me as I lie helpless. I had no injuries that would suggest he had any interest in female anatomy. At the time of the assault, Dahmer was living with his grandmother in West Allis, Wisconsin, just a seven hour drive from Lakewood, which had a vibrant gay singles scene, rivaled only by San Fransisco at the time. He would have surely heard about it, while attending college in Ohio.
“If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with!” -Billy Preston
And to be fair, it would not have been hard to picture me as a boy from behind, with my short hair and linebacker build! It had been quite a while since I had shaved my arm pits and legs, since I had been living in my car. Christ…I was probably more masculine looking than many of his victims!
Well, it makes for a good story anyway! One to tell myself and to tell others, but for two very different reasons. One puts to an end, the other piques interest. Perhaps, telling myself that it was Jeffrey Dahmer in that apartment, satisfies a need in me for justice and a happy ending. He was caught, tried and convicted. Family members of the victims got to have their say, and he was able to apologize. Justice was served.
As for the happy ending, Dahmer was bludgeoned to death, while cleaning toilets in a Wisconsin prison, by a fellow inmate, who smashed his skull with a metal bar, and later confessed that God had told him to do it. Well, Amen to that Brotherman! And we all lived (just a little more) happily ever after!
The End!
Thank You For Being Here With Me My Friend!
You have survived rock bottom and my next few newsletters will likely not need any warnings posted! Spoiler Alert: Things get much better with my family and I start bangin’ my hot ass Army recruiter! I told you, it’s not all bad. It’s complicated, and if it wasn’t, it’d be boring!
Also, I haven’t forgotten…
I owe you some recipes! It’s been hard to come up with recipes for my last few posts. I mean, what food pairs well with murder or anal rape? Seriously!!! So, grab yourself a Butterfinger Candy Bar, a can of Coke and some Marlboro Lights, and that oughta hold you over till my next newsletter!
I’M KIDDING! I just wanted to see if you were paying attention!
See You Next Time My Friend!
Cheers!
Bridget