Yesterday was the thirtieth anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre.
One of my pals back in the Seattle remembers the event as the first that truly scared him as a child. The mass suicide is certainly the first international news I can clearly recall from my childhood, though I always had a sense that the world was a dangerous place.
Not a very radical or delusional concept, given the fact that we had three serial killers on the loose in the Northwest. Ted Bundy, Westley Allan Dodd, and The Green River Killer (I’ll never be able to think of him as Gary Ridgway) were active, real threats, not phantom fears.
Even the most innocent activities were fraught with anxiety – I was at Campfire Girls sleepaway camp the summer the Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders hit the news.
Of course I also grew up in brutal yet aesthetically ravishing rural poverty. There is a reason Twin Peaks was filmed partly in my hometown. Where I’m from, victim and perpetrator were conflated. Violence was a standard expression of devotion.
I was conditioned to be wary, but also to accept the grim as normal. Why have I always consorted with criminals and killers? That is the life I know. The people who have fallen in love with me start on the pathological liar point in the spectrum, veering out across serial rapist to sociopathic killer.
I didn’t choose them, I just went along with whoever came my way. Though I have always been highly amused by the ensuing antics.
The other day I posted a short, throwaway anecdote about something that happened when I was nineteen. It was (in my opinion) just a funny little memory.
Ten minutes later I erased it.
When I moved to England I was relieved because the risk of custodial kidnap was reduced by the complexity of crossing international borders. When my daughter reached the age of majority the danger vanished entirely.
This does not mean I am safe, since I was informed – with a loaded gun at my temple – that a certain person would be much happier if I were dead. At the time I was exasperated, and the years have not tempered my response.
I was never afraid. I just accepted the facts of the case.
I am widely and correctly perceived to be a cold-hearted bitch, but the truth is: I am too tolerant of mayhem, too entranced by trouble. I moved far from my home to raise my children with a different set of values.
It is hardly surprising that I struggle to make polite conversation at Cambridge dinner parties.