May 28th, 2012 / 2:50 pm
 Craft Notes

Jeffrey Dahmer on Writing

“I really screwed up this time.”

“I should have gone to college and gone into real estate and got myself an aquarium. That’s what I should have done.”

“I think in some way I wanted it to end, even if it meant my own destruction.”

Of his first victim: “I, uh, didn’t know how else to keep him there other than to get the barbell and hit him, over the head, which I did, and then strangled him with the same barbell.”

Robert Ressler: “So you were aroused at just the physique?”
Dahmer: “The internal organs.”

“That’s why I started drilling. ‘Cause drugging was not working.”

“I made my fantasy life more powerful than my real one.”

“The maintaining of the skulls was a way to feel that I had saved at least something of their essence, that I wasn’t a total waste in killing them.”

“I would cook it, and look at the pictures and masturbate.”

“My consuming lust was to experience their bodies. I viewed them as objects, as strangers. It is hard for me to believe a human being could have done what I’ve done.”

“I was completely swept along with my own compulsion. I don’t know how else to put it. It didn’t satisfy me completely, so maybe I was thinking, ‘Maybe another one will. Maybe this one will.’ And the numbers started growing and growing and just got out of control, as you can see.”

“I carried it too far, that’s for sure.”

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12 Comments

  1. May 28th, 2012 / 3:18 pm joe bussiere—

      I cook brocoli and take pictures and masturbate to it.

  2. May 28th, 2012 / 3:39 pm /ann-dree-uh/—

       “I should have gone to college and gone into real estate and got myself an aquarium. That’s what I should have done.”    Yeah, that would have totally kept the psychopathology at bay.

  3. May 28th, 2012 / 6:14 pm Eric Raymond—

      This is creepily accurate.

  4. May 28th, 2012 / 11:52 pm alan rossi—

      Cut the “internal organs” one and this is all of our lives until it isn’t.  

  5. May 29th, 2012 / 12:01 am Trey—

      “It is hard for me to believe a human being could have done what I’ve done.”
      yeah, sweet.

  6. May 29th, 2012 / 12:39 am Anonymojo—

      Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.  He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes.  Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

  7. May 29th, 2012 / 1:57 am shaun gannon—

      murder is the most ironic crime, and other observations

  8. May 29th, 2012 / 8:45 am Scott McClanahan—

      Wise words, Mr. Dahmer.   Wise words.

  9. May 30th, 2012 / 7:54 am cari todd—

      i knew that cheese sauce tasted funny! im never eating broccoli at your house again!  :-)

  10. May 30th, 2012 / 10:26 am Joan Markson—

      Like writing in every way. Except …

  11. June 1st, 2012 / 7:13 pm Richard Grayson—

      If you like Jeffrey Dahmer, I would recommend Denis Woychuk’s “Attorney for the Damned,” which has great stories about his defense of what is sometimes called “the criminally insane.” His fascinating clients include one guy who supposedly ate the heart of his victim.  Denis is a terrific writer who was in the Brooklyn College MFA program with me in ’74-’76.  Some of you may know him as the owner of KGB
      in the East Village.

      http://www.amazon.com/Attorney-Damned-Lawyers-Criminally-Insane/dp/0684874385

  12. June 4th, 2012 / 10:38 pm Anonymous—

       tinyurl.com/73huk6r