Dark Obsessions
Friday, Jun. 04, 2004 11:03 p.m.
My sorry excuse is that I have read all the books written by my favourite thriller writers, Greg Iles and Dennis Lehane, and so I desperately needed another author to read while I anxiously await my men's latest books.
You see I have succumbed to yet another Nicci French thriller. Yes, in spite of her works' horrific effect on my sanity, which I elaborated on in some detail here. This time I picked up Killing Me Softly. It is a novel about obsession. It is about finding the man of your wild fantasies, only to discover the underlying menace in his devotion, attentiveness and passion towards you.
In short, it is a novel about being with a man who cannot let go. A man rather like The Asshole.
No, I didn't know it was going to be that kind of book. I was expecting a gruesome murder and a psychopatic killer. Instead I got what the critics on the blurb called an "erotic thriller", and I found out that the book was made into a crap movie starring Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes.
Look, I hated Sleeping with the Enemy, that Julia Roberts movie about an obsessed abusive husband hunting down his runaway wife. I wouldn't watch it again if it was on TV. So, no, I'm not perversely drawn to books or movies about abuse because I was abused myself, if that's what you were thinking. I read and finished Killing Me Softly because it was well written; suspenseful and chilling. It is rather annoying that the book happened to remind me of my dark past.
I haven't heard from The Asshole in 2 years, and I'm glad. When I talk about him now, people will cringe and some will say, "Yes, but it's over now, isn't it?" What you should know, because I won't tell you, and I won't tell you because I know you won't get it, is that it's never over. You can never forget something like that. You cope with it, it gets easier as time goes by. Some days you think if you walk down the street and you see him walking towards you, you wouldn't turn and bolt but just go up to him and say hello in a tone of apathy. Some days you think you might even have a cup of coffee with him. Other days you shudder at how narrowly you've escaped a living death, and your heart breaks for the others who are still trapped, and whom you might lose for good because their courage and strength fail them and they give up on life.
So I write about it. I begin again and again. It's a form of exorcism, and I have to do it every now and then because the demons do return.
They returned when I read that book. (Spoiler alert. If I have unwittingly aroused your interest in Nicci French novels and you feel that you might just pick one up, do not read past this paragraph).
The demon in the book, Adam Tallis, kills 3 women, on different occasions, over a period of several months. This we find out by the end of the book. 3 women, 1 motivation. Obsessive jealousy. His ex-girlfriend, a fellow mountaineer, died in a climbing accident. He led her down the wrong path in the mountains; he'd found out that she was sleeping with his friend. Then he strangled and buried a second woman in a quiet patch of countryside, because she'd decided to call off their affair and be with her husband. He killed that woman's sister because she knew what he had done. When he meets the narrator, Alice, they have a torrid affair and marry shortly after. He is possessive and obsessive about her. He tells her again and again how beautiful she is and how much he loves her. She believes him, because it is true. He is not abusive, but his violence manifests itself through violent sex. It is always sensual but painful with him, and ultimately exhausting and frightening. Alice accepts that part of him. But his reticence about his past drives her to look for answers, and when she finally learns the truth, she becomes fearful of her own life, because she knows he will kill her as surely as he has killed the others. She is saved only because she helps the police find the body of the buried second woman. Adam turns the violence on himself by committing suicide.
It is a dark, dark tale indeed but it rings true. Some people do love you to death. I felt that with The Asshole. He loved me with an intensity that was flattering and exciting at first, but suffocating and terrible in the end. When I realised I didn't love him anymore and broke up with him, he couldn't do the same. He couldn't shake off his obsessive love for me and it drove him mad and so he had to keep trying to get me back. It was like a curse. I keep asking myself, what is the solution to obsession? How do you make a man who will not let you go, let you go? I had often thought to myself that the only way I could break free from The Asshole was if I killed myself or killed him. If either of us died. It was that hopeless. And I remember reading some article about a girl in Italy who was shot by a former lover. It happens everywhere. The same tired old story.
I want to know, who protects us from the clutches of psychopathic men? When Alice in the book goes to the police to tell them what she knows about her murderous husband, they don't believe her. They think she is mad and advise her to see help. That's exactly how useless the police are. They can't protect you unless you're badly cut up, and even then they try not to interfere with "domestic affairs". You can't tell them to keep someone away from you if he hasn't at least threatened you with violence. And if, like The Asshole, the psycho sends you flowers and gifts and cards and love letters and emails on a regular basis to your home and your workplace, the police will only see a romantic guy trying to win your heart again, not a sick, twisted fuck who's playing mind games with you trying to wear you down. In other words, our words mean fuck-all to the police.
I tell you what. If I ever become the victim of abuse again, and nobody listens to me until I get smashed into oblivion, I will fucking haunt every motherfucker who ignored me when I cried out for help. Do not fucking tell me that your hands are tied, that you have no authority to help me. I cannot accept how you can look at a battered woman or a woman frightened out of her wits and say, sorry, I cannot help you. You, a man, men. In that uniform purporting to serve and protect, but complicit in our killing.
I will be a screaming banshee knocking on the windows of your conscience and the windows of your bedroom. Count on it.
P.S. See, this is why I must stop reading Nicci French.
Older entries
Ramadan - 08 October 2006
Where I Have Been - 03 October 2006
Baby Talk - 10 August 2006
6 Weeks of Separation - 16 July 2006
Unacceptable Rudeness - 21 June 2006