Confessions of a Sociopath (26 page)

Most people have to listen to whatever signal is being broadcast the strongest, both within themselves and in their social environments. By virtue of my sociopathy, I get to choose which signals to listen to. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to choose who to mirror or how to feel, but it can also be
a burden. If I’m in a social situation, I have to constantly and actively monitor the airwaves. Most people pick up on social and moral cues because they automatically tune in to other people’s emotional stations, reading body language unconsciously and displaying appropriate emotional responses in a natural, instinctive way. Empaths are like cell phones in this way—they automatically seek out the strongest signal from the cell towers. Sociopaths, on the other hand, are like traditional radios. I can only hear the strongest signal if I happen to be on that station, or if I’m being extra vigilant about scanning. It’s a lot of work; there’s a lot of trial and error involved. Often the best I can do is realize I’ve missed an important cue, then shift and shuffle through my stations to recover.

This happened the other day with one of my students. I had called on her about the meaning of the Latin phrase
duces tecum
because she had previously indicated some knowledge of Latin, but she shrugged the question off. After class she came up to me to say that she would be missing the next class, that her grandmother had died that morning and that she was flying out for the funeral the next day. My stomach sank and I became anxious. I spat out the usual, “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” accompanied by a very concerned-looking face (hopefully it was concerned looking—luckily the grieving are not close observers of the authenticity of faces). She lingered. I didn’t know what else to say so I kept yammering: “Well, presumably you have asked one of your classmates for a copy of their notes. Also Mr. Smith usually audio-records the lectures; you might want to ask him for a copy of the recording …” She wasn’t making eye contact, looked down and away. I didn’t know what to say and I wanted to get away from her so I finished with, “But I’m very sorry for your loss.”

At that she understood that our conversation was over. I didn’t understand what the purpose of the conversation had been or whether I had properly met her expectations, but I got more nervous as she walked only five feet away to be comforted by her classmate, now visibly upset, triggered by the slightest provocation of her classmate’s small expression of concern. I suddenly had the irresistible impulse to leave the room as quickly as possible, but she was blocking the aisle to the door. Luckily, I remembered that there was an emergency exit at the back of the lecture hall that dumped into a little alleyway and I made my escape, instantly hidden by the night. I threw my stuff in my car and made a hasty exit from the parking lot, determined not to run into the dead-grandmother student again.

So, I can be awkward around strong emotions. But over the years, I’ve gotten better at masking my errors. I can cycle through possible emotional choices very quickly and come up with acceptable responses like a computer playing chess. But like chess, there is a practically infinite number of pathways and variations in human social and emotional interactions, and I’ll never be as fast as an empath in intuiting emotions or applying the appropriate (natural) responses.

Being relatively unemotional can be very useful in professional situations, but it’s caused some unfortunate tensions with friends and lovers when things do not upset me that they desperately think I should be upset by, like being worried at the possibility of a breakup. Not long ago when I told my friends that my father had just had a heart attack that day, they were very confused about whether I was being serious and whether it was an appropriate thing to joke about. This confusion occurred only because I did not accompany my statement with the appropriate show of negative emotion. In
fact, when I was formally diagnosed, I believe that one attribute—having conversations about very emotionally fraught subjects without appropriate displays of emotion—was one of the most striking indicators of sociopathy that I displayed to my psychologist. It is the one that is often the hardest for me to accurately fake.

A lot of times my lack of emotionality just reads as an increased masculinity. The men I date sometimes lament that they feel like the girl in the relationship. I wonder what my sociopathy would look like if I actually were male—it often seems that male sociopathy exhibits itself as blatantly antisocial in a way that is not always the case in women. Indeed, very little research data exists regarding sociopathy in women, but what has been done reveals that female sociopaths exhibit only two or three main features that are similar to those found in men—usually, a lack of empathy and a pleasure in the manipulation and exploitation of others—but do not often exhibit violently impulsive behavior.

I am rarely tempted to commit violence, but my impulsiveness got me into plenty of trouble in my teens and early twenties, when I would find myself being groped and harassed in seedy concert venues alone and scantily clad, traveling down a heavily trafficked dark hilly road on my back on a skateboard, or caught in a lie (and possession of stolen goods) in a retail store’s security office. On occasion I experience bloodlust, in particular when I think someone is trying to force me to experience guilt or shame. One commenter on my blog remarked about impulse: “Once impulse takes control there is no grasp of reality or balance until it’s over and you’re looking down at what you’ve done wondering what the next move is to get away with it.”

Impulsiveness and fearlessness are defining characteristics of sociopathy. Scientists have explored variations in psychophysiological traits in sociopaths, finding that sociopaths have an abnormally low startle response when confronted with aversive stimuli. It appears that we have a deficit in our ability to feel negative emotion—or fear—in response to threats. I literally do not blink in the face of danger. One time I walked in on two men robbing my apartment. At first I didn’t realize what was happening. They of course did and scurried out the back window where they had come in. I ran after them but then realized that most of my things had not been taken, only piled in the center of the room in preparation. There was no point in chasing after these men, and so I stopped. The police came at my neighbor’s insistence, but I felt acutely aware that I had no idea how to behave before them. I was not naturally afraid or particularly concerned, though I knew this was what was expected of me. I ended up just being friendly, but it came off as flirtatious. Maybe that’s okay. It’s these unusual circumstances that are certain to trip me up in my continuing project to appear mostly normal.

My first year of teaching, I said many borderline-offensive things and then I just started intentionally saying them, as if I was being sickeningly sarcastic or deliberately offbeat, like suggesting that I might dress as Condoleezza Rice for Halloween. It’s not that the mask slips off and reveals my true thoughts. I don’t really have “true thoughts,” just good and bad performances as I attempt to say and do things that normal people say and do.

And really, I can’t help myself. I am continually shaping my self-presentation so that I can control what people think of me. I have been doing it for so long that I cannot even imagine what I would be if I were not performing all the time, blunting
my edges and cultivating tricks of invitation. Even the way I speak is manufactured.

I have an ever-so-slight accent, something of a low drawl colored with unusual inflections, that is nothing like my siblings’ or parents’ accents. It has no identifiable origins but developed, I think, from my propensity to indulge in the sound of my own voice. If you listened closely to my speech, you would hear the pleasure I take in the textures of consonants and the phrasing of vowels. I have done everything to maintain and cultivate my accent, as I’ve discovered that it promotes a kind of accessible mystery and captivating vulnerability, an otherness that is attractive and nonthreatening. People often mistake me as foreign, most frequently Eastern European and Mediterranean. One of my paramours actually said that, if anything, I seem like an alien—“decidedly not human.”

I meet a lot of people at work and at conferences, and I work hard at putting on the right act to optimize my standing in the profession. Unfortunately, like many, I’m bad at remembering people’s faces, typically because I did a quick valuation of someone as a person upon meeting him and figured he was not worth the effort. If he remembers me and I don’t remember him, I act like an idiot for the first few sentences. Then I flirt like mad. I touch shoulders. I laugh heartily and repeat his name as often as I can. “Oh, Peter! I like the way you think!” If he compliments me back I accept the compliment with confidence, then quickly turn the conversation to him and keep it on him. I am gracious and generous with compliments and expressions of interest. My accent is more pronounced. I create a rush of attention and flattery, with no apparent origin or goal. I excuse myself abruptly. I always make sure that I leave the conversation. I am careful not to be left.

If I’m stuck where I am, I veer the conversation to an area
of personal expertise. I know what you are thinking. This is what douchebags do. But you would be surprised at how delicate I am about the shifting of conversations. You would not notice it unless I told you. I ask at least a few more questions before I confess my own experience, interest, or knowledge of the subject matter. I am razor sharp. I tell witty stories or interesting factoids.

“You lived in Los Angeles for a year? Isn’t it beautiful?”

“After about three months there I got sick of the sun. I felt that every day I had to be out bicycling or hiking or otherwise making the most of such good weather.”

“Ah, see, that’s the special pleasure of living in that climate, being able to waste a beautiful day by drawing the drapes and watching ten episodes of
The Sopranos
. It’s decadent. Like eating gold flakes.”

People like to hear words like
pleasure
and
decadent
. They think of Roman orgies or chocolate. I emphasize my point by tilting my chin down ever so slightly while maintaining eye contact. My hand reaches out to touch theirs just for an instant, a half grab or tug that never really materializes. It’s unmistakably sensual but too fleeting to be forward. They laugh nervously, wondering for just a moment whether I can read their thoughts. Of course I can.

Sociopaths typically don’t make small talk about themselves as much as normal people do. They will direct the conversation back to the new acquaintance as much as they can. When I talk to people, the only thing I really care about is getting what I want. This is true of everybody, but I never am trying to get someone’s approval or admiration, unless it is a means to the end. I have no desire to talk. Instead, what I find most useful is collecting a mental dossier about everyone I know. Knowledge is power and if I know even something like
where your grandmother is buried, I might be able to use that in the future. Consequently, it typically only makes sense for me to listen. If I’m not listening, I’m probably telling a joke or shamelessly flattering you. I probably would rather not be talking to you at all, but since I am, I might as well be polishing my charm.

A sociopath will reveal “personal” details about himself strategically, i.e., for the purposes of misdirection or a false sense of intimacy or trust. Revelations of actual truths are very rare and may be perceived as a small slip of the mask. I don’t like people knowing things about me because it just means more things for me to remember that I can’t lie about (or more lies to keep track of if I decide to evade the truth). And if knowledge is power, I want to keep my cards very close to my chest.

Sociopaths are supposed to excel at deceit, and new research might reveal why. The brain is made up of gray matter, which is the groups of brain cells that process information, and white matter, which carries electrical signals from one group of neurons to another, connecting the different parts of the brain. Habitual liars, in a study by Yaling Yang of the University of Southern California, had on average 22 percent to 26 percent more white matter in their prefrontal cortex than both the normal and antisocial controls. The white matter may be a result of liars making connections between things that nonliars would not make, for instance “me” and “fighter pilot.” According to Yang, these connections allow you to “jump from one idea to another,” fabricating stories from otherwise unrelated stories and ideas. What is not clear from the study is whether these connections facilitate lying in the otherwise truthful, or repeated lying creates these extra connections by “exercising” them.

On the blog, I am careful to disguise my identity. The deepest and most invisible lies are the ones that you never have to say out loud—that others tell about you to themselves. I selectively disclose information about myself for strategic reasons. For instance, I never talk about my gender or even strictly about my ethnicity or other demarcating personal characteristics. I hope that by doing so I will be a blank slate and people will be able to project their own ideas onto me. I want to be a figurehead, a receptacle for people’s hopes, dreams, fears. I want people to relate directly to the blog—to think of the sociopaths they love in their lives or the sociopaths they hate. If I got too specific about anything, the illusion would be broken. Instead I stick to generalities and let people fill in the blanks in whatever manner they feel inclined. When people write to me and say that I seem to describe perfectly their own experiences, either as a sociopath or as someone who has known a sociopath, I know I have been successful.

The self-confidence that has helped me become something of a figurehead with the blog also helps in my seduction life. I always do much better than my looks alone would warrant. I don’t just walk, I strut. I make solid eye contact. I act as if one of my main purposes for existence is to be admired, and I give people ample opportunity for it. I always assume that people have crushes on me, a belief that has been validated many times by embarrassed confessions years later when the issue has become less sensitive for the sufferer.