The Last Victim_ A True-Life Journey Into the Mind of the Serial Killer - Jason Moss [37]
Gathering up my courage, I wrote Gacy back, giving him the number of my personal phone line, whose only extension was in my room. I told him the best time to reach me was on Sundays.
For a while after sending the letter, I worried what I’d say if my parents got wind of this. I could just imagine my brother answering the phone in my room and yelling throughout the house: “Jason. Telephone. It’s for you. John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer, is on the phone. He’s calling collect from Death Row.”
There was also the problem of paying for the calls. They’d be collect, since inmates can’t make regular calls. My parents, especially my father, were very concerned about money—mostly because they’ve never had much. I knew there was no way they’d let me accept a collect call from anyone, unless we were reimbursed.
Still, I decided to deal with those problems if and when they arose. As it turned out, my next few communications from Gacy were in letter form. At one point in my previous correspondence, I’d asked him directly if he was attracted to me, hoping to catch him off guard. Now he said that I was too inhibited for him as a partner, but he admitted that he fantasized “getting it on” with me, especially if I was interested in having an “older teacher.”
As I would later learn, my tossing out that “attraction” question gave Gacy the green light to bring up the subject anytime he liked. It was as if he’d never thought of me as a sexual object before this query came his way, but since it had . . .
Gacy, like most sociopaths, would never take responsibility for his actions, and could manipulate any situation to portray himself as the victim. To him, I was the one who caused him to see me in a sexual way; he’d never considered such a thing prior to my bringing it up.
In one of his subsequent letters, he took the opportunity to present me with a brief analysis of my own personality, as well as the reasons why I was writing him in the first place.
You can’t tell another what to do as life is experiences. It depends how open you are. Your still learning so who is to say how far to go, and if you could be unselfish and giving as well as receiving without hang ups. I think you want to. I also think you wrote me because it was a male sexual case, and you thought you could learn from me. That’s fine, but your like asking me to give you the green light of approval when I know you want to anyway. Hey go for it. If you were here around me you would try it all, then decide. We all control ourself.
I had a number of reactions to this analysis. First, I was pleased that he thought me so transparent and that he’d apparently been taken in completely by the role I was playing. Second, I was a bit unnerved to realize he was right about my wanting his approval, although not in the way he imagined.
The fact is Gacy had become an important person in my life. If nothing else, he was a source of status among my friends. But he was also, I’ll admit, a bit of an addiction. Like a Sunday golfer who practices his swing throughout the week, dreaming of getting out there on the links, I found myself constantly daydreaming about how I’d parry Gacy’s latest prying question, or elicit from him another nugget of insight.
By now I was feeling confident enough that I decided to test his connection to me. In my next letter to him, I acted furious at his misinterpretation of my motives. I told him that all I wanted was friendship and that maybe I shouldn’t continue writing him if he thought I had some ulterior motive. I told him that, although I had discussed sexual things with him occasionally in my letters, sex, and anything related to sex, was the last thing I was interested in.
This response completely