The Last Victim by Jason Moss, Jeffrey Kottler Page B

Jarrod to read any of the letters sent directly to him. In fact, I wish that somebody else could
     have screened them so I wouldn’t have had to read them either. But I have to admit: for a while, deceiving Gacy was sort of
     fun.

15
Fictional Friends
    O ne afternoon I was sitting in the bleachers at the university softball field, watching the last half of the women’s game with
     my friends. As usual, we were talking about which girls on the field were the “hottest” and bitching about our families.
    “Man, I hate living at home,” said my friend Randy.
    “Yeah, me too,” Josh added.
    Randy continued, “I can’t even bring my girlfriend home or my parents will give me shit for having someone in the house.”
    “Yeah,” Josh agreed, “my mom is always on my ass.”
    Sitting there next to these guys I’d known for almost ten years, it occurred to me that they really knew less about me than
     Gacy did. There we were, watching girls running around in their skimpy outfits, and bullshitting with each other. Yet it felt
     like I had almost nothing in common with them.
    I’d confided to Gacy not only some fabricated fantasies I thought he wanted to hear but also some very real feelings I had
     about life and the future. I’d shared with him my frustrations at home, my feelings of isolation, my hopes and aspirations.
     It felt weird to think that, in a strange way, he was actually becoming my
friend.
    At this point in our relationship, Gacy and I were relating to each other in a casual, relaxed manner. He was still feeling
     me out, testing what my limits were, and I was still trying to gauge how he viewed me, not knowing if he was as hesitant about
     me as I was about him.
    I noticed one trend for certain: the more naive and confused I acted, the more confident and controlling Gacy became. It bolstered
     my opinion that he truly believed the character I was presenting was real.
    In my letters to him, I’d taken great pains to present a family pattern that would seem very familiar to his own—I told him
     I had an overbearing mother and a very passive father. While this depiction was somewhat exaggerated, it was close enough
     to the truth to make me sound convincing.
    Gacy frequently played psychologist, offering me his sage insights. In one letter, he observed:
    So it sounds like your dad is the passive one so maybe thats why you like to be dominated by older women. You ever think of
     that? I don’t know the age of your parents but in the 40’s your mother will go through a change of life so maybe thats what
     is happening now. Just be kind to her. Your dad has the right idea of just being passive.
    I fabricated a family situation in which I was suffering abuse at the hands of my parents, both emotionally and physically.
     Attempting to echo as strongly as possible Gacy’s own background, I blamed this on the weakness of my father. Likewise, I
     invented scenarios in which my father had beaten me in much the same way I knew Gacy had been mistreated. I figured: if Gacy
     is able to relate to my suffering, he might give me insight into how these situations affected him. The other reason for spinning
     these tales was that it created an impression I could shortly be homeless—banished by either my father’s or my own decision.
     I suspected that Gacy would seize on this as an opportunity to instruct me in novel ways to earn money. And he didn’t disappoint.
    He coached me on how to sell myself on the streets and how to make my body my most important tool. He described how interested
     “buyers” would act and how I should act with them. Basically, he was giving me a tutorial in how to be the perfect victim.
    Although he claimed sympathy for my abusive situation, he insisted that being passive was a good quality. The fact is, he
wanted
me to become overwhelmed by those who were strong and could break me down. Right from the beginning, he set the tone for
     me to enter the world of submission to his