Season 01 Episode 05 - Scent of a Murderer: Patrick Süskind's 'Perfume' meets Jeffrey Dahmer

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Transcript

it's a Tale As Old As Time the battle between good and evil a dichotomy common

to almost every culture on Earth we almost always appeal to our regional

deity to explain the origin of Good and Evil but I believe we already come equipped with moral conceptions tattooed

on us at Birth in the scripture of our DNA for example if an ancient religious

text was Unearthed tomorrow from a long lost civilization 100,000 years ago

containing wisdom and knowledge shockingly accurate predictions and

prophecies even if it was filled with new discoveries that helped the world if

that text also said that it is okay to murder people most of us would still

feel repelled by this idea this episode we explore two creeps

one real Jeffrey dmer the Milwaukee Cannibal and the protagonist of the

novel perfume the story of a murderer this is novel Meets Evil Scent

of a killer novel Meets Evil is a true crime

podcast where we compare literary characters from Modern fiction to real

cases to see what we can learn about human nature you think you know your neighbors

your co-workers your spouse but the real creeps hide in plain sight every day

what's behind the curtain what are they hiding do you really want to know and

why are you so eager to look what are you hiding I'm here to tell you that

there's nothing wrong with looking just don't stare it'll give you the

creeps good is associated with Life Health generosity continuity happiness

love and Justice evil is connected to conscious and deliberate harm

discrimination that harms others humiliation of people with the goal of

damaging their psychological health and dignity destructiveness and unnecessary

violence it seems to be hardwired into us that good should Prevail over evil

it's opposite writers play with Hero Stories all the way back before the Old

Testament as a way of illustrating more moral lessons pessimism the dark side is just

as silly as optimism the light side and if we're being honest stories

of danger and adventure and murder are compelling because we all feel good and evil within us light and dark strength

and weakness gentleness and violence in fiction Murder Mysteries and

tales of the maab appeal to us while tales of the good and righteous just aren't as titillating tiating we are the

same humans who click on the negative story about a celebrity we hate 10 times more often than the uplifting article

about someone we admire we Rubberneck at traffic accidents but take no notice of

Two Lovers holding hands it's human nature advertising and media Outlets

understand this and make careers off of human nature starting in the year 2000 I

worked for the Public Library when I was working at the Martin Luther King Jr

Memorial Library in DC I checked out thousands of books to every kind of person out there I met a lot of people

through similar reading interests and got introduced to a lot of work I never would have discovered by

myself there was a guy clearly homeless and also clearly a very Avid Reader

philosophy history art fiction everything I talked to him every time he

came in the Library about what he'd been reading and he always had interesting hot takes I once asked him what was the

most disturbing fiction he could recommend that was also really good without hesitating he gave me two

titles the first was the WASP Factory by Ian Banks and the second was perfume the

story of a murderer I'll call it perfume from here on setting aside the former

for a later episode perfume was an interesting choice why why did he find it disturbing I

wondered he said it was because you experienced the story Through The Eyes of a downtrodden genius artist who also

happens to be pure evil we don't know whether to root for his success as an artist or cheer for his downfall because

of the horrors he unleashes on the world or at least on France the book did very well upon its

release in Germany and then the rest of the world I bet it would have done even

better if it were reworked by Hollywood simplified down to good triumphs over bad the Hollywood ending that's the

reason this book is so compelling though because it's hard to accept we prefer a clean dichotomy to a

complex mixture of Good and Evil but that's what real people are it may be less sexy but the author

csin understands how to tell the story including both aspects in a balanced way

and I'd have to agree with my library pap friend it is all the more disturbing because of this a librarian I worked

with an older guy the classic librarian with a vest and a bow tie red nose and

he smoked a pipe I described the book to him and he said sounds ambitious but I wouldn't read it but hey say what you

will about Hitler but the guy could work a room like nobody's business in other words even villains have their strong

points can we possibly give props to a person like this though well in this

case it's only fiction I approach this episode's novel within this

framework so for example let's take two fictional concert pianists competing in

a world-class competition one player is an honest upstanding person who strives

to help people and who scores a 9.5 out of 10 on the judges

scorecards the next pianist is a mass murdering rapist who also scores

9.5 how good or evil they are doesn't seem to matter when considering the greatness of their

talent this fact is more than a little disturbing considering the amount of media art and other information we

consume blindly from unknown sources we don't know who they really

are I'm not saying that evil people playing an instrument for our enjoyment will somehow seep into our souls like

disease however we don't usually see the opposite as true we've all seen someone

performing on stage from a place of peace and joy and we hope this will be conveyed to The Listener and provide a

spiritual experience we know there are good people from whose natural talents we have

benefited but it would be ignorant to deny that similar Talent also exists in people seen as

wicked super villains for example are always more likable than their evil

henchmen there's sort of a charm in their scheming if we picture a ven diagram

with two Fields good on one side and Evil on the other side within the overlapping area are The uncommonly

Talented some with gentle Hearts but also some genuinely shitty people who if

not for their talent would be swinging at the end of a rope but we rarely step in to prevent

these people from contributing their talents at least not until they're usefulness can be extracted in other

words even someone from Slytherin should have the ability to acknowledge the talent of Hermione

Granger similarly someone from Gryffindor would have to acknowledge the same talent in someone from

Slytherin regardless of how you judge the person with the talent the ability is there The Talented devil that is

really the topic of this episode's novel Patrick suskin 1985 novel perfume not

the the Hideous acts of the book's villain but rather the role of transcendent talent in a tragedy of Good

and [Music]

Evil the science of

smell the power of scent is so Primal it is known to conjure up poignant memory

emotion romance alarm sexuality more quickly at a deeper level of

Consciousness than any other sense Harvard's venkatesh morthy Life

Sciences professor and chair of the Department of molecular and cellular biology says smell and memory seem to be

so closely linked because of the brain's Anatomy smells are handled by the olfactory bulb a structure in the front

of the brain that sends information to the other areas of the Body Central Command for further processing odors

take direct route to the lyic system including the amydala and the hippocampus the regions related to

emotion and memory the old factory signals very quickly get to the lyic

system this is all very interesting however the novel perfume is not really

about perfume you do get a front row seat to the process of how scents are

conjured up in the minds and realized at the hands of Craftsmen with finely tuned

noses this this all changes when we settle into the life of our protagonist Jean Baptist

grui an oddest of odd ducks with a god level superpower and the sickest of

Ambitions grui was born with a pure talent the best nose in Paris possibly

the world he understood the world through old factory input and his ability to

decode and catalog sense was photographic beyond the level of

inspiration of Mozart and the calculus of Newton even if he'd been born blind

his vision of the world would still have been complete simply through his sense of smell he could find his way in the

dark by smell follow a scent all the way across town to its source these were the

games he played with himself despite having been born into sickening squalor and disease and thrown

away like garbage in a rancid pile of fish guts he survived Against All Odds into

Boyhood without any love at all no sense of purpose learning only enough language

to get by showing no interest in any skill that didn't have to do with smell

like so many prodigies his talent was all he had so that's what he stuck to

and not even perfume but the odorous characteristics of everyday items flowers sewers meat markets silks herbs

dead rats brel grass stone rain to him it didn't matter as long as

the smell was new he would wander the gritty streets of Paris with his eyes

closed mapping out a world that no one but him could perceive these are the perfumes he's

after on a day like any other Jean Baptist picked up a Heavenly scent

stopped what he was doing and followed it across the city through streets down alleyways and around corners until the

scent became constant he had identified its source a red-haired girl selling

yellow plums unlike this natural Masterpiece the finest actual perfumes

of Paris bored the child prodigy he could easily identify and quantify the

exact all Factory components of each OD the tolet with just one inhalation but

the natural fragrance of this girl was special and marked the first time greni had never been overcome with the beauty

of for lack of a better term a perfume he sidled up to this girl to get a

better Sniff and he surprised her he covered her mouth and laid down

with her absorbing her scent in a dream world when he came to the girl was dead

which wasn't really an inconvenience for him now he could smell every part of her

body memorize and catalog every detail but before long her her fragrance

dissipated and he was grief stricken the best thing he had ever had and it was stolen away in

minutes so perfect and so shortlived was the magical effect of her

Essence this experience changed everything let those simple-minded

Aristocrats pay good money for their crude romantic mixtures he now knew real art and knew

the Crusade he would have to undertake he would learn to extract every odor known to man and create a perfume as

perfect and Alive as this girl had been if anyone on Earth could pull this off

it would be Jean Baptist groi when he stumbled ass backwards into

paris's professional perfuming world he was just a lowly delivery boy bringing glove leather to as luck would have it

the perfume of the once famed scent Master JPI baldini the moment he walked

in he was already capable of creating Transcendent perfumes many levels better than those that were ruling the markets

across Europe indeed better than anything baldini had ever conceived of

what he lacked however was the tradecraft the techniques the

process in the laboratory of this hasb been Master Jean Baptist learned the

names of thousands of ingredient s extracts essential oils and how to mix and assemble creams powders and pomades

to be sold at his master's shop before long baldini purchased greni

from the leather maker he had been working for now that Jean Baptist was his baldini taught the boy his own

techniques of water distillation over low heat source which worked to extract the run-of-the-mill perfuming

ingredients everything most perfumers would ever need France like other European

countries at this time was classist and as greni was barely better than a slave

the poor wretch had no social standing to even begin the process of becoming a perfumer so to repay his master for his

education he casually rattled off a series of Next Level perfume recipes which baldini would take credit for and

not only did these restore Baldini's brand to the old factory map but also spread news of his renewed genius all

across Europe greni couldn't have cared less about the fame and fortune though he

only cared about one thing continuing his Mastery of preserving scents how to

extract the essential Essences from every substance known to man even those

undetectable by fine noses like Baldin Jean Baptist's Quest began to

annoy his master as he begged balini to teach him how to isolate the smells of

glass glass copper gravel glass has no scent gravel has no fragrance you

idiot one time in a foreshadowing move Jean Baptist decided to extract the pure

essence of a puppy dog it worked the puppy's life was

donated to his experiment and he carried around a small vial of o de puppy

sniffing at it occasionally red flag once Jean bapti knew he had nothing

more to learn from baldini and having set him up for life he left Paris in search of even more advanced methods of

scent extraction baldini had explained to his Prodigy that if there was any

place on Earth one could learn more techniques it would be in the Holy Land of the perfuming world the famed town of

grass in southern France so he left in Grass Shan Baptist Started From The

Bottom learning new more effective methods for extracting scents using animal fat and Tallow he worked his

hands to the bone in a flower extractory leaching substances from dying blossoms

learning how the life cycle of a living or recently living organism changes the usable notes over time this would then

have to be refined and filtered but using this method he discovered new ways of extracting animal

smells slinking around grass greni picked up the essence of something reminiscent of of the red-haired girl

from his past but even better it was another red-haired girl hidden somewhere

Behind the Walls of the residence of the richest man in Grass the aristocrat's

daughter as greni had learned a good perfume contains several layers of scent

not just ingredients but notes in a great chord that rings in harmony with itself and dies away

gracefully he had learned this craft from baldini the that the top notes will last 5 to 15 minutes giving way to the

heart notes 20 to 60 Minutes followed by the Basse notes which lasted 6 hours or

more it was common practice to include fowl odors combined with sweet floral

notes because the only thing that really mattered was the final composition the cord just to entertain himself greni had

regularly Incorporated extracts of cat or dead animal into fine perfumes

the customer would never know and that pleased him his artwork was antisocial

personality disorder manifest he hated humanity and it showed

in his work in Grass Jean Baptist gave himself a deadline of 2 years to collect

24 notes the smells of the young nubile girls of grass and compose them into a

symphony his own personal Museum of specimens in early experiments he paid

Prost stitutes to let him wrap them in Tallow soaked cloth and later purify the

substances to a concentrated drop or two of oil but these women weren't comfortable or relaxed and he knew from

his previous experiments with animals that a scared creature will emit hormones of fear and perspiration that

sullies the true pure Scent of a Woman at rest logically as any psychopath

would do he found himself a club he knew exactly how to control his

own Aroma to render himself if not invisible undetectable 24 murders later the town

of grass was living in fear petrified of a phantom who without being noticed

would slip into bedrooms and take the girls they would be found nude with

their hair Shor and well moisturized and lifeless greny lived unnoticed and

unsuspected as he added the final notes to his Masterpiece but suddenly he decided

sometimes a perfume needs just one more note to take it from phenomenal to

Transcendent this final note resided within the aforementioned Aristocrats

walls and more specifically within his gorgeous auburn-haired

daughter just like every father in Grass this man locked his girl away going so

far as to hide her in a nearby town but this didn't deter grui who quietly

followed her sent to a nearby Village and made his final extraction the symphony was complete and

now greni turned himself in as you would expect the town authorities are relieved

but they also wanted blood they sentenced greni to a gruesome

public execution and everyone came to see the Imp broken and hung for their

pleasure but they they didn't count on one thing the superpower now contained in a

tiny vial hidden on Jean Baptist's person one drop and his jailers realized

he was not a man he was an angel they led him to the execution

grounds where upon inhaling his new perfume the public as well as the

authorities declared him innocent of all charges and actually worthy of love and

praise another drop and the whole crowd fell in love with each other with

everything with life itself long story short there was a

massive orgy involving priests and citizens soldiers and women boy on boy

girl on woman any and every possible combination when everything was over

greni was gone in the nearby Countryside Jean Baptist came to a sickening realization

that his quest the formulation and execution of his Masterpiece was only half a success sure

it rendered him a God to anyone near enough to smell but these were the people he hated filthy brutal

Humanity he thought his feat would be his ultimate source of self-esteem but he found it a hollow

Victory he dowed himself with the entire vial of his magical Elixir and

completely unable to control their lust for him the town's people converged on him like

hyenas tore away his clothes his skin tore him limb from limb and devoured him

completely thus ends the tragedy of Jean Baptist greni unrivaled Prodigy whose

work was too good for humankind's understanding and whose heart was brilliant and

[Music] evil if you know any exceptional people

you know they are often surprised surprised when it's pointed out to them I'm imagining a tragic house fire where

a neighbor a genuinely good person is lauded as a hero for jumping into the

burning building and saving the baby well they didn't even think about it they didn't mean to do anything heroic

they didn't have to overcome some crippling fear to do it the flip side of the coin is that the character of Jean

Baptist never meant to do evil or harm by extracting his ladies any more than a

hungry lion wants to to do Evil by hunting an IEX at a watering hole it was a natural byproduct of his talent fueled

by his ambition if he could have extracted their sense non-violently I'm sure he

would have been fine with that anything to get to the end goal but if you actually are evil at

your roots then you don't have to intend anything they act according to their

nature just like the hero does on the light side and nature however brutal

takes its course when a criminal psychopath is presented with his crimes

he's often similarly surprised well I guess when you put it that way it was wrong to kill all those

women it simply doesn't occur to them and that is the fascination to Glimpse even if just for a second this model

fits greni to a te with so many characters noting along the way his innocence and naivity in his daily

activities he didn't know how the world really worked and people took advantage of this

all he knew was smell and that's all he was capable of valuing it even affected the way he

learned language limiting his vocabulary toward the old factory away from a well-rounded fluency it would have

served him well to learn everything but that was not the mind he was born with

and a mind is not something easily undone it's unfortunate but we all know

what needs to be done with a Mad Dog or or a tiger who has tasted human flesh

you take him out back and shoot him in the head moving into the evil section of

this episode I am assuming you know who Jeffrey Lionel dmer

is he lured young men to his apartment and killed them but only so he could

have someone to lay with he had grown tired of spooning with

mannequins and needed something more realistic like a real

person he was incapable of finding real love with the real man so like greni he

decided that as long as they served his purpose humans were disposable they were mere science experiments to these

sickos dmer was the boogeyman of my generation as maybe Manson or gasy was

to the Gen xers we all watched the news reports as they Unearthed new Horrors in his

apartment suskin our author gives an illustration when describing Jean Baptist grui that

applies easily to dmer both men are like ticks going unnoticed and seemingly

harmless but quietly stealing dmer was a hungry tick lodged In the Flesh of an

apartment building in a rundown section of Milwaukee greny walked the streets of

Paris nursing his own Obsession they were both collectors collectors of

things better than than themselves they could never be good healthy men they had nothing to give to

society they could only make their marks on society by what they stole from it we

compare these creeps today on this episode of Novel Meets Evil episode

Scent of a killer dmer was a parasite he wasn't a

cancer that would eventually kill its host but rather a nuisance on his host

humankind of course once the world learned of his chamber of Horrors we were dumbfounded on virtually every

level the acts themselves of course were Beyond imagining but also the flaws in the

system that might have made the rest of us a little safer I remember the dmer case being the

first time in my life I was 10 when the story broke when I considered that we all might be living among people we

don't fully know it gave me the Shivers many of his neighbors and

co-workers said things like oh yeah Jeff he was a nice guy just a regular dude in

these words almost as much as the details of his crimes scared the Daylights out of me just a regular dude

so let me get this straight I can be looking right at someone but simply not seeing them like a phantom a puff of

smoke in the case of dmer a middling attractive kind of loser looking

doofus the Milwaukee cannibal shouldn't look like that because if I accept that

then how do we protect against it a grinning gray nondescript shape just

hanging out not even lurking in the neighborhood bar who is really a king

cobra my position of male privilege has allowed me to avoid having to think about it but many women feel this

anxiety basically all the time yeah guys can be nice and un assuming and harmless

but you never really know who to trust and shocking violations of trust

happen often enough it's understandable that women walk around feeling vulnerable guys are creeps or better

said creeps are usually guys and while it's usually a guy crossing a line with

a gal the case of Jeffrey dmer breaks that pattern a

little dmer was a creep and a guy but he only violated other men

and despite what I learned growing up they weren't all gay men nor were they all black men in fact the first two were

white the third was Native American I believe the reason we remember the race

and sexuality of the victims and why they were focused on by the '90s media was because even if they weren't the

reason for his choice of victims racism and homophobia absolutely enabled dmer

crimes everything about this man's pathetic life leads me to believe he was lazy and grabbed people right around him

at the establishments he frequented people nearby that wouldn't pose much of a

challenge all he had to do was offer them some quick cash just enough to pass

the threshold of weariness they might have felt in going back to a random guy's apartment for the first time there

were probably times when I was dumb enough to do that as a kid that I would have felt the pull of a hundred bucks if

the person offering knew all the right things to say I I'd like to pretend that I've always known better but when I was

a kid who can say that Milwaukee creep was committed he had his game down dmer

only made enough money to fuel his bizarre hedonistic Pursuits he worked

the graveyard shift at the Chocolate Factory so he could afford a shitty apartment in a bad part of town booze

cigarettes pills and drinks at the bars he frequented it was all to collect men

or really things in the shapes of men realistic mannequins to roleplay with

because this was the closest he would ever come to establishing real human connections at least this is the

explanation we're given poor guy was messed up in the head from birth and lacked the ability to connect with other

people but I've always wondered how hard did he try I wasn't there at the time

but it's also possible that he just turned people off over and over and this convinced him that he was destined to

strike out forever and once he got the ball of murder rolling after the first

planned attack he didn't even bother fighting the urges because they were irresistible as an analogy a lot of us

use food to self-medicate we eat too much and we gain weight we can say things like I

tried as hard as possible to resist the urge but I was powerless against it but how hard are we really

trying many of us convince ourselves that we are trying and we Trot out the old genetic or biological obstacles that

we can point to they're what's really holding me back and hey there's a Pizza Hut across the street let's continue

this conversation over there shall we there's one great way to know if you're trying the numbers on the scale

underneath all of the explanations of why the numbers aren't changing the process is self-evidently simple and

brutally hard to execute on the treadmill and at the dinner table I diverted from dmer because we

have a tendency to put the bad guys over there in the bin of deplorables safely

away from normal people like us they're practically a different species with the horrendous crimes they commit they would

have to be their Temptation must be different than ours yes that feels better less

threatening to the old self-image a tiger can't help wanting to tear you apart a shark is just being a

shark but a human we may hate someone and want to go tiger on them but we can decide not to the Tiger can't do

that that decision for the very rare person like the Milwaukee cannibal may

be as hard as it is for us fatties to go jogging really hard for an hour three

times a week and not eat carbs it's as if it's impossible but really it's just

very hard dmer told Stone Phillips that after his first intentional murder he

was helpless to resist helpless dmer was very smart but did poorly in school

because it was hard he opted to drink whiskey all throughout the school day and do just enough work

to go unnoticed mental conditions like his are serious and because the evidence of his

crimes is so graphic and hard to comprehend we tend to accept that he's a monster and it is simply inevitable that

these sickos will do what they're going to do just like a shark they are tempted by a desire too

horrific for us to relate to in terms of its content something in their nature

and we assume that it's unavoidable but is a drug addict predestined to return to drug use just

because it's too hard to resist we're told there's no way we can possibly understand these psychos and we take

great comfort in being able to just throw them in that box way over there before we proceed into the

darkness of late 80s Milwaukee we need to address a topic and the topic is

collecting there's something inherently creepy about collecting there just is

Men Of The Modern Western World tend to take certain boyish pastimes into our adulthoods even if we try to keep it

hush hush and disguise it as a hobby we graduate from collecting Star Wars

figurines to acquiring watches coins vinyl records even cars collecting isn't just a guy thing

but like most things guys do we tend to go overboard to a level that transcends casual interest we may use a collection

as an opportunity to display specialized knowledge or in classic guy fashion use

it as a way to compete with other collectors of the same thing in a sense it's a conspicuous expression of

prosperity even waste I don't need 10 cars and that's exactly why I have 10

cars collecting has always existed throughout human history as a way to gather items and material that were

scarce for future use we are all here here because people learned the power of collecting resources but there are also

power objects whose importance seems to be nonphysical but can be just as

powerful for symbolic social creatures like humans and even our ancestors I think I remember hearing Homo erectus

buried their dead vertically and put objects in tombs and stuff our survival

has required relationships and networking with others and as such we tend to assign physical objects with

additional invisible importance historical weight religious power

familial meaning certain locations were and still are believed to hold meaning

because of their connection with the history of bygone members of the human race we make pilgrimages to an empty

field because an important battle happened there hundreds of years ago we traveled to lands with religious

significance and hopes of feeling what some Prophet may have felt walking the same paths hearing the same Birds

smelling the same air I'm not a religious believer but even I have made pilgrimages to hometowns of several

artists who contributed to my life through their music writing and art of course they didn't know it and that's

part of the humanness of it their work is an encoding of their Essence through painting or music and even when they're

gone it's providing a service to the rest of us maybe the most important service you can have all your needs met

meat dried and stored in the cave for winter but art gives us hope and people

who can afford it almost always collect art H connecting with creative Works reminds

us that there's something else going on here other than just the objects that ensure our survival I don't think that

has to be a God but I understand the pull of that concept I'd even like to see the holy lands of the Bible just to

experience the places referenced so often in Western culture which has roots in much older cultures I'm trying to hit

all my ancestral regions of scand scavia Ireland and Germany at some point why

there's a certain satisfaction if only psychological of actually being there

why should someone like me who doesn't believe there's anything magical about these places still benefit so much from

that symbolic connection a photo of a dead loved one a letter an heirloom

still brings security and even power if I carry this letter into battle it gives me confidence confidence may change the

way I fight I carry a lock of my loved on 's hair in a dangerous journey and I feel the essence of that person guiding

me even speaking to me objects power

collection the importance we imbue into objects is transparently phony on one

side but that doesn't seem to matter emotionally I remember someone dropped their glasses at an art museum in a room

of free form sculptures and by the time they came back to retrieve them a crowd of people had formed around the glasses

and people were discussing the implications of the lonely spectacles seemingly abandoned when they would have been so dearly needed it's a statement

about blindness about why seen clearly isn't necessarily freeing it is better

sometimes to see less then the person showed up picked up the glasses and left the museum the people felt betrayed by

whom by their own need to find meaning in just about everything we see whether

real or not it's funny and absurd when it's shown so clearly as that example

but I absolutely don't think those people are silly for reading into those glasses especially in the context of an

art gallery we deposit a loved ones ashes in a pond near where they first fell in love and it's meaningful this is

how humans finalize we give gifts that the other person doesn't need but what it means is

more important than what it does in the 18th and 19th centuries when perfume

supposedly takes place collections became a status symbol Botanical and

animal specimens fossils or seashells organized on display cabinets became common in wealthy homes rare Spirits

valuable antiques even human body parts in bottles were not

uncommon philanthropy is intertwined with collecting many personal

collections are donated to museums proceeds of valuable collections can be donated to charitable organizations this

endowment effect is another reason why people collect things they regard objects as having more value when they

own more of them similarly there's something called the contagion effect the value

collectors place on objects formerly owned by celebrities Sports Heroes world leaders collectors view the object as

bringing some of the essence of its former owner the idea that collections may have

started as a survival mechanism Gathering scarce items makes sense but I think of this line from The 40-Year-Old

Virgin when they're talking about letting Steve Carell's character Andy who has this massive toy collection

possibly hanging out with him the guy says I don't want to end up a lampshade in some creepy apartment and it's funny

because it's Universal to find unnecessary collecting kind of creepy Killers almost always men take souvenirs

so they can rewind to that moment when they you

know when we left off with Jeffrey D he was bringing a mannequin to Grandma's

she found the object unnerving and got rid of it so this lonely weirdo started bringing real men

home since high school he had kept his fantasies of lying next to an inanimate man secret he said once these images

crept into his waking thoughts combining with his fascination with dissected animals from then on his inner thoughts

were basically unshareable I can see why he was called the world's loneliest man even if joking

and I do feel sympathy for him and others who live with this Affliction whatever it is loneliness is known to

kill older people however I don't buy it as an excuse for what he did next you

see Jeff got his system down luring men to his house with the promise of money

drinking sex and then drugging and killing them simple the spider laid out

his web passively waited for the prey to walk in immobilized them waiting then

extracted what he needed he repeated the process several times at Grandma's house

and then at the Oxford Apartments his final Lair the details of his crimes are all

over the Internet documentaries and so out of respect for the victims I'm skipping over those why he did what he

did is interesting to me I don't need to lay out all the salacious details like a thriller where the victims are just

bodies Jeff had become a collector of men just like Jean Baptist was a collector of women dmer kept trophies

from his his victim so he could replay their romantic time together that's really how he looked at it too he saw

their contact as having sacred importance to him and as such he had drawn up details of a plan for the

Jeffrey dmer altar complete with the painted skulls of his little congregation like you and I might save a

box of love notes to look at every 10 years power objects became the main

focus of these weak men's lives one in Paris one in Wisconsin just like our perfume

protagonist dmer claims to have never enjoyed harming the men that it was just a means to an

end a psychopath places no more value in a human life than that of a vegetable no

guilt no regret because the sacrifice was for a purpose just like ripping out a tree to put up a

fence this was always the way the story was told I doubt this though D's last victim

Tracy who survived his attempted collection said that the creep was whispering to him quietly as he laid his

head lovingly on Tracy's chest listening to his heartbeat Tracy asked him what he was doing and Jeff casually said I'm

listening because I'm going to eat it and why would he say that if he didn't take pleasure in terrifying this poor

guy I wonder if Jeff wasn't just narrating not with the intent of taunting the guy but still I don't buy

it I think he drank to dull his guilt because he knew he was evil because he

wasn't actually a spider he took took took from better men

because he knew what he really was empty this is a perfect time to share

the first stanza of The Spider and the Fly an 1829 poem by Mary howt you'll see

why will you walk into my parlor said the spider to the fly is the prettiest

little parlor that ever you despire the way into my parlor is up a Winding Stair

and I have many pretty things to show when you are there oh no no said the little fly to ask me is in vain for who

goes up your Winding Stair can n come down again in perfume Jean Baptist similarly

lived for himself but as he had no family or loved ones he truly was living for himself alone he gave nothing to the

world he preferred to get out of everyone else's way to go unnoticed GR unlike dmer is an artistic

virtuoso it's hard not to admire that type of talent even despite its source

if someone an artist for example commits some horrible act but also happens to be a genius I will not forgive them but

simultaneously stand in awe of their talent I may also decide not to support their career if they're still alive with

my money as far as I know that's how the free market works I will usually still listen to someone's music watch their

movie even if they did something horrible unless the art they're producing reminds me of what they did we

all contribute to this complex by benefiting from engineering Marvels that may have violent and disturbing

connections we'll still work in those buildings or take those bridges while acknowledging history is real a lot of

us are hypocrites anyway eating meat and using iPhones despite knowing how they came to be in our pockets we don't have

meat in our pockets but you know in this system someone's got to pay for others to receive and yes it's absolutely

unfair for example I think vegans who avoid all animal products for ethical reasons are actually better than me in

that realm I'll admit it I think as long as it's wrong to kill people it's probably wrong to kill animals too for

food but I recognize that there are different levels of wrong and I think vegans who have taken on that experiment

living as close to a cruelty-free life as possible will be seen by Future Generations as Superior to people like

me I have always felt guilty about this cruelty and I have have a theory that most of us walk around subconsciously

aware of our transgressions a little one here another there and accumulating guilt about them I know I do we take

part in the dark and Light Of Being Alive we pay a cost light and

dark we will consume dumb comedies and slasher films alike because they all shine a light on

us they show us how weird we are and also how full of love we can only hope that the good we

do or each other will outweigh or at least balance the bat that's my

hope you will do good because you are good in one of his last interviews Kurt

Cobain cited perfume the story of a murderer as his favorite book noting that he had read it about 10

times if ever there was a mixture of light and dark it can be found in the art of people like this who accept both

fear and love and try as hard as it can be to do do good it let's do

good don't be scared subscribe to season 1 for free in your podcast app then be

scared