I Shop Therefore I Kill

Here is a little something interesting I pulled from the vaults when Karla Homolka went out and got herself knocked up. In my mind, if I was forced into a life of killing women, or if I went into it of my own volition, I would think it’s a good idea to be sure I never give birth. Just what would this woman tell the kid when she reads his bedtime stories? “I raped and murdered my sister- does that ever make you feel vulnerable, honey bunch?” Perhaps the justice system could have thought about the year span and ensured she not be released “just in time’ for the possibilities of biology to make her a mother. Hello? Or mandatory sterilization if release is desired.

The piece was called I Shop Therefore I Kill.

Our Lady of Woe is Me is the proud owner of this season’s hottest accessory: a brand new baby boy. I’m sure as hell not the only one outraged that convicted child-killer Karla Homolka is stockpiling kids of her own. After all, once she and Paul planned on raising a passel of brats to keep as sex slaves.

Tabloids have maintained that convicted child-killer Karla Homolka is a manipulative and calculating woman with a thirst for blood and gore. Flip the coin and you have the press championing her as a victimized, battered wife, submissive and compliant under master Paul Bernardo’s violence. Well, they thought that once, anyhow.

Neither of these images is true. Ms. Homolka’s psyche is simply an extreme example of the results of consumer culture. She is a byproduct of profit and production values. Remember the adage that money is the root of all evil? Karla is the real live plastic doll of the millennial marketplace. To her, there is no differentiation between human and object, between shopper and purchases. What upset her most was not finding that there was a ravaged, raped, abused carcass in her home, but that her husband and victim Leslie Mahoffy had used her favourite wine glasses. They were special glasses, after all, Karla explained in all seriousness. They were from Europe and she and Paul had rarely even used them together.

It’s the sign of the times. It’s Canadian Psycho. Like Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis’ troubling fiction, Karla has metamorphosed as a public symbol of consumer and consumed. Her concern is the blood on the carpet, not the blood. That’s what she expressed in police interviews- the carpet cost her good money and defined her as an owner of fine things. Some of the fine things in her possession just happened to be young girls.

Barry Keith Grant writes that Bateman’s violent sexuality manifested in American Psycho is thoroughly determined by consumer culture. “Bateman is nothing more or less than a complete product of popular culture,” he says. On one lucky occasion, Bateman’s victim is saved. It isn’t mercy on his part, though. The assassin himself is uncertain as to what saves his prey this time. Perhaps he doesn’t wish to ruin “this particular Alexander Julian suit by having the bitch spray blood all over it.”

The book was cause for concern to a great many parents, censors, and bookstores, causing it to be banned, pulled and popular. I argue that it is an important document of our times, despite its renderings of mutilations and dinner wines. It expertly juxtaposes the boredom of those who have or can have anything with the depletion of personality when the soul is replaced by a credit card, when substance is substituted by merchandise.

Every niche of our life is filled with the Master Dollar’s decree that we define ourselves by spending money, owning more things, disposing of those things, and buying more things. Advertising on television, in magazines and radio was not enough so new markets had to be devised. Corporate interests have bought out libraries, school buses, and privately owned cars, and have even invaded the privacy of the bathroom cubicle. As you empty your body of waste, you are bombarded with new things to consume and waste.

We are defined by how many dollars we amass. Our value is the collected total of products we have owned, discarded, and purchased again. To be whole, we are told to buy more clothes, more cosmetics. Brand counts: remember that Noxzema girls get noticed. Retail fashions change monthly or even weekly to ensure that you never quite reach Complete Person status. Headlines scream “I want”, “must have” “can’t live without, that you want it so bad it hurts. The magazines that promote these wish lists carry more ads than articles, but they cost you money. The few articles are usually based on new products.

Humans worldwide are seen a marketplace. Merchandise and planned obsolescence is the surrogate culture, replacing folk traditions or religious values. This is not in defense of moralizing political agendas to return to a specific view of God and family, but it needs to be recognized that where faith and friendship were once deemed sacred, where loyalty, honesty and integrity were once esteemed qualities, now Kleenex, Timex, Rolex and Kotex are our personal qualities.

“Strangled marketplace” is the economic and sociological jargon for a market that has reached maximum sales saturation. This is when a new and improved version must replace the old to make our products disposable. Items made of lesser quality guarantee the need for new products. Monopolies will also pitch their product aggressively to other countries, creating need among other cultures for useless North American products by maintaining the myth of American superiority. While we are berated for our imperfect bodies and lives and told to buy new ones, foreign countries are attacked with formula samples, given free to curious third world mothers who assume incorrectly that what Americans use is better for their children than their own milk. What the corporation achieves through this brilliant and horrific marketing ploy is about two years worth of new consumption. By the time the mom realizes her kids are lactose intolerant, as many cultures are, (or that the kids react poorly to heavily processed soy products), her own milk has dried up and it’s too late. She is now a consumer of a useless, harmful product that she cannot afford. But hey, you can only sell so much formula in North America.

What does all of this have to do with murder?

Everything.

A disposable culture means disposable products. Then our body parts become dispensable. Plastic surgery is commonplace where previously it was only Hollywood scandal for the rich, beautiful and bored. Headlines scream “Safer silicone”. You can even remove unsightly female genitalia with labioplasty, trimming it away for a few thousand, because even your folds must be trim. Besides, traditional customs of castration and infibulation for some African and Muslim cultures gave moneymakers a great idea- why not charge for the service right here at home?

After disposable body parts, the next logical succession is of course, disposable bodies. In Karla’s case, she has fond memories of the bodies that she caressed and killed. “You get really attached to these people,” she explained with deadpan seriousness. She and Kristen French got to be real close in the days before French’s murder. They used to do girl things together, like try on makeup and look through catalogues.

She must also have fond memories of another possession of hers, younger sister Tammy. Karla gave Tammy to fiancée Paul as a Christmas gift- what better gift than a virgin version of yourself? Much tighter without ordering the surgery. They made a tape to remember how close she and Kar were. The sisters did everything together- they giggled over boys and went shopping. Now that Tammy is dead and Karla is in prison, her other sister Lori takes care of the coupon clipping and writes to Kar, keeping her informed on the latest Revlon colour schemes.

When Karla was taken back into the house of death to aid police with evidence in the conviction of Paul Bernardo, she didn’t remark on the horror that the rooms brought back to her. Instead, she calmly asked the police if any of her furniture was damaged during the investigation.

Karla herself was damaged merchandise. Paul nearly looked her over in favour of another girl who had a tighter pussy. However, Karla was hotter and happy to share and snare virgins, so that solved that problem. He beat her black and blue until her eye was hanging out of the socket. After all, ultimately she was his possession and prize, and she slept in the closet or ate his shit if he needed to be reminded of her love. But Karly Curls was not his victim- she was a willing doll product. Some speculate that Karla was the one who killed the girls, that Paul was merely a rapist, but we can’t be sure. What we do know is that Karla did not want her position threatened by these pretty young things, and she didn’t want another body. Things were out of hand and messing up the house. It was a close call when Mom almost went into the cellar for potatoes, and would have stumbled across a corpse during dinner preparations. Besides, the carnage was getting out of hand, and if another body were discovered, Kar’s daddy would NEVER sign that car loan agreement.

While we wait for the Karla Barbie to come out, we already have the comic book, the videos, the prison fashion layouts, and the descriptions of Paul’s impressive choice of olive-shaded suits. We even get the tunes- the Banned sang, “I wanna live like Karla and Paul, they had the sex, the money, they had it all.”

They did have it all, whatever it is, piles of it, mounds of carpeting, cars, clothing, acrylic and mousse- fancy glasses filled up all that space where a soul could have been. But hey, the thrill of blood and guts is so ‘70s. The ‘90s- and the zeros- are about disposability- new stuff, new babies, credit and debit, and throwing it all away.

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

Her book, The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos, is available on her site, or on indigo or amazon. You’ve also seen her work in Adbusters, Geez, Blood and Aphorisms, Book Slut, Dog Fancy, Xtra! White Wall Review, The Fiddlehead, and more.

Quote of the Day

I always get that warm, fuzzy feeling when hardened serial killers see that they just had average, run of the mill performance anxiety, which can happen to any guy.

Perhaps it’s celibacy that helps, or performance among the male-only cell mates is easier. “Now I work out,” Paul Bernardo allegedly said during a 2006 police interview. “I wake up every day knowing I’m not psychopathic. I care about people. I cried during 9/11.”

Just goes to show that the switch to prison is just what’s needed if you are killing women because you can’t get it up – or even just thinking about doing so. You, too, can weep once more at world news.

Loretta Has Two Daddies!

Who would have guessed that after my wild days of yester-yore, what I look forward to most in the week is church on Sunday?

Some Sundays, feeling particularly gluttonous, I attend two services.

Yesterday was Father’s Day, and I spent some quality time with my heavenly father, sure to make my earth dad a happy man!

Sure, Dad’s an old-fashioned fundie at heart, and the Metropolitan Community Church’s feel-good brand of Bible is a tad disconcerting for him. “Progressive Christianity” is certainly an oxymoron for old-schoolers steeped in rigid mores. But Dad knows that I like sheep had gone astray, and now I’m happily home with that good shepherd. He’d rather see signs of faith than of none.  I’ll never believe what Dad does- I can’t swallow the historical Catholic or Protestant hatred of women, heathens, or the body- but that said, Dad trained up a child in the way she should grow, and now that I’m old, I have not departed from it.

I’m one of those deeply neurotic people who carry endless wells of anxiety within, despite Christ’s soft admonishments not to worry about tomorrow. If there’s a storm, I worry about floods and getting struck by lightening. I worry about the future, about starving to death in war, or being amputated by a falling branch. I worry that the lady from the video store might not be talking to me, or that the assignment I sent by email didn’t make it and my editor will think I’m late. I worry that the crackheads next door will smoke the building into flames. I worry that my friends might end up in a car accident. When I was a teenager, I worried that I would get pregnant and be disowned by my family, despite understanding perfectly the logistics of science and hence, the virginal impossibility of such a plight at that time.

This propensity to fret fueled an alarm clock neurosis that I know I share with quite a few- Jerry Seinfeld feared his friend might miss a race, and suggested Elaine set up a dozen alarms clocks to ascertain his rising. I would go a few steps further if tomorrow’s task were of any import – anticipating the possibilities of power outages, at least a few clocks should be set with batteries. More than one, of course, in case the batteries were bought low! This special neuroticism was passed to me from the most tremendous worrywart of all time, my grandmother. My brother and nephew got a good dose of it, too, and often worry about being kidnapped, though their parents have no resources to make them a likely target!

Yep, war, unrest, crisis, hurricanes- the fearless bravado anyone might see in my work is not necessarily false- but it’s only one aspect of many! Inside, I’m a quivering bowlful of jelly who still finds it mildly disconcerting to ride a streetcar with strangers. At the very least, I don’t have to take special medication anymore just to get to class. Still, half my life I’ve obliterated those fears through chemical festivity. Anyone who has gone there knows that just brings a whole new slew of hells worth worrying about- very real ones. The past few years I’ve worked toward a healthier relationship with abstinence, rejoicing that today’s drug of choice is yoga. And chardonnay. And gin. There will come a day soon where I won’t need the Hemingway-ian cup o’ ice and gin in hand to feel like a writer, or drown my various distresses. One day I may be teetotally clean before my lord, but today I stand occasionally half-crocked.  Whatever: did the good Lord not send wine to celebrate the big occasions and to comfort those who mourn?

In any event, the transition from party girl to reasonably mature may never be complete, but Saturday night is no longer the star of the show- Sunday morning is where most of my spirits come from nowadays! I couldn’t be more blessed to call Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes my teacher. A more sincere, down-to-earth, honest, selfless man I’ve never met. Every single week Dr. Hawkes addresses the realities of his congregation, rather than some archaic fairy tales that are irrelevant and ludicrous. And while my Dad can rest assured that the good doctor has a more literal belief than most of his flock, I find Hawkes’ guidance relevant and refreshing right here in my real world. It’s true that my real world has not included immaculate conceptions, kidnappings, or life-threatening alarm clock issues. But it has included a massive dose of grief and loss, poverty, addictions, confusion, relationship and family dysfunction, illness, and distress- you know, everyday life. I have to admit I have never been happier than returning to the comforting spiritual rituals and laying these things out before the Lord.

The twist, of course, is that the MCC tries very hard not to puppet people’s fears, anxieties, hatreds, prejudices, angers, and delusions. Other spiritual homes seem to simply be a mirror of these base, irrational qualities, and talk about judgement and punishment and hell and how people born female or gay (recall how ‘coloured’ was on that hell-bound list not that long ago, despite the obvious impossibility of choosing one’s biology) were immoral savages. Dad would argue that sin and accountability are central doctrines, and I wouldn’t disagree. But I don’t think nature is a sin – I think it’s sin to lie and cheat and hate and pollute the earth and be greedy and rape and allow poverty and drive people into misery and suicide and despair for things that they were born as. Sin is war and hunger and wife beating, not our normal, healthy drives or gender or skin colour or orientation. The whole of religion has been so hung up on sex because of its hatred of women that stems from foolish millennia-old fears- fears far more ridiculous than mine.

At my church, women and gays are allowed to pray and don’t have to ask their husbands before speaking in church. At my church, depressed people or addicts or immigrants are treated with equal respect, just as Christ treated them. Yesterday Pastor Brent said MCC “is not about telling you what to believe, it’s about raising questions, honouring your intellect, and giving hope.” Instead of pushing our anxieties deeper until we kill ourselves or abandon God, the source of comfort, our church lifts the spirit. Instead of pushing people away from the source of light because they have come out of the desert and the dark ages and exist in the knowledge of modernity, our church encourages intellectual growth and an appreciation of science and discovery. We can’t go backwards, so let’s go forward.

Reverend Jo Bell’s sermon last night was about our often-injured relationships with our fathers, and how that sometimes translates into a difficult father-child relationship with Our Father Who Art in Heaven. Ma Bell and me both have an affinity for bringing up the feminine aspects of the divine whenever relevant, to make sure women’s contributions are celebrated and not denigrated. But I’ve never had issue with saying “our father’ instead of “our creator.” Because Dad was just so amazing and cool and kind and supportive and authentic, despite our obvious differences in opinion and spirituality, I’ve always been able to take comfort from the masculine side of God.

Only tyrants and insecure egos must resort to an all-blustering, power-hungry fire-breather who does nothing but smite. Sure, a father has to discipline a child when he has lost their way, but it was never lost of me that the sky-god stories of the old testament patriarchy are just that- patriarchal, archaic stories that show the experiences of those people through that historical lens.  I thank my father for showing me the gift of God’s love and for loving me through various hells that hurt like hell, so that I could come out on this side.

And I thank God for my father, to whom I have always turned since I was a little girl when I had one of my neurotic worry spells. Dad always had an answer, slow and certain, without making light of my very real if irrational anxieties. I am blessed to have two heavenly fathers!

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

Friendship Sunday

I’ve been so very fortunate and blessed to love some of the most amazing, colourful characters, inspiring friends with wild imaginations, nifty philosophies, saintly kindness, impossible strength. I have loved vividly and extravagantly. I have shared adventures and positive changes, and the deepest valleys.

Today was Friendship Sunday at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, so this week, I dutifully spent some time reflecting on friendship.

Just yesterday I read Dax a favourite book from childhood, The Friendly Book.  Cute kids and bunny wabbits are snuggling and blissing out on the bright cover. And the simple, snappy words tell a story that stayed with me all my life. I like trains, Margaret Wise Brown says chirpily, I like boats, I like stars.  Her voice reverently gives way to mystery as she lists “far stars, quiet stars, bright stars, light stars, I like stars.” The Friendly Book enjoys just about everything in life, but most of all, people. “I like people- glad people, sad people, slow people, mad people- I like people.”

Of course, Dax wanted to know since when do I like people so much? A friend for nearly two decades, he is especially privy to my every nervous breakdown. And he knows I thrive on this quirkyalone stuff, can’t imagine having less time, and that I dream of more.

But I do like people. In fact, I like nothing more. I especially love crazy people, the flamboyant and inventive characters, the magically hip, the tragically injured. I love writing profiles about fascinating people. I just love what ways the imagination reveals itself in millions of interesting people around the world.

But the best part is when the people above are my friends. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am so thankful for the amazing teachers, these fellow creatures who know me and still love me. I’m so blessed.

I admit I spend some time in grief, and suspect I always will, though I’d prefer to waste less time mourning the dead and celebrate the living with the savings. But the ways that friends, living and dead, or dead to you, contribute to the fabric of your being means that remembrance is just part of the routine. On any given day I admit my heart is broken. Isn’t yours? Loss is everywhere, and we assimilate the absences into our presences. Some are smoother transitions than others. Some are more pendulous at some times. Some feel almost healing, natural, where acceptance has managed to genuinely plant itself without pretense.

One of my very best friends is quite a philosopher, and I love the way he unravels the world and shows me how to see it. I was making one of my trademark bitter drama queen jokes, as always using humour to survive dark or morbid feelings. I quipped something along the lines that my trips to the chapel require a shopping list and lighting all those candles, one for every dead person, was giving new meaning to three words, “house of wax.’  To be fair to my crude attempt to laugh the pain away, it was becoming a real concern that there wouldn’t be enough candles to go around for the other people’s kindred, and that I had to keep a list handy to make sure I didn’t want to forget anyone.

Sure, I was very, very bitter. Another person that I loved so very much had just bit the methamphetamine dust. All the feelings from those stark, hollow, unbearable days of emptiness after Marko died surfaced afresh. I just wasn’t sure I could survive the emotions again, and didn’t want to feel them. It was also terrifying that most of the circle from that crowd is dead. The bleak defeat that surfaced, and my sick relief for not taking the road- let’s face it, friends, it’s just by chance that I didn’t’ end up on that road. Lucky me. But now I had to mourn again, a beautiful, beautiful dreamer of a man who desperately wanted to be free and couldn’t make it. This sucked so large I couldn’t see joy showing itself anytime soon.

I felt much better immediately, for sharing this fresh wound with this friend. Not everyone is as verbose and emotional as I am, but Rob didn’t make a big deal, either, of my need to talk. Instead, he shrugged and said, “When you’re ready, it will okay to just light one for all of them.”

A simple solution, and so liberating. Ritual has always been important for me to use in making sense of life, in life’s enchantment, its theatre. I was grateful that Rob had said, “When you’re ready.” It felt okay to know that one day, I would be fine.

So today was friendship Sunday. The service was for our friends, and I celebrate them, those with me, those far from me, and those who were in a hurry to get to heaven. I lit one candle for the Cosmic Express gang and one for the friends I am still blessed with day to day on this earth.

You may be scattered through the world, but today I remember you, and the things you have done for me. They ways in which you made me laugh. The books we’ve shared, the facebook word games, the nights out together if we should be so lucky. Thank you for the small gifts, and for the big ones, of trinkets and of your company. Thank you for telling me like it is, when you know, or when you can. Thank you for loving me, even when I’m just a hot mess. Thank you for listening when my stories repeat themselves. Thank you for sharing your stories with me, for letting me in.

I thank you for your patience with my shortcomings. I thank you for the open-hearted ways you’ve imagined for us to be close, even when we can’t be. Today at Friendship Sunday, I thought of you, individually and as a beautiful sort of aura-whole that surrounds me. I thank fate for the crossing of our paths, no matter what transpired there.

“My friends are my estate.”
-    Emily Dickinson

Visit the writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.