What I Am

In the original Fifthnail blog I was as honest as I could be without exposing myself as a child rapist/murderer. So at times I even made carefully worded denials of any interest in children at all. These denials, of course, were deliberate lies. But in this “Fifthnail Exposed” blog, I no longer need to hide my sickness or perversion. I am what I am, and attempting to deny the truth at this point would be a futile attempt at vanity, not to mention self defeating.
The “revelation” that caused me to bring eight-year-old Shasta home and surrender myself to the police, did not “cure” me. I still have fantasies of raping children, and even masterbate as often as I feel like it with little or no compunction.
Several times after I was arrested in 2005, I tried to suppress my deviant fantasies and would go weeks at a time, “fasting” from all “pleasurable thoughts”. These fasts would often include going without food at the same time. I continued these fasts, off and on, for about two years after I was arrested, thinking that I had to be able to “control my desires” in order to be “pure” and “completely honest”.
And during these fasts, I often told my attorney's about my attempts and failures, at self control, thinking that being as truthful as I could with them would help me to become more honest. I even “confessed” to the FBI, at one point, with this same goal in mind (which I explicitly explained to them as the reason for my talking to them against my attorney's advice. I said, “God told me to be honest with you”.)
But, as it turned out, it was easier to starve myself for weeks at a time (the longest I ever went was about two weeks with no food) than to get control of the violent fantasies that kept coming into my mind. They seemed to have a life and will of their own, to survive!
I started noticing that the fantasies would react to specific external circumstances. When guards, or other inmates, projected insults at me, I could be doing something completely innocuous, such as reading a book, or writing a letter, and even though I tried to ignore the insults, the fantasies of deviant sex would come seemingly all on their own.
So I started “experimenting” with different reactions and techniques. For example, I discovered that if I allowed myself to react to the insults, by shouting back for example, that the fantasies were much less likely to come, or if they did come they were much less persistent. I also noticed that even if the insults were not directed at me, for example, when I overheard inmates or guards talking derisively about some other “sex offender”, the fantasies would still react as if somehow to “defend” me from harm. I remember explicitly reporting this realization to my attorneys at the time. I told them, “It's as if some unconscious part of my mind is trying to protect me!” I was realizing that my fantasies were the product of completely unconscious processes that were attempting to attenuate the pain of reality, even though consciously they often caused even more pain! (For the first several days after my arrest in 2005, I was in a kind of emotional shock that kept any fantasies, and barely any thoughts at all, from coming into my conscious mind. I thought that perhaps I had been “freed” from them at last! But on about the fifth or sixth day I had calmed down and recovered enough that this unwanted “defense mechanism” decided to kick in, and I started having fantasies about having sex with Shasta and her brother, Dylan, at the mountain campsite. When the fantasies came and demanded my attention the way they do, I curled up on the cold concrete floor of the jail cell, and cried. The pain came from knowing I was not “free” after all.)
On the way bringing Shasta home in the Jeep, I had promised her that I would never have “bad thoughts” (i.e. fantasies) about her again, not even after I was arrested (she knew I was going to turn myself in). I truly believed I could and would keep that promise, because at the time I was able to relate to her in a completely non-sexual way. In other words, I was not having any sexual desires for her at all, much less fantasies. Not since before my arrest in 1980 had I been able to relate to a child with no sexual thoughts. So, I thought I had been “miraculously cured” on the mountain when I decided to bring her home. It was a “cure” I had been praying for, for a very long time. But, I was wrong.
I am still the same “sick” and “twisted” pervert that I have been all my life. Yes, I admit, even as a kid I was a “sicko”. But as a kid that “sickness” was only the result of a severe lack of healthy sexual information and experience. I could have easily been “cured” with just a little time all by itself (as recent studies show happens frequently – i.e. under confidential agreements, many responsible adults who have never been arrested, or accused of sexual crimes, have admitted that as youths they engaged in sexual behavior that could have gotten them arrested, often even feloniously. And I have personally known several such men, who are now very law abiding and respected members of society – one man, for example, who molested both me and my brother when we were 12 and 10 years old respectively, while he was 17, is now a Captain in the Navy. And he didn't just “touch our privates” out of curiosity. He did things to my brother and I with a bicycle pump in our butts that was perverted even by my present standards! Now he has a wife and kids of his own, and a very respected career.)
Eventually I realized that I was running around in circles trying to “control my fantasies”. I noticed that I was starting to fall into the same behavior cycles that I experienced when I was in prison years ago trying to “cure” myself.
So, I stopped trying to suppress my fantasies several years ago. I rationalize that there is no danger of me acting out my fantasies ever again, so why not “let them go” and try to learn by watching what they do. It's kind of like living with primative anthropoids in order to better understand them. In the past I tried to control them with external pressure. Now I'm just trying to understand them from within instead.
I've been learning a lot, and have even reflected on some of those lessons (in mostly non-sexual contexts) right here in this blog. Perhaps, if I live long enough, someday I will learn something that might help other people, or even society in general. But, I realize that's a thin hope. I'm just content to know that I don't have to struggle anymore. No matter what happens, for the rest of my life, I will be what I am. And that's okay.