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My Kidnapper

October 20, 2000

I have a pen pal who wants to kidnap me and induce Stockholm Syndrome (named after a Swedish banker who got engaged to her former captor). He will destroy my will via sensory deprivation and humiliation. I have his photo. Svelte modern primitives might talk about kidnapping you, but real kidnappers probably look like this man: overweight, ponytail, glasses, sausage arms. He resembles an otter. I find that attractive, just as Celine Dion at twelve was drawn to her manager (he was thirty-eight and fat) and his "mysterious, exotic side, like a quiet seducer." She said she loved the authority he exercised. I've always wanted to be abducted and have my will destroyed. Other little girls dreamt of becoming actresses and marrying princes; I wanted to grow up and be kidnapped.

    

In an old movie, Sally Struthers fell in a strange sort of love with her captor. He raped her in front of her tied-up husband. It was easier when she was "nice," so she acted nice and then I think it started to feel nice, which scrambled her brain. In the car eating fried chicken, she empathized with her captor gnawing away rather than with her husband, who was too frightened and queasy to eat. Sally Struthers devoured her piece of chicken like an animal. At that point, she was neither captor nor captive — she was an animal. I want to feel sure of something the way she bit that greasy bone.

    

My kidnapper works with artificial intelligence and for fun he experiments with the drug DMT. When you take DMT, he says, you don't know if your eyes are open or closed. You comprehend mathematics beyond what we currently even dream of knowing. Socially, he's a reptile. People tell him to "shoo." Not going on many dates, he has lots of time to work out complex alternatives.

October 22

I have been squabbling with my kidnapper. He annoyed me when he said all women are vile. It was just so dumb. I told him not to talk to me like that and he answered that I'm "nothing but a rudimentary brain stem attached to a cunt" and that I must love Andrea Dworkin. So I explained that he's just too rude and I changed my mind — don't kidnap me. He then called me a soccer mom. Of course I'm a soccer mom! Or I will be, once Wolf's old enough to play soccer, if he wants to play soccer. How can I respect my kidnapper when he's so immature?

October 25

This morning he called me a harpy, a shrike, a gorgon; a drug-addled, vicious harridan; a broodsow, a bloated gasbag ego, a classic out-of-control narcissist. He used to belong to this Aleister Crowley group — I think that's where he picked up the Olde English.

    

When my kidnapper was four, a coke dealer pointed a gun at his head and his mother did nothing to stop it. When I was five, my father and stepmother used me as a decoy when they ran guns and drugs between Mexico and Arizona. One time the "buyer" took out a badge — he was a narcotics agent. We were in our motor home, and my father drove it faster and faster towards the cliff. He was willing to kill us all for the pleasure of beating the narc. He told me afterwards that killing me, in particular, would have been his trump card. My value was high. (At the very edge, where the road became air, he changed his mind, turned the motor home around and went to jail.)

    

My father exercised that same ownership over my fate in nonthreatening circumstances, too. A game of raquetball became dangerous when he let me know that my stepmother would be angry if she knew we were playing; he'd wake me and we'd sneak out in the dark. I had no friends — what did I need them for? Like they could ever match my dad for excitement! My father was diagnosed as a sociopath when he was in jail; sociopaths are known to isolate and manipulate their offspring. Being a kidnap victim sounds relaxing to me — I grew up that way! I had the sleep deprivation, the drugs, the isolation — I had it all! Everything one needs to turn one's personality fluid.

    

My kidnapper thinks he's so self-made. He has no idea he's actually looking for his mom, and that he dreams of tying me up so that this time I (Mom) can't leave. I, however, know that it's Daddy I see in these rude and wrong "doms." I want to replicate our original relationship, only this time, what was internal will be external. And this time, I want to break his heart.

    

I don't like my DMT friend. He is disgusting. But we have something in common, something I don't have with the people I like. He and I can play this awful game and it makes me feel warm that we know the same rules. I can't play the game with my loved ones, because the object is to destroy each other. My latest move is to ignore his insults. I hold my finger over the email reply button and don't press it, thinking, "Take that, Kidnapper!"

    

"You have met your match!" he boasts into my silence, like a tourist yelling into the Grand Canyon. "I am so much meaner and smarter than you'll ever be," he continues. He tells me I don't know who the father of my child is. A fellow as into torture as he claims to be ought to know that a hard and steady nastiness isn't half as effective as an interrupted one.

    

I wonder how my kidnapper is in bed. I imagine it would start off well, but within twenty-four hours he'd be in my lap sobbing as I petted him with handcuffed hands. People are sad.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
	Lisa Carver is the author of the books Dancing Queen, Rollerderby, The Lisa Diaries and Drugs Are Nice. She's written for Hustler, Index, Icon, Feed, Newsday and Playboy, among others. She lives in New Hampshire.

©2000

Lisa Carver and Nerve.com, Inc.