An Explanation is Not Necessarily an Excuse...

May Day,

Sunday night...

We were making the rounds of some of our favorite sites, blogs and tumblrs, when we noticed jason over at the charming: "night is half gone." blog,  posted this post: "guess...um...who", who can resist a question like that?  So we clicked....
Lo, and Behold,  there was a photograph of our best friend from high-school...
AND...
Captured at the time when we knew him best...
AND, in a spectacular '70s bathing suit, no less -

Our long time friends & avid readers already know that this is Jeff Dahmer, of whom we write of from time to time...
(check the label on this post).

Now, we don't expect everyone or anyone to understand, but our memory is incredibly vivid,  we have had access to youtube long before it was invented...
Our recollections are photographic & events play for us on a loop, upon command.
(we were told by investigators & attorneys that we were of great help to those on the case, and to Jeff as well,  some thirteen years later... events, dates, the time of day, witnesses; et cetera)...

We find all of this difficult to communicate via typing, indeed, if you all were in the red room, we could do it with the most gracious of ease & with the ease that comes with graciousness...
(not to mention that we are a swell looker).
Gracious!

We now submit our explanatory outline for your personal consideration....

In chronological order:

#1 - You are buying some cigs at the jiffy-mart... You look  to your left at eye level, and your friend is on the cover of time & newsweek & such....

#2 - Then, you are trying to have a bourbon with some sweet looking, sexy boy at some dive, and you can't help but overhear the jokes from the people sitting more than a few stools down
(then have some more vegetables!)...

#3 - The authorities call, and you help them under the condition that you can have direct contact with your friend & they agree! Then the authorities stop your friend from committing suicide & then the authorities let your friend get murdered....

#4 - Years later, you are going about your business, and the name of your friend becomes a fairy tale, a legend, an anathema, to be bandied about at the whim of the user...

#5 - You try to smoke a joint with your peeps & watch south park to have a laugh or two & then your friend shows up... with satan, no less....

#6 - You take a sweet little nap in the afternoon & leave the TV on; You are trying to have a sweet little nap & they are talking about your friend...

#7 - You get older & dislocated and start a blog, and your bloggy, bloggery friends post a picture of your dead friend & more than likely you will type something stupid....

#8 - It won't be over till it is over for us...  Thank God for the arrival of that beautiful day....

He did really terrible things, but I loved him.
So, We can get a little touchy about this, we don't want to upset anyone, it is just a sore spot that we have...

If we had offended anyone, then please accept our explanation, and do, please, excuse us....
Sincerely,
qw

Time for a little Joni...

...Lots of laughs....

And as we said:

mayday mayday mayday....

First period, act I; scene I........

High School in Ohio in the Seventies in many ways was a cool place to be; they taught us how to think, and never what to think. I am very happy to have been  publicly educated in Ohio,  the birthplace of public education, (amongst other things).

The mornings at Revere were interesting... The commons were open for hours before the opening bell, Television, coffee, doughnuts, potato chips & soda-pop, amongst many other things were available from the district superintendent as well: in the smoking lounge or the smoking area, (outside), one could purchase on a daily basis: pot, hash, acid, quaaludes, speed, chrystal T, coke, wine, liquor and most likely ass, (though I'm way too sweet to know about such things)...

Homeroom was a duty, you had to show up. Attendance, Announcements and a shift of Attention ...,(very american)...
Twenty minutes later the first period bell would ring, signaling each ones' journey to their chosen first period class; I chose free time as my first period class, and scheduled myself for library aide. Jeff D. also scheduled his first period for free time as well; study in the library...

I would go directly to the library at that time, and first check with the head librarian, Mrs. Shepheard,  (God Love Her), she then would fill me in....,(you readers don't need to know what she said, don't worry about it, I got it, You kids go back to having fun, OK?, ok.). Then, after being filled in, our first duty was to go outside and gather the "periodicals", The Akron Beacon Journal, The Plain Dealer, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and one we don't quite remember, perhaps a rag from the christian science monitor ?
So.
First day of our sophomore year, we go out to collect the periodicals, and lo and behold.... There is Jeff D. ,(whom we have never met before),  guzzling whiskey from a fifth....
Well,  he looked at us as though we would turn him in; upon realizing this we took the bottle from his hand and sucked down about eight ounces of that Canadian Goodness....
We were friends.... We drank a fifth of whiskey three out of five mornings that year
Never got in trouble, almost three thousand people in pissing distance, and no one knew...
After the drinking, we would take our places within the library...
Second period we scheduled physics.... Really drunk, but we still pulled 3.8/4...

enough for now.

Why it can be hard to give an account...

We were about to do a post entitled, "First Period", but whilst googling images to illustrate our points, we came across other people whom we know from this particular part of our past. This is not necessarily painful in and of itself,  however, when people skew their memories and leave the truth for embellishment and that, especially for money, (we like to call this lying), it bothers us and it upsets us even more when said lies are about someone we love.
We pointed out to Mistress in the comments to Jeff-Jeff-Mike-Wally that the one interesting thing that the FBI found out about this case is that anyone that was truly close to Jeff refused to speak publicly about him.  Indeed, we are only doing this now for two, no, three reasons:
1. It needs to be done; I need to do it.
2. It is 2011 and any chance of hurting anyone involved has diminished substantially.
3. There are at least two people that want to know, for real, (and they are both Canadian, Eh?), what they need to do with this information we don't know... But our intuition tells us that perhaps in some way the world may become better; we have, so we give.

Anyway, this one person that we came across in our search that claims to have been Jeff's friend, (and as it happens this guy has done very well for himself, professionally as an artist, all of us in North America have enjoyed his work, we promise you.),  Jeff actually considered him a teasing bully.  There was one time he addressed this to us,  and we witnessed this on more than one occasion ourselves.  They very well may have been friends at one point in time, but not when all the shit went down.  We know, we were there. (unbeknownst to him, his own writing supports our statements).

Most of his crimes were committed in Wisconsin, and that, a few years later, but the good people of Ohio just had to start wagging their tongues which gave law enforcement a good deal to sort out. Eventually, according to the agent that interveiwed us, Jeff finally told them: "If you want to know about Ohio, I only had three friends: Jeff S, Mike C and Wally S."

He did terrible things but he was not dishonest.

enough for now.

qw

The Players - Jeff, Jeff, Mike & Wally...

We four...


1

Jeff D. -
 '71 Ford LTD, two door, midnight blue, ivory landau roof, ocean blue brocade interior..... great radio/8-track...

smelled like pot, menthols, Canadian whiskey & spoodge. 




2

 Jeff S.

'70 Ford LTD, four door hardtop, midnight blue, midnight blue vinyl roof, midnight blue vinyl interior, great radio/8-track.... Smelled like menthols, pot, mad dog, beer, and burger farts...

3

Michael C.

'73 Dodge Charger Fastback, RED w black striping, bucket seats, cheap black vinyl interior ,

lousy radio... Smelled like pot, menthols, plastic fumes and a little bit like his sister's perfume...

4

Wally S.
 '70 Fiat 850 Spider Grand Tourino, Convertible, ORANGE, black striping, black top, bucket seats, black vinyl interior, radio that only works within metropolitan Rome.... Smells like roses & freshly steamed tiramisu... 

When we think of Jeff, Jeff, Mike & we, the first song that comes to mind is :

When we think of the many times we were cruising with Jeff D, alone, this is the only song that was playing:

We must point out that this was the nineteen-seventies in northeastern Ohio.... We went out every night.

That is to say - we went out, mostly.

That's about all I can handle for one night of reminiscent pain...

more later...

If you don't understand these posts of Jeff, Jeff, Mike & Wally, Just ignore it, and we always try to post something FUN after.

qw

Pssst. The cars look all romantic now.... But back then... Four schlubs were we...

We Have Always Enjoyed the Rending ....

SEW...

It is important to know us in order to understand.

We were the head library aide in our school system from grade seven up until our earliest possible graduation.

Make fun if you must, but Wally had access to everything that everyone, ever, checked out of the libraries in Summit County, Ohio, and more specifically: Revere School District, i.e. Richfield, Bath, parts of Peninsula, parts of Medina, Northhampton & the like:

(some of which are just plain gone.)

Yes, access to everything you ever read and your siblings, your cousins, your parents, grandparents....

You get the picture.

This hippy roamed the halls of higher learning with impunity; when a teacher or a principal saw us in the halls in the middle of a period, we were never, not once queried. Of such we used greatly to our advantage, please understand.

Tonight, we just would like to point out that we met Jeff in the library, first period in early September of nineteen hundred and seventy-six, (in Ohio we made our own schedules for high-school). We struck up a conversation with him because his "card catalogue" intrigued us. Jeff on the other-hand was more intrigued that he was being spoken to, directly....

That is all we can handle for now.

qw

Thinking about high school lately....

Or nights, and it was Jeff,  more correctly.