My Dear Woman,
I hope you read all of this. To do that, I'm sure, you'll have to fight an impulse to stop suddenly and tear it into tiny pieces. Either that, or you'll want to hand it directly to your prosecutor friend and spare yourself the bother of what you see as my perverted problems. But I'm hoping that you'll be able to draw on some of the enviable resilience you displayed at the trial and, with teeth and fists clenched tight, make it through to the end. I do understand how unpleasant holding a letter from me must be. I can appreciate that your thoughts throughout the length of this missive may center only on the state's failure to adequately silence me. But let me convince you of my worth - for the length of this letter alone. Let me assure you, firstly, that contained herein is information you'll want to know in order to form a truly accurate portrait of your beloved son and, secondly, that you can trust me to give you unflinchingly honest facts and opinions based on close and careful observation. You're certainly correct in questioning my motives for such a letter, and I won't attempt to lessen your possibly justified hatred and prejudice. But if I might be so bold - we find ourselves in a rather unique position.
We share an extraordinarily intimate relationship with your son as loving catalyst and interface. And, whether you prefer to admit it or not, our relationship is, since the passing of your son, as close as either of us will ever be to him again.
Now I would assume, both from seeing your actions at the trial and parole hearing, and reading various quotables in the press and depositions, that you find no use in shielding yourself away from the gory details or painful invectives regarding Danny's death or living situation. It is to this strength of character I wish to appeal. And further, I'm sure you would agree, that any information regarding Danny's life and death is, at this sad point, very dear indeed.
To be brutally frank, I think you owe it to Danny. By your own admission-at the parole hearing especially, when you so eloquently explained the hole in your heart and life since Danny's untimely end - you owe it to Danny to picture him in your mind as he truly was, and not just as what the public wants to hear or wants you to think.
And as concerns my veracity: You know the facts. You know the photos. And I suspect you sense the honest truth. But honesty is a valuable, precious commodity - so precious, in fact, that it is irrevocably insular. Safety and fear demand that we cast aside our pure sense of honesty and instead act on a base level more common to jungle animals and thieves.
May I suggest, then, with that excruciating familiarity as a backdrop, that we ignore the false veneer of respect and good taste and allow our shared experience to speak for itself. Just as true honesty celebrates itself through the necessity of lies and trickery, let's you and I concentrate only on our observations - shared as they are in deference to Danny.
I promise I won't keep you long. I also promise you a unique experience afforded to very few mothers.
How many women do you know who are able to see their child through perfectly clear eyes - precise, lavish images unmuddied by falsely accepted sentiment or natural (to wit: blind) concern? Allow me the chance to show you Danny as his peers, his public, saw him. Let's you and I share the selfishness of his personality. His being. His image and reality. I suspect, as I said earlier, we already do. I thought your presence at the parole hearing last month was a very brave and commendable move on your part. I know how difficult it must have been for you. You said so yourself, didn't you? The papers and court records should accurately reflect that fact also.
Your pain as a mother suffering a mother's most extreme heartache is quite obvious. Your words reverberate in my brain as they echo through the public's Sunday newspapers: "I don't want this creature out to kill again. He took my son. He can't ever be allowed to be paroled. Never, never release him. May he die in hell. He not only killed my son, but he murdered the father of my son. He surely died because of the stress and strain of the case and the pain that he caused."
Strong words with a personal, real-life backbone. Let the parole board see the living pain of the crimes. Quite right. After, of course, they've viewed the actual photos. The photos that you brought with you. The same photos the prosecutor had and passed around to the board members just as he did to the judge and jury so many years before.
You came across, to me and your public, as exactly as you see yourself. As exactly as you are,
I'm sure. Damaged and hurt and especially honest. These outrageous circumstances demand ostensible sincerity. These demands require that you share with all of us the most confidential and introspective details of your psyche and experience. An ugly situation, indeed, and one where the greater concern for general welfare is sometimes forgotten entirely in simple practice. You held up well and put on a very special performance.
I think, therefore, you will understand what I mean when I say that I saw a lot of Danny in you. As I watched you, as I checked your piteous bawling your manipulative pleas and acerbic, bitter, vengeful insults, I saw the real Danny seep out of the witness stand and obliterate you. Through you, I watched Danny and his dismal failure to understand his
impulses and drives. I saw the most basic personality forged precariously upon laziness and the ever-ready acceptance of the immediate public moment.
Pity, then, that I can't say your social soul-searching was enlightening or unique. Like Danny, your honesty was only as entertaining as your mistakes. Your opinions are only viewed against the typical scenery of public stupidity.
This indolence might forever serve you, but between us, and our very special closeness, it will remain a heavy and brutal wedge. This is a shame. Forgive me if I don't dismiss you as readily as you dismiss yourself, but I think your raw nerves and motherly mewling need some shaping. You need some motivational skills, some insight - a few less back-pats, concerned hugs, and empty reassurances and a few more details.
"All you have to do is look at the brutality of the act of the man. The fact is, he is a monster."
Impressive, effective, I suppose, but you and I know: empty. Let's not let ourselves sink down to their level. Let's you and I disregard the convenience of histrionics and, instead, base our feelings - our honesty - on what we know between us.
Which is to say that Danny was not a particularly bright boy. He wasn't especially pretty or endearing in even the most open or drunken circumstances. I know that your relationship with Danny wasn't all that close. The sheer frequency with which I saw him was enough to tell me that. But, beyond that, I could see it every time I was with him. However, I would never question the strength of your influence, and, of course, that very special elemental bond between a mother and son.
Danny's main attributes were his slim waist, large penis, and cheap price. His young age helped, as his chosen lifestyle hadn't evinced itself on his face just yet, though I wouldn't call him in any way cute.
His mouth was a little slack and his eyes dull. Of course, the rather large amount of drugs he took daily couldn't help but alter his appearance, but then, to guess at his looks without that chemical-induced stupor would be about as unfair to him as the crying jags in your testimony. I only knew Danny when he was high and for sale. But, as I've said, I knew him often.
Danny was friendly and malleable and eager to enjoy himself whenever he was completely blitzed. He was talkative and typical and, I suspect, somewhat retarded or permanently drug-stunted. A nice boy and nicely available. He was extremely polite, albeit street- cool with a slow, slurred solicitousness. Charming in a sluggish, desperate, thoroughly average type of way. Lovely, if barely awake. I encouraged Danny to talk whenever we were together. And, in keeping with my avowed dedication to honesty between us, I will confess that my interest in what he had to say was more sexually selfish than the misguided altruism that is more commonly assumed. Danny told me about his girlfriend, his plans for marriage, and his hope of getting away to Montana to "take it easy" eventually. Danny was always careful not to act gay and also to not let me think he was just some sort of street bum.
Shall I tell you some of the other stories Danny told me? I think I should, as you can quite possibly use the details in your next interview with the TRIBUNE or the parole board. That is, just in case, you'd prefer at this point not to continue on with me in my attempts to help you formulate that warm and colorful portrait of your son.
Perhaps I should explain that, speaking from experience, a lot of what prostitutes say is usually manipulative in some way. If they're not trying to sell an image or raise the price, they're trying to ensure a repeat client by giving him what they think he wants to hear. Sometimes it's just lowly self-aggrandizing.
I can only add that what I'm about to enumerate came directly from Danny's mouth. And just as I choose to believe or ignore those things I prefer or dislike, so should you. As I suspect you already do. But it did all come from Danny.
He told me his mother and father died a long while ago, after which he was delivered to an aunt and uncle for whom he didn't really care. He said his uncle raped him when he was nine, and although I encouraged Danny to give me explicit details of this attack, and which he dutifully did, I will spare you them as I know them to be mere business phantasms best consigned to my more private moments. After all, you're still living, and during the trial I heard not a single mention of any uncle or any other less-than-proper living arrangement during his younger, more formative years. I wonder why he said both you and your husband were dead, though. Perhaps you can tell me?
He told me he didn't think he was gay because usually men only paid him to let them suck his cock.
He told me he had a lot of problems cumming and even staying hard in their mouths and often had to resort to thinking about his girlfriend with his eyes closed. However, if I offered him a bit more than the going price, he was quick to let me in his crack, and only once - the first time - did he remark that it made him feel cheap. He always seemed to take it pretty good. Some mess, no blood, not especially tight.
He told me he saw a social worker who came around periodically but that ("no offense") he seemed a lot like his customers. And the girl that came around with condoms and addresses of where he could stay and sleep and kick was "really fat and ugly - you know why she spends time with us, it's 'cause no one else will hang out with her."
He said he quit school because his classmates would call him a faggot and other names, 'cause word got out about what he was doing. He said he got in a lot of fights but won 'em all. Of course, the Danny that you and I knew couldn't win a fight with a nun.
Perhaps a natural awkwardness and frailty accounts in part for the exceptionally long list of drugs found in his autopsy report?
He charged an extra twenty bucks if his customers didn't want him to use a condom. He confessed that he was worried about AIDS and was always very careful. I explained to him that he was probably not in the position to get the virus, as it was his dick getting sucked, and he replied it was just a way to get more money anyways.
Rest assured, I used a condom.
When I fucked him.
Danny liked heavy metal. But, perhaps not surprisingly, he liked the older groups - Judas Priest (his favorite), Black Sabbath, Ozzy, UFO, Led Zeppelin.
He hadn't heard of many of the newer groups, though his friends sometimes talked about them. I told him about the so-called "death-metal" bands such as
Napalm Death, Carcass, and Morbid Angel, but he only seemed politely interested. He told me he bought a Slayer cassette and an AC/DC cassette from a local used-record store one night. He wanted to listen to them in his new Walkman, but "the fuckin' thing's all
fucked-up. I just fuckin' got it, but I don't know what the fuck happened - it was alright when I got it."
Needless to add, Danny was pretty high. Sometimes Danny would ask me for an extra five dollars. "I'm having financial problems today," he'd say. This meant business was slow. He'd say he needed the money for dinner and then start talking about the extreme price he had to pay for drugs. He said he had to make deals with this "scumbag nigger at his roach motel."
Danny told me most of the men he went with were "middle-class white guys" and that he was pretty selective. I can tell you that while this may have once been true (though I find it hard to believe), by the end of his sixteen-year-old life, Danny looked a little more than tired. I'm sure if he didn't waste all his money on drugs, he could have saved quite a lot of money.
I can't help but wonder why he took so many drugs.
Do you think his school life was really that bad? I can't imagine what he was trying to get away from. I can't quite understand what would make him so desperate for artificial fun.
Although I know how special Danny was in your eyes and how you're just sure he stood out from the crowd - how he was kindhearted and carried your neighbor's groceries and helped his little sister, etc. - I must unfortunately confess that this was not obvious on the street. Alone or in a small gaggle of misfit hookers in Uptown, Danny was no less or no more cute than any of the others. His moves, his come-on and usurious smile, his slow conversation, were all rote performances. Very much like all the rest. Very careful. Very fucked-up. His penis, as I said earlier, was large (long and kind of thick for such a skinny boy), and that may have made him stand out to various size queens, but, in all honesty, his main allure stemmed from his availability and familiarity. I've had better and worse. More entertaining ones and more abused ones.
Now, of course, what I knew of Danny and the impressions he made on me were put in a different light after I hurt him. His crying and begging and swearing and fitful rage and drugged inability to cope tend to cloud my earlier memories. Just as I'm sure your loving images of breast-feeding and nighttime tuck-ins are marred by the crime photos you promised to bring to each and every parole hearing. But these were extreme circumstances, and I'm sure it wouldn't be exactly fair to judge Danny on such a caged and urgent set of events. One's mortality is something one is desperate to avoid, and when faced with its shocking and painful reality, one can easily be excused for forming an entirely new personality. Perhaps we can talk about all this in another letter. It would be fascinating to hear your thoughts on how you think Danny perceived himself and his surroundings. His sense of purpose, his religion, his politics, etc. He did beg fearfully for his life, I can tell you, and I somehow suspect that this reflects a little better on you.
Well, I know I've taken up too much of your time, and if I might be so bold, one last time, I suspect your time with Danny was always a mite strained and difficult for you. Hopefully, next time you talk to the press or the parole board, you might mention less about what a great kid gone awry he was and more about how he was pretty much dead before I even got near him.
I think that would be the honest thing to do and more in keeping with a real love for Danny. No use in tarnishing your personal photo book even more than it already is.
Additionally, I'd like to hear more about yourself. Maybe how I've made you feel in light of all the press and peer attention you've received. Nothing wrong with a little limelight, and I certainly don't mean to suggest that you're an empty, worthless media hog.
In fact, I think the photo of you shrieking and crying at the courthouse when the caption below read, "Danny's mother declined comment" was especially tactful. You did look old in that shot. That was probably enough of a comment. But I'm talking more specifically about how I've given your rather special mothering technique that rare stamp of legitimacy.
You'll no longer be a piece of trailer-camp white trash with a faggot junkie whore for a son; you're forever now a poor, blameless mother who has suffered unspeakable injustices. Inconceivable tragedies.
Gross disadvantages.
Violence is quite a purge, my dear ~ and when I think of the gleaming coincidences we share, it's mildly disturbing to me that we're not much closer. I'm sure you'll agree.
Hope to hear from you soon…

Tool is an 8 part fictional collection of Peter Sotos' writing, and appears in Goad To Hell Enterprise's book Total Abuse. Copyright 1991.