Romantic Violence

by Christian Picciolini

  The horribly misguided actions of my last seven years had begun with my extreme loneliness as a child and materialized themselves as vengeful hate and bigotry. I’d blamed everyone but myself for what I believed had been taken away from me as a young boy. I was angry with my parents for abandoning me for their careers and I took my misplaced aggression out on the world, blaming those who I failed to make an effort to understand, rather than taking responsibility for my own feelings and actions.

  And because I was so blind, too overly ambitious to pay attention to my true emotions, I ended up blaming others—blacks, gays, Jews, and anyone else who I thought wasn’t like me—for problems in my own life they couldn’t possibly have contributed to. My unfounded panic quickly, and unjustly, manifested itself as venomous hatred and I became radicalized by those who saw in me a lonely youngster who was ripe to be molded. And because I was so desperately searching for meaning—to rise above the mundane—I devoured any crumbs I was fed that resembled greatness. Made them my identity, overshadowing my own authentic character. The same one that I’d grown weary of as a kid. And through my misguided animosity, I’d become a big, fat, racist bully. Morbidly obese from the countless lies I’d been fed by those who took advantage of my youth, naïveté, and loneliness. Toxins I’d eagerly feasted on. Now, I just wanted the poison inside of me to get the fuck out.

  And I was exhausted.

  Spending seven years willfully denying the truth of humanity drains an incredible amount of energy. At twenty-one, I didn’t have the strength anymore to continue to engage in constant battle with my own conscience.

  Now, people I had once terrorized knowingly put what I’d stood for aside and connected with me. I didn’t feel like I deserved their kindness. They were aware of my entire sordid history, yet they never judged me nor did any damage to my business, which I’d feared they might. They never condemned me or kicked out my taillights or spray-painted obscenities on my store or hurt my family. They weren’t the people I’d set out to serve when I decided to start my business, but the undeniable impact they made on me during that time gave me an intensely eye-opening perspective on life. They looked beyond my crumbling façade and sensed my pain before I even acknowledged theirs, and I understood now that it had been me alone inflicting damage onto the whole of us for so long.

  Non-whites and Jewish people weren’t evil or out to get me; gay people loved each other in the same ways I loved my wife and child; the people I’d thoughtlessly punished were all victims of the same pitfalls in life that I was. We were all in the same world—the same underdog’s corner. Bobbing and weaving tirelessly against the ropes with our guard up as we fought to survive in a world full of pointless jabs—in the end, just wanting to be loved for who we really are. We had to rely on each other, not hurt one another.

  This truth was at first excruciatingly painful and shameful, but it was the key that unlocked the heavily fortified barricade that had imprisoned my soul.

  Everyone from my old crew had stopped visiting the shop. They grew certain that the jumble of outsiders who’d made their way into my circle were pushing them out. They’d grown weary of my excuses for why I couldn’t come out and spend time with them: I was tired; the baby was sick; the store needed to be inventoried. Before long, I began to hear whispers that I’d lost my edge, that I was a capitalist looking to profit from white power music. I became nervous. Afraid to come clean about my feelings, worried that others might see me as a coward, I squashed the rumors as quickly as I heard them by making an example of those who spoke them. Shaming them. Discrediting them. Turning the tables. Even Kubiak and I had grown distant after his bachelor party. He’d only half-heartedly asked me to stop by after we bumped into each other at the gas station the night before.

  “What the hell is that nigger-lover doing here?” I heard the young new face quip just after I arrived, as I descended into the wood-paneled basement of the shabby VFW hall. “Shouldn’t he be at his shop, sticking his nose up some kike’s ass?” A small group assembled around him silently chuckled behind the beer cans pressed to their lips.

  I stepped over Kubiak who was already half in the bag, laid out on the steps. “What the fuck did you say?”

  I hadn’t ever noticed this kid before tonight, but the deadness in his eyes reminded me of something I’d seen in my own mirror a thousand times.

  “I said you’re a nigger-loving faggot who sucks circumcised Jew dick.”

  Operating on pure muscle memory, I pushed off the bottom stair and lunged at him. I’m not sure which came faster, the bile filling my gut over his words or my clenched fist crushing his glass jaw. Either way, my knockout blow meant he’d have an easier time spitting out several of his teeth than repeating that sentence again anytime soon. The crowd scrambled to separate us and Kubiak reached in from behind and put me in a chokehold.

  “You have to fucking go,” Kubiak grunted as he struggled to drag me away. “You can’t be here.”

  Those who had once been fiercely loyal to me had begun to disparage my commitment behind my back. The fuse had been burning for months—they’d been whispering loudly about it amongst themselves—and tonight the spark had finally reached the powder keg and triggered the explosion. They’d been witnessing my change happen and decided amongst themselves to sever the head of the beast before I could swallow the poison pill and take the group down with me. I’d become a pariah. And as scared as I was of what the consequences might be for my perceived betrayal, it was also the first time in my life that I was satisfied with the feeling of not belonging. At once, I denounced my responsibility to them, unsure of what my future held.

  I soon found myself preferring the solitude of the store to anyplace else and spent at least twelve hours a day there. Which did not sit well with my wife.

  Neither the coming of our second child, nor the extra money the store was bringing in, was making much of a difference in our marriage. I began avoiding Lisa again, tired of the renewed fighting, weary of the accusations about not spending enough time with her and Devin; sick of the complaints that she was tired of the way we lived. Bitterness and melancholy engulfed me. I’d given up all my involvement with the movement. All I did was work to support my family. What more did she want from me?

  I was too young, too blind and damaged, to realize that what she and Devin needed most from me was simple—they were starving for my time and attention. All I believed was that nothing I did pleased her. In retrospect, I realize now that I was extremely unhappy with myself, not my wife. I was a disappointment to me.

  One of my biggest motivators for opening the store, aside from supporting my family, was that I wanted a chance to start my own business like my parents had done. While I may not have been able to articulate it at the time or even been aware of it, I desperately wanted acceptance and respect. From my parents. From friends. From the movement. From Lisa. This desire became stronger than any other motivating factor, ironically overshadowing any dedication to my family. The manifest irony that I was losing respect from those I was seeking it from, because I was so narrowly focused on my own selfishness, never dawned on me.

  So I continued to find solace in my work, ignoring my pregnant wife’s and small child’s essential needs, certain that as long as I was providing for my family financially, I was in the right.

  But Lisa and I continued to argue constantly over the same things. Lisa was incensed that I was never home to spend quality time with her and Devin. She was right. She needed a partner and I had checked out. I never did see that she just needed a break. A young woman, barely out of her teens, stolen from her own dreams, who was busy caring for a two-year-old and about to give birth again. I was too engrossed in my own selfish needs to help. I should have been there for the intimate times and the small things that often mean so much more. Irresponsibly, I had treated my own wife and son like my parents had treated me. This was a harsh blow.

  Our second son, Brandon, was born on November 18th, 1994, just a
fter my twenty-first birthday and almost two years to the day after our son Devin was born. His birth was every bit as moving and magical as his brother’s had been, and Lisa and I instantly fell madly in love with him.

  But his birth could not save our marriage. If anything could have, it would have been our children.

  It was too late.

  I knew we were doomed the night I came home late again to Lisa strapping Devin and Brandon into their car seats. Missing dinner, like I had the night before. One look at her swollen eyes that avoided mine like poison, I could tell she had been crying. She said she wasn’t in love with me anymore. Not only that, “You make my skin crawl,” she added, stabbing me with an icy, dead stare, clasping four-month-old Brandon to her chest. That bruised me the most of all the arguments we ever had. I knew at that moment all hope for our marriage was lost. I wasn’t sure we could recover from that fatal sentiment. “I want a divorce. I want you to go,” Lisa cried, slamming her car door.

  Lisa left for her grandparents’ tiny trailer on the lake in Michigan—the very same one where we’d spent our first night as joyful newlyweds—with our boys in tow. I stood in the street and watched my family vanish into the darkness before me. I’d set out to give them everything, but instead I had selfishly hijacked their lives. I knew I had no right to stop them from leaving.

  I spent the next two solemn hours packing a canvas duffel bag with the only belongings I felt entitled to—a couple T-shirts, two pairs of worn-out Levi’s, an armful of underwear and socks, and the heavy Doc Martens on my feet. It was all I deserved. I slept on the floor in the back room of my shop, next to a stack of broken vinyl records.

  My marriage was over.

  Quietly.

  No pleas for forgiveness. No more promises to change.

  At daybreak the following morning, I knocked on my parents’ door and moved back into the basement apartment below them that I’d made my home when I was fifteen.

  Just like that.

  Back to my skinhead frat-boy dorm room. Dusty and stale. The air moldy and dank.

  I’d outgrown it. And it served as a constant reminder of my failure.

  Even eleven-year-old Buddy didn’t want to hang out with me.

  “Hey, Buddy. I could use some help doing inventory at the record store. Want to come to work with me tomorrow?”

  “No. I’m going to the movies with Flaco. Maybe some other time.”

  I’d been too busy with the movement and my own aspirations to pay much attention to him. He was in middle school now with friends of his own. I’d thought of him often. Missed him. But when the holidays and rare instances of extended family time came, I paid too much attention to my own selfish needs and not enough to those of my young brother who had idolized me growing up, but who now resented me for abandoning him when he most needed me.

  Leaning against the counter, tired and alone after work that night, I realized that I’d been exactly like my parents. I’d relived their failures, irrationally thinking that being devoted to anything other than the needs of the ones you love equated to being a good parent. Too busy making a living instead of making time for my family. And I’d even taken it further. If I had been completely honest with myself, I’d have realized that it wasn’t the desire to put food on the table that had kept me away from my home and family. It was my egotistical dream of being somebody important, of making a difference. Being a hero. When all I needed to do, to be those things, was just to pay attention to what was right in front of me the entire time.

  When all was said and done, the only thing I’d accomplished was to become someone I didn’t respect. Fueled by hubris, detached from those I loved, planting lies and sowing seeds of hate to mask my own feelings of insecurity and loneliness. Creating fear, dividing people against each other. I had instead become someone I didn’t even like. Exactly what I’d hoped, from the beginning, not to become. A villain.

  Chaos Records would not fulfill my desire to provide for my family. Instead it broke us. After I pulled all the racist music from the inventory, which had accounted for the bulk of the store’s sales, my income plummeted and before long I couldn’t afford to keep the doors open. Two short months after Lisa and I split up I shuttered the store.

  We decided she should keep the house and in our divorce proceedings the judge awarded her majority custody of our boys. I was destitute. I had no job, no home, no friends, no wife, and I no longer lived with my sons—the two most essential beings remaining in my life. My identity—the person I thought I was, who I’d fought for seven years to become—imploded.

  Each harsh thrashing became a catalyst for the next.

  At twenty-one years old, I’d lost everything.

  Four months later, on the morning of April 19, 1995—the day before neo-Nazis across the globe would have celebrated Adolf Hitler’s 106th birthday—white supremacist Timothy McVeigh drove toward the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, carrying a 4,800-pound fertilizer bomb in the back of his rented Ryder truck. He detonated it, killing 168 innocent people—including nineteen children—and injuring many hundreds more. McVeigh had with him an envelope containing pages from The Turner Diaries—the fictional account of Earl Turner and an army of white revolutionaries who ignite a race war by blowing up FBI headquarters using a truck bomb.

  The same book that Clark Martell had given me when I was fourteen.

  The same book that I’d read over and over.

  The very same book that I kept stuffed in my coat pocket for almost seven years.

  What the hell had I done with my life?

  Christian Picciolini (Photo by Meredith Goldberg)

  24

  RAGNARÖK

  For the next five years I withdrew from the world and sank into an ever-deepening depression that saw me wanting to sleep in just a little while longer each morning until, eventually, I would run completely out of daylight. I’d open my eyes, hoping the darkness surrounding me meant that I was dead. I didn’t know who I was, what my place in the world should be, or if I even cared enough about myself to remedy my miserable situation.

  I’d lost everything that held any real value in my life. My wife and children were no longer part of my daily routine. I’d long since alienated myself from my parents, grandparents, and brother. My social framework and business had both collapsed. I found it painful to muster the energy to seek meaningful employment, and when I did force myself to find work—because I wanted to support my children—the best I could do was to toil away in a part-time, minimum wage job without much promise of self-fulfillment. Once again, I felt completely alone. Isolated and empty. The same feelings I’d experienced as a lonely young boy sitting cross-legged in my grandparents’ coat closet, gazing past my own reflection on the windowpane, wishing I were part of the vibrant cinema of life projected behind it.

  In my youth, during the years before I joined the white power movement, I’d watch the world from afar, detached from it like an outsider. My innocent hopes to belong to something floating on the horizon—out of reach—a million miles away.

  In retrospect, everything seemed so perfect from a distance. So romantic. In my solitude, I daydreamed of being the hero, the leading actor, the protagonist, so that others would more easily accept me, instead of embracing who I truly was, who I was meant to be—an individual; one that was flawed and scared but had many great qualities in common with other wonderfully flawed and scared people. I imprudently took miscalculated risks and co-opted the stories of others as my own identity.

  When I was a kid I wanted so desperately to be like Rocky Balboa or Han Solo or Indiana Jones. What little boy didn’t dream of that growing up? I craved the same type of outrageous adventure I saw played out on the movie screen and thought that if I could be more like them, people would like me better and let me into their world. But then as I grew older and saw acceptance slip further out of reach, I started to gamble away that simple innocence—the fundamental quest to
belong—hoping that I could more quickly force my own destiny if I took on the role of a tough, well-respected gangster character instead—à la Robert De Niro as Johnny Boy in Mean Streets or Vito Corleone in The Godfather.

  When those small bets began to pay attention-garnering dividends, I wagered against even greater odds for a chance to further gain respect and thus began imitating the real-life people around me that I admired, like Carmine Paterno and Chase Sargent and Clark Martell. As my ego spiraled out of control and I became unsatisfied with simply being respected, I craved being feared, as well. So, I went all in and bet against the house, only to lose everything while thoughtlessly trying to fulfill the savage role of Earl Turner from The Turner Diaries.

  I wanted a story to tell so desperately that I ignored all I had when it was already within my grasp. I started to gamble it all away, ultimately losing everything. The familiar sensation of despair I’d experienced in my youth—not unlike that of a solitary crow perched upon a broken tree branch, swinging in the wind, looking for a last-chance meal—rushed back and overwhelmed me. I’d become so emaciated from a lack of self-acceptance that I’d starved my soul just as one could deprive their body of food and nutrition. I’d become a paper-thin shell of skin and bones with no heart and no soul.

  Throughout the seven years of my involvement in the white power movement, I worked tirelessly, not only to disrupt the lives of so many innocent people, but to sabotage myself, denying myself of what was absolutely essential—love, basic human goodness, and a clear purpose for living. For years after I abandoned the caustic crusade I’d helped define, I would suffer those losses of love, goodness, and purpose again and again. Even when I stopped ingesting and spewing the poisonous bigotry of the movement, I still denied myself the nourishment of redemption and the natural cleansing that happens when exposing toxicity to healing light and fresh air. I prevented my own truth from escaping my lips.