The Mask of Sanity

by Hervey Cleckley

  Her family first became aware that Anna had serious problems through the discovery of a boys’ club in the local high school which, if not exactly founded in her honor, had at least been organized about her as the central figure. Comprised of ten or a dozen members in their early teens, a secret society in a sense, the group, like many Greek letter fraternities, had special phrases, symbolic signs, and countersigns. Encountering each other at the soda fountain or passing in the school corridor, two boys might slowly flex the fingers of their hands (so as to suggest a rounded aperture, possibly), leaving their arms dangling as if to veil slightly from alien observers a mystic communication.

  Amid the chattering of groups over their chocolate sodas or hamburgers. certain phrases were thrown out stamped with idiom by the tone of voice and a special knowing quality in the accompanying glance. Small talk proceeded along lines common to pubertal groups. Baseball scores were predicted and estimates were voiced as to whether or not a certain girl would neck or pet or perhaps do a French kiss on the third date. The occasional gestures and the allusive words provoked curiosity among the uninitiated without actually revealing the secret content. Numerous small groups of boys, sometimes only three or four, sometimes more, banded by a common interest in postage stamps, firearms, a secret shack in the woods where they met to gamble, or in some other affair, often reserved for themselves a peculiar connotation in bits of familiar language or devised codes of slang, verbal, digital, and postural, to transmit among the elect understandings of special recognitions best reserved from the surrounding masses.

  First and fundamentally, the comprehension of the entire adult world was glibly evaded by this communication system. In mixed gatherings, such as at dancing school, allusions could be made, say to a half bottle of cheap liquor stored weeks ago in a hollow tree near the riverbank. This often evoked an arcane deviltry through which the girls could be teased but in which they could not fully mingle. Groping among confused and paradoxical concepts of virility, some boys could find stimulus (or protectiveness) in neologisms and fresh innuendos pertaining to the act of excretion and its subtle relationships to insult, sexuality, and infinite defilement.

  Like dozens of other small, spontaneously forming and dissolving fraternities centered around interests that ranged from bird study to techniques of mutual masturbation, the group whose special interest lay in Anna did not for a while attract undue or sustained scrutiny from the adult world. The club had come into being after a discussion among several boys heretofore not particularly well acquainted with one another. Chat had veered desultorily from literal accounts of what they had done to certain girls to playful variations on the theme of personal insult by the versatile (and at times fantastic) use of strongly obscene words.

  As every junior high school boy knows, this argot of double-talk can bring a stimulus of exaggeration into the simplest statement and at the same time literally indicate matters so grotesquely perverse that they probably lie beyond biologic experience. Though at times seized upon to express actual rage or contempt, even the most objectionable formulations are oftener used in amiable or even affectionate badinage and horseplay. The actual nouns and verbs, chiefly those of four letters (occasionally those of three or five), denote parts of the body involved in excretion and the genital organs of man and woman, and eliminative and sexual activities. Mingled in a sort of cloacal chaos, seasoned with qualifiers of coprophilic and more broadly scatologic significance, weirdly sadistic, rounded out with participial references to olfactory and other sensory outrages, this unprintable language is worn so smooth by continuous repetition among pubertal boys that even its more literal meaning often bypasses their awareness.

  In calling this language unprintable I am not uncognizant of the fact that there is not one of the forbidden words which has not occasionally appeared in books and that all of them can be seen scrawled on the walls of latrines. These words, however, in isolation or in different contexts, cannot even hint at the terrible significance so obvious in the context of speech into which they are woven. Though some attention has, of course, been given by psychiatry to what is now being mentioned, it is an area that deserves further study.74,91,229,248 The material is so highly charged that even in medical or in any other technical writing it cannot be handled freely. The actual discussion that led to the beginning of the club to which we are giving attention cannot be presented to the reader.

  It is, of course, for one thing not directly accessible to me in full detail, although there is sufficient information to reconstruct a reliable approximation in concrete terms. The nature of Anna’s behavior and experience in her relationship to the club can scarcely be conveyed by a generalization, From what material is available about this specific incident and with the aid of confirmatory detail gathered from the review of many similar situations, let us, as best we can (tentatively, but with sufficient evidence to give confidence that the approximation is in substance valid) attempt to reconstruct a little of the scene. Even a few bowdlerized and typical fragments may be helpful.

  The boys had been hanging around together at a spot near the riverbank where they sometimes fished, talking in the sort of bull session that often arose.

  “Butch, you sure ___ed me up on that algebra assignment last night.”

  “Aw ___ Jack, you ___ed yourself, you damn old horse’s … Just because the prof wouldn’t suck up all that bull___ you tried to hand him, don’t give me that kind of ____. The prof just up and ___ed on you. That’s all there is to it. He ___ed on you good. Right in your eye.___ , to Prof. Blank! Why that ___ halt ___sted ___sucker almost ___ed me out of a pass on the last test.”

  Another boy diverted this trend of conversation by claiming he got “a piece of ___ from the colored woman who washed dishes at the Greek’s hot dog stand,” boasting that it was “plenty good … and cost only fifty cents.”

  “____ on that old black … ” Butch commented disparagingly, “If you put a croker sack over her head I might give two bits for it.” Thoughtfully he added, “Nigger ___ ___s too bad for me. You can have my share of that ____y stuff!”

  Butch had been raising his .22 rifle to his shoulder from time to time as he talked, idly glancing down the sights as he aimed it at distant objects. “Lemme see your gun a minute,” Jack asked, impatiently stretching out his hand. When Butch signified refusal by silently shifting the rifle out of reach, Jack expressed mild vexation: “Well, stick the goddamned thing up your … ”

  Bill, another one of the group, caught up the momentarily abandoned subject. “Some fellows say nigger women got the best damn ____ in the world.” Bill referred to an ingenious method learned from his older cousin, now a grown man at college. The boy had overheard him and another man discussing their exploits of miscegenation. Bill had not yet had an opportunity to try the technique personally, but this he did not disclose. It involved the use of an old towel (a hole having been cut near the middle) and offered advantages worth knowing about. He went on to explain how you could, in this way, “____ it to ’em” with no bodily contact except that imperatively necessary and with minimal suggestions of intimacy. Jack laughed and expressed approval of the approach described by Bill, then tilted his head toward the boy with the rifle, shouting, “Reason old Butch talks so finicky is because he can’t even get up a___ I Betcha a hundred dollars if all the ____ in the world was sprawled right there in front of him that he couldn’t even raise a ____ !”

  “You dirty _____, you,” Butch answered, slightly irritated, “You’re talking about your ____ self. Everything you say goes back on yourself.” Apparently feeling this was a little lame, he added quickly, “Bet old Jack ain’t ever even ____ off in his pants!”

  “Maybe all he’s done is just to_____ in ’em,” Bill commented merrily. “Bet that’s what old Butch would do if a girl had no better sense than to let him think she’d let him ____ her.”

  Turning now from this exchange of compliments, the boys offered bits of information and speculation about several girls
with whom all had some acquaintance through classes, dancing school, or Sunday school.

  “I understand Sue White’s begun to put out a little ____,” Bill said.

  “____ no!” Butch disagreed. “Sure would like to get myself a little of that ____ But Sue’s a nice girl.” “Pete Green says he finger ____ed old fat ____ed Rita ___.” Pausing a moment he continued listlessly, “Can’t think of her last name. You know who I mean. Lives in the big house next to Sam Beech’s uncle.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised,” Butch agreed. “I dry ___ed her myself the second time I ever got her alone. On the other hand, you can’t believe anything that damn mother ___ing ____ Green says,” Butch added.

  Feeling his enmity to Pete Green, who, a month or two ago, had made him back down with the threat of “slapping the living ____ out of him, Butch continued in unspoken thought, “Damn that Pete Green! If that _____ ever tries to cross me up again I’ll tell him I’ll ____ his ____ mother up the _____ with a two by four and then ____ in his ____ face! That would shut him up, maybe!”

  Pete had intimidated Butch several times in the past. He knew he wouldn’t dare to provoke a fight by talking to Pete in any such way, but it eased his feelings a little to think about it.

  “Tell you what I’d like to try,” Bill admitted, after a moment of silence, “is some of that ____ Anna Blank packs. Every day in Latin class I keep thinking I’ll take a shot at it … but somehow with a girl like that … I just don’t know … ”

  Bill could not quite express what made him cautious. It was not only that her father and mother were rich and prominent and powerful in the community and her older brother strong enough to beat him half to death if anything, even about a try, was found out. It was more than that. Most of the girls you did these things to were sort of from the other side of the tracks. But by no means all of them were. You could get away with it lots of times with ones supposed to be real nice. Lots of goofy fellows still thought some of them were nice, Bill realized in an inexpressible wave of superiority and vague elation. Some poor damn ____s would even marry them some day.

  The sort of thin, ruthless exuberance that glowed in the boy screened an underlying stratum of personal insecurity probably common to all mankind and sometimes particularly disturbing at this age. He did not try to account for the triumphant feeling or to ask if it sprang chiefly from ideas of debasing the female or, perhaps even more, from the scornfully superior position he thus attained in fantasy to the other male. Thoughts of this sort did not enter Bill’s consciousness, but factors influenced his feelings which, if he had understood them, might have produced such thoughts. By no means given to violence in action, this boy would not have inflicted physical injury on another. In imagination, as in the comic strips, all sorts of fatalities occur without anyone really getting hurt.

  Still musing on Anna, Bill continued. “She sure is built, that girl! She’s built just like a brick ___ house.”

  Butch and Jack, who had been looking slyly at each other, gave a low whistle almost simultaneously. Then they began to interchange a sort of chuckling that was half laughter and half teasing, designed to provoke curiosity in their companion. After a while Bill was told how easy it was to get ____ from Anna. Each of the other boys gave a detailed account of his own experiences, including one success by Jack in the storage room at school. These experiences were quite recent and until now had not been widely discussed by either Butch or Jack.

  Each had, in fact, been surprised and, though this was not admitted, also shocked to discover that Anna was not a “nice girl.” A confused disillusionment no doubt played some part in their present emphasis on the opposite evaluation of this girl who had, rather typically, represented the “sacred” (sexless) female in their thoughts. The fear of so honoring a female who turned out to be this other sort of thing loomed as a threat to one’s own manhood. The untouchable priestess, once disclosed as an impostor, must be thoroughly defiled. Thus man sometimes seeks protection from confusion through which he himself risks the defilement of personally enshrining one who will make his virility (honor) the laughingstock of the group.

  Fortified by this enlightenment, Bill partook of Anna’s favors soon afterward. All of the boys found a special pleasure in talking together about their achievements. Soon a friend of these three was told about their source of pleasure, then another friend, and still another. At first each boy had gone alone, but as time passed it became more practical for several to visit Anna together. An appointment would be made by one of those interested. Anna, under the pretext of taking a walk or going to visit a friend would, without detection, make her way to a building situated on the other side of the large garden behind her house. Now used as a storehouse and garage, the building was originally a stable, and its former hayloft afforded reasonable privacy. The boys, by coming from another street through a hedge back of the garage, could make their way unnoticed to the rendezvous. Safe opportunities, though fairly frequent, were limited because the chauffeur was sometimes in the garage. There were also days when the yard man worked nearby, or, rarely, Anna’s brother might be there exercising with barbells and other gymnastic equipment he kept in another part of the building. This, no doubt, was a factor in the group’s choice of coming together, particularly as its membership expanded. Of even more importance, perhaps, was a specific satisfaction found by some in entering upon the venture together. The closely shared experience seemed to enhance the pleasures of club conversation when they gathered later to talk over what happened.

  After chapel in the morning it was customary for the captain of the baseball team, the chairman of the debating club, and others interested in extracurricular activities occasionally to announce plans for meetings of their various groups. One morning, in response to a dare by other club members, Jack came forward and in a bold voice called out: “At the beginning of lunch hour there’ll be a meeting of the Animal Crackers in Room 49.” There was a scatter of giggling and some random speculation on the part of a few teachers, but no official inquiry about the club was made and no adult thought of any play on Anna’s name or caught improper innuendos.

  The existence of the club and their daughter’s undesirable situation was finally brought to the attention of Anna’s parents through its effect on another person.

  Among the older boys who had been attracted by Anna was one who had apparently turned to her in the utmost seriousness. All accessible information indicates that this boy fell in love with Anna not by a trivial attraction but with all the vividness and life shaking stir that the first complete and genuine experience of this sort can bring to an earnest young man almost ready for college. The younger girl, suddenly having become mature in body, loomed like something never seen before upon his awareness. There is reason to believe that he was determined to marry her and resolved to be scrupulously faithful through all the years he must wait for this. There is nothing to suggest he did not seek her with strongly passionate physical desire, but apparently his idealization of her and fear of arousing even further impulses, which it would have been for him a desecration to fulfill under these conditions, caused him to treat her, if not like an untouchable goddess, at least with extraordinary restraint. Anna, it seems, behaved in such a way that he was sure she reciprocated his feelings not only in kind but also in degree.

  Reports as to how he discovered the relations of Anna with the club are somewhat conflicting. It is almost impossible to believe that fortune was so unkind as to have him blunder upon an actual meeting of this group with the customary activities in progress. So it is said to have happened. At any rate, he received enlightenment in such a convincing way that the impact was sudden and trenchant.

  In his immediately subsequent state, rumored to be a “nervous breakdown” at the time, his family physician, after considerable difficulty, seems to have obtained some idea of what he had experienced. Being a relative of Anna’s mother and a boldly conscientious man, he felt that the situation demanded attention and disclosed something
of it to her parents.

  Insofar as the complicated and seldom obvious attitudes that enter into the administration of parental authority and guidance on such an occasion can be evaluated, it seems that this girl’s father and mother avoided the typical mistakes that might have been made. Neither attempted to conceal the humiliation and distress brought upon them by such conduct. After adequate frankness about their reaction to the conduct itself, they tried to avoid rubbing it in by moralizing reiteration. A decision was made for Anna to be sent at once to a fine boarding school in a distant state. Apparently feeling that the daughter could not fail to be critically traumatized by realizations that withered them with pain and shame, Anna’s mother and father tried, as some people are able to do after losing eyesight or a first child, to accept what has happened without evasion but nevertheless to turn with all resolution available to what is ahead and not to stir what is tragic or hideous, but now past and unmodifiable. There does not seem to have been gross error in glossing over what had taken place or minimizing the possible consequences. Both parents tried to support Anna by emphasizing opportunities in the future and by their knowledge that in the process of growing up it is not uncommon for people to make mistakes that in the adult world would be fatal.

  Anna’s apparent reactions were such as to enable all the family to be entirely sincere in showing her their continued confidence, their respect, and their love. In choosing a fine private school with high academic standards, she seemed to be showing her serious intentions about the future. Her keen interest in choosing clothes, her care in getting exactly the right sort of curtains for the dormitory room might have suggested to some almost too easy and quick a recovery from the fell blow she was thought to have suffered, but at the time this seemed instead a fit and appealing veil of insouciance that she bravely, if not almost heroically, pulled about her to conceal with stoic and patrician grace the terrible trauma her spirit had sustained. Even in the short period of time before she left for the East, the outwardly blithe air that Anna displayed when she joked and laughed with friends who came by (her ability to seem blandly preoccupied in getting the new jazz records and those popular dancing slippers that the shop was expecting any day now) provoked fleeting but ominous thoughts in the family that such poise, considering the full circumstances, might be a little excessive.