Transcript from an interview with Constable Rogers.
Alright. Ready. Can you hear me? [taps microphone]
[muffled] Please don’t do that. Just talk normally.
Sorry. Ok. Go ahead.
What can you tell us about the crime scene?
[loud] It was extremely grisly. I have nev-
Stop. You don’t have to talk right in to the mic. Trust me, it will pick up your voice. Just look at me and use your normal voice.
Sorry. I’m just nervous. Ok. Ready.
[pauses] Go ahead.
What?
What?
Ready.
Go ahead.
With what?
The fucking crime scene!
Right. It was extremely grisly. It was horrible. Disgusting. I’ve never said anything like that. Blood everywhere.
And the chair?
It’s comfortable, thank you. Where’d you get it?
The chair at the crime scene.
I don’t know how comfortable it was, I never sat in it. Too bloody.
Are you fucking serious right now?
Yes, very serious. Very bloody. I’ve never seen anything like that.
Alright, let’s try this: what is a constable?
Oh. I help protect the town. We don’t have our own police force and have to borrow police from the larger towns around us. I worked with the police forces so often, they just decided to make me a constable.
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Transcript from This American Life, unknown airdate. Used without permission from NPR or Chicago Public Radio.
I guess it all started a couple years ago. Five or six. From what I hear, I knew him better than anyone. He was a regular.
Before or after?
His accident? Oh, way after. A long time. He’d been out there doin his thing for a long time before I met him.
Do you know how long?
Oh, he would try to tell me the order of things, but it always got really messy and didn’t always make sense. You can understand how that would happen. Someone in his condition. All he knew from day to day – when he’d sleep, that is – is whatever was on his phone.
He had his whole life, essentially, on that phone.
Oh heavens, yes. Isn’t it that way with you? When was the last time you used a phone book? When was the last time you wrote a letter? Can you remember your friends’ emails or phone numbers, or is it just a shortcut on your phone?
I guess you have a point.
Yeah, you could say he lived on his phone. A travelling drug rep, you know, he’s got his schedule, his notes, his directions, his email, his everything on there. And it was constantly in his ear. In his head, on his thumbs, beeping and reminding. I think he slept with it under his pillow like some people sleep with a handgun under theirs.
So he was a regular. Did you two have sex often?
Never.
Never?
Never.
How’s that work?
He paid. I mean, he always paid.
What did you do, the two of you?
Talked.
You’re kidding.
Nope. We talked. He called me, we talked, he paid me, then it was over and started again in a few days, usually.
[stumbling over words in disbelief]
Seriously. It’s not all that weird. People usually pay me for different things. A blow here, a hand there, play this role or be that person. He was no different except he just didn’t want sex.
Did you ever want to have sex with him?
Only towards the end.
Why only then?
I knew him very well by then. I just wanted to help him in some way.
Pity?
That makes it sound so… demeaning. It wasn’t pity. It was… you ever give some wedding presents?
Of course.
Ever give a more expensive gift to a couple you really liked instead of just a toaster, or a blender or whatever?
Yeah, if I really liked them.
Was that pity?
I see.
No, it wasn’t pity. I just wanted to help him in whatever way I could.
Even after all the murders and tortures?
If you knew him like I knew him, you wouldn’t call it that. You wouldn’t use those words.
Today on This American Life; the story of a man with no memory of his actions after he wakes up, a study on morality and the soul, and a blog that chronicled the whole thing. We’re using the entire episode to talk with the webmaster of wheniclosemyeyes.me.
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From the keyboard of wicme.me
Undated
I wonder if reincarnationists and “past lives”-ists use that belief as their god. I figure that God is an excuse for doing the right things for people who aren’t smart or strong enough to drive themselves down that path. For those people, there has to be a greater reward or purpose to tell them right from wrong. Do this and you get Heaven or inner peace. Atheists and agnostics must think that their current life is so shitty that the next or previous is/was better. I wonder.
My life is fine, as you all already know, but what drives others? No matter how much pleasure-seeking a person does, doesn’t there still have to be a greater purpose? All day clients want me to make their lives a little better (or a lot better), but they can’t have me 24/7. What do they do when I’m not there? Why do they work or steal to get their money. Why do they then give me that money? Am I their motivation for acquiring it in the first place?
There used to be a thing called a sin eater. It was usually a non-religious (or a very poor) person who figured out that all the religious types were having a ton of guilt and that they were willing to do almost anything to get rid of that feeling. The sin eater would take on their clients’ burdon of sin so that the god nut could feel ok until they inevitably sinned again. Very entreprenurial of the sin eaters if you asked me; the first people who made money off of a naive religion.
In the end, people get what they deserve… religious or not
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From the keyboard of wicme.me
Undated
“When I close my eyes,” he used to say.
“What?” I’d ask.
“That’s it. When I close my eyes. Period. Dot. End. Nothing else.”
“I don’t understand.” I’d say.
“That’s it. You close your eyes, wake up the next morning, and there you are. You’re still there, waiting to do stuff and go on about your day. You remember yourself from yesterday and just continue on, uninterrupted. I’m different. I don’t do that – I can’t. When I close my eyes, I end. That’s it. This me is not the same me from the day before or the day before that. I could be a different person every day and never know the difference. So, for me, when I close my eyes, I die. That’s the end. Period.”
We’d sit in silence then. Contemplating. I never understood what he meant until it was too late. Maybe I never really understood it.
