So, yesterday I had a little space to kill at the end of my entry, so I got to talking about Auto Focus, the intense movie adaptation of the sad sex life of actor Bob Crane, which I recently borrowed from a friend and saw again for the first time since it had been in the theatres. (Oh, and if the director's name, Paul Schrader, sounds familiar to you, it's because his last movie was that Exorcist prequel that first got shelved by the studio, then completely remade by a new director, then eventually released because the second version was such a huge bomb. Schrader also wrote the scripts for many of Martin Scorsese's first films, including Taxi Driver and Raging Bull - so believe me, he knows how to capture darkness in a story.) And in typical fashion, I ended up running out of space yesterday right when I got to the most interesting part of Crane's story - the truly perverted relationship he had with this guy named John Carpenter, who is in fact the guy who many believe actually killed Crane, but is now impossible to prove for reasons I'll get into later. And so it looks like I'll be finishing up the story in today's entry instead.

Man, I don't know what exactly it is, but co-dependent relationships just creep the fuck out of me so damn much - that is, the idea of two addicts forming a friendship or romantic relationship with each other, that exists for no other reason than to rationalize their addictions and encourage each other to keep indulging in them. And I guess part of it is that I just find addiction itself to be this really creepy subject on its own, the idea that an external substance can have such an obsessive hold over an otherwise sane, happy and normal human being - because ultimately I consider myself a secular humanist, and fundamentally believe in the power of the human mind and human will to overcome any other power that exists.

So that's part of it, definitely, that I have a fascination with addiction to begin with, and how it is that this otherwise infinitely complex and smart thing like a human brain can trick itself into having such an overwhelming dependence on an outside substance. But see, most of the time addiction is an intensely personal experience, because of the nature of it all - the guilt, the secrecy, the hiding of the addictive behavior so that friends will never learn its extent. So it's even more fascinating, I think, when two addicts are even willing to acknowledge their addictions to each other, which is why I'm so fascinated with creative projects where the characters meet in some sort of recovery program, and go through that intense emotional experience of sharing their addiction with another person.

But co-dependent relationships go way beyond that - it's not just an acknowledgement of a shared addiction, but a shared denial of the addiction as well, and a relationship specifically established to help create this common denial of a problem. And like I said, ultimately I consider myself a humanist and an atheist - which means, for example, that ultimately I believe in human reason and human brains being the most powerful force in the universe, 'cause it ain't like some fuckin' supernatural being is going to save our asses in times of crisis. And one of the most powerful things about human nature, in my opinion, is our ability to form relationships with other humans - deep ones, complex ones, emotional ones that subtly change with each day, all of it maintained by the power of the human brain alone.

So maybe this is what creeps me out so much about co-dependent relationships - that people could use this infinitely complex thing like a human brain, and spend so much effort creating such an elaborate justification for unhealthy behavior. It just really disturbs me, I guess, this idea of two people who don't particularly like each other, but nonetheless put in the complex effort necessary for a relationship between them, for no other reason than that they're so desperate to get something from this other person that will aid them in their addiction. Oh, and man, it doesn't get much more textbook than the relationship between Crane (the smooth Hollywood star with an obsession for filming himself having sex) and Carpenter (this sorta ugly, creepy guy who had trouble scoring women himself, but was an expert with the expensive and temperamental home video equipment that was first being invented at the time); I mean, if you plotted their relationship out as a fictional story, it'd almost be too ridiculous and intense to even believe. On the one hand you've got Crane, who has all these connections to local swinger communities, as well as the best pick-up line ever invented ("Hi - I'm a famous Hollywood actor"), but who needs all this help with the video equipment necessary to support his addiction; and then you've got Carpenter, who has all this expertise on the video equipment, but needs help actually picking up the women necessary for his own addiction.

And then of course the addiction in this case is sex, which then just adds ten times the creepiness of what is already a creepy situation. And this is something I never really talk about regarding my own swinging experiences, because I made a conscious decision back then that all my writing on the subject would be positive in nature; but the simple fact is that there are always a certain number of people involved with swinging for creepy reasons, and that you will meet your fair share of Bob Cranes if you ever get involved with swinging yourself (that is, sex addicts who are both completely out of control and unwilling to acknowledge that they have a problem). I mean, you shouldn't get me wrong - I believe that swinging can be really great as well, and for those who have the right inclination and motivation, it can be just as unbelievably erotic as you're imagining group sex with strangers might be. But like I've said many times, sexuality is an infinitely complex topic for us humans - far from being the mere biological subject that it is with other animals, human sex is all wrapped up as well with our emotions, our sense of self-esteem, the way we identify ourselves to others, the way we even view other humans in general. And man, it's just a fact that X amount of swingers at any given moment are swinging for some pretty dark reasons - because they're married to someone they don't love, because they don't love themselves and are using others to mask the pain, because they get a drug-like high from the idea of dominating or humiliating others, or from participating in risky sex, or from having sex with strangers, or from having sex while others are watching them, or from watching others have sex. There's just a million unhealthy reasons out there for being into swinging, just like there are lots of healthy reasons for being into it as well; and if you ever get into swinging yourself, it's pretty much guaranteed that you will meet a cross-section of both types, and witness at least a couple of attitudes from certain swingers that will just creep you the fuck out.

Crane's particular addiction, for example, was auto-eroticism; of being unable to be completely aroused during sex unless it was being recorded as well. In fact, Crane's addiction got so bad in those last couple of years that he could no longer even have an orgasm while having sex - the only way he could achieve climax was by masturbating to a video of the sex afterwards. And it's facts like these that is ultimately why I don't have a lot of sympathy for Crane or for what he went through, because his life was just so full of such warning signs he chose to ignore; addict or not, genius or idiot, you can't experience something like I just described and not at least partially think, "Okay, something seriously wrong is going on here." And that's the nature of addiction, of course, as anyone who's dealt with it can confirm - that even the addict himself usually understands that they're addicted, can see all the fucked-up little warning signs and know that they're fucked-up little warning signs, but just chooses to ignore them for the sake of the addiction. And this of course is why addicts form co-dependent relationships to begin with - because with the right person, it's infinitely easier to ignore these warning signs as a team, just like it's infinitely easier to recover from an addiction as well when you have the right person at your side.

And by all the material that was left behind, it seems that Crane and Carpenter had just about as classic a co-dependent relationship as it comes - something you could write down verbatim and hand out to sexual therapists, with the headline "This Is What To Look For In Your Patients." It's a fact, for example, that Crane and Carpenter had this sorta "alpha-male/bitch" relationship when it came to their actual sex partners - that it was usually Crane who convinced the women to come back with them, Crane who convinced them to be videotaped having group sex, Crane who usually chose which of the women he himself wanted to have sex with, with Carpenter pretty much resigned to whoever was "left over." And it's true that Carpenter thought of Crane in this sorta sick, doting way - that he admired his celebrity, his ability to pick up women - even as he sorta despised him as well for the same exact traits. And it's true that Crane didn't really like Carpenter much at all, but simply needed him because of all the expensive equipment at his disposal. (In fact, Crane actually ended their relationship at a certain point, and only renewed it because his camera broke, an event faithfully reconstructed in the movie.)

But then it's also a fact that Crane and Carpenter spent time together almost every single day during those years - that they ate together, went to clubs together, of course had lots and lots of sex in front of each other, even traveled with each other and sometimes stayed in the same hotel room or rental unit. (For those who missed it yesterday, Crane actually put together a touring dinner-theatre production during the last years of his life, specifically so he could regularly visit cities like Scottsdale where there are large and active swinging communities. And since Carpenter was one of only five videocamera salesmen in America in the early '70s, he spent a huge amount of his job simply traveling to other cities for service calls.) It's a fact that they used to sit around naked together a lot, masturbating to old videos when it was too early to go out prowling again. And it's true that all this proximal sexual activity affected both men profoundly, with both of them having problems even maintaining erections by the end of it all unless the other one was there.

I mean, that's fucked up, right? Anybody can see that, which like I said is why I guess I'm so chilled by the idea of co-dependent relationships - of just the unbelievable amount of effort spent to ignore all these troubling signs, even while they're both aware that the signs exist, and what this says about you that you're willing to put in so much effort, and what it says about your opinion of the other person, knowing that they're aware of it all too, knowing that they're ignoring it all for the sake of their addiction. Oh, ugh, I'm finding it difficult to express exactly in words why this subject disturbs me so badly; hopefully you're seeing my point nonetheless.

So anyway, like I said, most people who have studied the case now believe that Carpenter was Crane's killer, for a whole variety of reasons. It's a fact, for example, that their relationship got into some pretty weird homoerotic territory near the end of it all, despite them both being straight. (In fact, that scene in the movie where Crane catches Carpenter grabbing his ass during sex was based on a real incident. For those who are curious, by the way, conventional wisdom says that Carpenter wasn't actually gay, but that his simplistic doting over Crane's lifestyle, along with the unnatural intimacy both had developed by this point, is what led to Carpenter's behavior.) And it's certainly true that Crane used to just unload on Carpenter sometimes (also shown in the movie), just these vicious attacks on Carpenter's sexuality and lack of dating prowess, whenever Crane himself was in a bad mood. So that's the common thought about what happened - that Carpenter simply got tired of it all, or flew into a rage one night in the face of these harrangues, and bludgeoned Crane to death in his apartment while he was sleeping. And there was certainly some physical evidence at the time that supported such a theory, like finding blood smears all along the inside of Carpenter's car door the next day.

So why was a conviction never secured? Well, mostly because the Scottsdale police department fucked up the handling of the evidence so royally and completely: they never got a sample of the blood smears, for example, then destroyed the car before realizing this; and for another example, they let Crane's family actually walk around the apartment and remove personal items, before the evidence had been collected and removed, which led to all of it being declared tampered by a judge and thrown out of the eventual trial. So Carpenter was never found guilty, and then died himself in the mid-'80s, which means that we never will fully know what exactly happened, or what the exact truth is about Crane's death.

So let's call it a cautionary tale, then, because there's something just so heartbreaking to me about Crane having such an experience and no one learning anything from it. So the lesson, I suppose, is that the first key to overcoming addiction is simply acknowledging that it exists - that not a single thing will ever get better, and in fact things will get a whole lot worse, until one is strong enough to admit that these warning signs are taking place. Or, maybe the lesson is that sexual addiction is a real thing, or at least as real as an addiction to gambling or overeating, and that a lot of good could come from us as a society acknowledging this. Or, you know, maybe the lesson is to not have group sex every single day with a person you don't like very much, but are using because they have something you need, because you never know when you're going to get bludgeoned to death in your sleep for it.

Ugh, did I just write that? Okay, Jason, time for happy thoughts again; please excuse me, won't you, while I spend the weekend watching 7th Heaven reruns and listening to Sleater-Kinney over and over again. I promise, this journal will be much lighter again in tone come Monday!