CRAIG EDWARD KELSO, Killer

 

Killer is the name I’ve given her.

She’s of a beauty so universal it is fair to describe her as every man’s type. Physically, she is the ideal, again, for every guy. She is staggeringly beautiful, and so literally everyone who walks by her stops and forgets basic manners. They gawk. Even women.

She’s a Killer not just because she is devastating in her looks, but also because of how she reacts to situations. She waits and waits and waits to get mad, and when she lets it out, she bursts. 

Splash! 

Her emotions hit peaks I’ve rarely seen a woman able to express. To be clear, I do not get her mad. She cannot get mad at me for some reason. She explodes in my presence, and she explodes due to a perceived slight by another. It doesn’t seem to take much. And she’s so possessed in her anger, so involved in it, it’s kind of impressive. I’ve doubted privately to myself, many times, whether she is completely sane.   

I talk her down, much in the way of the Horse Whisperer, taking the wild, rude horses and breaking them into fine specimens through the Horse Whisperer’s calm and steady example. I guess I am the Ho Whisperer. I take stupid, conceded bitches and turn them into capable women. Don’t call me a hero. 

Just sharing my gift.  

We’ve struck an acquaintance, and I like how we’ve not defined it. With some people, I insist upon defining their relation to me. With Killer it is different. We have nothing in common, really, … or at least not much. Men speak to her on the make, in pursuit of her culo. They want her. I do not want her. This allows me to be candid, perfectly. Of course, I am always candid with every woman, but Killer is so very used to not stretching her mind that our conversations are something she can get from nowhere else. I am not bragging. It’s the truth. She has said as much. She uses the word love to describe her enthusiasm for our time together.

Killer came to me, excited to share a mysterious happening in her life. She commented on how the event bordered on the paranormal.

I stopped her.

I asked her what paranormal meant. She wanted to skip over that part and get to the juicy testimonial, her story. I insisted she first define her terms.

Oh, I don’t know, like something beyond what we usually experience. Something mystical, she said hurriedly, hoping I’d allow her to return to her tale. The look on my face at her lame answer must’ve spoke for me. She then continued on to define paranormal. Finally, she reached the definition I knew she meant. She meant to say something above or beyond nature itself. Supernatural.

I used this early break in her story to introduce the concept, the idea, of supernaturalism or paranormalism being logically absurd. 

I asked her if she understood there is objective truth. 

This meant I’d have to discuss the notion of some people being wrong, are wrong, no matter how close they are to you, no matter how cool or admirable they seem. Truth, I explained, exists independent of us. We can find it, but we have to develop rational ways of looking at the world, and logic allows us the clearer pathway to truth.

I wanted to know if she could understand the Law of Contradiction. It’s an analytical law, and it can be deduced much in the way of most scientific discovery. For example, two parallel lines never intersecting is true, always true, by the very definition of parallel. They’ll never touch. You can CLAIM to have it violated, seen it violated, but we all know you’re daft; we all know you’re an idiot.

Is there such a thing as a married bachelor? I asked out of context.

She twisted and burned at the thought, trying to give me a scenario by which a dude who was married could also, at the same time, be a bachelor. It was comical. I’d keep sending her back with the definition of married, the definition of bachelor.

But that’s not a married man.

But that’s not a bachelor.

It took her a while, but she relented. She understood. To speak, to speak with purpose, to act in the world, one had to navigate with the proper equipment. Reason, logic, I insisted, are the only ways to discover objective truth.

I still hadn’t heard the story.

I told her before she could really understand what had happened to her, she had to develop a proper way to interpret her experiences. She had to develop values, principles. She had to act consciously. That if she really wanted to know, rather than just roll around in mystical garbage like a pig in slop, accomplishing nothing, she’d have to put in the heavy lifting of thought.

So you don’t want to hear the story? she asked angrily.

Look, I explained in my trademark Ho Whisperer tone, you’re not interesting to me if you’re going to think along the same lines as everyone else. I can find that conversation anywhere. Chicks like you are a dime a dozen. Though I’d like to see you naked, I wouldn’t want to have breakfast with you the next morning. I wouldn’t want to be around for longer than it took to get you naked again.

I paused for effect. 

She was quite stunned. Though we’d spoken open and honestly before, I don’t think she’d really realized what I meant in her life. We’re less than friends. We’re more than strangers. Somewhere in the middle. She now understood I was PURPOSEFULLY keeping her at arm’s length. No one keeps her at a distance, and certainly not a single guy.

I still cannot tell if she was impressed by my discipline or annoyed in a childish way I didn’t want to hear her story. Somewhere in the middle.

She asked I explain myself more. I did. I used other examples of how we’re pattern-seeking animals, designed by natural selection to connect scenarios and happenings. If our ancestors did this, they more often than not weren’t the day’s lunch. They could then reproduce, passing on their DNA … in a causal chain all the way to us. Neat.

But the pattern-seeking trait has remained in our monkey brains, and it has a big appetite for satisfaction. We invent patterns to help us explain the world. It more or less works, but the false-positives are hugely problematic. We beLIEve this or that until it all falls apart, and we do because we’ve not used sound reasoning to determine which patterns are indeed legitimate (patterns DO exist in nature – and that is the work of science). 

X country is suspected of harboring weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Only one way to find out. Invasion. Innocent life taken. No WMDs. Oh, well, the invasion was really about curbing terrorism.

The insatiable pattern-seeking in humans, given false-positives, can kill.

I tried every genre of scenario, from world politics to every day relationships. It was my hope she’d at least understand the power of logic, the power of reason, and, conversely, the limits and danger of not employing rationality to life situations.

Do you want to hear my story or what? she laughed, stomping her foot and looking adorable.

*

  Craig Edward Kelso is the author of Anarcho-Capitalism (2014), a primer on the philosophy of peaceful, stateless cooperation. His curriculum vitae include a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from San Diego State University, and a Post-Baccalaureate secondary education credential in both Social Science and English Language Arts. Kelso taught for nearly a decade in the American public school system, and was voted by colleagues Teacher of the Year, twice in his short tenure, earning numerous accolades from chambers of commerce, mayors, state assembly persons, governors, congresspersons, senators, and even Wal-Mart. Currently he struggles to earn an opportunity to be employed, working as a laborer, dishwasher. He is deliriously happily married to Myra Kelso, living in Southern California with their adorable children.