Reading about
Elliot Rodger and the tragedy in Santa Barbara, I was most struck by the futility of pushing people off a ledge at a party he went to:
Elliot Rodger's rage-filled manifesto documents his growing fury with the world and his initial attacks on women and couples that he envied. One of those attacks occurred on his 22nd birthday.
Fueled by vodka, Rodger decided on July 20, 2013 to party with the California college students he despised.
“I was giving the female gender one last chance to provide me with the pleasures I deserved from them,” he later wrote in a 137-page manifesto.
That "last chance" turned bleak – a night that reflected his ambitions, fury and warped perspectives. It became a flashpoint leading up to last Friday’s attacks that left six others dead and 13 injured.
Rodger bought a bottle of vodka that night, taking a few shots for courage, maybe downing one too many. Other students were partying – “good looking popular kids,” as he identified them. Without the buzz, he would have been too intimidated to mingle.
He walked into a house party. Hip-hop music blasted from the DJ booth. The students played beer pong.
Rodger soon became frustrated that no one was talking to him. Instead, women were giving “obnoxious slobs” attention, he wrote. With his inhibitions blurred by the liquor, Rodger’s rage boiled over. He confronted a couple before walking outside, “realizing how pathetic I looked all by myself when everyone was partying around me.”
He decided to climb onto a wooden ledge and plop onto a chair. Some partiers eventually climbed onto the ledge, too. But since the students weren’t talking to him, Rodger snapped.
“That was the last straw,” he wrote. “A dark, hate-fueled rage overcame my entire being, and I tried to push as many of them as I could from the 10-foot ledge.”
He didn’t succeed. The students pushed him back, and Rodger fell onto the street, breaking his ankle.
As he stumbled away, he realized his Gucci sunglasses were missing. He turned back – but he was so drunk, he forgot where the party was, so he ended up walking onto a nearby front yard, demanding to know who took his sunglasses.
The students there called him names, and more fighting followed. Eventually Rodger staggered home, beaten and bloody. No one offered to help. His sunglasses – as well as his necklace, he later learned – were gone. And his ego was crushed, he recounted in his manifesto.
I think maybe most young men find themselves isolated at parties at some time, but lashing out like that doesn't even begin to solve the problem.
Rodger had advantages of wealth and good looks, but social awkwardness combined with latent mental illness and Napoleonic grandiosity erased these advantages. It probably didn't help he was on the periphery of Hollywood, with all its unrealistic expectations. Never having been in this position themselves, his parents did not know how to address these issues. The mental health folks had no effective remedies.
This week, I notice most female writers on the Web are referring to the problem as one of male privilege. To me, that doesn't sound quite right. To me, Rodger's problem was negotiating around the world of female privilege. How to take the social initiative is key.
Most young men face these same dilemmas and blunder through these same spaces. At Rodger's age, I had disadvantages of comparative poverty and severe acne. Eventually, though, I formulated a plan. At age 20, I moved to Denver, CO, where I knew no one, for seven months. No more excuses: I would have to figure out how to socialize. No pushing people off ledges either. My guidebook was the cheesiest of cheesy books from the Seventies, Jess Lair's pioneering 1973 self-help book, "I Ain't Much, Baby - But I'm All I've Got." I took particular comfort in that helpful slice of cheese. And, after a fashion, the socialization plan worked. Better than I had expected.
Not entirely, of course. I'm still awkward around women in general, and sorority girls in particular. But I'm learning.
Rodger never did.
