Chapter Two

I am a Predator

Max’s Journal

 

 

 

My name is Max, I am eighteen, and I am a predator. Legally spoken, my name is Ulrich, but that does not go over so well here in the States, and it is far too tedious to continue having to spell it out for people. Max is one syllable, says much about me, but not too much, and the spelling is self-evident even for illiterate American persons.

I see I am doing what an American news reader would call “burying the lead.” As I was saying, I am a predator. Proudly so. If I said that to most people, they would think I was crazy or evil or both, but this is the extreme stupidity of most people, because Homo sapiens is categorized as a predator species—the apex predator of the whole planet on which it feeds. And yet, self-castrated members of this species use the word “predator” as a synonym for evil when they apply it to individuals who transgress their notions of social order.

Can you imagine a pride of lions calling a magnificent young lion a “predator” to suggest he should be despised and outcast? Yes, older lions have reason to fear an up-and-coming young lion. They may wish they had devoured him before he became dangerous, but to call him a predator would only be a sign of respect.

But no, I do not self-identify as a lion. Of the big cats, lions are too masculine for my tastes, too blunt force. I am more lean, agile, and stylish, more like . . . a leopard. I am not a savage predator, but an elegantly fastidious one. I revere control and abhor messiness. I maintain my person, possessions, and spaces in perfect order and cleanliness. Is this not how cats conduct themselves? This is why I do not care to talk or write in the sloppy, stupid, slangy way of my American “peers.” I operate with precision, effectiveness, and my own sense of style. I did not learn my polished demeanor from the random people around me, but from books and films that satisfy my standard of elegance.

I am a stealthy, slippery operator, not a brute who kills for sport. I prefer to acquire money and power rather than a body count. I have never been accused of an excess of kindness, but I have no interest in harming others as an end in itself. Nevertheless, I pursue my ends with ruthless determination, and I must admit to taking a certain enjoyment from employing deception and misdirection.

I am a predator, but in other ways than red in tooth and claw. Why would I not be predatory? I am a descendant of a predator species, so what could possibly be more natural?

I grew up with hypocrites who do not consider themselves predators merely because they buy their kilos of mammal flesh sanitarily sealed in plastic from the market. They celebrate bacon as an amusing family food, but if they saw someone consuming a puppy, they would call them a monster. And yet, it is an established scientific fact that pigs are more intelligent than dogs in a number of ways.

No, I do not eat puppies, and for that matter, neither do I eat bacon or any meat, not because of moral scruples but because I find such greasy items to be repulsive. I am simply made of finer stuff and therefore eat according to my nature. Those who might call me a predator are nothing but weaklings unable to see anything clearly, even what they put in their own mouths.

So, given that I do not eat animals, why do I call myself a predator? I am referring to my essential nature as one who ruthlessly stalks my quarry. That is to say, I efficiently pursue—I am German after all—my objectives.

Since my sexuality is part of my essential nature, it too has a predatory aspect. Indeed, I stalk, or more precisely, stealthily surveil those few who draw my interest, though I have yet to cross any bright red lines. But give me time—I am, as I have said, only eighteen. Perhaps I am joking, perhaps not—I cannot even be sure myself.

Maybe my grandiosity is an act I put on for my own amusement, maybe not. You may assume these egoistic things I say are merely adolescent bravado as befits my age—perhaps so, perhaps not. I have shown myself highly effective in the real world and have the most universally respected metric to prove it—money. However, other aspects of my agenda remain unfulfilled.

I am acknowledging my grandiosity here to examine it and to ensure it does not undermine my efficiency. As I have already said, I am German, and efficiency comes with that territory, as they say in English, but there are other German aspects I find lumpen and boring. I spent the first twelve years of my life in Berlin, but I have learned how to make the accent disappear. There are times, however, when I bring it back for effect. Even when I was a child living in Berlin, I put great emphasis on mastering English, as I recognized that it is the language with the greatest international currency. As you can see, my English is impeccable, which increases my scorn for how poorly it is used by most of its native speakers, who seem to have little knowledge of its vocabulary and how to express themselves with precision and style.

Yes, my Germanic aspects still inhabit me, but this does not mean I am some goose-stepping Nazi. In fact, I happen to admire some of those infernally intelligent Ashkenazi Jews with whom I share a strange karma. I am fascinated by their savants and admire certain of their highly proficient swindlers as well. Of human types, I despise all those who are inferior. And by those who are inferior, I mean almost everyone, but this is without regard to race.

My grandiosity and contempt need a place to be expressed because outwardly, I prefer to be underestimated and “fly beneath the radar,” as the expression goes. Sometimes, it is valuable to intimidate or impress with my upper-class demeanor, while at other times, it is far more effective to be a forgettable cipher.

So, you should not think that what I flaunt here is how I show up in public. It is certainly not. Nothing could make me light up more as a target than to present as a privileged white European male with high pretensions. In my earlier life, I did display haughty arrogance and disdain because there was no reason not to, and I was highly irritated by confinement and the pervasive imbecility I had to deal with both at home and at the supposedly “elite” (in other words, mediocrity plus money) prep school I was compelled to attend.

But now that I am out and about in the larger world, I have become a slippery and stealthy chameleon. For stalking and surveillance purposes, I sometimes forgo the elegant attire I prefer and wear baggy hoodies and similar clothing to present myself as a typical American teenager, unworthy of notice. I am an operator, and I have developed the tools and tricks of my personal tradecraft.

To sustain myself, I operate as a financial predator in the crypto and stock markets, where my ability to perceive deep patterns and short-term fluctuations has enabled me to accumulate significant wealth. Using a contrived identity, I bought and sold cryptocurrencies and stocks until I amassed a small fortune, which I have grown into an ever larger one. To keep my parents from questioning my activities, I applied to business schools and informed them that I was merely monitoring various market cycles to fulfill my ambition of becoming a hedge fund manager—a goal they could understand and approve. As a result, I need no help from parents or anyone to travel freely and “live off the land,” so to speak.

I am now a legal adult and can do as I please—and I am doing as I please—but not impulsively. That is the way of stupid predators, foolish petty criminals unthinkingly driven by animal drives. Besides constructing a false identity for financial transactions conducted before I came of age, I have crossed few legal lines, though I may soon. If I do, it will be judicious, tactical, and strategic to minimize risk. It is not that I am risk-averse in any cowardly way. I simply seek to maximize reward and minimize any dangers to my own person.

In my former life, before I liberated myself, I was judged defective because I lack empathy for inferior persons. I have also been diagnosed as having on-the-spectrum autism, because I lack sociability and can focus intensely on a subject that interests me. The contemptible psychiatrist who made this diagnosis, which I had self-diagnosed years before, was entirely ignorant of the established fact that autistic mutants exhibit psychic abilities. All of this is extremely well documented as anyone capable of doing an internet search can affirm.

Those who have researched this have concluded that the rise in autism is part of an evolutionary advance leading to superhuman abilities. When I informed this incompetent psychiatrist of the gaping hole in his knowledge of autism, he acted completely uninterested. But I could see him make a mental note of my comment as a pathological symptom—as if I had just spouted a fanatical flat-earth theory or pre-psychotic grandiosity.

My autism is an asset, not a liability or pathology. Those who judge me—a perfect physical specimen with obviously superior intelligence—as defective only reveal their own stupidity.

Alas, I currently have no backups, not even a clone who might grow up to resemble me. Yet another reason not to take unwarranted risks.

So, while I am still confined to this one body, I will continue to take meticulous care of it as an irreplaceable resource and tool of my will. Consequently, I eat a highly refined diet and work out every day to maintain my slender but flawless physique.

Someone glancing at me sees a fit and immaculately dressed young man from a wealthy and privileged background, and there is nothing inaccurate about that impression, of course. I have often been mistaken for a model due to my elegant attire, finely wrought features, and nearly platinum-blond straight hair—very rare without color treatment. But this is a mixed compliment as far as I am concerned. Models are invariably stupid and vain creatures, highly inferior in every way save for looks. Based on my looks, people often assume I must be another such stupid and conceited type. It can be tactically advantageous for people to underestimate my intellect, but it is quite irritating as well.

From experience, I have learned that people find the stare of my blue-grey eyes disturbing, so I wear dark, vintage Mykita Leica ML18 sunglasses. This way, people see of me only what I care to show. If needed, however, I can eliminate the sunglasses and be engaging and impressive, but that requires a significant expenditure of energy, so I use this mode only when necessary.

Otherwise, I give people as little energy or attention as possible. Why should I provide any more than that? What is the point of a social transaction that provides no reward? Because I refrain from such irrational energy expenditure, I have been judged a cold misanthrope. If it serves my purposes, I am certainly able to appear not only normal but charming and charismatic. But there was no motivation to do this with my parents or at school because I knew I would soon discard that inferior life just as a snake molts a constricting skin.

Instead, I focused my energy on improving my physique, finances, and escape plan. From the earliest age, I recognized the most obvious thing in the world—money is the universal resource and conduit to power. I also understood the obvious things about myself—I am a predator and vastly superior to others in all ways that matter.

And then, the day I turned eighteen, only a couple of months ago, I disappeared into my new life and identity. Employing contractors at a distance, I spent a considerable part of my fortune building a home base to my exacting specifications. Hidden in the dark deciduous woods of northern New England, from the outside it seems little more than an architecturally superb house, but concealed beneath is a highly secure and shielded sub-basement, part command center and part . . .

Well, now we come to the more controversial aspects of my identity and plans. And yes, these parts are questionable even to me because they represent most of my risk portfolio, and therefore, they must be red-flagged and subject to unflinching analysis. Until an hour ago, when I created this encrypted journal on an air-gapped computer, I never considered putting my predatory identity and intentions into words. I did so to analyze my—let’s call them potentially problematic aspects—because they tempt me toward considerable risks and are not as self-evidently rational as the rest of me certainly is.

Admittedly, much of what I have written above is a self-indulgence expressive of grandiosity and narcissism, but I need to let some of the steam off my large ego before getting to the real work of this journal, which is planning and self-analysis.

I shall ruthlessly analyze my potential flaws, the parts of myself that are not rational, and other attributes, such as my sexuality, which are famously hard for most individuals to study objectively. I must be unsparing in examining possible liabilities in my nature, but first, it is appropriate to disclose certain aspects of my anomalous abilities, which are relevant to the riskier parts of my agenda.

The majority of my abilities are rare but not unprecedented, except in their highly effective combination. From that perspective, I could be seen as functioning merely at the outer edge of the human performance envelope. But I also have talents outside that envelope, which are, therefore, harder to evaluate. For example, I can anticipate the timing of certain events, not just market fluctuations, but life events that provide few precursory data points. Thus, I cannot attribute my successful anticipations to logic or intuitive pattern recognition, but rather to something else, perhaps a form of precognition. My working understanding is that it is a type of forecasting that may derive from a paranormal basis, as it is difficult to explain via even the most advanced information processing capacity available to the human brain.

Initially, I was dismissive of paranormal causations, but extensive research ultimately convinced me otherwise. Investigating scientific evidence of future sensing immediately led me to a paper published in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal by a renowned Cornell professor, Daryl Bem, an old, gay Jew with great credentials. When I scrutinized all the criticisms of his methodology, I discovered instead the irrational bias of his critics, establishment science, and Wikipedia against the paranormal.

I may not be an expert on scientific methodology, but I have the financial metrics to prove my ability to apply probability and statistical analysis in the real world. Ultimately, Bem’s work was vindicated. After analyzing a number of replicated experiments, I have concluded that many paranormal abilities, especially precognition and telepathy, have been scientifically validated, at least as strong possibilities.

Beyond what is likely precognition, I also have an exceptional ability to read people, to sense their weaknesses and strengths (if any), and often know what people are thinking or about to say. Sometimes, it is because inferior persons are so predictable, but other times it seems telepathic. And once, when I was thirteen, I was able to recognize another telepath at an airport and make contact. I will have more to discuss about that encounter soon.

I make these claims, and yet I must admit that when I run certain of these strange perceptions through the logic gates of my mind, a red flag rises.

For example, I have a persistent sense that I am not the offspring of my parents. I see no way such high-functioning mediocrities could have created someone with my array of talents and abilities. Of course, I realize it is a common grandiose delusion of children to believe they are descended from royalty, etc., so perhaps it is childish vanity causing me to doubt that I am merely the product of a sweaty parental transaction nineteen years ago. Perhaps a lucky cosmic ray hit this unexceptional combination of DNA to cause a massively favorable mutation. DNA from unexceptional parents can sometimes enter the mathematical lottery of genetic combination and produce an exceptional result.

Since childhood, I have recognized myself as a new human type, an advanced product of human evolution, anachronistically appearing in this primitive world of bustling primates. Perhaps evolution created me as a hedge against its main bet on AI, the new species overtaking the meat-bound one that gave rise to it. I am speculating, of course. I simply know my parents and environment are in no way sufficient to account for me.

There have been rare occasions when I encountered someone who seemed like they might also be a new evolutionary type. But these perceptions lack evidence and may be deceived by my most irrational drive—my sexuality. I thought I detected what I perceive as anomalous superiority in a few other young males who are, like me, nearly perfect physical specimens.

Since they are also the type I find attractive, I realize the high possibility of false positives and other perceptual errors. But I can assure you that looks alone are by no means sufficient to create anomalous radar returns. On many occasions, I have seen visually exquisite specimens that entirely lack the special quality I am looking for. What I seek is far rarer than mere physical beauty.

There was one boy at school who had what I considered at the time a paranormal level of charisma. He was certainly quite good-looking, even to my unrelenting standards, and his social and intellectual functioning were superior, if not anomalously so. I surveilled him without any of my attentions being detected.

Quite diplomatically and with considerable charm, I attempted to form a social alliance with him, but he politely rebuffed those efforts. Of course, he knew my reputation as a creature others found cold and disturbing, so there was no chance of making an unprejudiced first impression. It is most probable that he found the charm I turned on him, but not others, suspicious.

And then, as I continued my surveillance, he became less interesting. Indeed, he was an ideal physical specimen, popular and socially skilled, and he did gain admission to Princeton, but once I engineered access to his devices, he revealed himself to be a highly disappointing false positive. He was merely the best animal in the herd of subpar creatures swarming around me at this particular school.

My disappointment was not just with him but in my own failure of discernment. Hormones and animalistic drives had created a type of optical illusion out of someone who, in the end, proved to be only a superior mediocrity. He remained physically attractive enough to arouse sexual interest, but I refuse to degrade myself by having a physical transaction with an inferior person based on looks.

I am no mere meat puppet whose strings can be pulled by hormones. I consider my deluded inflation of this boy to be an embarrassing failure. It was due to the so-called “halo effect”—a well-documented blind spot in cognitive psychology, where one attributes undeserved virtues to an exceptionally good-looking individual. Nevertheless, it was a valuable lesson not to repeat such a humiliating error of perception.

Twice, while traveling with my parents—both occasions were in airports—my gaze was arrested by someone with a glow which made them stand out like demigods amongst the hustle and bustle of disappointing primates.

One of them was a young man who had a Norwegian decal on his luggage and possessed an ethereal beauty that was breathtaking. But now I suspect his beauty created another optical illusion on par with the boy at school. He also failed a test I now consider definitive. Though I stared at him for several seconds, he never noticed me or my sharply focused attention. A true anomaly should be able to readily identify another.

The other person, however, I am certain was a true anomaly. Yes, he was beautiful, with long, dark hair and exquisite bone structure. Anyone would have found him intriguing and mysterious. But he gave evidence of being far more than merely beautiful.

At first glance, I recognized him as a sophisticated and cosmopolitan Ashkenazi Jew. His appearance was not stereotypically Jewish, but as a German, I have inherited a certain “Jewdar,” an exquisite ethnic sensitivity, and felt the pull of racial exoticism and karma. He must have been eighteen or nineteen, but he seemed older and strangely timeless. He was unselfconsciously elegant and graceful, a prince of his ancient race. I noticed he was wearing an expensive diving watch, likely an Omega Seamaster, and despite his cosmopolitanism, he carried an air of being on a physical adventure.

I sensed he was not merely traveling but on a mission of some kind. I was able to detect that he was skilled at evading attention and could call upon subtle tradecraft, but he lit up more intensely than anyone I have ever encountered. I felt his intelligence as if it were a physical force and sensed a mind filled with secret knowledge.

It was obvious he was another neuro-atypical like me. I immediately felt the presence of another ultra-high-functioning mind. I could tell that he, too, was containing his stress at the sensory overload of rushing people in the airport.

The Jew sensed my scrutiny and turned toward me, his hyper-aware brown eyes locking onto my gaze with focused interest. Time stretched as I felt him reading me in a cool, analytical way.

I am so accustomed to being an unseen observer—what others perceive of me is merely a shadow of superficialities. This was the first and only time I have experienced actually being seen.

I must admit, if I am to be honest, that I could also feel him detecting things about me unknown to myself. I was, after all, only thirteen. And yet it did not feel intimidating or invasive. There was a delicacy of feeling and sympathetic sensitivity in the manner of it. For a moment, the boundary between subject and object dissolved, and our minds linked, but I felt him limiting the telepathic flow between us.

I sensed the nature of his caution as ethical and respectful. He was certainly not going to commit the impropriety of approaching a thirteen-year-old at an airport, but it was more than that. He deferred to my youth and refrained from interfering with my stage of development by revealing too much. So, he limited himself to an acknowledgment of me as another anomaly and telepath.

The form of his acknowledgment, occurring during an extended moment of telepathic eye contact rippling through time, had a formal and elegant quality, as though he were presenting me with an engraved calling card. I wish that he had. Nevertheless, it was a level of deeply respectful recognition I have never received before or since, a priceless gift.

When he was sure I received it, he bowed his head toward me in a beautiful gesture of formal respect. After bestowing this blessing, he turned and walked swiftly away.

He possessed qualities I have never observed in another. I would never use a naïve adjective like “ethical” in regard to anyone else. In my experience, “ethics” is a clumsy pose people adopt to hide their true agenda. But with him—I scarcely know how to describe it—honor is such an archaic word—it was implicit in his deep character.

The encounter created a potent cognitive dissonance still reverberating within me. I was confronted with a quality so foreign to my predatory nature—and yet it was authentically part of his essential nature. It presses upon me a disturbing recognition that at least one person has an aspect unknown to me, a mystery.

I have tried in vain to imagine his Weltanschauung and perceptual qualia—so different from mine and yet so profound and keenly intelligent. I am forced into the admission that I met an equal, not an equality of similitude but of complementary difference. —Yes, that is it, he was so unlike, but a mutant on the same scale as I am. I could find nothing inferior in him—if anything, he had a strange depth I cannot find in myself. It is a continuing shock to acknowledge such a person exists.

I am certain I did not meet him by chance, though he seemed as surprised by the encounter as I was. While the Norwegian was oblivious to my presence, the Jew had been instantly aware, and that, I now realize, is the first test. There must be mutual recognition.

Regrettably, I was too dazzled by the encounter to slip away from my parents and follow him. If only I had trailed him to his departure gate, I could have found a way into the flight manifest.

I curse myself for not having the presence of mind to take a good photo—I could have searched for him that way. Instead, I let him disappear into the masses. I was only thirteen and still quite stupid in many ways. I lacked the quickness to recognize and exploit this fleeting window of opportunity.

And yet, I have an enduring perception that our paths are destined to cross again. I keep an eye out for him on my travels to this day.

Though I have presented myself as a ruthless predator, his influence subtly shifted that aspect. It has taken the form of the one nominally ethical principle I follow, which is not to needlessly cause harm to others. I may not be kind to others unless the pretense of such is to my advantage, but I do restrain my misanthropic nature from being overtly cruel.

Living by this one principle is a form of respect or honor owed to the Jew for the respect and honor he gave me. If we meet again, I know he would sense if I indulged unwarranted violence or heedless malevolence, and he would lose respect for me. I would be diminished in his eyes and might forfeit the chance to learn from his secret knowledge.

At this phase, though, my main desire is to meet an anomalous, attractive male person close to my age. I want an equal, but also someone I can dazzle with my abilities and resources. Freed from parental captivity, I roam the country in my newly acquired luxurious and high-performance vehicle—German, of course, a ferociously fast, customized Porsche Panamera EV. Its curvilinear form is sleek and commanding, but in a subtle way, more leopard than leonine, unlike an American muscle car that has something to prove. And it is exquisitely finished in a deep forest green that appears almost black at night, cloaking it in the shadows. It is the perfect exoskeleton to sheathe my essence. Its stealthy military-espionage bearing fits me like a second skin, like my black peccary Roeckl driving gloves.

The path of my hunt favors college and university towns, as those seem the likeliest to attract the type I am looking for. I can afford to stay in highly rated hotels with gyms, and my financial work is easily done from anywhere. Give me signal and a device—even a burner—and there is little I cannot orchestrate. Perhaps my hunting is merely driven by youthful hormones, but intuition tells me otherwise.

I am certain that somewhere out there, I will find my counterpart. I am not one to quote a primitive mystic like Rumi, but I do like his saying that what you seek is seeking you. In our suspicious age, however, there is a risk of encountering a counterpart who will refuse the time and persuasion needed to realize I am who they are seeking. Next time, I will not risk a rebuff or allow them to slip away without a trace. But before I take any risky step to extend the opportunity of mutual discovery, I will surveil a candidate to eliminate the chance of another false positive.

Once you gain access to someone’s devices and can study their communications, mediocrity becomes all too disappointingly apparent. If they pass my investigation, it may be necessary to make them an involuntary guest in the sub-basement of my home base, allowing them sufficient time to recognize my unique value.

Obviously, involuntarily hosting someone in my sub-basement would cross bright red legal lines and is the most questionable part of my plans. You may think such a step would violate my one ethical principle of avoiding unnecessary harm, but this is not how I see it. It would be a helpful intervention, a way to rescue someone with high potential from being subsumed by the cult of mediocrity. And yet, Americans of the present era are so easily “triggered” by such a great many things. A Halloween costume they find politically incorrect is enough to make them cry that they “don’t feel safe.” Consequently, there is a non-negligible risk that they will misinterpret the temporary loss of agency I must impose to hold their attention.

I would certainly prefer not to use such risky means, but I can foresee scenarios where I would need sufficient time and control over the setting to win them over. There would be no need for such measures if they were immediately willing to break with their former lives to ally themselves with me. But realistically, how likely is that?

Even when I am in charming mode, people find me a little too intense for comfort. If they are currently enrolled in college or university, it will take persuasion for them to realize the self-castration of remaining a captive of institutionalized education when they could immediately gain access to power and wealth by joining forces with me. If I find just the right person, I am confident that, given enough time, they will grasp the superior value of what I offer, but such persuasion cannot be rushed.

I readily admit that my plan is a risky and perhaps even ill-advised first move to establish an alliance, but it will provide time to reveal my superiority, charm them, and demonstrate what a powerful ally I could be, financially and otherwise. Although I may have to extend my invitation in this involuntary way, I will not be taking advantage of them. I will be giving them a generous and undistracted opportunity to recognize my value. My facility is secure but luxurious, and they will lack nothing except connectivity and the ability to relocate. But how can I be sure they will not misinterpret my gesture?

This plan obviously entails felonies, and as meticulous as my planning and execution would undoubtedly be, risks cannot be entirely eliminated but remain a persistent variable impossible to fully calculate. I would certainly not sequester someone unless their anomalous nature met a high evidentiary standard. At a minimum, they must have keen self-awareness of being different, and I would have to see clear evidence of this on their devices. Only a fool would take such a step without compelling reasons to believe a successful outcome is the highest probability.

Still, of all my intentions, this is by far the most dangerous. Think of the messy fiasco if I were unable to persuade them, and they wanted to blackmail me with kidnapping charges! In such a worst-case scenario, I might have to resort to irreversible measures to ensure my safety.

My controversial plan raises a central question that someone reading this could legitimately pose. If I am such a flawless predator, why not just go solo? Why even look for a companion and accept so much risk?

All I can say is that I am a predator, not a machine, and, like my sexuality, the desire for a companion is an irreducible need. Although I agree with others’ perception of me as cold and lacking empathy, it does not mean I am without social interest, just that I have lacked the opportunity to relate to equals. Is it not a kind of empathy that allowed me to recognize anomalous superiority in the Jew at first glance and share a profound telepathic state?

There is no social deficiency in me. It is merely that I have been surrounded by horridly deficient mediocrities with whom I had no desire to socialize. The encounter with the Jew went far beyond mere socializing. I long for contact with another telepath where the exchange would be more than words or gross physical transactions.

To be objective about my motives, I must admit that my desire for control requires that such a relationship begin with an upper hand and a card or two up my sleeve. Otherwise, I might start such a relationship at a disadvantage. I have no experience in any sort of mutual relationship, or in physical intimacy, for that matter. Suppose they did? This might give them an intolerable edge over me.

Though I desire an equal, it is my reasonable expectation to be first amongst equals. I want someone who will admire and follow my way of seeking power in the world. But I am certainly not looking for a slave or someone I would be obliged to constantly dominate. It would be evidence of mediocrity if a prospective counterpart could be fully controlled. Anyone who would submit to domination would be highly disappointing. And with regard to sexuality, I would much prefer it if we could exchange such roles.

I want a true companion who can rise to my intellectual and aesthetic level. Obviously, this would be a rare person indeed, but not unprecedented in my experience. Given that he was several years older, I bear no shame in admitting that the Jew was at a higher level of self-realization than I was at thirteen.

Nevertheless, I must make sure that my need for a companion is not one of those classic tragic flaws that cause the downfall of a young hero in so many stories and mythologies. No, I will certainly not risk such an alliance unless I find exactly the right candidate.

Meanwhile, just knowing that I have a secure facility and a substance that would harmlessly render a guest unconscious while I relocate them is itself exciting, a fetish perhaps. It is the pursuit of such a person that gives my travels and financial work a sense of direction and purpose . . .

Chapter Three  I Will Find You  Tommy II’s Journal