So I've known about this for awhile because we have a copy at the library. I didn't take the time to read it because it has mixed reviews, and I thought it was fictionalized. (It's in our fiction section.)

Then I started reading Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman where he talks about this graphic novel at length and it sparked my interest in it again. This isn't fiction. Derf went to school with Jeffrey Dahmer and he tried his best to make this graphic novel historically accurate.

It wasn't quite as in depth as I expected it to be, and Derf's position that Dahmer was a sympathetic character until his first murder, and then Dahmer became an incomprehensible monster, is just a dumb thing Derf tells himself so he can separate himself from Dahmer.

I agree that Dahmer is a sympathetic character, but I feel like the horrible thoughts and urges that plagued him are the incomprehensible thing. The fact that he acted on them just makes sense. I act on most of the thoughts and urges I have, I'm just lucky that most of them are perfectly okay or at least not terribly bad. I think my worse urge is that I want to eat junk food for dinner, AND I DO SOMETIMES. I can't imagine living with dark urges like this. When I was a kid I suffered from the unwanted compulsive thoughts that come with having OCD, and I imagine it's like that but 1000 times worse. I also sympathize with the isolation of being gay in a small town. When I was a kid I thought I was literally the only person on the planet who had gay thoughts and I was terrified.

So I agree with Derf's assessment that Dahmer needed help and that things could have turned out much differently if he'd gotten that help. It's one of those situations where obviously, none of his peers were equipped to do anything (it was the 70s and they were kids), and honestly they just would have been in danger if they'd tried. His parents were clearly in no state to help because they also needed help. And Derf blames the teachers at the school for not helping, but I'm not quite sure what they could have done either. What resources did they have? I think it's easy to understand why nobody did anything. I don't know that any one person could have done much. But I do think in a perfect world, Dahmer could have been saved from himself. I think if he grew up in the right time and the right place things could have played out very differently.

So I don't regret that I read this. I didn't really know anything about Jeffrey Dahmer beyond the really basic stuff almost everyone knows, and it surprised me to learn this is who he was to the people who knew him because it's not what I would have imagined. I just wish Derf understood himself, other people, and the world better.