The Magical, Expanding Timeline!

Another thing I should've noticed about Clark right off the bat was that the timeline of his stories just didn't fit. He was of course an "expert" in his field,and he'd been renowned in said field. He'd had all sorts of awesome jobs, positions that neither made sense given his qualifications nor given his age. Since high school, he'd been on broadway (only later, when I compared notes with others who had been "friends" with him, I found out which show he claimed he'd done changed several times.), been a model, starred in stage shows at a theme park (I do believe he worked there, but I think the lie was in the role he "gave" himself in these stories), studied abroad in France for a semester (and was fluent in French), been on a trip to Afghanistan ( I later found out it was Iraq in some peoples' versions). Technically, from what I know, he only left town for about two years, and it seems almost impossible that all of these things could have happened in that time. Not to mention, Google is an incredible tool, and let's just say there is no record of him anywhere near any of these things.

Of course, I can't check the records of the France story, but I will say this...after I started to find out his lies, I recalled an incident where we met up with a friend of mine who was fluent in French. I raved to her about how Clark was, too...they could talk to each other! I remember her talking to him and the look of panic on his face. He just stared at her, his face turning red. I now attribute that to exactly what it was: he didn't understand a word she was saying, because he wasn't fluent in French at all.

This is one thing that still bugs me in regards to his snowing people to this day, because he uses these "professional acting credits" on his resume to land jobs and the respect of people around him, which is one reason so many people are quick to drink in his flattery. After all, who doesn't want to hear a professional actor tell them how great they are in an amateur theatre?

I wonder sometimes how I was dumb enough to believe it, too. After all, if he was a professional actor, why the heck was he busy doing community theatre productions? Why were there no playbills or pictures from his time in New York as a model or on the road on his tour?

But he was also very good at lending crediblity to his stories in such a way that you never heard the attesting to from someone else, but you believed it came from someone else just the same. Example: he once told me how some of his students (whom I knew) had "looked up his pictures online," and how embarrassing that was. I never saw them, I never asked the students about them. But someone, just that little tidbit was enough that it made you believe it. It's a phenomenon I can't exactly explain. It was as if he was able to have someone else corroborate his story when in actuality, it was just him lying to corroborate it using their names. Some of the tactics are so simple it's hard to believe they work!

I guess it goes back to the whole thing about how, if you're close to someone, you don't have a reason to doubt them. After all, 96% of the population aren't sociopaths. Unfortunately, I'd befriended one of the 4% that is.

So Many Crazies, So Little Time

There are a lot of things that should've clued me in that something with Clark wasn't right. Then again, there were a lot of things; I just ignored them. How could I not? After all, if there was one thing he was good at, it was showing me, his target, everything I needed to see to believe that he was a great person and that anyone who said one word against him must just not know him very well.

Looking back, though, there were so many signs. There were wild claims of things he'd done when there seemed to be no evidence of this past aside from his tales about it. He also had many a serious pity ploy, which many books say is the closest thing to a warning stamp on a Sociopath you'll ever see. However, those things are for later blogs, because today, I want to talk about another sign I should've noticed...

There were way too many "crazy" people in his past as well as way too many people who "hated him for no reason." The second or third time I was alone with him, he confided in me about his "crazy" ex-boyfriend (we'll call him Andy) who was abusive, had once pulled a knife on him after chasing him in his car, and at a separate time, had tried to poison him. And though I never saw him, Andy would occassionally "show up" in town, call Clark, or otherwise harrass Clark, which would cause a massive pity event.

There was another girl I knew, we'll call her Mallory, who moved from town just as I was coming into his life. When I first met her, I had the impression the two of them were very close friends. However, when she moved, I got a very different story. She was "crazy" and "obsessed with him." He would tell me all kinds of stories ranging from how she would watch him sleep (they were roommates) to how she embezzled money from the company they ran together.

There would be several people in town who he would tell me had a vendetta against him for no reason or even worse...they hated him because he "was gay." They would talk badly about him, not support his company and tell others not to support his company because they were "crazy." And there did seem to be an awful lot of people who seemed to dislike him or have grudges against him. But I just couldn't understand it; all I'd ever seen was this sweet, wonderful person who I'd come to think of as my best friend.

Well, when I was discarded, I started to learn more about Clark and what he was, and I began to learn more about sociopathy and targets. I also found out the truth about these "crazy" people. They were me. They weren't crazy; they were past targets who'd found out, just like I had, what Clark was. So, in order to avoid the risk of them exposing him to people who liked Clark, he painted them as crazy. He would tell all of the current people on his radar, particularly his current target, wild (false) stories about his past targets to totally destroy their credibility. For target Andy, it was that he was an attempted murderer. He's not. He's actually a normal guy who was never charged with anything as Clark told me. I know. I've spoken to him. For the girl Mallory, she was a creepily obsessed with him and an embezzler. Those are just two; I have actually talked to several others. Me? I'm apparently an obsessed stalker who talked horribly about a lot of people he associated with.

It's not a bad plan, I guess. People don't want to believe their neighbor or their friend or the teacher could, well, not have a conscience. People want to believe the best of people, even when all the signs say they shouldn't. If someone has a choice of admitting someone they know is a sociopath or thinking someone is just scorned and bitter and "crazy," it's much easier for them to believe the "crazy" version. Not to mention of course, that sociopaths are convincing enough, charismatic enough, can spin enough stories, and tell enough lies to make sure they look like the victim instead of their targets.

So, let this be a lesson to you: one "crazy" = maybe. Two "crazy"= hazy. Three "crazy"= scorsese. As in, you need to run like you're being chased by a guy with a gun in a Martin Scorsese film!