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Faulking Around - Oct 17, 2004 - Printable Version
- Demise of the Writer
by Mark Faulk
This is a story of misguided intentions, a tale of delusion and obsession. But, it is also a story about passion, about devotion, and about that most universal of all human emotions. This is a love story. Granted, it is a really sick love story, but it is a love story, nonetheless. Just over three months ago, one of our contributing writers, Russell Tharp, embarked on a strange and slightly delusional journey, one that would take him from the pages of the Faulking Truth to a life on the run. It began as a bit of a lark, when Russell was smitten by a poster in our guestbook, who goes by the name of Lily. It's hard to say what it was that attracted Russell to Lily, just as it's difficult to say what it is that draws any of us to one another. The phrasing of a word (or the wording of a phrase), an unexpected laugh, a barely discernible smile. Sometimes it can be something as abstract as the way a strand of hair falls down over the eyes, or as simple as an intoxicating scent that only you can detect. But, it always seems to start with a single look, that moment when the eyes meet, however briefly, and magic happens.
In Russell's case, I can only speculate what it was that first attracted him to Lily. Here's the problem: he never actually met her and, at least to my knowledge, never had the thrill of experiencing "the look". She was just another anonymous soul who felt compelled to share a bit of herself with the ethereal world of the internet. It's not the first time I've heard about attractions being cultivated in cyberspace, and in fact, as strange as it might sound, I know of at least a couple of successful marriages that began as words typed on a computer keyboard. With Lily, it seems obvious that she is an intelligent, beautiful person, but then, that's the mystery of the internet, things are not always what they seem. Since it's an anonymous realm, and since she has chosen to remain an enigma, it's impossible to really know who she is....or for that matter, if she's even a "she". (I will say this, however, if she is in fact a "he", then he is the most sensitive imposter this writer has ever seen.)
Is it a surprise that Russell "fell" for Lily? Not at all. Many of our readers have been seduced by her considerable charms, and she has become a perennial guestbook favorite. But that's normal (well, as least as normal as cyberspace gets), and in reality no different than falling for a character in a book, or a face on a movie screen. We all do it at one time or another, but most of us realize that it is simply the image that we are infatuated with, the onscreen persona or the literary ideal, not the actual person who created that character. In Russell's case, it extended far beyond normal infatuation, his obsession with Lily became a soap opera sideshow on the website, as he spent much of his time professing his love for her on these pages.
At first, I thought it was just another of Russell's demented schemes, a scenario created in his fertile (albeit slightly skewed) imagination, just to stir up controversy and gain attention. However, it soon became apparent that this was not the case.....Russell's obsession was much more than a whim, at least in his eyes. A writer who began as a disciple of gonzo journalism, delighting in breaking every rule of political correctness, Russell at first maintained his off-kilter sense of humor, penning a sick tale of obsessed love called "Missed Connections" www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/FaulkingAround/1005.html , which was, appropriately enough, about a person who falls in love with someone who barely knows that he exists, and stalks her in the hopes of winning her affection. It was actually a fairly humorous piece, and I felt comfortable in my belief that he was, in fact, perpetuating this charade as a means of literary inspiration.
In all honesty, I have to assume some responsibility for exacerbating the situation by writing about Lily and Russell in my "Letters to the Editor" column, even titling one article "The Faulking Truth Dating Service". In retrospect, it's possible I was only pushing Russell further into the abyss. He has always sought to blur the line between fantasy and reality, so much so that it's sometimes difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. After all, as I've mentioned a couple of times on these pages, his favorite quote is "Every word is true, except for the parts I made up." It's much easier to recognize the clues after the fact, and it now seems glaringly obvious that at some point in time for Russell, the ever-shifting line between fantasy and reality, and between right and wrong, was obliterated altogether. As he continued to pursue Lily in his writing, it became increasingly clear that somewhere along the line he convinced himself that even "the parts he made up" were real. And who knows, maybe they were. As I said earlier, the internet is a gray area in the the otherwise black and white world of fantasy and reality, an alternate universe where right and wrong are often considered to be a matter of perception. As long as it exists only on a computer screen, who's to say that it exists at all? The unspoken rule is "what happens on the internet, stays on the internet".
Black or white, real or imagined, right or wrong, for Russell it no longer mattered. It wasn't long before he was reduced to reciting tepid (although heartfelt) poetry in a desperate attempt to win Lily's heart. Here is one of his pieces, entitled, aptly enough, "For Lily" www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/Words/1008.html . If he had remained in his pathetic lovesick state, that might have been the end of it. But then, after a month of leaping headlong off of emotional cliffs, things took a decided turn for the worse. Russell posted another poem, but this one was a bit darker, and in some ways chilling. It was entitled (again, appropriately enough), "The Stalker" www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/Words/1010.html , and it contained these unnerving words:
"I told you I'd stalk you, it wasn't a joke
I'm in the shadows, lurking in the dark
Haunting your dreams
You're never alone."
And then, without a word to anyone, Russell Tharp simply disappeared. He wrote a satirical piece just before he left, claiming that he had struck it rich in one of those internet scams and that he was leaving for the Florida coast, and that was the last anyone heard of him. Lily has remained with us, still gracing our guestbook with her wit and charm, and has done her best to coax Russell out of hiding (without encouraging his "questionable" advances too much), but to no avail. It seemed as if Russell Tharp would become another of those billion footnotes that saturate the internet, a name that triggers a couple of matches in a google search, and nothing more. Interestingly, I did a google search for Russell Tharp, and found another Russell Tharp who writes sarcastic movie reviews, ironically, in a style strikingly similar to.....Russell Tharp. However, subsequent investigation reveals that that Russell Tharp appears to actually be three guys named "Ken, Scoot, and Bjula", who run a website called www.hit-n-run.com . Our Russell Tharp, on the other hand, is disturbingly real. In fact, if he were here, I'm guessing he would at this exact moment be threatening to call his attorneys "Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe" (who, obviously, aren't real), and "sue the bejesus out of these imposters". But....sadly, he's not here, and "Ken, Scoot, and Bjula" are the closest thing to Russell Tharp that remains in cyberspace.
And then....about a week ago, someone sent me an email claiming that they had read an article in a small town newspaper about someone who sounded a lot like Russell (our Russell, not the Ken/Scoot/Bjula version). I'm not 100% certain that this is him, but there are too many coincidences to simply dismiss it. After exhaustive research, meaning I couldn't find it by performing a simple google search, and was forced to actually resort to (heaven forbid) making a couple of phone calls, I tracked down the article. I'll reprint it here, and you can draw your own conclusions:
A man was arrested last night after reportedly following an elderly woman home last night in Waterbury, then climbing a tree outside of her bedroom window and serenading her as she was changing for bed. The bizarre incident occurred shortly after midnight, after Lily Muese returned home from her weekly bible study group at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Sanctuary.
"I stayed late and played a little Yahtzee with the nuns, then walked home, like I always do." I noticed this strange man following me, but he wasn't that close, so I thought he was okay. Besides, he seemed like a nice enough young man, and I've always felt safe in Waterbury. Everybody knows everyone else's business in this town. You can't scratch your ass around here without it ending up in the local paper."
It wasn't until Lily arrived home that the trouble began. She locked her front door, went inside, took a shower, and changed into her nightgown, when she heard a commotion outside her bedroom window. "It was a horrible noise, like a bunch of drunken sailors. Later Zoie, my next door neighbor, told me that it was singing, but if it was, it was the worst singing I've ever heard in my entire life."
Zoie McClenden, Muese's neighbor, said she heard the commotion and immediately called the police. "I recognized the song from one of my granddaughter's albums, by that rock band Counting Crows. I just remember the lines ''Your can look outside your window, He doesn't have to know. We can talk a while, baby. We can take it nice and slow.' Frankly, it kind of creeped me out."
Lily called the police too, but they were already on the way. The man, who wasn't carrying any type of identification, but later identified himself as "Russell Thark", was arrested without incident, but insisted that he was Lily Muese's lover. Muese, age 74, when asked about the man's claim, replied, "Half the time, I can't even remember my kids names, but I'd like to think I'd know it if I had a lover. Hell, at my age, I wish I had a little action."
Later, as the man was being booked into the city jail, he distracted the police chief by throwing up on him, and made his escape. Although Police Chief Joseph Sned would like to apprehend the suspect, he is not considered dangerous. "He has been charged with criminal trespassing, violating the city's peeping tom ordinance, public intoxication, with an added charge of destruction of public property for throwing up on my uniform. These stains just won't come out."
As of Sunday evening, the man's whereabouts were unknown. Sheriff Sned asked anyone with information on Thark to contact the Waterbury Police Office.
Are "Russell Thark" and "Russell Tharp" one and the same? This is excerpt from his "Missed Connections" article, where he stalks his victim by following her home, watching her undress and shower, and then hides in her closet.
You: Wearing a light blue negligee that is slightly transparent when the moonlight hits it just right. Not so see-through as to be tacky, but just enough to make my heart skip a beat.
Me: In the tree outside your bedroom, I was the one with the binoculars. You looked my direction for a split second, then something frightened you and you screamed and ran out of the room. Was it a mouse? I don't like mice either. Did I already tell you that blue is my favorite color? It is. Call me.
Sound familiar? It should be obvious to everyone by now that Russell Tharp is a sick, deluded individual, in desperate need of professional help. Amazingly, though, I feel compelled to come to his defense. This is the Faulking Truth: Russell Tharp, however misguided his actions might be, is not that different than you and me. In fact, in many ways, he and I are one and the same. He is a man in search of passion, seeking to fill a huge void in his life, and he somehow convinced himself that Lily could fill that void. I, possibly even more than most human beings, can relate to that feeling, and my writings of late reflect that. In "Talking to God" www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/CommentaryToo/1003.html , the topic might have been soulmates, but the real focus was an underlying quest for passion in life. Forget opposable thumbs, it is our ability to experience passion and love that really sets us apart from other animals. Without it, we are nothing more than empty vessels taking up valuable space on an already crowded planet.
While it's true that that doesn't entirely exonerate Russell, hopefully, it will help everyone to better understand his actions. He, like so many of us, corrupted the purity of love with his obsessive behavior. He is not the first to commit that forgivable sin, nor, unfortunately, in this emotionally fragile world, will he be the last. Nor is he alone in his compulsion to turn a glorious fantasy into reality. Fantasies are limited only by the breadth of our own imaginations, while reality is most often mundane and repetitous. Who among us hasn't wished that he or she could slip into an alternate universe of our own choosing, never to return? However, in the end we alone bear the responsibility for all of our actions, whether committed in the physical world or in the "imaginary" cosmos of the internet. Maybe that's the lesson that we can learn from Russell's sordid story. No matter how creatively we disguise our hidden secrets, "what happens on the internet" (or anywhere else, for that matter) rarely stays there.
I'll close with a poem that Russell wrote just before he disappeared. It stands in stark contrast to the deviant behavior that he has exhibited of late, and illustrates the ongoing eternal conflict between who we are and who we'd like to be. As it turns out, Russell Tharp is a true romantic at heart. Who would have guessed? Surely we can muster a modicum of sympathy for anyone who has the courage to aggressively pursue that most elusive of all human emotions.
Russell, if you're out there, you need help, and most likely, massive amounts of medication. An extended stay in a mental institution isn't entirely out of the question either. I'm seriously concerned about you. Call me.
And Lily, if you're out there somewhere reading this, know that you are loved. True, it's about as twisted a love as the world has ever seen, but it's love, nonetheless. Oh...and one more thing: whatever you do, don't forget to lock your doors.
She knows that she's beautiful
She just needs someone
To tell her that she's right
And if I could I'd be the one to hold her close
And whisper every night
But instead I'm talking to the walls
To myself
Wishing I was someone else
Instead of a fool
Who can't let go
Of something he can never own
Like a diamond dangling from a string
Always there
Just out of reach
Knowing he can't have the best thing
That he's ever seen
Wishing I could change her mind
Stop the clock and turn back time
Start again and choose the path
To make her mine
Instead we're doomed to live between
The way things are and what might have been
Say a silent prayer for what still could be
And dream of you and me.
-Russell Tharp, 2004
Editor's note: This story, like everything that I've ever written about Russell, is entirely true (except, of course, for the parts I made up).
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