Could I Be a Criminal?

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Updated September 2:

I have very little in the way of a criminal record, and I'm 50 years old. In addition to not having a record, I did little to nothing in the way of serious crime and not getting caught, and what was done was ages ago anyway.

First of all, it is essential to note that with some crimes, it is almost impossible to start doing them at a late age. Strange, isn't it? Serious cops who stayed awake in Criminology class, especially detectives, know all this stuff, but your average citizen is a moron.

Let's start off with everyone's favorite: child molesting! Yeehaw!

I'm 50 years old and I'm going to say I've never molested any kids. I'll admit to what I call statutory rape, but that was very long ago. If you want to call that pedophilia, cool, then I guess I'm a pedo. No worries.

The whole idea of sex with a little kid strikes me as weird and bizarre for my tastes, but being polymorphously perverse, I guess I could how a guy could get into it, but then I can understand the mindset behind all sorts of evil and messed up stuff.

At age 50 and with no history, I'm probably unlikely to start off doing something like that with no history, but I guess there are exceptions.

I'm surely not a pedophile. Pedophiles are only interested in kids, and don't get turned on by adults, and you can't "catch it" in late life (it always starts in adolescence).

It's true that a number of guys like me (White, upper middle class background, advanced degrees) are going down on child pornography possession. I know what that stuff is, and whether I've seen it or not is irrelevant, as a lot of us old Internet hounds have seen just about every evil thing on the Net.

Point is, I know what it is, have frankly no interest whatsoever in it, know how to find it (it takes a very long time of searching specifically for it, probably days) but have no interest in the hassle, and don't worry about "accidentally stumbling on it".

I think a lot of these guys are into for the forbidden fruit aspect. They like it the same way people like beheading videos. Sure, some are pedos, but I don't think most are.

And there are varying types of "pedophiles" anyway. The two types to be most concerned about are preferential and exclusive. These are almost always males, and it's been there since adolescence. The preferential one prefers kids, but he can get off without them. The exclusive one can only get off with a kid. Some of these guys will marry a child-like woman and get her to dress up like a little girl to have sex.

It's clear to me that Michael Jackson and John Mark Carr are this type of individual, and I also suspect Woody Allen.

The other type is optional, and it's by far the most common. These guys have normal sexual interests and are mostly attracted to mature males or females, but they can also get turned on pedo stuff too, though they can take it or leave it. I think that the term "pedophile" is wrongly used in such cases, and John Douglas, FBI expert on such things, does not use it.

Guys with my profile are also going down for screwing teenage girls or getting them to pose naked. While I understand the impulse, I certainly try to make sure I don't act it. I don't get any offers anyway, so there's not much temptation to deny. As I get older, your average teenage girl seems sillier and sillier, and I'm not even sure if I would do it if it were legal.

Considering that older guys are now getting 10-20 years and similar insane sentences for bopping 15-17 year old girls, you guys really need to watch it out there. I'm serious!

One thing I can't become at my age is a serial killer. You don't just wake up at age 50 or whatever and decide to become a serial killer. For one thing, I'm getting kind of old, and serial killers need to be young and strong to subdue their victims with sheer physical force.

If I was a serial killer, I would have started a long time ago and would still be running around killing people, never having been caught. I'm going to deny that, but you suspicious types are certainly welcome to your paranoid fantasies about me.

I can't be a voyeur, an exhibitionist or a frottuerist either, because I believe that those start young. You don't just wake up at age 50 and start creeping onto people's property and peering into ladies' windows. Nor do you start running around with a trench coat flashing girls or hang out on subways jacking off in public. Nor do you start rubbing against women and girls nonconsensually in crowded public places.

I'll admit to engaging in frotteurism with a total stranger on an overnight bus trip once, but it was definitely consensual, and it was lots of fun. We never even discussed it, we just did it.

The next question is could I become a rapist. Apparently there are some folks around here who already think I am one. That's ok, but I'm going to deny it. I'm going to cop to what some might call date rape, but I just refer to it as "seduction". You're welcome to differ.

Rape is a young man's crime. For one thing, you have to be strong to overpower the woman, and that is indeed what you have to do most of the time. Furthermore, young men have a very high sex drive, and rape is in part a crime of sex, not violence, no matter what the feminists say.

If I were to be a rapist, I probably would have started a long time ago. Any guy my age still raping probably started young. Further, men with my profile simply do not rape. They might commit date rape, but even that is more likely when younger.

How about robbery? Males with my profile and with no history of robbery don't simply take it up at age 50. Also, robbery is definitely a young man's crime.

How about burglary? I must admit that this sounds like a pretty fun crime, but I've never done it before. If I could have burglarized an evil business or someone I hated, I might have been up for it. Burglary is another young man's crime. Anyone still burglarizing at my age is a drug addict.

How about embezzlement, fraud, etc? Yes, males at my age with my profile do quite a bit of this sort of thing. It's not violent, and you can steal a Hell of a lot more with a pen than with a gun anyway, and it often requires some brains or a degree to get into a place where you can even try to do something like this.

How about domestic violence? Men at my age with my profile commit little domestic violence. They do sometimes kill their wives, but at a much lower rate than other ages or different profiles. As I'm not married, there's no wife around to kill, so it's rather irrelevant at the moment.

Could I go nuts with a gun and commit a mass murder? I suppose I could, and guys my age do such things, but most of them don't have my particular profile (multiple degrees, advanced degrees). They are often depressed, deeply depressed. They're also very hostile, and I'm not very hostile, nor am I near as hostile as I ought to be.

Usually they are working at a fairly low level occupation, and I'm not working at any occupation. I don't have any guns anyway, and as they scare the crap out of me, I have no intention to get one. I suppose I could go nuts with a butcher knife or a club, but that wouldn't be too successful, and I'd be subdued pretty quickly.

I don't even have fantasies about doing something so antisocial, so I'm not worried, though 20-25 years ago in LA, I admit I used to have fantasies of throwing hand grenades at the teeming, incoherent, 3rd World-like United Nations crowds moving ant-like along the sidewalks, usually when stuck in traffic. I didn't have any grenades, so it wasn't a public safety issue.

So, tragically, it looks like the odds are that I don't have much of a criminal future. I'll have to be stuck with a life of law-abiding quiet desperation.

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