Well I took a slight break tonight from marathon reading and writing to watch some TV, or more precisely catch up on some TV. I don't know how many of you watched Hannibal, but it really is a provocative TV drama centering around Hannibal Lecter, America's favorite Cannibal. I finished the final season today and had several thoughts about this version of Hannibal and Will Graham.

Yes, they are most definitely a messed up gay couple, but in a weird horror movie way, Hannibal makes sense as he skillfully manipulates people like a certain Prince of Darkness You can't sympathize with him, can't reason with him, and can't defeat him, because all his flaws are inherent in all of us, symbolically in most cases. That just got me into thinking about the nature of evil; human nature's most self destructive impulses and it brought me back to a few old names that I had forgotten as their news stories faded.

There are certain individuals in the last 30 years, who have been notorious mass murderers and, incidentally, repressed gay men. John Wayne Gacey and Jeffrey Dahmer come to my mind as the some of the worst our community have seen and tragically their first victims are gay men. Is it self hatred that drives these men to do such horrible things, a reverse narcissism? Will society's new openness to LGBT people make such monsters disappear? Or, will a reactionary monster rise far worse than either of these evil men?

I don't know the answer and quite frankly, I am grateful not to know.