THE FIRST RULE OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL OBSESSIVES

 

Unless obsessives grasp the first rule of success  that elevates them to the ranks of a Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot, they trouble no greater audience than  themselves, their families, their therapists, and possibly the criminal justice system.

 

Even higher profile obsessives like The Angel of Death, The Alligator Man, The Shoe Fetish Slayer, or the Vampire of Sacramento become footnotes without applying the rule of successful obsessives:  Obsession without organization leads to obsolescence.  The small, but critical piece that lifts even the small time criminally minded into the annals that matter is organization.  Take it as an axiom.

 

It’s the more organizationally minded obsessives who build lasting value because they are able to put their obsessions to better use than mere sensual gratification; The Hell’s Kitchen gangs, a.k.a. The Westies, being a case in point.

 

The Westies were actually a number of gangs starting with The Gophers in the early 1900’s, and though they could boast of their share of psychopaths they built up an organization that didn’t rely on any one charming personality to survive.  Their goal was not the cover of People magazine. The Westies actually went on for almost ninety years before they were brought down by the distaste of one ruling partner for the other’s obsession with evidence disposal, and his subsequent loss of organizational focus.  

 

Jimmy Coonan, and Mickey Featherstone ran the gang from 1976 to the mid-80’s.  Their tenure included a murder every few days, but Jimmy’s formula of “No corpus delecti, no investigation,” kept the boys (and their enterprise) in the clear.  It’s said that Jimmy took a real delight in dismembering the victims, and tossing their parts into the East River, but Mickey, no piker in the psycho department, to his credit, found Jimmy’s relish distasteful.  Sensitivities can be offended when your gang works in a kitchen, and one person’s relish can be another’s purgative.  What really tipped Mickey, though, were Jimmy’s awkward efforts to form an Irish/Italian alliance. Factions clashed, many murders and much dismemberment ensued, the law bumbled into action, and the guiding principle of “organization,” collapsed.

 

The story does have a happy ending, though.  Mickey, faced with life in prison, found freedom in singing arias to the Feds, (another group of obsessives,) who have since found him an expenses paid situation in an undisclosed location; and Jimmy has been enjoying three hots and a cot on tax-payer dollars with a 75 year term up-state.

 

Ah, you ask, but were they successfully obsessive?  Define success.  Until they lost track of the first rule, they and their associates thrived; and even now, Mickey is married, with four children, living a middle-class lifestyle in some suburban somewhere; and Jimmy has been cured of his need to dismember the competition.  Their names may be forgotten, but the name of the Westies has gone down in history (and been featured in many major motion pictures.)  I would think the boys would be happy about that, wouldn’t you?