Codependent Daydreams of Lee Harvey Oswald

Somewhere, in my recent adventures around the Internet, I came across that iconic image of Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's assassin (well, unless you believe in conspiracy theories), being assassinated himself.  Kennedy was not assassinated in my lifetime, so the first time I saw Oswald's image was in an encyclopedia (anyone remember those?).  I may have been doing a research project for school, but I seem to remember that (because I was a nerd), I was just thumbing through Britannica's pages for fun when I came across it.

I didn't know, at a glance what was going on in the picture.  I didn't know who any of the people were.  What caught my eye was the man in the center who seemed so small, powerless and vulnerable: all those big, tough men in hats and suits and even uniforms around, and he's in a dressed casually, in a sweater.  There's a look of agony on his face as he curls into himself, in an overdue, futile gesture of protection.  And for me all of that meant love at first sight.  I needed to know who he was, this tiny man who was crying out, silently, who so clearly needed something, someone.

So I read the caption.  Oh.  Kennedy's assassin.  Awkward.  Not exactly the guy your friends and family will understand you hanging up in poster form above your bed.

Still, I surreptitiously read all I could on Oswald.  I would have loved some conspiracy theories back then, but the official sources at my disposal left me no hope of his innocence.  And it wasn't like he came across as a pleasant guy independent of the whole Kennedy assassination mess, what with the whole high school drop out, military drop out, Soviet defector drop out, narcissistic, wife beater thing going on.

But that image of him, like eyes meeting across a crowded room, stayed with me and I romanticized him anyway.  After all, that quiveringly vulnerable man couldn't be bad, not really.  If he'd turned out that way, it had only been because he'd never met anyone who understood him, who saw him for the sweet, hurt little boy he was and loved him right.  I had this feeling that if only I could travel back in time and meet him in his youth, we could date and discuss Marx together and I could finally fix hm in a way that the people in his life had clearly failed to.  Yes, I was going to change history, restore Kennedy to life (handsome and vibrant) by curing a mentally ill murderer with the power of my love.

A time machine failing to appear, Oswald was eventually forgotten.  And I went on to try my hand at fixing real life men with my love instead.  I only remembered him when I saw that image one more time and thought, "If I'd lived back then and met Oswald, I'd have ended up victim to his abuse, and Kennedy would still have died in Dallas."  Well, unless LBJ did it...

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.