Would you feel safe with a person whose personality was quite aggressive if you knew they had killed someone?

The first time I went to my group meeting, one of the men announced that he had killed someone. He didn’t describe the circumstances, but it was clear that his kill didn’t have any form of state sanction.

Later on, I found out that this person has a very aggressive personality. He is very quick witted and sarcastic and he is always putting other people down. He is also getting into trouble a lot. He walks in neighborhoods where he risks attack, and then he is attacked, and then later he comes back to the kids’ houses, asks the parents to bring the kids up to him, and he proceeds to beat the shit out of them. So he says. He said the parents thought their boys were trouble and deserved the beating.

He has a hundred stories, it seems, like this. He’s been seeking action and trouble and life-risking situations for a long time. Anyone near him can probably feel this sense of danger oozing out of his pores.

My wife was with me that first meeting, and she was pretty scared, and told me not to tell him my address or anything. I was a little concerned, too. But over the year or so, I came to know more, and since we’ve become friends, I know a lot more, and I know what’s inside him and I know why he risks his life and wants to be seen as dangerous.

At some point, he told his wife about the killings, and after that, it seems, his marriage went downhill rapidly. It seemed like she never trusted him after she found out. She was scared of him. So much so, that one day she put her whole way of life at risk by calling the police and accusing him of endangering her or something. He was taken to jail, where he lost his teeth and some other things happened that he won’t talk about. If he was convicted of her accusations, he would have lost his disability income and had no money to pay for the place she was living.

When he came out, he was homeless. He went from friend to friend to find a place to sleep for the night. Obviously, my wife would not let him under our roof. She was especially concerned for our children. However, she was away the night he called to ask, and I couldn’t turn him down. My wife wasn’t happy when she came back but it was a done deed.

Other women in our group, I believe, are pretty leery of him, especially when they first join. Dealing with him is a rite of passage I think. I find myself trying to protect them by making fun of him (which he seems to like—so few people seem to be able to put him in his place), by explaining him away.

Well. The story is the story. Here is the question:

Would you ever be able to be friends with this person? Why or why not? Would you ever feel safe around him? Why or why not? What role would his claim of being a killer play in your opinion of him? What role would his aggressiveness play? What would it take for you to feel safe around him or become his friend?