Meinecke happened to be caught in the middle of a power and personality struggle
between two charismatic characters and, in effect, between two cultures. Alex is black, as are some of his people, all of whom are either gay or drag queens involved in prostitution and stop dancing. Their world is primarily the gay club and drag scene.

In contrast, Lost Boy is white, his people are white and heterosexual, and they reportedly make their money' dealing drugs. Their culture is vampirism, pickup-truck bad-ass and heavy metal. Each of them aspires to be, as Alex puts it, "the big old white-boy [coke dealer] with the long hair, white snake skin boots, diving a black Camaro." Members of the two groups share interests - - vampirism and drugs - - as well as hostility for one other, though all occasionally cling to the notion that "We're like a family out here."

They were forced to become intimate over Meinecke, who, by various accounts, was
dabbling in both cultures and aggravated the tension between Lost Boy and Alex with
regard to who "owned" him. A part of the violence toward Meinecke was likely a
byproduct of the hostility the two harbored for each other.

Alex's story is at times rambling, with days and details merging. The sequence of events - - which beatings took place when - - is sometimes unclear, and there are frequent gaps,
changes and contradictions in the narrative, though the gist of what happened seems
solid.

Alex is a hustler - - talkative, articulate, seductive - - telling me about a crime that has yet to go to trial, and it's possible he's trying to portray himself in a favorable light to play down his culpability. He also bears grudges toward some of the defendants in the case but says that two of the them, Joseph Hurd and Christopher "Crystal" Taylor, whom Alex says he was in love with, were present but not directly involved in the abduction or beating.

When I showed Alex a newspaper account of the Meinecke incident, the one passage that bothered him described a rock album playing in the background during the beatings. "A 'rock album' - - that was not rock," he says. His account is filled with affectations strikingly inappropriate to the events that he's relating; he often acts amused, commiserating with me about the absurdity of some of the things that happened (I know, those people are crazy) as if he weren't involved in those very events.

While telling the story of Meinecke's beating, Alex will frequently digress to talk in detail
about himself, sometimes referring to himself in the third person: his likes, dislikes, petty
annoyances, how his apartment is decorated, the quality of his stereo, how during all this he was shopping for G-strings at Basic Brothers, how he had his hair in a pompadour for a Grease strip show he was doing. It's as if the enormity of the crime washes over him, can't compete with his interest in himself and the difficulty he had trying to manage a three-day torture with an incompetent work force. The egotism is, however, not absolute: In one letter from prison he begins the story of his life with the line "Back home where I come from, I am a fucking total loser."

Early on in the interview he states, "I don't have a problem with Rudy. I love Rudy very
much," which seems, in an odd way, partially true as well as ridiculously disingenuous.
Listening to Alex talk, it's apparent that he considers Meinecke so insignificant as to be
unworthy of even real animosity. Throughout the conversation, Alex will refer in an
amused, patronizing way to him ("This is what y'all are mad at?"), characterizing
Meinecke as almost beneath notice: a foolish, low-level figure running around Montrose
causing problems and getting into trouble. Meinecke was so powerless on the streets that in Alex's world, where power is everything and defines your existence, Meinecke wasn't considered a real person. And, ultimately, he wasn't treated like one.

Though in fairness, in subsequent letters Alex sent from jail, the tone is different, more
penitent, confessional.

After a number of letters and phone conversations, I ask Alex again to tell the truth about what happened. He writes: 

"Lost Boy ordered Rudy's ass to be kicked one time, never twice. 1 think I have made a
mistake. I sent out a second order under Lost Boy's name when there never should have
been one. Kevin, I screwed up and got a man hurt for know [sic] goddamn reason. Lost
Boy had me so shook the fuck up I lost my head and sent out too many orders. That night was moving too fast, I should have slowed it all down, and nobody would have gotten hurt. We did Rudy wrong, and it is my fault, not Lost Boy's because he wasn't there the second time, only the first time."

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