Chapter 4: The Assessment

“Mr. MacGowan, tell me as much as you are comfortable sharing,” Dr. Torrent kept her eyes steady and omnipotent as they looked directly into his.
“OK sergeant doctor, can I call you that or do you prefer Doc?” he saw her flinch and instantly regretted the harsh tone he had spoken to her in but was not sure why. As if in apology he added, “stop calling me Mr. MacGowan.”
She considered his response; she studied his eyes with a mysterious caution,
“What would you like me to call you?” she asked.
“Trent,” he said.
“Trent,” she said and saw him shudder as he met her gaze. The wide chasm of his pupils dilated as the prism shifting shades of blue and gray irises swirled ---compelling. She bit thoughtfully on the corner of her lower lip in an absent way that seemed to be her habit, as if chewing over her own thoughts.
“I am here to help you, —Trent… Do you want to be helped? Or are you on a self-sabotaging mission? It’s best to let me know from the beginning instead of playing childish games. Games irritate me.”
“So you prefer to cut to the chase.”
“I’m not impressed with arrogant shows of spoiled brats. I don’t have time to pander to egos. And it just gets on my nerves, to be honest.”
…a song played in his mind…The night haunts me as dawn now arises…. so does evening then demise? And all our plans to be revised? Or is it better to be realized? Is this a mask I doth devise? What is the compromise? I am straight jacketed in mental lockjaw. Call me pretty boy…whipping boy…. a mirror as a mask is a …face that I claim here to be, let me put it down, let me take it off -- let me, please… let me…please. Let me mirror you, mirror your mask of faces: created by an artist….
“Tell me what happened.”
“Tell me why I should trust you.”
“Because I’m your best bet. Your only hope here.”
“Hope here for what?”
“For getting you out of this mess.”
“How do you figure that?” he asked. “You determine I’m crazy I don’t go to jail but I get to stay locked up in here instead?”
“Who said I thought you were crazy?”
“Don’t you?”
“Actually, no”
“So what am I doing here, doctor?”
“You tell me.”
“What’s it say in your report there?”
“Why are you protecting her?”
“Who?”
“The person you were arrested for killing. Hmm… all that blood… how gruesome…”
“Blood?” his face seemed to go whiter, if that was possible.
The cool expression on the doctor’s face took a while for Trent MacGowan to register. Dr. Torrent continued to study his face with clinical detachment.
“You bitch! What’s going on?”
“You tell me, Trent.”
“Fuck you! --And your fucking mind games! You think you can mind- fuck me? Dr. Torrent-- or Doctor Tor-ment? Let’s see who can win at that game, didn’t you know that is my trademark? …What happened to her? Tell me!” his voice broke in a cry of despair openly pleading with her.
“You obviously care about her. You wouldn’t kill her.”
“I didn—stop fucking with me and tell me the Goddamn truth, you fucking bitch!” losing his self control, he’d forgotten about his bound arms and tried to lunge at her, but fell over onto the floor in a pathetic heap. With a rush of pity she released his straight jacket in one motion. He sprung to his feet and grabbed her by the shoulders. Now standing, Trent MacGowan towered over Dr. Torrent, his long arms and legs seeming three times longer upon his sudden release. Dr. Torrent remained cool, as if used to being physically accosted by her patients. She overcame him easily with a strength that he found surprising. The force of this physical exchange seemed to leave Trent MacGowan exhausted and he crumpled back down to the floor in a heap of sobs. “Please tell me doctor…. Is she dead? Please stop doing this to me, just tell me, I need to know.”
“Well you obviously didn’t kill her.”
He was openly crying in grieving horrible anguish, his face hidden behind large, elegant, long-fingered hands that tapered into beautifully shaped tips and nail beds. He had musician’s hands-- the doctor could not help but notice, strong fingers with characteristically grooved knuckles and modest grace. These were not murderous hands; these hands belonged to a sensitive artist who possessed intense emotions.
“There is still no body,” Dr. Torrent sighed and coolly walked over towards the windows to look outside into the full mooned October night.
“So you were just fucking with me, weren’t you? --Fucking emotional vampire bitch?”
With whiplash coldness he heard the doctor say,
“So are we done with our game playing now?”
“Yeah, if you are. I thought you were suppose to be honest.” He leered at her threateningly, like a lizard king, looking at her now with open accusation. And hurt? Looking every square foot the ominous rock star known for his ear-piercing, hard-core sound, masochistically edged with the melodious ballads that made the females swoon. What an amazing contradiction he was she thought: threatening at the same time as man-child in juxtaposition like a slippery fish with two minds. Right now the twist of his mouth in a grimace reminded her of a shark.
“Let me know when you feel like talking,” Dr. Torrent began walking in the direction of the door, picking up the folder that contained his report, her combat boots making clank-thud sounds over the wood floor.
When she reached the door he said,
“Wait.”
She stopped, turned slowly and looked at him, waiting.
Now his expression had changed, it had turned back to the gentle, angelic face like one of his faces from a magazine cover, with the huge, bigger than life baby-blue eyes deceptively fringed with spiky wet lashes. He looked at her with a look of coy charm,
“Aren’t you going to tie me back up, baby?”
Dr. Torrent laughed softly, then turned the door handle and continued on her way,
“I think civilization will be safe for now,” she opened the door and began to leave.
“Please don’t leave me here…” there was something in his voice that made her hesitate….
“No—wait…. Doctor…. Please don’t go yet.”
Something about the pitch of his tone stopped her. She turned back to face him. He walked over to her and even as he was twice her height he seemed boyish and vulnerable. His eyes pleading with her openly, like hypnotic swirls that caught her by surprise. The mask had dropped away a little.
He said,
“Please don’t leave me here.”
*******************************************************************
She looked up into his face and found empathy for his present state, imagining how she would feel if she were him in this exact situation. Dr. Torrent shut the door and stood looking at him thoughtfully noting the sheer panic within his eyes and familiar with how that felt she nodded with a gentle sigh. Her own guard dropped too. She glanced around the room. There was not much to it, except that it was quite large and there were plenty of windows—too bad the view outside of them was grotesquely bleak this time of year. Images of Ichabod Crane came to mind. The walls inside the room were bare and the only object to look at was the institutional desk that seemed to judge everything that it faced. I would hate to be left here, she thought now berating herself and looked at him with sincere sympathy.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “this must be a very horrible time for you. I wasn’t sure where you stood in all this.”
“That’s OK. I’m the one who should be apologizing. I antagonized you. I’m not usually like this.”
“That’s understandable,” Dr. Torrent walked around the room thoughtfully, her combat boots making thud sounds that echoed in the emptiness.
Trent MacGowan moved over to the desk chair and sat down, burying his face in his hands. His long arms and legs seemed caricature-ly too big for the chair he occupied, the white straight jacket, now undone looking massive and huge on his bony frame as the buckles hung off in a helter-skelter fashion seeming to mock his situation.
“Do you feel like talking?”
He looked up at her, his face full of complete, utter despair and his brooding brows knit together in the middle as if pleading. His eyes as wide as the full moon outside and just as stark. After a long silence he finally said,
“I don’t know what I feel like. To be honest. I just don’t know what I would do, doctor, if you left me alone right now…. I’ve been alone in this room since they arrested me this morning and dumped me here ….” He turned his head towards the ancient gothic windows glancing at the glowing moon, “and now it’s after twilight. I don’t really understand why I’m being accused of this….
“And the sick part of all this is that I think I would prefer to be in here, anyway, because I think I’d feel worse out there wondering where she was. But then, I’d be able to go look for her, or try to call her… I don’t know what I’m saying… do you have any idea why I am being accused of killing her?”
“Your lawyer told me that she had asked for a court order to keep you away from her last week. She filed a restraining order.”
Trent MacGowan was thoughtful as he digested this information. He was calm and did not react.
“Did you know about that?” Dr. Torrent asked him.
“Yes. I did.”
“Why would she have done that?”
“We were fighting a lot.”
“Physically?”
Now he became tense,
“she’s the one who’s more prone to getting physical that way. Lisa is the one who gets violent. She loses her temper. She’s come at me with a knife before and, you know, I’m a lot bigger than she is so I can handle myself against her if I have to protect myself.”
“Could you tell me what your relationship is with her?”
He looked up at Dr. Torrent with a wry smile,
“that is… a very complicated story.”
“Well, try to describe it the best you can.”
He ran a hand through his erratic bleached white hair and sat exhaustedly back in the chair, lank arms and legs dropping to his sides,
“we used to be involved—like years ago. I was very into her. She was into me. But things got pretty weird. Fame can do that. Success and all the media… the money… we were also a lot younger back then. That was over fifteen years ago. Fifteen years…. Crazy, sometimes I can’t believe I got this old. We were kids back then. The whole fame trip seemed so wild, we couldn’t handle it all. We went our separate ways. Then a lot of things happened in our lives. Life shit, you know. Tragedies, messed up shit that really ages your soul and I guess we found ourselves with each other one night at the right time and the right place --or not… we’ve been through a lot of stuff and … sometimes just having someone there who knows you and has known you through it all and remembers you from before everything changed… we keep going back to each other. I see other people, she sees other people but after the breakups, the bad press, the legal fiascoes the phone rings and its her and … I go back.”

Chapter 3 -- Electra's Comic Book Scene 1: Trent

Electra’s Comic Book
Scene 1
Trent

He dreams in comic book font:
The bat lady…

She came into the room occupying its entire space with her presence. She moved bat-like in her dark colors, long flowing black taffeta and her billowing sleeves. They move past her as she walks. Following the wakes of her arms. Long bat sleeves, bell sleeves, bell towers… bats in the belfries… gargoyle footmen… belfries, bell freeze…. is she free? Was she a blaze of the fires of hell, like a torch in a castle? The smoke affect of her bat material seemed as if to emphasize the smoking of her Medusa web like hair. Web like, in that, although tangled or tossed, there was some organization to the mad living mass, some identifiable pattern …a pattern so easy to get lost inside, with mazes that lead nowhere. And everywhere.
Or somewhere.
As the trails of her stilled themselves before his eyes, he realized his error. She was not real. She was an apparition… a fiery-- faery vision. A vision. She was too small to be a real doctor, Tinkerbell…. Shrink--doc? Headshrinker. Which doctor or witch…? she took minds back to her elfingroth. She kept them all in jars, enchanted by her obsidian eyes… scrying eyes she could look into and devour people’s souls. Beautiful darkness, India ink pools crying India ink tears down a feather quill pen. She held out her hand and gave him her card. It was the queen of hearts. But aren’t they all?
She seemed to snap her fingers as if to break a spell. And it did, a little. He went to scratch his itch but remembered too late that he was still in the straight jacket. Still? Where was he again…? Bat lady seemed to be saying something but it was muffled; only some of the words got through.

The drama is told

Narrator:
Lisa Loath had been missing for a week now and the media was going crazy over what was behind her disappearance and possible homicide. Trent MacGowan was arrested, and then sent here --a mental facility-- for evaluation. How could there be an arrest without a body? She wondered. She paced about the cold sterile office reading the report that had been handed to her as she kept wondering how it was that she had been called to be the mastermind for this incredible case. What did she know about rock stars and their the bigger than life lives they lived? Her eyes were drawn to the photo of Trent MacGowan that lay on the pile of reports. There were newspapers and tabloids with this story overflowing on the desk in the office. This ugly office that she had been given to use, her own office all the way on the other wing of the mental hospital. She had been on the staff here for about five years now. It faced over a cemetery that was huge and historical and where the famed oak tree was still standing: in the direct center of the city right beside this gigantic mental institution in the heart of Regal Grove. Last night Trent MacGowan’s band had played here. He’d been arrested this morning. Why would a little city outside of Motown metropolitan area need such a big loony bin? She studied his picture on the cover of one of the magazines, somehow compelled by his face and felt a strange chill.
His eyes… it was his eyes that dispelled any doubt that this person could possibly be a murderer. They were haunted eyes, but not cruel. Beautiful, a strange gray-blue with an angelic glint with secrets, taunting. Intellect…. Yes, that was there. And there was something about him that disturbed her.
She went down the hallway to the room he was in and entered after a quick knock.
Their eyes met from the doorway as she put down her things, shutting the door behind her.
“Bat Lady,” he said. “Or do I mean dragon-lady?”
“What?” she put a folder away in the desk drawer and searched a pocket for--a pen or pencil and wrote a note that she tucked into a hidden pocket. She wore black, not white --like all the sterile doctors here and the fools that attended him.
There were eight gothic shaped windows (he had spent a long time in here waiting staring at them and kept counting them to entertain himself) and all the shutters were open revealing a dark evening October sky that seemed to go on forever. There was a huge moon. A harvest moon maybe? Ominous, it loomed behind her, great, like a watching Cyclops with a foggy, cloudy halo shrouded around it …
Trent MacGowan sat crouched in the corner, long arms and legs wrapped around him, straight-jacketed. He was ghostly pale and in the shadows his eyes looked black and huge. There were gaunt hollows under his sculpted cheekbones and under his eye sockets. So pale, he looked as though he had no blood… as if a vampire had sucked him dry. You could see through his skin. She walked over to him.

He could not see her eyes; they were distorted behind black rectangular glasses that made her look professional and intimidating. The darkness of the room cast shadows everywhere on her. Her hair hung as if in long dreadlocks, some of it carelessly tied up in a knot around a ballpoint pen in an absent-minded manner. She had a long neck. Bat lady, he thought again—like one of Dracula’s minions. She looked like the queen of night. Her skin was luminous marble. From his crouched position on the floor, all he could make out of her was the shape of her silhouette that was further distorting her so she looked like elongated shadows that flickered like a candle with incandescent heat. She stood in a long black dress-- and –shit he could swear she wore combat boots! Was his shrink Morticia Adams? …This had to be just a very weird dream, what the fuck had those ass holes given him who had tied him down jabbing a needle up his arm…?
“Should I call you ‘sarg?’” he asked and looked pointedly and insolently at her boots. Unexpectedly, she smiled at him in appreciation, acknowledging his observation, even as he had meant it to be snide. He felt a strange queasy feeling in his stomach and then there was a fluttering, like batwings, which blew across his cheeks as she moved towards him
She knelt down to him in one graceful motion that seemed instantaneous, as if she had the power to move faster than time. First up there and then suddenly she was knelt before him, eye level. Her liquid-dark direct gaze made him seasick. Behind the librarian glasses her obsidian eyes drew him down into their inky pool --inside there. Limpid, eyes like liquid …oh mother mercury, look what you’ve done to me, I cannot run I cannot hide…(Queen, 1978). Up close her skin looked more like gray marble, not alabaster. This close he could see the worn off red lipstick on her full mouth and the sharp contrast of features that looked carved from stone -–the shock of artificial color from lipstick made her look otherworldly, as if she glowed in an unnatural light.
I am looking at myself from where I see you… down your eyes into the wall behind you there. Now I can look out and see from inside your head. See me from the way you look at me. It is not that I am outside myself; it is rather, that I am rooted to something from your angle. On this other end the fish bowl is always in view. So the walls must be inside. I see you better from the vantage of how you see that I see you.

Chapter 2 -- Electra's Dictionary

The very first time that it happened, I had not known that I could do it. It happened by itself spontaneously as sheer pain spliced through my senses. The skin to flesh slaps had stung like fire, like a scorpion’s venom, but the lick of the belt sent me clear over the rainbow.

A flash of neurological overload and some blinding red pain. Was I going to die? Was I still afraid to? Because there it wouldn’t hurt so bad. Anymore. I heard thoughts the way a lightning bolt vibrates your spine.
I heard, you are safe… I’m watching you… come with me for awhile and lets talk as this chastisement continues… I watched it all happen to me from some other far away place. I was enclosed in a net of magical protection, so familiar that I knew to trust it beyond my life.

So I did.

Part of me fell asleep. Part of me was healed-- that was the part of me that was eternal and knew of an infinite knowledge I had temporarily forgotten. I was six.

I watched the small red haired girl get whipped by her dad. I watched the rage and venom pour out of him like a physical energy of spite. The little thing took every blow. She lay there unmoving and unmoved. She was … hollow. They picked her up and brought her out to the living room and lay her on the sofa. Hours passed. Nobody stirred her. She stared senselessly at the ceiling. Her dad was far away. Mother was far away. Her sister was far away. Everything was far, far away. She lay in God’s hand and his fingers kept her safe. Days passed. She saw the fear in the faces that peered over her. Grandmother was there. She looked alarmed. She was shouting at Mother. Loud voices between Mother and her dad. She went away for awhile again, closing her eyes.

That was the first time it had ever happened. She could slip out of her body. It was a way out. Some force had brought her to safety there and told her to return there any time she was in danger and she would be safe. Not with words, she just knew. It was understood as if from a previous conversation before landing.
Sometimes it was only in that other place that I existed. So many days passed and they are forever lost to me. Like a sleep walker, I could perform in life as I was somewhere else. Why could I do that? Was I a super hero? This brought a laugh in reply. There is really only one super hero. All others are messengers. This pain was not my penitence. There was some other task more pressing to accomplish or fall from grace.

The last entry of the diary was gone. Incomplete now, like someone erased I got lost inside my reflection knowing someone had got in. The reflection stared. Who’s in there? “the face in the mirror won’t drop…” was it so important that I know who she is? I am not my body. It is the soul that is eternal, why should the rest matter? It is the uniform. If I wear my French maid uniform then that is the part I play. Does this provide insights or hints? Humility. But why? Why a French maid? You’re not a French maid, you are a female. A female person-thing. No, I am a bastard, not a French maid, almost the same thing. How so? Because that role is enslavement, there is no freedom there. Freedom… what is that? A stupid lie they tell.

Who is she? My face looks like nobody from my family, really. It used to bother me. It used to anger mother when I asked her about it. It was something I was not supposed to be suspicious of. Maybe I was adopted? All kids think that at times. Why the cover up? I knew Trisha was born a bastard, I figured that out when I was fourteen, years after her death from a drug overdose. She was a hippie. She was my idol, my role model, My goddess. My life was empty after she died. And then we moved far, far away from everybody we knew. We moved overseas. Dad was an ad man.

If ever there could be my most poignant antithesis it would be a commercial materialist. So my dad and I were destined to be natural enemies. He once told me I was the bane of his existence. When he said that, I remember how it had hurt. Looking back, though… now—I’m proud of it. All the terror of my childhood can be forgiven if I believe that what he called me was really true; The Bane of his Existence. I caused him pain. How did I do that? All I wanted was to be daddy’s little girl and to know a father’s love. He never loved me. My first heartbreak was his rejection. Then hers.

I think that moving to Europe helped me, but not for the reasons most Americans go to Europe for. I was eleven when we moved there and deep in a depressive state as grandmother and Trish’s deaths were only months past. I had become obsessed with dreaming up methods of suicide.

It was Europe that saved me that time. My vines took root in the romance of the landscape and architecture that I got exposed to everyday-- the school field trips to famous art museums that housed the most splendid of masterpieces. The meaning of life went beyond this one me, this one self, and being awakened to that woke me up. I flourished. I became some tuning fork for the gods of the muses and became visited by inspiration like a re-occurring fever. For the first time ever, I felt alive but only when engrossed in one of the arts. Visual arts, literature, classical music took me to a better place and that was the only place that I chose to ever exist.

I know that is where the key is buried.

There I am not lost.

But there is where I am.
There is Electra.
There before the grace of God go I….

Chapter 1 -- Premise

I am going to tell you a story about a girl.

Let’s call her Electra.

She creates a comic strip that tells a story. Within the comic strip is a diary that is known as Electra’s Dictionary. Through this it is possible to tell. There is no need to explain or apologize. There is no type of repercussions for the things that she reveals.


The density of words allows more to be said as the interpretations of words can always be defended by the subjective tendency to error in understanding, especially on the behalf of the reader. I think that in order to be a good secret agent you really have to be a good spy.

If this were a trail of clues the blue print would look like splices of a cross-section diagram. You put different colored films over the surface and examine how this influences the way that it looks. Other realities are exposed. Within every one of those realities is an infinite number of interpretations. Which is the right one? This question is irrelevant because all and none would be the answer and I know that is a contradiction in terms. Follow me.

You take a knife and cut into the cross section. You lay a film of ultra-marine over it and then alizarin crimson. You take away one and view. You put them together in two separate orders. Ultra violet is my favorite color; it contains so many, like the violet dawn.

I would make a series of mobiles; three-dimensional sculptures to explain that the dimensions actually are more than three-d. Maybe they are like solar systems. Every planet, every moon, every galaxy… contains many mobiles, many cross-sections and infinite dimensions. With so many possible realities the pondering of Truth becomes erroneous.

I remember being handed my assignment before I was jettisoned to life. I forget my way and exhaust possibilities while spinning in a battle to steady the focus. I get lost.


I am lost.

But let’s talk about her. Our heroine. The one who draws a comic strip. Why comic? Is it funny? The tragedy of life is hysterical. I still think the Greeks did it best. So let’s invite their chorus for this comic book opera and this splice may be seen through Freud’s interpretations or the lunatic inside. Either way. Not sure. Which way it goes. Or will go.

Ready? Let’s go…





Let Go

I am Electra.


As old as time…..

I’ve been called so many things, so it doesn’t matter what my name is. Dinosaur or Thesaurus Rex-- wrecks…. the web, the lines get tangled and often overlap. Literary or literal, words never say enough….







Electra…. Who is she? A psychological assessment would give us a clinical, deeper understanding of her. But would it show her in her truest light….? In the absolute sense of truth?

We consider the Greeks as our birth of thought.




What do we know of Electra? And here, I do not mean the classical Electra, as in Euripides or Sophocles, nor am I referring to Freud’s Electra. Our Electra, who remains silently locked inside a dark world and uses symbolic suggestions instead of language to keep her barriers up and to politely snub the world. The dictionary, or lexicon is a primer, every line spoken in rhymed code. And yet we do know that her use of the choice of calling her diary Electra’s Dictionary is obviously meant to suggest all classical references to Electra in the ancient and modern sense. A guise, concealed behind what seems like simple self-analysis woven in a diary.

The question remains, as it always has, how much do we tell or how much do we distort in order to tell everything and remain safe within anonymity? I have written pages, volumes and years of this, at this very task. Those volumes have been destroyed. By me and by someone else who discovered them…. and acted to keep certain secrets safe. Or to just keep them. Some pages sit in legal offices, confiscated by…. one of many enemies

It took that last lesson to finally learn mother’s rule of “never put anything in writing….” Both my mother and the man who fathered me left no physical evidence or documentation. I know this because I have looked and searched.

What is a poet to do? Find solace in poetic license. These facts must be revealed in riddles of alliterations and allegory for the purpose of the secret(s) I am and have been bound to, and the need to unburden my soul.


We must begin somewhere. A starting point?

Words work for you and against you. My cryptic language is not intended to be mistaken for pretentiousness. The simplicity of words are intentionally dense. Fewer words said the more truth is stated. Look for it. You must accept these rules, as they have been the very rules, which have crippled me. Double meanings. Lines written invisibly or grammatically oblique. You see, I am committed to truth. And why should anyone care? It doesn’t matter if you do or not. Not to me. Just that I tell. This. But I will not spell it out because-- I think it was Cocteau who once said, “the matters I relate are true lies.” The truth lies somewhere between the lines. Sometimes I do not know which is myself. Mother was a good liar. She kept track. I never could.

What relevance do I have to this selfish greedy world only interested in immediate self-gratification?

Truthfully,

So-often I despise my species….




Hmmm….

I think I will entreat you with temptation.
 

Come in:

[in a whisper](As an emotional vampire that feasts on the delicacy of the untainted

I ask you--


How pure is your soul?)

--Because I don’t want your blood.

Cocteau also said, “The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.”

I am an artist but I am a poet first.

I will use poetry to reveal what I must and to conceal what must be concealed. I must be cautious in what I say. Suggest but never say aloud. Be careful what you miss. If you care or dare, take it or leave it. This is a story that must be told.



With 21st Century’s electronics and the Internet it makes sense to use

--along with my poetic license

images….


I am an artist –but, you see, nobody cares about art anymore.

So I will draw in modern cult style.

I always loved Batman and his Gotham city as a kid… and all those dark B

movies in black and white…

The Prance of the Panther

The Prance of the Panther


I’m not a number
My fingerprints belong to me
--my fingertips
what I do is my life
& not for public scrutiny
your opinion does not count
I don’t care
I’m not your number
And time is when we share this planet
But I didn’t create your rules
If I was in some other time
There would be other scorecards
I walk away from chains and uniforms
There’s freedom but not
On your time.
There’s freedom on my mind
But it’s not your kind