Self-Defence

Terrence Gary Trafficant, 41, essayist and former inmate at the New Jersey State Prison at Rahway, where he had been serving a thirteen-year sentence for manslaughter.

Next day's paper cared only about Trafficant, describing how acceptance as a Sanctum Fellow had hastened the ex-con's parole and detailing Trafficant's criminal history: robbery, assault, narcotics use, attempted rape.

Jailed almost continuously since the age of seventeen, Lowell's protégé had earned a reputation as a combative prisoner. With the exception of a prison diary, he'd never produced anything remotely artistic. A photo showed him in his cell, tattooed hands gripping the bars: ski

Questioned about the appropriateness of Trafficant's selection, Lowell said, "Terry is excruciatingly authentic on smooth-muscle issues of freedom and will. He's also an anarchist, and that will be an exhilarating influence."

Mid-August: Sanctum's opening was celebrated by an all-night party at the former nudist colony. Catering by Chef Sandor Nunez of Scones Restaurant, music by four rock bands and a contingent from the L.A. Philharmonic, ambience by M. Bayard Lowell "in a long white caftan, drinking and delivering monologues, surrounded by admirers."

Among the sighted guests: a psychology professor turned LSD high priest, an Arab arms dealer, a cosmetics tycoon, actors, directors, agents, producers, and a buzzing swarm of journalists.

Terry Trafficant was spotted holding forth to his own group of fans. His prison diary, From Hunger to Rage, had just been bought by Lowell's publisher. His editor called it "an intravenous shot of poison and beauty. One of the most important books to emerge this century."

The New York police lieutenant who'd arrested Trafficant on the manslaughter charge was quoted, too: "This guy is serious bad news. They might as well light a stick of dynamite and wait for it to blow."

The next few citations on Lowell turned out to be cross-referenced interviews with Trafficant. Describing himself as "Scum made good, an urban aborigine exploring a new world," the ex-con quoted from the classics, Marxist theory, and postwar avant-garde literature. When asked about his crimes, he said, "That's all dead and I'm not an undertaker." Crediting Buck Lowell for his freedom, he called his mentor "one of the four greatest men who ever lived, the other three being Jesus Christ, Krishnamurti, and Peter Kurten." When asked who Peter Kurten was, he said, "Look it up, Jack," and ended the interview.

The article went on to identify Kurten as a German mass murderer, nicknamed the Däusseldorf Monster, who'd sadistically raped and butchered dozens of men, women, and children between 1915 and 1930. Kurten had other quirks, too, enjoying coitus with a variety of farm animals and going to his execution hoping he could hear his own blood bubble at the precise moment of death.

When recontacted and asked how he could term that kind of thing "greatness," Trafficant replied, "It's all a matter of context, friend," and hung up.

A storm of outraged letters ensued. Several religious leaders condemned Lowell in their Sunday sermons. Lowell and Trafficant refused further interviews, and after a week or so the fuss died down. In May, From Hunger to Rage was published to uniformly strong reviews, went into a second printing, and made it to Number 10 on The New York Times best-seller list. A scheduled book tour for Trafficant was canceled, however, when the author didn't show up for an interview on a national morning talk show.

When questioned about Trafficant's whereabouts, Buck Lowell said, "Terry walked out on us a couple of weeks ago. Right after all the sturmdrang idiocy about Kurten. Words mean different things to a man like that. He was wounded deeply."

A sensitive soul? asked the reporter.

"It's all a matter of context," said Lowell.

Over the next two decades, coverage of Lowell diminished steadily, and by the end of the period nothing was left but a few doctoral theses, inflicting upon him that peculiar gleeful viciousness that passes for wit in the academic world. Command: Shed the Light went out of print, and no further books or paintings materialized. No mention at all of Terry Trafficant, though his book did go into paperback.

Checking out the gray volume, I drove home. When I passed Topanga Canyon, I wondered if the great man was still living there.

6

At Las Flores Canyon, static wiped out the music on my radio. I fooled with the tuner and caught the word Shwandt at the tail end of a news broadcast. Then the disk jockey said, "And now back to more music."

I couldn't find a newscast and switched to AM. Both all-news stations were doing the sports scores, and everything else was chatter and music and people trying to sell things.

I gave up and concentrated on the beauty of the highway, open and clean as it ribboned past true-blue water. Even the commercial strip near the Malibu pier didn't look half bad in the afternoon sun. Bikini shops, diving schools, clam stands, real estate companies pretending they still had something to do during the slump.

Once home, I took a beer and Lowell's poetry onto the deck. It soon became clear this wouldn't be reading for fun.

Nasty stuff. Nothing like the luxuriant verse and lust-for-life stories Lowell had put out during the forties and fifties. Nearly all the poems dealt explicitly with violence, and many seemed to glorify it.

The first, entitled "Home-icide," was almost a haiku:

He walks in the door

briefcase-appendaged. And

Finds

She's shot the kids.

But the dog's still alive.

Time to feed it.

Another proclaimed:

Over the meadows and through the woods to:

Clarity

Chastity

Priapisty

Buggery

Butchery

Prepared perfectly for truncation:

Hone the bone. Toss the I Ching,

then toss the rules out the window.

The title poem was an empty black page. Several other pieces seemed no more than random collections of words, and a six-page poem entitled Shaht-up consisted of four four-line verses in a language that a footnote explained was "Fi

The final piece was printed in letters so tiny I had to strain to read them:

Slung and arrowed, she begs for it.

Shitsmear idiocy- who does she think she is?

Snap.

To give up!

Snap.

Just like that-

LIKE THAT

Easy to see why the book hadn't worked- and why it had enchanted Trafficant.

I pictured him poring over it in his cell, then rushing to Lowell's defense.

His motive would have been more than shared literary taste. With a few supportive words, he'd bought himself early parole.

I reread the final poem.

A woman begging for it, then scorned for giving up.

Classic male rape fantasy?

Lucy's incubus…

The abduction imagery in the dream.

Had she come across this dreadful little book, perhaps as part of her brother's "roots" research?

Reading it and identifying with the victim?

Or what if the dream represented something more personal- being molested herself?

At the voir dire, she'd denied ever having been a crime victim. But if it had happened long ago and she'd repressed it, she wouldn't have remembered.

The dream had started right after she'd listened to Milo testify about Carrie.

Identifying with a child victim.