BOOK 3: The Opera: We Were Mothers Once, and Young
Chapter 26: The Overture
BOOK 3—The Show [Charade] Begins!
Book 3 of Mother-Fucking: The Saga of One Fucked Mother is aptly entitled “The Opera: We Were Mothers Once, and Young”. The Family Court Charade begins.
In this section, Legion relives her legal struggle in both Family and Appellate Court to keep and protect her children. She employs a simile—an Opera—to tell this part of her story. The Opera is divided into an Overture and Three Acts—representing the three trials. There are five Parts: the First Act has one Part—the first trial; the Second Act has two parts—the second trial and first appeal; and the Third Act has two Parts—the third trial and second appeal.
CHAPTER 26 is “The Overture”. Legion describes her frustration with the legal process and how it works against her receiving a fair outcome. She says the readers will be her jury since she has not been afforded one: “‘You the Audience of Readers will be … tah–dah … This Opera’s Jury,’ my overturing arietta concludes.”
One problem she identifies is that transcripts are only available in her jurisdiction if an appeal is filed, and they are expensive. Of course, she is the one who has to pay the big bucks to get them transcribed. She wonders how a judge can remember what is said during the trial when he is making his findings without a written record and with no notes to refer to. Worse, she will not be able to use the first trial transcript in her appeals which greatly disadvantages her.
With her kids having been taken away, Legion already feels like her life has been stolen from her. She asks herself, like so many loving mothers who find themselves trapped in the Family Court nightmare—how could this possibly happen?
Dr. Blue’s novel is based on her own experience of the Custody Crisis. It uniquely conveys how Family Court judges are “mother-fucking” women—a form of systemic oppression and violence directed at ex-wives—as protagonist Legion is systematically and methodically deprived of her children and money and reduced to “one fucked mother”.
Chapters are stand-alone interesting so you can begin reading anywhere. A Cast of Characters follows to help readers at any point [on the web page]. All published chapters are included in the Section: “Saga of One F**ked Mother” accessible on the top bar of the home page of Women’s Coalition News & Views. Sequential chapters are published every Wednesday and subscribers will find them in their inboxes, so make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet!
TEASERS
None of the strips in these piles and mounds is ever retyped up into 8½ x 11 sheet pages—transcribed, that is, into a broadly and perhaps universally understood language of any kind—except that, first, someone files an appeal and then someone, usually that same someone or somebody of her family, friends and supporters, … pays!
…And so I do not have the lines, then do I, from Act One—since there was no appeal of it these pages of trial transcript, er, lines of testimony, they don’t even exist!? Verstehen?
The lies do get into the mix of things from whence comes from out of that judge after so much time has passed … the final order? Can the decree then—the law—be nullified on, tah‑dah, ‘a technicality’? Or, is one just, well, ya’ know, … fucked?!”
BOOK 3
The Opera: We Were Mothers Once, and Young
CHAPTER 26
Dr. True's Opera in Three Acts—with Five Parts
The Overture
“My life has been stolen from me. I am living a life I have no wish to live. How did this happen?”
—Adeline Virginia Stephen (Woolf) as portrayed by Nicole Kidman in the 2002 film, “The Hours”
It’s not even a dark and stormy night nor more than 14 years since, but I still cannot remember all of my lines. Again this remembering and forgetting thing here. The Show might be on all right, but I cannot remember for you Mirzah, for you Zane nor for you Jesse, all of the history that are the lines of the script of The First Trial.
Good thing I guess it is then that I have every mother‑fucking, flashback one of those lines in the three, red cardstock‑bound manuscripts, each about 1,200 pages in length. That is, those three would be its trial transcripts. And these three exist at all because, well, I own them at all because … because there was an appeal. There was a formalized, to‑the‑State’s‑appellate‑courts appeal.
Most folks don’t know about a civil court’s, a family court’s trial transcripts. They do not know. And the reason that most folks don’t know is simple and, actually, quite fortunate. Fortunately, most folks never, never end up going to trial or even find themselves in litigation inside a courtroom at all–over anything, let alone, over theft perpetrated by a perverted thug upon a burgled and brutalized band of souls, over several soul murders. They do not. Some, even sometimes more than half of, contractual marriages end; but they do not end litigious, let alone, litigable, that is, in litigation and actually in, inside, a court. At trial.
But when there is an appeal from a civil trial judge’s decision, which truly is far more important to all of the parties and players than the trial or its documents are, why then, that is when the lines appear. Those in hard copy. Copy that is actual words, witnesses’ words; a manuscript materializes. The lines of an opera’s script! Then and only then. Never at the actual time of the trial nor after the matter is decided and put to rest without appeal are there actual sheets of words which were said at trial for anyone to, well, … to read! Even though all of the words are, to you, to any of you, free, public and obtainable information—or … allegedly accessible to you anyhow.
There is an exception to this—an exception to when there is no appeal, but only one of which I am aware: when specific court officers, that is for example, the trial court judge or either party’s attorney, want a page or so for himself or herself to read or to study after the day’s or the entire trial’s proceedings are concluded. If the initial request for proceedings’ transcripts is not that of the trial judge but is, instead, at the behest of either party’s attorney, then the trial judge has to approve the lawyer’s request, however; pages don’t just appear because either the petitioner or the respondent or their respective attorneys want them to. And then, only that short piece of the proceedings is ever transcribed into hard copy and then, only that short piece is ever given over to the particular judge or attorney and not over to anyone else. When these very particular court officials are through with these pieces then, those few hard‑copy sheets may not even be kept; for all I know they are shredded or just tossed in toto.
Not women and not mothers but a man is by far, far and away the person to use his will to choose, that is, to make a decision. The human being. Not the DEhuman being. The largest number of district civil court case adjudicators are male; check with any of the 50 states’ civil courts on this one fact alone! And I am not even explaining about justice in other countries here. So a man almost always decides; he judges the civil court cases of marriage dissolution and then, of course, the subsequent custody of that dissolved union’s children. Far, far and away. Even in America. Still.
Why the distinct procedure of handling my district civil court case’s words—and, of course, yours too—is so enormous and so significant and is one, certainly, about which I during The Opera’s first act, The First Trial, had no mother‑fucking idea, is that a judge does not, does not even have hard‑copy pages of testimony, most of that stuff legally termed “evidence”, mind you, to study. At all! To review and to study and to think back on long and hard or to research back and forth the people and the dates and the places and the events of all of the involved matters––or even to have as just a short, confirming reminder in his brilliant little hand, ya’ know, that might help him to remember back on not only the facts stated but especially also on all of the nuances, the hints, the shades, the traces—of the ways the people in attitude, bearing, comportment and carriage at trial were—or soooo were not––telling The Truth! The whole truth and nothing but … The Truth!
Assuming something big, really, really big, of course, this pointing out of the utter absence of these hard‑copy trial transcripts does: that he, the judge, for the express purpose of correctly dispensing out … justice … cares to remember these things about trial, that is. It assumes that Your Honor Himself wants to have totally straight all of the facts and exclusive tinges to the spoken words of my particular case at time of trial!
As you can further imagine, there is one more most massive quandary with this specific authenticity assumption here. And it takes really only the simplest of understandings this last, most profound problem does: that what was “testimony” spoken at trial, that what he said and what she said, indeed of course, is fact … This’s what the judge’s having such hard‑copy sheets of trial testimony transcripts—in hand—to review at all would assume. Ya’ know, the veracity of the things that just somehow manage by way of oath‑taking or affirmation to get said, petitioner and respondent, witness after witness—and put onto stenographic machine strips—at time of trial for the judge to then even have in tangible form to be able to review and to study and to further research. The Truth. Allegedly.
Of course, without sheets of transcripts what just gets said could still be UNtruths, and that most certainly does occur; but this occurrence would not be written up, so to speak. Those falsehoods “testified” to the thin air wouldn’t necessarily be remembered by a judge by the time of his writing up a decree, now a law … weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks … later! Believe me to be sure: a terribly friggin’ loooong, long time … later!
But then if they were remembered and then, because of that, they did become part of “the findings of fact,” “the conclusions of law” and “the final decree,” why, there’d be no way of easily going back into the real record––those stenographic strips require a decoder and a lot of trouble––to find the lies and the fairy tales and the deceits? There’d be no way, now would there be? Whether the lies managed to get incorporated into the decree—accidentally or … purposefully, why, it’d just be too difficult to ferret them all out again, wouldn’t it?
And then, afterwards, as regards technicalities and falsehoods, those outright lies? I am thinking, “What if things are wrong in the evidence that then get entered into the decree—and become … law? The lies do get into the mix of things from whence comes from out of that judge after so much time has passed … the final order? Can the decree then—the law—be nullified on, tah‑dah, ‘a technicality’? Or, is one just, well, ya’ know, … fucked?!”
And then I am further left conjecturing, “Well, now if Dr. Edinsmaier gets up there in that witness box, sits there on that so‑called stand and states, O my yes, every single day under a big, big show of oath‑taking garbed in his swell‑looking and o‑so mighty fine, pillared doctor clothes and states in such livery that this and that and that and this are so thus and so. ‘Yea, verily, verily, I say unto you, Your Honor, these five things, blah, blah and yada, yada, yada and so forth and so on, did, indeed, happen!’ well then, I am thinking, is the judge, is Mr. Also Pillared Judge Man, going to send out into the community some unbiased third party official from the Second Judicial Court, like Mrs. Wren, the judge’s personal assistant who’s always there and keeps herself right around the judge himself in actual physical presence or like that other guarding, security guy, George, ya’ know, these two court people who every single day hear all of the “testimony” words, too, these words which are termed “evidence”, to bring him back, to bring back to him, the Judge, absolute solid, tangible materials and people, those from Herry’s neighborhood, his workplaces, my workplaces, the kids’ school, the childcare providers, alcoholics anonymous meetings, the piano teachers, the soccer club and Little League gangs, from Quaker Meeting and so forth and so on? Tangible actual facts that can verify and prove precisely true those exact five things Dr. Edinsmaier just “testified” did, in point of actual fact, happen? Ya’ know, blah, blah and yada, yada, yada … those very five things Herry just now avowed from out of his mouth?”
Or, is the judge going to do nothing and just believe every frickin’ thing that Herry tells him? Because it is so‑called sworn‑to “evidence”? And, very especially, by “virtue” of the two mother‑fucking facts, of course, that Herry is 1) male and 2) a pillar in the goddamn community—just like the judge himself is!?! That is, also a pillar and also in that very same community! And, very especially too, just exactly like the judge certainly perceives himself in both countenance and demeanor to be in that very same community!?!
Who is going to bring us all back the proof that what Herry says, under oath, is fact, is … well, true? So that an accurately informed decision, a legal decree, can be written. So that it will then be based upon all matters and things correct and right!?! And therefore, be itself, … right … as in just, as in justice, ya’ know!?! Who is going to bring us all back this proof, let alone, in a really, really timely manner?
So that this now‑correct decree is written rightly—even weeks and weeks and sometimes literally months after the trial concludes––where and when the words of it were actually said! That one right there just stuns me: that such a thing can happen at all. With little, little kids growing up and up and up, that such a delayed‑ness, such a delayed mess of justice, alleged justice, can happen at all! I am just blown away by that. Who is going to provide the probity, this tangible truth to Herry’s testimonial tattle lickety‑split such as is exactly the genre of time frame out of which soap opera operatives and operations occur? Lickety‑frickin’ split.
Weeks and weeks and weeks often, very, very often, go by before he, Mr. Also Pillared Judge Man, gets himself freed up enough or just plain mother‑fuckingly gets around to finally writing up the decision, his decree; and about this I am not at all exaggerating. It is or can be weeks and weeks … moooonths later, I am saying, and b’gosh b’golly, why—he has noooo fucking memory helps! No civil court trial transcripts to help him the fuck remember what fucking shit was said and, by remembering from reading and re‑reading about it then so much later, just exactly how it went down inside the fucking courtroom months earlier!
Now, you say, “Weeeell, Legion … His Honor the Pillar may’ve taken notes on those soooo legal‑sized, yellow pads of his and with, O yes, … with that so‑gilded, stogie‑sized, black Schaeffer ink pen given to him as a congratulatory gift when he was nominated by his pal, the State’s former governor, to that very district court judgeship of his. And those notes? Those be his memory helps, right, Legion?”
Of course, to which piece of whim‑wham, to which frickin’ whit I upbraid with, “Bunk! Bunkum! Bupkus! O JYeah, I saw both the pen and the yellow pads all right but, you see, what I didn’t see was daJudge’s writing anything down on them. Ever. I never saw him write down a mother‑fucking, goddamn thing! Not in any one of the three quite mother‑fucking acts, er, trials, I’m telling ya’!” And I, of course, state this—because that is exactly what I witnessed inside his courtroom. Every single time. Always. Behind that leather and lemon‑lustrous, bronzed brown bench of his, he His Most High, was most certainly poised to take some, to jot some down. True enough. Yet then again, His Honor up and wrote down not one thing. Not one goddamn thing. So how could there’ve been later a reminding note of any kind from out that fucking fat, gold‑filigreed pen of his?! Ever?!
* * * *
Not in this fiction in three acts, Dear Readers, and scarcely ever either in or after the civil trials of others. And here again, most folks do not know this to be “the findings of fact.” Most people do not know that from out the backend of the court reporter’s little 22‑key, yet about a $4K contrivance called a stenograph, comes nothing––nothing at all extrudes out of it but a two‑inch‑wide paper strip with tiny phonetic, code‑like letterings of gobbledygook shorthand, the meaning of any of which jabberwocky is most literally known … only to her, “the Court’s” reporter. Well, sure, that … of which we can—materially—see.
But what we cannot see is that the piles and piles and piles, the heightening mounds of these creased paper strips actually stack up behind the machine, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth there, in a little molded tray … and then—materially—that’s it. That’s all. That is, quite materially, all she, the reporter, wrote! Er, typed. None of the strips in these piles and mounds is ever retyped up into 8½ x 11 sheet pages––transcribed, that is, into a broadly and perhaps universally understood language of any kind––except that, first, someone files an appeal and then someone, usually that same someone or somebody of her family, friends and supporters, … pays!
O JYeah, there’s the rub again. The money! None of the recorded strips’ letterings from out the rear of these stenograph machines is deciphered by a decoder, usually the court reporter herself or himself. None is dictated onto blank cassette tapes or, now other more modern audiological devices; and then none is listened to most likely through earphone headsets nor manually typed up on computer keyboards that store there on hard drives electronic documents which, voila, end up being printed off as white sheets of readable copy paper of the standard office size! And, therefore, let’s hear another voila: none end up capable of actually being picked up, held in our hands and read by the rest of us public folk. And studied. And understood. And … remembered!
Ya’ know, if there is one thing males do not remember (in contrast to females’ experiences with not remembering), it is, for certain, whatever they will themselves to specifically wanting not to remember! Cognizant, active passive aggression along with arrogance and entitlement Dr. Phil counsels us that this fuck is in people, the vast percentage of them male––even he admits. The arrogance and the entitlement I lump under the one befitting characterization termed narcissism––also long, long such a male deal.
Like remembering to bring home the bread that his wife, looking out for herself and her children’s upcoming supper, phones him up and asks him to do. And, consequentially, he agrees to do! He says that he will! He says that he will … literally … bring home the bread!
But the wife, considering the fact that she herself knows he ‘just’ seems to ‘forget’ a whole heckuva lot, she is looking out for him and his ways, too, by remembering to wait to call him about the bread until the late, late afternoon, just moments before he leaves his microscope and his pathology laboratory so that surely he’ll have just a wee, short time of it after receiving her request until remembering then to stop for and pick up the loaf between his medical office desk and her home. The store is on his way home, not hers. She remembered to call. She remembered to wait to call. She waited and waited. And stiiiill, she remembered. Still remembered near the end of her day, near the end of his day … to call him.
The steaming‑hot spaghetti with such a fine, aromatic sauce made ever more special by her adding those extra chopped onions and extra bell pepper chunks and extra fresh mushrooms is served. And yet, still yet again, there is, she finds, not one toasted garlic bread slice that she had so remembered to specifically plan for—anywhere in sight to be purveyed.
She didn’t quite know what to call it—either his not remembering again or how she feels about it. Now, however we do know; and the ‘it’ of his violence has a name: narcissistic passive aggression. The guy is … aggressive and, therefore, violent. Again. She knew from the time she was a little, little girl—about six or seven years old—just how against her this type of act made her feel. As did he also then know, that is, how it would make her feel before he did it to her … that is, the wake of whatever would be the action of his self‑centered aggression. So too, he knew about the garlic bread deal. The guy is violent. And has so messed with her and her home. Again.
“Whoops, no! No. No. Noooo! Uh‑uh.” I am no longer dazed nor perplexed; the actual act of writing this fucker down has just now—here—snapped me out of that. These books and pages, these bloody, redder ones, not the Sheriff of Nottingham’s royal‑like blue ones but these scarlet three are from after the act, the Second Act that was, indeed, The Second Trial, that Act’s appeal, an appeal that is itself, however, the third part in the order and mix of acts and parts to the entire Opera, that is, Part Three inside Act Two! And those azure ones I just mentioned? Those particular, five similar but cobalt – colored, cardstock‑bound ones, those aren’t from Trial One either; they’re from the appeal after Act Three, er, that would be Trial Three, the Third Trial but itself Part Four! There was no appeal filed nor occurring after Trial One, the First Act. Only the trial. That was it for the operatic Act One. And Part Five? Well, then that would be the appeal after the Third Trial or Part Four within Act Three. And so I do not have the lines, then do I, from Act One—since there was no appeal of it these pages of trial transcript, er, lines of testimony, they don’t even exist!? Verstehen?
Hmmm, Om’gosh, for a moment there, I was getting utterly confused: the nine, plain, cardboard boxes’ worth, their quite literal weightiness when hauling them out and around, the books, the pages, the lines, some of the dates, the hours and the hours and the hours, the mother‑fuckingly incessant hours. But not about the people—not about the characters, the participants, the smuggish thug‑thieves, the several Acts’ players, the actors and the actresses, the takers, the several others of the Whole Show who soul‑murdered and stole from me and from my babes all of our time with each other and—unbelievably—who took from all four of us their utter childhoods: all of our lives. All three Truemaier Boys’ entire adolescences, all of their middle school experiences times three, all of every single high school year times three and, for one of them at least, the murder of all of brilliant Mirzah’s complete memory before he was 11 years old.
And for what this theft and this murder? Why?! Why was this––ever––A Good Thing to Do?! Why was this, for adults and for adult behavior, nearly all of them adults through all of the Show’s three acts and five total parts, that is, through each of the three distinct district court trials and each of the two appeals after the second two trials, for all of these adults who knew then … why were these holocaustic acts of theirs, these thefts and these soul murders––ever––The Right Thing to Do? And, I so stagger to think, “Why?! Why was any of this … just? Justice?!”
Most certainly I do. I do. I do soooo remember the feelings, my feelings, for this happening, for this which is the wake and the mess of their collective will—that which came out from all of these people—these villains—who knowingly and who willfully did this. To me the DEhuman. And to the DEhuman’s three babies.
About these feelings? Not a mother‑fucking thing about these feelings of mine is confusing. Not one.
* * * *
White knuckles gripping the steering wheel. Jesse, always so sweet‑sounding when his little boy voice would come across and over the beige Shitbox Dodge’s front seat bench to me when he was just four, five, six, seven years old. But, now, he was 14, an adolescent. Whom, along with neither one of his brothers Zane or Mirzah, I had not seen nor talked to in almost 18 months’ time.
Stunning me Jesse’s voice is at his present day age of 14 with nearly its same sweetness. Jesse is telling me softly from another backseat in another “United State,” one so alien to me, that Herry, through Herry’s lawyer Mr. Shindy Scheisser, had contacted a Los Angeles or New York City made‑for‑TV film outfit of producers in their very high‑dollar desires—in Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s wake, again—of making me out (Zane, the next day at a different and teensy‑weensy park’s picnic shelter, filled in a few of the blanks in Jesse’s chronicle) to be his movie’s actual murderer. I was to become the manslaying slaughterer in this endeavor, these several men’s money‑making television film scheme of three acts with five parts! “The contract, I saw it, Mama, it has many, many pages, and it’s for $100,000 plus 5 percent. What do they mean, ‘plus 5 percent’, Mom?” He, at 14, knew already what $100,000 meant; about that part of the mother‑fucking ‘contract’ he did not have to ask me.
Folie à deux is a psychiatry term in, of course, French. Herry knows French. Well, he used to. Perhaps now he in his middle age doesn’t remember all of it that he used to love to show off. Folie à deux literally means double insanity, and not quite so literally Noah Webster states it to be a condition in which two closely associated people who are both mentally ill share the same delusional beliefs.
In the same manner then as with any individual and non‑thinking person in regard to all religions and to her or his ‘worshiping’ therein––delusive, that is––this definition fits the minds and hearts and thinkings and doings of Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive in her role as the Sheriff of Nottingham with Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, the Kingdom’s King. Or, Herry the King with Mr. Shindy Scheisser. Or, Shindy the Noisy Puppet with Fannie who in The Opera is remembered for her double role. In addition to hers as that of the Sheriff who, like the noise‑making jointed figurine, also giddily responds to the money and treasure involved and so most willingly implements inside the Kingdom the King’s dicta, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive is also just the Next One in the King’s Stash––the King’s Stash of Fuckable, Male‑Identified Females.
Or, Herry the King and Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor the High Aggrandizier. The role of Judge Seizor is distinguished in Act Three: Parts Four and Five from that of Judge Harley Butcher only in the denotation that Judge Butcher in Trial Number Three becomes Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor and takes on there for himself then the designation of Judge Harley Butcher the High Courtier. Judge Butcher, through some clarification that is Act Three: Part Four merely champions and parrots back the minds and hearts and thinkings and doings that is the wake of the folie à deux between Herry and Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor. Throughout all Three Acts of these separate or conjoined machinations of the High Aggrandizier and the High Courtier, let it not first be forgotten that both Judges Sol Wacotler Seizor and Harley Butcher were lawyers before they became judges so that both are, therefore, after becoming judges … still puppets. Still puppets among the Pillars of the Community known as … the Kingdom.
“Hmmm, except the fit of the definition of the folie à deux condition has to exclude the minds and the thinkings of these folks,” I reason. You see, the deal is that these five fellows, all owning—true it is—such the tiny minds that they clearly do possess, are … well, neither mentally ill nor delusional. All five of these players are as sane as––and manifesting the same lucidity of mind as, say––Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein or as that most classic of male‑identified females, Mehitable, who could have written the literal and seminal text on such of her ilk.
This sanity of theirs is not to be mistaken for what is just, for what is justice, for what is protection, for what is “in the best interests,” for what is going to be a Good Act, a Good Action decreed and then enacted and implemented. Mistaken for what is the wake of clear‑thinking. Clear‑thinking––in the sense of what The Right Thing to do is, what a Righteous Ancestor in Training would do––is the opposite of these characters’ intent, their minds and their thinkings. And, therefore, justice and protective best interests the oppressed opposite of its wake.
My feelings are not confusing. I am a mother fucked, yes, and, therefore very often said, especially by these five of rather royal repute—or so they would have you and each other to behold them as royalty—of The Opera’s characters even now, even right now today, to soooo confuse things. But my feelings about the Show, about this one, about The Opera? True it is: I know what they are. Straight up.
“Findings of Fact” I do not confuse. Most of the stuff and all of its people, The Opera’s cast of characters:
i) The children. Always and only the same ones, of course, throughout all Acts, all Trials. The secular things so not physically in the singular courtroom and whom I alone chose to grow: Zane, Jesse and Mirzah. The things not in the room who are my babies. I alone chose. I alone chose. I alone chose to grow these couple of cells—times three ! ! !—into … people.
ii) The judge, daMan, daJudge, both for Trials One and Two. There was only the one. That is, daMan was the same one. Whatever is up with that shit?! The saaaame one! “O,” I know, “This is supposed to be smack in line with the appearance that … “justice” is blind. Not just anyone can figure it out, “my case” being the “it”. No, no, no—only those who are the lawyers before they were the judges and then only those lawyers who are “neutral”, who “take” the law and do with it what its words codified and certified and down onto official paper dictate that the State of Iowa can do with it. And only that. So that anyone and everyone “judged” gets the same and equal treatment under such. There is no expansion nor enlargement nor increase. There is no amplification in one of the two parties’ loot of “justice”. All get the same amount of “justice” dispensed, not?” That is why daJudge can be the very same daMan. Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor. Judge Seizor the Aggrandizier.
iii) Testifiers. O JYeah. The witnesses. Witnesses the Verbal Evidences would be their collective title. Some the same, some new ones for Trial Two, that is, Act Two: Part Two. And it doesn’t matter whether for or against the petitioner or for or against the respondent. Theirs in The Opera will be of the role to provide “evidence”—what the State legislates as that because it is something called “sworn testimony” and then from which daMan uses it since it, the “evidence”, must (mustn’t it?) be “the findings of fact,” to implement his decisions. To implement, daJudge does, by way of that “evidence” first becoming mixed into something known as “the conclusions of law” before daMan’s finally stating it, “the decree”, for all to read and to know. Ya’ know, the final judgment. Theirs, the witnesses’ spoken words at time of trial, will be that which is pulled back from out of the thin air into which it is first uttered, first attested to, and then onto a court reporter’s stenographic strip and either, once said, not ever seen as English word utterances again or they, the words, will be seen – also as “evidence” – as those inside the blood – hued and bloodied binders of Act Two: Part Three, that is, the visible words within the appeal after Trial Two.
iv) More evidence. O JYeah. Not everything that the State codifies as “evidence” is the spoken word, of course. Passels of it, quite tangible material, occupy several of those nine cardboard boxes that are the equally palpable wake of the entire Show. Ya’ know, like my Rolodex with its individual inventory‑of‑Legion assignment, Mr. Larry Brouhaha’s therapeutic joke, the one this is which is ‘officially’ now marked as Exhibit 9 and as equally ‘officially’ now dated as 11 May 1989. These material materials, no matter how private and personal, will … well, will no longer be that, ya’ know, private and personal. Never ever again. Not even the respondent’s medical records nor counseling documents nor tapes made of the telephone conversations that are the advice and wisdom of Grace the Confidant, Grace Portia the True Friend or with Margaret Sagely, Margaret the Other Mother—if there are any—ya’ know, that sort of thing. These evidences appear in and within and deep into the body and the core of The Opera at all because of another State‑codified civil court trial thing called Discovery and Interrogatories! A massive mess this legal procedure—that were he, the man of pillared medical community status and conscience, never to have ‘visited her home,’ could not have been left there by him then. If the twat had just settled out of court and before trial, why, this mess, this mucking, fucking dirt, Herry‑Daddee wouldn’t have gotten a hold of—in order to be able to then piss it up, over, onto and all around her. He wouldn’t have been able then to make this next mess of his; he simply wouldn’t have needed to. With this material “evidence” of hers—through Discovery and Interrogatories … But she wouldn’t, would she, the stupid‑ass heifer wouldn’t right off let him take from her the growths from out her very own belly so she knew what the consequences of the wake of taking on his wrath would surely be, didn’t the cunty wench? The shrewy harpy knew what the mess was she was forcing him to wrench from her. After all, she is over eight years of age, isn’t she? He knows the pussy knew. Petitioner knows respondent knew. However, and a huge ‘however’ here, … it wouldn’t have mattered had the whore known or not known. Daaaah. The wrenching business is man’s business, Bitch.
v) And almost lastly, the Parties. Us. We are the stars of The Opera, of course. For the most part and, in my case, for a little while at first anyhow I star. Then? … Then I soooo do not. I shall be the soprano, and you already knew that. And Herry will be the tenor. That’s a big fucking shame: I utterly love all of the tenors whom I’ve ever fucking heard sing. Wouldn’t ya’ know it? Well, to reconsider though, that makes literally an awful lot of sense as a matter of fact. All of those bad boys I so burned after both first in pursuit of them and then, after, in the ashes of their wakes, the messes that they left me with—once they’d visited themselves upon me and mine! Hmmm. Alongside us, the fleshy parties, alongside Legion True and Herod Edinsmaier, of course, sit and sometimes stand the Band of Big Boys, our employees. They are really ‘the parties’ in another flesh and in The Opera, that is, are not themselves at all. So Mr. Jazzy Jinx is Dr. Legion True and Mr. Shindy Scheisser is Dr. Herod Edinsmaier; and whatever is sung, said, done, acted out or occurs by them is done in my name or in Herry’s. Carefully it shall be noted right off here, however, that two flesh‑and‑blood bodies does not equal two voices necessarily and, in the case of the thing in the room that is me, two bodies either means Jinx’s voice (except when I am actually testifying) or … well, none at all: no voice. There is, in said band of identity bandits here, furthermore, a very distinct‑appearing female. And one more male‑identified and very nondescript person who is also female but just sort of out there—waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting—waiting on daMan as per usual—in the house wings somewhere almost all of the time. Both of these women, Ms. Carlotta Klutz and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive (pronounced ‘MacKehlvee or MclIIIIIvv, either way, just choose one) have memorized Mehitable’s chapter on How to Maintain … if a male‑identified female. Once one of these women ascends the ladder of luxury, a rare event when the stats (… AmTaham’s numbers there!) are made truly known, in this instance, Carlotta as one who rose up in the areas of both legal influence and affluence, there has to be a way figured out and already set in place for these females then to securely stay up at its top, not? That would be Ms. Klutz’s ‘specialty’––more so even than family law: making sure that she stays at the top––no matter that she has so conveniently filed away and forgotten on just who‑the‐hell’s feminist bootstraps she has managed to crawl the fuck up to the ladder’s top! The other of these two women, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, clawed her way to the top when she found her 01 July 1989 high school class reunion talons dug into the lofty level of luxury literally right there on the lap of Herry. That was a ladder not at all too high to climb as allya’all know Herry’s height, and thus right where his crotch would be located, a ladder with its rules on maintenance of said top level that Ms. Fannie devoured inside Mehitable’s subchapter entitled The Next One in the Stash. Ms. Fannie’s was a mounting implement used in gold‑digging and one that actually projected itself downward. Her ladder’s trajectory took off downward such as into or inside a deep, abyssal mine—the likes of which she believed could be found down into and inside Herry’s pants somewhere, its pockets, that is, or … otherwise. We do not even see Ms. McLive until Act Two; in it she sings herself from the wings as loudly and as proudly as someone so plain as she can possibly spout starting then within The Opera’s Part Two there.
vi) Finally, we have the characters known as … The Jury. “Oooops, am I confusing things again?” I warble, then further trill, “O O O noooo, no, no. Just testing you I am. Mocking you? I am moooocking you? Never. Never. I? I do not do ‘mocking’, no, not me, not me Legion. And it isn’t me who does ‘snide’ either. That? That would be the petitioner, the appellee … the appalling appellee. So when I tell you most seriously, it is exactly that: ‘most seriously.’ So please, please, please, listen up here: There is no jury! Uh‑uh. That’s riiii–iiight. None. Zip. Zilch. Zero. ‘Member the ‘findings of fact’ that I did not confuse were ‘all of the people’? Well, since there is no official jury then, this is where You the Audience of Readers have almost an equal starring role I say! Nearly equal. Nearly equal. You the Audience of Readers will be … tah–dah … This Opera’s Jury,” my overturing arietta concludes.
[to be continued…]
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Dr. Legion True: One Fucked Mother
Dr. Herod (Herry) Edinsmaier: Legion’s husband/Sperm Source [“re: I am snide” backwards]
Zane Truemaier: Legion’s son
Jesse Truemaier: Legion’s son
Mirzah Truemaier: Legion’s son
AmTaham True: Legion’s father [Mahatma backwards]
Mehitable True: Legion’s mother [Me hit-able—i.e. she was abusive]
Ardys and Endys: Legion’s sisters [names backwards]
Sterling: Legion’s brother [her mother’s planned name of next son (who never came)]
Mi Sprision O'Revinnoco: Herry’s sister [misprision: concealing knowledge of treason/O'Revinnoco = O'Connivero backwards]
Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier: Legion’s father-in-law [juggernaut; aut = 0; misein = “to hate (misogyny)”]
Detanimod Edinsmaier: Legion’s mother-in-law [dominated backwards]
Ava Saffron True and Zebulon True: respectively, Legion's paternal grandmother and her husband, Legion's paternal grandfather
Rowland and Wyman Natures: respectively, Legion's most favored uncle and most favored male first cousin
Fannie Issicran McLive: fawning enabler of ex [narcissi(st) and Mc(Evil) backwards]
Legion’s Friends: Margaret, Mona, Yanira, Stormy, Lynda, László, Jane, Kincaid, Joseph, Sheryl
Legion’s Best Friends: Ms Grace and Dr Lionel Portia
Wende: = Legion's friend after divorce [committed suicide due to Custody Crisis]
Jim Cornball: Herry’s acquaintance from AA and realtor
Loser Lorn: Insurance agent referred by Cornball
Judge Harley Butcher: Family Court judge
Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor: Family Court judge
Judge Barry Crowrook: Appellate Court judge
Judge Pansy Shawshank: Appellate Court judge
Jazzy Jinx: Legion’s Family Court lawyer who sold her out
Shindy Scheisser: Herry’s lawyer [shindy = noisy; scheisser = German for shithead]
Li Zhang: Herry’s Aussie affair
Dr Freddie Goldstein & Ella: Herry’s colleague and wife
Mick: = Herry's acquaintance from high school; best man [not in Herry’s life after that as he had no true friends]
Varry Wussamai: Herry's AA sponsor (not a real friend) [I am a wuss backwards]
David Humes: nursing student; classmate of Legion's, y1968 - y1971, New York City
Edmund Silver: Legion's boyfriend pre-Herry
Braemore St: where Legion and her family lived, y1983 - y1986
Havencourt condominium: Legion's Ames apartment; after separation
Zephyr: tabby cat of Zane's, Mirzah's, Jesse's [pronounced “Zay – fear”]
Madonna: realtor
Larry Brouhaha: court-mandated marriage counselor
Carlotta Klutz: Legion’s Family Court attorney
Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor: District Court judge on first two trials
Judge Harley Butcher: District Court judge for third trial
Author: Dr. Blue, aka Ofherod, BSN, DVM, PhD = Commander Edinsmaier's Handmaid (Commander reiamsnidE's Handmaid)
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