Helter Skelter - Part I

Meeting Charlie

Metting Manson

Manson enters escorted by an officer. He goes through an elaborate frisking regime to ensure that Manson poses no harm. He is instructed to sit down, and the black officer introduces himself to the women as Robert Seale. He elaborates on the ground rules that need to be followed in the jail and highlights precautionary measures should anything go wrong.

Bobby Seale (as officer): Ladies, my name is Robert Seale. I am an officer of this corrections facility and the law. You have requested a meeting with Mr. Manson so as to conduct your research. He has agreed and you will be permitted a supervised meeting with Mr. Manson on the condition that the nature of the meeting is confined to your research and that no criminal activity is engaged during or as a result of the meeting. He is here under supervision and poses no threat to you.

Manson is now brought in front of the women and seated. He is curious about the women as to who they are, where do they come from and why are they there. He notices that woman 1 is not White. They both explain why they are there, their intentions (may be a paper / research). Both of them are from different fields, W1 being a PHD in sociology/psychology and STAR a media graduate student whose interests are closely aligned with the issue and that of radicalization in the current context. She is perhaps a tom boy/lesbian/bisexual.

Manson: You got your camera going? Oh, it is? It’s turned on? (sips on water) You got enough tape or you got your battery goin, or whatever it is? Enough battery? Okay, good. So should I start now? (smiles, faces women) Now what is it that you two pretty girls want with a little old nobody like me?

W1: What do you mean by that?

Manson: Everybody wants somethin’ from somebody. It’s just a matter of figurin’ out what they want from who, whether you got it, whether you want to give it to em and whether you may want somethin in return?

W1: I meant why you called yourself nobody.

Manson: I’m nobody to you.

STAR: We’re both PhD students. I’m in media and…

W1: I’m studying philosophy.

Manson: So you wanna know who I am and you wanna know why I’m such a phenomenon, why I’m so phenomenal? Where are you from?

STAR: Australia

(Manson starts laughing)

STAR: What? What is it?

Manson: It’s just your friend there don’t look like she’s from Australia!!

W1: What are you talking about?

Manson: See, the world to me is very black and white! And the people, their either black or they’re white. To me, looks like you don’t know whose side you’re on, brownie! (laughs) I’m sorry, did I offend you? Certainly didn’t mean to cause any offense.

W1: (Gets visibly upset but does not want to jeopardize the interview and keeps silent)

STAR: We’re curious as to what leads people to resort to extreme acts of murder?

Manson (scornful): And you want an answer from me???

(Pause) I can’t tell you anything at all about murder. I’m not a murderer.

W1: Oh, you’re not?

Manson: You got some sort of problem with that? You got a problem with me not bein’ a murderer?

W1: I was just interested in your interpretation of events and whether, when you claim that you’re not a murderer, you’re basing that claim on the fact that you maybe never ask ctually killed, as such. But then, most of what you say contradicts something that you’ve said before and none of what you say is actually factually true, whether the subject matter is the manson family or world war two.

Manson: The first thing that happened and the only thing I ever actually done was cut the ear of a hypocrite like Simon Peter so I’s just walkin’ in the way of the Lord. How else would you expect Christ to behave? The lie is that I killed. I don’t kill. I’m not a killer. I’m a reflection of whatever your desire is.

W1 : When you are accused of being a murderer, we are saying that you were at the centre of it all. You’ve been portrayed as the puppet master. Were you?

Manson: Oooh, You want a trip? I’ll give it to you. People don’t so much wanna kill as other people wanna be killed and I just somehow got caught up in the whole mess. I cut the ear of a man for money, drug money. I’m a two bit petty crim and you wanna make me your prince of darkness. I never killed anyone. For me what happened was a conversation with the establishment and whatever they found at these so-called murder scenes were just different things that we wanted to say. I might have written a song had you not sent so many of your disturbed children to me…

W1: Are you aware that it is the anniversary of Sharon Tate’s murder?

Manson: Whether I’m aware of it or not is neither here nor there. What this is really about is what you are implying by your question, which is that I might know somethin other than what’s taught to me by lookin at a blank wall. Because that’s what I have done for most of my life, stared at a blank wall like this…

W1: What we would like to know is whether you have anything to add to what you have previously said about the murders and what happened, what you did?

Manson: My father jumps off the second wall of a war in the ruptured ducts that are in the little pins in the floors of the nut ward and all the people’d gone crazy. And I’ll tell you this, my father was all men that I’ve ever met in prison. Creepy carcases and others.

W1: Seriously, Is there anything you’d like us to know?

Manson: Knowledge, now that’s an interesting subject but the level of comprehension that you hold in your mind is only taught to you by a school book in a sorority house.

STAR: We’ve all been somewhere, what’s so special about where you’ve been?

Manson: I learnt something from everyone. The prison guards, the wardens, I learnt a little bit from everyone and I never met anyone that I couldn’t learn something from. But now that I have learnt what I’ve learnt, I don’t think you people wanna know what I know, because it’s not very nice. Because the people who run your lives are not very nice. The people who govern you, they’re not good people.

W1: Listening to Manson speak is like hearing the mating calls of a wild beast, a bird or an ape. I once heard that in Bornio, people, scientific researchers and the like, come home and they’ll find a bunch of apes going through their pantry, eating their food and they can’t just shoo them away like you might other animals. They just don’t accept your authority or superiority as a human, or whatever it is. You have to negotiate with them, give them something in return….

Manson: So because it’s the twentieth anniversary of somethin’ that happened that was a short-circuit in the electrical system you call society or culture or whatever the thing is, you wanna make me into your martyr for your PhD on the nature of existence, on the phenomenon of bein’ Charlie Manson…

W1: Charles, what do you want?

STAR: What can we give to you?

Manson: Well, now, there isn’t a whole lot you can give to me.

W1 : It’s documented that your mother was a prostitute?

Manson: Your mother’s a prostitute! (pause) All mothers are prostitutes!

W1 (ignoring him, pressing): And so your father was a client. You must have no idea who your biological father was?

Manson: I know exactly who my father is! Maybe better than you all know who your father is!! My father is the jailhouse. My father is your system. . . I am only what you made me. (He gets up and mimes this like a hobo dance type thing) I have ate out of your garbage cans to stay out of jail. I have wore your second-hand clothes. . .

STAR: What everyone else calls morals or values, you call middle-class sensibilities?

Manson: So that means you gotta cage me in!! And it’s gotta be a prison cage because if you admit I’m insane, you might take pity on me and see me as the human I am. But you never could call me crazy because if you had, you might see it as a justification for what you think I done, when all I done was think. I live with what I done but all I done was think. I thought things, dreamed things up and they just happened and you locked me in a cage but I still the king of the underworld. I’m still the devil and there’s not a damn thing you can do about that!

W1: You were Christ before. Now you’re the devil…

Manson: I AM ABRAXAS!!! I’m the king of the underworld! Not because I say it but because you think it! Even now, you’re sittin’ there in your two bit fucking outfit and if you’re not rich then you’re at least respectable or self-respectin’, as you might wanna call it. (pause) But we all self-respectin’! You gotta be to keep yourself from hangin high from a tree.

W1: Were you engaged in a conversation with the establishment, as you call it, when you made you magic, in your younger days?

Manson: You got a lot of nerve askin’ me a question like that after I let you into my world and my soul. I told you the truth, straight up, in all honesty, with hand on my heart, even swearing by your bible if that’s what you want and all you want is for me to kill you! You want your brains to be beaten out because you want to turn me into a murderer. I know that if you say it, you make it so because that is what you do!!!

PS :This is a fictional tale, this never happened retard. Part 2 will be released whenever I feel like it.