I. Invocation: Skinning Ted Sergeant

Was the easy part. Much easier, in fact, than the uninitiated reader (meaning most of you, I suppose, save a few enterprising souls) might imagine. For the curious, I offer that it is a simple process which doesn't require medical training, though experience excoriating animal hides will prove beneficial. To ensure that things go smoothly, I recommend an ample supply of well-sharpened, sterilized stainless steel instruments (they dull rapidly in this kind of procedure); a quiet, discreet, climate-controlled space conducive to the execution of precision-intensive work (e.g. a basement or a clean, air-conditioned attic; a sterilized operating facility would, of course, be ideal, but in most cases is not readily available); and lastly, just a little old-fashioned know-how, as they say. Though not necessary, an anatomy textbook or perhaps a dissection manual of some sort may prove helpful (check the bookstores at your local college or university). And finally, need I mention a strong stomach? If so, I suggest you read no further; cast your gaze elsewhere and stop bothering me, you whiny, insipid fool.

I might add that the skinning procedure is not without its spiritual benefits. Given the proper mental paradigm -- unencumbered, that is, by the weighty ethical dilemmas attendant upon such work -- one may approach a Zen-like condition, not unlike the meditative bliss of tending one’s garden or executing a series of scales on a well-crafted instrument. . . . Yes: I recall with fondness the decortication of Ted Sergeant. I've not known comparable satisfaction since. In truth, that which has transpired in the days, weeks, months - is it years now? - since acquiring that most elusive prize has proven harrowing beyond immediate understanding. The fleshy garment of selfhood, held in place by thin, fibrous fascia . . . tenuous and mutable beyond imagination . . . how liable to slip and fall away, leaving . . . what?. . . . But I intuit your complaint: let’s get on with it, already . . . enough of this pompous blathering; get to the Good Part. . . . Well, all right then. Per your request (nay demand) - bored, impetuous reader (may your children be born blind, deaf and diseased!) - here is how it happened:

II. Exposition: Necrology

So I've got him strung up there, upside-down, like a bona fide 12-point buck. A goddamn trophy if I've ever seen one. I’m thinking I should take a Polaroid and send it to Field & Stream. I’ve got two large meat hooks suspended from my basement ceiling, about three feet apart. Medium-sized incisions behind the Achilles tendons; the hooks slide through with little difficulty. Not too concerned about abnormal damage to these areas as I intend to just lop off the feet, along with the hands, and dispose of them appropriately. Flaying the extremities would require skills well beyond my own. The head alone will no doubt prove a daunting and time-consuming task - I can't afford to waste time on areas of lesser importance. I've placed a large metal tub beneath him to collect the blood. I make a deep incision beginning at the right ear, down across the neck, clear over to the other ear. Torrents of red empty from his long, slender body, covering his face, filling his nostrils and soaking the gray-streaked, wavy brown hair that extends at least two and a half feet from his scalp. I anticipate it will take some time to drain all six liters, so I put on some music. I hit the "Random" button on my multi-disc player. The opening riff of Sergeant's own “Chokehold" blasts through the speakers. DA-uh-da-da DA-da-da DA-da-da DA-duh DA DA . . . I'd nearly forgotten just how pedestrian this music really is. . . . Well, at least he doesn't sing on this track - no doubt, I've performed a Nobel Prize-worthy service by putting an enormous goddamn gash in these most wretched of vocal cords.

The blood has drained now for the most part. I hose him down before going any further as he's somewhat of a mess now. The wounds in his ankles have caused streams of blood to streak down his legs, all the way to his groin and into the crack of his small, hairless white ass. Given his track record, I figure it's best to reduce actual contact with his blood to a bare minimum.

After carefully removing the head (which twists off with surprising ease after having cut through all the muscles and ligaments), I'm ready to set about the task of skinning Ted Sergeant. As much as I would like to remove the skin in one large piece, I realize such would be quite impossible. Instead, I remove large sections of hide with straight, clean cuts in order that the pieces may later be sewn back together with relative ease. Unfortunately, I am not able to preserve the delicate genital skin and am forced to just slice off the privates altogether. Just as well - I figure I'll chuck 'em in a jar of formaldehyde; save them for posterity.

Upon completing the skinning, I am for all intents and purposes through with the body. Fifty-some-odd-year-old meat is hardly desirable for consumption, having grown tough and stringy. Further details regarding the disposal of the corpse are not really necessary; suffice to say I've effectively eradicated most detectable traces of the body. The former rock star known as Ted Sergeant has been forced into early retirement (as if plummeting record sales and general public apathy weren't incentive enough). All that remain are his dick and balls in a jar on my desk and several finely cut strips of skin carefully laid out on a large table in my basement, not to mention an intermittently listenable catalogue of some 30 records destined for out-of-print limbo, relegated to the $1 bins of your local used record store.

III. Mutability, and Suspension of Disbelief

Let me tell you, clothing yourself in the flesh of another is no small task. Shorter and somewhat plumper than the Motor City Maniac, as he’s called, I’m forced to make endless alterations: sewing, cutting, stretching and re-sewing. But persistence and devotion to craft do in fact pay off, and I soon find myself gazing in the mirror not at myself, but at Sergeant himself, or a damn close approximation. The hands, feet and genitals are my own, but otherwise I am completely cloaked in the trappings of another. The skin of the face droops somewhat, and enormous Frankenstein-like scars snake across significant portions of my body, but for all intents and purposes I am him.

For the next month or so I remain mostly in my house, only stepping outside for the mail or paper. I stop answering the phone and reduce my diet to mostly water and a few pieces of fruit a day. In time, the new skin begins to adapt to the curves and crevices of my body; and conversely I myself grow into the skin. My height, even, feels somewhat changed. I sweat from new pores and hair begins to grow from my new face. I am not accustomed to the maintenance and grooming of such an abundant mane of hair, but I soon adapt. Unfamiliar odors even begin to rise from my body. Increasingly, I begin to feel that I not only wear the flesh of another, but that I look through foreign eyes and taste with unknown buds. The experience is not altogether unpleasant.

An unexpected side-effect (though I now fully understand its inevitability), I find my guitar skills unaccountably diminished; or, perhaps, not so much diminished, but rather, I simply find myself increasingly confined to the key of A. I sit for hours on end and churn out series of strikingly unvariegated riffs composed mostly of A and G. I am stunned by the seemingly endless array of possible permutations of these two chords. Between riffs, I occasionally execute a series of pentatonic "box" runs ("box" because the scale is confined to a box-like pattern on the fretboard -- such scales can be executed with relative ease provided you have at least two working fingers). It's easy to remember what key you're in with these scales because the box typically occurs in the same general fret position as the chord you would be playing over. Here, for example is what's typically known as an A5 chord (sometimes called a "power chord"):

	1---------------------------
	2---------------------------
	3---------------------------
	4-----------7---------------
	5-----------7---------------
	6-----------5---------------

This "5" chord (a staple of Sergeant's ball-bustin' rawk-n-roll) is somewhat of a misnomer insofar as it is not really a chord at all. A true chord should be composed of at least three different tones, and the 5 chord, while, as you can see, has three notes, is in fact composed of only two true tones as the third note is simply the octave of the first. The chord is called an A5 because the two tones comprise the root (the A) and the fifth of the root, in this case an E. This "chord" is neither major, minor, nor diminished, or any variation thereof - it's just rock-n-roll, baby.

The A pentatonic minor "box" scale may be played as follows:

	1--------------------------------------------------------------------5-----8------
	2--------------------------------------------------------5-----8------------------
	3--------------------------------------------5-----7------------------------------
	4--------------------------------5-----7------------------------------------------
	5--------------------5-----7------------------------------------------------------
	6--------5-----8------------------------------------------------------------------

Note that the scale occurs in the same general vicinity as the A5 chord, and forms a kind of box pattern on the fretboard. An example of a typical box run I may execute in the interim between a typical A/G riff pattern goes as follows (a "B" denotes a "bend" in which the string is stretched, typically upward, thus raising the tone, typically a whole step):

	1----------5-----5----------5-----5-----------5-----5------------5-----5--------------------
	2----------5-----5----------5-----5-----------5-----5------------5-----5-----8-(B)--8-------
	3----7-(B)----------- 7-(B)------------7-(B)-------------7-(B)------------------------------
	4-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	5-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	6-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	2----5-----8-----5------------5-------------------------------------------------------------
	3------------------------7------------7-----5-----7-----5------------5----------------------
	4----------------------------------------------------------------7------------7-----5-----7-
	5-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	6-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	2-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	3-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	4----5------------5-------------------------------------------------------------------------
	5-----------7------------7-----5-----7-----5-----3-----5-----3-----------3------------------
	6----------------------------------------------------------------------5-----------5-----3--

	1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	2-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	3-----------------------------------2-------------------------------------------------------
	4-----------------------------------2-------------------------------------------------------
	5-----------------------------------0-------------------------------------------------------
	6----5-----3-----0-----3-(B)----------------------------------------------------------------

It’s easier than it looks. A novice player could execute this “lick” with speed and clarity with a mere week or two of diligent practice. . . . But as usual, I digress. Have we not made satisfactory progress toward the Good Part, toward the elusive narratological Holy Grail? . . . Your resounding response sets my already damaged ear drums a-ringing. Let us proceed then. . . .

IV. Allegory: Lycanthropia

The fresh, chilled air of a November morning. Sublime silence of the forest at 6 a.m. Inhale deep, through the nostrils . . . cold rush filling the lungs, brain and eyes. Ecstasy of purification, a million miles from the paved world of men and ideas. Absolute spirit and wilderness. Indelible part of myself: the trees my limbs, the sun my fiery skull, the earth the soles of my feet, leaves and grass my garments. Total self, the stalking alpha, eyes of fear and death. . . . Exhale through the mouth, warm colliding with cold, steam rising. My seed spilleth onto the earth, fertility, the life-giver - and taker. My stature greater than the tallest of mountains. Now I am walking death. Power of the divine electric in the air and coursing through my veins. I am singular here. Exhilarating fury that burns the loins. Any other man now, I would crush under my heel.

I creep silent, walking on air, before stopping, descending into a crouch. Some 30 minutes, and a white-tail emerges from the shrub, about 35 yards from me. A 9-point, stunningly elegant, moving with quiet, majestic grace across the forest floor . . . occasionally brings its nose to the ground. It glances in my direction. I hold my breath and remain still, a statue. Its great dark eyes and stately posture suggest a mysterious stoicism. Something sublime and unreadable. Taking no notice of me it moves on. Careful, I stand and raise my bow, nock the arrow on the string. Draw and take aim. When I feel confident, I release. The 2315 arrow zips through the cold air and rips into the buck’s massive rib cage. It staggers slightly, then falls onto its side. A deluge of hot exhilaration floods my body. The felled animal kicks its legs in a futile attempt to right itself. I quickly nock another arrow and deliver the coup de grace. Straight through the vitals. I let escape an ecstatic yawp, raising my arms heavenward. . . . The dead prey at my feet, my hot breath against the cold air. It's dark eyes are empty now, their former majesty absent. . . . My bladder aching, I turn and piss on the earth.

V. Mirror Scene: Inferno, Circle VII, Round III

It's funny how these things happen. I signed no less than three autographs at the supermarket today. Two men and one woman. The men were middle-aged and burly. I imagined coats of wiry fur covering their pimply white backs. Both wore red and black checkered caps with wavy mullets snaking out the back. They flashed gap-toothed grins and muttered something about K-Mart, Rosie O’Donnel and the 2nd Amendment. I signed their grocery receipts (as nothing else was on hand), "Best Wishes -- Ted Sergeant." Then, inexplicably, I appended the phrase, "WHACK 'EM AND STACK 'EM!!!" A large, goofy grin crept across my face behind my bushy Nietzschean mustache.

The woman was a fortyish mother of two. She was wearing orange sweats and had piss-yellow bleached hair with an inch of black showing at the roots. Her makeup was caked on thick. Looked like she might have been a piece of ass 20 years earlier, before kids, cigarettes, blowjobs, and boredom rendered her wretched and whorish. She came on with the you-probably-don't-remember-me bit, and went on to say something about backstage in San Antonio, '78. I smiled and nodded and signed her grocery list. Two decades ago, I thought, she would've asked me to sign her titties, and then would've bent over, inviting me into her tight white little ass. She probably did.

	-------------------->	-------------------->	-------------------->

It's 2:00 am and I'm back at the hotel after the show. I spot her in the lobby. Tender and untouched. Our eyes meet. Brown eyes like a doe. . . . But she's not so naive. Came here of her own accord. It's so simple. . . . Move in closer. In her eyes, comprehension. I've witnessed this look a thousand times. Fear and understanding. Hold her there under my gaze, like a stranglehold. Bearing down on her. Irresistible force.

Coup de grace

. . . In my room. She, on all fours, ass in the air, its aroma stroking my nostrils. Her head down, brown hair falling across the pillow. Pressing against her anus. She stiffens and recoils. Says "no." Little splash of a voice. A delicate whine like the child she was not so long ago. "Ssshhhh," I say. I press my 10mm Glock against the back of her beautiful head. She sobs. Stiff like an arrow, I rip into her puckered little flower. When she cries out in protest, I gently whack her head with the barrel and crush her face into the pillow. She quiets somewhat. . . .

VI. Denouement: The Heteroglot

I've been invited to participate in a televised panel discussion titled "Wayward Youth and the Culture of Death: A Balanced View." Sitting to my left is a prominent writer of espionage fiction who was forced into seclusion after a feminist group placed a sizable bounty on his head for strangling his porn star wife in self-defense. Across from me is a young, pretty actress from a well known primetime melodrama. To her left is an odd little man whom we are told is a prominent circus performer. After a tiresome introductory monologue from the moderator, the discussion gets underway. Catching me somewhat unawares, the moderator throws the first question at me:

Moderator: Mr. Sergeant, you've suggested that teens convicted of trafficking in controlled substances should face stiffer penalties, up to and including capital punishment.

Me: I don't recall--

Moderator: You did say that.

Actress: We're talking about death here?

Circus Performer: Dear heavens!

Novelist: Oh wow.

[Laughter]

Me: I didn't say that. What I said--

Circus Performer: If . . . if I may interject. May I?

Moderator: Please do.

Circus Performer: The thing that strikes me . . . the thing that. . . . Well, to put a Kantian spin on all this, to understand it within a cohesive ethical paradigm--

Actress: I'm confused.

[Laughter]

Circus Performer: . . . the categorical imperative states--

Novelist: Aren't we all, though?

Me: What?

Moderator: Yes!

[Wild applause]

Moderator: Ted, you see that your position is indefensible?

Me: No, I don't see that at all. In fact--

Novelist: Oh boy!

[Laughter]

Me: In fact . . . let me tell you a story.

Moderator: Go on.

Me: Just the other day, I met a bright, beautiful young woman--

Actress: Uh huh.

[Laughter]

Me: She has a good little head on her shoulders--

Moderator: I love this.

Me: You know, and--

Circus Performer: He said 'head.'

[Laughter]

Moderator: That's right!

Actress: I'm horny.

Me: . . . and I tell you, this girl . . . no dope, no unusual piercings, no "body art" --

Novelist: Cultural pollution is what we're talking about here.

Me: Right. Yes. I agree--

Circus Performer: Certainly.

Actress: Mmmmmmm . . .

Novelist: Did I mention I like to smoke crack?

Moderator: He does have a point there, Ted.

[Wild applause]

Circus Performer: What do you have to say to that?

Me: You know, the problem with you people is that you're a bunch of whiny little twats who are afraid to exercise your God-given constitutional rights as Americans. All of you are culpable in the general decline of our great nation - participants in a spiraling moral entropy. The time is now - as the millennium approaches and a dark, uncertain future lies ahead - for the righteous and the patriotic to stand in solidarity and spit in the faces of the diseased, depraved perverts, deviants, and “intellectuals” who piss on the ten commandments and wipe their asses with our sacred flag, dragging America into the terminal sewers of nihilism and cynicism. It's time for brave men and women all across the nation to tell all the maggot-infested hippies, faggots, kikes, spics and spooks to start behaving like decent, god-fearing Americans, or get the fuck out. Otherwise, we'll find you and - exercising our sacred second-amendment rights - we'll blast holes in your dirty, greasy, ugly foreign faces. That, my friend, is what I came here to say.

[Scattered applause. Then silence.]

Moderator: That wasn't very nice, Ted.

Actress: You fucked up my orgasm, you prick.

Novelist: I need a tissue.

Moderator: There are ramifications--

Circus Performer: Off with his head!

Audience: OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!!

Me: Holy Jesus!

Actress: Off with his fuckin' head!

Novelist: Can't we just get along, y'all?

Audience (Chanting):

 
	OFF WITH HIS HEAD!
	OFF WITH HIS HEAD!
	OFF WITH HIS HEAD!

Circus Performer: MAKE HIM REALLY DEAD!

Audience:

	MAKE HIM REALLY DEAD!
	MAKE HIM REALLY DEAD!
	MAKE HIM REALLY DEAD!

Audience members are rising from their seats and vaulting the barriers, making their way to the stage. Panic and chaos ensue. Ted leaps from his chair, his face stricken with terror. He looks about him for an escape route, but he is surrounded on all sides. The audience, the moderator, the actress, the circus performer, and the crew all close in. Even the novelist, weeping, joins the fray. Ted reaches into his pants and brandishes a pistol. But too late: before he can get off a first shot, the throng descends upon him. . . .

Thursday May 20, 1999 2:43 PM ET

70s Rock Icon Murdered by Angry Mob on Late-Night Talk Show

By RAJ SWORDHIP Associated Press Writer

DETROIT (AP) - Wildman guitarist Ted Sergeant, best known for his raucous on-stage antics and his 1977 hit "Back Door Snatch," was killed Thursday during the taping of I'm Right, You're Wrong, Ha!, a popular late-night talk show. Sergeant was 51.

In a bizarre trend which has gained popularity in recent months, the entire studio audience rushed the stage and attacked the erstwhile rock star, literally tearing him limb from limb. Just two weeks before, 80s flash-in-the-pan rocker Aldo Nova met a similar fate on the primetime cable show, Dysentery.

Sergeant came to prominence in the late 60s as a founding member of The Psychedelic Crypto-Fascists, and rose to even greater popularity after going solo in the mid 70s. His fame peaked in the late 70s when he was the top grossing concert attraction in the U.S. three years in a row.

Bud Vishnu, a prominent musicologist and chair of Brown University's Department of Pop Culture Studies, characterizes Sergeant as "emblematic of ironic, self-parodic postmodernity - a self-commodifying Warholian figure who skillfully eschews high culture pomp via a splendidly vacuous body of work amounting to the musical equivalent of toilet paper."

The 80s saw a decline in both popularity and credibility for Sergeant. The primitivist caveman persona which had attracted legions of heavily sedated adolescent males in the hazy 70s seemed passé and just plain stupid to the ultra-chic, coked-up suburban brat kids of the Don Johnson 80s.

Sergeant attracted a different kind of popularity in the 90s as founder and president of the ultra right-wing organization, the Nationalist Reactionary Alliance. Sergeant also founded the controversial children's summer camp, Killing Koons for Krist.

In recent years Sergeant had been the target of numerous death threats.

Just hours after Sergeant's demise, lawyers representing the slain rocker's family filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the producers of MTV claiming that the popular music channel's "deliberate, malicious, and irresponsible" disregard for Sergeant's music in recent years, "set in motion a relentless chain of events, culminating in this terrible tragedy." MTV's lawyers are expected to issue a statement later today.

Although autopsy reports have not yet been made public, rumors that the victim was not actually Sergeant but an impostor have been dismissed by longtime friend and manager, Dick Tubstock, as "pure conspiracy theory rubbish concocted by people who spend too much time watching The X-Files and what have you." Proponents of the impostor theory emphasize that Sergeant was reported missing for a full month last year before mysteriously and inexplicably reappearing. Friends and family noted that he "seemed a little different, even looked a little different," but was essentially "the same old Ted."

Sergeant is survived by his third wife, their son and daughter, and legions of disoriented rednecks (some of whom, statistically speaking, could very well be Sergeant's own illegitimate children).