Scene Four: A Court Room.
[They run on-stage.]
JUDGE: MISTER Andersen. You are fifteen minutes late.
DRAKE: Sorry.
JUDGE: How do you plead?
DRAKE: Well. I had my case ready since Sunday.
JUDGE: I see.
DRAKE: Then I tried to get a ride here. But I did not have a car.
JUDGE: Go on.
DRAKE: So I asked my friend here to take me.
JUDGE: Is this Mister Jacobsen?
JACKSON: At your service.
DRAKE: [eyes Jackson briefly then continues.] But we wound up going to a party and getting hammered.
JACKSON: Wait. That was on Sunday.
JUDGE: Order in the Court!
JACKSON: Oh sorry. Wrong kind of hammer.
DRAKE: And I tried to take the bus here.
JUDGE: One day early?
DRAKE: That was the original plan.
JUDGE: And the bus did not take you?
DRAKE: No, sir. Your Honor. The bus driver called me a misogynist and drove off.
JUDGE: And to be clear this all happened AFTER the aforementioned incident on Sunday.
JACKSON: PRECISELY, Your Honor.
DRAKE: Jackson. Be subtle.
JUDGE: ORDER!
DRAKE: Then this morning I tried to steal Jackson’s car keys.
JACKSON: SUBTLE.
DRAKE: And he caught me. So we drove here.
JUDGE: That still does not explain your tardiness.
DRAKE: Well. We called yesterday. And a woman told us that the time had been changed.
JUDGE: It had not been. And now we have deliberated and this court session shall be a Hearing.
DRAKE: Where is the barista?
JUDGE: She went home to watch Stranger Things.
DRAKE: The show? Or just in general?
JUDGE: ORDER!! Take your seat at the stand, Mister Andersen.
JACKSON: Your Honour. If I may. Ought he not take a stand at the seat instead?
DRAKE: Which of you have done this?
[Seated in his place is Our Hero’s Mother. His Father is in the Lawyer’s seat.]
JUDGE: Now: MISTER Andersen. You have been living a double life…
DRAKE: Thou canst not say I did it: never shake
Thy gory locks at me.
JUDGE: On the internet you go by the Hacker Alias NEO…
JACKSON: Your Honour, I do believe you have selected the wrong case file.
JUDGE: Right you are!
BAILIFF: What’s the matter with that guy?
DRAKE: When now I think you can behold such sights,
And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,
When mine is blancht with fear.
JACKSON: Drake, what are you ON?!
DRAKE: Mom. Dad.
JACKSON: Oh. The Freudian thing.
MOM: If you’d just been kinder to us none of this would have happened.
DRAKE: I WAS kind to you! You can’t demand an inexhaustible KINDNESS from me. I was never shown such inexhaustible kindness as was my OWN DUE!
JUDGE: Though the Court acknowledges that this is really quite touching, Mr Andersen…
DAD: We loved you. But you chose the path of lies and hatred.
DRAKE: I only wanted to attain the very Power that YOU had raised me to attain!
JUDGE: Jackson. Can you stop him?
JACKSON: No, Your Honour.
DRAKE: And so much of my own Innocence and Kind Gentleness was lain ROUGH by that pursuit that you had thrust upon me!
JACKSON: Believe me.
JUDGE: This thing happens?
JACKSON: Frequently.
MOM: We only wanted you to be Happy.
DRAKE: No. NO. You wanted me to make YOU happy. You knew nothing of happiness. You could only try to live vicariously through your SLAVE.
DAD: Now that is a LIE.
DRAKE: Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury: Camus defines a Slave as one whom one can get mad at but who is not allowed to talk back. And THAT was my childhood. To be a parent is a responsibility. Parents owe the WORLD to their children, for it was they that CHOSE to bring children INTO the world that THEY THEMSELVES created.
JUDGE: Order in the Court!!
DRAKE: There is no Order to the Universe save for that of Unconditional Love. Love is not some thing that one EARNS from one’s parents. It is supposed to be as inexhaustible as the Ocean. Yes: that means that those few fortunate children – or many – who are so blessed… like Virgil. And Tapeworm. And Ariana even. They might run amok. They might even become the dogmatic patriarchs that my own parents became, acting as though we were all doomed to repeat the mistakes of our fathers and mothers when in fact they are perpetuating a trend that their own parents never took part in: Abuse. Moral relativism allows for this hypocrisy for it allows for all things. That is Satanism. But it will never amount to any thing more than feeble attempts to displace one’s own guilt onto a scapegoat.
JUDGE: Jackson Jacobsen. Are you the caregiver of this patient?
JACKSON: Yes. Your Honour.
JUDGE: And is it true that you were appointed to keep a close eye on him should be show symptoms such as the Court now bears witness to?
JACKSON: Yes. Your Honour.
DRAKE: Love is like an Ocean. It can even withstand Hatred. That was why I braved a year of abuse from Ariana. And it is not as though I asked my parents to endure such abuse in return. I knew they would not do so. My standards were never as high as Ariana’s, because I could not afford them. She had been blessed with loving parents and raged against the World when it failed to live up to their standard. I was cursed with abusive parents who blamed me for their own inadequacies. And to think I saw her to be a Victim!
JUDGE: We shall have him transported to a Mental Health Facility presently. Do you wish to represent him in this ruling?
JACKSON: No, sir.
JUDGE: Then it is decided. The defendant is legally insane.
DRAKE: Yet she taught me some thing indispensable. That nothing justifies abuse. Not even abuse. If one loves unconditionally, one can endure the slings and arrows of an other’s BULL shit and not raise a finger in self-defense. Parents do not teach their children self-defense by hitting them when they “act out”. They only teach them violence as a coping strategy. For that is all that parental abuse is. And I don’t care if that sounds like a tautological, foregone conclusion.
JUDGE: You are at this moment relieved of your duties, Mr Jacobsen. For having arrived late to this Hearing, you shall be docked from your pay.
DAD: Don’t worry. I’m a lawyer. I can talk them down to a two-dollar deduction, no problem.
JACKSON: Thanks boss.
DAD: No worries man.
JUDGE: After all: It was ONLY fifteen minutes.
DRAKE: I knew violence my entire life. And I knew fear. It was not I who brought it. To be a parent is a responsibility, for it is a choice. To be borne is a fate. And the value of a life depends entirely upon what is poured into it, unconditionally. So long as love is true, and so long as it is unconditional, hatred has no excuse, for love can withstand even hatred without turning to it. Love does not require love in return. It is a fulfillment in and of its self: virtue as its own reward.
JUDGE: Take this lunatic away, Bailiff. Case dismissed.
Dm.A.A.
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