Synopses & Reviews
Dean Seagrave was having an extraordinary day. All his belongings just went up in smoke, and he's tooling around Los Angeles in a rental car with a handheld tape recorder. The police are on his trail for assaulting an old woman outside a grocery store, or so he was just told by the man in a wheelchair he attacked at Venice Beach. He's an emotional serial killer, he says, explaining his frenzied quest for Pablo Ortega, his lover, who disappeared one night going out for cigarettes. But what bothers Dean more is Pablo's connection to a cult, all the disappearing animals, and the story about torture in Chile. Problem is, Dean might be crazy. Or everyone might be lying. But now Dean has a machete (because the chainsaw made too much noise), and he just found Pablo.
James Robert Baker is the author of four other novels: Tim & Pete, Boy Wonder, Fuel Injected Dreams, and Right Wing (published on the Internet). His sixth novel, Testosterone, will be published by Alyson in October 2000. On November 5, 1997, he committed suicide.
Chapter One
Preface
I don't really want to say a lot here; I think Dean Seagrave, in the transcript that follows, speaks very well for himself. I certainly don't want to proffer any sort of facile commentary on the difference between love and obsession. What I do want to say is that Dean represents to my mind a true tragedy.
I can't pretend to be objective. Dean was (and still is) a good friend. But even if I didn't know him, I would still have been bowled over by his artwork. His graphic novels-Mean Beach, I Was a Queer for the FBI, Manson Girl Memories, Foto-Novella, I Was a Teenage Speed Freak-are brilliant, funny, insanely inventive satiric works ofthe highest order. Despite his current circumstances, I hope he finds the will and the inspiration to draw again.
I can't condone Dean's actions or even offer an opinion on what Pablo Ortega did or did not do to him. I only met Pablo once, briefly, at an L.A. restaurant. He seemed pleasant enough-and incredibly sexy in an oddly ineffable way.
It's an art world clichC) which many may understandably scoff at. But when I think of Dean Seagrave, the line that always comes to mind is: Genius and mad
Synopsis
Dean Seagrave was having an extraordinary day. All his belongings just went up in smoke, and he's tooling around Los Angeles in a rental car with a handheld tape recorder. The police are on his trail for assaulting an old woman outside a grocery store, or so he was just told by the man in a wheelchair he attacked at Venice Beach. "He's an emotional serial killer," he says, explaining his frenzied quest for Pablo Ortega, his lover, who disappeared one night going out for cigarettes. But what bothers Dean more is Pablo's connection to a cult, all the disappearing animals, and the story about torture in Chile. Problem is, Dean might be crazy. Or everyone might be lying. But now Dean has a machete (because the chainsaw made too much noise), and he just found Pablo.
James Robert Bakeris the author of four other novels: Tim and Pete, Boy Wonder, Fuel Injected Dreams, and Right Wing (published on the Internet). His sixth novel, Testosterone,will be published by Alyson in October 2000. On November 5, 1997, he committed suicide.