Here We Go Again

With mixed emotions and questionable sincerity, we here at the Ken Socrates World News Organization extend our bewildered congratulations to our seldom lucid em- ployer on the announcement of his recent engagement to young parisien debutante, Chavenay Toitrouge. In celebration of the matrimonial stench now permeating the air here we offer a retrospective featuring Ken's previous eight wives and the circum- stances surrounding both their union and the susequent fracture thereof. We strongly urge that Mr. Socrates view the following as it is intented, not so much a nostalgic revelry of his past marriages, but as a very timely and relevant cautionary tale.

1. Ethel "Loopy" Warner
Married May 9th, 1978 - Divorced July 14th, 1979.

Ken and Ethel met in England, January 25th, 1978 at a Manchester clup called Pips. The night marked the first live performance of the band Joy Division under their new moniker and Ken was in attendance representing the alternative music magazine Spaz Plaster. Ethel was a local Ham Radio enthusiast who'd turned out for the music and the inevitable brawls. It was a chaotic evening and when Ken was forcibly removed from the premises during soundcheck the sympathetic Ethel took pity on him, using one of the straps from her overalls as a tourniquet to staunch a massive leg wound Ken had sustained. Whether it was love on first sight or Nightingale's Syndrome is unclear but the two fell madly in love the way only two unstable young wanderers could. A few months and forty or so pub brawls later the two were married in a small ceremony in Droylsden. Ken's best man for the occaision was Colin Newman and the other members of Wire were employed to forcibly keep Ethel's parents from the hall. They honeymooned on the Isle of Wight where Ethel fell violently ill after consuming some tainted shellfish, a morbid foreshadowing of things to come.

For the next year or so they enjoyed a form of wedded bliss while Ken worked diligently on establishing himself as a music journalist and Ethel continued her radio hobby from their small one bedroom flat in Prestwich. Tensions soon rose as Ken spent less and less time at home as his writing took him from concert to concert all over Great Britain and Ethel, in response, indulged herself in marathon Ham Radio sessions lasting for days during which she would not remove her headphones or speak to Ken. It came to an abrupt end in the spring of 1980 when Ethel discovered a stack of over 200 letters Ken had written to Debbie Harry, all of which had been returned unopened. She had only to read the first few to absorb their lewd, pleading tone and she left him, radio gear under one arm, never to return. The divorce was processed unhindered.

2. Hildy Volstagg
Married February 14th, 1981 - Divorced February 17th 1981.

Upon receiving the advance for his first novel, the legendary and as yet unpublished Zither Fragments, Ken went on what is now widely regarded as the most infamous and influencial two week benders in recorded history. The entire affair need not be recounted here but, suffice to say, it resulted in the first Banishment Order signed by the British Monarchy in over a century and the immediate dismissal of nearly half of the members of the Royal Ballet. It is also significant to note that Ken remains one of the only people known to have been deported from a country while unconscious. Upon his return to America he was unwillingly committed to the Garlandwood Rehabilitation Center in Talladega, Alabama, where doctors, to this day, marvel at the astonishing quantity and quality of the substances found in his body.

It was there that he would meet the most dangerous and important woman that he would ever know, Ms. Hildegarde Volstagg, a bush pilot and gun runner from Andalusia trying to shake a chronic amphetamine habit that had her halucinating violent attacks from rampaging gila monsters, a volatile situation when one is proficient in four major martial art forms and has a knack for weapon concealment. They had both been committed for sixty day programs and during that time the two grew close, finding commonality in a verve for life and adventure and an innate cleverness at sneaking intoxicants into the clinic. When, finally, it was discovered that they were single handedly responsible for providing all twenty four residents of the treatment center with a two week supply of methadrine, they were expelled, as it happened, on Valentine's Day, 1981. Unstable and drug addled as they were, they took it as an immediate sign and vowed to be married. Later that evening, aboard a Salvadoran freighter captained by one of Hildy's nebulous associates, Lothar Mandible, they were legally united in a ceremony at sea.

Little can be confirmed about the ensuing two day journey from Mobile Bay to Tampico, Mexico but the journey has been speculated about for nearly twenty five years. One thing is certain, that Captain Mandible's freighter, Old Squid Kicker, arrived at port with only two passengers. One, a dazed, incoherently gibbering Ken Socrates, garbed in the ragged shreds of a teal satin prom gown, lashed to the craft's prow like some ancient mermaid figurehead and Hildy Volstagg, grim, angry and intent as she drove the ship into dock at full speed, destroying seven wharves and sinking numerous small craft and a 45 foot oceanography yacht owned by Robert Ballard. Fleeing the scene like a wild fury, guns blazing, Hildy escaped into labrynth of the city's waterfront neighborhoods and, despite an exhaustive search by authorities, remained uncaptured. Captain Mandible and the eighteen man crew of Old Squid Kicker were never found and are presumed missing at sea.

Ken, rescued and nursed back to health at a local shelter and with no memory of the events of the two days aboard ship, was granted an immediate annulment.

3. Yasuko Sawaguchi
Married December 18th, 1983 - Divorced September 2nd, 1985

Ken met Yasuko Sawaguchi on the set of Gojira 1984 (released in the US as Godzilla 1985) where the young actress was performing the role of Naoko Okumura, the troubled younger sister of a the lead character played by the charismatic Ken Tanaka. The veteran actor was in the process of trying to seduce his inexperienced co-star when our Ken arrived at the Tokyo studio where miniature shooting was taking place. Ken was on assignment for Monster Island Monthly, who had sent him to do a cover piece celebrating the 30th anniversary of Godzilla and the production of the first new film starring the infamous giant lizard in nearly a decade. The instant chemistry between Mr. Socrates and Yasuko was palpable as they flirted their way through a series of routine interview questions, all the while ignoring the fuming Tanaka who stood by watching helplessly as the superior Ken swept the starlet off her feet. It was clear to all on set that a very genuine romance was blooming before their very eyes.

That night, enraged by what he saw as a humiliating social defeat and in an attempt to save face, Tanaka attempted a diabolical scheme of murderous revenge. Knowing that Ken and Yasuko had made plans to meet on the set after filming had wrapped for the day, the inferior Ken found himself a deadly and devious hiding place and waited for the young lovers to arrive. When they did he fell upon them, screamingly terrifying in the fully articulated rubber Godzilla suit worn earlier by Toho stuntmen, claws slashing, tail whipping, teeth bared at the unsuspecting couple. Stunned at the onslaught, they crashed into a pile of miniature city rubble. Ken recovered quickly, however. He hammered Tanaka over the head with a scale replica of a Japanese cruise ship, knocking the vicious thespian to the floor in a stupor. Ken quickly rushed Yasuko to the safety of her trailer and then returned to the mini Tokyo with a vengeance, in the full, roaring glory of the mighty King Ghidira costume itself.

It would be forever remembered in Japanese folklore as The Battle of Two Kens.

There they fought, the tiny buildings crushed beneath their fiery rage as they flailed at one another, the spikey Godzilla tail lashing Ken's feet out from under him while the relentless pummeling of Ghidira's three heads took it's toll on Tanaka. Finally, as a clever feint of the middle head brought Ken T. into range, Ken S. hacked downward with one of the razor sharp Ghidira wings, rending the Godzilla costume from nape to navel, spilling a beaten and exhausted Tanaka onto the ruined city to fall face first into a 30 story hotel. Ken finished him old school with one mighty clawed stomp driving his head into the smoking rubble, roaring to the heavens in triumph. Of course, by the next day, the destruction was discovered and Ken was banned from the set. Production was delayed while Mr. Tanaka recovered from his injuries during which time young Yasuko and her newfound hero enjoyed a whirlwind romance, eventually being wed in a Buddhist ceremony high in the picturesque Kii Mountains.

What followed was a time of pure happiness that Ken still recalls with great fondness. Unfortunately, all of Ken's attempts to find journalism work in Japan had failed due, mostly, to his complete inability to master the country's language and the fact that his writing, when translated into Japanese, became incoherent and indecipherable gibberish viewed with disgusted bewilderment by local readers. The tension rose as Yasuko's career blossomed and the shame of Ken's failure led him down dark paths of rampant sake consumption and animated porn. When, at last, he was offered a job stateside as part of Ricardo Montalban's growing publicity machine, he was forced to take it, simply to rescue his own pride. They parted in sorrow, their love torn asunder by means beyond their control, forever separated by the gulf between their vastly different worlds.

To this day you cannot ask Ken about her unless you're willing to watch the most pathetic display of man-blubbering you could ever begin to imagine.

4. Hildy Volstagg-Socrates
Married November 18th, 1986 - Divorced November 29th, 1986

1986 was a year of grisly disasters. The Challenger explosion. Chernobyl. Billy Buckner. The Fox Network begins. Arnold Schwarzenegger marries Maria Shriver. The return of Halley's Comet had signalled every sort of horrifying event imaginable and the life of Ken Socrates would be no exception. He would be dismissed from Montalban's service when a series of strange, sexually explicit letters toWilliam Shatner, written on Ricardo's personal stationary, were brought to light during an awkward dinner party from which Angie Dickinson reportedly departed sobbing uncontrollably. The fact that Shatner had initiated the dialogue and believed he was corresponding with Montalban himself did not mitigate circumstances and Ken was released. He'd been writing small articles for a underground comic book fanzine under the pseudonymn Heady Borgland, but was fully aware that such work, while entertaining, would never pay the bills. When, unshaven, intoxicated and pantless, he was turned away from the Mexican border and his moped confiscated, it became painfully obvious that he had reached a dramatically new low point in his life. In the post midnight hours of a cool November night, wearing nothing more than a soiled white t-shirt and an adult diaper, Ken elduded the Border Patrol officers supervising him and disappeared into the desert outside of El Centro, California.

As one might imagine, and as is often the case with Mr. Socrates, he can recall little of his pilgrimage to the desert. Images haunt him of nights spent sleeping in dried river beds while strange, gargantuan shadows swept through the skies above him, obscuring the stars, searching for him. He recalls stumbling through the torrid heat, his mind ablaze with hellish visions, his diaper getting ever heavier with each step he took. In the end, he remembers warm waters soothing his blistering face as he collapsed at the shoreline of The Salton Sea, lying half immersed in the heavily salinated waters, waiting to die.

Which he, of course, did not do. The notion that he was rescued, however, is quite debatable because the circumstances he soon found himself in could arguably be considered a far inferior substitute for death. He awoke to the sensation of being helplessly thrashed about the interior of a filthy horse trailer, his dazed, limp form bound entirely in duct tape. When he grimly managed to slither upright and look out of the screened window he saw that the trailer was being hauled behind a madly careening beat up old pick-up truck racing through the rough dirt and gravel roads of a desolate desert landscape. One glance at the eyes that greeted him in the rear-view mirror and Ken immediately recognized the diabolically grinning visage of none other than Hildy Volstagg mere seconds before the vehicle slammed around a violent turn and he was dashed back to the manure covered floor into unconsciousness.

How she found him is anyone's guess. Some believe she was tipped off by some of her government contacts, others that she participated in some other-wordly shamanistic ritual that allowed her to detect his very soul. Suffice to say, she abducted him with ease in his weakened form and drove him quickly to a remote encampment she had established in the rusty hills outside Sedona, Arizona which she had disguised as a Dude Ranch. The facade was tenuous and a close inspection of the facilty would quickly reveal that the staff was entirely made up of heavily armed UFO enthusiasts and that it was, in fact, a militia base with only three actual horses on the premises. Waiting for them at the camp, among the guerillas, was a shaman of the local Havasupai tribe, as well as Whitley Strieber, and after all involved were forced to consume gargantuan quantities of peyote, a ritualistic ceremony was performed. Under the vast twilight of an autumn desert sky, and at the point of several locked and loaded M-16's, the two were married for the second time.

The marriage was consummated in an aggressively confrontational manner over a period of several days in Hildy's cabin. During the night she would ride Ken like a mechanichal bull while, during daytime hours, his head was chained to a wood stove with a bicycle lock while she left on training exercises. She proclaimed her undying devotion to him in an elaborate ventriliquist's performance after which she enacted a bizarre menage-a-trois involving herself, Ken and the dummy, heedless of her husband's incessant weeping. This was more than enough to break the spirit an already weakened man and Ken found himself slipping into a profound dementia, drooling and constantly mumbling that he'd "gone to Fantasy Island..." and he wasn't coming back. For a time he would only answer to the name Vee-Garr and would eat nothing but oyster crackers. To Hildy, it was the honeymoon she had always imagined and she spent her days in a state of unbalanced bliss.

Until the afternoon of November 25th. The television had been left on while Hildy had hiked to a local stream for an hour of self-flagellation and Ken, despite being bound to a radiator with steel strapping, was able to watch a fascinating national news story develop. Attorney General Edwin Meese was just announcing the very peculiar details of the diversion of funds from the sale of weapons to a certain Central American paramilitary group when Hildy burst back into the cabin, her face seeminly drained of all blood. She paused only long enough to confirm the details that were being announced and she knelt to Ken, kissed him lightly on the forehead and said "Farewell, my love," before vanishing into the surrounding hills. Sometime in the night a shadowy figure that Ken could only identify as being "likely a midget" slipped into the hideout and freed him of his shackles. He exited the cabin in the morning to find the camp deserted aside from an oddly bemused Whitley Strieber wandering the grounds naked, unresponsive to all communication attempts.

After a thirty-six hour hike through the red mountains, Ken found his way back to civilization where authorities, amused and unsympathetic, assisted him in aquiring a legal divorce.

Once again, no trace of Hildy could be found.

Continued In Part Two

Part Two of our monumentally ponderous epic continues here
as we discover the true stories surrounding wives five through
eight, following our Ken from the barren deserts of lonliness and
betrayal to the heavenward mountains of true love and passion.

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