DISSONANCE

It is Christmas Eve in the busy Andalucía restaurant. There is an atmosphere of noisy chaos; this is a deliberate ploy on the part of Esteban, the restaurant manager. The aim is to transport diners far, far away to the heat of exotic Southern Spain, with its Arabian heritage, where everything seems to be chaotic but really it isn’t. There’s a lot of shouting from the waiters as they attend swiftly to the diners. The waiters flatter female diners with flirtatious flickering glances. Esteban has told them to do this, flirting with English women is to be expected of Spanish men regardless of your sexual preference and regardless of the woman’s age.


Christmas Eve is always one of the busiest nights of the year in the Andalucía restaurant.
The lights in the Andalucía are kept low, creating an atmosphere of intimacy. You are just able to discern colour and you can observe a guitarist wearing a red muleta, a matador’s cape, moving between tables, getting in the way of sweating waiters as he thrums a flamenco in the style of Rodrigo.


Reds and blacks predominate and sudden flares as a chef flambés steaks at one of the tables. His movements and gestures are flourishing; a sort of constitutional showing off.


The fragrance of cooking meats stimulates the appetite.


A host greets a man and a woman, a Señor and a Señora at the door and takes their heavy coats. It may be warm in the restaurant, but this is England in December and it’s bitterly cold outside, a gale blowing spiteful flecks of snow around.

There will be a white Christmas.


The woman is very beautiful with a Rubenesque figure. Her features are pretty, with wide dark eyes and a full sensuous mouth. Her long auburn hair is swept up at the neck with just a few curls allowed to fall casually.


She is small, barely reaching her partner’s shoulder. His craggy dark good looks are tight with tension.
They are shown to their corner table. It’s the table that they have always had, every Christmas Eve for twenty seven years. She has asked for it when she made the booking.

They sit in silence for some minutes.

“This is nice,” the woman says.

They peruse the menu, each knowing what the other will order. It will be the same entrées and main courses that they have always ordered over the years that they have been coming here.


Only the choice of wine varies.


They order their food: small talk seems necessary.


“I do love this restaurant, it’s like being in Spain, I mean actually being in Spain. I think we should book our holiday soon, make our reservations at the hotel.”

“Perhaps,” says the man; he knows that a response is necessary.

“There’s no ‘perhaps’ about it,” she says quickly.

“Well…yes maybe we should.”

“Well, at least we agree on something.”

“Do we?”

“Do we what?”

“Agree on something.”

They are silent for seconds. The waiter brings a jug of iced water.


“A bottle of this,” the man asks the waiter, pointing to the Cava on the wine list.

The waiter pours them both a glass of iced water and leaves them to talk.

“I’m in the mood for red,” she says.

“Nothing’s ever right for you…”


But he’s asked for the Cava anyway…he has ordered his usual Fruit du Mer as an entrée. Mussels are at the height of the season and will be plump and delicious right now. And his wife has predictably ordered her usual safe citrus fruit cocktail. The taste of the cool white wine will clash horribly with the citric juices, but he’s past caring.


She ignores his jibe. She picks at the cuticle of the thumbnail of her right hand with the index fingernail of the same hand. She wants some answers from him, but she’s not sure what the question is anymore. When she does speak it is a clumsy attempt at intimacy.


“What sort of people sit in a restaurant and don’t even try to talk to each other?”

“Married people,” he says quickly.

The woman flinches. There’s a sting in his words. “We don’t talk anymore, not really talk,” she says. We used to sit up all night, just talking, remember?”

The man fixes his wife with a long cool glance.


“I remember we used talk about a lot of things all night. We used to do a lot of things all night too.”

“Please don’t…I thought we’d finished talking about that.”

“Talking about what?”

“You know…”

“Do I?”

“You can’t even say the word. It’s sex; fucking.”

She takes a sip of her iced water. “I still can’t make up my mind about how to have the kitchen finished off. I think wood would be best. Mahogany or pine. What do you think? I don’t think we should go for the stainless steel. An industrial look wouldn’t fit with the farmhouse.”


Her husband sighs. He rests his elbows on the small table and he leans forward. She can feel his warm breath on her face. She cannot repress a shudder.

“You’re prevaricating again. You always do that…prevaricate. Evade the subject.”

“Thank you. I do know what prevaricate means,” she says irritably.

“So you should, you’re an expert at it.”

She slides her forefinger over the condensation forming on her chilling water glass. A gesture that could have been seen as slightly erotic, but he knows better.

“Don’t be nasty. It’s Christmas Eve. We can do it when we get home…if you like.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t say ‘thank you’. You our make our lovemaking sound so mechanical.”

“It is mechanical. You go to the bathroom before we fuck and stuff your cunt with lubricant. Then we fuck. I want to hold you afterwards and even do it again, or maybe not…but you can’t wait to get back to the bathroom so you can douche.”

“Don’t be crude…you’re being crude…and nasty cruel.”

Her fingernail digs at the cuticle; she has made the place sore.

“Oh sorry if I offend your delicate sensibilities. I can’t believe that you really think that couples of our age don’t have sex anymore.”

“I never said that…not exactly that…but I no, I don’t believe they do.”

“So because we’ve both hit fifty, we’re never going to have sex again?”

“There are more important things.”

“Oh really? Like what? The kitchen and holidays in Spain?"

“Yes…if you like…”

“I don’t like…sometimes I despair.”

“Don’t exaggerate. You despair about what?”

“My own body. I don’t know I don’t know what to do about my own body.”

“You’re still talking about sex? You’re obsessed. You should masturbate…in fact I know you do, I’ve smelt it on the bathroom towels”

“I do…masturbate, often. But it’s not enough.”

“You’re sex mad, that’s your problem.”

“You always say that.”

“I have needs and so do you…I hear you masturbating in the night, when you think I’m asleep. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“It’s…it’s just a physical thing…like scratching an itch…I sort it out and go back to normal.”

“You’re insane,” he mutters.

“You always say that.”

The wine waiter arrives, the tall clear bottle of pale, honey coloured wine wrapped in a white linen napkin. He performs the little pantomime that none of them really believes in, but the ritual of pouring, offering the glass to be sniffed and tasted has to be observed.

The man nods his approval to the waiter and the waiter pours two glasses.

“I really would have preferred red.”

“I’ve order red, a Rioja to drink with our main course.”

“Don’t you love me anymore?”

“What, because I didn’t order red wine straight away, you think I don’t love you anymore?"

“You’re just being so abrasive tonight.”

The waiter brings their entrée. They are silent a while; the food is a small distraction. She pushes the thin slivers of orange and grapefruit around the deep blue bowl and surreptitiously watches him eat.

He is skilled at the delicate way he manipulates the shell fish. The first one he opens with a fork, then he uses the empty shell casing as an implement to pick up the next moules. He opens it up, now using the shell like a pair of tweezers and grips the plump body inside. Then he eats. The procedure is sensual. Touch, taste…clever sensitive fingers, dexterity, lips, mouth, saliva, sucking.

She shudders.

She has given up all pretense of eating her entrée.

“Well do you still love me?” she asks.

“Don’t know. Do you still love me?"

“Yes, I do very much.”

He is silent.

“Don’t you like your food? I can ask for something else if you like.”

“It’s okay.”

“Perhaps I do still love you, perhaps I don’t, I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t like you very much. But I still desire you, is that the same as love?”

“That’s deep.”

“Not really. It’s like in the song, ‘something has died inside and I can’t hide and I just can’t fake it’.” He knows he’s muddled the words; he always muddles the words even when he’s singing along with Carole but he’s smiling as he softly sings the lyric.

“You’re being personal and hurtful to pay me out.”

“Revenge?” the man’s laugh is without any humour. “I gave up on revenge a long time ago. But I’m glad it hurts. I think of all the times you’ve belittled me, made me the butt of your stupid jokes. Made me a joke. Vanessa doesn’t think I’m a joke, by the way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

The fingernail digs deeper; the cuticle begins to bleed.

“Have you had sex with Vanessa?”

A waiter deftly removes plates. Another waiter brings their ruby red Rioja. The ritual of pouring, sniffing, tasting is repeated.

Their steaks arrive. Filet de boeuf. Rare for him. Very well done for her. Thus it has always been and always will be. A younger waiter dithers over serving the red tomato salads and frites. Perhaps he feels the tension in the atmosphere. She sighs her irritation and the young man leaves the table unfinished.

“Not yet, but I could have. I may well do. Vanessa likes sex.”

He cuts into his steak, it is bloody, just as he likes it.

She glances at her bleeding thumb cuticle. Dabbing at the blood gives her a distraction. She doesn’t know whether to believe him.

“Have you discussed our private life with Vanessa?"

“Of course I have. I talked, she listened. Then she talked and I listened. You know a dialogue like grown up people have.”

“I want to leave. I want to go home. Can we leave now please.”

“Not yet.”

“What is it exactly, what is it that you want? Do you want a divorce?”

“No, I don’t want a divorce.”

“Then what?”

He puts down his knife and fork.

“That’s pretty much what I talked to Vanessa about.”

“Ah, Vanessa, the fount of all wisdom.”

“Not really. She just told me stuff about people who have the same sort of problems that we have.”

“And what’s that?”

“You know what the problem is.” His voice is raised, and despite the noise in the restaurant, a couple on a nearby table turn to stare. “Boredom, sexual boredom. I want more than you seem able to give. I want to touch you deep inside. I want slow tenderness. I want it fast and rough. I want you to want me inside you as much as I want to be inside you like we used to. I want to taste you, I want to taste me in you after we’ve fucked. I’m dying inside here Elizabeth, suffocating…choking for air.”

“You’re ridiculous. Dying inside, suffocating, choking…that’s a stupid thing to say. And you’re disgusting, filthy, perverted. You make me feel sick.”

He meets her disdainful gaze. “And I want variety. That’s what Vanessa talked about. There are places we could go…together. Places where men and women have multiple partners. I want you to see me fucking other women. I want to watch you fucking other men. I want to watch you with a woman too. Several women…”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then I’m going to go there with Vanessa. You can do what you like. Take a lover if you want. Do whatever you want.”

The Spanish guitarist stops playing. He glances at the couple at the small table in the corner. A lovers’ quarrel. He and his Maria often quarrel. There is joy in the making up, in the fucking. He knows that the two lovers will go home and fuck. The woman looks feisty. The Spaniard would put money on her taking control of their lovemaking. How delighted the man must be with such a wife! They stand up to leave. They have barely touched their food. Obviously they cannot wait to fuck each other senseless. He leaves the restaurant and sits in the chilly garden for a cigarette break. Cigarettes are now politically incorrect in uptight England and you have to go outside in the cold. But he’s a Spaniard and he smokes. People have been generous with tips on this Christmas evening. He can buy his Maria a gift.

The restaurant is much quieter now. Just the low rumble and mumble of the diners.


                                                                      ***

George Pappas, author of Monogamy Sucks, Dear Hef and many, many poems, told me of a Hemingway story he’d read a long time ago at college. “Hills Like White Elephants.” I hadn’t read any Hemingway, but I ordered a collection of his short stories and read the tale. It’s very short, but what is intriguing about it is that Hemingway tells it entirely through dialogue; a couple are talking about abortion, but never actually say the word and I understood immediately why the story has stuck with George for all those years. George said it would be interesting to try and write a tale, perhaps with the theme of sexual boredom, using Hemingway’s technique of pushing the plot on through dialogue as a template. George’s idea would be to mention sexual variety but never to get to the word Swinging. “Go for it George!” I said. George said he didn’t have time, but with a generosity so typical of him, he gave his idea to me.

I hope I have lived up to George’s expectations. I know that I can never equal Hemingway, nor can I equal George Pappas, but it’s been interesting trying.

And film buffs will recognise these lines from “Two for the Road” starring Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney. (1967)

Joanna Wallace: What sort of people sit in a restaurant and don’t even try to talk to each other?
Mark Wallace: Married people.

THE GAY SERIAL KILLER

Indianapolis 1993. The Gay scene; men were disappearing. It must have been a while before anyone really noticed. Even if you realised that you hadn’t seen a guy for some time, you would probably just think that he had moved away to a different state and maybe the disappearance isn’t at all sinister. Maybe he just got bored with Indianapolis and moved on. Or maybe he was married and leading a double life with a wife and kids who didn’t know of his bisexuality. For many gay men, even today, with laws rewritten, the anonymity of sexual encounters is paramount. Exposure could be tragic. And if you ever thought about the guy whom you hadn’t seen for a while – well, there was always the possibility that he may have died.


Roger Allan Goodlet was one of those men who didn’t come home. This was on the 22nd of July 1994. But Roger had someone who loved him and who knew that his disappearance was out of character; his mother.


Roger’s mother contacted the police, but she was unsatisfied with their response and she hired a private investigator. Soon Roger’s face began to appear on flyers throughout the area. Finally, the gay community and the media began to ask questions about the young men who frequented the gay night clubs in the area and their disappearances. Days after Roger’s disappearance, Stephen Hale was the eighth man to vanish. Police turned to the FBI Behavioral Science Unit for help. The profile indicated the perpetrator was a white male, mid 30s, bisexual with a mid to high level IQ. The profile would only be useful if the received information had a possible suspect.


One potential witness came forward. Mark Goodyear told police about an odd encounter he’d had with a man who was a regular patron of the gay bars in the area. Mark and the man were discussing the missing person flyer; the man showed concern, but Mark wasn’t sure if his empathy was genuine. Despite Mark’s suspicions, he agreed to accompany the man home, where the Mark was persuaded by the man to engage in erotic asphyxiation foreplay in the home’s swimming pool. The man described it as the best orgasm he would ever experience. With the hose wrapped tightly around his neck, Mark realised that the man wasn’t going to stop and was intending to strangle him. Mark feigned death and that was what saved his life. Mark is a big guy and in a face to face confrontation there was no way that the much smaller man would stand a chance and Mark made his escape. But Mark was shaken by the encounter and reported the incident to police, but he was unable to pinpoint the location.


The man continued to contact Mark. During their phone conversations, the man admitted to accidents or bad nights, but he never confessed to murder. By August 1995, ten men had vanished. Then one night Mark spotted the man in a bar and took down his vehicle license plate number.


The license plate number belonged to Herb Baumeister.


The Police ran a background check on Herbert Baumeister. He seemed innocuous enough; a typical resident of his wealthy Indianapolis suburb. He, and his wife Juliana had three children and ran two successful retail outlets in Indianapolis. Juliana described Herb as a devoted father who spent plenty of time with his kids. The kids grew up in the park like setting of the Baumeister estate.


The police widened their investigation. Herb Baumeister was still on their radar, but there were other trails to follow.


Then in 1995 Herb and Juliana’s 15 year old son found a human skull and some other bones in the grounds and told his mother. When Julianna mentioned this unusual discovery to her husband, he assured her that the bones were probably left over from medical research that his father, who was a doctor, had been working on. He offered no explanation as to why they happened to be buried on the estate.


Meanwhile, there was an ongoing police investigation in the Mid-West regarding the disappearance of more than a dozen gay men – the first case dating back to 1980.


But they hadn’t forgotten Herb Baumeister. It seemed that Herb was well known at every gay hangout in Indianapolis and the police began a surveillance. They considered that Herb’s fascination with the ecstasy of nearly strangling his prey was eclipsed by the thrill of watching his victims die.


Police wanted to search the property at this point, but voluntary entry was refused. Herb certainly didn’t want the police poking around, and Julianna didn’t believe the accusation of her husband’s double life. But the possibility of exposure did its work on Herb Baumeister and he neglected their business interests.


Foreclosure by the bank was imminent.



Julianna filed for divorce and Herb left the house. Julianna allowed the police to search the house and grounds; the search yielded hundreds of bones and bondage paraphernalia.


Herb was questioned and released. Not surprisingly, he fled.


In all, the bones of seven victims were found on the estate. Autopsy data on nine other bodies found along rural roads Indiana and Ohio pointed to Herb Baumeister’s modus operandi. The nine other slayings, committed between 1980 and 1990, had striking similarities. All the victims were partially unclothed, found near water and most had been strangled. The victims were all from Indianapolis.


Herb Baumeister shot himself with a 3.57 Magnum in a Toronto park in 1996.


How Julianna could not have had an inkling of her husband’s secret life frequenting the gay bars of Indiana is difficult enough to comprehend. But how she could remain ignorant of seven bodies buried within a few feet of their home seems impossible.


Was Julianna an accomplice after the fact? Maybe she was; maybe she wasn’t, but she was never charged.


This blog post has been compiled using sources from the web.

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY: JAN VANDER LAENEN

I am thrilled and honoured that my talented writer friend Jan Vander Laenen comes to my blog with his incredible story; “The Sleeping Beauty.” A story delving into the darker side of desire; dipping a toe into the forbidden. The taboo.



Welcome to me is sleep, and dearer still,
While wrong and shame endure, my stony death.
Neither to see nor hear is my good luck.
Do not awake me: pass with bated breath.
(Michelangelo BUONARROTI)



I think I can call myself a bit of an artist; I am particularly attracted to the Italian language and culture. And I am not a little fascinated by the beauty of my own gender, especially the darker specimens. None of which has been able to hold me back from worming my way into the respectable straitjacket that once belonged to my unimaginative father and grandfather, from marrying as they did, from raising children and exercising the dignified profession of a solicitor: quite the model Flemish, middle-class existence.


I shan't dwell on my public life - it's of little consequence. Like all solicitors, doctors, pharmacists, surgeons and other representatives of the liberal professions in Flanders, I speak French, earn heaps of money that I don't work for and that I salt away in my accounts in Geneva and Monaco, am a member of my local Lyons club and, in my village, just outside Brussels, am respected and invited to all the weddings and so-called cultural events. My wife, a covetous grande bourgeoise, dresses in haute couture, my three children are boarders at a strict private school, and if everything goes as one would wish - and for the haut bourgeois, God ensures that everything always goes as one would wish - in fifteen years or so, my eldest son, Frederic, will take over the baton of my solicitor's practice.


An easy life, isn't it? A dreadful life! A double life! Fear gnaws at me constantly, the fear of being uncloaked, the fear of losing the respect of the people for whom I myself no longer have respect, the fear of having to give up all those things for which I ultimately couldn't care less any more: money, standing, a boring job, a boring and snobbish wife, snobbish children who think that the world is theirs just because their father happens to be rich.
Drastic decisions are often the best decisions that you take in your life, except unfortunately I haven't yet, at forty-three, got that far. With my financial means, I should be able to pack my bags, turn my back on my office, and ditch my wife and children to go and rent a flat somewhere in Brussels so that I can have a buzz-cut done and don a leather jacket to go and get smashed drinking in the gay bars and give vent to my desires. My own experience has told me that there is no future for two men once they've shot their bolts, and solidarity is an empty concept in the ghetto. And so, for the time being, I stay with my wife and children, and thus am doomed to dreaming up a thousand excuses and wriggling out of a thousand corners in order to be able, unbeknownst to them and to my neighbours, to satisfy my homosexual urges.


During a meeting, I sit in a sauna. I conclude a public sale with a hurried visit to a porn cinema. A conference at Brussels university becomes a pretext for an afternoon in a hotel with rooms by the hour in the company of a little Moroccan picked up in Place Fontainas. And afterwards, always afterwards, those damned mints and chewing gum, so that no one’ ll smell that my tongue and lips were between another man's legs a quarter of an hour previously. Or that dull dread of returning home with a little ailment, crabs or - God forbid! - AIDS.


Summertime is perhaps the period when I can most be myself, within the limits that I have self-imposed. I can hand over the reins of my office to my associates, put on my casual clothes, devote myself to sports activities and depart for warmer parts with my wife and children. As befits a true, upright family man, it is I of course who select the destination, a destination where, in addition to sunbathing and swimming, we can also do something cultural and relax. Where, without being a gay mecca, there is of course something that men like me can get up to on the sly. Sitges, Ibiza and Mykonos are therefore out, due to their excessively open homosexual atmosphere; but, alongside these Mediterranean Sodoms, there is a whole string of other places on the Mediterranean Sea with a beach, a wood, or a park where you can get a pick-up. Just look in the Spartacus, the gay bible. Every gay bar's got a copy, and for the price of a pint, you can quickly note down a couple of 'useful' addresses or - as I do in my paranoia of being caught - you can learn them off by heart.
What kind of places have I been to as a good husband with his family?


Nice - classy, French and a little rocky coastline just outside the town centre almost exclusively for men. Hammamet - Tunisian, exotic and with drop-dead gorgeous young men, who'll drop their pants or lift their djellabahs for a couple of dinars. And Viareggio, of course, Viareggio, Italy. Viareggio is the pearl of the Tyrrhenian coast and for me virtually heaven on earth.


Just imagine: alongside delicious food, a fine climate and the proximity of artistic cities like Pisa, Lucca and Florence, Viareggio boasts a wood of pine trees situated behind the beach and dunes, which stretches from the harbour to the Torre del Lago. There, between the pines and bushes and to the happy rhythm of chirping crickets, shameless open-air sex - my favourite fantasy - is all the rage. For a voyeur on the look-out for scenes to awaken the senses, all he often has to do is step off the widest tracks that criss-cross the wood and follow the trail of used condoms and paper hankies through the thick undergrowth. With a bit of luck, he can remain concealed and witness some duo in the course of their lovemaking. Or a trio. Or a quartet. Traditional, paying or same-sex.
The area behind the restaurant called 'La Casetta dei Tigli' is the exclusive domain of a number of Felliniesque whores, who ride around on their Vespas looking for clients, and then disappear into the bushes. Around the 'Bocciodromo', the older men meet for a chat and maybe to pick up some young boy or girl that has wandered astray. But the most secluded spot in the wood, a place behind the beach that can only be reached at the end of a walk of over a mile through the greenery, is the traditional tryst for the gays. Yes, in the summer, about half the homosexual population of Tuscany frolic around there in the nude or very scantily clad, on the hunt for ecologically responsible but not always equally safe erotic entertainment with one or more others of the same sex. On three occasions, I have rented a summer residence in Viareggio for my family and me, in the district of 'Campo d'Aviazione', situated next to the pineta. Always with the excuse that the wood is an ideal place for me to do my daily jog, I have often been able to make contacts with a number of Italian soul-mates.
They can be good-looking, Italians, pretty and fickle, and maybe a tad unattainable, but if you take your time to study their southern cruising ways and adjust yourself to their signals, they are just as willing as our more northerly specimens to submit to the love gods. Or maybe even more willing, since they are able to dispense with the entire vestimentary carnival that seems to be the winning ticket on the Brussels gay scene, in order to distinguish themselves from heterosexuals. Probably because the boundary between homo- and heterosexuality in Italy remains somewhat more vague and undefined. Did they not describe same-sex love at the court of Versailles as le vice italien, and was the Italian version of La Cage aux Folles not called Il Vizietto? It's as if homosexuality is not a way of life or philosophy, but merely an ignored little vice to which people occasionally yield but that does not denote a life and cannot deviate from the normal pattern. And so, a large number of visitors to the pineta are, like me, nicely married-with-children and not pathologically disgusted by the female sex organ, although it is not rare for them to prefer the male body. 'Men,' someone once said to me in the wood, 'have more beautiful behinds and a more dexterous mouth.' I can't say that he was wrong ?


But, let me backtrack a little - Monday, the twenty-sixth of August, 19** to be precise - and recount to you the most unusual adventure that I have ever experienced in the pineta, or anywhere else for that matter. A bittersweet adventure that has been a source of some deep reflection on my part, that until the end of my days will make me feel guilty, and that I shall maybe one day tell to a judge, should the fatal day break on which I draw a close to my mendacious marital existence.


As most holidaymakers will know, the Italians go on vacation en masse on 1 August and return to their work and occupations - the so-called contresodo - likewise en masse on the last Monday of the month. As I awoke next to my wife on that Monday, now four years since, with an overwhelming desire for male flesh, I then hardly dared to hope that I would get what I was wanting that day. There probably wouldn't be much happening in the pineta. The skies over Viareggio were grey and ominous, and on top of that my younger son was unwell.


An unsatisfied lust for sex evokes hatred for everything that stands in the way of fulfilling that lust. No verbal vitriol can describe the hatred that I felt for my family on that day, seemingly without end. I hated my wife, my snobbish, bourgeois wife, whom I was only able to kiss and penetrate with closed eyes as I recalled the memories of my conquests in the wood. I hated my only daughter because she didn't like olive oil and because pasta purportedly made her fat, and above all I hated the little cry-baby that was my younger son, Paul, who, on the pretext of a slight temperature, constantly demanded my attention and ceaselessly asked me to play cards with him. Eventually, at about six in the evening, the proverbial gasket blew. I couldn't have taken it to be with them for another minute, with those parasites who lived off my money and for whom I had sacrificed my life. With loud cursing and swearing - and with my wife in hysterics - I changed into my running gear and closed the door to our apartment behind me. I was alone.
Once in the wood, I calmed down a little. I had been right, there was much less happening than a few days previously, but the sight of all those majestic pine trees and the bushes beneath them - in short, a Fragonard landscape - went some way to tempering my aggression and stirred my sexual urges. If I found nobody, I would undress in some hidden spot and, if necessary, leaning against the resin-odoured bark of a tree, masturbate, imagining that the soft summer breeze caressing my tanned skin was the thousand fingertips of a hundred men and that I was shedding my lonesome seed over a pair of strapping male buttocks.
A surprise, a vision of exceptional beauty awaited me, however, when I had eventually forged a way through the Mediterranean overgrowth to one of the darkest areas of the wood, ready to touch myself there. There, in a spot strewn with withered pine needles, lonely and alone on a fiery red towel in the pose of a classical painting, lay a naked young man, asleep. He had rolled onto his belly, his left leg drawn up, his right leg stretched out, so that he not only afforded me a view of his innocent but provocative buttocks, which were turned toward me, but also of the ridge of his scrotum and the exposed glans of his member.


I may not be very poetically-minded but this sleeping beauty nearly moved me to laud his body in verse and rhyme: his short-cut dark hair, his face, which he concealed in his arms, his muscular neck, his tanned shoulders, back and legs, and, of course, his white buttocks, the only place that the sun had been unable to touch him over the summer months and which seemed to be sculpted from marble. White, virginal marble from the quarries of Carrara that can be descried from the beach; white, veined marble that seemed all the whiter and flawless against the bronzed colour of the rest of his young, unblemished skin and the deep red of his bathing towel.


For a number of minutes I must have looked upon this spectacle, for a number of minutes I must have stood still, as quiet as a mouse, with bated breath, until my desire gained the upper hand over my asexual sense of beauty and aesthetics. I coughed gently. No move came from the sleeping beauty. I broke a twig from a bush with a dry crack. Still no reaction. Eventually, I stepped silently up to him and went and sat next to him on the corner of his towel. I must have been so hypnotised up to that point by his rear end that it was only then that I noticed a number of objects that lent the vision a certain tragic character: a letter written in ink, a half-empty bottle of mineral water and a number of empty canisters of pills with fatal-sounding names like Xeraxat, Lexotan and Xarax. This beautiful boy, who might well have made so many people happy through his mere existence, had decided to give himself up into the cold hands of death. And somehow his body had indeed already cooled as I carefully laid my hand on his right calf and then allowed my fingers to dwell on his buttocks.
'Giovanotto, wake up,' I whispered to him as I rolled him onto his back with a delicate motion. His eyelids and his mouth opened and stared at me with a hazy, hazel-eyed gaze as he murmured a few incomprehensible words. What then got into me I don't know, but so beautiful, so regular was his visage that I pressed my mouth against his fleshy lips and, under the first few drops of a summer storm, started to kiss him. Yes, I explored the inside of his dying mouth with my tongue as I held his chin in the grip of my hands, that proud, sturdy chin with its growth of beard and moustache.


Then I turned him over like a clothier's dummy, my sleeping beauty, and, under raindrops that were falling more and more heavily to the accompaniment of still far-off thunderclaps, I buried my head between his legs. Only a lizard that had found a shelter under a nearby bush and a squirrel that observed us with his keen little eyes from the branches of a pine tree were able to witness how I experienced the most extraordinary moments of my otherwise, oh, so banal life on that stormy August evening with a boy who was soon to breath his last. Yes, even now, after four years and now that I am back with my family in Viareggio, I can still recall the minutest details; I can remember the slightest detail without difficulty and again wallow in those voluptuous moments in my memories, in those sensuous moments that brought my five senses to a satisfaction extraordinaire. For, after a while, I, too, undressed and procured the dying youth a worthy, corporeal departure from this earth. The fact that he had sunk into a deadly sleep and yielded to my lust, the lust of a man unknown to him from far-off Flanders who under normal circumstances he probably wouldn't have deigned to glance at, and this made me hotter than ever, if such were possible. I tasted the odour and savour of his anus. Gently, I inserted my spit-moistened finger into that hidden place, where the last remnants of his bodily warmth seemed to have gathered. I sucked on his member and testicles until he, somewhat to my wonderment, got a suspicion of a nocturnal erection. I nestled up against him so that I could better feel the contact between our skin - mine at normal, human temperature, his a few degrees lower. This entire love game - if one can speak of love when one of the partners doesn't even have the strength to consent - this entire love game, then, played out under a sultry summer storm that made the entire wood, the entire surroundings, smell of damp earth and moss, that lighted up the dark, purple sky above the high peaks with tremendous thunderbolts and the screeching of panic-stricken crows and gulls, was drowned out by clashes of thunder.


After quarter of an hour, without having touched myself, I reached a climax and smeared his back and buttocks with my warm semen, which was quickly washed away by the rain. Meanwhile, we were both soaked, and whilst I pulled on my equally wet running gear in a state as if I'd been awoken out of a wet dream, I glanced again at my sleeping beauty. He still seemed to be gently breathing and, in a last, convulsive attempt, he slowly turned back to exactly the same position he'd been in when I had found him. He reached his despondent hand out toward the piece of paper before him. Like my sperm, his last words, written on the farewell note, were washed away by the pitiless raindrops.


I then set off running, again forged a path through the gorse bushes and, panting and enervated from the enjoyment, I reached the track that led directly out of the pineta. Only then, only there did I realise the extent of what I had done: I, me, a decent, married solicitor from far-off Flanders, had abused a poor Italian boy in his last sleep. Whatever, I thought, maybe it was not yet too late to do something, perhaps I could quickly hurry to the police not far away or ring for an ambulance or call a doctor or, once I reached the Viale dei Tigli, I could just flag down a car.


But what could I say? How could I have explained my presence at the gayest place in the wood? That would have given me away, I would have blown my cover. The police and the local population knew only too well the reputation of the isolated area where my sleeping beauty had intended to meet his death, not least because two murders had once been committed there against gays. The police or ambulance men would certainly have asked me questions and had me fill in forms, and questioned me as to why I had been there at that moment. The whole situation would have grown into a local scandal, into an, oh, so typical Italian fatto di cronaca, a fatto di cronaca of a decent Flemish citizen who sticks his bureaucratic finger in the arse of a suicide victim. In my paranoia, I was naturally convinced that they would have found my finger prints or - more simply - would have spotted the brown tip of my right index finger.


And so I made off like a cowardly, vile person back to my rented flat, to my family, in full realisation that my hypocrisy meant the death of a boy.
Once home, I immediately withdrew to the bathroom where I stood before the mirror, gazing into my own eyes, and again sensuously licked at my finger. And my wife, that awful person, spoke not a word to me during the whole evening, no, she didn't once ask how come I had scratches on my arm and mud stains on my jogging suit.


Two days later, two days after my shameful deed, news of the boy's act of desperation did indeed make the front page of the local paper: 'Young gay commits suicide in woods' was the headline that could be read all over Viareggio on the posters that were renewed each day in front of the news kiosks.
I bought a copy. As far as my knowledge of Italian permitted, I understood after reading the article that the boy - his name was given as Salvatore Barzi - had seemingly taken his life because he and his family had not been able to accept his being different. It was also said that his farewell note had been made unreadable due to the heavy rain. At the same time, the reporter wondered about the feeling of solidarity amongst gays. According to the medical report, the boy was only discovered eighteen hours after taking the sleeping pills, by someone who wanted to remain anonymous. The reporter also said that it was extremely improbable that no other clandestine visitor to the gay part of the pineta had noticed him earlier. Newspaper in hand, and a swelling in my throat, I went and sat at an open-air cafe and ordered a grappa.


Yesterday, about four years after my adventure with the sleeping beauty and back with my family in Viareggio, I went and paid a visit to the cemetery in order to see the grave of Salvatore Barzi. I bought a fiery red rose from the flower-girl at the entrance to the graveyard, and then I enquired of the attendant where the grave of a certain Salvatore Barzi was situated.



'Salvatore Barzi, the sleeping beauty?' rapped the attendant, as he looked at me somewhat quizzically. 'You go to the central sector and, when you're there, you can't miss his tomb.'


The attendant was right. The tomb of Salvatore - the boy whose saviour I had not been - did indeed stand out amongst the last resting places of all the other deceased. The pit containing his mortal remains was covered with a heavy, black porphyry slab. On the slab was sculpted a likeness of Salvatore in white marble and in exactly the same position as I had encountered him on that pernicious summer's evening. The artist must have been truly gifted and had probably been inspired by police photos whilst creating this classic work of art, for no detail was missing: the rear end and the glimpse of the boy's genitals were shown without false diffidence, his marble limbs seemed to be as muscular as they seemed weary and indeed it looked as though his marble left hand was grasping for a sculpted letter in front of him. 'Salvatore Barzi' were the words in the letter, together with his dates of birth and death. He had been but twenty-six?
With a respectful gesture, I lay the red rose at his graceful feet. I gazed long at his effigy, so long that it seemed to come alive in my mind's eye.


Eventually, I stretched out my hand and caressed his stone buttocks. I wasn' t the first to have done so, for I now noticed that the marble on his rear end gleamed from having been repeatedly touched by human hands. It gleamed like the holy foot of St. Peter in the Basilica in Rome, or the lucky arm of Everard 't Serclaes on the Market Square in Brussels. Barely had I withdrawn my hand when I was approached by a little women dressed in black whom I had not seen earlier, so bewitched was I by the statue.


'How do you know Salvatore?' she barked at me.


When I was unable to think of a suitable reply, she grasped my rose and struck me in the face with it.


'My Salvatore wasn't like that, leave him alone, you pervert!' she yelled indignantly, whereupon she tried to push me away from her son's grave.


I left the cemetery of Viareggio with sullen shoulders , my left cheek scratched with the rose thorns, with a mind to head for the pineta. There was more to do there than at a cemetery.


When I got there, an older, married man explained to me more about Salvatore. His tomb had adorned the front page of Babilonia, a militant Italian gay magazine, in a call for greater solidarity, and since then the monument had grown into a holy place, a place of pilgrimage for the Italian gay community. Touching Salvatore's buttocks brought luck, to the horror of the boy's mother, of course, who watched over his grave virtually every day.


I wept, crocodile tears probably, but tears in any event and when, at dinner that evening, my wife asked me where I had got the scratches on my face, I again brushed away a teardrop. 'I have heard that the wood at the back here has a reputation that is by no means very good,' she said, yet with a slight reproach.
'Let's not talk about such things in front of our children,' I answered curtly with a tone of authority.


My wife seemed to be satisfied. The middle classes don't like at all to talk about the more colourful things in life and it is therefore unlikely that I shall ever tell anyone my story of Salvatore Barzi, the Sleeping Beauty of Viareggio. I can be as silent as a grave...



***

From a review of Jan’s Sleeping Beauty.

“Epistle of the Sleeping Beauty” by Jan Vander Laenen is a truly delightful tale reporting an unusual erotic adventure on the gay side taking place in the famous pineta (pinewood) of Viareggio, Italy.

“Belgian writer Jan Vander Laenen's “Epistle of the Sleeping Beauty” was translated into English for the anthology, and is among the most unsettling of the stories: a man on holiday, hiding his homosexual cravings from his wife and children, seeks risky public sex and discovers a naked, dying, young man in the woods. This like many of the tales in the collection divulges the horrifying lengths some will go to fulfill lust, and is more cutting and critical than celebratory of many gay lifestyles.”

Jan loves to hear from his readers. You can email him at jan.vanderlaenen@skynet.be;


Jan Vander Laenen lives in Brussels, Belgium, where he works as an art historian and translator (Dutch, French and Italian). He is also the author of eight collections of short stories, plays, and screenplays which have attracted keen interest abroad. A romantic comedy, Oscar Divo, and a thriller, The Card Game, are presently in the hands of a competent producer in Hollywood, while his short fiction collections The Butler and Poète mauditare eliciting the requisite accolades in Italy. He credits Karen Blixen and Edgar Allan Poe as his literary influences.

The Sleeping Beauty has been published in Dutch as “De Schone Slaper” and in French as “Le bel au bois dormant”. Vander Laenen's "The Corpse Washer" appeared in Ignavia.

The Sleeping Beauty is available at Amazon UK

And at Amazon US

SEX, MURDER & STATE OF THE ART TECHNOLOGY (EDWARDIAN STYLE)

It was the first notorious killing of the twentieth century. July 1910 Britain was gripped by the progress of a huge man hunt. It was on a scale that hadn’t been seen since Jack the Ripper.



The fugitive was Doctor Hawley Harvey Crippen and he was wanted for the murder and mutilation of his wife Cora. Together with his mistress, Ethel le Neve, Doctor Crippen had fled from London. Handbills had been printed and pasted everywhere and distributed to police around the world. Everyone was talking about this case.

The Home Secretary, a certain Winston Churchill had organised a reward of £250, worth £20,000 in today’s money for their capture.

So where was Doctor Crippen and his lover Ethel le Neve? In fact they had already left the country and were holed up in a hotel in Belgium. They had plans to leave for North America.


Henry Kendal was the captain of a steam ship heading across the Atlantic to Canada. But two of his passengers had aroused his suspicions. The SS Montrose had only been at sea for one day when Captain Kendal noticed a father and son behaving strangely on deck. He thought it was very odd that they squeezed each other’s hands immoderately, as he put it, and that they would sometimes disappear behind the lifeboats. The two of them were travelling as Mr and Master Robinson.

What happened next was just like a detective novel, with the Captain playing the part of Sherlock Holmes. Captain Kendal decided to carry out an experiment to try and confirm his suspicions that he had Doctor Crippen on board. He took a newspaper photograph of Doctor Crippen and using chalk he whitened out the Doctor’s moustache and then blackened out the frames of his spectacles and it was a photo fit. Without his moustache and spectacles the mysterious Mr Robinson was clearly Doctor Crippen.


Captain Kendal had access to a pioneering piece of technology that would speed up the process of twentieth century crime investigation. It was the Marconi wireless, but the transmitter only had a range of 150 miles. When Captain Kendal made his breakthrough he was already 130 miles from the nearest receiver; he had 20 miles left to get the message out. Rushing along the lower deck to the wireless room he handed the wireless operator the message that would electrify the world.


It read:


“Have strong suspicions that Crippen the London cellar murderer and accomplice are amongst the passengers. Accomplice dressed as a boy but with voice manners and build undoubtedly a girl.”


But would the message get through in time?

So what exactly were the events that had led up to this extraordinary situation?


Doctor Crippen, an American, who dabbled in cheap patent medicines and dentistry had been living what seemed a pretty conventional life in a North London villa. His wife, Cora, was a would be music hall artiste. But the marriage was troubled and Crippen had begun an affair with his young secretary, Ethel le Neve. On the 19th January 1910, Crippen visited a chemist to purchase five grains of hydro bromide of hyosin; an enormous dosage of a deadly poison. He signed the poison book like he was supposed to, with the words “for homeopathic purposes.”



On the 31st January, the Crippens held a little party at home. Later, Crippen would claim that it had been followed by a terrible quarrel between him and his wife. Cora had said that she was leaving him the very next day. Whatever really happened that night the guests at that party were the last people to see Cora Crippen alive. To explain Cora’s absence Crippen claimed that she had gone back to America and then he later said that she had died out there. Very suspicious Cora’s friends now paid a visit to New Scotland Yard. The case was taken up by Detective Chief Inspector Walter Dew, a veteran of the Ripper murders. He was a member of the Yard’s newly formed “murder squad”. Its members prided themselves on their prowess and their skills in disguises – however unconvincing. Chief Inspector Dew searched Crippen’s house for evidence but found nothing. But he wasn’t quite satisfied. He went back three days later for another look and discovered that Crippen had disappeared. “My quarry has gone,” he said.

Crippen’s house, where a block of flats now stands held a strange attraction for Dew. “That sinister cellar,” he wrote, “draws me to it.” His sergeant began to work away at the brick floor, then to remove the earth beneath. There was a nauseating stench and Dew and his men had to rush out to the garden for fresh air. Fortifying themselves with brandy, they returned to the cellar and soon made a grim discovery. There, in a shallow grave, lay a limbless headless torso. What kind of person could have done this? Surely not gentle Doctor Crippen?

The story caused a frenzy of excitement, with lurid headlines in the popular press. Inspector Dew was now under enormous pressure to catch the killer.


And then, that sensational telegram arrived from the mid-Atlantic.


Chief Inspector Dew now hatched an ingenious plan – he had to take a faster ship to overtake the Montrose before it reached Canada and to arrest Crippen on board. And the press were hard on his heels. Word had leaked out about what was happening on the SS Montrose. Newspaper readers could follow Dew’s pursuit as he closed in on his suspects at the rate of three and a half miles an hour.


This story has it all. As well as a gruesome murder, there is an illicit romance and a chase across the Atlantic. And best of all, the suspects didn’t have a clue that the police were onto them, although every newspaper reader in Britain did. Doctor Crippen had become the most famous murderer in the world.


Dew attempted to evade the journalists by disguising himself as a harbour pilot in order to board the Montrose. But it was no good. Reporters were there to capture the moment when Dew finally greeted his suspect with the words; “Good morning Doctor Crippen.” Can you imagine an actor and director lingering over that line – the pace, the dramatic pause?

Press photographers caught everything that happened next. The crowds waiting at Liverpool docks. Dew escorting Crippen off the boat. The anticipation outside Bow Streets magistrate’s court for the committal of Crippen and Le Neve.

The press had made the couple into a highly marketable commodity. This was a very modern murder.

Bizarre offers now began to come in. If they were acquitted Crippen would get £1000 a week for a twenty week tour. le Neve would receive £200 a week for a performance including a musical sketch entitled “Caught by Wireless.”

On the 18th of October the trial of Doctor Crippen began at the Old Bailey. This was going to be a huge spectacle. Four thousand people applied for tickets, the court had to issue special half day passes so that double the normal numbers could get in. In the words of the Daily Mail’s reporter;

“…the crowds begged, pleaded and argued for seats in the public gallery.”

Inside there was even more chaos. There was a rowdy atmosphere, like a music hall. People were shouting ‘blue tickets that way, red tickets up here.”

The trial ended on Saturday the 22nd of October. The jury only took twenty seven minutes to find Crippen guilty of wilful murder. He was sentenced to death.
In his evidence on oath, Crippen said that his wife had often threatened to leave him and had picked a quarrel with him over his behaviour while they were having friends round for dinner. Recounting the last time he saw her, he said:


She abused me, and said some very strong things; she said that if I could not be a gentleman she had had enough of it and could not stand it any longer and she was going to leave. That was similar to her former threats, but she said besides something she had not said before; she said that after she had gone it would be necessary for me to cover up any scandal there might be by her leaving me, and I might do it in the very best way I could. I came back the next day at my usual time, which would be about half-past seven or eight o'clock, and found that the house was vacant.
The trial ended on Saturday the 22nd of October. The jury only too twenty seven minutes to find Crippen guilty of wilful murder. He was sentenced to death.
The jury took just 27 minutes to reject Crippen's explanations for his wife's disappearance and convict him of murder.
Crippen was executed on 23 November 1910, less than four months after his arrest. His last request was to have a photo of Ethel Le Neve in his top pocket when he was hanged. He was buried in the cemetery at Pentonville prison.



Ethel le Neve, at a separate trial was acquitted and she lost no time in selling her side of the story. A publicity shot shows her in her infamous disguise as a boy. But her fame was short lived. It was Crippen himself that would be imortalised. Even during his trial sculptors at Madame Taussaud’s had been preparing a wax figure based on those snatched court photographs. Within days of the passing of Crippen’s death sentence Taussaud’s unveiled their new addition to the chamber of horrors. Crippen was on display to the public before he’d even met the hangman.


And over one hundred years later he is still on show.


In the 1912 catalogue to the Chamber of Horrors he takes his place amongst the greats. His fellow doctor, William Palmer the poisoner. And opposite the 19th century murderess, Maria Manning. They have a description of their crimes in the catalogue. Doctor Crippen has none. Everyone knows who he is; what he did.


And a contemporary journalist described this place, the Chamber of Horrors as “the holiest of holies.” These were the people everyone wanted to see. What does that say about the Edwardians?

Indeed; what does it say about all of us? Public hangings are no more; but I bet people would go to see them if they were. I recall watching the Crime channel (I’m addicted to it. It’s my version of a seat in the public gallery at the Old Bailey) there were crowds outside the jail where they’d got Ted Bundy. They cheered when it was announced that his death sentence had been carried out.

It seems that a lurid fascination with murderers and death did not die with the Edwardians.

You can read statements taken by the police and transcripts from the trial here; http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=def1-75-19101011&div=t19101011-75

TV viewers of BBC 4 will recognise that I have plundered parts of “A Very British Murder” presented by Lucy Worsley. The rest of the post has been put together using sources from the web.

THE SWING: JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD

The Swing, or The Happy Accidents of the Swing was painted in 1767 by Jean-Honore Fragonard. It is painted in the Rococo style, an iconic piece of frothy boudoir chic; which quite intentionally takes the privacy of the inside space – a woman’s bedroom – to the out of doors space, where there are flashes of danger and anything can happen.


Commissioned by the notorious French libertine Baron de St. Julien as a portrait of his mistress, The Swing was to be painted to the following specificity: "I should like you to paint Madame seated on a swing being pushed by a Bishop."


While this odd request was turned down by other painters such as Gabriel François Doyen, a painter of more serious historical subjects, Fragonard leapt to the occasion, producing what became the most iconic work of the French Rococo.


In the foreground the playboy Baron himself is depicted, reclining in the lush shrubbery, one arm outstretched towards the woman’s skirts, his other arm holding his balance. He gave very specific instructions to Fragonard, stating "Place me in a position where I can observe the legs of that charming girl."


Not only can the Baron see the woman’s shapely legs, his gaze is fixed onto what he can see between her soft, plump thighs and that makes the image highly arousing. The viewer knows that the woman is deliberately exposing her fat, moist genitalia to her lover.


His mistress flies through the air on a sylvan swing, the lovely young woman giving herself away to frivolous abandon, her shoe flying off in the heat of the moment.


In the background of the composition one can see what was originally going to be the Bishop, requested by the Baron, but which was changed to the mistress's husband by Fragonard. The husband plays a lesser role, being immersed in shadow while the Baron is illuminated under the woman’s dress.


The inanimate objects add to the narrative. Two cherubs below the swing appear concerned by the sordid actions of the humans above them, one looking up at the women in trepidation and the other looking away from the action with a scowl. On the left side of the image is a stone statue of Cupid who raises a finger to his lips to point out the secretive nature of the impending affair.


The Swing, rich with symbolism, not only manages to capture a moment of complete spontaneity and joie de vivre, but also alludes to the illicit affair that may have already been going on, or is about to begin.


The painting draws on fetish to flesh out the narrative. The Baron is a voyeur feasting on the moment of frivolity. Maybe the husband is aroused by his wife’s lewd behaviour and enjoying her exposing herself to another man, or maybe the husband, exerting himself pushing the weight of his bride on the swing does not have a clue about what is really going on; secrecy that idea is a fetish too. The secret is part of the erotic journey.


The woman herself is an exhibitionist enjoying being the focus of male appreciation. And we are voyeurs too spying on their moment of titivation.


The young woman is the main focus of the painting, delicious in her froth of pink silk, poised mid-air tantalizingly beyond the reach of both her elderly husband and her excited young lover.


The woman’s slipper, which flies off her foot as she swings so easily, is another playful touch which helps accentuate the erotic subject matter, as well as providing a visual focus in the splash of sunlight.


One of Fragonard's first teachers, Francois Boucher seems to have made an impression on the young painter; this can be seen this erotic confection.


Boucher specialized in the combination of the pastoral scene with a passionate sensibility. While originally commissioned to paint mythological scenes, Fragonard had a knack for turning them into boudoir scenes in the open air and this provocative sensibility is reflected in The Swing.


Always a fan of the Dutch Masters, the inspiration that Rubens provides is clear in this portrait with its attention to detail, loose fluid brushwork, and the uncaring attitude to the convention of the narrative.


In addition, the Dutch of this time period were notorious for their inclusion of small symbolic items, which appear in The Swing in the case of the embracing putti and Cupid with his finger over his lips, to symbolize the secrecy of the affair. These are all reminiscent of earlier works by Rubens.


Fragonard painted The Swing with the intention of flattering the Baron and his mistress, to supply them with a lighthearted, frivolous painting and to provide an intimate memento of their relationship. To this end, he utilized only the finest of the Rococo techniques.

The Swing is composed in a triangular shape, with the Baron and the husband forming the base of the pyramid, and the woman in the air at the top of the triangle, in the center of the space.


She is illuminated by the soft lighting coming from above, and the fanciful trees form an oval frame for the action in the center.

Fragonard includes a number of hidden details within the composition to heighten the message of playful love, including two putti embracing, a stone lap dog and dolphin, and a stone statue of Cupid.


Considered to be Fragonard's most successful painting, the Swing stands alone today as an emblem of Rococo art. The combination of insouciant attitude, naughty eroticism, faded pastel swirls and pastoral scenery creates an irresistible testament to the beauty of youth and illegitimate affairs. In prerevolutionary France adultery is but a playful contrivance to pass the time.


There are a number of copies of the Swing – none by Fragonard. You can see The Swing in the Wallace collection which is conveniently located in Central London, just a few minutes walk from Oxford Street, Baker Street and Marylebone Village.


This blog post has been put together using sources from the web.

LOLITA: STILL QUIETLY BRILLIANT

I’ve read Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” a few times. I read it again quite recently. It’s still as disturbingly, quietly brilliant as ever. It will always be disturbing, it will always leave the reader shaken; it is meant to. But more than anything, it is a brave book. Nabokov doesn’t just tip-toe around this huge, very difficult subject. He hits you with it hard.


Paedophilia. It’s a word to make you shudder. What can you say about it, other than it is the horror of a nightmare?


Nabokov isn’t defending paedophilia and he’s not attempting to explain it. Through his unreliable narrator, Humbert Humbert, he explores the nature of the predatory, salacious psyche, and shows paedophilia up for the totally selfishly, depravity fuelled lifestyle that it is.


Some books, it has been seen, as with “Lady Chatterley’ Lover” public taste has finally embraced Indeed, it is now hard to believe that Penguin books were actually put on trial for publishing it. “Ulysses” was also considered depraved. People don’t think that way now. Yes, times change, we grow up, we mature. But public taste will never embrace “Lolita,” it will always be read with a shudder.


. "Oh, no, not again. Please, leave me alone, will you."


Lolita cries, as she sees Humbert sobbing lustfully, because he wants to fuck her, yet again. And this is a novel about a grown man fucking a twelve year old girl, let’s not be shy.


Humbert fucks Lolita relentlessly.


Humbert insists that he is not a monster. True, he may not look like one. I have the image of a tall, dark, intellectual. Distinguished; he’s an academic, a bit of a bumbler. A debonair European; Lolita’s mother, who is also Humbert’s landlady, falls for him and they marry. When she dies, Humbert, who is now Lolita’s stepfather, also has total control over her. It all worked out so well for him, didn’t it?


But Humbert Humbert is a monster. Although he is our narrator, he tells things only from his point of view. He dissembles and Nabokov makes it clear to the reader that in his planned seduction of Lolita, this is a pervert planning to fulfil his lascivious desires.


"So let us get started. I have a difficult job before me." Humbert addresses the reader.

He describes the process.


“She was musical and apple-sweet. Her legs twitched a little as they lay across my live lap; I stroked them; there she lolled on in the right-hand corner, almost asprawl, Lola, the bobbysoxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice, losing her slipper, rubbing the heel of her slipperless foot in its sloppy anklet, against the pile of old magazines heaped on my left on the sofa—and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty—between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock …”


Nabokov guides the reader. No matter how much Humbert dresses it up, what he wants to do is ejaculate without Lolita knowing. Humbert shields himself from how repulsively he has acted.

“Her teeth rested on her glistening underlip as she half-turned away, and my moaning mouth, gentlemen of the jury, almost reached her bare neck, while I crushed out against her left buttock the last throb of the longest ecstasy man or monster had ever known.”


“With the deep hot sweetness thus established and well on its way to its ultimate convulsion I felt I could slow down in order to prolong the glow. …”


But the most perverse, shocking scene occurs later in the book. Humbert shows no contrition, just plain evil, salaciousness when he is confronted by Lolita’s school teacher. The teacher tells him that Lolita is; "antagonistic, dissatisfied, cagey" and "obsessed with sexual thoughts for which she finds no outlet."

Nabokov is using the schoolteacher as a mouthpiece to show the damage done to Lolita. Humbert sneers inwardly and goes to find Lolita at study. Here is the
passage. Humbert Humbert finds her:


“with a sepia print of Reynolds' 'The Age of Innocence' above the chalkboard, and several rows of clumsy-looking pupil desks. At one of these, my Lolita was reading … and there was another girl with a very naked, porcelain-white neck and wonderful platinum hair, who sat in front reading too, absolutely lost to the world and interminably winding a soft curl around one finger, and I sat beside Dolly [Lolita] just behind that neck and that hair, and unbuttoned my overcoat and for sixty-five cents plus the permission to participate in the school play, had Dolly put her inky, chalky, red-knuckled hand under the desk. Oh, stupid and reckless of me, no doubt, but after the torture I had been subjected to, I simply had to take advantage of a combination that I knew would never occur again.”


“Lolita” is a shocking book; it is also brilliant in Nabokov’s delineation of character, both of Humbert and Lolita. It is about 55 years since “Lolita” was published. But I’m glad that it was published. The book was rejected by five American publishers, who feared they'd be prosecuted on obscenity charges. It was first published in France by Olympia Press, which put out some serious books — and lots of pornography.


Nabokov didn't know that — he was just relieved that someone agreed to publish his book. And so Lolita was published in a plain green cover, in Paris, on Sept. 15, 1955. It was published in America three years later and was an immediate success.


A while ago I watched a television programme about paedophiles. They dragged out the usual brigade of psychologists, psychiatrists and criminologists. And a collection of paedophiles. They asked the usual questions: Can paedophilia be cured? Does one choose to be a paedophile? And they didn’t really come up with any answers. They interviewed a few self-confessed paedophiles, their responses were quite sickening.


But for one man. This guy knew that he was a paedophile, always had been, always would be.

But he chose not to act on it. I was impressed.

(My own ideas and sources from the Web have been used compiling this blog post.)

Previous comments.

Descartes29 April 2014 at 09:59

I've always found Lotita to be a brilliantly written book and one with many layers. True Humbert lies, but he leaves it up to us to decide which part is the lie and which is the truth. The idea that a twelve year old girl is a temptress is interesting and certainly young girls that dress like Katie Perry and Lady Gaga out there today seem to be overly sexualized. And aren't women always blamed? Watch Philomena and note how many fathers are punished for parenting children.

One of the things The Anti Saloon League of America did while they were fighting for Prohibition was to get the Age of Consent changed from 10 to 16, it was still 14 in many places in 1920. So think of Humbert, who is 42 when Lolita is 12 in 1955, a mere thirty years after a change to practices that were common the world over. This, of course, was one of many reasons so many 'women' died in childbirth, they were but children themselves.

Lolita is an amazing book and a disturbing one. I especially like the opening:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

Carol Hedges 25 May 2014 at 07:55

Sadly, I think, however much the narrative is dressed up as ''literature''' it boils down to a titillating and corrupt story aimed to shock its readers, but also to excite and plant thoughts in the minds of some.
Nabokov was quite well aware of what he was creating, if not, why should he write it in the first place. As a writer, one invests time and emotional energy in one's characters. He carefully steers and controls the reader through the narrative. He may not ''approve'' of his protagonist (who could?) but the mere act of creation suggests, surely, approval on some level.
You write well on the subject, and analyze the essence of the book's purpose, drawing in wider areas to discuss and throw light on the book.
However, for anybody who has a daughter, or who has worked with children damaged by predatory adults, as I have, the core theme of the book is still dangerous and depraved.
Lolita broke the ground and opened the door for other narratives,maybe not so well written, but dealing on a variety of salacious levels with the same topic. As such, I cannot condone it.
Publication gives it validation. You invited me to comment. This is my comment. I have no doubt I shall now be shot down in flames by many who see me as a ''prude'' and a ''Puritan''. Tough....
Like all such books, the cry ''it is a brave book'' does not fly. Writers have a moral responsibility for how they use words and an obligation not to use them for evil purposes.
I remember reading the book in my teens and being deeply shocked. It changed my perception of the adult world as a ''safe ' place and made me reassess both myself as an emerging sexual being, and the male authority figures around me.
A little gold flaked off my innocence. Thanks Vladimir.

Jean Roberta 28 May 2014 at 14:16

This raises the question of whether literary skill can give value to a work of fiction
that deals with shocking desires and activities. Some say there is no justification for "legitimizing" actions that cause long-term harm, while others say there should be no limits on what can be written about. I've thought a lot about censorship, and have had some first-hand experience with the decisions of censor boards, and my conclusion is that outlawing a thing (book, film, statue, painting, whatever) that already exists is doomed to fail. The publishers who refused to publish Lolita had every right to their decision, but once it was published, legally banning it would have turned it into hot contraband -- much like heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, etc., which flow across borders regardless of massive efforts to stop the dope trade. Discussing a book is different from trying to make it go away, and I think it makes a lot of sense to keep pointing out Humbert's selfishness, his pathological refusal or inability to imagine how his actions affect Lolita, and his unattractiveness as a role model. As far as I can see, a well-written book is a well-written book, but disturbing content is disturbing content -- these two aspects of the same novel don't cancel each other out.
Those in the caring professions who deal first-hand with the results of child sexual abuse can oppose defenders of men like Humbert every time they pop up in public places, including cyberspace. (Yes, I know this is exhausting. That's why many voices are needed!) I've been amazed at how often I have to explain to university students in an English class that: sexual assault or coercion or manipulation, by definition, is caused by the perpetrators. No one "causes" any of these things by being attractive, or "too innocent." (!) It seems as if each generation of young adults needs to hear this message all over again.

SWINGERS! GEORGE PAPPAS

I am so pleased and yes, honoured that George Pappas comes to my blog this week to talk about the Swinging life style and his great novels, “Monogamy Sucks” and “Dear Hef”!

Monogamy sucks for me and I think for a lot of other people too. Every time you turn around there’s another celebrity or politician cheating scandal. I believe this is a microcosm for what is happening in our larger society. I mean studies say there is a 50 percent chance someone will cheat during a marriage and of course we know that 50 percent of marriages fail in this country. So all is not well with monogamy and relationship contrary to popular belief, which is what I explore in my novel Monogamy Sucks.

I don’t think people are realistic about monogamy and its potential limits. I personally don’t think monogamy is natural. It is something that is imposed and encouraged by society and tradition, but it doesn’t work for a lot of us in this modern world so ripe with temptations. So people stray and cheat, and the whole notion of monogamy begins to appear hypocritical.

Open relationships and swinging are not for everyone. You have to keep an open mind and can’t be judgmental. But swinging is much better than cheating. Swingers don’t have to lie about their desires for others. All I ask with my book is for people to consider alternatives, keep an open mind and not judge others.

Swingers are not freaks - -- they come from all walks of life. You probably know a swinger right now and don’t know it.

Swingers fall in love, have families, own houses with picket fences, work day jobs, go on vacations and live the mainstream life except in their bedrooms and sex lives.

This book all started with my own monogamy crisis. When I was in my mid- thirties, I grew dissatisfied with monogamy and conventional relationships. It led me on an interesting journey into the swinging lifestyle. I wanted to write honestly about my experiences and to dispel a lot myths about swinging and swingers in the media, TV and movies. I essentially learned that swingers are like everyone else except in the area of their sex lives.

I started writing my novel Monogamy Sucks in March 1998, however, because of my fears and doubts that anyone would be interested in my story, I kept my novel in my computer for more than 12 years as I worked on many drafts. Early in 2009, I read an article on the Huffington Post about how a number of bestselling books started out first as blogs. So I decided to launch my novel on a blog one chapter a time in May 2010. Several months later, digital publisher Lazy Day Publishing offered me a book deal. I seriously doubt if that would have happened if I hadn’t put my novel out in the blogosphere and tweeted about it on Twitter. I believe Twitter is an essential tool in promoting my book and novels in general as is Facebook, blogs and the Internet overall.

I call my book real life erotica or reality fiction. I hold nothing back. It is like Tucker Max meets Sex and the City -- an unflinching look into the male sexual mind.

My book is frank, funny and shocking at times but above all -- it is painfully honest.

My novel -- really all my novels -- give women intriguing insight into how some men -- more than would admit it -- really think about sex, monogamy and relationships.

I have also has started a sequel to “Monogamy Sucks,” and I am eventually is looking to turn Jake Dalmas’ erotic adventures into a trilogy of books.

The story is told in the form of a fictional diary by my book’s protagonist Jake Dalmas, who is looking for answers to deal with his growing disillusionment with conventional relationships and monogamy.

A few years later, I realized that these sexy, bizarre, funny and even at times inspirational experiences would make an interesting novel.

I knew nothing about the swinging lifestyle before my own personal journey. I was going on myths and misconceptions about this hidden world that still persist today. So I had to research everything about swinging for this novel. To just write about it without participating seems patently dishonest to me and would only perpetuate the myths about swingers that are already out there.

The story is loosely based on my experiences in the swing world, and the stories of others I met along the way, but I want to stress that this is a work of fiction and it’s not non-fiction, a memoir or autobiographical.

I see Jake’s journey as one that has largely gone untold in fiction. There are a lot of books out there honestly documenting the female point of view when it comes to sex and relationships, which I think it a great thing, but there are too few novels detailing the male view on the subject. Furthermore, swinging has not been adequately explored in fiction as it no doubt should be. Contrary to popular perception, there is a lot more interest in swinging among the general public than people might think. Just look at the explosion of porn on the Internet and sex and swinging Web sites.

This is a great time to be a writer. Finally, authors are finding that they have many avenues to pursue their dreams of being a novelist.
Readers and my fellow writers and critics have started to embrace my book and my character’s journey which is reflected in the growing number of impressive reviews on my Amazon page and on the Internet.

As with the rest of the entertainment industry, the Internet will completely transform the publishing business in the coming years. Writers should embrace the immediacy of the Internet as a beneficial means to expose their work and develop their own audiences rather than wait around to be discovered by an agent or publisher. That’s the future of publishing – do it yourself -- whether the publishing industry wants to acknowledge it or not.

The next best selling writer or literary star more than likely will be found on the Internet and not in the usual places such as writer workshops or universities.

Look at Amanda Hocking. She was discovered through her blog and now has prosperous writing career. Stories like hers have been an inspiration for many of us writers.

I have also has started a sequel to “Monogamy Sucks,” and I am eventually looking to turn Jake Dalmas’ erotic adventures into a trilogy of books.

In my most recent novel entitled DEAR HEF released in September, the dark side of Internet hook ups meets Hugh Hefner and Playboy cool. It is also funny, sexy and explicit in detailing my character’s online adventures and how he e-mails Hef the details (or what he calls his "Playboy Training") as a clueless fan.
I’ve also been invited to write a story for an erotica anthology coming out in October on Lazy Day Publishing entitled "Indulgence." It will have some paranormal elements which will be new territory for me.

In an interview with “The Next Big Thing”, George Pappas was asked what other writers does he compare to within the Erotica genre?

George talks enthusiastically about Charles Bukowki’s “Women,” Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer,” Anais Nin’s “Henry and June,” to name a few.

“Each of them bravely and uniquely explored controversial sexual and societal issues in a frank, unsentimental manner exposing truth and hypocrisy alike. I treasure novels that truly take me on a journey and challenge my preconceptions about life.”

George was then asked about the inspirational writers; writers who had influenced him to write MONOGAMY SUCKS.
“The two most influential books on me as a writer are Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” and Anais Nin’s “Henry and June.” Miller’s and Nin’s eagerness to explore erotic subjects in a serious way that were considered taboo at the time (1930s and 1940s) has always impressed me. Miller’s frank and brutal honest prose and Nin’s sensual, erotic and insightful diaries and description of her own sexual awakening have impacted my own writing. I say this humbly, but I view my novels “Monogamy Sucks” and “Dear Hef” as my attempts to write modern versions of Miller’s and Nin’s seminal novels.

“I wanted to write honest books about swinging, monogamy, sex, Internet sex, but leave in all the troubling, shocking and funny encounters most other erotica books leave out. Despite its explicit content, I don’t consider what I write erotica. I call it real life erotica or reality fiction without the erotic trappings of your typical erotica novel. I want to make you think and laugh not just turn you on.

An interesting and intriguing essay from George I think you’ll agree. I don’t believe that the mainstream and its conventions take kindly to criticism. It isn’t at all surprising. We’re talking about a hegemony that has propped up the status quo for centuries. Open any book on English critical theory, or the social sciences and you’ll find chapters devoted to hegemony. One definition of hegemony talks about the concept of Imperialism. But hegemony is also about the construct of society; basically how we organise ourselves; how we run things. We are protective about our social order; in terms of monogamy – one man, one woman for life, but as George Pappas so succinctly puts it, “monogamy sucks.” It does for him, and for a lot of other people too. Monogamy has certainly sucked for me and I’ve had to find my own way around its suffocating conventions. Monogamy is there because it always has been, because that’s the way it is. Okay, monogamy is there for good reasons; financial security, emotional security, love, but it increasingly appears that monogamy is not for everyone.

All that George Pappas is asking through his books, is that we consider that there might be another way, and the statistics that he cites in the first paragraph of his essay for failing relationships are persuasive. His books convey a personal politics that is frightening for the mainstream.

“…but right now I have no illusions about the prospects of my books in the mainstream...
as an author, poet, etc...I scare people in the mainstream it seems...”


The message in George Pappas’ books is revolutionary and in some ways shocking, but I think that his quest rings of integrity and wholeness. Dark forbidden desires…that’s what we are talking about – isn’t it? And as writers and readers of Erotica we delve into the darker side of desire every time we open a book or open our word processor. All swingers do is to act on those desires.


And George is in esteemed company. DH Lawrence first published Lady Chatterly’s Lover in Italy in 1928. It was 1960 before an unexpurgated version could be read here in England after a famous court case where the Crown accused Penguin Books of peddling pornography.

James Joyce, probably one on the most influential writers of the 20th century, famously said that public reception of his work made him feel like an exile in his own country.

And my own writer friend, Jan Vander Laenen is clearly irritated by the way his work is viewed in his own city, Brussels.

“About the Flemings and the gays here, they treat me as if I don't exist anymore although many people begin to recognize me in the streets. Maybe they read me in private and loathe me in public. The literary agent here was afraid of the consequences taking me as a client, the politicians are afraid to help me, and a lot of gays don’t simply accept that I also describe the darker side of the gay world."


I’ll let George have the final word.

“I hope readers will take a chance and read my provocative novel Monogamy Sucks, or Dear Hef and won’t be put off by the controversial content. They really are like no other novels they will have read. However, my books have some relevant and interesting things to say about sex, relationships and monogamy, and is an intriguing exploration of the male sexual mind. I think my novels appeals to both sexes, but it really seems to have struck a chord among women, which was unexpected. Yes, my books are explicit, but I believe the themes are more universal than one might think.”




Monogamy Sucks is available at Amazon UK

and at Amazon US



Dear Hef is also at Amazon UK



and at Amazon US

Both books are at Lazy Day Publishing

You can also visit George’s Author page at Amazon.