FFB: Body Charge - Hunter Davies

Franko Baxter is sort of lost in life. Drifting in and out of a humdrum life as a cab driver with no real friends, living with his Gran with whom he ends each night with a ritual cup of cocoa, he finds no real joy in life except when work is done and he can head off to play football with young men and sometimes teenagers.  Body Charge (1972) is the story of his aimless life, his search for love and friendship and in the end a story of reconciliation of the self.

Franko is hopelessly naive about himself, especially as far as sex goes. We learn prior to his current job in an unlicensed car-for-hire service he was working in a hair salon and lived with an openly gay and sexually ravenous man named Jonathan. Franko hints at a few male on male encounters with Jonathan but we don't learn the real truth of that relationship until the penultimate chapter.  As the story progresses it is clear that though Franko is attracted to women and attempts a few straight relationships what he really craves is male companionship. Sex with anyone doesn't really excite him he confesses, yet he finds himself increasingly fascinated with men, the male physique and what he feels is an astonishing energy required to maintain a life of non-stop hedonism. The novel focuses on four men and the strange friendships they develop with Franko.  There is Zak, a young married man living on the dole whose son says "my Dad's job is looking for a job";  Shug, a rising star athlete in professional football (that's soccer to all you Yanks);  Joff, an arrogant highly sexed BBC TV presenter; and Ginger, a teenage hooligan and would-be skinhead.

1st UK paperback (Sphere, 1974)

When one of these men is found beaten to death in a park known for gay cruising and sexcapades in the bushes Franko becomes one of the prime suspects.  The mystery aspect of the novel is not all that mysterious. It's rather obvious what happened to the poor guy and who is responsible.  But the point of the story is not really about the crime and its solution.  Rather that Franko must have his eyes opened to the truth about the men he thinks are his friends while simultaneously undergoing an epiphany about himself.  The murder investigation forces him to admit to a few secrets in his past as well as mustering up the courage to stand up for the gay men even if he must suffer physical violence in the process.

This is a book with an identity problem of its own. It starts off as a character study, then tries on social satire, then metaphysical navel gazing, then trips into the land of murder mysteries.  The murder mystery is the least successful of the genres Davies attempts but somehow it was difficult to put down. Eventually this quick change storytelling settles down in the last half when Body Charge becomes an intriguing novel of social criticism and Franko finds himself speaking out against cruelty, oppression and violent bigotry.

As an examination of self and sexual identity the novel is a little ahead of its time for the early 1970s and has lot that still resonates for contemporary 21st century life. Long before gender identity and sexual politics became topics of study in college and graduate school Davies was unwittingly writing a sort of primer for gay identity. The novel is also an encapsulation of 1970s life in London in its depictions of football hooligans, skinheads, sex parties, swingers, and gay activism. One of the most unusual and prescient vignettes is found towards the end of the book when a guerrilla theater group protests intolerance for gays and lesbians by staging a mock gay wedding that ends in cheerleading and in-your-face same sex kissing. Most of the observers are appalled and disgusted, but a group of senior citizen ladies give the demonstrators a rousing ovation.

Hunter Davies

Despite his blase naivete Franko is the kind of loser character you want to root for.  You want him to commit to anything and stop dabbling, you want more from him than his slow realizations that seem startling to him but to anyone tuned into real living would find obvious. You want him to find a foothold in Life instead of standing half in his long gone adolescent past and half in the world of grown-ups. He reminds me of characters like Nick Carraway who stand outside of life always observing, rarely participating. These are the kind of characters always in awe of people who grab life by the balls and sink their teeth into experience often devouring people in their hunger for exuberant living. But these observers never have the courage to try to emulate those they admire. Franko has to be forced into his decisions and though he pays dearly at the violent hands of one of his false friends in the final paragraphs there is encouragement and hope for him.

Body Charge has been reprinted by Valancourt Books and their fine reprint edition includes a foreword by Hunter Davies disclosing how the book came to be written and how surprised he was that it still seems timely to him more than 40 years after its original publication. You can read more about Davies and Body Charge at their website here.

FFB: The Fetish Murders - Avon Curry

And now for something completely different....

I've been reading a lot of early transgressive fiction as research for an essay to be included in a book slated for 2016. This has led me into a strange and fascinating world of crime novels with plots that touch on formerly taboo topics mostly to do with sexual preference and unusual sexual practices. So when I fortuitously came across a book called The Fetish Murders (1973), with that cover seen at left, I had to read it. It's not at all transgressive fiction as I thought it might be since it has at its core a respect for morality and normalcy and does not revel in all things rebellious or counterculture. Thankfully, it did not turn into a serial killer novel as the title seems to imply. It's an attempt to present what most people in the 1970s (and I guess quite a few these days, too) would view as a distasteful subject -- erotic fetishism -- in a humanistic compassionate setting. It succeeds to a degree, but it disappoints on a whole other level.

The Fetish Murders begins with a comical scene in which June Hissock, "Carnival Queen of East Ganford", storms into the police station to report being attacked. She is the latest victim of a scissors wielding maniac who has been cutting locks of hair from young blond women. June is incensed; her hairdo is ruined. And the attack occurred just before she was to award some prizes at a school in one of her many beauty queen publicity gigs. Smart aleck journalists have alternately dubbed this hair crazed phantom the Demon Barber and Jack the Snipper. The newspapers also make a lot of allusions to Pope's "Rape of the Lock". It's all tongue in cheek and ridiculing and all a bit wrong. For they have no idea just how dangerous this hair clipping creep will become.

No one has ever seen Jack the Snipper, not even the women whose hair he is collecting. Each young woman has been attacked from the rear, the hair quickly snipped from the nape of the neck and the attacker fleeing before the victim even knows what's been done. Sergeant Pinnett is a bit worried that the attacks seem to be on the rise. He has a daughter who also has blond hair. What if she should be next?

You can guess what follows. Not only is Marjorie Pinnett next on the list she is also fatally stabbed with the scissors in what appears to be an attempt to fight back. And now the Demon Barber is no longer just a creep but a murderer.

This is very bad news for reporter Peter Stack. He had just written an informative news feature on fetishism in which, quoting expert advice of psychoanalyst Dr. Luton-Bailey, he explained the harmlessness of the attacks. The article was to reassure the public and prevent hysteria and vigilantism. He's alarmed by the murder and even moreso when he learns the victim is the daughter of a police officer who he overheard vowing to seek revenge on the Demon Barber. Stack revisits Dr. Luton-Bailey to try to understand why the fetishist suddenly became violent. When the psychologist hears that this particular hair clipping attack happened from the front he comes to the conclusion that the Demon Barber must've been recognized by Marjorie. And in that moment he felt it necessary to kill.

Luton-Bailey is one of the better realized characters. His psychology is modern and sound, even sympathetic, but still a bit too Freudian. I was disappointed that here was yet another instance of a psychological suspense story that dealt with aberrant behavior that must be explained away by an absent father, a domineering mother, and a belittled and abused child who grows up to be a deeply disturbed adult living out "perversions" in order to deal with trauma. No attempt is made to discuss fetishism as a form of eroticism without the taint of mental illness. Not all sexual fetishism is about mommy and daddy issues. There's a lot more involved in the fetish world that Avon Curry didn't seem to want to explore.

Bringing us to the writer. That name is an obvious pseudonym and by page 20 I was sure that the androgynous sounding Avon Curry was probably a woman writer. The way that Marjorie and her friend Nancy are depicted, the detailed talk of women's clothes and hairstyling, the sensitive nature of so many of the male characters -- this seemed not to be a male writer at all. And I was right. After consulting The Dictionary of Pseudonyms I learned that Avon Curry was one of several pen names used by the prolific writer Jean Bowden.

Jean Bowden, retired at age 90

There is a lot about Bowden online these days after she formally announced at a 2009 SWWJ conference she was retiring from professional writing. She had a varied career beginning as an editorial assistant for a variety of British paperback houses including Panther and Four Square, moved on to become assistant fiction editor at Women's Own, and ended as editorial consultant for Mills & Boon. She has been credited with discovering Catherine Cookson and a few other bestselling writers. Concurrent with those publishing positions from 1958 to 2009 she used seven different pseudonyms to write over fifty novels consisting of romance, historical fiction, family sagas, crime and detective fiction and tie-in novels for the UK TV series The Brothers and Emmerdale. Her most recent incarnation as novelist is "Tessa Barclay". Using this name she wrote a series of crime/adventure thrillers featuring a series character, the ex-Crown Prince Gregory of Hirtenstein.

The Fetish Murders begins as a crime novel and slowly evolves into a psychosexual mystery but is never a true detective novel. Early in the novel Bowden reveals the identity of the killer and the existence of his mysterious girl friend Angela Good. The book alternates between Peter Stack's sleuthing -- both as a quasi psychological profiler with Luton-Bailey's assistance and a physical evidence gathering detective -- and the tortured behavior of Dennis Justinson determined along with Angela's help to shift the blame to an imaginary mad killer. There is one final twist Bowden adds towards the end of the book that is no real surprise to a modern crime fiction reader and sadly so ineptly handled that it fairly ruins the book. When the end comes it is violent as expected, tragic, a bit pathetic but wholly contrary to how the author led us to believe she felt about her antagonist. When Peter Stack calls Dennis "that thing" I was not just disappointed, I was pissed off.

*   *   *

Reading Challenge update: Silver Age card R5 -"Author who uses a pseudonym"

FFB: The Brotherhood of Velvet - David Karp

Psst, over here.  Ever hear of the Bechtel Corporation? They've got their hand in everything, you know. How about Opus Dei? Evil Catholics trying to control the world just like Bechtel. Halliburton was behind 9/11. And the Illuminati are everywhere, of course. Conspiracy theorists will tell you all that and a whole lot more if you lend them your ear for an hour or two.  Jim Watterson tells you a similar horror story about a secret society bent on world domination in The Brotherhood of Velvet (1952), David Karp's finely crafted noir nightmare. The group bent on destroying Jim is The Brotherhood of the Bell, a fraternal order he joined back in his prep school days. They have been shaping and controlling his life for the better until poor Ted Appleton keeps making desperate phone calls and Watterston makes the mistake of seeing him in person.

"If you have any of God's mercy, you'll help me, Watterson. Please, please" are a few of the lucid words Ted Appleton manages to get out between hysterical sobbing and cryptic comments about "those bastards" who have somehow managed to get Appleton fired from his job, kill his wife, and ruin his son's future army career just as he is about to graduate from West Point. It's all the work of the Brotherhood. He pleads with Watterson who listens and is both embarrassed and curious, but reluctant to help this man who seems on the brink of a nervous breakdown.  Watterson eventually refuses to help Appleton and a few days later Ted blows out his brains on a park bench.

UK paperback published
under Karp's pseudonym

Then the Brotherhood contact Jim personally.  They want him to get his best friend Clark to resign from his job in the Secretary of State's office where Jim also has a high level position. As a nudge to help Jim engineer the resignation they provide some documents which reveal Clark had indulged in some gay sex practices when he was a teenager.  To Jim's mind this is the worst possible and entirely damning secret to any man's reputation, one that will haunt and ruin him for life.

He follows the Brotherhood's instructions but soon regrets what he has done. Now trapped, and a victim of a plot to destroy his own life, Jim finds his only hope is to expose the Brotherhood and their far reaching and sinister power. But who will believe him? 

Such is the mindset of the "homosexual panic" novels of this era. The title alone was slapped on this book by Lion Books in an attempt to appeal to the salacious reading tastes of the "sleaze" market that churned out gay and lesbian books of dubious merit as cheap thrills. Most of those books are utter junk. This one, however, is not. In fact the gay interest in the book is only incidental. Still Karp uses the increasing overt gay and other "deviant" sexual behavior as an insidious sign of the degradation and moral bankruptcy of 1950s America in an effort to underscore the paranoia Jim experiences.

Sexual deviation was the one thing that no one ever quite forgot. Notorious lechers were still box office idols, reformed drug addicts found their way into civilized company and the American theatre, ex-jailbirds were mayors, and congressmen, panderers and thugs were accepted into American business, and bigamists, usurers, adulterers and murderers were as common and numerous as the household fly -- but publicly exposed homosexuals run a particularly hot and long gauntlet. The sin of adolescent hands and flesh and touch in a wooded darkness of summer lasted a long, long time, bayed wildly and loudly by the wolves of our land.

Karp makes sure we know that Jim is a sexual man with a terrific appetite for his wife Vivian, one of those characters who displays her sexuality freely and wildly often appearing in scenes wearing little but underwear or a loosely open dressing gown. Her body is on constant display when she's onstage. We need to know Jim is involved in a healthy straight marriage with a woman he desires, a job that allows them to live a comfortably rich life before we see him begin his fall at the hands of the Brotherhood. But no sooner has the Brotherhood sent him on his dreadful errand to ruin his friend's life then he begins to succumb to corruption and secret desires himself.  He finds himself sexually attracted to Clark's wife, he refuses the advances of Vivian who then further insults him by making insinuations about his close friendship with Clark calling him "your dear, dear friend."  All sorts of seeds are planted in the reader's mind as we read of Jim's own words (he narrates the story) so that we are often questioning his perceptions and sanity.

The book is relentless and bitter in its depiction of a corrupt world.  Bribery, indulgent sex, heavy drinking, and deceit are on every page.  Jim falls deeply into a mire of sarcastic cynicism. He finds his only solace in bars where strangers become his friends.  Plays the role of a cheap flirt with a cocktail waitress and is embarrassed by what he has become. All due to the machinations of the Brotherhood of the Bell. But is the Brotherhood real at all?  There is an ambiguous aura hovering over the book as is the case with most novels that deal with conspiracy theories. Is it truly a plot or has Jim lost his mind and imagined it all as a result of paranoid schizophrenia?

Dean Jagger & Glenn Ford in the
1970 TV movie adaptation

It's odd to me that Lion Books chose to play up the gay element of the book in a tawdry marketing ploy. It taints the book and has unjustly placed it among other lesser books with which it has little in common. Karp is an intelligent writer. He has trenchant insights and a sharp prose style. This is a noirish thriller that is also great writing, a literate novel as Lion calls it on the rear cover of my copy.  It's not sleaze at all.

I urge you to find a copy in one of its many incarnations. It's been reprinted several times in paperback both in the US and the UK.  Read it or else! The Brotherhood is watching and they will know if you don't follow these instructions.

FFB: A Jade in Aries - Tucker Coe

Today Patti Abbot, our host for Friday's Forgotten books, has arranged for a tribute to Donald E. Westlake (and all his various pseudonymous incarnations).  Be sure to visit her blog and click away to your heart's content traveling throughout the blogosphere to read reviews on the wide variety of books this Grand Master wrote. He did it all - tough crime novels, private eye novels, erotica, crime capers, satire, and screenplays. I chose one (well actually two ) of his books he wrote as Tucker Coe, a decidedly different voice from tough guy Richard Stark or the loony comic capers he wrote under his own name.

Mitch Tobin is the series character in the Coe books.  Tobin was forced to resign in shame when in the course of pursuing a daytime adulterous affair he was responsible for the death of his partner who was shot in the line of duty. Tobin was not there to protect him. He's now a bitter and broken man. He spends his days in a sort of occupational therapy building a wall in his backyard. Later in the series when the weather turns bad he puts the wall on hold and instead retreats to the darkness of his cellar where he begins a new project by digging a sub-basement. Tobin is trying to heal. His wife and son are lost to him and long for him to return to them as husband and father. Soon he finds himself in unusual side jobs from people in need who ask him to use his police skills in making their own broken lives whole again.

His first outing is in Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death in which he is hired by a mob head to find out who killed his mistress and made off with $80,000 of his money. It's where we first learn that Tobin is utterly conflicted - he knows he needs to start re-entering the world, learn how to interact with people especially his family but he feels that he is a toxic influence on everyone. He doesn't want anyone else to die from his neglect. Eventually he gives in when his wife cajoles him plus he recognizes that the fee he will receive is $5000 that they could really use. The first book is more than just Tobin's search for a killer and recovery of stolen money it's a journey into his own psyche and how the messed up lives of other people reflect his own inner turmoil. The entire series is a study in a broken man's recovery of his true self. And in order to become whole again he will have to enter the world of misfits, outcasts, and the reviled. He takes on cases involving the hippie scene (Murder Among Children), the mentally ill (Wax Apple), and in the book reviewed here the gay subculture of New York.

In A Jade in Aries (1970), the fourth book in the series, Mitch helps Ronald Cornell find the killer of his lover and business partner Jamie Dearborn. Cornell tells Mitch that the police are trying to pass off his lover's brutal beating death as just another case of a bar pick-up gone wrong. But when Cornell is found in the alley behind his men's clothing boutique having survived a fall from the building's roof Mitch is sure that someone is trying cover up the beating by making it look like Cornell attempted suicide over the loss of his partner. As in the first book sexual attraction, love relationships, and cheating partners are the primary focus of the story. Only in this book all the involved parties are gay men.

I have to admit that I expected this book to be similar to other crime novels about gay men that were written in the 1970s - populated with limp wristed, lisping queens in flower print shirts and leather clad, hypermasculine studs with pumped up bodies.  I was prepared to thoroughly despise the book. But though Mitch and a couple of other bigoted characters do like to throw around the "F" slur a lot the book floored me with its accurate, often complex, human portrayals of the gay men I knew while growing up in the 1970s. These gay men are a mix of the vain and the shy, the self-loathing and the out and proud, the butch and the queens, white guys and men of color. They're all here in all the vibrant color of a Rainbow flag as well as the darker colors of carnal desire and shame.

It's not so much the mystery of who killed Jamie Dearborn (a sexual tease and philandering bedroom thrillseeker much like Rita Castle was in Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death) or who pushed his surprisingly conservative, almost square lover Ronald Cornell off the roof that captures the reader's attention here as much as it is Mitch Tobin's slow realization that he may have an awful lot in common with all these faggots (as he first calls them) under suspicion of murder. Westlake displays a quiet compassion and insight into the troubled lives of these gay men. Mitch may not be thrilled having to deal with the strangely emotional, all male world but he has some pointed observations and confessions as the story unfolds. At a scene at a gay party where he walks up a stairwell and over two men into a heavy make-out session Mitch finds that he just sees two people kissing and doesn't think twice about literally stepping over them. Only later does it dawn on him that they were two men and he wasn't sickened by the sight. Earlier in the book Mitch fears his lack of paternal attachment and emotional distancing from his son may "turn" his son gay. A dated and guilt ridden belief to be sure, but a telling one showing that Mitch's interactions with these men are having an effect on him personally and psychologically.

For me the most significant aspect of this story is Mitch's unconscious analogy of the love and intimacy in a gay male relationship with the non-sexual intimacy in a cop's relationship with his partner.

I thought about Jock. I thought about him a lot, conversations we'd had, days of our partnership when specific things had happened. There was nothing homosexual between us, but there are other kinds of closeness than (sic) can become meaningful and real, and we had one of them.

He goes on to draw analogies between the other men and Jock and sees connections to his own life.  He also sees how after having been with these emotionally frank men that he has been able to open up more, to rejoin humanity, to forgive himself and stop living in guilt and shame. It's a powerful section of the book and the real highlight, the true climax of the plot.

My only quibble and the only things that rings false is that not once do any of the men refer to themselves as "gay." Only the words "homosexual" and "faggot," and twice "queer" are used to describe them. While most of the labelling is done by the straight men in the book, two of the gay characters refer to themselves as homosexuals. And it wasn't done archly or sarcastically. That bothered me. It wasn't real at all. Even in 1970 the word gay was being used regularly - both self-referentially and disparagingly. In an old 1970s issue of Kirkus Reviews the writer called the men in A Jade in Aries "Gay Liberationists." A euphemism or a political statement? I'm not sure. But the fact that the reviewer eschewed the clinical and derogatory term homosexual cannot be overlooked. If only Westlake could've seen that and dared to use the word gay -- at least when one of the gayest characters was talking about himself -- then this would truly be a perfect crime novel about gay men in the 1970s. Still and all it's probably one of the best. It sure beats the hell out of something truly dreadful like The Last Woman in His Life by Ellery Queen and some ghostwriter. Don't get me started on that broken record.

FFB: The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (1991) by Tom Spanbauer

"It was the human-being hand reaching out the touch that feels so good you hurt for all the times you never felt it."

The rainbow flags have been unfurled and are flapping madly in the Windy City. There's a heavy smell of tanning oil and hair gel in the air, too many lean muscled men are wearing tank tops, I hear an increase in Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson and Scissor Sisters music around the old 'hood. It can only mean one thing - the Gay Pride Parade is a-coming to Boys' Town. As my nod to our annual summer bacchanalia in the streets of Chicago's north side I have chosen a book that has absolutely nothing to do with crime or the supernatural. In fact, if I had to slap a label on it I would call it my favorite western.  But I'm not gonna slap nothin' on The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon. (Yeah, yeah a double negative = a positive. Tough. I'm adopting a character voice for this piece. Live with it.)  It's a book that defies categories and labels even if it features cowboys and Indians and prostitutes and man-on-man action in the old American west.

I will never do this book justice if I start in on a plot synopsis. It's too dense. Too rich. It's loaded with wisdom and humor and suffering and pain.  All the good stuff in Life.  Oh yeah, and there's a whole lot of sex talk and sex scenes. And of course a mess of raunchy words,  crude references to the male and female anatomy,every four letter word you can think of and couple with a lot more than four letters. If that's a big turn-off then I feel something awful sorry for you. You're just gonna miss out on something truly different. Plus you will never learn the secret of Moves Moves. (I'm not giving it away here. Read the book.)

I could go all analogy crazy like I usually do and come up with nutty stuff like this is The Adventures of Augie March reinterpreted by Karl May (if Karl May were gay). Or imagine Deadwood if it had been written by Armistead Maupin. Or how about the first pansexual Bildungsroman set in the wild west? But I won't. And yet I did. But it was the part of me that's not me that did it. So that's all right. Let's talk about that concept of me and not me that is so eloquently put forth in the telling of this tale.

The story is told through the eyes of Out-In-The-Shed, a young half tybo (that's white to all you non-Indians), half Shoshone or half Bannock or half something. He really can't remember. He's stuck in two worlds and so are most of the people he meets. Forget that most of the people who are taking care of him and educating him about Life are white people. They aren't tybo at all. Just like Shed is not Indian and not tybo, but something in between. He refers to "the part of me I like to call the part not me" throughout the book. In every coming of age story there is the struggle with identity.  Shed has more than his fair share of those troubles.

He is taken in by Ida Richilieu who runs the whorehouse in the old Indian Head Hotel and she puts him to work immediately. Shed is a berdache and he's kind of a specialty of the house. He only takes on male clients who like a little taste of the exotic. Dellwood Barker is one of those clients.

Dellwood tells Shed that berdache is also an Indian word (Bannock or Shoshone or something else, maybe) for "holy man." He's kind of Shed's tutor in Life teaching him a whole lot of interesting words and how to spell them and a whole lot about sex and telling stories. He's a philosopher. But let him speak for himself:

Smoke and wind and fire are all things you can feel but can't touch. Memories and dreams are like that too. They're what this world is made up of. There's really only a very short time that we get hair and teeth and put on red cloth and have bones and skin and look out eyes. Not for long. Some folks longer than others. If you're lucky, you'll get to be the one who tells the story: how the eyes have seen, the hair has blown, the caress the skin has felt, how the bones have ached. What the human heart is like. How the devil called and we did not answer. How we answered.

Tom Spanbauer (photo by Jerry Bauer ©1991)

This is a book that is practically screaming, "Read me aloud!" Every sentence is a kind of microcosm. Shed's voice is so authentic, so original that the words want to be given true voice. What difference whose voice? Your voice is just as good as his. The words are the key. And since I can't read all my favorite passages to you via this blog I'll do the next best thing. You read them aloud yourself.

That's how the devil is: how he is looking to you isn't how he is. Your eyes see one thing while your heart is seeing another.

What you were doing, though, was a telling a story. [...] Good fucking is bartering, wrestling, swapping tales back and forth and telling lies 'til you get to the truth.

Some of what I learned, if you want to say out loud, there's words for, some not. Most of what I learned though, I'm still thinking about -- probably always will.

There's only so much pain you can feel before you start forgetting. Pretty soon pain is your mother. Lost is your mother. Pain and lost is your home. You got to know who you are and why you live before you can find your way home.

"Most folks are damned fools," Dellwood said, "and have no idea they're making themselves up. But you're different, Shed. You live with the knowledge and understanding that who you are is a story you've made up to keep the moon away.  And since you know what it's like to live without a story, you've made yourself an expert on stories and what stories do."

Telling stories. That's really what this book is about. Shed even reminds us that sex when done right is really nothing more than two people telling each other their most intimate story. "The best stories,"  Dellwood is always telling Shed, "are the true stories." Just as the best people to talk to and listen to are the people who tell you their stories. When you get right down to it blogging is nothing more than telling stories. Even when you're writing about stories - telling the story of the story - you haven't escaped it. It's all part of the human being essence. The way we connect. The way we live.

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is the best kind of story. A true story.