Rockin’ the Riverside

A small thermonuclear explosion detonated at the River Rock pub in Duncan last night. A collection of extraordinarily gifted musicians gathered and, in the space of a few hours, performed in cohesive bands, exploded and re-coalesced into new groupings, sang, jammed, riffed and generally blew the roof off the joint. It was a rambunctious night of energy and superb entertainment. Rarely in recent memory has such a stellar collection of talent converged on the Trans-Canada Highway. The level of musicianship displayed by local virtuosos was nothing short of extraordinary and had at least one aging rock journalist wondering where the hell the stringers for Rolling Stone were hiding, because last night saw some truly great performances.

Screw “Drunken Duncan.” Last night, it was “Rocking Duncan”.

Thank Helen, River Rock pub, Duncan BC – 5 Aug 2016

 

First up was Thank Helen, a cow-punk thrash unit from Courtney with surprising melodic range. Fronted by the dynamic Tracey Nolan, Thank Helen found its footing within a song or two. By “Pay the Rent”, they were mesmerizing us with lively renderings of good, solid songs, tightly arranged. Thank Helen is a band to reckon with – a deadly combo of guitarist Jamie Nolan, bassist Caleb Kennedy and drummer Dekan Delaney in a solid polyrhythmic triad kicked into overdrive by the commanding Tracey. Harmonies and beat combined to raise their show to atmospheric levels and by the end of their set, at “Freeway”, nobody wanted to let go.

 

A lull was filled when a young man took the stage with an acoustic guitar. I was gathering my notes and not expecting much when Colton Mann, 20, abruptly launched into some of the most solid improvisational acoustic work I have heard in years. Later joined by Underdogs percussionist Marcus, Mann unleashed a soaring acoustic version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing” that was nothing short of breathtaking. By the end of it all, you could hear a pin drop in that crowded bar. Watch this young man: if he develops to even half of his potential, he will conquer hearts and minds. And worlds.

Weak Patrol, tearing it up.

Briefly assuming Thank Helen had reassembled onstage, I was surprised to learn that their core instrumental group, absent Tracey, performs a combo unto itself. Weak Patrol, a classic rock power trio, is half Beck, Bogart & Appice and half Rush after they’ve been stiffed playing a gig at a curling arena in Edmonton: cold, angry and precise. This trio wound between hypnotic pseudo-reggae rhythms and soaring, poly-instrumental arrangements reminiscent of Yes. These three, no matter what they decide to play – or when – will scoop the field. Some old school rock trio power happening here: good, good stuff.

The real treat of the night was the Underdogs, segueing from cool bossa-nova combo to Big Brother and the Holding Company that somehow morphed into an extended blues jam. More akin to a musical community than a group, the Underdogs features a twin-vocalist salvo, acoustic guitar and rock rhythm underpinnings. Unconventional perhaps, but sufficiently engaging to hold the audience rapt with a Bear McCreary-flavored rendition of “All Along the Watchtower”. Although unpolished in places, the Underdogs proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, they had bite. This is a premiere rock band in the making. If they can stay the course, they will shake up the West coast scene.

The Underdogs

With 1 AM beckoning and a deadline looming, I left the bar as the Underdogs were pulsing into the second soulful phase of their opening set. I felt strongly, walking across the highway to where my car was stashed in a public lot, that I had discovered something truly great in Duncan – a motherlode of talent and passion overlooked by the mainstream rock audiences and critics. Be that as it may, this writer will listen and report back. Good music deserves an audience, and this correspondent will do all he can to help these musicians find theirs.

CHICAGO LAKESHORE 1: How Ann Sterzinger & Jamie Mason Founded Camus-TV

Much as Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson conspired to create Brexit without any real plan for how to deal with victory, so did Ann Sterzinger and I pitch a pilot to a Hollywood director, that convinced us to found a Kickstarter without ever really expecting people to respond. And oh my God, did they respond …

And so without further ado, the history of CHICAGO LAKESHORE.

1. MY BEST FRIEND

This is Ann Sterzinger. Ann is an alien being inhabiting Chicago who subsists on a diet of caffeine, French literature and raw sarcasm. So far as I have been able to determine, Ann hates just about everybody.

Ann Sterzinger fucking hates you

She hates me a little less than most others and so we’re BFFs (best frenemies forever).

2. GOALS

Ann and I are both writers. We’re old school devotees of the late 19th century schools of European literature. While most kids grew up wanting to be Jim Morrison, we wanted to be Balzac.

Balzac, hung over

Because we were serious literary prodigies, we both went to college. We got degrees. We worked shit jobs for decades and devoted ourselves to our craft. Then ECLIPSE became a best-seller. Since then, we spend a lot of time talking about becoming mercenaries in fucking Syria or something whilst swinging wildly between despair, alcoholism and suicidal ideation.

3. FATE!

We met on Facebook. I imagined Ann as an overweight chain-smoking woman in her seventies who wore mumus. She knew I was Canadian. That was enough for us to develop a healthy mutual suspicion of one another.

We started writing together. Oh sure, we could have had phone sex or indulged in some form of primitive long-distance cyber-romance but we’re both broke writers so rather than waste time on that bullshit, we started beta-reading each others’ stuff and then, later, collaborating. Our phone calls occasionally strayed into common territory. And we discovered …

4. NUTS

We both had first-hand experience of the mental health system, myself as a guard and Ann as a patient. We began comparing notes and discovered that our experiences weren’t very different. In fact, they were eerily fucking similar.

5. CHICAGO LAKESHORE

Let’s be honest. The world is sinking into for-profit, corporate-driven mass psychosis. Ann and I have decided it’s time for a television show that reflects this emerging reality.

Welcome to the psychiatric-industrial police state. Welcome to Chicago Lakeshore.

Group Sex with Me & Mary Shelley

Hi My name is Jamie and I have written a wonderful new novel entitled ICK!

Victor “Frankenstein” DeVito realizes his lifelong dream of becoming a mad scientist by creating Industrial Color Killer, a living turpentine enzyme. While stripping paint off the hull of a US warship, ICK breaks free and goes berserk, turning the ocean, land, plants and animals all the same shade of off-white. Victor must battle anarchist color revisionists (CRAYON), Black nationalists angry at no longer being black, Vatican spies and his own demons to subdue his greatest creation.

It’s a great novel. It’s a total mad scientist novel. I mean – how cool is that? Don’t you just fucking LOVE mad scientists? And if you don’t, then ask yourself: just what the hell is wrong with you, anyway?

My favorite novel in the entire universe is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Did you know that Mary was hanging with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley the summer she wrote it? They were all crashing at this castle on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, being all louche and taking drugs and writing ghost stories and Mary – sweet, meek, nobody-pays-attention-to-her Mary, the Mary they sent out for beer runs in the row boat and more or less ignored when time came for group sex – Mary wound up writing Frankenstein, the ghost story of all ghost stories. And now she’s more famous than either of those two bums. So I sort of identify with her, right? Like, I could totally see rowing the boat out on the beer run with her, and being ignored during group sex  (because assholes, hey?).

So I have this mad scientist novel up at Amazon Kindle Scout. All I need are enough people to go to the website, click the nominate button and BOOM. I’m in the running for a book contract and all kinds of neat, free advertising and stuff.

So click and nominate. And if you don’t then ask yourself why. Could it be perhaps as a result of some mean heartedness on your part? Could it be that I perhaps intimidate you with my all-consuming, mysterious machismo? Or maybe that you just don’t like novels that start with the letter I. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. What the hell does it cost you to click, go and nominate? Seriously. You can’t DO that? I mean, what? ARE YOU DEVELOPMENTALLY IMPAIRED OR SOMETHING? I mean, EVEN IF YOU WERE, it’s not like I’m asking you to perform open heart surgery or compose the Oratorio for Prague or volunteer for 6 months building a Burma railway, for Christ’s sakes. JUST CLICK ON THE DAMN THING! You get to read an excerpt and everything! If not for me, do it for Mary.

And thank you. So much.

 

 

 

Daddy Loves His Work

I was saddened by recent exchanges with two writers, both of whom expressed dissatisfaction with their careers. One says she no longer wishes to write at all while another, frustrated by a lack of commercial success, speaks frankly of killing herself. A third friend with a book coming out has complained to me privately about how the publisher is handling the release. And a fourth lamented that he still does not consider himself a “pro” (whatever that means) despite a very impressive set of publishing credits. All four of these are writers I respect a great deal, and who have achieved more than I with their work, and yet they are unhappy. Understandably so. This is a tough racket, and many writers have walked away …

I can’t.

I would not consider myself a particularly visible or well-known author, even within the genres (SFF) to which I have devoted myself since 2009. I am no great commercial success, by any means. I can’t live off of what I do (although I have hopes it may supplement my retirement income nicely). But the option of walking away is just not there for me. It never has been. The prospect of life without the words is as unimaginable to me as losing  eyesight or hearing and just as terrifying. Laura Dern explained it so beautifully in THE WEST WING episode “The U.S. Poet Laureate”: “This is how I enter the world.” The act of writing is, simply, how I experience and process my existence on planet Earth. I would still be filling notebooks and cranking out fiction even if I never sold a thing because I simply don’t know any other way to live.

Two new projects are reminders for me of the real joy I take in the process of writing and publishing.

My short story “Mr Johnson & the Old Ones” will appear in the forthcoming anthology from Martian Migraine Press CTHULHUSATTVA: TALES OF THE BLACK GNOSIS. This is my first piece of Lovecraftian horror fiction, and is the point of departure for the next stage of my career, which will focus mainly on writing mystery and horror. The story combines my twin fascinations of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Johnson and has the two meeting in a jook house in 1930s Mississippi under surreal circumstances. I found the process of exploring that world so fascinating that I am now adapting the short story into a full length novel. Meanwhile, it’s been a real pleasure working with MMP C-in-C Scott Jones to bring the short-story version out and get it to you. Look for CTHULHUSATTVA to drop in late May.

I am also engaged in contract negotiations with Amazon for GAVIN’S WOMAN, a sequel to GAVIN’S WAR which came out last year. Although we’re still ironing out the details, the project as been green-lit and we are a go. GAVIN’S WOMAN picks up four years after the events of GAVIN’S WAR and features the return of known characters Iris and Salazar along with several new ones. Researching the piece has me learning much about the BC coastline, various types of military helicopters and the U.S. Army’s famed Nightstalkers. I imagine the novella will see daylight some time this summer. Stay tuned for further details on that front.

Recent events in the United States have caused me to reflect on World War II. While watching the mini-series FLEMING: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE BOND, it occurred to me that I’ve always wanted to write a story set during the Blitz, an event that had a great impact on my father’s family. The time has come to write that story and, in so doing, perhaps come closer to an understanding of my father, a man with whom I had a complex and very uncomfortable relationship. I’m not entirely sure I really want to explore that region of my past and psyche … which merely serves as confirmation that I must. Again: writing as my way of processing life on Earth.

And so the words roll on.

Mishima once said that life is a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.

I have to agree.

Pivot

I was surprised when my tongue-in-cheek Facebook post concerning my “retirement” from science fiction prompted a response. I received several messages from fellow writers and one editor asking what gives. That’s when I realized I haven’t done a very good job explaining my decision. So here goes.

Why I Write. Money. I write to supplement my income (which ain’t great). The few extra hundred dollars here and there since my first pro sale in 2009 have really made a difference. If Churchill boasted he bought Chartwell “with his pen” then I can make a similar claim regarding the warmth and dryness inside this 1970s-era mobile home I own, which leaked like a sieve until last autumn, when proceeds from my Kindleworlds novella Gavin’s War paid for my pal Roger’s game-changing roof repairs. It’s been raining non-stop since yesterday afternoon. I haven’t awakened to a stream of rain-water on my pillow in over a year. Money well spent.

There’s No Money in Sci-fi. Oh, I’m sure there’s some there. I just hardly ever get to see it. Second-tier markets pay a pittance and, with few exceptions, the pro markets have perfected the art of stretching out payments to writers such that I’m convinced hieroglyphs of our vanished culture will show a legion of the starving would-be  Asimovs on their knees with laptops in hand,  pleading with an Ibex-headed Editor God-thing. (Part of why they can get away with this is because most sci-fi writers don’t have to write for money – more on this “pride culture” later.) I have worked with some awesome sci-fi editors and publishers. But I have worked with many more that drove me absolutely bug-fuck then didn’t pay me. I have had to resort to using a bill collector on occasion. Nothing personal, folks. Just business.

The Culture is Poisonous. It’s a small little pond the English-speaking sci-fi world paddles in. Girdled by instantaneous global communication via Facebook, these geeks have carved out a vibrant and busy little sector of the digisphere for themselves. Unfortunately, it’s one riven by politics, prejudice, bullying and sanctimony. I really began to realize how poisonous the scene was when I began branching out into horror and mystery. Interactions with editors and fellow authors there were of an entirely different complexion. Where in the sci-fi field I encountered ad hominem attacks centering around identity politics and plenty of thrown shade, mystery and horror writers were comparatively welcoming. We learned from each other. We support each other. It’s nicer here.

Diversity? Please! I hate to say it, but the diversity wars in sci-fi, and those who stoke them, strike me as “methinks they doth protest too much”. Sci-fi is white-boy culture writ large, and efforts to prove otherwise have been about as convincing as a country-club full of drunk Caucasian aunts and uncles forming a conga line to show how hip they can be. The most strident debates for inclusion and diversity occur in a white liberal echo chamber from which diverse voices are conspicuously absent. Flame wars, Amazon sabotage campaigns, angry blog posts, podcasts – has any of it led to more money in the pockets of more diverse writers of sci-fi? No. (See, “There’s No Money in Sci-fi”, above.) Which leads me to the crown jewel, the golden goose of sci-fi’s embarrassment …

The Fucking Hugo Awards. Spare me. Of all the literary cultures of which I have been a part since stumbling, wide-eyed, into my first American Publishing Association convention in 1982, sci-fi is the most fixated on literary prizes. Sci-fi is a “pride of place” culture, with prestige counting as currency. (Unfortunately, this acts to disqualify people who are too poor to jump on a plane to go hob-nob. Pride cultures tend to favor those with means.) “Hugo nominee” on a cover moves books, sho nuff, but the concentration of accolades within the prize communities has enabled the rise of reactionary forces gaming the system. Pity those who must wear their coveted rocket like an albatross this year. The genre is an embarrassment. “Hugo nominee” don’t have the cachet it once did.

In 2004, when Bush was re-“elected”, I came home. “You’re lucky to have Canada,” literary critic Roger Bowen e-mailed me.

I’m lucky to have mystery and horror. And I have gone home.

 

 

BOOMTOWN

In the fly-blown desert strip-mall that was Reagan’s America, authenticity was hard to come by, particularly in music. After a Me-decade spent hashing out new technologies, market jurisdictions and FCC red tape, the unweildy goose known as the “entertainment industry” had landed. Media moguls invoked focus-group wisdom to foist “edgy” punk acts and big hair metal bands on the public while conspiring to craft the ever-elusive mega-hit. 1984 was the year Columbia Records dumped half its advertising budget into a single album, yielding BORN IN THE USA’s record round of hits and a windfall for shareholders. No one could be happier. But amid the ticker-tape and champagne, a few of us felt like something had been lost. The era of the contemplative songwriter with the journalistic focus and eye for small-time detail had been drowned out in the goldrush.

Enter BOOMTOWN, the stripped-down, guitar-driven album from David & David, a rock duo that appeared from out of nowhere with a catalogue of songs perfect for what ailed the era. Arranged with raw beauty and featuring rich lyrics growled with a kind of fuck-you insolence, “Welcome to the Boomton” proved a signature hit. Like the other songs, “Boomtown” was a starkly-drawn portrait of an LA underbelly populated by losers – the road-kill of the very media moguls bestriding the landscape: a mean old man washing his hands in the bathroom of the Firefly lounge, a former footballer dealing dope out of Denny’s, a coked-out rich girl gunning her 944 down a dark road toward her destiny and a puzzled guy on the cusp of middle age looking back and wondering how his old friends got swallowed by the cracks. No focus group could have given us the rich cast and dark pathos of BOOMTOWN. Baerwald and Ricketts had succeeded, in an era of shallow pretense, in creating a masterpiece.

There was no follow-up. Pressures internal and external conspired to derail any sequel to this promising debut. Singly and together, both men would go on to pursue other interests, contributing music to film projects or furnishing material or chops on other peoples’ records. Toni Childs and Sheryl Crowe were two who benefitted from cross-pollination with the Baerwald/Ricketts magic, as did their listeners. MOULIN ROUGE, LEAVING LAS VEGAS and a host of other films would be powered by the sound. But an opportunity to reform and release new music would elude David & David until 2016. Now on the brink of releasing BOOMTOWN’s sequel, Baerwald and Ricketts are turning to the public with the simple question: do you want more?

We have come a long way from the hair bands and media moguls of the 1980s. Those of us who care about songs with killer lyrics and great musicianship now have a chance to show those focus-groups just where we’d like the damn money spent. Backers are promising to bankroll another album if the boys get the support. Consider this short retrospective an appeal to David & David fans past and present to step up and support the band’s return by “liking” their Facebook page and getting as many friends as possible to do likewise. 6000 more likes and we’ve got ourselves BOOMTOWN 2.

Go on.

You know you want to.

Tally

2015 was by far my most successful year to date as a writer. Since my first pro sale in 2009 I have pursued two seemingly contradictory goals. The first is to prioritize creating work that I feel speaks to some universal or emotional truth above creating work for the express purpose of making money. The second is to make money. In 2015, I achieved both.

I am fortunate in this regard as I have always been physically fit, employable and more than willing to work hard. I’ve never had a problem finding and holding down blue collar jobs suited to feeding my art both financially and in terms of subject matter. This has left me free to follow my muse at will. In this, I consider myself very fortunate. I suppose I could, in the interest of making money from home, always write ad copy or technical manuals, click-bait or porn – all honorable pursuits. But for me being an artist is as much a journey of personal and global exploration as it is a chosen career path. Balance is key. Where I once resented having to leave the keyboard to venture out into the world, I now see the acts of writing and holding down a day job as two sides of the same coin. The day-job feeds the art. And in the absence of a family to support, the art gives me a reason to get up and go to work in the morning.

George Orwell once wrote:

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

In my case, there has never been any shortage of demons (I have hinted and, in some cases, written openly about these demons elsewhere.) The trick has been to tame them to the point at which, broken and muzzled, they can be led into the barn and saddled for the ride to hounds. Suffice it to say that, in 2015, the hunt led me to publish two novels (KEZZIE OF BABYLON and THE BOOK OF ASHES), one novella (GAVIN’S WAR) and two pieces of short fiction, one of which was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to produce an original James Bond tale (“Daedelus” which appears in ChiZine’s LICENCE EXPIRED: THE UNAUTHORIZED JAMES BOND, a great collection I am told, for I have yet to receive my copy). In addition to this, I also produced four guest blogs for some wonderful colleagues: Cat Rambo, Sean Smith and Dave Wilbanks.

The money? The money was pretty good this year. Best it’s ever been. But the real payoff has been my satisfaction with the quality of the work, the professional connections I have made along the way (publishers, editors and fellow writers) as well as my ongoing and deepening connection with my readers. I am blessed with a small but fiercely loyal readership, many of whom have reached out to me on social media to become valued friends. It is to them that I renew my pledge never to produce anything but my best. They deserve nothing less.

I deserve nothing less.

That is a great deal accomplished for one year. I embark upon 2016 with a raft of short fiction already under consideration by magazine editors and a new novel on the rails. Entitled AT THE CROSSROADS OF MADNESS, it is a Lovecraftian tale featuring none other than famed bluesman Robert Johnson as protagonist. This has led me to read numerous books and essays about Johnson, reconnect with my love of the blues (both listening and playing) and explore those regions of my psyche where the bleaker demons dwell. To make things even more exciting, I can report that several publishers have already approached me requesting to see the finished manuscript. I consider this a great compliment. I am both humbled and grateful.

I imagine 2016 as a vast and fertile plain surveyed from a hilltop where I wait at the head of a small but loyal band of cavalry. In the silence before battle, I hear the creak of saddles, the clink of weapons, the fluttering of standards. They say battles are won or lost before they even begin. In both the art of war and the war of art I can say, with absolute certainty, that I am ready to lead the charge.

THE ROAD TO ASHES 4: Going Off-Grid

I began writing THE BOOK OF ASHES in May 2013. This coincided with a personal decision to withdraw from society as much as was practically possible for a period of time. Initially, I believed the withdrawal would be temporary . For while I have always admired the monastic life, I have never been able to conform to either its religious or aesthetic strictures. My mind delights in spontaneity, and I am too spiritually omnivorous for holy orders. And yet three years and two books later, a discipline of its own has emerged from this existence and I remain committed to it. If anything, my isolation will deepen.

I better explain.

I have a book coming out next week – an important one for me. Although I don’t begrudge it of others, I never did the whole “professional-workshop-rub-elbows-with-authors-and-editors-of-note” thing. I have noticed how the publication of a workshop grad’s novel is treated as an event – a celebration of mutual import. Resonant words like “launch” are invoked (both for book and career). Authors receive exposure by association with more famous colleagues, and recognition from peers, who take time to read and discuss the book seriously.

My career, by contrast, was not launched with the care of a newly-minted cruiser but rather tossed off the back of a truck by a shady hitch-hiker in a hurry, someone staying low to the ground and moving fast. That’s just how things worked out for me. Travel and opportunities for professional networking are limited for me now. I miss that camaraderie and, while I do have peers who support me, there’s no sense of being part of a class – a group that shared the experience of developing to this point. Unfortunate, as this would be my coming-out novel, the one that marks a new stage of growth. That acknowledgement is likely to remain tacit, which saddens me as this is the book I would have my peers read and take to heart. And so I am reminded again that fate and circumstance have offered me a different road.

The apocalypse in THE BOOK OF ASHES is entirely a personal one. As my friend Gareth Woods noted in his blurb: “The end of the world can have very human beginnings.” Fascinated as many of us are with “the end of the world” we are too often deaf to the cries of those whose worlds are ending all around us. The brutal eruption of immigrants on Europe’s doorstep, recent violence in Paris and San Bernardino and the current apocalyptic tone of the American elections all serve to remind: worlds end. Sometimes at our hands, sometimes not. Mine ended in May of 2013 and I eulogized it in novel form. Now the trumpet sounds again.

As this world descends into chaos, I have begun outlining my next writing project with the leisure of a man not under contract. Cue cards, crowded with penciled notes, dominate my kitchen counter. I read and watch documentaries like I have plenty of time on my hands. In another week or so, my Christmas present to myself will arrive – a manual typewriter identical to the one I used in college.

Deeper roads beckon that I must follow.

One world ends. Another begins.

 

THE ROAD TO ASHES 2: DESTROYER OF WORLDS

From the Holy Koran, this:

“Whosoever kills an innocent person,
it is as though he has killed all of
mankind.” (Koran 5:32)

Cory O’Neal, the protagonist of my forthcoming novel The Book of Ashes, is a teacher and a victim of Make-Believe Rape, a false accusation of sexual misconduct made against him by a student. As usually happens in such cases, the details are ironed out so as to preclude publicity or police involvement. And so the polite world can continue. But the damage to Cory O’Neal is deep and lasting.

His world is destroyed.

We seem to be living in an age of World Destroyers. Consider the currents and counter-currents of radical Islamic terrorism and xenophobic backlash. We live in an age where Canadians say ‘immigrants go home’ and Americans shadow worshippers to the mosque with automatic weapons. Ten short years after the Left decried George Bush as the greatest tyrant in American history, a presidential candidate leads the polls with talk of registering Muslims as Hitler once did Jews. And the press will not say ‘fascism’. And the President will not call it Islamic terror. And meanwhile in Turkey and Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan and downtown Paris, the world burns.

As Joseph Brodsky wrote:

In the towns with funny names,
hit by bullets, caught in flames,
by and large not knowing why,
people die.

Here is wisdom: we become what we do. What is the apocalypse? The apocalypse is what happens when we are so intent on destroying the worlds of others that we neglect our own. Just as a nation that builds its value system on war cannot expect to experience anything but war, so it is axiomatic that those who destroy only bring about more destruction. In ways great and small – in the thunder of bomber payloads and the whisper of rumor, in the massed screams of true believers and the duplicitous smile of an evil child – we have become destroyers of worlds.

If you kill one man, you kill an entire world. And so we are destroying our own.

THE ROAD TO ASHES 1: MAKE-BELIEVE RAPE

Let’s talk about rape.

Not real rape. Real rape is a deadly serious issue and a topic on which I am vastly underqualified to speak. But there is another form of rape about which I am very qualified to speak, and that is ‘Make-Believe Rape’.

Some of you – mostly women – have already tuned out or stopped reading altogether. Because you think you know where there is going.

You don’t.

Make-believe rape exists, although it is politically incorrect to acknowledge that it does. This is because the politically correct handle big issues like rape by creating a catechism – a creed that they incant whenever certain Unacceptable Ideas appear (much as primitive people incant charms to ward off demons). Make-Believe Rape is such an idea. Because the catechism about rape, soft-peddled by the Socially Just (those Crusaders Against All that is Unsafe and Oppressive) is that rape victims are never believed. That rape is more prevalent than is statistically suggested and that victims of rape who come forward often face harassment, ridicule or worse.

All of which is true.

But it doesn’t cancel out the existence of Make-Believe Rape. And because Make-Believe Rape is one of those Unacceptable Ideas, greeted by incantations and banished with discourse, it has yet to be mined for outrage. It has yet to be scripturalized, catechised or moulded into PC dogma. So it therefore remains truly a frontier of free thought.

Make-Believe Rape is what happens when a woman tries to destroy a man by creating a story. It is a story so disturbing and uncomfortable that no one dares inquire too deeply into it. Instead they suggest, in hushed tones, that the “victim” seek help from the police or other professionals. They commiserate, offer support, take a dim view of the accused and never ever question whether or not the story is true (because that’s just WRONG). And so it is the perfect weapon for a woman out for revenge, use of which against a man – short of legal recourse – guarantees almost no repercussions.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman. But I would imagine that sort of unwritten code of comradeship exists among you all. It makes sense that, as an oppressed group, you would band together. Women appear to support and take care of each other – even strangers – in ways that men don’t. One woman can go to another (again, even a stranger) when threatened with violence or sexual assault with a pretty fair assurance her plea will be heard. And a woman who reports a rape can be assured of an instant support network.

Not so survivors of Make-Believe Rape.

Survivors of Make-Believe Rape are men who, for whatever reason, have been falsely accused of committing an act of sexual violence against a woman. They cannot go to other men for comfort or support because males, by their very nature, crave female approval and so are often only too ready to ‘take the woman’s side’ in cases of gossip and scandal. (Comfort from women, of course, is also completely out of the question.) Furthermore, there is a tendency on the part of both sexes to assume that anyone accused of rape is, if not guilty, probably at least partially responsible for bringing the accusation upon himself by some behavior or other. And so suspicion of the accused deepens to the point at which they become isolated and, occasionally, even ostracized.

We ought to be having a cultural discussion about Make-Believe Rape. Not because I think it is a particularly widespread phenomenon but simply because it exists. And because it is an Unacceptable Idea to discuss. The very notion of Unacceptable Ideas must be challenged at every turn. Failure to do so has led to the very public lynchings of certain celebrities. Some have truly been rapists. But not all. And so the question becomes – how do we talk about victims of Make-Believe Rape?

Don’t, whisper the Social Justice Warriors. Because it doesn’t happen often enough to matter.

To which I say: fuck you, Social Justice Warriors.

It happened to me once. And once was enough.