Catch a Falling Star

January 18, 2023 · 3:55 am

Thinking About Nakedness

One might wonder why I am thinking about nudity so much. And I suppose if I am going to devote a book of essays to the obsession, then I should probably explain why I am so obsessed and why I am trying to actually be a nudist. Of course, you will probably laugh about it when I get to the real reason. At least I hope it’s a matter of laughter and not pitchforks and torches.

You can probably trace the nudist thing in this blog to the publishing of my YA novel, Recipes for Gingerbread Children. In that book, there is a pair of twin sisters, Sherry and Shelly Cobble, who are nudists, come from a family that practices nudism at home, and are beloved child friends to the main character, Gretel Stein, the old woman who survived the Holocaust and had once been a nudist herself, before Auschwitz.

This was not the first book I published, nor, in my opinion, the best book I had written and published to that point. But it was the first book to become popular among a special classification of book lovers. I mean nudist and naturist writers of fiction. One of them read and loved the book, becoming an advocate for it, and inviting me to become a part of their writer’s group. That advocate has many wonderful nudist-centered stories available on Amazon under his pen name, Ted Bun. I recommend that you check out his work if you have the least bit of interest in living life without clothes on all the time.

The obsession does go all the way back to childhood, however. I was a child innocently fascinated by nature and what it felt like to be immersed in it with little or no clothing on. I lived at a time when bathing suits only covered the part of me below the belly button down to barely below the crotch. And I was fascinated on Friday nights by the nearly naked body of Tarzan Ron Ely and his boy sidekick Jai as they swung on vines through the African jungle. And I will have skinny-dipping stories to share later in the book as well. I liked to go to the Bingham Park Woods south of town and ride my bicycle naked up and down the park pathways. I loved the feeling of being naked outdoors.

That innocent love was tragically suspended by a traumatic thing that happened to me at the age of ten that I will have to talk about in this book. And it will not be any easier to read than it will be for me to write about it. But nudism and naturism have a strong enough attraction for me that it eventually helped me overcome the trauma. Nudity has been a good thing for me throughout my life, even during that period that I felt it was bad for me. And I will have to do a lot of explaining about that.

And so, in this introductory excuse-making and rationalizing essay, I finally come to the real reason I need to write this book. I decided that, when I retired from teaching, I would choose to do at least one thing that truly terrified me, but would help make my life complete. Skydiving, flying an airplane, and bungee jumping was all beyond what I had the power and monetary resources to do. So, in 2017, I agreed to write an article for the True Nudists website about trying nudism for the first time. I then arranged to make a first-time visit to Bluebonnet Nudist Park in Alvord, Texas. And I will be writing about how I carried out that evil plan in this book as well.

1 Comment

Filed under humor, nudes, Paffooney

January 17, 2023 · 4:35 am

The Haunted Toy Store… Canto 5

Canto 5 – The Game’s Afoot

Stanley Menschen was a simple man, believing firmly in the right and wrong of many things. He believed in police procedures. He still believed in them now that he was no longer a member of the Dallas Police Department and was doing freelance investigative work instead. That’s why he didn’t participate in the initial investigation of Yesenia Montemayor’s disappearance. You needed to let the police do their jobs.

“Stan, you know she most likely ran away and threw down the underwear with the blood on it to get talked about as she hid out with friends somewhere.”

Stan leaned over the desk and looked Officer Jason Penny in the eyes. “J.C, tell me you don’t think the boy isn’t worth investigating because he’s doing the same thing?”

“He was her boyfriend. The connection is obvious.”

“So, the bloody underwear thing was a pre-planned throw-down? They plotted it out together?”

“What else?”

“That’s what I want to know. Any other clues that don’t indicate a simple runaway?”

“The detectives didn’t turn anything up.”

“Did you seriously investigate the store owner?”

“You mean the creepy guy? Old Eule Geist? You know he’s your stepdaughter’s alibi, don’t you?”

“Yes, but that shop has been investigated for years. What other current investigations involve that damned toy store?”

“Just a couple. The mysterious case of a woman dropping into a coma inside the store. Name of Brittany Nguyen. Currently in Parkland Hospital’s Long-Term Care Unit.”

“A prior medical condition?”

“Not that we can prove. But how would Geist have…”

“You know the toy store is owned by some guy named Mephisto? Has been for over a hundred years.”

“Same guy?”

“Same name on all the paperwork. Probably a Junior and a Third, though the documents don’t say that.”

“No way any of them poisoned the lady. Especially not the dead ones.”

Stan scribbled the name of the coma lady down in his notebook. “And the other cases?”

“Couple of runaway grade school kids. Eight years old. Shandra Johnson, age eight, and Mark Merriweather, also age eight. The boy’s bicycle was found near the toy store. But the girl’s old man is a prime suspect. He’s been on our radar for wife beating and child abuse for quite some time.”

Stan noted that down too.

“Anything else?”

“Your girl’s case.”

“Yeah. At least it is something to start with.”

“There’s nothing there, Stan. Really. It’s all coincidence and rumors about a place we all said was haunted when we were kids. Nothing there, I tell you.”

Stan nodded. Nothing on the surface. But a lot of dark and deep water to dive into. You never prejudge anything… at least, not if you’re wise.

Leave a comment

Filed under ghost stories, horror writing, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as The Haunted Toy Stpre

January 17, 2023 · 1:43 am

Talking for Dummies

The secret to this essay is that the title is a pun. And yes, I know you probably don’t find it very punny. But I wanted to talk about the difficulties of portraying the difficulties of communication in a talk-a-lot-sometimes-talk-too-much world.

Yes, my current work in progress, Fools and their Toys, is about a man who can hardly talk at all because of undiagnosed autism who suddenly, miraculously finds a voice through ventriloquism, and then finds himself needing to communicate to a boy who is deaf and only speaks sign language and another boy who is profoundly distracted with ADD and bipolar disorder. He needs to communicate desperately because he knows things that have been locked up in his head for years that may help the FBI stop a cereal killer. No, that is a pun again. Shame on me. The murderer commits multiple murders of young boys, not breakfast food

Danny O’Day… not mine, but very much like mine.

I chose to write this rather insane novel about how not to communicate with real people because I, myself, as a kid was given to all kinds of communication theatrics and tricks of entertainment. I was also a shy kid after the age of ten for very sinister reasons.

It is important to realize that you absolutely have to communicate with others in life. Even if something is preventing you, like my own bout of self-loathing brought on by a sexual assault committed against me by an older boy. I got a ventriloquist’s dummy for Christmas near the time of the terrible event. It was Danny O’Day from the Montgomery Ward’s Christmas catalog. I taught myself to do ventriloquism. And then I gave it up when I realized the puppet would say things I didn’t want anyone to hear.

Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy, and Mortimer Snerd

Never the less, I continued to be fascinated life-long with ventriloquists and the little people they created.

Edgar Bergen was often in movies on TV during the Saturday afternoon matinee on Channel 3. I often saw his lips move. I was actually a better mouth-still ventriloquist than the old master.

Jerry Mahoney, Paul Winchell, and Knucklehead Smiff

Paul Winchell used to have a TV show in the 50’s which I saw on re-runs as a boy in the 60’s. He was also the voice of Tigger, Dick Dastardly, and Gargamel. (If you don’t recognize any of those cartoon characters, I mourn for your inadequately-filled childhood.)

Shari Lewis, Lambchop, and Charlie Horse

And, of course, I was fascinated and enthralled by Shari Lewis and Lambchop any time they were on TV, especially Sunday nights with Ed Sullivan.

Learning about ventriloquism never solved any problems for me. But it gave me a way to talk to myself that simulated having real friends. It helped me survive the dark years of being a teenager.

It is, of course, Jeff Dunham who fascinates me now.

Ventriloquism, humor, made-up characters, and the ability to talk with them is what I am chiefly concerned with now. My life and my current novel is taken up with talking, though not the normal talking of normal people. Talking with the voices that come from strange locked trunks inside you, the secrets you always meant to keep, but sooner or later have to be said out loud by someone. And maybe that someone is a dummy.

Leave a comment

Filed under autobiography, comedians, feeling sorry for myself, goofiness, novel writing, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as Fools and Their Toys, ventriloquists

January 16, 2023 · 4:38 am

Thinking Naked

I intend to write a book of essays about naturism and nudism, my attempts as a teacher to avoid becoming a practitioner while still teaching, and my eventual yielding to the urge to become what I avoided becoming for too long.

Now I know from my own family and my various communities over the years that nudists and naturists are generally considered to be a category of crazy people. That was especially a pointed observation in Iowa during the winter time when I was a boy in the 60s.

Of course, it was the 60s. And even though the hippies and other allegedly naked crazy people lived in far-away California and far-away New York, and closer, but still far-away Chicago, there were people we all gossiped about that would gad about their house in the all-together. Apparently, we knew because somebody, probably an old-lady gossip gatherer, had been looking through somebody else’s back windows. And some of those local crazy people turned out to be ordinary farmers, bankers, and even members of the Belle City town council. Really, the councilman and his wife are the reason I am calling the town by the fictionalized version of its name. Not because I am trying to protect the people’s identities, which you can figure out with very limited research, but because the old-lady gossip gatherer may have fictionalized what she allegedly saw through their back window and talked about at morning coffee in the Uptown Cafe.

But you see me here in a drawing of myself as a nude boy because from very early on in life, I felt the urge to give myself the freedom of costume… or lack thereof… as the councilman and his wife obviously gave to themselves in the privacy of their own home.

I was a big fan of skinny-dipping, and spending alone time nude in the woods south of town and the tree-lined pastures down by the creek to the west of town. I enjoyed being naked, although I dreaded the Devil finding out what I had already told Jesus in private, and then being condemned to Hell to burn for eternity… although, according to the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch in the Encyclopedia Britannica at school, I would still get to be naked.

This, then, will be a book both humorous and potentially sad about naked people and why naked can be good. I will include in this book works of art that I have made portraying people who are intentionally naked and happy about it. So, if your eyeballs will catch on fire for seeing naked people in artwork, your eyeballs should already be producing prodigious amounts of smoke, if not open flames. You better stop looking before you are blind. Some people’s Old Testament God is obviously much crankier than the God Jesus told me about when I talked to him in private.

I do intend to make fun of people who like to be nude in this book. But I will also make fun of myself for being one of those people. And I don’t intend to spare people who wear clothes all the time from a little bit of satire either. (Really, Mrs. Simms? You made Richard wear a swimsuit in the bathtub until he was twenty?)

4 Comments

Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, nudes, Paffooney

Tagged as Essay on nudism

January 16, 2023 · 3:13 am

Reading Bag of Bones

This is not a book review. I did finish reading this book in a 3-hour-end-of-the-book reading orgy, spending an hour last night, and two more early in the morning before the rest of my family was awake.

This is certainly not a book review. But I did read a Stephen King book, 1998’s Bag of Bones, which I picked up from the dollar sale shelves at Half Price Books. And I did love the story.

………………………………………………………………………This is not a book review. Instead, I want to talk about what a novelist can learn and reflect on by meta-cogitating over what this book reveals about King’s work habits and style and author’s voice.

Mike Noonan, the protagonist, is a novelist who writes books that routinely land in the numbers 10 through 15 slots in the New York Times Bestseller List. Obviously, this first-person narrative is coming directly out of King’s own writing experience. But, remember, this is not a book review. I am discussing what I have learned about how King puts a story together.

King sets a back-story for this novel that digs deep into the geographica and historica of the city in Maine where the story is set. The literal bag of bones revealed in the book’s climax is almost a hundred years old. And he takes a compellingly realistic tour back in time to the turn of the Twentieth Century more than once to reveal who the undead characters are and why they do what they do. One thing that makes a writer, a novelist, truly solid is his ability to set the scene, to grow the story out of the background in the most organic and realistic way possible. But this is not a book review. I am saying that King always does this with his books. And if you wish to write at that level, you must do that too. I know I am sincerely trying.

At the end of the story, he clearly tells the reader that he learned from Thomas Hardy that “the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones”. So, he is definitely aware that a character is a construct that has to be crafted from raw materials. It takes a master craftsman to build one with the right words to make it live and breathe on the page. He does it masterfully in this book with several characters. The protagonist, the beautiful young love interest, the love interest’s charming three-year-old daughter who is nearly slain in a horrific manner at the end of the book… The living villain is a well-crafted bag of bones, as is the ghost, the actual bag of bones in the story. But this is not a book review. Most of his books, at least the ones I have read, have the same sort of masterful characters.

There is so much more to be learned about novel writing from this book. He literally shows you how ideas are captured, how they are developed into stories, how you overcome “writer’s block”, and Noonan’s book he is writing within this book is even used as an example of how to poetically advance the plot. But this is not a book review. You should read this book. It is a very good and scary piece of work. But you should read it because it shows us how to write and do it like a master.

1 Comment

Filed under horror writing, insight, inspiration, NOVEL WRITING, writing teacher

Tagged as Bag of Bones, Stephen King

January 15, 2023 · 3:49 am