The Age of Enchantment

[mallorys_camera]

Read AS Byatt's wonderful review of an art exhibit called The Age of Enchantment.

This naturally made me want to write a dark fantasy novel about a serial killer who owes his psychopathology to a faery strain intertwined deep within his human DNA. Also it forced me to stalk the writer J.M. Barrie through various biographical iterations on the worldwide web.

"Wendy" – yes, that was Barrie's nickname! – was obviously a pederast. Somehow he managed to become guardian to the five orphaned Llewelyn Davies boys. Those were simpler times, weren't they! "Never say never!"-land. Two of the boys as adults committed suicide; a third died in WWI. It would be interesting to find out what became of the survivors, what their lives were like.

Homosexuality in Britain tends to be less of a lifestyle choice than it is in the States, more a developmental phase. But sexual fixation on very young children is a rarified fetish. In Barrie's case I suspect it was an expression of narcissism.

I have a million things to do today and I don't want to do any of them.

Comments

[wailaki.livejournal.com]

Like Michael Jackson's "Neverland". I see pederasts (like Michael and Barrie) as men who are attracted to pre-pubescent boys and want to be around them, unlike pedophiles, who simply lust after them and want to have sex with them.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Well, they do want to have sex with them actually (at least according to the witness testimony at Jackson's trial.) But the sex doesn't involve penetration. It's more infantile -- mutual masturbation, frottage.

I actually disagree with the current puritanical mores that deem sex between a post-pubescent teenager and an adult as morally wrong. I think it's fine as long as it's consensual. How else are people going to learn?

But sexual urges towards prepubescents is just creepy.