There are four or five creepy things I've done (1) that I should write about if I am honestly to tell my story...

I remember screaming at Jessi… she was Jessica back then, Jessica Anyway. Just outside Val's not-a-commune I yelled, "I do have to scream," I bellowed, and it echoed all over College Crescent and the playing fields. And that's not even in the top ten creepy cringe-worthy things… no maybe it is. It's probably right up there. But...

Creepy Thing Number One

The creepiest things I have ever done, number one: when I was seven and measles or mumps and neighbouring Sam came along, I jabbed the Kleenex box at his crouch saying "Sly little foxy goes…"
      That totally blew my mind! Who was that? It wasn't me, was it?

and back then I inventoried my creeping doings, rehashed if not rehearsed them. At eight nine ten years old I would trouble my nights by listing, remembering, the five or ten things of which I was most ashamed. Weird little nerd. I can only remember the one item clearly, oh no, there's another. But they were simple childhood peccadilloes, not worth noting (footnote them, then! [2])

Creepy Thing Two:raging at Rita!

The beagle ran off across the heath at Crowther's Field: above the Don and Don Valley Parkway. A rabbit? She'd do that. Catch a scent run and be gone, oh twenty minutes, or till you chased her down - on two or three of these occasions she returned fattened... another shape, what did she find?: but here in Crowther's Field she flew down and across the steep meadow a hundred, a hundred and fifty yards. I bellowed for her return...

Time out!
an aside: see the poem (or skip? scroll down?) "all I could do was scream"..

and all I could do was scream

they went chasing into the bush
cornering something in the fen
barking
barking
and all I could do was scream
my voice breaking
time running
karma biting
and all I could do
was screech and holler
and of course they'd never come to that
so I ventured in
in towards the swamp
saw them hounding some
critter at the edge of the water
me yelling the while
too long and too loud
I went in through the rough
to the bog
thick mud
where now Lucky had most
of a muskrat's head in his mouth
while the beagle worried its ass
doing their best
to maimed and
and they'll kill it promptly
God willing
so for a while I didn't scream
Lucky shook the critter
but It hardly seemed to be dying
so I screamed
and pulled the dogs off
clumsily
they broke to harry the creature again
and I screamed them away

it seemed alive
it on its rounded back
in the mud
looking at me
one eyed
the other muddied and
who knows
blind
I pulled the dogs off
covered in black
and left the muskrat
to its painful fate
painful dying
or painful living
cause all I could do
was scream

Creepy Thing Two: resumed

But, back at Crowther's Field the beagle had run off far down the field harrying a what? And I'm bellowing for her to come back, and totally blowing my stack. I stomped across the fiend, screaming...
Sometimes I call her Miss Decibels because she won't come unless I yell.
And why this time, I was really losing it... I was going to whip that dog, whip that bitch, with the leash perhaps yes I fumed now closing on her, she cowering

and I've the leash in my hand raging about to whip her

"Here, don't do that," someone, a mountain bike, riding the trail, stopped , perhaps fifty yards below us, and shouted as I loomed over the quivering beagle

I turned towards the voice,
and I turned my rage towards this...
And then my rage collapsed.
And I thank the Lord for that coincidence that brought this good fellow to intervene and save me from a deeper shame (and the beagle from a thrashing).

and tangentally...

When Teresa and I were breaking up, start of the 90s, I found myself in one of our arguments with this "spite", observed "spite" passing through and went off and wrote...

Spite Speaks

I am his own devil
who skews his eyes
and covets the purse
and the pussy
who stifles delight

I am his curse
his I'll be damned
I sour the milk
of all my achievements
piss off

I'm just mean
spike you for spite
spit in the face
of all your longings

I scorn to be soft
I grab for
with fist
to be first
take what's before me

I'm Lord of the Manor
or some angry madman
in gutter cursing
fuck you arsehole
I'm better

The anti-creep (one)

I spoke earlier of meeting Luk. Luk, and his dog, Zander, made quite an impression on me. The cattle dog, of course, reminded me of Lucky. And Luk is suave, yet worldly wise. Steetwise, too. He'd left his ghetto home, and school, at the age of thirteen. But he soaks up culture, sharp as a...
     Often after meeting Luk, we'd go back to his house.... He lived on the same street as me, as I, Craven, but south of the tracks. We'd smoked, toke up, Zander's chin on my thigh.
     And Luk has introduced me to some of the coolest things, spiritual things. Corinthians 1:13, "if should speak with the tongue of men and angels..." That first day visiting, Luk recited it in Jamaican patois, and that, dear friends, was as compeling "spoken word" as I have ever heard. (Here, click on The Jamaican New Testament and that will bring you to the "Bible Society"'s page. Scoll down to the window which (after a few moments) will show a big blue "B", below which will be listed the chapters of Mathew 1, 2 etc (it reads: "Bible Society - Mathew 1") and now (in that window you have to scroll down to Corintians 1:13. Click on this to hear this poetry!)
     Oh, and another example, I really love Alan Watts tube video "what if God got bored."

So sometimes I see Luk as the anti-creep. But we'll speak more of this.

But back to Norman's creep list...

Creepy Thing Three: Rab Best and Aspirin

When I was in the 6th Form in London, up Holloway...(that's like the last years at High School, 16, 17, 18 years old) there was a lad in class, Rab, Rab Best, who was, on the one hand, chinless, nerdie, curly hair on a willing face, but no young lady's man... who was the wildest wit. A wonderful satirist (give him fifteen years and he might have been your Monty Pychon). Rab was lower class, lower middle class, almost your worker: sharp as a pin, in Islington. And he was hanging out with us Hampstead fellows.
     Where did he go to school? I mean University, after our Holloway Comp?
     Anyroad: Rab would turn up at them same parties as what I use to call the Hampstead Junior Zen Men: course, we were all "fringers": weekend beatniks. This is the late 50s, early 60s.
     So one day, at a party, Rab asked whether I had anything to smoke - which I didn't - but remembered that I was carrying some aspirins, and I gave Rab one, telling him it was something new and special.

Perhaps it was a year or two later that Rab opted out, radically. Gone, gone. And perhaps my little unkindness, untruth, unreliability, help nudge him over the edge. Maybe not, but I count it among the creepiest things I've done.
     Forgive me, Rab.

I have a strange feeling about me as a child. I was nerdie and needy. And I sort of cringe a bit seeing pictures of me as a child : oh, and actually feel pretty cringy about most photograph (a few exceptions. Recently Sherry Gee said I should carry photos of young Norman with me and come to terms, to a peace with that child. And so recently I've started painting from those photos. This, from a photo of me at 7.

creep's poem

With the soft touch of a dugong,
And the gentle kiss of leech,
I am perfume of the onion,
As I nibble on my peach.
My lust for ripe pineapple
Cannot be concealed,
So I try my crab-like fingers
Never to reveal:
But I pinch and bite you
In the night, you
Know I have no choice;
And I'd try to charm you,
But I'd only harm you
With the grating of my voice:
So I'll put you back in the fruit bowl,
And go off on my animal way,
I'm a bit of a ravisher,
Much of a scavenger,
And I loved you yesterday.

People have been weirding out on me, a bit, lately. Friends and even best friends going creep on me... Ah, but that's the human condition.

Creepy Thing Four...

Oh, pit! I'm going to have to talk about Amy, and the creepiest thing I every did.
    Before we get to that, over in England this Xmas (2015), I looked up Amy, and she reminded me of our mutual friend Vee. Vee was the most adorable thing. A little younger then Amy and I, and...    And I once took took Vee's hand and placed it on my cock, at the absolutely most inappropriate time. The most inappropriate time. She a child of 17. And was I a young adult at 21? An asshole! And now I learn from Amy that Vee is a publisher. Do I have the moxy to send her this and my writing? I guess the question goes begging. I can't find her on google or Facebook.

Amy, and the creepiest thing I've ever done... Get on with it! Ah no, but first, to get to there, I need to tell you a little more about my father, Ted Allan. (Have you read TAiS yet? Go one, Read Ted Allan in Spain: the movie! Or at least look at the provisional illustrations, with it's synopsis [then read TAiS])

In 1947 Ted went back to Spain, to Franco's Spain, as a reporter, and he contracted Typhoid Fever. Repatriated to New York, he was dying. Lying in the hospita in New York, hee recalls, he said, that the doctors did not expect him to survive the night.
     In the middle of the night, the duty nurse came over to Ted's screened off bed. "She wasn't particularly good looking," says Ted. "She was quite plain. And what she did, I'm sure she did it to bring me back to life. And it did. She gave me a blow job. And my energy changed. I brought me back to life."

Fast forward a quarter of a century.
      I had a girl friend, Amy, and she had had a brain aneurysm burst. She was near to death, and then recovering very slowly. It was worrying. She was conscious, not comatose, but so ill, and so slow, or stuck. And Ted reminded me of his Typhoid Fever story, of the nurse fellating him back to life.
     Oh, and that goes along with the Reichian Therapy Ted was into in those days. Reich saw genital release as the most important of vital functions.
     Did Ted urge me to "sex" Amy? I should say so. Does that relieve me of any responsibility? Oh, it would have taken balls to reject the suggestion. (And I lacked those balls.)
     I sexed Amy up there in her hospital room. An inexpert attempt at cunnilingus. Oh, she survived. But our romance didn't. (And I more than doubt it had any positive effect at all. Know most certainly mine was a most negative input.) And that is the creepiest thing I ever did: to sex up Amy in her hospital bed.(3)

Ah. (Deep sigh.) That's the worst of my story.

Oh. And the fifth most creepy thing? I forget.