OUT NOW: The Rites of Spring

What do you get when you cross weird science fiction, bawdy adventure, sideways humor, and delightful strangeness?

Frankly, I haven't the faintest idea, but my serial story, The Rites of Spring, might be pretty damned close.

So, if you like your science fiction weird, your adventure stories bawdy, your humor tilted, and your strangeness delightful then head on over to the great Paper Bag Press site and download the first chapter of my fun new project.

And, naturally, if you want to write a review then drop me a line and I'll send you over a copy.

Here's a quickie taste:

"Sweat, a runner’s thing and not a girlish thing, pooled in her valleys and streamed down her creases. Salt stung her eyes and her shoes. The miraculous devices were wet and heavy; liquid gently surged between her cramped toes. Some of Gazelle’s sweat cooled on the top of her head -- natural air-conditioning made from the run itself and her soaked dreadlocks.

Her belt jumped and wore at her hips, chiming and jingling, adding a sharp downward tug to each step. The tube, the reason for this whole thing, jumped and tapped her back with each step -- a high-pitched feeling compared to the trembling bass of the belt on her itching hips. Her kit, the bag, wasn’t heavy because there wasn’t much in it. But anything, no matter now slight, was an ache as she ran: Her breasts -- hills and valleys -- pulled against her chest; sandbags tied to her lungs and her back.

Despite the fuzzy wonderfulness of endorphins, everything hurt. Painful, sure, yes, damned straight -- but even it was a pain she was used to, trained for, bred for. It was a natural kind of pain, one that was intimate and close to most of her memories: she was a runner from a tribe of runners, and pain was something that was a part of doing anything -- because running was everything.

She was a Messenger: hours, hours, days, days she’d run the track around the ancient fort (from the Age of Slavery), the Runnerdrome. Mile after mile on the crunching and hissing gravel had made her friendly, intimate, bored with the long run. The burning of her lungs, the jumping with a kick of her strong, strong legs (miles and miles and miles on that track) put her over the wall, gave her the high medicine -- the reward of natural drugs.

Excitement, thrill was cinnamon in her mouth. This was her trip. Who cared if her breasts hurt? Who cared if her legs ached? This was her run, the prize. She wouldn’t turn back until she’d completed her task, and then, when she did return, she’d be a woman, a Messenger with merit.

Gazelle ran, absorbed in the action of her arms and her legs, blurred by the chant of her natural stride. She ran through the City, pumping and pounding, proud full to bursting -- after all, she’d won, she’d emerged victorious from the Rivalry. She’d passed all their tests (no matter how weird), she’d run their course (no matter how hard), and she’d emerged the winner and claimed the prize: the honor of the run, this run, her run.

One thing bothered her, though, cutting through the fog of endorphins, the glow of accomplishment, the blister that may or may not have been forming on her left heel:

Spoke had smiled, had wished her well.

... and nothing but the ...

Here's a 'fun' little piece I wrote to vent a bit about what it really means to be a writer ....

I’ve pretty much always wanted to be a writer but it’s only recently I’ve wanted to, well, be honest about what it really means to be a writer.

It’s not that the “How To” books, teachers, and especially writers really lied to me but after I finally stepped into the world of professional writing after ten long years of struggling I realized I had been unprepared for what it was really like.

After another ten years as a ‘pro’ I’ve come to realize some essential truths about being a writer, truths I wish I’d known before working all those years to get my work in print.

The first, and for some folks the biggest, reality check is that you’ll never be rich. In fact you’ll never be able to make a living – and even if you manage to do it for a while it won’t last very long. Insult to injury, it can even work against you getting a regular job: try explaining a six-month, or year-long, gap in your resume because you were trying to live as a writer. No employer wants to hire someone just biding their time until their dream comes true – especially if it never does.

The second is that you’ll never be famous: your book will never be an Oprah Book Club selection, you’ll never be interviewed on NPR, nothing you do will be made into a movie, you won’t be reviewed in the New Yorker, and people won’t ask for your autograph. You want fame? Then get on American Idol and sing … very, very badly. Even then you’ll only have your Andy Warhol fifteen minutes.

The third is that you’ll never get any respect. Friends won’t read your books, spouses will only read them because they have to, and if you tell anyone you’re a writer their eyes will glaze over for a minute and then they’ll ask you if you saw the latest reality show last night. You’ll get even less consideration from people in the ‘industry.’ if you can even get a reviewer to read your work, they're more likely to trash it than praise it because most are frustrated writers eager to show readers how "insightful" they are. Other writers will either arrogantly ignore you or speak ill of you or your work out of jealousy. Agents, publishers, and editors won’t answer your queries or if they do they’ll make it very clear that you’re not important to them – and never will be.

I’m not deaf. I can hear all of you very clearly: "But my last book made a bucket of money." "But I’ve got oodles of ‘friends’ on MySpace." "But my agent is wonderful!" … but … but … but … maybe you’re right, but you’re also completely wrong.

I’ve personally had some great experiences, some marvelous experiences, some fantastic experiences as a writer: decent royalty checks, fan letters from out of the blue, rave reviews, supportive friends, kind and conscientious editors, publishers, and agents, but they are rare exceptions. For every one of these positives there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of negatives.

But there’s another thing I wish I’d known before I set out to become a writer. It's something that, alas, I still work very hard to remember when one of those negatives crosses my desk or pops into my email box (or doesn’t, as the case may be). It’s something I wish I could tell every writer, and get everyone, everywhere, who deals with writers in any capacity, to understand as well.

Writers are brave.

Actually, that’s not quite right. Oh it’s accurate all right but it’s a little short of reality. It’s better to say writers are incredibly brave.

Every time we write we’re reaching back into our minds, our souls, our dreams, our fantasies to then throw what we craft out into an uncaring and cruel world. We do it all by ourselves, without help – or much help -- from anyone. We risk more with each story, each novel, than most people do in an entire lifetime and, what’s even more courageous is that we keep doing it, over and over, after each kick in the balls … or teeth, if you want to be less sexist.

We do it when the money doesn’t come, we do it when the fame doesn’t come, and we do it when the respect isn’t there. If that’s not bravery then I don’t know what is.

That’s the message I really wish I’d gotten when I was first starting out, that I now wish someone would tell all writers, budding or otherwise. Yes, I wish I could have told myself that being a writer would be a profitless, thankless, frustrating, demeaning, and depressing undertaking – but I also wish I could have heard that no matter what happens, or more than likely what doesn’t happen, I’d be doing something remarkably brave.

And that deserves tremendous respect and admiration -- even if it only comes from yourself.

Actually, again, that’s not quite right. It’s much more accurate to say especially if it comes from yourself.

Legendary Masquerade

This is very cool: Matt Schuler, the editor of Legendary, just posted a preview of the graphic story Wynn Ryder and I did, and that I've been chatting about here. When I get word about Legendary's publication date I'll naturally let you all know.

Year's Best Lesbian Fiction

Just got some very cool news: My story ("The One I Left Behind") from Catherine Lundoff's fantastic anthology, Haunted Hearths, just got picked up for Year's Best Lesbian Fiction.

If You Live In The UK -

(and I know some of you do) then check out the newest issue (Vol 43 No 6) of the very excellent Forum UK magazine for an sex-ed article by myself called "Happiness Is A Warm Bottom" (about the theory and practice of submission).

Here's a taste:

Invariably it happens. Sure, the workplace, the volunteer center, the family gathering, the "straight" friends, may not be the perfect place for my predilections to come to light but often they do. In my case, which I admit is rather unique, it's usually because I'm a writer of explicit materials (AKA "smut") and as such instantly become the expert in all things sexual -- but I also know some friends who just get tired of the inane jokes, the goggle-eyed mocking, the "would-you-believes" around things like body piercing and the "Dominatrix Love Triangles" on the Jerry Springer Show and just have to say something.

Once out, that's it: every stubbed toe, every sore back, every social interaction becomes shaded by their giggling discomfort. "But you like that kind of thing ("stubbed toe"), "Oh, and how did you -- wink, wink -- hurt it?" (sore back), "We know what Chris is going to do -- laugh -- this weekend. Just don't come back bruised."

They just can't get a grip on anyone who, in their eyes, likes to get hurt ....

[MORE]

Keep Your Eyes -

- on Flickr. I'm shooting to have some fun with a long-neglected hobby: photography. Hope you like!

Masquerade: Page 2

As I mentioned before, here's a preview of a very special project: Masquerade was illustrated by my great pal, and a fantastic artist, Wynn Ryder, from a story by ... well, me ... for an upcoming graphic novel anthology called Legendary.

I'll be putting up more pages from the final over the next few months ... or you can read the entire thing on Wynn's Deviantart pages.

Thanks!

As some of you may know things have been kind of tough for me lately. That's why I'm very touched by the folks who've reached out with their kindness and support. I can't believe I can actually say this, but there are too many to thank.

But I have to toss out some special hugs of gratitude to my beloved Jill; my cherished friend, Pauline; the fantastic Jude Mason; my sweet pal AF Waddell; the wonderful Lisabet Sarai; my friend Mick Dementiuk; Jim Brown; Donna George Storey; Oatmeal Girl, Remittance Girl, The Dirty Blond ... and others I'm ashamed to say have slipped my mind for the moment.

And I want to give a warm hug to a new friend, Don, who not only sent me a fantastic note but also some great presents from my amazon wish list!

For Don - and for all my other wonderful friends - here's a little smut story that I tried to also make into a statement about the great people in my life:

Love
By
M. Christian

"You could have stayed with me," he'd said, the first time I went to Seattle to see him, but stayed in a motel. I hadn't even thought of it, and so the disappointment in his eyes.

I never went back. After he got promoted there wasn't any point.

You could have stayed with me evolves into a fantasy in which those four days play out differently: an invitation made earlier, my discomfort of staying in someone else's house miraculously absent. Fresh off the plane, strap digging into my shoulder (I always overpack), out of the cab and up a quick twist of marble steps to his front door. A knock, or a buzz, and it opens.

A quick dance of mutual embarrassment as I maneuver in with my luggage, both of us saying the stupid things we all say when we arrive somewhere we've never been before. Him: "How was your flight?" Me: "What a great place."

Son of a decorator, I always furnish and accessorize my fantasies: I imagine his to be a simple one bedroom. Messy, but a good mess. A mind's room, full of toppling books, squares of bright white paper. Over the fireplace (cold, never lit) a print, something classical like a Greek torso, the fine line topography of Michangelo's David. A few pieces of plaster, three-dimensional anatomical bric-a-brack on the mantel. A cheap wooden table in the window, bistro candle, and Don't Fuck With The Queen in ornate script on a chipped coffee cup.

Dinner? No, my flight arrived late. Coffee? More comfortable and gets to the point quicker. We chat. I ask him about his life: is everything okay? He replies that he's busy, but otherwise fine. We chat some more. I say that it's a pleasure to work with him. He replies with the same.

I compliment him, amplifying what I've already said, and he blushes. He returns it, and then some, making me smile. My eyes start to burn, my vision blurs, tears threatening. I sniffle and stand up.

He does as well, and we hug. Hold there. Hold there. Hold there. Then, break—but still close together. Lips close together. The kiss happens. Light, just a grazing of lips. I can tell he wants more, but I'm uncomfortable and break it but not so uncomfortable that I can't kiss his cheeks. Right, then left, then right again.

But his head turns and we're kissing, lips to lips again. Does he open his first or do I? Sometimes I imagine his, sometimes mine. But they are open and we are kissing, lips and tongue, together. Hot, wet, hard.

But not on my part. Wet, definitely—in my mind it's a good kiss. A generous and loving kiss. Hot, absolutely, but only in a matter of degrees as his temperature rises and mine does in basic body response.

Not hard on my part, but I am aware of his. Between us, like a finger shoved through a hole in his pocket, something solid and muscular below his waist.

Does he say something? "I want you," "Please touch me," "I'm sorry," are candidates. I've tried them all out, one time or another, to add different flavors, essences, spices to that evening. "I want you," for basic primal sex. "Please touch me," for polite request, respect and sympathy. "I'm sorry," for wanting something he knows I don't.

"It's okay," I say to all of them, and it is. Not just words. Understanding, sympathy, generosity. All of them, glowing in my mind. It really is okay.

I'm a pornographer, dammit. I should be able to go on with the next part of this story without feeling like … I'm laughing right now, not that you can tell. An ironic chuckle: a pornographer unable to write about sex. Not that I can't write about myself, that making who I am—really—the center of the action is uncomfortable, because I've certainly done that before. I've exposed myself on the page so many other times, what makes this one so different?

Just do it. Put the words down and debate them later. After all, that's what we're here for, aren't we? You want to hear what I dream he and I do together. You want to look over my mental shoulder at two men in that tiny apartment in Seattle.

I'm a writer; it's what I do, and more importantly, what I am. So we sit on the couch, he in the corner me in the middle. His hand is on my leg. My back is tight, my thighs are corded. Doubt shades his face so I put my own hand on his own, equally tight, thigh. I repeat what I said before, meaning it: "It's okay."

We kiss again. A friend's kiss, a two people who like each other kiss. His hands touch my chest, feeling me through the thin cloth of turtleneck. I pull the fabric out of my pants with a few quick tugs, allowing bare hands to touch bare chest. He likes it, grinning up at me. I send my own grin, trying to relax.

His hand strokes me though my jeans, and eventually I do get hard. His smile becomes deeper, more sincere, lit by his excitement. It's one thing to say it, quite another for your body to say it. Flesh doesn't lie, and I might have when I gave permission. My cock getting hard, though, is obvious tissue and blood sincerity.

"That's nice," "Can I take it out?" "I hope you're alright with this." Basic primal sex, a polite request including respect and sympathy, and the words for wanting something he knows I don't—any one of them, more added depth to this dream.

My cock is out and because he's excited or simply doesn't want the moment and my body to possibly get away, he is sucking me. Was that so hard to say? It's just sex. Just the mechanics of arousal, the engineering of erotica. Cock A in mouth B. I've written it hundreds of times. But there's that difference again, like by writing it, putting it down on paper (or a computer screen) has turned diamond into glass, mahogany into plywood.

Cheapened. That's the word. But to repeat: I am a writer. It’s what I do. All the time. Even about love—especially about this kind of love.

He sucks my cock. Not like that, not that, not the way you're thinking: not porno sucking, not erotica sucking. This is connection, he to I. The speech of sex, blowjob as vocabulary.

I stay hard. What does this mean? It puzzles me, even in the fantasy. I have no doubts about my sexuality. I am straight. I write everything else, but I am a straight boy. I like girls. Men do not turn me on.

Yet, in my mind and in that little apartment, I am hard. Not "like a rock," not "as steel," not as a "telephone pole," but hard enough as his mouth, lips, and tongue—an echoing hard, wet and hard—work on me.

The answer is clear and sharp, because if I couldn't get hard and stay hard then he'd be hurt and the scene would shadow, chill, and things would be weighted between us. That's not the point of this dream, why I think about it.

So, onto sex. Nothing great or grand, nothing from every section of the menu. A simple action between two men who care about each other: he sucks my cock. He enjoys it and I love him enough to let him. That's all we do, because it's enough.

He sucks me for long minutes, making sweet sounds and I feel like crying. He puts his hand down his own pants, puts a hand around his own cock. For a moment I think about asking him if he wants help, for me to put my hand around him, help him jerk off. But I don't. Not because I don't want to, or because I'm disgusted, but because he seems to be enjoying himself so much, so delighted in the act of sucking me, that I don't want to break the spell, turn that couch back into a pumpkin.

He comes, a deep groan around my cock, humming me into near-giggles. He stops sucking as his gasps and sighs with release, looking up at me with wet-painted lips, eyes out of focus. I bend down and kiss him, not tasting anything but warm water.

I love him. I wanted to thank him. I hope, within this dream, I have. The night that didn't happen but could have.

For me, writing is just about everything: the joy of right word following right word all the way to the end. The ecstasy of elegant plot, the pleasure of flowing dialogue, the loveliness of perfect description. Sex is good, sex is wonderful, but story is fireworks in my brain. The reason I live. The greatest pleasure in my life.

And he has given me that, with nearly flowing letters on an agreement between his company and I, between his faith in my ability and myself. He looked at me, exposed on the page of a book, in the chapter of a novel, in the lines of a short story, and didn't laugh, didn't dismiss or reject. He read, nodded, smiled, and agreed to publish.

Sex cannot measure up to that. Bodies are bodies, but he has given me a pleasure beyond anything I'd felt: applause, and a chance to do much, much more with words, with stories.

He doesn't have a name, this man in my fantasy. There have been a lot of them over the years, and a lot more in the future, no doubt. Gay men who have touched me in ways no one has ever touched me before, by making love with my soul through their support of my writing. Each time they have, this fantasy has emerged from the back of my mind, a need to give them the gift they have given me: passion and kindness, support and caring, and pure affection.

I worry about this. I worry that they won't understand, take this secret dream of mine as being patronizing, diminishing them to nothing but a being with a cock who craved more cock. I've confessed a few times, telling a select few how I feel about them, how I wish I could do for them what they have done for me, to be able to put aside my heterosexuality for just an evening, an afternoon, and share total affection together.

Luckily, or maybe there really isn’t anything to worry about, the ones I've told, they smile, hold my hand, kiss my cheek, say the right thing and to this day, even right now, make me cry: "I wish we could too, but I understand. I love you too."

Am I bi? I know I'm physically not—I simply don't get aroused by men—but that doesn't mean I don't adore men, or for the ones I care about, the men who have touched my soul through their support and affection for my stories and writing, I wish I couldn't change. More than anything I wish I could give them what they have given me.

With a cock or a pen, with a story or hours of wonderful sex, it all comes down to one thing: love.

Painted Doll, An Excerpt (redux)

This is also ultra cool: The very nice Elisa just posted as excerpt from Painted Doll on her site (in addition to an excerpt from Dirty Words). Thanks so much, Elisa!

The View From Here: Songball

(the following is part of an ongoing 'column' I did for Suspect Thoughts, and, no, it's not supposed to make sense: only be weird fun)

The neighborhood kids are playing songball again. I don’t mind - except when that poor hydrocephalic kid from down at the Corporate Dormitories plays. His voice just grates on me -- and three times now he’s hit just the right frequency, causing my precious candyglass trinkets from that wonderful Summer at Bronze Beach to explode like kitsch-shrapnel hand grenades.

Last time I thought I’d escaped unscathed, that his screeching rendition of Baldwin’s new hit “Peacocks on my Mind” had somehow bypassed those mnemonic souvenirs of firm breasts and multicolored pubic hairs against a backdrop of pure, blue sands and a crashing champagne sea -- but after one drop, then two of blood on the manuscript pages I was laboring over, I reached up to find a sliver of cheaply spun crystal at the end of a wicked slice of skin.

I have to admit that when I heard their tunes drift up from the alley, I jerked my head to my little shelf of erotic brick-a-brack, waiting for one to detonate -- mentally running my apartment full of crap for something suitably heavy, but not too weighty, to drop on the poor little spud’s head.

Luckily for him and for my criminal record -- the Magistrates being tightly wound that Summer as the League of Handsome Prostitutes had decided to attend their Convention of Postures in unusual droves -- my kitsch stayed intact on my little shelf, the swollen-headed fry obviously having something better to do that screech and therefore inflict minor flesh wounds on lowly writers.

A writer lives for distractions. Anything will do. Messages suddenly crying to be composed, a stubborn pillow under the ass that cries to be fluffed and then fluffed again, a speck of grit on a window, a cup that simply looks out of place, a candletip that needs trimming, a fingernail just a shade too long -- or, in my case that afternoon, the local spawn playing songball in the alley.

I’m not a fan. Oh, sure, I like swingtag like most good Franciscans, but frankly I just don’t have the pitch or pipes to do anything but get teammates and adversaries to gag on their laughter or fall over backwards. So a lot of nuances of the game are lost on me.

But ... writers and their distractions, so I took my favorite cup, full of deepest black and wondered over to sip and stare -- anything but face that damned blank page.

Songball? Really? I had no idea what I was looking at. Oh, sure, I saw the alley, a battered couple of charcoal bins, a few flutters of litter, and the half-dozen or so scruffy (and sometimes not) local kids standing there on the soiled pavement, marked the usual cubic patterns of places and HOME, cheering, jeering, and chanting. I thought I knew the basics of the game, but either somehow I lost what little knowledge I’d had or the game had evolved on the street into something totally unique. The pitch was the same, that’s what I’d first heard, but the delivery, the spin, was strange and new.

I kept looking, listening, trying to figure out the play but just when I thought I had a grip on the rules, the behavior, it slipped away. Songs seemed to change and evolve totally at random as one child skipped forward and another skipped back. An outstanding performance -- like when a copper-headed sprite in Naval Greens belted out what I thought to be a perfect rendition of Carol’s “Death of Summer” -- brought catcalls and squeals of disappointment, and then when one of the little urchins tore up the air with what seemed to be just random squawks and squeals they got applause, cheers and to progress up five, and even seven squares

Fear started to niggle at the back of my mind, as if the world has suddenly twisted out of whack. Had I set down to my work in one world, with one version of songball only to look up somewhere else where the rules were completely different?

I thought about yelling down at the insufferable brats, either to get then to stop playing their game with my mind -- or at least key me in with the damned rules. I also thought about grabbing my shawl and rollers and just getting out of there -- maybe to the library where the books would hopefully still be books and the clerks as rude as ever.

I felt a shiver of panic, imaging a trip out my door -- down suddenly unfamiliar roads, past unfamiliar buildings, neighborhood commonalties having shifted into not-quite right, and what-the-hell? Would menus be nothing but puzzling heliographics and impenetrable encryptions? Would signs become a dance of squiggles and stylish ciphers? Was the city outside the city I remembered?

Just then, right when I was really starting to worry, one of my trinkets blasted away into a rainbow cascade of cheap materials -- and I knew, much to my satisfaction -- that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

"In The Butt, Bob!"

I'm thrilled to be the author of one of the few stories in Tristan Taormino's new book, The Anal Sex Position Guide, from Quiver Books. You can, naturally, order it from amazon.

Dark Roasted M.Christian (flashback)

Head over to Dark Roasted Blend for a article on the weird phenomena of mass hysteria:

For a topic involving laughter, what you’re about to read is not amusing. Creepy and disturbing, yes. Funny, no.

Things supposedly started innocently enough. Kashasha, near Lake Victoria in Tanzania in 1962: One girl in a boarding school there told another girl a joke. Maybe, “Have you heard the one about?” or “A Jew, an Indian, and Herbert Hoover walk into a bar …” or “Take my wife, please … ” Whatever the setup, the delivery, or punch line, the result was laughter. Whether it was a giggle, a guffaw, a chortle, a snort is irrelevant. The listener found it funny.

But then things went dark, weird, and creepy: one girl laughed, but then so did another, and then another, and then another, and then another.

After exposure, the incubation period from nothing to hysteria was short, from a few hours to a couple of days. There was no fever, no physical symptoms, just laughter and occasional crying between short moments of exhausted recuperation. When victims were restrained they sometimes became violent.

No one knew what to do. The school administrators were puzzled, local doctors were confused. Trying to put a lid on the phenomena, the administrators shut the school down.

But that was too little, too late: Whatever it was began to spread. It infected other schools and worked its way into the village, seemingly carried by infected students. It traveled to another village 20 miles away, and another 55 miles from Kashasha.

Even weirder, it wasn’t a constant thing. Like little hysterical explosions, the laughter would pop up, disable small groups for days at a time, then vanish.

Want to know what it was like? Well, it wasn’t funny, I can tell you that: one victim in Tanganyik reported watching it spread around him, hitting one neighbor after another: giggles, guffaws, chortles, snorts – horrible, nightmarish laughter. Terrified, he retreated into his home. But then he began to feel it too, a compulsion to join in with the hideous joke. He shouted and cried and – naturally -- laughed throughout the night.

The phenomena is called Mass Psychogenic Illness, more commonly known as mass hysteria, and although the Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic is an extreme version, it’s more common than you think. In fact what’s really scary about the giggling madness that sprung from one girl’s joke in Kashasha isn’t that it occurred but that many researchers believe it happens so often, and is so powerful, that we simply aren’t aware of it. Or rather we aren’t aware how much the phenomena controls us.

Ever hear the one about the Mad Gasser of Mattoon? In the 1930s -- all the way through to the mid 40s -- the residents of Botetourt County, Virginia, and Mattoon, Illinois, were terrorized by a surreal specter. Also called the “Anesthetic Prowler" or "The Phantom Anesthetist," he was supposedly a dark, mysterious figure responsible for dozens of victims falling ill from mysterious gasses flooding their homes. Whole families reported sudden attacks of choking, dizziness, headaches and various respiratory ailments.

The cops couldn’t catch him and doctors were baffled by the mysterious ailments of his victims. The FBI was called in but they couldn’t catch him either. Bulletins were circulated, newspapers warned residents to be on the lookout, vigilante groups roamed the streets trying to catch him -- in short, everyone went more than a little nuts trying to catch this gassy assailant.

But evidence suggests that he never existed. Sure, lots of people got sick, dozen and dozens and dozens more reported seeing dark and mysterious figures up to hideous no good stalking the night, and the authorities were run ragged with reports but there were no leads, nothing solid; nothing but suggestion, victims suffering from anxiety and fear, and the bizarre power of mass hysteria.

Ever hear the one about the Monkey Man of New Delhi? About four feet tall, sporting a metal cap and steel claws, he terrorized many a New Delhi night in 2001. Victims reported being savagely scratched and bitten by the odd ape. What’s worse is what happened to people scared of the ape: an unlucky short man was beaten by a mod who suspected him of being the ape, a pregnant woman fell down some stairs because neighbors had shouted that the ape had been seen, and others were said to have seriously injured themselves running away from what they thought was the ape.

The punch line for the Monkey Man is the same as for the laughing girls of Kashasha and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon: it was all in their minds.

You might guffaw and giggle about how silly those girls behaved, or how naive the folks of Mattoon were, or how ridiculous the Monkey Man sounds, but before you do too much laughing think about what some researches are hypothesizing: that much of what we believe about the world, about its horrors and mysteries -- including witch trials of every sort, communist conspiracies, UFOs, Satanic cults, white slavery, environmental illnesses, and so much more -- are nothing but signs of the tremendous power of the human mind, coupled with the drive to become one with the crowd.

Now ain’t that funny?