when it comes to the preponderance of evil, men have it all over women, meaning, they have the physical prerequisites to commit it -- women don’t. This blog is not a defence of the male gender (yes there is a gender called male, these guys have penises) some of them would sooner cut out your tongue and torture you for months as look at you; honestly, I guarantee it. The evil that the male of the species do is without end; yes you may be raped and mutilated at any moment, that’s a given. But this is not about that. I have not written here for ages, and apparently I have three loyal fans. I owe them this. I thought the reason was that I had come to associate these writings with the COVID lockdown. No. I associated this blog with a woman who claims to have been hurt by my writing. Yes, this happened long ago, and you might well wonder who I am talking about. Well wonder away. But I will not speak of her specifically — I will speak of the evil women do; for it is not often interred in their bones, but floats again and again through the generations. I knew this first through my mother — who I will always love — who is forever blameless — but who taught me of women's twisted ways. She was pretty, but dark inside, and cold as ice, and wanted desperately to take you in (as Barbara Streisand sings in Woman in Love) and wanted, just as desperately, finally, to put you out. That is the trick; a friend of mine once said this about his lover (a male), paraphrasing Tennessee Williams: ‘the light shines so brightly, but when it is shut off, it hurt so much.’ This was my mother to a tee, she loved me to death, but also made it very clear that -- if certain conditions were not met --said love might disappear. This is what a woman who shall remain nameless did to me. (You will think I’m talking about Evalyn Parry, go ahead, it’s a free country). She took me in, she had me. This is the loving part, where you can do nothing wrong; where you are told you are perfect -- and perfectly loveable --and everything you do is brilliant and gorgeous. You can’t believe that you have found such admiration. But the castle is made of sand. Was I ever truly loved? I doubt it. It was a careful calculation; I was a strong male, and in this case, a writer, and I was assured that support was there for me. Yes, woman as support — a misogynist cliche. Can you blame them for taking that abuse and running with it -- for perverting that boobytrapped gift — a role, after all, that is forced upon them? No; and you can’t blame them for gleefully grabbing the knife when at last they are given power -- some power. For they have you between their legs -- or as they are prone to say — in their hearts — and now they are going to kill you and toss you aside.This must all sound terribly misogynistic. You will put it down to my homosexuality. Just don’t bother, as I will say again and again that male evil, in so many ways -- is much much worse. But a woman can get you to physical agony soon enough; the mental illness becomes physical, she knows that. She too is a monster, and what is most monstrous is that she will never admit it. No, for there is no end to the depth of a woman’s suffering — they gave birth to you (or someone else) and must bleed for you monthly, whatever the case. Of course, this is not all women. But then again, it's not just one. There’s no point in shaming a whole gender — let’s leave that to trans theorists. There are good women and there are good men. But what makes the evil ones evil? Well, there is evil of the Iago kind; the motive seeking of motiveless malignity, no reason; it just is. It may get you some day; it may not— that’s what horror movies are about. (After all, contrary to what you hear in the media, lots of us won’t die of the horrific COVID, we will simply die in our sleep.) Then there is the second kind of evil; born of self-hatred. For what evil these people do to others is inconsequential next to the evil they do themselves. The woman who tried to stop me from writing this blog attacked me as a writer; it was because she was not a poet herself. And she wished she was. You see, she had failed. (Sorry Evalyn). She looked at me with admiration, loved me, encouraged me, and deep down all the time was thinking: ‘That should be me! I should be him! I should have his accolades — and it’s all because I’m a woman that I don’t!” No, it’s not because of that; women have a much harder time of it as artists, for sure, as do gay men. Women and gay men can triumph, but when you do there is always someone who wants to kill you for it. So that’s it. I was knifed; it was some time ago. But I’ve recovered. I’m back. I’m wearing the knife in my head right now; I’m one of those guys who walks around with it sticking out of his head and people have to tell him it's there. And no, finally, for the millionth time, this isn’t about Evalyn Parry; I don’t know how to convince you. I know I doth protest too much, but it’s oh so nice to be back again and lying to you. Remember — the poet doesn’t lie in order to be found out; or to be interpreted, or to be understood. (There is no ‘key.’). The poet does it to seduce you. Like so many others.
