malicious misconception by chris madoch, u.k. corrrespondent

I have chosen to publish this piece, knowing that it will inflame some perhaps simply because of the very nature of the thorny issue that it tackles and that it even comes close and dare we utter or broach the subject of children and sexuality. In our efforts to protect our children, noted one author, we have neutered them. Children are, by their very nature, sensual beings. This does not mean by any stretch that children have any comprension of sex or adult sex or that I or anyone here would encourage sexual relations with children. For the record: I absolutely do not. Children do not have the power to consent. You cannot consent to what you do not and cannot comprehend. But are children sensual - absolutely.

As a biographer, particularly of Lewis Carroll, I faced this issue a lot, for Carroll was often thought and still is often thought (it seems many prefer to think of him as, that it is almost "comfortable") as a pedophile. Why it should be that the best selling children's book of all time (Alice in Wonderland, which outsells every book every year, along side the Bible and Shakespeare, with whom Carroll is the most widely quoted author in the world  - that is verifiable) - yet we are comfortable with this idea of Carroll as pedophile while we lull our children to sleep with his "fairytale" of a little girl who fell down the rabbit hole.

This is not my article. This is wholly Chris Madoch's article - I write only to note that as Editorial Director and Founder of Tant Mieux I applaud the forthrightness of the piece and as such, I did not edit a single word. What you read below is uncut. We do not believe in censorship.

Be well, and thanks for reading,

s.r.p.

I have recently been publically abused by an intelligent maliciousness that has arisen out of a bigoted misconception. I am not surprised. I am an artist working in an age where art is largely condemned to be a tame accessory to intensely self-affirming lifestyles and there are many writers, artists and musicians who seem to have sold their soul to this concept. I make no apologies for not being one of their number. I see no point in being drawn into a discussion of the merits of their output.

Art submits itself to personal interpretation, there is no escaping that and often art is breathtakingly misinterpreted, taken the wrong way. This event is all the more likely when the interpreter is harbouring a mindset formed by unswerving beliefs and prejudices. They may even be persuaded that the artist in question is pursuing an agenda. In my particular case it was thought that I was on a campaign to promote the practice of raping children anally. The message that arrived on Facebook was not fan mail but fanatic mail.

It is true that I have written pieces concerning paedophilia; why not- the media indulges in debating the subject at length and in ugly tabloid detail. Artists are no strangers to the theme: Grayson Perry, who often dresses in public as an eight year old girl, won The Turner Prize for his magnificent and monumental pots. Some of the decorations of these wonderful ceramics refer graphically to a pivotal point in his childhood when he dreamed of being a very young girl sexually abused by adults. The accomplished painter Paula Rega has never shied away from similar themes in her work. Clearly, to some, these works are in no way decorative but utterly contentious. As for writers, well the list would be endless.

Let me complicate things somewhat. Odd for a queer, I have a gene pool that includes eight grandchildren. Naturally I would not want them to be scarred by an encounter with a paedophile. These ill people are real, far better that my loved ones know this. Maybe my daughters will inform them. Maybe the truth will filter through from the media, the classroom or the playground. Maybe this process can be ignited by art.

To this end I wrote two poems specifically about sex with children; one was based on a news story, the horror of which had penetrated my psyche, the other derived from my reading of a novel. Martine Cole is a British writer of gritty urban thrillers which are always well researched so when she tells the story of a young addict who rents out her children to a paedophile ring the stench of truth is palpable. The poems will confront you. That is the intention.

1]

EMPTY VESSELS

To watch a house

After dusk

The mandarin over glow

Hushing lesser stars,

The common privet moist

To lean against

Yet giving, like flesh,

Cannot be easy.

You’d be scared stiff

Of your own fluid daring.

You’d be rattling like a jar

With nothing in it.

You would surely be observed-

Seen as the purpled shadow

Loitering at the edge of the world.

You would be shuddered at

By some arthritic elder-

The pain making her sit and spy

Like a flowerless vase

In shawl and lightlessness.

She’ll be the one

..........To go to her phone,

..........To slip on a door mat

..........To die alone.

..........A crock in fragments.

How could you know that?

How could you know

The whereabouts of anything

Beyond the bidding portal-

Its jaw dropped

Letting bath steam saunter

Where it will,

Better than having it tongue

The newly decorated hall,

Letting the paper slip

Like family secrets?

My bet is you were born

In such a place,

Had your shit smeared in your face

And was left. Was left again

Then left for good.

That’s it,

Your sphincter muscle tone

Made slack by dad,

His mates and

Mother’s brother Jack.

But what decides this new act,

Committing you to attack the innocent?

I guess the kind of instinct

That makes falcons glide-

Silent as death

Above the shrew’s rabid scramble,

Its heart a frenzied tambourine

Before the talons

Cut short any scream,

An alloy of nature and nurture,

Need and hunger.

Or, could there be another inner voice,

The Black Sea in an empty shell,

That whispers in Russian, now or never.

You creep quiet

On crepe rubber soles

‘Cross the crazing paving,

Then the bare threshold.

The insane boldness

Brilliant.

Your face and balaclava flashed

Pink by mood bulbs.

And against the flow

Of all religious sense evaporating

You eat the shaggy stairs

In giant strides

To reach the treasure unawares.

AND

Then you fly-

It is the only explanation.

You superman it, hands wet,

A Cindy flannel pressed

Against her breathless baby face,

To the solemnly chosen, nearby place.

The street lamps blind.

The back alley kind to evil.

THEN,

Under the flap of a rodeo mac

You prise her mussel open,

Roar the act ungentlemanly,

Being voiceless.

BUT making

Just the faintest crack

Of teeth denting a toffee-apple skull.

Your grey disgust dripping

In that horrendous lull

Before the coming buzz of

The perfectly planned getaway-

Short jog to a blue Ford Van,

Glove compartment full

Of moist ones.

Long drive

To a pre-booked Travel Lodge.

..........A leisurely bath.

..........A fry-up in a Little Chef.

The news on the TV

As graphic as you expect.

Invisibility made easy.

On a strange divan

You snooze into a half sleep,

Despite the cold turkey

Come down

To earth with a bump,

Your chilling perversion dumped.

Then you drift in and out

Of dreamily planning

All the white-knuckle risks

Of your next thrilling excursion.

The baby’s ghost of a mother

Poor lowing cow,

Is in all the tabloid papers now-

Ripped of spirit,

An empty vessel

Sounding off the most with

Groundbreaking headlines,

‘How was THIS fuckin’ done?

Give me. Give me. Anyone!

If only I had a loaded gun!’

2]

SPOILED ROTTEN

Shazza has a bad-n-sad habit

Used to steal, to do kerb tricks

Anything to work to support it.

Now she’s SELLING her kids.

Tracy-Madonna is barely six.

Her brother Ben is just another

Highly PROFITABLE hole; he’s ten.

His mum RENTS both of them

By the hour to mostly men

Who film all the lewd sex acts

On a set with a settee that’s

Covered in see thru plastic.

Broad smiles, coz paedophiles

Are charged a PREMIUM RATE;

They pick her kids up late

But have ‘em home for eight.

She insists on a family breakfast,

‘It’s the best meal of the day,

Gives you grit’ they hear her say.

Counting mountains of CASH, she

Stashes it away for when ‘DEALS

On Wheels’ is knocking on doors

Singing-

‘Lady, what is mine is yours

Here’s the goods that you ordered,

Come on,

Baby, baby, give up the gravy.’

Of course

It’s shocking, but it’s also TRUE.

.....Rush

To judgement, why don’t you

NOW. The poor fucking cow!

.....Just hush

Your mouth being holier than thou.

These kids get tons of sweets,

Fitted shoes on their feet,

Loads of love and attention.

Spoiled they are. SPOILED ROTTEN.

I won’t extrapolate, as ever the pieces should be left to speak for themselves. But let me say, there is nothing in them that I would not share with my family. I am that transparent. And there is a very good reason for that. I am dying somewhat slowly from a progressive lung condition- not Cancer. To my mind there is no point in hiding anything.

When challenged by mortality one tends to focus on the quality of life that remains- my response was to never again live in one iota of denial of my true self.

A life-long rebel and truth seeker, my writing had always erred towards the contentious but since that moment it has grown more so. It is not that I am intentionally courting controversy for its own sake, it is that my art is naturally more confrontational than decorative. It has work to do.

It follows then that there will be, beside the utterly disinterested, avid fans and malicious detractors. Oddly, I rather enjoy criticism and do not put myself above it but I will always have problems with personal attacks made on the basis of malicious misconceptions or jealousies.

However, I can do nothing about the numbers of ignorant, prejudicial bigots that abound in our society- they have their darts to throw and I am an easy target because I hide nothing.

I totally hate the idea of my having agenda- it smacks of politics or religion both of which I abhor but, if pressed, I would have to say that my agenda is for transparency in all things. Sadly and to my lasting regret, there are self-righteous people who seem to think that that position is very dangerous and that, because of it, I should be got rid of.

I say to them, bring on the assassins- death comes in many forms. These same killers would most likely have all paedophiles despatched. They could never be persuaded that the humanist solution lies in education, medication and rehabilitation.

Chris Madoch © 2009