Clik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 2: SCHOOLDAYS
By Andrew Maben Idyll of childhood, such as it had been, was about to come to an end, though of course I had no forebodings. One cold, misty, drizzly, January afternoon my father loaded my newly packed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 3: JUST A LONELY BOY
By Andrew Maben Ravenswood was another private boarding school in the hills bordering Exmoor. It had the same rules, the same ghastly food, the same institutionalized cruelty. And I certainly had...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 4: SHERBORNE
By Andrew Maben Eleven Plus, I’m sorry to tell you, was yet another shameful humiliation. You may well be thinking it’s high time I got over it. What can I say? Only that I fail now, as I did then, to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 5: GROWING UP
By Andrew Maben It’s probably fair to say that most, if not quite all, the volunteers for the Digby were losers and refugees like me, seeking any escape, even should it prove to be from frying pan to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 6: FREEDOM
By Andrew Maben No reprieved prisoner could have felt greater joy and relief than I as I walked out of the front door for the last time and made my way to the station. I took off my tie, that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 7: ART SCHOOL
By Andrew Maben Memory is still a misted night journey: soft, unshaped forms loom and fade, with occasional bright oases of light. The first week: a time of excitement, a time of uncertainly finding...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 8: SUMMER OF LOVE
By Andrew Maben So, wait a minute… What, as they sometimes say, was I thinking? What indeed? I suppose that in a certain sense you could say I wasn’t thinking at all, simply living to my utmost, in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 9: WINTER OF DISCONTENT
By Andrew Maben Yes, I was still a student, and I’d been set a summer project as an introduction to the Fine Art program: a painting on the theme of night. Somehow I became fascinated with a small...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 10: ON MY OWN
By Andrew Maben Before I left, Mum handed me a packet of Durex, told me to always keep them handy. Good advice. I’d found a bed-sit just south of Victoria station, a tiny room on the top floor, up many...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 11: SUMMER DREAMS AND DISILLUSION
By Andrew Maben For the first, and I hope the last, time in my life I slept standing up. The train from Paris to Marseilles was so packed with Parisians making their annual summer exodus that there...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 12: KIND STRANGERS
By Andrew Maben You’d think that at this point I might have stopped, or at least paused, to take stock, to consider what I thought I was doing, where I thought I might be going. Apparently not. If I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 13: THE ROAD TO EXCESS
By Andrew Maben I surely did not notice as Ourobouros touched tongue-tip to tail. Looking back at this moment it has, however, often seemed so: that this was the moment I chose to dive into the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 14: UNRULY TIMES ON AVENUE DE CLICHY
By Andrew Maben By about three in the afternoon we had reached Amiens, and after trudging from the centre of town finally found ourselves back on the side of the main Paris road. Traffic was sparse, no...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 15: HENDRIX IS DEAD
By Andrew Maben I regained consciousness to find the sky still that limpid blue, and to the smell of the dew-damp grass soft beneath my back. I was lying half-in, half-out of the van, which teetered...
View ArticleClik here to view.
CHARLES JESSUP: RADIO PREACHER AND COCK FIGHTER
By Jim Linderman Rev. Charles Jessup was a border radio fixture for years on a powerful station operating just across the Mexican border (and just outside U. S. regulations) at the same time as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
WILD SEX (IN THE DEATH KNIGHT CLASS)
By dixē.flatlin3 What you are about to read will contain a lot of acronyms. And likely a lot of information you may have never cared to know. But there are many strange kinks in the human phenomenon,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
WILLIAM H. DOOR: MURDER OF A SUNSET STRIP SMUT KING
By Jim Linderman William H. Door was found November 20, 1963 shot and clubbed to death with his hands tied behind his back. With him, also murdered, was his girlfriend Ellen Criss. Door was “a known...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 16: SCARED STRAIGHT
By Andrew Maben Well. Yeah. No. I was not responsible for, nor even involved directly in, the untimely demise of any rock gods. Or anyone else for that matter. But still… It gave me pause. I was also...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERESTING TIMES 17: STONED!
By Andrew Maben It felt like flying. The sun, the blue sky, the quiet road out of town, the sea, and dunes, and Maggie laughing, hair blowing, nipples taut beneath the lacework of that blouse. In the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
UGLY IS
The “Ugly Spirit” was the impetus for William Burroughs’ writing career. He attributed the accidental shooting and killing of his wife to the influence of such an elemental force, and his vast output...
View Article