never Phil and my actual friends. That would have felt ridiculous. I picked other chums to fill out my crew: Joyce who drew a perfect Donald Duck with eyelashes, Andy Pfeiffer because he had a cute smile and I liked his name, Joey because I found myself wishing he was my friend during a game at his birthday party when we chose papers from a hat and, from their instructions, ran each other through gauntlets. My attachment to him was instantaneously erotic, as he slapped mybehind on drawing such a lot.
In fact, all my shipmates were kids to whom I was attracted but never turned into real-life friends. Instead, I invented their characters and our relationships.
After escaping atomic war we searched for another habitable planet. We visited worlds with green and blue rain, quadruple and quintuple moons: spiderweb villages, dragon-filled cocoons, yellow oceans, forests of talking birds and hedgehogs, underground tunnels and caves. I tried to drag out each phase of exploration as long as possible, returning to former venues to fill in missing details. We finally chose a home planet, built houses there, and befriended local animals and made up rules for our society. This activity spawned a continuous virgin papyrus for me to emboss and then commit to memory—just keeping track of the names of make-believe animals: Snellems, Hop-Hogs, Mugwums, and the like.
As life on our new world lapsed into squeamish intimacy, I created interlopers with their own plots and machines. I always stayed a step ahead of the story with predicaments for which I had no solutions. Dreaming up perils kept the daydream urgent and pure and gave my mind crises to solve. Just when our plight seemed most hopeless we would discover new regions of our world—deeper forests, further tunnels, abandoned forts—or sometimes fresh powers in our vehicle. Eventually we were forced to flee and go deeper into the universe, so I had to create a new home planet.
The “tale” was with me for all the years of my childhood. In some part of my mind I held the up-to-the-minute situation and map of our universe with a backlog of worlds we had visited and lived on. At any time I could either pick up where I had left off or replenish an old episode.
I especially liked to revert to the setting in which the visitors contacted me and made a gift of their ship. To refine it reinforced its authenticity and essential nature. I never had my benefactors return. I didn’t want that option. They were almighty and inchoate. I needed to be the driving force behind my fantasy, to generate adventures and resolve them from my own deeds. To have gods rescuing us would have obviated the whole basis of the story.
I regularly reenacted our last-minute escape from Earth, mushroom clouds spreading, parts of buildings flying apart, maneuvering the spaceship to get to and save each member of my would-be crew—then our fiery blast-off … tearing through the atmosphere toward the stars—each iteration as suspenseful and gratifying as the original.
The story touched something in me that admitted no other form. It was my chance to fight back against terror, to become a likable boy at last, to make friends with kids whose allure intimidated me. But there was another element, a mystery hard to diagnose.
Rain whipped through a valley of phosphorescent trees. Hedgehogs bounced alongside our gang—they were our telepathic allies. I called to Andy and Jill to help. They brought wood from the ribbony forest. Joey had taken the ship and gone back to rescue Jimmy. The Snellems were searching for us on the other side of the great ocean and soon their warships would be drawing near. A music-like theme built in my mind, a sense of fascination like trance. I was checking star-maps in case we had to escape.
It was heady to look around the classroom and see unaware people accompanying me across the stars.
At night I dug deep into the covers as I kindled my universe into being. Daddy had taught me to say,
In fact, all my shipmates were kids to whom I was attracted but never turned into real-life friends. Instead, I invented their characters and our relationships.
After escaping atomic war we searched for another habitable planet. We visited worlds with green and blue rain, quadruple and quintuple moons: spiderweb villages, dragon-filled cocoons, yellow oceans, forests of talking birds and hedgehogs, underground tunnels and caves. I tried to drag out each phase of exploration as long as possible, returning to former venues to fill in missing details. We finally chose a home planet, built houses there, and befriended local animals and made up rules for our society. This activity spawned a continuous virgin papyrus for me to emboss and then commit to memory—just keeping track of the names of make-believe animals: Snellems, Hop-Hogs, Mugwums, and the like.
As life on our new world lapsed into squeamish intimacy, I created interlopers with their own plots and machines. I always stayed a step ahead of the story with predicaments for which I had no solutions. Dreaming up perils kept the daydream urgent and pure and gave my mind crises to solve. Just when our plight seemed most hopeless we would discover new regions of our world—deeper forests, further tunnels, abandoned forts—or sometimes fresh powers in our vehicle. Eventually we were forced to flee and go deeper into the universe, so I had to create a new home planet.
The “tale” was with me for all the years of my childhood. In some part of my mind I held the up-to-the-minute situation and map of our universe with a backlog of worlds we had visited and lived on. At any time I could either pick up where I had left off or replenish an old episode.
I especially liked to revert to the setting in which the visitors contacted me and made a gift of their ship. To refine it reinforced its authenticity and essential nature. I never had my benefactors return. I didn’t want that option. They were almighty and inchoate. I needed to be the driving force behind my fantasy, to generate adventures and resolve them from my own deeds. To have gods rescuing us would have obviated the whole basis of the story.
I regularly reenacted our last-minute escape from Earth, mushroom clouds spreading, parts of buildings flying apart, maneuvering the spaceship to get to and save each member of my would-be crew—then our fiery blast-off … tearing through the atmosphere toward the stars—each iteration as suspenseful and gratifying as the original.
The story touched something in me that admitted no other form. It was my chance to fight back against terror, to become a likable boy at last, to make friends with kids whose allure intimidated me. But there was another element, a mystery hard to diagnose.
Rain whipped through a valley of phosphorescent trees. Hedgehogs bounced alongside our gang—they were our telepathic allies. I called to Andy and Jill to help. They brought wood from the ribbony forest. Joey had taken the ship and gone back to rescue Jimmy. The Snellems were searching for us on the other side of the great ocean and soon their warships would be drawing near. A music-like theme built in my mind, a sense of fascination like trance. I was checking star-maps in case we had to escape.
It was heady to look around the classroom and see unaware people accompanying me across the stars.
At night I dug deep into the covers as I kindled my universe into being. Daddy had taught me to say,
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