Why I wrote “Wet Goddess”

Posted on by Malcolm J. Brenner

Prologue

(Above: Dolly, my dolphin lover. © 2010, Malcolm J. Brenner)

Let me make something abundantly clear: Wet Goddess was not written to promote bestiality or zoophilia, although I knew if I told my story it would probably come down to that.

I wrote Wet Goddess to share my experience with a creature that I found to be remarkably sophisticated, intelligent, aware, loving and worthy in every way of the designation, “non-human person.”

And she didn’t come out of some alien spacecraft. Her kind exist here on Earth, as they have for millions of years before we appeared, surviving ages of fire and ice in the arms of Mother Ocean.

In the decades since my experience with Dolly, science has, in many ways, caught up with my impressions and anecdotal experience. Now cognitive psychologists and others have explored the mind of the dolphin and arrived at the same conclusions I did in 1971: dolphins are self-aware individuals, able to recognize themselves in a mirror, experiencing a vast range of emotions and behaviors, language users and capable of employing “theory of mind,” the ability to calculate or imagine what another creature is thinking.

We should be devoting a large chunk of our resources as a species to understanding these creatures who have survived so much longer on this planet than we have. What are we doing instead? Some nations still slaughter them en masse in tuna nets, while others conduct murderous drive hunts and butcher them with glee. Some nations take the prettiest ones and commoditize them and sell them into enslavement, where they are forced to perform stupid tricks for our amusement. And we are polluting their environment at such a rate that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. I despair for their future.

My zoosexual love story with Dolly the dolphin is what has attracted most attention, but if I’d had sex with a barnyard animal or a household pet, do you seriously think I’d have spoken up, exposing a practice that most people find viscerally revolting?

Of course not. Zoophiles may still have to keep their sexuality a secret in most situations, but they are humans and accorded certain rights by law. Dolphins are considered chattel, or property, by the same system. I am advocating for changing that and giving dolphins rights under a framework that recognizes their status, as acknowledged by science.

And that, folks, is what I mean when I say “I didn’t write Wet Goddess for zoophiles, I wrote it for dolphins.”

Sorry I had to spell it out for those of you who so perceptively pointed out that dolphins can’t read.

 

Book review: “Uniquely Dangerous” by Carreen Maloney

Posted on by Malcolm J. Brenner

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Book Review: Uniquely Dangerous by Carreen Maloney. Published by the author.

By Malcolm J. Brenner

Every so often a non-fiction book comes along which threatens to expose the common wisdom about its subject for the misconception it really is. In my own life, I can think of only a few books that have had this profound effect on me. Growing up in the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement, one was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, co-authored by Alex Haley; another was Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver’s short but damning tale of incarceration, Soul on Ice.

I mention these two books because they come most readily to mind, not because I want to make race an issue. The subject of Uniquely Dangerous is an Anglo man, not a person of color, and a privileged Anglo man at that, who rose to wealth and renown while concealing a dark secret from everyone around him, including those he loved.

His name was Doug Spink, and if that sounds vaguely familiar, you have a long memory for the perverse and obscure. It hearkens back to a 2010 raid by a multi-agency taskforce of 30 people on a tiny cabin in Whatcom County, Washington, to bring Spink in for probation violations relating to an earlier arrest for drug smuggling.

But that wasn’t what made the headlines. What got the big, bold typeface was the announcement by authorities that they had busted a “bestiality farm” run by Spink, where clients could be serviced by dogs or horses he had on the property (including a champion show jumper). The allegations grew even weirder when local animal rescuers announced that they have saved several rats covered with petroleum jelly. One “client,” an English tourist, was arrested with Spink.

Carreen Maloney was an experienced print journalist and a supporter of the Whatcom County animal shelter that received Spink’s animals. While the headlines about bestiality repulsed her, she wondered about a lot of things. Why hadn’t any of the reporters who covered the story tried to interview Spink to get his side? Weren’t journalists supposed to be fair? What happened to the animals, especially seven dogs and the mice, that went to the county shelter? And what made a successful businessman like Spink, who worked in cutting-edge encryption technology that even puzzled the Feds, drop everything to live like a hermit and indulge a sexual orientation many people found revolting?

Thus began an eight-year odyssey for Maloney, but her toil and research has paid off in a remarkable tale that reads like a mystery story but has the ring of truth. We find out that the 2010 raid was only the beginning of Spink’s troubles with the justice system, which seemed more concerned about ending his vocal support for his alternative sexuality than about punishing him for a non-violent crime.

Maloney has accumulated a huge volume of material on Spink’s dual life, a high-tech wizard by day and a zoophile by night, and distilled it to its most essential parts. The story plunges backward and forward in time, exploring Spink’s past, his family life, and the marriage that ended in failure when he came out as a zoophile, and a gay one at that. But Maloney handles these transitions with great skill, even weaving in her own narrative, as a tragic personal loss sets her on the road to telling Spink’s story.

Along the way, Maloney also takes sidetracks into other elements of the hidden zoo culture, showing us how it covertly appears in art, advertising, entertainment, religion, as an enduring theme of a group that’s uncomfortable with its own species. She uses Spink’s torment at the hands of federal prosecutors as a lens through which to view society’s loathing of human-animal sex, and she courageously asks the question, why? Why such a visceral reaction?

If you are a zoophile, or know someone who is, you owe it to yourself to buy Uniquely Dangerous, because seldom has writing on this inflammatory topic been so lucid, so even-handed and well-documented. If you are interested in the psychology of human sexual deviance, this book will provide useful insights. Similarly, those concerned with loss of personal freedoms and the erosion of privacy will find a story that illustrates their worst fears. If you like tales of personal will and courage in the face of overwhelming odds, you’ll cheer Spink’s outspoken defiance. And if you simply admire a riveting piece of journalism about a taboo subject, Maloney won’t disappoint you.

The portrait that emerges is of a complex, troubled man who always seems to find himself athwart the tides of life, whether he’s fighting his ex-wife for his beloved jumping horse or telling a federal court judge exactly how he feels. In the end, you may not like Doug Spink, but you might come to admire him. In a world that demands conformity, he refused to bend. Uniquely Dangerous is the balance sheet of what that stand has cost him.

— Malcolm J. Brenner, author: Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover

(In the interest of full disclosure, my novel, above, receives a brief mention in Uniquely Dangerous as part of material past the Appendix. This inclusion has in no way influenced my opinion of the book, however. — MJB)

 

 

“Twysted Tyrants” show interview April 16

Posted on by Malcolm J. Brenner

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. – Since the publication of his review of Oscar-winning film The Shape of Water, author Malcolm J. Brenner has seen renewed interest in his writing and  opinions on the controversial subjects of inter-species sex and love.

“The interview, written by Ashley Feinberg and published in The Huffington Post, has drawn a lot attention, and insane condemnation from people who wouldn’t know me from Adam in an ape suit,” Brenner said. “However, it’s also sparked an enormous bump in sales of my novel Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover, which is based on my 1970-’71 relationship with Dolly, a female bottlenose dolphin.”

Monday, March 26, was unique, in that Brenner got requests for two interviews: one from The Twisted Tyrants Radio Show on STLR Media in Sarasota, Fla., the other from a student journalist in Sydney, Australia.

Brenner will be a featured guest on the podcast starting at 9 p.m.
(Eastern Daylight Savings Time) on Monday, April 16. The show is hosted by Johnny Christ BayBay and his sidekick Uncle T, as well as a couple of other on-air personalities.

“Most interviewers want to talk to me about zoophilia and the maybe dolphins, in that order,” Brenner said, “but I’ve written two other books, one about my childhood in a pseudoscientific cult and the other a novel dealing with UFOs. When Johnny contacted me, he mentioned that he was interested in my experience practicing Wicca and my time reporting on the Navajo Nation, because one of his advertisers is a magical supplies store. I’m glad to shine some light on other aspects of my remarkable life.”

“Be prepared for two hours of strictly adult entertainment,” Brenner concluded.

 

Review: The Shape of Water

Posted on by Malcolm J. Brenner

A few days ago, I was contacted by writer Ashley Feinberg, with the Huffington Post, who asked my opinion of the movie “The Shape of Water.” I hadn’t seen it yet (I’d been wanting to, on the recommendation of friends), but I was glad to go the next day (one of the pleasures of being retired).  Rather than mess it up with any kind of introduction, I’ll just link to the story: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-shape-of-water-malcolm-brenner-dolphin-sex_us_5aa17482e4b0e9381c169b7a

And I’ll tell you I’m very happy with the way the interview went and the resulting story. Many thanks, Ms. Feinberg!

 

Author releases “Wet Goddess” outtakes

Posted on by Malcolm J. Brenner

PUNTA GORDA, FLORIDA – In a daring literary experiment, Malcolm J. Brenner, author of the human-dolphin love story Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover, has resumed publishing deleted chapters from the original first draft of the controversial 2010 novel.

“This material was originally first published several years ago on my personal blog at http://wetgoddess.net,” Brenner said. Tight finances forced  him to discontinue the web page.

“With the recent claim that some scientists have taught a killer whale, or orca, to imitate a few words in English, it occurred to me that this deleted material, with a brief introduction, could be recycled of its own accord,” Brenner said. “I wrote it in 1978, and it is essentially unchanged from my original drafts. I think it is prophetic and wonderfully ironic, given what we now know about how killer whales live in the wild, versus how they survive in even the best artificial conditions.”

The four consecutive chapters will be published one at a time, starting today, on Brenner’s writing web page: https://www.facebook.com/MJBrennerwriter/

“Wet Goddess” has sold about 1,450 copies in 18 countries, and has been translated into Russian. It is available as a 341-page photo-illustrated trade paperback from Amazon. com, and as an ebook from Smashwords.com.

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Author gets alumni write-up

Posted on by Malcolm J. Brenner

Nimbus2017

Author Malcolm J. Brenner and his books got a brief write-up in Nimbus, the quarterly magazine of the New College Alumnae/i Association, #81, Fall 2017. The photo, which Brenner submitted, shows him with one of the residents of the Dolphin Research Center in 2005.

Author gets free publicity from SNL!

Posted on by Malcolm J. Brenner

dolphins_045PUNTA GORDA, Fla. – Writer Malcolm J. Brenner got a pleasant surprise on a recent Monday morning when he read a web site that plugged Wet Goddess, his epic human-dolphin love story. The story was picked up by Brenner’s routine Google Alerts search.

On November 13, The Inquisitor published a review of an edgy Saturday Night Live skit featuring Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant as a pair of female scientists trying to train a dolphin to communicate. When the dolphin hits adolescence, they find the only way to keep him on task is to masturbate him. Host Tiffany Haddish plays a colleague who finds the whole thing nasty. The skit manages to be funny, cheesy and satirical at the same time.

It’s based on the actual relationship between a kindergarten teacher, Margaret Howe Lovatt, and Peter, a male bottlenose dolphin kept in a unique living arrangement at the Communications Research Institute on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the early 1960’s. Lilly described the unusual situation, which was intended to teach Peter how to speak English, in his 1967 book The Mind of the Dolphin.

During six weeks of living with Peter in a flooded room day in and day out, Lovatt found him demanding she masturbate him before their lessons would continue. Eager to continue the research, and unable to rationalize any objections to Peter’s advances, Howe complied. Lilly used parts of her notes in his book.

The Inquisitor also referenced a 2014 article in The Mirror, a British tabloid newspaper, which interviewed Brenner about his dolphin experience by phone. That article, in turn, linked to an earlier story about Lovatt and Peter.

Asked whether the exposure had any effect on sales of his novel, Brenner said “I’m not sure, but I sold four copies over the weekend, which is unusual. The first sale came in from the next time zone west of me at about 11:30 p.m. my time, so I don’t know whether SNL would have been on there. But I’ll take any publicity I can get!  Thanks, guys, the check is in the mail!”

Brenner recently had to completely re-do the layout for his dolphin novel before having the next order printed.  “I’ve written two other books since Wet Goddess was published in 2010, and I wanted to add a couple of pages at the end of the book to let readers know about my other work, which is equally radical.

“Because Microsoft had changed its Word document creation software between 2010 and now, the original .doc file had paragraph spacing errors when I opened it in an up-to-date version that uses the .docx filename. I ended up having to completely reformat the book, adding two new photos to take up some blank space,” Brenner continued.

Ever the perfectionist, Brenner had no sooner gotten the books back from the printer than he found another minor typo in them. “That’s the beauty of short-run printing,” he explained. “You may not be able to afford an editor or a proofreader, but any goofs you make can be corrected in the next print run.”

Wet Goddess has sold about 1,400 copies in 18 countries and been translated into Russian, Brenner said. His other books are 2014’s Growing Up in the Orgone Box: Secrets of a Reichian Childhood, a memoir, and a 2016 science fiction novel, Mel-Khyor: An Interstellar Affair.

 

“Mel-Khyor” published as audio book

Posted on by Malcolm J. Brenner

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PUNTA GORDA, Florida – Author Malcolm J. Brenner’s latest novel, Mel-Khyor: An Interstellar Affair, is now available as an audio book on iTunes, Amazon and Audible.  The release marks the first dip into audio book production for Brenner and Eyes Open Media, his publishing company.

“Like most of my ventures, this was a do-it-yourself project,” Brenner said. “I chose to read Mel-Khyor because at just 210 pages the book is short and fast-paced.”

The audio was recorded with Brenner reading into an Optimus unidirectional mike while seated at his desktop computer in his living room. He recorded mostly at night to avoid ambient sounds outside, and even unplugged the refrigerator to avoid any trace of background noise.

“It took about two weeks to record the entire book,” Brenner said. He then spent a couple of months editing the recording to remove hesitations, fluffs and glitches. The process was interrupted by major surgery in April to repair abdominal hernias; Brenner was in the hospital for a week.

When editing was completed, Joe Seul stepped in. Brenner met him through the services of publicist and networker Tamara Patzer. “Joe took a raw recording, equalized it, optimized it and added a touch of reverb, which gives it depth and a slightly mysterious quality,” Brenner said. “All and all, he did a wonderful job with the book.” The completed recording runs a little over four hours.

Brenner was a novice at production, and it took him three tries to get the book accepted by ACX, the audio book distribution arm of Amazon.com. “The book was rejected for a minor background noise in one chapter and chapters that didn’t conform to the ordering format that ACX requires,” Brenner said. “Once I knew what they were, they were relatively easy to fix.”

Now that the audio book is available, Brenner is watching the results. “This is an experiment,” he said. “Even though the trade paperback copy of Wet Goddess outsells the ebook by about 10 to one, I know there are some people out there who prefer to read a book on their Kindle or listen to it during drive time. Making an audio book out of Mel-Khyor is an attempt to satisfy their desires.”

The author of Wet Goddess and Growing Up in the Orgone Box said he has no intentions at present to produce either of those works as audiobooks. “They’re both too long,” was his only comment.

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Author’s Ebooks On Sale

Posted on by Malcolm J. Brenner

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PUNTA GORDA, Florida – If you’ve wanted to read something by Malcolm J. Brenner, now would be a great time to do so! Both Brenner’s ebooks Wet Goddess and Growing Up in the Orgone Box are on sale March 5-11 through Smashwords at savings of up to 50% off the regular $6.99 price.

“Wet Goddess” is a 1970’s-era novel about a hippie college student who’s falling in love with a captive bottlenose dolphin. It’s available at 25% off, or $5.24. Discount code: RAE 25

“Orgone Box” is Brenner’s memoir of being raised in a family that followed Wilhelm Reich’s “orgone therapy” beliefs and the trauma wrought on him when his Reichian psychiatrist turned out to be a sadistic pedophile. It’s available at 50% off, or $3.50. Discount code: RAE 50

“I’m trying to encourage sales of my work as ebooks,” Brenner said. “Right now, trade paperback copies of my writings are outselling the ebooks five to one, and I’d like to know why, especially since ebooks are supposed to be the ‘in thing.'”

Brenner is waiting to hear from Audible whether his third book, the science-fiction novel Mel-Khyor: An Interstellar Affair, has been accepted for distribution. It’s his first attempt to market an audio book.

As part of the 2017 Punta Gorda Literary Fair, Brenner will speak on “Writing the Offbeat Work” at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 9 at the Punta Gorda campus of Florida Gulf Coast University, 117 Herald Court in beautiful downtown Punta Gorda. Admission is free. Brenner will be at the Punta Gorda bookseller’s street fair to autograph copies of his work on Saturday, March 11.

“Mel-Khyor” gets first pro review

Posted on by Malcolm J. Brenner

Writing in The Florida Weekly, book reviewer Phil Jason has given Malcolm J. Brenner’s new novel Mel-Khyor: An Interstellar Affair a big thumbs-up.

“Mr. Brenner creates an interstellar relationship that is at once eerie, intellectually stimulating, humorous and romantic,” Jason wrote in the January 19-25 issue. “His eye for real and imagined detail draws us into his largely improbable scenes.”

Those improbable scenes revolve mostly around Susie Louise McGonagle, a woman trying to find her way through three relationships: her 1980’s marriage to an abusive first husband, her 1990’s marriage to an investigative reporter, and the haunting memories of a provocative alien encounter that preceded them both.

The fireworks start when Susie accidentally lets that encounter slip her lips to her reporter husband, who then becomes consumed with trying to prove whether her recollections are real or not. Weaving in and out of Susie’s story are the escapades of a team of government agents sent to find the elusive alien and his crashed, self-aware spaceship.

“Getting a review in The Weekly is a big deal,” Brenner said. “I’ve been writing and publishing my own books since 2010, and this is my first professional review.  I’m delighted that Mr. Jason liked Mel-Khyor and had so many good things to say about it.”

Mel-Khyor is available from Amazon as a trade paperback. Brenner hopes to have an audio book out soon, read by himself.