The Chronicles of PJ and the Dangler
The Chronicles of PJ & the Dangler is a novella which became a feature screenplay, The Island of Misfit Toys. It’s the first piece of long fiction I wrote; and wow was my head on fire at the time.
Behold the lovely cover art by Tara Ann Clayton, designer of all my book art. Find her at https://www.taralynnclayton.com
It’s all my shrink’s fault. He mused once on the fact that since early childhood I’d been obsessed with torture. I’ll give some credit for that fact to the…warm and nurturing environment I did not find myself in at home, but it was really having teachers at my various Christian schools read Fox’s Book of Martyrs to us after lunch and recess that gave the whole field of ‘Torture Studies’ the imprimatur of institutional approval for me.
When my shrink suggested that I sit down to write ‘the ultimate torture story,’ the first obstacle I hit was the fastidiousness of my own daydreaming/fantasy life. In keeping with lots of my fellow GenXers, my entertainment as a child came mostly from in between my two ears. Fantasies might nit be real, but for the love of all that’s good and proper, they’ve got to make sense and have internal validity.
Come on, people. When you’re making shit up, you can’t just make that shit up.
So who would one torture? I mean, it seems like a grim business that would stick around in the memory with some degree of unease, torturing someone does. You’d want to know in your own mind that they deserved it.
Fast forward a few years and the entire notion of folks ‘getting what they deserve’ has just deflated itself completely in my mind, beyond the reach of even the most heroic doses of Cialis. The last thing I want is to ‘get what I deserve.’
But I came to that stance precisely because I wrote this story. I decided that a pedophile priest would be the best kind of target.
I mean, even if PJ were to get caught, he’d be a celebrity in Cellblock D. Who knew Andy Warhol could be so right? Everyone will be a celebrity one day.
But what would be the point? PJ had to have a point; like I said, characters have got to earn their keep in my imagination. He can’t just be a maniac; he’s got to be a maniac with a crackpot idea.
PJ’s notion is that if he could just get the pedo priest to see what he’s been doing, and to see that his target is a fellow human creature the same as he, and that what he’s done to the boys he’s hurt is no different that what PJ is doing to him, then he’d merely…not be able to do it any more.
Those two ideas sit side by side in my mind as a result of this project: The fierce desire for vengeance, and then also an overwhelming awareness of pain and damage I have caused my fellow creatures, almost always because I failed to see myself in them.
It was also around this time that I began to maintain conscious awareness of my own experience as a survivor of child sex abuse. The details have nothing in common with the fictional characters and situation in this project, but the dynamics are the same.
PJ is humpty dumpty, a man blown to bits, trying to put himself together again, trying to get all those characters down there in the basement to come together as one man.
If that ain’t me, I don’t know what is.