The Mute Eunuch and Other Tales from Mars

By Roy J. Challis

Most of this material was written by the author during the sixties to roaring nineties. Some of the attitudes presented may have been influenced by John Gray’s Men Are from Mars Women Are from Venus. The material was collected, rewritten, and collated during the period 2011–2020. The enterprise of collecting the material was prolonged by a stint on the Saskatchewan School Boards Association board of directors, including several years as the Urban Public representative and three years as president of the association. The major stumbling block was a series of life-threatening health conditions. Most of them were complications from a long battle with an early onset of type 2 diabetes.
The collection is a miscellany of contradictions from gentle family material to adult situations galore. Adultery, stalking, and men who can’t keep their johnson in their pants meet women who welcome their advances and many who don’t. It’s all meant to be good fun. Life is more worth living if we don’t take ourselves or anybody else too seriously. Some of us have too many Neanderthal genes and others don’t have enough. Classifying ourselves is so last century. Welcome to the world of Homo sapiens. The human race, better than a marathon, and everyone is a winner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664134171

Roy J. Challis

Roy J. Challis lives with his wife Donna in a small city on the north side of the North Saskatchewan River Valley. He recognizes the peace and solitude that comes from living on Treaty Six territory as we are all treaty people. He was born in Surrey, England, the result of an accidental meeting between his Saskatchewan-born-and-bred father and his English mother during wartime. An event that stamped perpetual chaos on his mind. Roy has been writing and performing and teaching in The Battlefords since 1966. He has been honored by Theatre Saskatchewan Inc. with a lifetime achievement award, by the Saskatchewan Drama Association with an Outstanding Achievement Award, by the Canadian Mental Health Association with a Volunteer of the Year Award, and by the Saskatchewan School Boards Association with a Lifetime Membership and Award of Distinction. Being a big fish in a little pond has its benefits and allows one to make big waves without capsizing the canoe.

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Copyright © 2020 by Roy J. Challis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/07/2020

Xlibris

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Contents

Preface

Sociological Counterperspectives

Wishful Thinking

On Poverty

Once a poet said, Love is a season.

Gladys Is 80 Today

For Men Only

Differences

Song for Dauunn

A Nation of Spectators

Anatomy of Adultery

Summer Heat Spell

Nightmares in Black and White

Madness in the Family

On Wallace Street

My Brother John

The Hitchhiker

I was born

Dusty Bottles

Scarecrow/2 Takes

Spring

Conversations with the Waitress

I Love the Ambience of Halloween

Under Cover of Darkness

I Like Nudes

The Mute Eunuch

The Memoirs of Dr. K

Preface

M ost of this material was written by the author during the sixties to roaring nineties. Some of the attitudes presented may have been influenced by John Gray’s Men Are from Mars Women Are from Venus . The material was collected, rewritten, and collated during the period 2011–2020. The enterprise of collecting the material was prolonged by a stint on the Saskatchewan School Boards Association board of directors, including several years as the Urban Public representative and three years as president of the association. The major stumbling block was a series of life-threatening health conditions. Most of them were complications from a long battle with an early onset of type 2 diabetes.

The thought of publishing my material was never an overriding consideration. I was an actor and writing my own material was convenient, and then I made it public (published if you like) by performing it. At some point, six score and ten I suppose, I began to contemplate the possibility of collating some of my writing into a book. I had written several plays that I had copied for other’s perusal and several of them had been produced and royalties paid, but I had never thought about having them published and distributed by some international publishing house until recently. I forwent that task and collected the poetry and prose instead. I hope you find something to your taste.

The collection is a miscellany of contradictions from gentle family material to adult situations galore—adultery, stalking, and men who can’t keep their johnson in their pants meet women who welcome their advances and many who don’t. It’s all meant to be good fun. Life is more worth living if we don’t take ourselves or anybody else too seriously. Some of us have too many Neanderthal genes and others don’t have enough. Classifying ourselves is so last century. Welcome to the world of Homo sapiens, the human race. It’s better than a marathon and everyone is a winner.

Sociological Counterperspectives

Notes written while studying for a final

If brevity is the soul of wit

                                        (accept it, why argue with Bill)

find a witty sociologist

                                        let him write texts.

The poet sits in constant intercourse

                                        with his Mother tongue

but when like the raving Oedipus

                            he begets a barren brood of incestuous words

    that no man would look at

                            he discards them.

For he knows

                in spite of his licentiousness

                                        that the mastery of words

                                                            is not easily achieved.

But social scientits have conceived a sociodictionarianism

through a neojargonary

only nonantipseudoscientists could have perceived.

On their thoughts

                    one must perform the dance of the seven veils

                                        to reveal in all their purity

                                                            the ancient poets’ tales.

Wishful Thinking

I used to think that the universe and I were one but now . . .

A picture

        In less than a thousand words:

puffy pink clouds bump against the azure yellow sky

        bloody screams pierce the noxious air

                hard, rough, cold symmetry invokes remorse

I wish

I could return to that time

when I took the first step from the jungle

when the universe and I were one,

when all the damage I have caused would be undone.

On Poverty

"Redistribute the wealth of our great nation

in a fair and equitable manner so that we can abolish poverty forever.

Never again will children go to bed hungry; nor will the sick be denied medical attention; nor the ignorant, knowledge" (a politician’s election brochure).

Let’s play Monopoly. We’ll all start with $1,500.

You buy Park Place and Boardwalk

I go directly to jail

without passing go or collecting $200

another lands on chance

go to the addiction center, lose two turns

and yet another rolls doubles thrice consecutively

Reading Railroad takes another for a ride

you end up with both utilities

we pay and pay and pay

until

                at last

                        one of us has all the wealth.

Thank whoever is in charge

It’s only a game! We can start all over again.

Once a poet said, Love is a season.

But he could’ve said more.

Is love like autumn?

Where the Now is lost

in dreams of summer’s glory

in dread of stormy winter.

Is love like winter?

Blustery, cold, unfeeling.

Offering a vague promise

a leafless tree.

Is love like spring?

Unpredictable, turbulent,

offering glimpses of light and warmth

if you only had time to wait.

Is love like summer?

Warm, carefree, heedless

of the wintry winds that bring the end

And the clinging cold.

Is love a season as the poet said?

Or should he have said less

knowing that no one

but one in love can say what love is.

Because Love . . . is.

Gladys Is 80 Today

As the setting

                        sun

                                announces

                                                the dying

                                                                of the day

So it reminds us,

                                renews faith of a new day in the morning

and as the red hues radiate from the West

the wind stills

                                all take time to rest,

momentarily . . .

    and in that moment

                                when man and nature cease

to war upon each other

and peace reigns

remember

where

this ray fell

upon a silver leaf

    and

that ray glowed

upon the undercloud

And made your heart fully leap:

memories are made of stuff like these

For Men Only

Men:

Heed not the cry of the vixen!

Forget not the plight of Adam

when Eve, with idle hands and mind,

sought out the serpent

tasted the Apple sweet

tempted him to share—her exile.

Ages have passed and Adam’s sons

have begotten sons to build

a new Eden in the wilderness.

Now, daughters of Eve

relieved from serfdom,

seek the serpent.

Cry Liberte!

wrench from their jealous hands and minds

those tools of castration they wield

in the name of equality.

Fear woman! By her very nature

she is compelled to enslave

your escape from a womb angers.

Heed not the cry of the vixen!

With cunning smiles she begs for sympathy,

creates love in her own image,

agendizing the complete enslavement

the merciless destruction of man.

Differences

I sat and watched