Moira Greyland - The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon

Youre lying awake with the sheet over your head
The memory of heartbreak just crept in your bed
And no tears or pleading could stop what they did
Fight back now, take your life back, put the monsters to bed!

Put the monsters to bed, tuck them all into bed
And be the good Mother you wish that you had
Put the monsters to bed, ugly claws into bed
They cant hurt you when theyre sleeping, put the monsters to bed!

Sometimes so much pain comes you feels like youre dead
And you know youd fill an ocean with the tears that youve shed
But take back your time, and take back your bed
And just like little children, put the monsters to bed.

Put the monsters to bed, tuck them all into bed
And be the good Father you wish that you had
Put the monsters to bed, scaly wings into bed
They cant hurt you when theyre sleeping, so put the monsters to bed!

And sometimes it feels like your minds not your own
Or that youll give in to the pain youve known
But hang on my love, because youre not alone
Hang on and you know well survive!

Put the monsters to bed, put your anguish to bed
And take back the future that you should have had
For your lifes worth much more than the pain you ignore
Let your nightmares see the daytime
Let them vanish in the sunshine
Make a future instead,
Put the monsters to bed.

La la, la la, wake your dreams out of bed!
La la, la la, try hope instead!

Moira Greyland

I read four or five of Marion Zimmer Bradleys books in high school. I started with The Heritage of Hastur, then read two or three more Darkover novels that caught my eye in the Arden Hills library. While I didnt find them sufficiently entertaining to continue with the series, they were just interesting enough to inspire me to pick up a trade paperback of The Mists of Avalon not long after it was published by Del Rey in 1984. As it happens, I still have that much-ballyhooed monstrosity, its long-untouched pages now yellowing on a dusty bookshelf in the attic.

The Mists of Avalon was a massive 876-page bestseller heavily marketed as a feminist take on Camelot and the legends of King Arthur, and was critically hailed for being very different than the usual retellings of the classic tale. It was different, and in some ways, with its grim darkness and overt sexuality, The Mists of Avalon might even be considered a predecessor of sorts to George R.R. Martins A Game of Thrones. I found it to be too much of a soap opera myself, and certainly not a patch on Chrtien de Troyes, Thomas Malory, or even T.H. White, although there were a few salacious sections that did serve to liven up the book considerably.

But even as a red-blooded young man, some of those sections struck me as perhaps a little too salacious. While I cant say that I had any inkling of what the authors habits or home life were at the time, I can say that I detected a slight sense of what I can only describe as a wrongness from the book. Arthur didnt love Guinevere, but was pining away for his half-sister? Sir Lancelot was not only Galahad, but also Arthurs bisexual cousin? Instead of being a tragic love triangle, Arthur, Launcelot, and Guinevere were a swinging threesome? And Mordred was not only Arthurs son, but the product of incest knowingly orchestrated by Merlin for pagan purposes to boot?

Yeah, thats not hot. Thats just weird and more than a little grotesque.

I dont recall if I ever actually finished the novel or not, but I know I didnt bother reading any of its many sequels. I felt that I had given this vaunted feminist author a fair shake and delved as deeply into Ms. Bradleys strange psyche as I wished to go, little knowing that what I dismissed as freakish feminist literary antics were merely scratching the surface on what was actually an intergenerational psychosexual horror show.

Three decades later, despite being a science fiction author and editor myself, I found myself increasingly at odds with the creepy little community known as SF fandom, which can best be described as the cantina crowd from Star Wars, only depressed, overweight, and sexually confused. At the same time, I was also becoming increasingly aware of a wrongness that emanated from that community like a faint, but unmistakably foul odor.

There were rumors about the real reason behind science fiction grandmaster Arthur C. Clarkes bizarre relocation from southern California to Sri Lanka. There was the arrest of David Asimov, son of science fiction legend Isaac Asimov, for the possession of the largest stash of child pornography the police had ever seen. There were the public defenses offered by many science fiction authors on behalf of the SFWA member and convicted child molester Ed Kramer. There was the naming of NAMBLA enthusiast and homo-horrorporn author Samuel Delaney as SFWAs 2013 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master.