It was a big black mole and appeared near the left side of my mouth at about the time I entered 1st grade. It was at once how I was different from other boys.
Dr James Ebrim told my mother, “It’s sort of a beauty spot on the boy, nothing to worry about. He took a needle and got a bit of it for testing.
Mother told me the tests came back a week later and were negative and she said that meant, ‘Not cancer’. Cancer I knew nothing about in the 1st grade at age five. I did know that other boys didn’t have beauty spots like me.
During the school year my nickname became ‘Black Mouth’. I was not fond of being called that, so I had five serious fights in the beginning grades. I guess I won three fights and lost 2. We kept score by the number of teeth we lost.
In the 8th grade lots of the girls wanted to kiss my mouth because the rumor got around that my big mole caused my mouth to taste better than most boys. That ended when someone painted a whole wall of the gym that said, ‘EDDIE’S MOLE CAUSES CANCER.’ Well even when it was painted over the kissing stopped.
My parents moved away from Fredericksburg Virginia where I grew up, before I went to high school. In high school I was just an outcast with the mole, not ‘UNCLEAN’ or ‘CANCER BOY’. Those were two of the things I was called in Virginia.
During college one young infirmary doctor said, when I was in his office, “Have you ever had the lab check that mole?”
“Sure, at age 5, and it’s not cancer.”
“Well I can take it off for you.”
He gave me a numbing shot and took a knife that looked like a model aircraft cutting instrument and I didn’t feel anything, but all at once I was free of it — it was gone.
There was no scar on my face or lip.
From then on the mole only appeared in my bad dreams. My face was like everyone elses face. No one but that first doctor had found beauty in it. Oh yes, and the junior high girls who kissed me.
So I was writing who-done-it fiction and since I had no wife or children, and my parents died in a traffic accident, I lived near my publisher in New York City.
Also because my parents were dead, and I had no close living relatives, I began writing and living under my pen name Rem Parker Brown.
With ten novels out in book stores and 3 others going on; I also gave lectures at City College of New York about once a month (starting out).
My lectures were about writing or an in-depth look at some other author I was reading or admired. My reason to accept the lecture thing was really social. Since my earliest years I had been what is often called an introvert. I sort of organized and ran my life without outward discussion.
I dated 3 women who also taught at the college and they were my age or older. Dated may be too strong a word for what I did with women. I met them at faculty parties and dinners various women. Then I took them to my home or went to theirs at a time they specified, or that afternoon or night.
I let their wishes be my guide about, much sex, little sex or in many cases no sex.
During my NYC period I spent time with Dr. Morris Mosley every Wednesday where he used Carl Rodgers theories of counseling on me, except to offer suggestions about how I could climb higher on the Abraham Maslow latter of success. It was PhD Mosley that suggested I do the lectures and ‘invest in something’.
The first thing I invested n was half-books. My publisher often could not afford ot offer much in advance to authors, especially with non-fiction books (times were tight in publishing, and authors didn’t get what they needed to live on). Some books took ten years to write and the authors might be starving to death and as a source of last resort I might advance a few thousand dollars to get the book published. As 51% owner some books I had published that were not considered finished by the author.
I wrote fiction, but never bought fiction (too risky). My favorites were textbooks. Dr Mosley thought I should meet in my home with possible authors to get interactions with real people. Why go to a doctor if you disregard his suggestions?
My regular books were good sellers, mystery paperbacks, and made me nice bank accounts and I bought and paid for my apartment.
So I had three bestseller half-books. The first, and best one, was a chemistry book. It was a subject that I passed and liked the ‘unknowns’ part of it, but took it only in high school. In college it wasn’t required in the study of American literature and writing. I did take physical science which bordered on the subject.
The book was 400 pages when I received it and was written to be understood by just an average reader. I advanced $5,000 on it because the author needed to write 200 more pages. He said it would take a year. He got sick when he had finished maybe 50 more pages.
I edited the book, cut out 100 pages and got it published. It was called The Key to Chemistry and was used on all levels of instruction from high school to graduate school. It also was marketed to the general public. I had the publisher hire a well-known T.V. chemist to take the book on a tour. The TV guy wrote the introduction.
I got two other books about that good. Some books failed. I founded an agency to buy half-books called the Rem Agency.
By age 32 I had almost completely re-invented myself. I was Rem Parker Brown literary agency owner and writer. As a boy I had been a social out cast with a facial mole.
After 3 years of looking at my life on a couch I was making movement out of my shell. I began to fantasize about some of my 20-year-old female lecture students.
For me it was hard to ask out women.
I tried to be the professor in my classes and all business in my student conferences. I was not so much older than my students, so with encouragement by my analysts Dr. Mosley on Wednesday; I asked out 2 of my students. The first one was Amy Drexler.
I watched her for several semesters, she was blond beautiful and easy to watch. I never saw her with a male. She came to all my lectures and her reason for wanting conferences with me was to discuss her writing.
My problem was that I know I had a double standard with Amy. Her stories were terrible, as mysteries. The brutal truths of life and death didn’t come out of her characters. She didn’t make us care enough for those she created in her stories.
On one June afternoon I said after as conference, “I know a nice restaurant on 42nd Street; would you like to eat there with me after our session?”
“Would this be a date Mr. Brown, or is it to talk about my story? I wouldn’t want to give you the wrong idea, by going out with you, I mean in a social situation.”
“Oh.” was all I could seem to say. It was above all her tone of voice and facial expression. The very definite message was that, ‘If you were the last man on Earth Mr. Brown, I would never be seen with you.’
She never asked for another conference. I made up my mind that next time I would tell her the truth about her fiction, and I figured she would cry and keep crying.
That same year Candy Simerure came to my class and handed her manuscript after class. She was not registered in my class, but was just a non-credit student.
When I read the writings of Candy they were not like the work of a young woman. The subject was ‘canibalism as a sexual practice.’
Her book was something that would probably sell in very weird stores. I hired a detective named Kevin, To follow her and find out all about her.’ At that point of my life I had a total excess of money. I had it but never spent it.
Candy asked me after class for 3 weeks, “Have you read my stories Professor Brown?”
“Not yet Candy, but I’m planning to,” I said or some variation of that explaining how I was so busy. One time she smiled ant me and said, “No real hurry.”
Kevin found out Candy was one of the desperate poor in the city. Her home was one small room in the worst area. The detective took pictures inside her room. He checked her refrigerator to see if she was eating people.
She worked as a cleaning woman in a hotel. Before each class she dressed in a bathroom in a Greek restaurant.
I had a conference with Candy and recommended two publishing houses in California that specialized in works like hers. She thanked me for reading the book and then I said, “If there is any restaurant you would like to go get something to eat at? Well I would like to take you.”
“Thanks, but no thanks Mr. Brown,” she said., “Your too old for me.”
“I’m only 32,” I said, and she gave me a shrug and facial expression, like to say, ‘There you go.’
After my 2nd abrupt turn down, by women I had dreamed about, I of course unloaded my rejection on Dr. Morris Mosley. Who had several 2 hour sessions to give me a ‘better focus on life.’ I was depressed.
He finally suggested that I ‘get in touch with my past.’ He thought that my real problems were locked in my childhood.
At the doctor’s direction I was writing about ’my inner child’. The boy who had a bg mole on his mouth, DIRTY MOUTH, BAD MOUTH, CANCER MOUTH.
I wrote hundreds of pages about school bullies and my fights with those who insulted me. About the school authorities who ‘allowed’ boys to fight, on the theory, ‘Boys will be boys.’ I even wrote about junior high when I became an UNTOUCHABLE, THE CARRIER OF CANCER.
The girls who had kissed me became the one’s who were infected by CANCER BOY! MOLE KID! and THE WALKING DISEASE. Some boys and girls would shake their hands at me and say, ‘UNCLEAN, UNCLEAN!’
It’s amazing that even repressed events can rise to the surface because of hypnotism. Morris my doctor brought out the facts, all the names, and I watched the video of me telling it, while in a trance, at home, sitting on my green couch.
I had totally forgotten that I scratched the mole off 3 times and made, “A bloody mess!” as my father called it, but the ‘Cheek Beast’ always grew back.
Also were the memories of the names f my tormentors, girls like Betsy Trumble, Jackie Goldsby, and Linda Bos. Boys who were named Rod Ketch and Al Nich came up, in my first grade to 8th grade re-creation of the horror. I wrote furiously about these people, and the memories became a cleansing flood These demons were put in their place in a special drawer that was locked.
The 2nd part of my treatment by Dr. Morris was my makeover. I had no confidence in my good looks to attract women. I had even turned down women at City College, the teachers who volunteered to visit my apartment. All of them were in their 40′s and 50′s, although some lied about how old they were. Even with those, I became fearful of, fearing rejection. After Amy and then Candy, I was terrified of what one might say to me.
So I retreated into writing and my stories became better, not making more money, but better. I now made gobs of money on real estate and half-books.
The doctor’s makeover of me included hair transplants to overcome pattern baldness. I had a nose and face job by plastic surgery. I was spending my money at age 32 on farms in Pennsylvania and Florida. My facial was about the same price as another 100 acres in Florida or Georgia, but I looked like a new man. I liked how I looked, my face didn’t look stretched and I had found a movie star of current fame named Berry and the doctors tried to make me look like him.
I dressed better, I no longer wore rather casual clothes of the professor or writer, but power business clothes. I wore thousand dollar suits and expensive jewelry. On my books I had my picture, the whole back cover. My earlier books had no picture of me.
At once the tone of my fan letters became sexual.
Dr. Morris said, “Exploiting fans that write you would be like trying to find someone on the internet or seeking out prostitutes. I had thought about both those methods, but lacked the courage. and feared diseases.
“Just keep doing your lectures and some young woman will volunteer.”
He was right, either the picture or the brief bio in my newest book , Killer Hands caused women to seek me out.
The biography page said, ‘Rem Parker Brown lives in New York City and teaches writing at City College. He is unmarried and is one of America’s richest authors.’ Newspapers picked up on my story — local and national and I began to appear on lists of bachelors. My mail began to fill with pictures of private jet planes. I got a pay raise at the college and became a full professor. I got a bigger hall for my lectures and two graduate assistants, both women.
My assistants read student papers and talked to students. I told them to, “Let me see any manuscript that is about me or my life.”
I’m sure they found that curious, but since I graded them, and was the reason they got paid I got a few papers — not many.
Most students wrote the stories as just works of fiction for evaluation and comment but then a few female students added a post script like,
Dear Rem, Hope you liked my story. What Harriot did to Billy I will do to you. Come visit me at River Apartment number 1170 or call me and I’ll come to where you want me. Love, Deb
Some stuffed a photo at the bottom. Dr Morris said after looking at several nude photos of young students, “These girls could be worse for you than Amy and Candy.
Just keep giving your lectures and smiling at all the girls in your class. Your plastic surgeons have given you a very nice smile now, use it.
Someone more appropriate will come along and things will just click.
I was invited to parties, but didn’t fit in because I didn’t pop pills, shoot drugs or swill alcohol. One of my two assistants was Joyce and she was rather nice looking and young.
Since I was head of her graduate committee for her masters degree it was inappropriate for me to sleep with her, but I needed an escort to parties. I picked Joyce because she couldn’t afford to insult me and the other assistant was fat.
Part of my image building was my limo and driver. I never stayed long at parties and checked in and was first to check out. I took Joyce to very fancy restaurants after a party and enjoyed eating with a good-looking girl.
Lots of pictures were in the papers of Joyce and I. When I started going to parties lots of articles were written about me on Zimbio.com and other web sites, also newspapers. The before and ager photos of me surfaced showing the miracle of plastic surgery. I was called Rem (Berry) Parker Brown and then my old name from Fredericksburg Virginia Eddie Turner. That was the jist of some articles.
The main story seemed to be that I had plastic surgury to e repair a plain, stupid looking, average face. The public laugh was that I, ‘Tried to look like the actor Berry.’
Before I had pattern baldness, big nose, and unexciting mouth and eyes. Some articles used me as an example of what a man could do to achieve proper style in life.
Dr Morris helped me not get depressed about my new image. His new advice was, “get lost in your writing and lectures. Enough of parties.”
I was trying that approach and then one morning before breakfast my house maid ’Angel’ answered the door and got a package.
In New York City everything is available and my analyst thought I needed a woman and he gave me the number of The Paradise Agency. It was an international service for the extremely wealthy. My maid cost me more than my standby limo and driver.. It was the cost of a non-competative beautiful woman who:
Didn’t speak English (probably).
Responded to non-verbal commands,
When the homeowner pointed to his bed she either made it up, or got ready for sex in it.
The maid was always called Angel and every month on the first Monday one Angel would leave and another would appear. My bookkeeper seventeen blocks away paid the agency bill and my house was always clean and my bed had variety. I think all the women were in the country illegally, but who knows when they don’t talk?
So one morning Angel got a package at my door. Inside was a manuscript and usually I don’t read unsolicited manuscripts I either turn them over to my Half Agency or to my graduate assistants to read.
Well I opened it up at the breakfast table (Angel’s also cook a great scrambled eggs morning meal). So the book manuscript was titled, The Ugly Mole on His Mouth That Causes Cancer — The True Story of Rem Parker Brown. The author was Linda Bes.
She was one of those junior high girls I kissed, who later screamed ‘UNCLEAN’ at me.
What the book was about was the lives of six girls who kissed Eddie Turner who is now Rem Parker Brown, and all of them got cancer and died, except Linda Bes.
I took the book at once to Dr. Morris. It was not Wednesday so he had to cancel two other patients.
First I sat and watched him while he read the book.
Dr. Morris Mosley is a very big man. He is not fat, but heavy all over. He’s what someone would call ‘big boaned’. Even his head is big, and heavy.
It was a three hundred page manuscript and he took notes as he read. We also ate a lunch he ordered, while he read.
During lunch he said, “I presume that you don’t know where this Linda Bas is now or what her situation is?”
“No, nothing since junior high and she was a wet sloppy kisser.”
“OK, the detective agency you used to check on the girl you wanted to date. I think she was named Candy? Was that a good private detective agency?”
“Yes nothing in the book about that.”
“Good go call them and put them discretely to work on Linda Bas. Go home and call the detective then come back here.”
I went back home and called the agency and also found 17 Linda’s who had recently been in my class. I found 3 Linda’s who had taken my class for eighteen semesters. That was over 5 years. I gave those names to the detective.
So many records are online and available. We found the Linda Bas was now Linda Monroe. She worked in a lunch only restaurant where she had invested all her money. Her husband had died and she sunk his life insurance in the business. It was a leased location between two large department stores. She cooked and waited on tables, then took my course in the late afternoons.
When we talked about the situation the doctor said, “Really this is a poorly written book. Do you think it could be published Rem?”
“Yes after it is fixed up, since it’s about a celebrity and alleges that I caused cancer.”
“Yes some women might believe that.”
“In junior high I became an outcast. Even boys stayed a good distance away from me.”
“Can you think of ways to keep her silent?”
“She’s full of anger. The book is full of hateful anger. Nothing will quite her. She is on a crusade, she believes her breasts were both cut off because I kissed her mouth.
If I bought her book she would leak the essence of it to the tabloids. She may have already done so.”
“That’s really right, but if the other girls are dead that you kissed there are no other witnesses.”
“That’s true.” I said.
“If she could go away for one million dollars it would be a bargain for you Rem.”
“Yes but after she spent the blackmail she would come back for more.
One million would be a real bargain. I am now into billions.”
“I know,” he said, “not every doctor can perform a cure, but I think I have a way to keep her silent.
Leave everything to me, and after she is gone, and you are totally satisfied she will never come back send me a fat check for the million.
Agreed?”
“It’s a deal.”
We sat looking at each other for a while and finally I said, “How long do I wait before sending you the money?”
“Wait until she doesn’t come to your writing class anymore and your detectives can’t find her.”
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Contact Ray Cates at rcates2@cox.net or fax him at: 1-352-629-1573
