Category: David Heulfryn

Titles… Titles… Titles…

David Heulfryn / / David Heulfryn, Screeve

Some come easy, some come hard, and some never come.

I have a love/hate relationship with titles. Sometimes I write a great story, but I just cannot come up with a decent title or at least one I like. My newest story, “The Little Sneak”, stayed unpublished for over a week while I tried to come up with a title. It had a working title of “Max & Min”, the names of the two brothers, but I really don’t like titles that are just the names of the characters in the story; I think it is lazy and, more often than not, from experience, the stories tend to be terrible. But I just couldn’t think of a title! “The Little Sneak” was the best of a bad bunch, and I’m reasonably happy with it. But now I have a problem with what to call the follow-up.

The next part is already half-written and sees Min tease his older brother about masturbation. Poor Max, I feel his embarrassment.

I agonised for weeks to come up with a title for my novel, “Becoming Kes”, not the best, but it’s okay, I suppose. The half-written sequel novella is also titleless. And I have a series about some college guys going on a final school trip to France stuck in my titleless hell.

And then there are stories where the title is there from the start, or it just leaps from the screen as I’m writing, “A Black Cappucino…” was a title I had in my head from the start. Sometimes the title writes the story.

For every title hell, there is a title heaven, and the pain of coming up with a title never spoils the pleasure of writing the story.

The Little Sneak by David Heulfryn

David Heulfryn / / David Heulfryn, Stories

Finally, a new story! I hear you cry. But yes, I’ve now got around to editing and posting my latest short story, which will have a sequel, but it’s still in my head and not written yet. I’ve not written any new Cockaigne Chronicles yet, but I hope to return to that special town soon. I have more stories about that exciting place.

This story is about voyeurism and two brothers growing up. I have been intrigued by voyeurism for some time now. There is just something about watching people in private. You get to see who they really are and not just the facade they put on when out in public. It doesn’t necessarily have to be anything sexual either, but in this story, it is.

One particular scene is based on an account of a friend who walked into their son’s bedroom after he had a shower and saw his arse as he was bending down. The family are very open, and nudity has never been something to be ashamed of. I wish I had been more open when I was younger, but body shaming was rife where I grew up, and school was pretty traumatic if you veered away from what they decided was the norm at the time. So I like to strip away my hang-ups in the stories I write.

I hope you enjoy this, and there will definitely be more stories to come.

Parental Rights in Education Bill “Don’t Say Gay”

David Heulfryn / / David Heulfryn

The headline on the BBC website states, “Florida lawmakers pass ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill“, and it began to think about a similar thing we had over here in the UK, Clause 28. This law prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities from 1988 to 2003 in England and Wales, (Scotland repealed the law in 2000).

I grew up gay but didn’t know I was. Because of ‘Clause 28’, gay was never discussed, and the only portrayal of ‘gays’ I saw was on television; I put gays in quote marks as even though they were gay, I never understood them to be that as a term, they were queer, faggots, homosexual. I may have heard them being called gay, but it never entered my brain, mainly because I wasn’t like them. I didn’t act like them, I didn’t talk like them, so I wasn’t one of them. Any gays I saw growing up were either camp and effeminate or victims.

Clause 28 meant that I never learnt about gays in school. I learnt from television that same-sex attraction was wrong and meant you were a victim, be that violence or AIDS.

I knew I was attracted to boys when I was very young, 5 years old. It took me over 20 years to accept it. I never learnt that people like me existed (so I hid what I was). I never learnt that people like me could fall in love and have a monogamous relationship as every gay guy on the telly was either a mummy’s boy or promiscuous deviant.

My schooling in sex and relationship education was woeful. Well, relationships were barely acknowledged, and sex was purely heterosexual and purely missionary. I never even learnt about masturbation! And I didn’t have the internet.

No one is talking about teaching primary school children about anal sex, blow jobs and threesomes. We are talking about teaching kids that having two dads is okay, two mums is okay, a mum and a dad is okay. It’s okay to like boys, it’s okay to like girls, but you need to respect everybody. All teaching should be age-appropriate.

Children these days have other ways of learning about being gay. There are some excellent websites out there, but they are not top of the google search. Top of the searches are porn sites. And trust me, you learn nothing about being gay from porn; you don’t learn about relationships, and the sex and bodies you see are not the bodies you’ll see when you start dating or having sex. Cocks are not that big, six-packs are not to be expected, and cuddling can be just as good as sex, if not better.

The concept of a family has changed for many people and gay people now have the chance to be a family. This law is retrograde and won’t help those young kids growing up learn that families come in all shapes and sizes.

Stories Matter

David Heulfryn / / David Heulfryn, Stories

It may seem like 2022 has been a slow start for me, but it has been far from it. As the saying goes, life gets in the way. But rest assured that Screeve is still very important to me; I’ve just had to realign some priorities recently.

My fingers may have been quiet on the keyboard, but my head is full of stories, perhaps too full, as I’m finding it difficult to settle on one and commit it to kilobytes (the modern version of paper).

Cockaigne Chronicles are still floating around my head. I have several stories I want to write; I recently started thinking about a student from outside Cockaigne who unwittingly finds himself at Cockton University. I’m sure you can imagine what interesting experiences he could have had.

But amongst the fluff and fun and my stories, there are some more serious stories out there. Covid-19 has brought tragedy to many families, Brexit has brought divisions to the country and to families and the invasion of Ukraine has taught us how fragile peace can be. Whichever side of the divides you are on, there is sorrow, anger, loss, frustration. The world is changing, and I’m not sure it’s for the better.

For the last ten years, at least, there seems to have been a concerted effort to divide countries to get the population entrenched on their own side of the divide. (Just look at the effect of Brexit on the UK, Trump in the US.) While we have been intolerant of each other, we have forgotten how to compromise.

So whether it be fun, erotic, poignant or heartbreaking, your story matters.

Goodbye 2021

David Heulfryn / / David Heulfryn, Screeve

It has been a tough year for everyone. The coronavirus has caused lockdowns, followed by a relaxing of the rules only to be followed by more lockdowns. This has caused a strain on many people’s mental health, mine included.

I managed to cope for the first six months and did a little writing, but to be honest, I’ve not done much since. I think it’s probably time for some serious new year’s resolutions to get myself together and start to look after my health.

There’s one thing that really affected me, and that was a book by Sam Morris called “Don’t Fall in Love, Sam”.

 

The blurb say:

‘Don’t Fall In Love, Sam’ is a series of short personal essays, which takes the reader on a journey of a young, gay man’s exploration of self, body/image, identity, sex, sexuality, and existing as a real person in the digital age. It resonates with the millennial, initially, but extends to the human experience of life, and love gained and lost. Morris’ words are a truly emotional read for any queer person finding their way in this world.

I found the writing to be honest and emotional, and it really touched me. Although Sam has his own erotic website (one of the new generation of ethical porn), nothing in the writing is salacious, so don’t expect any erotica. Sam is a beautiful and complex person, which comes across in his writing. It is well worth reading.

After reading the book, I felt it would be an excellent way to excise my demons for me to write something similar, probably not for general consumption. I was in my late teens when I wrote a diary, and by writing down my, sometimes incoherent, thoughts, I came to terms with being gay in a mainly homophobic culture. Perhaps something like this would work again and allow me to come to terms with other aspects of my life.

Depression defines me more than being gay does; next year, I want to find myself again. And look after myself.

I will continue to write, as writing allows me to express my creative side, and Screeve will continue to showcase some great stories. I hope you will join me in welcoming what we hope to be a better 2022.

Everyone has a story, each story unique
Every soul is constricted, each life a journey to release

My story will continue, my life is unique, my soul will break the chains I put around it. I hope my journey lasts for many years yet and that you will join me.

Bugger!!! What a cock-Up!

David Heulfryn / / David Heulfryn

Be careful what you wish for!

Having my email address on the internet tends to mean that you get a lot of spam. And my email has been around for many years, so I get tonnes of the stuff. So much that I just delete whole swathes of the stuff at a time.

So for the past few days, I was relieved when I didn’t seem to be getting so much. It felt so good not to have the chore of clearing it all down.

And then I tried to log in to the website to check stuff. Shit! I couldn’t log in. I left it a day in case the hosting provider was doing some maintenance or something. I checked my control panel, and I had a message that the old style was being retired, and I had to upgrade. Was that the problem? I upgraded but still couldn’t access my WordPress login pages.

If I couldn’t access the site, there would be no more updates, and I would be forced to start over again. Trust me, it takes a lot of work to create and maintain a website with so many pages as mine.

My heart sank. I had a glass of wine to stop me from getting too stressed.

The next day, I googled the error, looked through all the YouTube tutorials, followed them to the letter. Nothing worked. I had another glass of wine or two.

Then something occurred to me. I had changed my anti-virus software. I quickly uninstalled it, and ‘hey presto!’ It worked. I can now access my WordPress login page again.

So I did some tests, and that’s when I found out that none of my emails were working.

Shitting hell!

I think this calls for another glass of wine.

I left it until today to try and sort it. And I have half sorted it. I can now receive emails again.

So that’s good news to the spammers trying to get me to part with my money or data and for the readers who have been trying to email. (They never even got a bounce back, so they didn’t even know the emails weren’t getting through.)

If anyone has been emailing me with comments or submissions, I sincerely apologise and please send them again.

But I did say that I half sorted it.

I can receive it, but I can’t send it. Well, not entirely true. If I email my outlook account, it gets rejected. If I email another account, then it goes through. I get some sort of error that Outlook has blacklisted the IP address that the email is sent from.

So I’m fed up!

I’ve now created an outlook account to send emails, and I’m thinking of keeping it and dropping the screeve.org email addresses in the future.

But I’m going to keep checking to see if I can get them to work. If anyone reading this is an expert, then the error message I get is:

Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [45.83.192.3] weren’t sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list (S3140). You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors. [MW2NAM10FT019.eop-nam10.prod.protection.outlook.com]

A bit of googling shows that others have the same problem, but I’ve not found a solution yet.

Wish me luck!

When I Was…Twenty-Seven by David Heulfryn

David Heulfryn / / David Heulfryn, Stories

Robbie and Jack are now older, and it is Jack’s wedding day. The two friends are as close as they have ever been as they spend Jack’s final night as a bachelor in Robbie’s apartment.

I like writing about these two friends. They have a closeness that I wish I had with my best friend. There is no sex between them, and I seriously doubt if they ever will have sex, it would spoil the relationship. I hope you like these glimpses into defining moments of the life of these friends.