Fri, 23 Sep 2011 3:56p.m.
This week I aired an interview with Malcolm Brenner, a Florida man who has written a book detailing his sexual relationship with a dolphin in 1970. The book is called Wet Goddess, and sits with a 5 star rating on Amazon.com.
You can watch that story online here. It’s sitting at around 50,000 views after a few days, due to a bunch of blogs writing about it, and the link popping up on the likes of Reddit and Fark.
I originally heard about Wet Goddess in an online forum, but surprisingly, apart from a few local radio interviews in Florida, the book hadn’t picked up much media attention.
I was curious about the topic of zoophilia, especially after watching a documentary in London called ZOO. It detailed the case of ‘Mr Hands’, a family man and Boeing employee who died after having sex with a horse.
I eventually got in contact with Malcolm online, and found him to be very open and interested in talking to the media - after all, it’s not easy to sell books these days. We recorded the interview months ago, but to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. The recording sat on my desk, and it was only last week that I thought “right, let’s air this thing”.
Since my interview with Malcolm went crazy online, I was sort of curious how Malcolm was coping with it all. I assumed it had had some kind of trickle-on effect, especially with the amount of negative feedback towards the topic on 3news.co.nz where the story is hosted.
Despite the odd topic, I found Malcolm really easy to deal with, and sort of liked the guy. I didn’t come close to understanding what he did, but as a person, I have no qualms with the man.
So here's a little Q&A follow-up with Malcolm Brenner, the man who had a 9-month sexual relationship with a dolphin called Ruby:
How has the story altered your life over the last week?
I began getting phone calls early this morning. One of them was from nationally-syndicated radio host ‘Bubba the Love Sponge’. It went on for about 10 minutes, and I thought things were going well until Bubba's sidekick Manson (I think it was him) called me "a sick son-of-a-bitch" and I hung up on him. I had to go on assignment for my main client, a local magazine, in the late morning. When I got back, there were another eight emails requesting interviews, and an e-mail from the editor of the magazine telling me that they no longer required my services, since I reflect badly on them and their advertisers. As I was trying to absorb that, both my cell phone and my land line began to ring continuously. The cell phone showed the caller's number as blocked. I have since changed the land line number and may also change the cell phone number. So in one day I've been insulted, fired and harassed. It's been quite a day.
The feedback to my story was mostly "How could he!", and only a few messages of support. How do you deal with this kind of feedback?
The question is not "how could he," the question is "how could SHE!" Or, perhaps more importantly, "WHY would she?"…. meaning the dolphin, of course. The feedback is understandable, in view of the fact that the people haven't read my book and thus do not understand that the dolphin initiated the sexual contact and maintained it in spite of my considerable efforts to discourage her. The question is why she did so, when she had other male dolphins accessible to her for most of that time.
Do you think society will ever accept zoophilia?
I think society will begin to accept zoophilia around the time when genetic engineering makes it possible for us to sport adaptations from other species the way kids now sport their pierceings and tats; in other words, about 30 years. Then we'll have cat-human hybrids, for instance. People who are all human will either be cultists or incredibly old-fashioned.
How are book sales going?
Book sales are 'way up, I've just ordered another press run. Total sales now are about 230, total courtesy or review copies 20 and ebook sales about 20. Bubba may have done me a huge favour! Hey thanks, lard-butt!
Part of me was concerned in doing this story, it would draw negative attention to you. For example, people that disagreed with you would get angry/abusive towards you. You've obviously dealt with this for some time, but have there been any scary moments with your detractors?
No, so far no scary moments with detractors. I have taken steps to ensure that it stays that way.
Anything else you'd like to add, Malcolm?
I have taken steps to try to get my novel published in Japan, where it would not encounter the same kind of sexual taboos it does here in the puritanical States, and where it might also have a positive influence on the debate about the dolphin drive hunts in places like Taiji. I would like to discourage people from attending attractions which feature performing captive cetaceans and encourage them to view marine mammals in the wild from a respectful distance and support marine mammal hospitals.
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So, that's the latest from Malcolm Brenner. He's lost his job, but is selling more books. Was it worth it?