PayPal for Pity

Whatever else he is, was, or will become, NasTim is an angry, angry man. He is angry, like many of us, at injustice in society. He is angry at publishing, for what he believes is its blind ignorance of him and his work. He is angry, in the abstract, at the reader ("I only loathe him, and want him to leave me alone. I want nothing to do with him and have removed myself to some very real isolation," he writes on LitKicks). Lately, he's even been angry at the Internet, a haven, he says, for "gossip and screaming." (This from the original KING of yelling in CAPITALS.)

Well, I prefer to think that, rather than screaming, I myself murmur in a bemused, whiskey-voiced sort of way, but that is neither here nor there. If I had to diagnose the source of NasTim's anger at Senator Stevens's series of tubes, I would attribute it not to either gossip or volume, but rather to its reach, to the ease with which information posted on it can be accessed, and how both of these, in the wake of the revelation of Barrus's deceptions, have cut him off from what was previously a source of affirmation for his fantasies and, it seems, something of a cash cow.

A reader (and there does appear to be, much to my surprise, one or even two) has commented in response to a previous post, that I am "dismissive" of those who believed NasTim's tales of woe, that I do not believe that what was done to them was wrong. That is far from so. One of the nastiest, dankest, most irredeemable aspects of the whole bizarre NasTim story is that he has, from the start, gone beyond mere imposture and well into the kind of territory more usually trod by fortunetellers, televangelists, and other scammers. He performed a sort of literary 419, each of his sad stories about beautiful, doomed boys and his selfless work to save them from the cold, cruel world adorned, bottom left, with a curt "Donate please" and that cyber-equivalent of the old tin cup, a PayPal button.

"I want to get them in the outdoors. Where they can learn something of the spirituality of the place and how that spirit is about a self-reliance... Alone in the hour of the dead, our dark garments will be from roots and fecund and magic djinns that move in turn in river’s bed so rich it perishes upon the tongue," he wrote, his plea an overwrought variation on Miss Cleo's ceaseless "Call me now!"

I don't suppose he ever got rich off the results of his begblogging, but here and there online one comes across admissions of having made a donation (even from a commenter herein), often enough to think that a nice little trickle of cash meant for the desperate plight of Refuge House and its Keane-eyed inhabitants helped augment the Barrus family fortunes. It was a trickle twice over, as well, for a similar appeal was a feature of his wife's blog, itself an odd, flat series of vignettes about children with autism, airless and repetitive, that promoted her own aggrieved worldview and underappreciated stewardship of the vulnerable.

NasTim's writing about his time as Nasdijj quickly dispel any lingering notion that the identity he had created was anything but a cynical ploy:

"I became someone else.

The truth is that it amused me.

I don't write for you. It's not a crime. It was time to turn the tables.

It's fun being Other People. Especially in print...

Here's Another Thing Other Writers will never, ever tell you: I did it for the money.

My life may be dramatic but it's very definitely not cheap.

I've been Indian. I've been an African-American...

Two of my fake lives were turned into serious Off Broadway plays and I sell movie rights like cotton candy to diabetics.

I did three author tours as a Native American. That was pushing the envelope. But let me tell you something: The Brown Palace in Denver is a great hotel and they have fantastic champagne. Room service. What the world needs is more room service. The Brown Palace even had a special poochie bed for my dog with her name engraved on it. Seriously.

I've been crippled. I've been a teacher. I've been a scientist..."

Like Whitman, one may say, he has contained multitudes. All of them, it seems, looking for an angle, for the main chance, for the weak spot he can use to manipulate readers he despises. Now, post-"Navahoax," that grift has become a whole lot harder.

Some magicians can handle the challenge of an audience on to their illusions; the knowing winks of Penn and Teller only enhance the joy of witnessing their skill. As a writer less keen on craft than impact, though, that awareness puts NasTim at a distinct disadvantage. Stripped of the sympathetic sighs of readers keen to share (and support) his outrage at "the real scandals," he is left with only his writing as itself: messy, all too often formless, and, invariably, obsessed with his own wrongs and his fiercely impenetrable self-image.

He's tired of the Internet. After the frenetic weeks of creating A Debris of Stones, most of it has been taken down, off into the haze into which Immolation, Year of the Hyena, Islands in the Dream and so many other projects have vanished. Perhaps the attractions of being a suave Eurotrash cineaste faded even faster than those of being a leather daddy, a shaman, or paterfamilias to a tribe of lost boys did. Maybe he just realized there was less money in it.

And wouldn't you like to know more about those Off Broadway plays? Do you suppose he is his own wife? Did Larry Kramer kiss him? Is he a lapsed-Catholic Ethel Merman fan? I suppose we'll never know...