But I was telling you about Dante. Dante was off his head. A lot of these writers were. James Joyce was mad as a hatter. I mean, when this guy was in his mid-teens he adored the Virgin Mary like she was God, but he had serious problems trying to distinguish between her and some of the whores he was doing business with during those tender years.

He also had a lot of time for Catherine the Great, who he claimed died in the middle of being sired by a horse. Catherine, he said, juggled at least twenty-two lovers and had a special interest in erotic art, owning several tables that had stuffed penises for legs. Can you beat that? Now how did she get her hands on the penises is what I'd like to know. Was she willed them, I wonder, or were they taken by force? Anyway, it's a funny old world, whatever way you look at it.

And by the way, deranged writers who suffered from sex mania weren't confined to just Dante and Blake and Joyce and Hesse. They were legion. And up there with the most revered was the mighty Roman writer Virgil that was Dutch to me till after I awoke in our backyard on top of Brando.

I wasn't studying Virgil long when I discovered that he was one of the biggest suckers of all time for these little nymphetic God-creations, though I also learned that he actually preferred boys. Me now, I got over boys for good when I was thirteen after nearly getting myself castrated while making night-time mayhem on a camping holiday with Saint John Bosco's Boys' Club. That experience drove boys well and truly out of my system and I soon settled for shyly eyeing adolescent demon girls.

And then as the years fell away, I slowly came round to realising that I also had a disturbing penchant for fully furnished males. The thought of these dream men, big in the right places and to my mind as horny as honey bees, affected me greatly, especially if I imagined that they too had a taste for men. It may sound tragic to you but I loved nothing better than the thought of being wielded by a homo erectus, being his bitch, his invert, his permanent plaything.

Reader, don't blame me. It was my mother.

Now I know there will be some out there, some sickeningly solid citizens and possibly virtuous long-nosed country folk, who will still be inclined to blame me and me alone for my wretched impulses. They will say "Don't point the finger at your mother. Get a grip on yourself and behave like a responsible adult." And there will be others who will question the truth of things they will read in these pages and claim that no one person could possibly have gone through as many raw and strange experiences as I will soon be relating to you.

To the first two groups I say this: "Listen, Dipshit, there but for the grace of God go you." And to the others I say: "Look, Doubter, at the drawings made by almost any five-year old refugee child, and ask yourself if they could really have been through what their drawings show. Well, I'm a refugee too, and here are my drawings."