![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloNorman rang up. I thought he and I had fallen out. Apparently not. (Actually I thought he was dead.)
Norman is a pagan. And at one time or another he's been best friends with everyone of note on the Pagan scene- starting with Alex Sanders (whom he knew or says he knew as a cross-dressing Manchester punk.) The look is grizzled old hippy. The manner is buttery. I'll flatter you and you'll flatter me back and won't we both feel good! He's a liar and a fantasist, but there's an innocence about him. He's a puppy. He's cute. He told us he was a transpersonal psychologist and we caught him out- not because we were trying to catch him out, but because we believed him and asked him if he'd use his "expertise" to help a friend of ours. These failures don't seem to faze him. He fluffs his way through them and comes out the other end smiling that twinkly-eyed, chipmunky smile. I wonder if he's ever had a moment of real self-doubt.
I put a version of him into a novel a couple of years back. He was fun to write- I invented lovely lies for him to tell- and in the process I grew fond. In certain lights he can appear almost Falstaffian. But I had to have someone shoot him at the end.
Norman is a pagan. And at one time or another he's been best friends with everyone of note on the Pagan scene- starting with Alex Sanders (whom he knew or says he knew as a cross-dressing Manchester punk.) The look is grizzled old hippy. The manner is buttery. I'll flatter you and you'll flatter me back and won't we both feel good! He's a liar and a fantasist, but there's an innocence about him. He's a puppy. He's cute. He told us he was a transpersonal psychologist and we caught him out- not because we were trying to catch him out, but because we believed him and asked him if he'd use his "expertise" to help a friend of ours. These failures don't seem to faze him. He fluffs his way through them and comes out the other end smiling that twinkly-eyed, chipmunky smile. I wonder if he's ever had a moment of real self-doubt.
I put a version of him into a novel a couple of years back. He was fun to write- I invented lovely lies for him to tell- and in the process I grew fond. In certain lights he can appear almost Falstaffian. But I had to have someone shoot him at the end.
