You've heard rumors of human-dolphin love before, and you've heard scientists arguing that dolphins should be given human rights. And now, a Florida man has just published an autobiographical novel called Wet Goddess about his love affair with a dolphin.
Portions of journalist and photographer Malcolm J. Brenner's book have been floating around for years. Part of it was published in Penthouse back in the 1970s, and other parts have been available online for several years too. Though Brenner claims many people have had romantic and sexual experiences with dolphins, he's the sole public face of the human-dolphin love movement. Brenner describes the book as "an autobiographical, satirical and metaphysical account of protagonist Zachary Zimmerman's slow slide toward an act of love that will distinguish him from most of the human race." He goes on to write:
It is . . . the proverbial autobiographical first novel. You know the cliché in writing workshops, ‘Write about what you know." This is what I know about dolphins, and most of it is information you won't find in any scientific treatise. It can't be quantified or readily explained, just described.
Ruby, Zack's cetacean paramour, doesn't share his human sexual inhibitions. As the real dolphin in the pool behaves more and more seductively, Zack comes to believe she's also communicating with him telepathically. The experience pushes him outside the box of human experience, with unexpected results for both parties . . . My idea was to see how close I could get in fiction to the reality of my experience, which was fundamentally unbelievable. I think I succeeded rather well, given the difficulty of explaining what it feels like to encounter an archetypal creature like a dolphin in her own environment, on her own terms.
Apparently Brenner had a psychic connection to "Ruby," the dolphin he loved when he was a college student in the early 1970s. At one point, Ruby even attacked his girlfriend, which he took as a sign of jealousy.
Now you can buy the book here, for all your friends who are suicidal because they can't go to Pandora to frolic with the Na'vi. Or you can read Brenner's blog and life story, where he talks about how he was raised by parents obsessed with Wilhelm Reich's theories of the orgone.
With Avatar's story of human-alien love raking in cash at the box office, Brenner's novel might be the bleeding edge of a trend where humans explore interspecies love right here on Earth.