The Last Closet_The Dark Side of Avalon

by Moira Greyland

  Animal studies show that chimpanzees, like humans, quickly become addicted to behaviors which have a varied schedule of rewards: Card games are addicting, all types of gambling are addicting, and addicts will persist much longer in these kinds of activities than the rewards should excuse. The sex addict, like any addict, is gambling with their brain chemistry. But whereas a drug addict cannot injure his drug of choice, a sex addict will routinely destroy one hapless victim after another.

  Exposing oneself in public is a symptom of sexual addiction and an act which is usually played out in fantasies for a long time before the sex offender summons the nerve to first act out his fantasy in public. It can be surmised that when Walter was first arrested, it was not the first time he had exposed himself. In fact, it may have not even been the first time he was reported for such a crime. To put this in perspective, while my father’s first arrest for lewd conduct was in 1954, his first conviction and incarceration did not take place until 1989, 35 years later. It should be noted that most people do not report sex crimes, and men are even less likely to report them than women, given the shame that is inherent in admitting such a thing happened to them.

  It should be noted that one of my father’s goals was to change the paradigm so that he would not be perceived as a rapist. Not only would this reduce the possibility of legal ramifications, but it would enable him to victimize a given victim many times, rather than only once. To this end, not only did he supply drugs to his chosen victims, but money, trips, restaurant meals, toys, even presents such as bicycles. This is what happens when a high-IQ predator has a long time to think about how he will commit his crimes.

  My father continued to work in the numismatic field while he was carrying out research on the Superkids. He edited MANA NEWS Quarterly, 1956–60, and continued to catalogue coins. He became increasingly active in the science fiction community and edited FANAC, a long-running fanzine. He also wrote book reviews, analytics, and critical studies.

  In January 1957, my father conducted the “Cent Collectors’ Forum” as a regular feature in The Numismatist. He sold an article, “Numismatics USA” to Encyclopedia Britannica in 1958, which did not appear in print until their 1965 edition. He was credited with writing the index of Charles Hapgood’s Earth’s Shifting Crust but claimed that a lot of the ideas for the work were developed in discussions between himself and Charles Hapgood.

  Earth’s Shifting Crust, published in 1958, featured a foreword by Albert Einstein and denied the existence of continental drift, suggesting the pole shift hypothesis as an alternative. This is the idea that there have been geologically rapid shifts in the rotational axis of the Earth as well as in the geographic location of the poles and that these shifts create cataclysmic floods and earthquakes.

  Walter knew he would not be able to make a living writing for coin publications, so under the direction of Dr. Sheldon, he completed a premedical course at Columbia University. He applied to literally every medical school in the USA but was rejected by all of them. It is possible that someone in a university admissions office got wind of his tendencies and spread the word around, or it might be that his grades were not the straight As which a medical school might have been expecting, given his remarkable test scores.

  He applied to graduate school programs in other fields, eventually being accepted by UC Berkeley in September of 1960 to do graduate work in sociology. He felt that his double 800 scores in the GRE and his Miller Analogies score in the middle 90’s were more a factor in his acceptance than his mediocre grades. His master’s thesis was The Changing Social Status of the Musician.

  Since my father never worked on only one thing, while he was at graduate school he edited the Metropolitan Numismatic Journal for the Metropolitan Coin Company from 1961 to 1965. By this time, not only was my father a renowned coin expert but a scholar of repute on many different subjects. He was fluent in seven languages: French, German, Italian, Spanish, and the three Biblical languages. He was a lightning calculator, which he would demonstrate as a party trick. He was an excellent pianist, organist, and accompanist, as well as an expert on medieval and baroque music.

  Among his enormous written catalogue of works, one can find the slightly more embarrassing inclusions of monographs on dirty limericks as well as his favorite fortune cookies. He also wrote prolifically on the shameful subject of pederasty from the perspective that it was the natural form of homosexuality, arguing for its widespread acceptance. Later in life, his writings and passionate arguments on this subject would help the judge decide his fate.

  On a more absurd note, Walter believed firmly in the notion of reincarnation and claimed knowledge of his past lives in ancient Greece and Atlantis. These traits made him very attractive to my mother, who found as close to a soulmate in him as it was possible for her to find in a man.

  “But the course of true love never did run smooth.”

  —Lysander, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  Armchair Psychology

  My father’s story is a tragedy.

  Walter Breen grew up without the father he loved, with a mother who continually hurt him. His mother had been completely rejected by his father, as had he, to his childish way of thinking, and this became the model for his life. Men and boys were sought after and desired, and any attention from men was a victory. He regarded women as being universally superfluous, vain, intellectually inferior, and cruel.

  He suffered atrocious physical abuse as well as emotional abuse from women, from his mother and the nuns in the orphanage. This might explain how he tolerated Marion for so long. She created a familiar emotional atmosphere of power and control, but she did not actually hit him, so he was able to maintain a degree of autonomy. She also never rejected him in the way his own mother had. Nevertheless, he viewed himself as the victim of every woman who was in his social sphere in any way, including me.

  Considering how terrible his hygiene, attire, diet, and smell were when I knew him, I am certain that those factors would have been a red flag to employers as well as to acquaintances who declined to socialize with him. Since my father had known so few men throughout his life, they were a mystery to him. He desperately needed male attention and was only able to acquire it as a child through inappropriate sexual contact with a priest, a male authority he should have been able to trust. Sex for him was love, and to him, it was something women could never understand because of their inexplicable and unreasonable need for commitment.

  In stark contrast to his obvious emotional and personal deficits, his intelligence and other gifts set him apart. To vulnerable people isolated by their intelligence he appeared to be a gift from God, but he was actually their worst nightmare, a thing that went bump in the night.

  Walter was a stupendously intelligent polymath with many specialties and areas of remarkable ability, yet he was brain-damaged and observably mentally impaired to anyone who knew him. His paranoid schizophrenia, coupled with his high intelligence, caused him to consider his own ideas to be gospel truth no matter how absurd, dangerous, or amoral they were.

  My father was well aware of the laws against molesting children. He was also aware that sometimes the children he molested would cry out in terror, and he would silence us through threats of various kinds. He felt, like any animal trainer, that our responses could be changed over time and acclimatized to anything he desired. He was certain that the orgasms he intended to produce in us would change our minds about what he was doing, especially since he regarded all objections to his sexual desires to be the result of puritanical anti-sex brainwashing. Having rationalized his actions, he did not hesitate to utilize drugs that lowered his victim’s inhibitions and helped him realize his objectives.

  By the time he had become involved with my mother, he had been molesting children and young teens for decades. He was settled in what he wanted to do and what he believed about it. He found a perfect partner in crime with my mother, who had no objection to having sex with children herself.

  By the stand
ards of his day, my father was mentally ill—sick enough to be committed involuntarily to a mental hospital. He was released not when he was cured, but when his military benefits ran out. All paranoid schizophrenia involves a fixed system of delusions, beliefs impervious to outside or contradictory information, and his delusions about his victims allowed him to continue committing sex crimes unimpeded by guilt or shame.

  An extended quote from an article written by Walter’s friend Jack Collins, “In Remembrance of Walter Breen,” that was published in The Rare Coin Review of Bowers and Merena Galleries, Inc. in the summer of 1994 may be illuminating.

  Even then, Breen was considered an anomaly, with a phenomenal memory that could digest an entire page of a Manhattan telephone directory in just a few minutes, and then moments later recite upon command any address and telephone number when prompted with the resident’s name.

  In 1960, I attended a California State Numismatic Association convention at the Ulysses S. Grant Hotel, in San Diego… Someone pointed out a tall, bushy-haired individual wearing a dirty white antique automobile car duster, carrying a small paper bag with a large grease stain on the side… I watched him as he turned and left the bourse room and walked to the center of the hotel lobby, where he sat down on a round tufted velvet banquette, opened his paper bag, extracted a large pork chop, and ate it in a flash, leaving a few scattered fragments in his beard.

  Sometime about that same year, I heard from a mutual friend, Jon Hanson, that Walter had come into Beverly Hills to examine auction lots at the Coin Gallery, operated by Abner Kreisberg and Jerry Cohen, on Beverly Drive. They had just renovated the store, including the installation of an expensive new red carpet. Jon pulled up in front to let Walter out of the car while he looked for a parking space. It was during a pouring rainstorm, and Walter landed with both feet in a river of rainwater at the curb. He ran into the store, sat down on a small stool, took off both sandals and socks, and then proceeded to wring the wet socks out on the new red carpet.

  Kreisberg, Cohen, and their secretary, Harriet, all watched aghast with their mouths and eyes open wide in complete disbelief. Walter, as many know who knew him well, was totally oblivious of the world around him. He had no concept of what he was doing, only that he had to get those wet socks off.

  Chapter 3: My Parents Meet, and Make Some Odd Agreements (1962–1964)

  Wedding of Minds

  The Times Record (Troy, New York) Tue. Nov. 26, 1957, Page 10

  Walter Breen, 27-year-old Columbia University bachelor, dangles his Phi Beta Kappa key importantly these days, and sounds off on genetics.

  He has organized a “Lonely Genius Club” for the purpose of producing future generations of geniuses. Breen has 28 male intellectuals in his club. They are seeking 28 female geniuses. The ultimate aim is matrimony. Breen says that when two true geniuses marry they usually produce a little genius. Without this quality in both parents, he avers, the chances of getting a genius in the family are about one in a million. Breen himself is said to be one of about 200 persons in the United States with an IQ close to 200.

  Breen’s theory sounds okay. But he is a bachelor, and we fear he knows but little about the practical side of matrimony. How long would two geniuses last across the breakfast table? When we run across two geniuses at the same time, they are always at each other’s throats. The male ego wouldn’t fare very well in such an intellectual atmosphere. We suspect it wouldn’t be very long before Reno had a genius club of its own.

  In 1957 my father came up with the notion of breeding little geniuses, which somehow justified an article published in The Times Record. This article makes an important point, one that I doubt my father ever thought all the way through: How well would two geniuses get along over time? Worse, how would they fare caring for children who might not live up to their grandiose expectations?

  “And wait just one cotton-picking minute,” the reasonable skeptics in the audience might say. “Walter Breen is gay, and he hates his mother. What on Earth is he doing looking for a wife?” Well, there is only one way to reliably acquire children who can be relied upon to not go to the police when you molest them. Not only that, but if you manage to find a sufficiently intelligent woman, perhaps the children will be smart enough to be interesting the rest of the time.

  My father was not a heartless Humbert Humbert like the protagonist in Lolita, interested in my mother only for her breeding potential. When he met my mother, he had four other girlfriends. In addition, unlike Humbert Humbert, my father made no secret whatsoever of his desires, even going so far as to write a book about them.

  Although his primary sexual interest was children, my father would gladly accept sexual contact with anything with a pulse. He would have furiously denied the label “bisexual,” as do many gays who sleep with opposite sex partners. In the gay community, “bisexual” either means gay and in denial, or it means indecisive and untrustworthy. Gay men, even those who sometimes still have sex with women, often talk about how disgusting women are. For a woman to remain sexually involved with a gay man takes a certain amount of masochism, even for the most vehement of feminists.

  My mother was an established writer long before she met my father. She was best known for Falcons of Narabedla (1957), The Door Through Space (1961), Seven from the Stars (1961), and The Colors of Space (1963). Sword of Aldones was nominated for a Hugo in 1963.

  In 1963, my father was writing for Coin World, including his famous coin column Bristles and Barbs. “Bristles” referred to his ubiquitous beard, and “Barbs” referred to the insults he slung at dishonest coin dealers. Bristles and Barbs was transferred over to Coins magazine in July of 1966, where it ran until March of 1985, with an eleven-month absence in 1981. Between 1963 and 1972, my father’s friend and colleague Lester Merkin hired him part time to write his coin catalogues. With his colleague Don Taxay, he formed the Institute of Numismatic Authenticators, dormant since the founding of ANACS or the American Numismatic Association Certification Service. He also tried to set up a curriculum of numismatics at Roosevelt University, but he was not able to obtain the necessary funding.

  My father initially met my mother through their mutual correspondence in a science-fiction fanzine, then personal correspondence for the next three years. They were attracted to each other’s writing, which is normal for high-IQ types. It is often the easiest way for high-IQ types to come up with a useful assessment of another person’s intelligence.

  When Marion and Walter finally met in person at a science-fiction convention in early 1963, the first thing they did was to fall into bed together, promptly begetting my brother Patrick. If they had not met that way, it is almost certain they would have met through Mensa. They were among the first Mensa members in the USA, both appearing in the 1962 edition of The Mensa Register with entries on facing pages, almost as if they were destined to meet.

  Here are their entries, edited lightly for clarity.

  Mrs. Marion Z. Bradley, Box 158, Rochester, TX

  Deist but not church member. Novelist/student (languages, education). Fantasy Amateur Press Association; Circus Fans of America; Fellowship of the Ring; IPSO (amateur press society.) The literature of homosexuality and variance; Spanish language. Opera; fantasy and science-fiction fandom; Tolkien fandom; circuses; amateur publishing; education of gifted children; legal reform of laws relating to censorship; occultism of the magical, cabalistic school.

  Lowbrowed highbrow; pulp novelist desiring to write quality work some day; frustrated musician. Member number 182

  Mr. Walter Henry Breen, 2404 Grove St. Berkeley California, USA Unaffiliated. Born in Texas 1930. Graduate student (sociology) (Univ. of Calif) /writer/numismatist. AB. M (President) Foundation for the Gifted Child Inc: Phi Beta Kappa; AAAS; Synthesists, Phalanx (Baltimore) Intl. Publishers Speculative Organization; Golden Gate Futurians; Fanoclasts; Elves’, Gnomes’, & Little Men’s Science Fiction, Chowder and Marching Society.; Fellowship of the Ring, numerous SF clubs and amateur press associations.
Classical music; other fine arts, science, especially relating to human behavior, sexology; SF; literature; numismatics (especially US) comparative religion, mathematics, especially. number theory, aspects of medicine, psychiatry, gifted children, constitutional psychology, handwriting analysis, semantics, the “best” world, etc.

  Busy bohemian with a Bushy Barbarian Beard. Will try almost anything once.

  Member number 190

  As I mentioned previously, my father’s IQ was tested at 144. My mother never mentioned her IQ to me, but it obviously tested high enough for her to get into Mensa, which means that it was at least 132. My father did not remain in Mensa long after having met my mother because the politics and infighting drove him crazy. I never heard my mother say a good thing about Mensa. She was ferociously anti-elitist and objected to Mensa for its elitism despite her previous membership; an ironic objection for someone who sought a high-IQ husband there. After all, one cannot buy membership, inherit membership, or gain entry through who you know, as the only way to get into Mensa is to pass a qualifying test.

  I suppose that once my mother and father had found each other in Mensa, neither of them needed it any more.

  Why is there so much infighting in Mensa and in the high-IQ community? When you are looking for your tribe, their opinions matter to you. When people in the high-IQ community say stupid things, it is much more troublesome than it is when “normals” do so. Often, people in Mensa find so much stupidity there that they seek membership in the higher echelons of the high-intelligence community such as Triple 9, Prometheus, or Mega, hoping that more raw intellect will eliminate all the undesirable traits of the people you meet. Of course, this is not true. When it comes to intelligence, the higher you go, the worse the infighting and the weirder the people become, even if some of them are truly remarkable.