Harvey Job Matusow's

an on-line autobiographical experiment

Why COCKYBOO? Simple, it's been my fantasy name, growing out of an explosively exciting childhood dream in The Bronx, in the days when The Bronx still had active farms.

COCKYBOO was magic, he could do wonders, quietly create joy and peace, unseen, deliver wishes to all in need.

He was the perfect fantasy being to cover all the pain and sadness I saw and felt. He could heal Kitty, my mother and allow her to have more children which illness had denied her. Allow her to have more children so she could have the daughter she never had. Then maybe she stop blaming me for not being a girl.

COCKYBOO is a thread of a life long fantasy, quiet, unseen, lying back in the recesses of a most cunning, guileful and street wise mind, and how that fantasy interrelated with reality, and what effect it had on the world.

COCKYBOO was a clown, his Guru, Harpo Marx. He knew early on that the only way to keep to himself those things he treasured the most, because he didn't trust people, he'd allowed himself to be hurt too many times, was to be a three ring circus all the time. COCKYBOO knew that when you're in the middle of a three ring circus, no one will ask you what you're doing.

And now I sit here about to embark on a book, knowing that to write this book means closing the circus down. Turning the TV off and going inside.

--Harvey Job Matusow, 1992