Selected Fannish Writings of Randy Byers

Colophon and Acknowledgments

“Thy Life’s a Miracle: Selected Fannish Writings of Randy Byers” Front cover art by Ulrika O’Brien (color and turtle), Jae Leslie (calligraphy), and carl juarez (digital composition) Back cover typography: John D. Berry Introduction: Andy Hooper Edited by: Luke McGuff ([email protected]) Some print copies to be distributed to friends and family and auctioned to benefit TAFF Support TAFF: https://taff.org.uk/ Support glioblastoma research: https://www.uwmedicine.org/locations/alvord-brain-tumor-center

Thank you to: Ulrika O’Brien, Jae Leslie, carl juarez, and John D. Berry for the front and back covers. Andy Hooper provided the introduction, many suggestions for material, and much support. Ulrika, carl, Andy, and John provided production advice and assistance. Claire Brialey provided a seed TOC that she had discussed with Randy, many items that had been published in Banana Wings, and some excellent copyediting. Jerry Kaufman dug through his archives and provided many physical zines. Geri Sullivan and Lonnie Byers provided pieces that had not been published elsewhere and which are the highlights of this effort. Denys Howard was Randy’s dear friend and long-time housemate. Ron Drummond provided much support and feedback. Julie McGuff was of inestimable help to me in this and all endeavors. I would also like to thank all the faneds who gave permission to republish material from their fanzines: Andy Hooper and carl juarez (Apparatchik and Chunga); Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer (Banana Wings); Jerry Kaufman and Suzanne Tompkins (Littlebrook); Alison Fairchild (Shebang); Randy Byers (Way, Wassamatta U., and Conversions); Rich Coad (Sense of Wonder Stories); Christina Lake and Doug Bell (Head!); Nic Farey (Beam). My apologies to all the many people who suggested work that I didn’t include. Sometimes it was mood of the moment as much as anything else. I’d also like to thank in advance the people who provide printing and distribution support. All errors and infelicities are my responsibility. It was a joy to read all this material, both the things I had read before and the things I met for the first time. And of course, the last acknowledgment, Randy Byers himself, who wrote so much and so beautifully. Thank you, Randy. Ciao for now.

Luke McGuff ([email protected]) March, 2019 Thy Life’s a Miracle Selected Fannish Writings of Randy Byers

Big Name Fringe Fan: Appreciating Randy Byers 5 Recuperation 10 Inventing , or How I Became a Trufan 13 Snapshots 15 Founding Member: ffwa 18 The President’s Address 21 ffwap! 23 A Dream of Vlet, or How I Became an Amateur 25 is a Forge: the Guest of Honor Speech for Corflu 34 29 March On 31 Thank You Christopher 33 Ding Dong, the Bells are Gonna Chime! 38 Venice 44 Cliffhangers 46 Turtle Energy 51 An Uneventful Day 68

Fallen 72 Memories of the Gay ’80s 76 Norton and Re-Norton 78 The Early Days of a Better Genre 81 Punking the Diva 86 When Life Hands You Lemurs, Make Lemuria 89 The Ring and I 92 Under the Rainbow, or A Pot of 96 From Troy to Toronto: Return of the Living Dead 104 Twin Peaks in the East 107 Potlatch Snapshots 111 Hugoing, Going, Gone 113 Twenty-Five Things About Corflu Silver 117 Less Innocent Abroad 122 The Floating Worldcon 125 Keep Me Lifted 134

Big Name Fringe Fan: Appreciating Randy Byers By Andy Hooper

Randy Byers and I encouraged each other to the brain find a pace the suits both, and it write. There were a lot of other facets to our becomes something like music, something like friendship, but I think that was the most building a beer can tower to the moon. Magical enduring thing which we had in common. We thinking, I admit it. But when it works, it’s bliss. both wanted to write, and wanted the other to So when I declare that this introduction is not read and enjoy what we wrote. We succeeded in easy writing, that this is something which I have entertaining each other that way for nearly 30 struggled even to begin for months, I do not say years, so it is Randy’s writing that remains most it to glorify my craft or impress you with the significant to me now that he is gone. depth of my clever research and invention. This Writing can sometimes be deceptively easy. is hard because I am writing about a friend who Writing anything of value is rather difficult, but is gone, after a long, hard fight to live, a fight the simple act of putting facts or thoughts or that feels like it left the world exhausted. damnable lies on paper is frequently the easiest Since Randy Byers died on November 20th, way to deal with what we know, what we have 2017, his friends and family have gathered in a seen, and what we feel. It takes a certain amount succession of small events to celebrate his life: of repetition to develop fluency, just as it does Toasts were drunk in his honor at a New Year’s to walk, or speak or throw a ball. But if one Eve celebration. Members of his family pursues the practice on a daily basis, it can scattered his ashes near a beloved spot on the become almost alarmingly easy. The fingers and 6 Thy Life’s a Miracle

Olympic peninsula in the company of two close Howard and Suzanne Tompkins. I already knew friends from fandom, Ron Drummond and Jerry Kaufman and Vonda McIntyre from Geri Sullivan. And later we gathered at previous appearances in Madison. Brouwer’s, his favorite Belgian-style pub, to Fortunately, I had several hours of the kind of hear Geri’s stories about the trip to the music they seemed to like dancing to – Talking peninsula, and learn more about his family, and Heads, the Cure, the B-52s, and slightly grittier even a little more about Randy’s last days. souls like Joan Jett and Elvis Costello. I felt We’ve been missing him, remembering and intensely flattered and happy at this, and made commiserating as much as we can – but it’s hard acquaintances that I knew would be friends for to stay very long without breaking down, or many years to come. Of course, I didn’t know dwelling on many other people lost in the past that fans danced – that they gathered few months and years. fandom is regularly to listen to bands and pogo through an aging subculture, and we seem to spend a lot the night, just as often as my peers in Madison of time saying goodbye to each other these days. gathered to talk about the short fiction of James So, grief we’ve got. But as Randy’s friends, we Tiptree Junior or play Dungeons and Dragons. were also his readers, his collaborators, and Not only were Randy and his friends the coolest often his subjects. Within the circle of his peers people I’d ever met in fandom, they opened up and correspondents, Randy was an important the very possibility that fandom could contain and well-loved writer. His contributions people who were that cool. From that night, it spanned more than 30 years, and included work was probably inevitable that I would eventually that ranged from the driest humor to gosh-wow move to Seattle and find something that Randy admiration for things he appreciated and and I could do together. enjoyed. I trusted both his eye and his voice. Seattle was an adopted home for both of us. Fandom does not usually offer much monetary Perhaps he did not know all the streets of the compensation or mainstream fame for work city the way the legendary Elmer Perdue submitted to fanzines or composed for a blog supposedly knew every street in , like Randy’s “Dry Ice Factory.” But it does but he made a fair attempt at walking each one. grant a writer a remarkable degree of freedom He was keenly aware of the natural Seattle to compose and share what they like. Randy underlying the man-made city, and delighted in treasured that freedom, and made full use of it, sharing the places where the wilder side showed as this collection demonstrates. through. The lowest moment for me came last I met Randy in 1984, at a science fiction October when Randy decided it made sense to convention in Madison, Wisconsin, where I go back to Oregon to be with his family. began my experience in fandom. He was part of Thinking of him taking that last ride down a contingent of fans who came to Madison Interstate 5 to Portland, and knowing he would from Seattle and its environs to celebrate West never see Seattle again, is a sure way to make Coast writers Lizzie Lynn and Jessica Amanda myself crumple. Salmonson, Guests of Honor at the convention. Reflecting on other, happier experiences is my It was a big weekend. I had a new girlfriend only dependable antidote. Last year, while named Carrie, and made my debut as the DJ at pawing through a random pile of old fanzines I the convention dance on Friday night. To my found a copy of issue 13 of BELLEREPHON’s delight, not only did Lizzy and Jessica attend RAGE, written just after Easter, 1979 by and make their way to the floor, but so did this Randy’s longtime housemate Denys Howard. In slim apparition with a checkerboard of blonde it, Denys described his first meeting with Randy and brunette hair decorating the closely- just before the beginning of Norwescon 2: cropped sides of his head. Randy was part of a crowd that included Tami Vining, Denys Big Name Fringe Fan: Appreciating Randy Byers 7

“When we arrived at the common lobby into eve of the convention. Happily, he was able to which the various concourses at that end of the attend and even enjoy the results of all his work, airport empty (Sea-Tac is big to my Portland- with the diagnosis of his cancer still blessedly bred senses), what should greet us but carl three months in the future. We sat and talked by juarez and his two neos from Eugene. That’s the river late into the evening on several nights, how carl had described them in a post-card. doing our best to ignore the thick smoke that How he introduced them was by announcing billowed over the city, a product of several ‘Hi, I’m carl-sub-one; this is Carl-sub-two, and nearby forest fires. Perhaps fiery vampire this is Carl-sub-three.’ In actual fact, the names and also filled the air; with Randy, no of the other two men were Carl Lesher and setting seemed too florid or improbable, Randy Byers.” especially if there was good beer to be had nearby. If he was a “Fringefan,” as he One of the secrets of is asserted, then he must certainly have been a Big that no matter how long we have been a part of Name within that order. it, we all feel like we are still “neos from Eugene.” Randy had a gift for finding his way to Randy was a regular correspondent from my people and places that represented some kind of earliest efforts in fandom, writing letters of center or focal point of fandom, yet continued comment on issues of fanzines like 9 to consider himself a resident of its eccentric INNINGS and SPENT BRASS. Our regular fringes. He made his first contact with fandom collaboration began in 1996, when I asked him in 1975, and gradually increased his level of to contribute a column to the tri-weekly fanzine activity until that first trip to a Seattle APPARATCHIK, which I edited in convention in 1979. In his collection, I found a cooperation with Victor Gonzalez and carl program from a one-day SF conference held in juarez. Randy’s articles were consistently among Portland in 1978. He had carefully collected my favorite elements of the fanzine, and I autographs from all the writers present, continued to seek contributions to other titles including F. M. Busby, Vonda and Jessica, all from him after APPARATCHIK folded with future Seattle neighbors. issue 80 in 1997. Eventually, our interests coalesced into the general-interest fanzine He was at the Worldcon in Los Angeles in CHUNGA, on which we worked, with carl 1984, and in the notorious room party where juarez, from 2002 to the present day. Issue 26 is the fwa – the fan writers of America, that most still waiting for us to finish it, and will feature theoretical of fannish institutions – was Randy’s account of his 2017 return to conceived. He traveled to conventions on four Micronesia and the island of Yap, where his continents, rubbed elbows with well-known family spent several years during his childhood. pros at those and many other events, and won the for co-editing the 12th and final He also contributed to and acted as a co-editor issue of one of fandom’s most beloved fanzines, or the American publisher of several titles by Lee Hoffman’s remarkable SCIENCE- other fan writers including Lilian Edwards, FICTION FIVE-YEARLY. One of his last and Alison Fairchild, and Art Widner. A most generous gifts to fandom was the LOST collection of his earlier work was created when WORLD FANZINE LOUNGE, a highlight of he successfully stood for the Transatlantic Fan Sasquan, the 2015 World Science Fiction Fund in 2003. Some of the contents of Convention in Spokane. Randy went through all “WASSAMATTA U: The Fannish Education of the terror and boredom of being junior Randy Byers” will be found in this collection as management in the convention committee, well, but the unique art and design of the including multiple face-to-face meetings and original collection make it well worth searching advanced tours of the site. Then he suffered the out. But this new anthology includes highlights first seizure caused by his brain tumor on the from an additional 15 years of experience, 8 Thy Life’s a Miracle including works for a cross-section of well- writers with his extensive writing about travel, reviewed fanzines, and pieces which have never which was never overburdened with detail or been published before. complaint, yet always aware of the emotional landscape through which he passed, as well as I don’t think Randy ever thought that writing its geographical context. He brought us along to was easy. He once had real ambition as a writer places as widely separated as Australia and of science fiction, and enrolled in workshops as Venice (the latter only figuratively). This an undergraduate at Oregon. He writes about reached a peak with his report on his 2010 trip these ambitions in “A Dream of Vlet, or How I to Novacon, ALTERNATIVE PANTS, which Became an Amateur,” but he is far too won a FAAn award as the Best Special dismissive of his juvenile efforts. He kept Publication of 2012. Even though he shared extensive notes, in spiral-bound books and on stories that stretched from Yap to Toronto, I his ever-present clipboard, and made multiple always felt like he had seen and done even careful drafts of his stories, essays and rock more, and will always regret that he did not operas. When we gathered for one of our have more time to add to his narrative. The rambling, beery editorial meetings, it was Randy remarkable “Turtle Energy,” previously who kept notes and guarded us against short- unpublished, gives a sense of what we have lost term memory loss. with his premature silence. Fan writers traditionally begin their work with a So there is much to admire in this extensive nerdish devotion to the genre of science fiction anthology, and it gives a fine sense of Randy’s and , and gradually become jaded with it, range as a fan writer. But it conveys only a and branch out into other personal fancies, such fraction of what there was to admire about the as jazz music and sports cars. But Randy Byers man. He was also a diligent and talented editor had already been a fan for two decades by the of others’ work, and felt great satisfaction in the time he began to write regularly for fanzines. creation of fanzines like WAY, BINNACLE, When he and carl lived together in Eugene, SCIENCE-FICTION FIVE-YEARLY and there was always a sheet of paper in the PROMETHEAN WAKES. His collaboration , and they collaborated perpetually on with Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer on the work they thought was fiction. Randy’s early SF 2010 British fanthology SLOW TRAIN TO fanzines, like CONVERSIONS (1992), were IMMORTALITY was a particularly impressive introspective, and seemed to owe much to his accomplishment. CHUNGA was as dependent connection to punk and mail art . But on his editorial sense as it was on carl’s talent the articles written for APPARATCHIK, with for design. (If you’ve noticed the frequency with which he announced his arrival as a working fan which the name “carl juarez” appears in this writer, were sly comments on the changing role introduction, you may have a sense of the of fanzines and fanzine fans within the larger degree to which he shared Randy’s journey as a world of science fiction, where we were fan and writer, and this collection is in part a becoming a very eccentric minority. And having tribute to him as well.) I hope that it may inspire found a new voice, he was eager to address a the reader to seek out the fanzines from which broad range of topics that interested him. He much of the material was drawn, particularly if wrote about favorite writers like , they’d like to know more about Randy and the Joanna Russ and A.E. van Vogt, works of admirable influence he had on his friends and cinema and music that he admired, and fannish colleagues. Only now are we coming to milestone events, such as conventions and appreciate how much he did for us, and how weddings. deeply his loss affects us. All of this is standard fare for science fiction He and I never said goodbye – fanzines. Randy set himself apart from most fan that was his preference, and not the kind of thing we would Big Name Fringe Fan: Appreciating Randy Byers 9 have done anyway. Our friendship was marked day, that are not as much “with us” as Randy is by a kind of unending conversation, which even now that he has died. Everyone lives in a could resume seamlessly after a separation of world which is increasingly haunted by ghosts weeks or months, as we learned and mentally the longer they remain a part of it; and Randy’s book-marked more things which the other shade, his voice in my memory, will always would most likely wish to share. I feel him in bring love into my heart. I hope that reading wilder corners of the city, where he was an avid this collection will make you feel a little of that urban naturalist, and think of him at the sight of too. one of the city’s venerable and disappearing movie marquees, under which we waited in line on so many occasions. There are people all Andy Hooper around us, whom we see and speak to every May 27th, 2018

Recuperation (originally posted to LiveJournal, March 11, 2016)

So it’s now been a little over two weeks since my last radiation treatment. I had stopped taking chemo a week before that due to low platelet counts. On the Monday after my last radiation treatment, my sister and I drove out to La Push in the Olympic National Forest, which has become one of my favorite places on the planet in the past few years. LaVelle had been intrigued by my descriptions of the rain forest and beaches and had been hinting that she’d love to visit one day, so I thought this was a good opportunity and would be a good place for me to lick my wounds. Unfortunately, as soon as we got out there I pretty much collapsed. I spent the first day and a half more or less sleeping the whole time. By Wednesday I was sufficiently recovered to go to the Hoh Rainforest with her and dawdle along the half mile Hall of Mosses Trail, which was just as awesome as I remembered from my previous visit, and we also drove down to Klaloch to eat lunch at LaVelle in the Hall of Mosses, Hoh Rainforest the lodge there. But my appetite was shot, so I Recuperation 11 didn’t enjoy the Dungeness crab cakes as Death metal, talk of prison experiences, two much as usual. The next day I managed to other people (plus a third companion) with hike with her the half mile (but with some neck to waist arrays to which the two were steep climbs) to and from Second Beach, but having additions made, and much loud talk I barely made it a hundred yards down the freely laced with f-bombs. Bronx-born Adam two miles of flat sandy beach before I had to quietly told me story after story about his stop and snooze on a drift log for a while. history as a tattoo artist in the NYC area, Fortunately the sun came out, so it was very where tattoos were illegal/underground pleasant. My thought had been that we could between 1962 and 1998. He apprenticed stop at Astoria on the way to Portland so I under a guy who went by the alias Spider could drink beer at the great brewpubs there, Web, which was a name that provoked wows but my tolerance for alcohol was shot, too, so from tattoo aficionados Dan and Lynn on Friday we just drove to her house in Steffan when I mentioned it. After the tattoo Portland. I got together for a beer at Alameda Brewing with my old college buddies, Brian and Carl, On Saturday I rested and read, and on Sunday and old fannish acquaintance, Neil (I knew his I got my Shakespeare tattoo (“Thy life’s a brother Ole better), and his partner Gloria, miracle”) from Adam Lunoe, which was quite whom I’d never met before. The beer still an experience for LaVelle, I’m sure. tasted like crap (to my radiated tongue), but the company and conversation were great. On Monday I got together for beers with Dan and Lynn at the Moon and Sixpence, and once again the stories that flowed were mighty fine but this time mostly fannish. In the evening my sister cooked dinner for me, my niece Jolie, her daughter (LaVelle’s granddaughter), and Jolie’s boyfriend. Good family fun, and little Celine made us all nurse her weirdly animatronic burping doll. Early the next morning I tearfully parted from LaVelle (who had been taking care of me for most of the previous two months) and flew from Portland to Palm Springs. I was in such a brain fog still that I somehow left my boarding passes behind while I went through the TSA line and then had to go back to get the boarding passes and go through the TSA line again, hooray! Clearly I still needed LaVelle to hold my hand. Anyway, Mom and Dad picked me up at the Palm Springs airport and drove me to their winter home in Desert Hot Springs. I’ll be here until March 23rd. So far I’ve done a little sun bathing (protecting both my radiated scalp and fresh tattoo), read, watched Pac-12 basketball on TV, and visited The new tattoo with my Aunt Ardys (my mom’s sister), Uncle Truman, Cousin Kris, and her husband, Steve. 12 Thy Life’s a Miracle

I’m still feeling worn down and still don’t have much of an appetite, but I think it’s very slowly, very gradually getting better. I keep waiting for a big breakthrough, but it looks as though it’s going to be a slow process. I guess I really have been through the wringer. They told me that it would probably be at least two weeks, and maybe four, for me to get back to normal, whatever that is anymore. I’ll practice my patience. It still feels to me as though I haven’t fully reckoned with what has happened to me in the past four months — there’s really been no time to stop and digest the news since I first found out about the tumor on December 2nd — and I’m still waiting for the sledgehammer of emotional reaction to hit at some point.

Please give me strength

Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air, So many fathom down precipitating, Thou’dst shivered like an egg. But thou dost breathe, Hast heavy substance, bleed’st not, speak’st, art sound. Ten masts at each make not the altitude Which thou hast perpendicularly fell. Thy life’s a miracle. Speak yet again. King Lear, Act IV, Scene 6

Inventing Lee Hoffman, or How I Became a Trufan (Previously unpublished; courtesy Geri Sullivan)

I never had the opportunity to meet Lee and so for the most part I learn only what Hoffman that I know of, but I did receive a comes to me. Years before we received that couple of e-mails from her. The first was a LOC LOC from her, for example, Luke McGuff on Chunga 1. When we printed it in the next showed me some new trade paperback editions issue, we used a big-nosed Rotsler with the of Lee Hoffman Westerns that he’d picked up. I caption, “No! Not a letter from her!?” We were didn’t know who Lee Hoffman was at that completely stoked to have a LOC from Lee point, so I filed the memory of those books in Hoffman on our very first issue, even though I my Leigh Brackett folder — Lee, Leigh, Lorelei didn’t know much yet about why she was so of the Red Mist, it’s all the same! — and then legendary. I had received the previous two over time managed to convince myself that issues of Science-Fiction Five-Yearly, so I knew she Luke had shown me some Leigh Brackett crime was editor emeritus of that, but I actually didn’t novels until I asked him years later if I could know much of the history (or legend) of the borrow them. I was completely confused when zine either. he said he didn’t have any. I don’t know if it’s safe to confess this level of Fast forward to an interview I did recently for a ignorance, but the truth will out. And I’ve profile in a campus paper, which resulted in the played this game before of insisting on my interviewer characterizing LeeH as a science innocence of fan history and tradition, resisting fiction writer in an initial draft. “It’s true that assimilation by the elitist trufen. As if! Still, it’s she wrote science fiction,” I wrote in response, true that I’m not studious about these things, “but she was more a legendary fanzine 14 Thy Life’s a Miracle publisher. For that matter, she wrote more with the upcoming issue of SFFY. Geri invited Westerns than science fiction.” Truth be told, it me to be a guest editor. After getting Ted took Wikipedia to sort that particular bit of White’s blessing on the idea (“It’s your turn in confusion out of my own head, so who knows the barrel,” he told me with an evil grin), Geri whether it really is true. At the very least, I got asked LeeH if it was okay by her. Sure, Lee the memory of those books out of the Brackett wrote back, he’s a trufan. And just like that, I folder and into the Hoffman folder where they realized I really was one. Funny thing, now that belong. My sense of Lee Hoffman’s career has I think of it, but at that 1996 L.A.con, expanded in the process. somebody had put up a whiteboard on which trufen could sign their names and proclaim their It says something about LeeH’s stature that I’ve allegiance to the tribe. I didn’t sign, because I ended up having to wrestle with my ignorance didn’t consider myself a trufan. Well, Geri and and confusion and to invent my own private Lee took care of that, even if it took another Lee Hoffman for the purpose of explaining a decade. few things to people outside the SF world. Perhaps it says something as well about the Power from a distance, that’s what Lee had, at importance of institutions in our little least for the likes of me. The only other direct subculture. Science-Fiction Five-Yearly became an communication I received from her was a institution — like FAPA, like TAFF, like Corflu second e-mail, when she asked to be removed — that carried its history forward and spread it from Chunga’s mailing list because her eyesight to each new fannish generation until even a had failed and she couldn’t read it anymore. I relatively out-of-it late-comer like myself was wrote back expressing our dismay. I still didn’t forced to pay attention fifty years after the first know much of her story and wouldn’t until I issue was published. What’s perhaps even more was invited to work on SFFY and realized it was impressive — or unsettling, depending on how past time to learn, past time to grasp the you look at it — is how the institution of SFFY heritage of fanzines and of Lee Hoffman that reinvented me in the process, as though I had has given me a field in which to invent myself been unwittingly (if not witlessly) possessed by and take part — take a place — in our sub- the spirit of Lee Hoffman, such was her power. culture. It’s too late for me to get to know the real Lee Hoffman, so all I can do is invent her It happened indirectly, as these things often do. as a goddess with the power to transform me I got on the SFFY mailing list after I met Geri over time and from a distance into a trufan at L.A.con III in 1996, sent her something I’d against my rebellious inclination. written, and got a rough draft of “Ashes, Dust, 9 Electric Razors” in return. Ten years and two Then again, I still haven’t read The Enchanted issues of SFFY later, we were on a roadtrip Duplicator, so maybe Lee was actually wrong from upstate New York to Toronto for Corflu about that. in May 2006, and I asked her what was going on

Worldcon Snapshots (Apparatchik 67, September 1996)

L.A.con III got off to a start when Tami and I “I don’t know. The Association of Sadistic went to check the message board located in the Bottoms?” Marriott. Tami had to take a whizz, and as soon “That can’t be right,” I said, not sure why. as she disappeared, the line for the Ice Cream Social materialized between me and the Hooper didn’t know either, when he got me Women’s Room. It was really more of a crowd sercon that evening. He thought it might have than a line, and I didn’t see Tami for the rest of something to do with Butt-fucking. the evening. Instead, I drank T’n’Ts in the “Oh, god,” I said. “Isn’t it the Association of Hilton bar, feeling lonely and unloved. Book Sellers or American Book Sellers, or The next day, back at the message board, a something like that?” woman shyly admired Tami’s tattoos. “That’s it,” he said. “Do you know where the ABS party is Disillusioned, we left my room, only to see tonight?” she asked us, with just a trace of fear. Robert Lichtman, Steve Stiles, Paul Williams, We both pretended we knew what she was Cindy Lee Berryhill, Frank Lunney, and talking about. In the context of the tattoo Christina Lake disappear around a corner down admiration, that B had to stand for something the hall. We followed, but they kept turning like Bondage or Branding. corners just ahead of us. “No, we haven’t heard anything,” we told her. “Guys? Guys!” Hooper called, with just the right note of the plaintive. “You can’t ignore She looked disappointed. me! I’m a BNF!” “What’s the ABS?” I asked Tami later. By this time I’d forgotten that I was lonely and unloved. 16 Thy Life’s a Miracle

Saturday evening, Tami and I joined Robert, and Tami on found percussion, Lenny Bailes on Paul, Cindy Lee, Art Widner, and Moshe Feder harmonica, and Bob Brown and Kathryn on on an expedition to a sushi restaurant. Robert background vocals. After David Hartwell led pumped me for information on how the the traditional 3:00 a.m. rendition of “Teen Apparatchik team works. Angel,” the sing-along revved into full gear, highlighted by Skipp’s eccentric choice of “Why “I don’t know,” I confessed. “They work in Don’t We Do It in the Road?” and the darkness and mystery, with only the occasional fortunate abortion of someone’s attempt to sound of shotgun blasts.” break out into the lyrics of the Gilligan’s Island He looked at me askance. theme song sung to the tune of “Stairway to “Well, okay, the frequent sound of shotgun Heaven.” blasts.” The highlight of the panels I attended the next Cindy Lee was trying to come up with a name day was when crashed the “Gender for her newsletter. She had fastened on the Roles: What Makes a Tiptree Award Winner” word “glebe” and wanted to know what it session to ask why his Glory Season had not won meant. None of us knew. Moshe thought it was the award and whether it was true that the a , but he was shouted down: “That’s Tiptree mafia had said nasty and despicable ‘grebe’!” This led Art off into a questionable things about him behind his back. Spike, the Chinese joke or two. moderator, told me that he later apologized to her, although only after he followed her to the Art was intent on introducing me to green tea bar, venting the whole way. ice cream, but we had to hurry back to the con to catch the production of Hooper’s radio play, Tami and I went to the Hugos. I don’t believe Fanotchka, in which both Paul and Cindy Lee I’d ever seen Hooper in a suit before. had parts. The rest of the evening was spent in the Fan On the way back, Moshe and I gazed at the Lounge, where Spike entertained us with stories lights of Anaheim stadium, where the Yankees of her childhood days. She would derail the had been trounced the night before. I accused efforts of boys to play house with her by telling him of being a stinking Yankees fan, and he them, “Okay, you’re the wife and I’m the berated me for my allegiance to the Mariners. husband.” We spoke affectionately of baseball after that. Before the shouting was over on Monday, I got I parked myself in the smoking room of the Tor the chance to return Hooper’s gift of sercon. party that night and spoke to Art about Still reeling from the sight of the snuffed ninth- Frankenstein, to Kathryn Cramer about the Web, inning rally in the Mariners’ loss on TV, he gave and to Paul about his bike accident, the me a bunch of fanzines. Included were issues 2 Sturgeon project, and the mythological and 3 of an LA zine called Delineator, from the importance of lead singers. The beer selection at mid-’80s. the Tor party was second only to that of the “There’s lots of pictures,” he told me. “Fans, Fan Lounge in quality. pros — a lot of media types.” Then there was that interesting semi-prozine The cover of #2 features a drawing of the editor who had spent three years in prison for upper half of a naked woman with nipples the dealing acid but who assured Art and me at size of your thumbs. She’s wearing a jeweled great length that, pace Clinton, he’d never taken collar. A sword blade hovers at her throat, and any of the stuff. Cindy Lee and John Skipp took another at her belly. turns playing their own songs, which were accompanied by Skipp (when he wasn’t playing) Worldcon Snapshots 17

The cover of #3 features a black-and-white “My car broke down, and we need a room,” I photo of a man bearing a woman in his arms. explained to the woman at The Golden Inn She’s challenging the camera with her eyes; he’s motel. looking down. They are dressed in ornate and “I hear that all the time,” she replied. revealing leather-and-metal gear. (Mongol Warlord and Scythian Barbarian Mercenary, Tami and I visited an old friend of mine in respectively, according to the credits.) She Grants Pass. Her new housemate told us about clutches the hilt of a sheathed dagger in the a friend who lives in the nearby town of Wolf jeweled fingers of one fist. Creek, whence I’d called the tow truck the night before. Her friend is a 38-year-old man who “These guys were into the fetish scene ten years likes to dress in drag. before it became generally popular,” Hooper said, his eyes gleaming with enthusiasm. “He’s okay in Wolf Creek, because they know him there,” she told us. “But he came to Grants I showed them to Tami later. Pass in drag once and got the shit beat out of “Look at the nipples on that one!” I said. him. So, now he carries a gun. She didn’t seem impressed. “I hate this fucking town.” On the return trip, after stops in San Diego, We stayed there for three-and-a-half days, while Fresno, and the Bay Area (thanks again, Spike first the clutch and then the transmission were and Tom!), we made an unintended stop in replaced. Grants Pass, Oregon.

Founding Member: ffwa (Apparatchik 69, November 1996)

“Enjoyed Randy’s ‘Worldcon Snapshots’ and met through fandom, but that it’s mostly a thanks for the note later that he was also one of social thing for me. I don’t read many fanzines, the original fwa founders.” So wrote Robert and I’ve only pubbed one ish of my own. I go Lichtman in Apak 68. to maybe one convention a year, and I’ve never worked on one. I’ve laughed at Degler It’s true that I was at the party where fwa was references for nigh on twenty years, but it was founded at the ’84 Worldcon. It’s less accurate only recently that I asked Hooper just who the to call me one of the founders. After all, I have hell Degler was. (I don’t remember his answer a reputation to maintain – if only with myself. very well.) A year or so ago, Lesley wrote a piece for Apak Sometime in the very late ’80s, Jerry Kaufman about reading The Enchanted Duplicator and categorized m-m-my g-generation of fans. He feeling intimidated by how much fannish called us the New Fen: folks who went directly history there was to learn. I considered writing a from neo to gafia. It wasn’t really a whole response in which I would extol the role of the fringe fan. (Or is that fake fan? I’m too much of generation. He was referring to a group of West one or the other to know which is which.) Coasters who were recruited by Fabulous Seattle Fandom in the late ’70s and early ’80s. I would’ve told her that I’ve never read The The names that spring to mind are Ole and Neil Enchanted Duplicator and don’t plan to — not Kvern, John Carl, paul lemman, Chuck Spear, because I have anything against it, but because it Tami Vining, carl juarez, me (nice name!), Tom has never seemed important to me. I would’ve Weber, and Victor Gonzalez. Although she was explained that I’ve been hanging out in or actually recruited by Controversial Edmonton around fandom for nigh on twenty years and Fandom, I’ll throw in Sharee Carton, because that the majority of my friends are people I’ve she belonged and I longed for her. By the end Founding Member: ffwa 19 of the ’80s, we had all dropped out of fandom following what was going on and enjoying it. or ceased serious fanac before anything of But I was on the sidelines, as it were. On the lasting fannish importance had been produced. fringe. So, Jerry joked about a lost generation, and for a Not long after the convention, Allyn Cadogan, moment I dreamed that I could’ve been a Sharee, and Lucy Huntzinger published the first contender. issue of Convention Girls’ Digest, which was about As Luke “Maguffin” McGuff would say, Hah! that Worldcon. My copy has a note from Allyn written at the top: “Well, all right, if you must carl introduced me to Fabulous Seattle Fandom have your own copy ... Were you at that party? at the Norwescon in ’79. Over the next few Why can’t we remember you?” years, I went to a bunch of regional cons and got to know some of the Vanguard crowd At the time, it hurt that they didn’t remember pretty well. That was one of the reasons I my presence. At this distance, it all makes a lot moved to Seattle in ’84. I moved in with two more sense. fans: Denys Howard and paul lemman. Later On a psychosocial level, the reason I cannot be that year, Denys, Jane Hawkins, and I drove my considered a founder of fwa is that I was not Ford Fiesta to the Worldcon in LA. actively participating in the discussion — or, for I was just getting to know Victor at the time. In that matter, in the flow of wit. That’s what fact, the Worldcon was probably the made me more or less invisible, too. However, breakthrough event in our friendship. What I the more important reason is that I was not a really wanted to do at the con was to, um, hang fan writer. I hadn’t even pubbed my one and out with Sharee, but she was having none of only ish yet, so I barely even qualified as a neo. I me. was cultivating Victor, and thus was a fringe fan. he had an in to the good parties. I glommed It’s interesting that of the New Fen I named, onto Victor. I got into the good parties. three of us are involved with Apparatchik. Victor What I did at the good parties was get heavily is beavering his way toward BNFdom. carl is sercon and listen. I listened to a lot of BNFs neither fan nor fowl. I — oblivious to The (some of whom I knew) talk about Topic A. I Enchanted Duplicator and fresh from another didn’t understand it. There were sheaves of Worldcon where I sometimes sat, got sercon, paper purported to explain it all. Victor read and listened silently to BNFs — am still a fringe assiduously and took part in the discussion. I fan. was put off by the earnest hostility in the air. It However, I am now writing semi-regularly for a intimidated me. I had nothing to say. I listened. fanzine. In honor of my presence on that Likewise, at the fwa founding party, I sat on the hallowed night twelve years ago, I propose side of the bed nearest the windows, got sercon, another organization: ffwa. and listened. I found this discussion much more Past presidents, anyone? entertaining. Wit flowed like wine, and wine flowed very much like bheer. I laughed a lot. I took part in the voting for the first Past carl adds: Randy has kindly allowed me an President. (I want to say that I voted for Teresa opportunity to append the following from our Nielsen Hayden, but, you know, I’m not sure correspondence. Consider it a non-fan non-fowl she was even on the ballot. I don’t believe she response: won. Who was it? Avedon Carol? I don’t remember.) I didn’t say anything. I was meek. “It strikes me that deep communion with TED as a requirement of non-fake-non-fringe Mind you, I wanted to be a part of the fun. I fandom is pretty stiff. I haven’t read it myself, was a part of it, in the sense that I was there and and despite my fringeness I’ve been reading old 20 Thy Life’s a Miracle fmz (Pongs, Izzard/Teloses, Space Junk, Spanish Web. (You yourself completely elide the Inquisition, Science Fiction Review) for years and apazines we were doing, or perhaps that’s a indeed in this year’s FAAn awards I was that comment hook.) I’m not sure being part of the lone vote for Elmer Perdue for Best Fan Writer. former group makes one any less a fanzine fan I consider myself something like a fringefan, in than being primarily a member of an alternative almost direct proportion to the degree to which SF fandom like furry animals or anime. You’re I consider SF important work. there, you’re there repeatedly (celebrating 12-16 year anniversaries), people in the local fandom “Otherhandedly, in fandom as everywhere else recognize you, you know the current customs. there will always be people who do things and Well, you might be an anthropologist I people who write about them, and an overlap suppose.” between those two groups that makes those things public/published via print or on the

The President’s Address (Apparatchik 71, December 1996)

On November 2nd, Seattle fans gathered at the amendment to the constitution of the Fringe home of Amy Thomson and Edd Vick for the Fan Writers of America was that the election of monthly Vanguard party. It was a momentous the Past President would be held whenever the evening, and not just because Apparatchik 69 Vanguard party took place at Amy and Edd’s was distributed and, thus, the Abi Frost/TAFF house. story broken to the common fan. No, it was It brings tears to my eyes to look around the also the night that my fannish career and presidential dacha that was once my humble seventeen years of (admittedly spotty) service to bedroom. (Is it only my imagination, or does science fiction were finally rewarded beyond my the space heater now smell of coal?) wildest dreams — although not, perhaps, beyond my most careful calculations. But there’s no time to bask in the perquisites of my new office. Fandom is once again in an In one of those acts of back-scratching, back- uproar. Fringe fan writers from around the slapping, back-formation cronyism endemic to globe are petitioning for an official fandom, Lesley, Andy, carl, Victor and I voted proclamation of our position. Therefore, and me in as the first Past President of the Fringe having only at that same November Vanguard Fan Writers of America. Jerry Kaufman, who been enlightened as to the casus belli of Topic A, was the only other member of the circle when my first act as Past President is to issue the we took the vote, attempted to abstain, but following pronouncement: What’s all this, then? menacing gestures from the security apparatus (Andy and Victor) brought him into line and the Beyond that, it is all irony — if not, indeed, vote into unanimity. tragedy. I should mention that my platform was the In response to my article on ffwa, carl wrote, “I promise to vote for Lesley next time. The sole consider myself something like a fringe-fan, in 22 Thy Life’s a Miracle almost direct proportion to the degree to which Sterling’s Holy Fire, and, yea and verily, I have I consider SF important work.” This comment been pleased. I have thought, This is the shit! planted the first seed of doubt as to my true While I’m more critical than when I was twelve nature. (yeah, the end of Distress kind of blew and While I was at L.A.con this year, I bought a Gibson’s caper plots are always flimsy and copy of Warhoon 31 in the Fan Lounge. I bought Sterling’s novels aren’t quite really novels), an it because it contained a manifesto by Vincent ember of the old sense of wonder still glows Omniaveritas called “The New Science fiercely in the ashes. Fiction,” and I am a fan of both Vincent I am a fan, not a fringe fan. Omniaveritas’ manifestos and science fiction. It So, I find myself in a potentially embarrassing never crossed my mind that the zine was position: the Past President of an organization produced in the thick of the Topic A fandango that I founded but may not truly represent. and by one of the main actors therein. So, I was surprised, when I finally read the thing, to This will not do. I do not wish to step down. I discover a heated discussion of the Main Topic enjoy my new power to proclaim. In fact, I want and to discover, furthermore, that this Topic more power. bled so easily into the topic I’d skirted around in I believe I can accomplish this with some my ffwa piece: the definition of “fan.” semantic finagling. Let us define “fan” as Of particular interest was a letter from George someone who started out as a fan of SF, then Flynn that found an echo in carl’s comment. got involved in fanzine fandom and slowly George wrote, “After all, the original motivations shifted allegiance and attention from SF itself to of fandom were almost entirely related to SF, fandom and to what is written by and about either in itself or as an inspiration to change the fans. Let us define “fringe fan” as someone on world.” Like it or not, fannishness is more alien the margins of fans; that is, someone who to that original impulse than conventions or enjoys the social environs of fandom but whose even media fandom. Which of course has primary reason for involvement in fandom is nothing to do with its value — but surely it still an interest in SF itself. Fringe fans, so does have something to do with who is entitled defined, must be seen as the larger group, and to inherit the name “fandom.” so my constituency has swollen and my mandate solidified. It took a while for this to sink in, and, in the meantime, Apparatchik had published my piece Science fiction will survive Abi Frost and other on ffwa and I had been elected Past President. TAFF disasters (although whether it will survive Not long after, I awoke from a dream with a the Thor Power Tools decision is another startling and vivid realization. question). The view from up here is looking better and better. I am a fan. Sorry, Lesley, but I’m thinking four-year term. I love science fiction. I’ve been reading SF for Hell, I’m thinking dictator for life. something like 25 years, and the stuff still thrills me. In the past year, I’ve read Greg Egan’s Distress, ’s Idoru, and Bruce

ffwap! (Apparatchik 74, February 1997)

It appears I got just about everything wrong. existence lends a new clarity to my outlook. Now’s my chance to be dead right. “I never gafiated,” Tami protested. Needless to say, it won’t pay to be frivolous “I didn’t actually vote for you,” carl confided. with this further extension of my powers. I have “When the Past President is elected, his or her caused too much confusion already, and it’s term is already over,” Ted admonished. time to set matters straight. This will be a little “Fringedom is no chopped liver!” Heather painful, but bear with me. implied. What is a fake fan? It is a troubling question. I “But wait, where do fake and fringe fandom have consulted the dictionary of fannish terms begin and end? Help!” Andy pole-vaulted. that Dr. Gafia posts occasionally to Usenet. I discovered an entry for fringe fan but none for In short, the reaction to my presidential fake, and I was momentarily cowed into the proclamations has so far only deepened my belief that there was, in fact, no such thing. wintery gloom. “He stands to be insulted and pays for the privilege,” sings the only Elvis that Still, I must have heard the term “fake fan” used matters. It is a bitter truth. somewhere. Andy’s question only reinforced my sense of a mystery that others were avoiding. If Still, I try to be amused, and happier news has he, who causes nations to tremble, did not recently arrived. This was the declaration of my know the answer, who did? death by Steven Desjardins in Apak 73. I was a bit startled at first by this turn of events, but the It was Lesley who finally gave me the clue I advantages of it soon became obvious. needed. In her misleadingly titled “Confessions Amongst other things, I find that a supernatural of a Fringe Fan,” she admits, “I’ve never been able to claim SF... as a favorite.” Furthermore, 24 Thy Life’s a Miracle she condescends to tell us, “It’s true I enjoy that beavising right now!) While it’s true that socializing with the fans I’ve met, but it was I’m holding Lesley up for ridicule, I do so only really the chance to write that drew me toward in the interest of understanding. The truth shall the Apparatchiki.” set you free. Well might she take solace in Tucker’s comment If Lesley takes the hard facts to heart, I believe that fandom absorbs all kinds! she will find new opportunities opening to her. For example, I hear that the Fake Fan Writers Labels may suck, but, by gum, they stick, too. of America need a Past President. Lesley Reece, YOU ARE A FAKE FAN!!! Some will see in these pronouncements a It brings me no pleasure to arrive at this dictatorial attempt to eliminate rivals to my conclusion, but the facts are undeniable. Most position as Past President of the Fringe Fan damning of all, of course, is the disinterest in Writers of America. So be it. (I will point out to SF, but this merely grasping interest in fandom Mr. Lichtman that Tami has disqualified herself is the final nail in the coffin. In these two by claiming trufan status.) attributes, we find the definition that has, till now, eluded us. You can’t, after all, assassinate a dead man. I’m not a hard man — although death has left me a little stiffer than usual. (And you can stop

A Dream of Vlet, or How I Became an Amateur (Banana Wings 47, August 2011)

As most of you no doubt heard, Joanna Russ remembered that old writing exercise. I thought died on 29 April this year. Russ is probably the it might be cute to find the paragraph of hers writer I most wish I could write like. I love her I’d aped and post it to LiveJournal along with precision, efficiency, terse lyricism, and my version. So I pulled out the ancient folder mercurial shifts in tone. I love her passion and containing the story I did this for, intelligence. I love her biting sense of humor. “Singularities”. It smelled of mildew, although When I was in college I took a writing class in the paper still looked clean — narrow-rule which I was given the exercise of creating a notebook paper with handwritten text, paragraph of my own by copying the typewriter paper with typed text. There was the grammatical structure of a paragraph from a Seal of Approval that carl juarez had drawn for Joan Didion essay – a noun where she put a me when I was feeling down about the quality noun, a verb where she put a verb, an adjective of what I’d written. And here was not one but where she put an adjective etc. I enjoyed the two different versions of the paragraph I had exercise so much that in a creative writing class based on Russ. Loooooooong paragraph. Starts I was taking at the same time I borrowed a off well, but uh-oh: quickly becomes pointlessly paragraph from Russ’ science fiction novel, And weird and stilted. So I looked at the second Chaos Died, and did the same thing in a story I version, which takes it more in the direction of was working on. the story I wanted to tell. Well, there’s more story there and the weirdness is more pointed; When I learned that Russ had died I thought but boy, is it stilted and disconnected and about her influence on my writing, and I inhuman. I read the first paragraph of the 26 Thy Life’s a Miracle finished story, and it was so horribly over- remember, and it was a pastiche of Edgar Rice intellectualized that I immediately stopped. This Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, who were was bringing up bad memories. my favorite writers at the time. Basically I projected myself and Reid into an alien world So I pulled out the slightly-less-ancient folder where, despite the fact that we were total dorks, that contained the , “Recognition,” we had heroic adventures. Very Seth Rogen, I’m which was the longer version of the same story, sure. The next year, as a sophomore in high written after I moved to Seattle in the mid-’80s. school, I showed it to my favorite teacher. AK, I started reading the first paragraph, which was as we lovingly called him, taught both English completely different from the original opening and French. His droll comment on the — and boy, was it horribly precious and handwritten manuscript was “Tu me blagues,” confusing and over-written. I looked briefly at which more or less translates as “You’re kidding the notes that a friend wrote after he read the me.” manuscript, and his first point was that shifting verb tenses was a bad idea. No shit! What the There were other stories, including a pastiche of hell was I thinking? Lovecraft in which a desert caravan discovers an ancient evil, but the next milestone was a rock I stuffed the folder back into the drawer, and I went into an emotional tailspin. I got really opera that Reid and I collaborated on, called upset. I had to leave the house. I had to flee. Vilion. Reid would write the music, and my job was to write the scenario and the lyrics. My I was surprised by how upset I felt. I thought memory is that I completed an initial scenario I’d put my dream of being a great writer behind sometime in either our junior or senior year. It me. I thought I’d found a niche of amateur was a pastiche of ’s Elric journalism that made a lot more sense for my stories, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Jon Anderson’s sci-fi personality. And indeed I still think I have. concept album, Olias of Sunhillow. Vilion was What I didn’t realize is that moving on didn’t half-elf, half-biscuit half-man, living a mean those old feelings of failure, tormented, misunderstood life amongst bigoted, disappointment, and self-loathing from the era elf-hating humans. He goes on a quest across a of trying to write fiction had been resolved. I volcanic wasteland called the Slag (i.e. Mordor), can’t say I missed those feelings. What a cesspit! fights a dragon named Thaurog, has a sword But perhaps it’s time to probe the wound. with a name that I’ve thankfully forgotten, does other questy stuff (need more ideas!), and finally finds the elves only to watch them depart the When I first started writing, I wrote pastiches of world forever. Reid wrote music for the dragon the science fiction stories I was reading as a battle. I struggled to come up with some lyrics. young lad. My first story, written in junior high school, was one of those thumbsuckers that At the same time I was broadening my literary ends with the punchline that the alien was... an horizons beyond the science fiction I had been Earthman! I showed it to my best friend, Reid, mainlining since I was twelve. I took advanced and he mocked me for the typo in the English and World Lit courses in high school, punchline: Eartman.” I distinctly remember and my mind was blown by Faulkner’s As I Lay composing this story on a typewriter, but I Dying and Dante’s Inferno (the Ciardi translation). don’t think I’d learned to type by then, so I’m Clearly the concept of Vilion needed some not sure how real the memory is. Maybe the work! It needed more profundity, man. I started typewriter was really a typowriter. working out an elaborate symbolism for the story. The fight with the dragon was obviously The next milestone was a longer story I wrote in symbolic of something or other, probably the the ninth grade. It was called “The Road to repression of sexual desire, knowing me. But Datan,” it had a cutesy subtitle that I no longer no, sexual desire was too raw for me to think A Dream of Vlet, or How I Became an Amateur 27 about even symbolically in those days. So called “The Boy Who Found Emptiness on an dragon = emotion, I guess. I remember working Island” (sigh) that I workshopped at a Taste of on a symbolic representation of the story that Clarion. Ursula K. Le Guin tore the story apart starts from the heart, works through the hands, for its smarter-than-thou condescension toward and ends up in the head. (Probably why I’ve the reader, although she thought there was always laughed at the theme of Metropolis. I re- some powerful use of language and a basis for a invented it as almost a literal sophomore!) To good soul journey in it and encouraged me to represent this symbolic journey I drew an rewrite it and send it to her. Bless her soul! The abstract schema of a man with both hands condescension was actually the reflection — or clasping his head and asked my AP English attempted deflection — of my uncertainty teacher what the image suggested to him. “A about how to create a narrative, but the result bottle opener,” he said. was the same. Over the next few years I came I got bogged down in my attempt to up with ideas for how to rewrite it under the reconceptualize Vilion as some kind of Dantean much better title “Little Dog Talk,” but they journey told in Faulknerian present tense came to naught. There was one more story — stream-of-consciousness. Off I went to the an SF version of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte called University of Oregon, still wrestling with it. “That Same Thing” — which sank into Within months I read Samuel R. Delany’s The incomprehensibility, and that was pretty much Einstein Intersection and had another Eureka the end of my attempts to write fiction. Well, moment. Here was the mythic quest story told unless you count that autobiographical porn in Faulknerian stream-of-consciousness! (Sort novel that I never finished because there wasn’t of.) Vilion plays a flute, just like Lobey, enough material... obviously! I mean, this is a rock opera after all! I wrestled with it some more, but never really got But what was going on simultaneously with anywhere. Reid gave up on it. I tried to turn the these latter-day incoherencies was that Victor scenario into a novel. I didn’t actually have the Gonzalez and Andy Hooper asked me to write chops to do what I was trying to do, and what I for their fanzine, Apparatchik, and by golly a few was trying to do probably wasn’t worth trying to people responded really positively to those short begin with. pieces. Over the next few years I made more I moved on to other things. I’m tempted to friends in the fanzine community, and more of make that the end of the story, because the them asked me to write for their fanzines. moral of this story is that the more ambitious I Nothing like a little positive feedback to redirect got about my writing, the less I accomplished. your focus into a new area. Writing about This was really the story of the next fifteen years myself was what I wanted to do all along of my writing life. It’s the story of anyway. “Singularities”/“Recognition,” which was So I gave up on fiction fifteen years ago, more another years-long wrestling match with an or less, and have been writing amateur ambitious idea about alternate realities, romantic journalism ever since. One of the things I took confusion, and identity transformation that I from the response I got to my fanzine writing could never quite pull off, with or without a was that I had more success when I wrote stolen paragraph from Joanna Russ. At least I simpler, more personal stuff. Less ambition = wrote two different complete stories based on good response. I still have to wrestle with my the idea, which was more than I had done with urge to write ambitious, precious works of Vilion. But the basic problem of an inability to genius (cf. my failed attempt at a TAFF report), execute at the level of my ambition remained. but the other side of it is that I’m much more There was one more major effort – a story productive writing at this level — although still 28 Thy Life’s a Miracle not nearly as productive as some of my other the memories, I learned a lot, but I embrace friends — and thus can always move on to reality. Possibly it’s that I have this nagging something more successful when I’ve written sense that when the stakes are high, I fold. something that falls on its face. Could also be that the dream took so many years to die that it left a lasting scar. It’s true that even on the amateur level I’ve gotten far more recognition for my editing than Whatever the case, here’s an attempt to lay it to for my writing, and this has at times taken a bit rest. I’ve tried to take this deep, but I’m sure it of, um, adjustment on the part of my ego. But goes much deeper. I can’t claim to understand in the end the basic reality is that I’ve gotten my innermost desires very well. Yet it still seems immediate recognition for my amateur work, to me that I have channeled my creative whereas my attempts to write fiction were a energies in productive ways. I’m not stopped difficult slog in a near-void, with not much up. I feel pleased by the opportunities I have to encouragement or self-will to keep me going. write and to be read, even if it’s only by a circle Nature found its balance, is the way I look at it. of friends. There’s no need for regret or remorse. But then again, who ever really needs a So that’s why it was such a shock to find good reason to feel regret or remorse? feelings of shame and self-loathing about my failure to achieve the old dream still lurking so And of course, now that I get to the end of this, close under the surface. For fifteen years I’ve I realize there’s an implication that if I tried less been telling myself that I’d found my balance, ambitious fiction, maybe I’d be more successful found my niche, found my voice, and yet it at that, too. Maybe if I made that seems that it still feels like a failure at some autobiographical porn novel a short story primal level. Maybe it’s that I’ve never properly instead... put the old dream to bed. Never said: thanks for

Fandom is a Forge: the Guest of Honor Speech for Corflu 34 (Banana Wings 66, June 2017)

[This version is slightly modified from the fanzines over the years. Some of my best friends version as delivered.] were fanzine publishers. Eventually, two of them, Victor Gonzalez and Andy Hooper, recruited me to write for their focal point Fandom is a forge, and it made an editor out of fanzine, Apparatchik, in 1996. me. Unlike my crappy science fiction, my fanzine Like many of us, I always wanted to be a science writing was almost immediately met with fiction writer when I grew up. Unfortunately, recognition and egoboo. At the ’96 LA like most of us who aren’t named Greg Worldcon I was embraced by the fanzine Benford, Gordon Eklund, or Ted White1, I publishers in attendance, and even Robert wasn’t any good at it. But I kept plugging away Lichtman remembered a piece about baseball at it into my 30s. Occasionally friends would ask I’d written for Apak. I enjoyed the recognition, me to write a bio or something for a program and over the next couple of years I collaborated book, and I published a couple of apazines and with both Andy and Victor on fanzines (The Jezail and Binnacle respectively). 1 All of whom were in the audience, so I was In 2000, Andy and Victor put on a Corflu in sucking up to them. Seattle that attracted an unusual number of 30 Thy Life’s a Miracle

Brits, and they seemed to take a liking to me, new identity with other people whose writer’s partly based on the fact that they had already itch was being scratched in the same way. met me in the pages of the fanzines I’d written That’s basically the end of this story, but I guess for and published. Soon I was publishing one- I’ll add a comment about one of the lessons I’ve shots with the likes of Scots fan Alison learned in the process of becoming a fanzine Fairchild, and by 2002 Andy had approached fan — and that’s that I’m actually a better editor me about starting a new fanzine which we than I am a writer. Or, at least, almost all of the eventually decided to call Chunga. A year later I award recognition I’ve gotten (including a was running for TAFF, and my fate was set. Hugo) has been for editing and publishing My first solo fanzine, Conversions, published in fanzines, not for writing. Largely through my 1992, was subtitled “Confession of a Fringe work on Chunga I believe I’ve become a better Faan,” which was an attempt to poke fun at editor since 2002, as I’ve learned the network of myself for hanging out with trufen at fannish writers and artists better and gotten conventions while being a mere reader of better at massaging egos and coaxing the best science fiction. Now, a decade later, I had work out of them. I’ve learned that there’s a lot somehow been converted into a trufan myself. of satisfaction to be gained from this act of The conversion process actually wasn’t very communal collaboration. mysterious. What had happened was that I’d So my initial selfish desire to be a famous writer finally found an audience for my writing, and I was gradually forged into an equally selfish started writing for them in order to maintain the desire to use my friends’ brilliant work to win flow of egoboo. Before I knew it, fanzines FAAn Awards for Best Fanzine. So what can I became one of my main modes of self- say except: thanks, guys! You discovered my expression — but, probably more importantly, hidden talent and welded me into someone who of communal expression — and Corflu had could put it to good use. become the main place where I celebrated my

March On (Apparatchik 77, April 1997)

The duck’s ass had been chewed off. We had a right. CU soared and wavered, collapsed and six mile hike ahead of us, and I was already rebounded, and never quite grabbed a groove. wondering how much more I could take. Pond didn’t get off the ground until the last three songs, and by then it was too late. No Yes, it’s spring again, and a winter’s worth of release. pent energy has blown the gates of apathy off their hinges. Ready or not, it’s time to Come to think of it, the Screaming Trees show rawwwwk. kinda blew, too. Rock was dead. So, on the last day of winter, Tami and I and No, wait, that’s right, I was dead. How quickly two other bacchantes rolled down to the we forget! Showbox to hear the Screaming Trees. It was a Where else to go, then, but to the Elysian perfect inauguration of the new season: sloppy, Brewpub to ask the goddess Hazel for some loud, frenzied, and drenched in beery sweat. nectar and whither the world of the living. Dervishes whirled, drunks hurled, and hair Hazel had only dregs to offer, but she gave curled. Unruly doubt got bounced by fellas with them freely. It was enough. I turned to confront biceps the size of my thighs. I danced and a ghost from the past, unseen since he departed pogoed, shucked the moshers, hugged my years ago on a journey to alien lands. Stories of friends, smiled at strangers, and felt almost Nepalese heavens and transparent Laotians alive. evolved. Time — what time? — time to go. On the first day of spring, I rested. It was Saturday then. The masseur next door On the second day of spring, the rawk siren located a brick of winter in my lower back and called again, and it was off to Moe for Citizens’ pressed it to talk. It sounded staticky, my head Utilities and Pond. But something wasn’t quite full of snow. I wandered hatless to the temple 32 Thy Life’s a Miracle of Master Hackney, who demonstrated the polyethylene, styrofoam, gelignite, and other graces of Tai Chi. Would this bring the release I sensible accessories. The weather was perfect sought? That night, still seeking, the neighbor for a march: cool and overcast, but glowing and I returned to the Showbox and tried the with the clean grey light of a sun barely whiskey. Amidst drag queens, wanna-fly girls, banished. frat boys, and hipless tourists, we bucked We set off. I aligned myself with my editor, and techno until the acid jazz lounge amped up. Fat first thing we saw was the duck. beats finished the massage. Release at last! “This is the year,” Andy said, mopping sweat On Sunday, I repented. Took the mower out from his brow. “Griffey. Fifty dingers.” He and clogged it over and over with still soggy began to sing a camp song from his grass, then squared everything with an edger. adolescence. Three days later, I was hardly sore at all Six miles later, only four of us remained anymore. Which gets us to Thursday, and nearly standing. It was the day before Easter. back to the duck. Another massage was Conventions raged elsewhere in Seattle, and in happening, at the hands of Karrie Dunning this Minneapolis, Baltimore, and Liverpool. The sun time. had burnt away the veil. It was a glorious day, “Carrie Root and I are getting people together and I was well spent. Spring stretched out for a Volks March through the Arboretum on before me like a long awaited lover, wanting Saturday,” she told me, while fingering the more. winter in my quadratus lumborum. The next day, a storm blew in. Trees crushed Carrie confirmed this when I showed up for the houses, and powerlines snapped. I pulled weeds Apak mailing Friday night. So, I rendezvoused from barren beds and cursed as cows sailed with the marchers the next morning. overhead. Our subset of the Volk contained Karrie, My ass ached. Carrie, Andy, Kate Schaefer, Glenn Hackney, And so on. Glenn’s daughter and daughter-in-law, and their child. I was glad I wasn’t the only one wearing leather, amidst the nylon, gortex, spandex,

Thank You Christopher (Wassamatta U: The Fannish Education of Randy Byers)

1988 was not a happy year for me. I had quit my “STOPPED SMOKING” on the 14th (I data entry job at Aetna Insurance the previous signally failed to note that I started back up October, which was a good enough move in again two months later) and, on the 28th, itself except that it plunged me into what felt “Butthole Surfers at Union Station.” like desperate poverty. I also started doing a fair The Butthole Surfers show is, in fact, more or amount of crystal meth around that time, less the subject of this memoir. Well, the real basically because I was feeling miserable about subject is, perhaps, missing the boat, or the my love life, or the lack thereof. When I tried to irrelevance of hype, or maybe even the death of jumpstart my joie de vivre that summer by shaving glamour. In any event, it’s an excuse to noodle my head for the tenth anniversary high school on about the past. reunion, I found out that my insecurity wasn’t up to the task of ignoring the strangers who I never got into their albums much, but the teased me on the bus. (This was apparently Butthole Surfers were probably my favorite live before shaved heads became popular in band in the late ’80s. As lead singer Gabby professional basketball, because when I shaved Hayes explained at a Ballard Firehouse show, my head again in ’96, strangers couldn’t be they made a yearly pilgrimage from Austin to bothered to give a damn, thank you.) Seattle for one thing: the bud. And who could blame them? The homegrown bud in Seattle In fact, when I consult the calendar I kept for was sweet indeed, and legend had it that the 1988, it looks like I must have sat in my room local variety had been developed for maximum and sulked for most of the summer, because I potency — for scientific purposes, of course — didn’t note any parties, concerts, or special in the labs of the Health Sciences complex at events for July, August, or September. October the University of , then unleashed is barren as well, except for the note on the happy populace by heroic red-eyed lab 34 Thy Life’s a Miracle assistants. Whatever the case, the Surfers played to face the military music in Germany so that he stoner thrash psychedelia, and their shows never could marry her. failed to transport me into a dreamworld of Victor and Jay came to the show as well. They thundering, echoey ecstasy. An appearance was were living in the Quack House on Phinney always a cause to celebrate, even when I was in Ridge by then, and Victor drove us all to the the depths of depression. show in his monstrous Olds 88, which he got Although the 28th was three days shy of after he rolled the Toyota Corolla down a Halloween, the show was billed as a Halloween hillside outside Bellingham. I spent a lot of time show. We were encouraged to wear costumes. at the Quack House in those days, snorting Whatever. Robyn was the only one in our group meth and hot-knifing dope and, come to think who dressed up, and she went as Medusa. She’d of it, listening to “Sweat Loaf” — the Butthole done the same get-up the year before, but it was Surfers’ whacked cover of Black Sabbath’s more than good enough to repeat. It involved a “Sweet Leaf.” I’d known Victor since ’84, when floor-length gown, the color of which I can’t I met him through science fiction fandom. He remember, although it was probably green. The was working as a DJ at a stripjoint called Déjà rubber snakes in her long black hair were vu, at the north border of Seattle, where nudity certainly green, as was her lipstick. It was that (or at least the stripjoint) was legal. I met Jay green lipstick that really did it. She was gorgeous through Victor, although he turned out to be a and deathly at the same time. classmate of the other Bellingham Kids that I Unfortunately, she went to the show with her met through Tilda Palmer — the daughter of boyfriend, Mark. Did I mention that I was science fiction fans, and Victor’s ex-lover. Jay worked for a poster distributor and served in unhappy about my love life? Right. Mark was her second boyfriend since then, and I liked the Army Reserves. He drove a camo’d scooter him, as I’d liked Derek before him. Mark was and was the best quacker in the Quack House. studying in the School of Fisheries in the UW, (He’s my next door neighbor now, so I have to and he ultimately moved to Kodiak Island to say nice things about him, or he won’t let me start an oyster farm. An easy-going guy, played borrow the lawnmower.) the guitar, sweet smile, looked like Patrick So, this was the gang that arrived at the Union Swayze, smoked pot, liked to hang out at the Station. The Seattle music scene was officially Blue Moon Tavern, where Theodore Roethke dead in those days, and venues were hard to spouted poetry and fell off stools in days gone come by. As such, the Union Station was pretty by. impressive. It hadn’t functioned as a train Also along for the show was a friend of theirs, station for god knows how long, but it was still cavernous and marbled – a far cry from the Nils — a German anarchist who came to the US to avoid the mandatory military service in narrow, brickwall taverns I was used to. They his country. He worked as a mechanic at a VW had set up a beer garden (without tables) in the shop in north Seattle, and was always self- back, and we established a camp on the floor contained, amused, and distant. Robyn and I nearby. Our psychedelic for the evening was once visited him in his upstairs room in a shared mushrooms, but we probably ate those before house, and as he rolled a conical, European- we went in. style, tobacco-and-hash joint to the strains of I hadn’t heard of either of the opening bands. I the Sex Pistols, he talked about life as a squatter guess I wasn’t smoking, so I must have just in whatever city he came from, I can’t paced around impatiently, exploring the space remember. Maybe Hamburg? He missed his and looking at costumes, riding the rising tide of girlfriend very much and eventually moved back the shroooms. Eventually the first band, Blood Circus, started up, and they sounded pretty Thank You Christopher 35 good. I bopped around at the rear of the crowd, marble. I felt sick. Life’s stupid fragility, never checking back occasionally with my friends, safe. The rest of the show went by in a blur. who remained at basecamp. On the drive back to my house, we were pulled Blood Circus stopped, and I probably had over by the cops. Oh, shit. Victor eased the another beer. Another band to go before the Olds into the parking lot of the infamous beloved Buttholes started. The next band was Bridge Motel, which swiftly disgorged its called Nirvana, and they sounded pretty good, enigmatic inhabitants as they came to see what too. Worth a closer look. I waded into the the excitement was about. Victor was very crowd, up to the front. People were slamming, deferential to the officer, calling him Sir. Nils and I joined in, anxious for some action. Some and Mark giggled in the backseat at his manner, of the guys had already stripped their shirts off, but it seemed to work. The cop let him off with and the action turned out to be more than I a warning, and we proceeded on to my place, wanted to deal with before the main attraction. where we drank and yodeled until the cows One has to conserve one’s energy, after all. I came home. pried my way out of the crowd, back to camp. The shrooms said that it was all good. We jabbered and laughed. The music came to an What got me thinking about that particular abrupt stop, which was fine: it meant that the show was reading a piece by Christopher Priest Surfers would be coming on soon. called “Thank You Girls” — a wonderfully evocative reminiscence about how chasing after Not as soon as we would have liked, of course, girls led him by chance to a Beatles show at the but they did hit the stage at long last. Our camp Cavern in December 1962. Priest describes that dissolved as we all moved up to be moved. first encounter with the Beatles as a life- The double thunder of the drums, the howling changing experience, and he speaks mass of guitars and voices. The stage show was compellingly of what their music meant to many more elaborate than I’d seen before, at the in his generation. “A personal identification Central and the Firehouse. A big screen behind with the Beatles survived ... even with Lennon, the band reflected a montage of Charlie’s Angels bombed out on drugs and made pathetic by clips and a groin-numbing penis vivisection Yoko, ending as a sad broken ghost of what he documentary. At the front of the stage, a topless once had been. I trace my own sense of woman did the gogo, ha ha, was this irony? She identification right back to the evening in the was cold and sexy. Cavern, when I had felt that obscure sense that “Shave your pits, bitch!” a younger man they stood for something... Even though they shouted beside me. dazzled my girlfriend and mocked my suit, they were somehow there on my side, saying things It seemed he was from another planet. One that would never enter my head, living a life I with hostile, aggressive aliens, intent on could only fantasize about, yet managing to invasion. I followed the dancer’s lead and speak for me and make me feel I was part of it ignored him. all.” It was all very weird and itchy and loud. After I The closest I came to that kind of experience had exhausted myself bouncing off of sweaty, was my brush with Nirvana, but, aside from the shirtless boys, I wandered around in the back of fact that it was more like seeing the Beatles in the crowd, where I saw a young woman fall off Hamburg, it obviously had a very different her boyfriend’s shoulders and land headfirst on on me. That is to say, not much of an the marble floor. She was whisked away, but immediate impact at all. I liked what I heard there was a tell-tale smear of blood on the that night enough — and was aware enough of Nirvana’s popularity on the local scene — that I 36 Thy Life’s a Miracle bought Bleach when it came out the next year. I So, when Nirvana’s Nevermind exploded into the thought it was pretty good, especially “Scoff” global music market at the end of 1991, I was and “Negative Creep,” but too angry and noisy caught by surprise. I thought it was a pretty overall for my tastes. I lent it to Robyn in good album, but I didn’t understand why it was exchange for Soundgarden’s Louder than Love, so wildly popular. I was 31 years old, and the which came out around the same time. That one picture of Cobain giving us the bird on the was too heavy metal for me but Robyn — a big inside cover seemed adolescent and silly. At the Black Sabbath fan — loved it. She didn’t think same time, the frenzied attention to the “Seattle much of Bleach. scene” that followed felt like a validation of my love of local bands, which by that time had As I mentioned earlier, it seemed like the local extended to Hammerbox and 7 Year Bitch. music scene was dead at the time, not so much (Both, like Vexed, on the C/Z label rather than because there weren’t any bands as because Sub Pop, leading me to believe I had jinxed there were so few venues for live performance. C/Z to extinction.) For a brief time, I lived in For the most part, I wasn’t enthused about the the hard rock capitol of the world, and it was bands who were getting a lot of attention from undeniably exciting. I listened to albums by the the scenesters. (Since I didn’t know any popular bands (even the locally suspect Pearl scenesters, my knowledge of who they liked Jam), I howled at Mudhoney’s mockery of the could only have been gained from the pages of hype in “Overblown,” and I felt like I was part that authoritative monthly music tabloid, The of something special. Despite my skepticism Rocket. Readers of Everett True in the UK about rock’n’roll attitude, I approved of music press probably knew more about these Cobain’s T-shirt on Nirvana’s first Rolling Stone things than I did.) cover: “Corporate magazines still suck.” My favorite local band was a progressive nerd- Three years later, he was dead, and the hype punk unit called Vexed, who didn’t exactly have swiftly died with him. I was caught by surprise a huge following. Still, on any given night in the by the strength of my feelings at his suicide. I tiny, beer-slick confines of Squid Row, they hadn’t noticed that he’d become important to could transport me to the stratosphere and even me even while his music hadn’t. Folks breathlessly beyond, and I counted myself compared him to Lennon, and I recoiled. Hell, blessed to have that magic available to me for a the deification of Lennon was bad enough, now cover charge of three bucks. There wasn’t much they wanted to elevate a screwed up kid from else of interest going on, but Vexed’s live shows podunk Aberdeen? But the fact that he was also were as good as anything I’d ever heard and from the Pacific Northwest, and played real even better than the Butthole Surfers. Their rock (which was pretty good, really), and liked bass player, Brad Matter — a.k.a. Alfred Butler the Raincoats and the Gang of Four... somehow — turned out to have worked with Victor at the it seemed we were in the same boat, I guess. Of college radio station, KCMU, and my old friend course, he had been hauled up to First Class carl also knew Brad and played with him in an while I was still down in steerage, but still... experimental noise band called Yama The Pit and briefly in another one called Sky Cries Mary A couple of years after Cobain’s death, I was at that would later shed its experimentalism and a party where I met one of the members of put out a couple groovy pop albums on World Blood Circus, who had opened the Halloween Domination. Through carl, I got to know Brad, show at Union Station. He told me that the plug so I guess I was kind of a scenester, too, but it was pulled on Nirvana that night when the wasn’t the scene that was about to take the flimsy plywood stage threatened to fall apart world by storm. under the onslaught of the slamdancers. That’s what I bailed out of because I wanted to save my energy for the Surfers. Thank You Christopher 37

And maybe the sweaty little guy who screamed about how his chance encounter with Nirvana at the Surfers girl that she should shave her pits that night changed his life forever. is off somewhere at this very moment writing

Ding Dong, the Bells are Gonna Chime! (Chunga 21, June 2013)

“Dither not,” quoth John D. Berry, and who factual dancing in the streets of Seattle that was I to argue with him? History was in the night, yah sure, you betcha! making, this time it was personal, and it was The story of marriage equality in Washington going to be fun. Jessica and Rhonda were State is a surprisingly long one, some of which I getting married! Now wasn’t the time for didn’t learn about until after the election. In second-guessing. 1971 two men, John Singer and Paul Barwick, filed for a marriage license in Seattle and sued when they were turned down. By the time the 6 November 2012 was a momentous day in Washington State Court of Appeals killed their America, and not just because a nation with a lawsuit in 1974, Singer had changed his name to long history of white supremacism re-elected a Faygele ben Miriam and moved on to challenge Black man named Barack Hussein Obama as the homophobia of the day in other ways, president. It was also momentous because two including suing the Equal Employment states (Colorado and Washington) legalized Opportunity Commission (of all people) for marijuana for recreational use, and two states firing him for being gay. (He regularly went to (Maryland and Washington) affirmed via his typist job at the EEOC wearing dresses.) popular vote the legality of same sex marriage. Marriage equality had never passed a popular The original marriage suit was an outlier both vote in the US before. It was a great day to be a locally and nationally, and the big push for Washingtonian, boy howdy. There was actual- marriage equality didn’t get going until decades later. The Netherlands was the first country to Ding Dong, the Bells are Gonna Chime! 39 legalize same-sex marriage, starting in 2001. In completely disappeared from memory, 2004 Massachusetts became the first state in the apparently my reasons were so irrational that US to legalize it. In Washington State same-sex they didn’t survive contact with reality. domestic partnerships were recognized in 2007, This reality arrived in the form of carl juarez, and two years later same-sex civil unions (with whom I met a few months later within hours of all the rights of marriage, but not the name) moving into my dorm room on the University were legalized. The civil unions law was of Oregon campus. It took a little while, but not challenged by Referendum 71, but it passed the very long, before we became such close friends popular vote. This year, three years later, having that he came out to me in an intense established that civil unions did not in fact cause conversation that lasted into the wee hours, the sky to fall or the earth to crash into the sun, wherein he painfully refuted all of my ignorant, the state legislature legalized same-sex marriage, homophobic beliefs. A few months after that he and this law was again challenged, by talked me and our other good friend (also Referendum 74, with results as described above. named Carl) into attending Norwescon in Dancing in the streets, baby. Seattle, where I met Denys Howard, who had So 41 years after Singer and Barwick filed for a not so much come out of the closet as marriage license in Seattle, the law finally came dynamited the closet into smithereens. My around. There are now nine states — as well as education continued apace. the District of Columbia and two American By the time I moved to Seattle in 1984 I was Indian tribes — that have legalized same-sex surrounded by gays and lesbians. My therapist marriage in the USA. But again, while the was gay, my hair stylist was gay, my best friend extension of civil liberties is the main thing, it’s at work was gay, and many of my best friends in also important that for the first time, in two fandom were gay or lesbian. It quickly got to different states, same-sex marriage was the point where people who didn’t know me supported by a majority of the voting often assumed that I was gay too. Considering population. Civil liberties should not depend on that I was basically long-term domestic partners majority acceptance, but it is hugely significant with a gay man, this wasn’t exactly surprising. in this case that the majority voted as it did. It is The times they were a-changing, and they were a sign of a tidal shift in public opinion — one a-changing me too. My political views had that was difficult to imagine in the relatively radicalized and, far from thinking that same-sex recent past, let alone in the more distant past of marriage should be legalized (which was my own homophobic youth. inconceivable at the time anyway), I believed marriage was oppressive to women and should be abolished entirely. Hey, it was a popular I don’t remember my indoctrination into belief amongst my leftist friends! Also, I had no homophobia. In some ways I only became particular interest in getting married myself. conscious of my homophobia (although of course I wouldn’t have called it that) when my Among the fannish lesbians I was friends with friend Kevin Turner argued with me about gay was , whom I first rights in the South Salem High School library in became aware of before encountering fandom, our senior year. It was probably in the spring of in the letter column of Dick Geis’ fanzine, 1978, right before we graduated. I don’t Science Fiction Review, which I discovered in the remember what exactly Kevin was arguing for bookstores I frequented as a teenager. Jessica or against. I just remember that he was the first was also a writer and anthologist whose interest person who had ever argued with me about in heroic fantasy coincided with my own, homosexuality, and that I was vehemently though I didn’t share her taste for horror against it. Why? Given the fact that they have fiction. She was a fantastically knowledgeable 40 Thy Life’s a Miracle bibliophile who for a few years ran a bookstore I met Rhonda Boothe in that same era and in Seattle called Aunt Violet’s Bookbin, where I thought of her as one of the Idaho contingent, liked to browse (I was too poor to buy much in along with Ole and Neil Kvern. Rhonda is a those days) and shoot the shit with Jessica. (She painter and singer. In the old days she sang in a now sells books online at violetbooks.com.) group called Strangeness and Charm with two Jessica flattered me in my semi-punk days, when other fans, Charlie Spear and Judy Kaplan. I I bleached my hair, by saying that I looked like didn’t know Rhonda as well as I knew Jessica, the protagonist of Anthony Shriek — the horror but she was certainly a familiar and friendly part novel she was writing at the time. When I broke of the Vanguard community. After the two of up with my girlfriend Robyn the first time, them got together and moved to Bremerton, I Jessica brought her to the next Vanguard party, didn’t see them as often as I used to. where we got back together. “I was hoping for Occasionally they’d come into Seattle for a some rebound sex with Robyn,” Jessica told us, convention, and I visited them in Bremerton “but I guess you guys can have make-up sex once with a friend. It was many years before I instead.” visited their house again, when I stopped by in January 2012 after a vacation out on the coast.

From left to right: Marilyn, Cliff, John, Eileen, Randy, Marcie surrounding Rhonda and Jessica

Ding Dong, the Bells are Gonna Chime! 41

In the meantime, however, I’d become their everyone, so if you know her you’re a friends, and that’s how I learned that handshake away from the whole world. Take in the wake of Referendum 74 they were that, Kevin Bacon! planning to get married as soon as the law Our driver that day, John Berry, probably allowed. The law went into effect on December doesn’t need an introduction, but then again 6th (which is when Rhonda first told me on neither did Eileen, so what the hell. I would’ve Facebook what was going on) and it requires a met John around the same time as I met Eileen. three-day waiting period after a couple files for They’ve been together as long as I’ve known a marriage license (same as for straight couples), them. John is, amongst other things, a god of so the wedding was scheduled for December typography and design in the US and around 9th. There was a flood of same-sex marriages the world. In fact one of the things we talked that day, all over the state. Well, at least in the about on the drive to the wedding was John and more liberal parts of the state! Eileen’s trips to Armenia and Hong Kong for The S’Klallam Tribe had offered up to twelve various international type conferences that he same-sex couples a place (Heronswood had helped to organize. Gardens) and the services to get married on On the ferry, however, we talked about December 9th. Heronswood Gardens is on marriage. John and Eileen got married five years Kitsap Peninsula, north of Bremerton, and so I ago in a private, civil ceremony with only had contacted John D. Berry about perhaps Wendy and her husband there as witnesses. catching a ride, since Rhonda told me that he They weren’t interested in doing it as a big and Eileen were going to the wedding. I told social event, because they were only getting John that I was dithering about whether to go married for the legal advantages and protections or not, but he was having none of that. Thus on married couples are afforded. We talked about the morning of the 9th he and Eileen picked me friends who had opposed marriage in the past up on the way to the ferry. When I got in the to the extent of not attending the wedding of car I discovered that they’d already picked up Jerry Kaufman and Suzanne Tomkins because Wendy Wees. they thought marriage was a patriarchal system “Haven’t seen you in decades,” she observed. of control. Then they got married later Indeed, the last time I remembered seeing themselves. We’ve all apparently evolved on this Wendy she was still Jessica’s girlfriend, or only issue, along with our legal system. recently ex. Wendy, like Rhonda, is a painter (I We arrived at Heronswood and parked in a guess Jessica has a thing for painters), and she muddy field. Gathering families and friends of showed us a flyer for a recent gallery show she’d the five couples getting married that day were done. I hadn’t known she was originally from St directed to a nearby building, where we found a Louis, which I learned when Eileen started table of food and sparkling cider. There was a talking about a historical novel she’s working on reporter from the North Kitsap Herald who was about a freed slave living near St Louis. interviewing people about the momentous Eileen was another person I met in my first occasion. Eventually Rhonda and Jessica encounters with Seattle fandom in 1979. She’s a showed up and were introduced to the woman writer, performance artist, and wit, and I’ve who would be conducting the ceremony. They always been somewhat in awe of her. Amongst went over her script, making decisions about other things she’s one of those people who I how to alter it for a same sex wedding. seemed to be connected to before I’d even met Meanwhile, Cliff Wind and Marilyn Holt her, through shared acquaintances in Eugene, arrived. This certainly was old home week, as I where she had history as one of the Radar have also known Cliff and Marilyn from my Angels. Then again, Eileen seems to know first visits to Seattle, and in their case that was 42 Thy Life’s a Miracle actually before they’d gotten together yet. script used by the officiant seemed weirdly out Marilyn is one of the founders of the Clarion of synch with the moment — already a stale West writers workshop, and she is also an leftover of a bygone era — and there was at organic farmer, having taken over the family least one moment when she uttered the words farm in the Poulsbo area, not too far from “between a man and a woman” and stumbled to Heronswood. Cliff only recently retired from add “or between a woman and a woman.” his job at the post office and is now working Meanwhile, behind the curtain I was sitting next harder than ever on the farm. to, two staff people were chatting animatedly about something I couldn’t quite make out, and I had assumed that they’d be at the wedding, a jazzy Christmas carol played softly on a radio. and it had gotten me to wondering, for some Jessica and Rhonda had adapted their wedding odd reason, how Cliff had ended up living in vows from the ones Tiny Tim used when he Australia for a time back in the ’70s. So I took married Miss Vicki on the Tonight Show in 1969. the opportunity to ask him, and he explained This included the odd vow not to be puffed up. that in 1975 he hadn’t been able to find a Marilyn was weeping across the aisle from me, teaching job in Seattle so he interviewed for one while she and Eileen both took photos of the in Australia. While living in Perth he made ceremony. contact with the local fans, and in fact he attended the very first Swancon, which was small enough to be held in writer Tony Peacey’s house. This was so long ago (in 1976, to be precise) that Judith Hanna was still living in Perth, before she moved to , and Cliff said she was one of the dozen or so people at the convention. When I mentioned this reminiscence to her on LiveJournal later, she wrote, “I seem to recall a family of baby ducklings waddling through at some stage.”2 When the time for the wedding came, we were taken across the muddy parking lot and down a path to another building. Although it was the dead of winter and the garden was still in the There was an official photographer, too, and process of being restored after it had been after the ceremony she herded us all out into neglected by the previous owners, the setting the garden and took pictures of the newlyweds was still beautiful, in a hushed, gloomy, moist and then of the group of us. “Give a cheer,” she Pacific Northwest kind of way. directed, and we let loose a ragged huzzah. After the proper papers had been signed by the The ceremony was suitably strange and married couple and the witnesses, we all walked whimsical. Jessica and Rhonda busted a move as back up the trail to the muddy parking lot and they walked down the aisle. The boilerplate visited with Jessica and Rhonda’s young, squirmy Chihuahua pup. I finally got up the

2 nerve to give Jessica the wedding present I had I was amused while doing research for this to discover the decided on at the last minute: the fossil of a following in the entry about Swancon in Fancyclopedia 3: “Swancon was started by Grant Stone, Cliff Wind and Tony snail that I found in a fossil bed by a train trestle Peacey, three fans from W.A. who met at Aussiecon in 1975.” outside of Salem, Oregon when I was a young As I told Cliff, in his case “W.A.” stands for “Washington.” boy. “This is exactly the kind of thing I love,” Cliff was amused, but he added, “I wasn’t amused though in ’75 when I was told I couldn’t have the time off to attend Jessica said, and she surprised me with a hug. I Aussiecon. I’d already met Grant and, I think, Tony.” had been pretty sure the fossil would be Ding Dong, the Bells are Gonna Chime! 43 appreciated, but it was still a huge relief that I particularly good photo, but everybody was so hadn’t actually made an idiot of myself. Giving thrilled by the occasion. History was being gifts is not one of my strong suits. photographed before our very eyes. We had asked a representative of the tribe to Meanwhile, back in Seattle John decided the recommend a nearby restaurant, and she best way to get to Fremont and my house from laughed and suggested the bistro at the tribe’s the downtown waterfront was by way of Queen casino. “It really is the best thing in this area,” Anne Hill. This route took us past the Hilltop she promised. When we got there, however, we Ale House, of course. found that the bistro didn’t open until later, so “Winter Beers Are Here,” I read from the we went to the casino buffet instead. Smoking signboard. was allowed, which now seems utterly alien to me, even as a former smoker. I drank a couple “Shall we stop for one?” John asked. of glasses of champagne with my meal, and I “Yes, let’s,” Wendy enthused. talked to John and Cliff and a friend of the newlyweds named Marcie who was also from We weren’t quite ready for this special day to be Bremerton. She works on the Navy base there, over. The four of us took a table in the pub and but in a civilian capacity. She was the odd ordered our various pints. We gabbed on person out in the group, but she seemed very various and sundry points of past and present. friendly and relaxed about it. Eventually Eileen and John started bickering about something so trivial I no longer We chatted long after we’d stopped eating, with remember what it was. I’m sure they were both Jessica grousing that diabetes was restricting her wrong, whatever it was. choices, while Cliff ate not one, but two pieces of delicious-looking dessert. Everybody said the “You guys weren’t like this before you got blintzes were great, but having recently been married,” I observed. diagnosed as pre-diabetic I joined Jessica in Wendy turned to me with a fey look in her eyes abstinence. Jessica also observed, in her and said emphatically, “Wrong!” wonderfully morbid way, that she would probably have to die to get us all to come out to How we laughed! Well, what do I know about the peninsula to visit her again. Since I had been marriage, old maid that I am? I’d say marriage to their house less than twelve months before, I binds not just two people, but the entire felt smugly exempt from the critique. Eventually community around them, even old friends who Jessica hit her introvert’s limit on people time are already long connected — if only by giving and bolted for the car. We trailed out behind us cause to celebrate and reaffirm our common her and said our various goodbyes, and John ground and common history. Even if the pointed the car in the direction of the ferry celebration comes in the form of affectionate docks. The miraculous event had come to an bickering. end. So here’s to Jessica and Rhonda and their house As we waited for the ferry I posted a picture of for decayed gentlewomen. It was a huge the newly-weds to Facebook with my phone. pleasure to witness the historic marriage of two Over the next couple of days it became the old friends. Long may they bicker. most Liked and most commented-upon post And so we drank to that. I’ve ever made. When it got to exactly 100 Likes, I gave a little whoop. It wasn’t even a

Venice (Apparatchik 79, May 1997)

My niece recently returned from an educational through. I’d thought about Jolie often while she adventure called Semester at Sea. She and was away, savoring a vicarious, not to mention roughly 500 other college students paid a premature, nostalgia for her encounter with princely sum (well, my sister paid it in Jolie’s fresh and distant lands. As I gabbed with my case) to board an erstwhile cruise ship now Mom about this and other things to kill the refitted as a school and spend a semester sailing time, I got my first clue that I’d been living in from port to port all the way around the globe. an alternate universe for a couple of months. Between stops, the students studied the Jolie sent me postcards from several countries. upcoming country in courses chosen from a The first was from Venezuela, where she swam varied curriculum that included history, with freshwater dolphins in the Amazon and economics, literature, politics, and art. They visited a tribe she’d studied the previous year in embarked in the Bahamas and landed finally in an anthropology course at the University of Seattle. Oregon. The next postcard featured the Palazzo My family came up from Oregon to greet Jolie Ducale in Venice, where she was off to shop at on her return. We joined the crowd of other the Rialto, someone named Constance families at Pier 66 as the ship docked, and we (apparently a new friend) was getting a massage, spent the next seven hours waiting for Jolie and and the weather was great. I’ve been to Venice, her luggage to clear customs. I looked at the and I smiled at memories of serene mornings in hordes of shiny students lining the rails of the stony plazas. ship, dressed in wholesome college sweatshirts It was more than a little surprising when the and Vietnamese straw hats, and I contemplated next card, also from Venice, was addressed to (more than a bit enviously) the mind-altering, my housemate, Denys. Jolie has certainly met soul-broadening experience they’d all just been Denys, but it did not seem to me that she knew Venice 45 him well enough to warrant correspondence. It “Really? But I got a postcard from you from didn’t make sense, but I was too tired from a there!” frazzling day to figure it out. Maybe the laser- Her face had the confused look of someone printed label represented a glitch in her address who has returned from a long, intense journey database whereby Denys’ name had been that is already beginning to feel like a dream. substituted for mine. I expected Denys to “Venice? I don’t think so. Where’s Venice?” express surprise when he saw it, but the thought was swept away by the river Lethe in a trice. “Italy.” A postcard arrived from Kenya: on safari, cool The map of the world crumpled on her face. animals, having the time of my life. Another “We didn’t go anywhere near Italy. Did we?” from Vietnam, where the War Crimes museum A couple of days later, I thought of this puzzle appalled and the people always smiled. The last again and searched my stack of unfiled paper one came from Hong Kong. She and some for the card. There it was. Signed J-O-squiggle. others had traveled to Beijing and the Great A couple of things clicked into place. John Wall. My letter had reached her in Hong Kong, Hedtke and Constance Maytum had spoken of see you soon in Seattle. an upcoming trip to Venice. John would have Venezuela, Venice, and Vietnam. “Is she only sent a card to Denys. going to places with names that start with ‘V’?” The signature on the card was John’s, not my neighbor asked me. It struck my fancy. The Jolie’s. V-names conjured visions of decaying jungles and sunken cities, alien customs and twilit I suffered a giddy moment while one world epiphanies. evaporated and another sprang full-blown from the void. I examined the new world. It was “Venice?” my Mom said, as I gabbed to her richer for John and Constance’s visit to Venice, about my vision. We sat on a bench on Pier 66 but poorer for the subtraction of one V-land in the summery spring sunshine. “I don’t think from Jolie’s experience. Two Vs are not so they went there. I don’t think they went to meaningful as three. The meaning fairly at all. Did they? That’s strange.” vanishes, taking with it a few twilit epiphanies. I remembered my befuddlement at the card to It is, perhaps, a better world. It has been Denys. But it was from Jolie. It had her released from the brain-lock I put on it, freed signature on it. I laughed uncertainly. “A secret, from the confines that my empathy for Jolie’s extracurricular escapade, perhaps?” adventure had built from the evidence of Mom shrugged. coincidental postcards and the consonance of a consonant. This world has more people in it, Hours later, after we got Jolie packed into the more life, more surprises. Still, there is the van and were headed down to Portland for a unavoidable sadness at the loss of that other celebratory dinner, I thought of it again. “Did world, where I might have sat with my niece on you go to Venice?” I asked her. a sunny morning, drinking coffee and She looked startled. “Um. No.” reminiscing about the narrow streets and broad plazas of Venice.

Cliffhangers (Chunga 1, August 2002)

“Are we having fun yet?” my sister asked. face of the original, the result is a four-hundred foot cliff of striated rock on the north bank of “No.” I fought to maintain my calm. the river, while on the south bank, another cliff “I’m not sure I can go any further,” I said, ascends two hundred feet to the broad, flat thinking, I’ve got to get the fuck out of here. floor created by the later lava flow. Across the “Is that right?” LaVelle said. Her tone was floor, a third cliff climbs to the same level as the steady — just another day in the park. northern face. “Go ahead,” I said, scrambling awkwardly to My parents have a house on the rim of the both of her way and maintain firm upper south side, with a spectacular view not contact with the ground. only of the canyon but also of Mt. Jefferson, Three-Fingered Jack, and the Sisters in the She worked past me and continued on. Cascades to the east. Every summer, I spend I looked at the edge of the cliff. vacation time at the house. That’s how, on more than one occasion, I’ve found myself staring at the edge of a cliff. The Crooked River Canyon, in the high desert A few years back, my brother, Lonnie, told me plateau of Central Oregon, is actually a canyon he’d seen something interesting while fishing within a canyon. The river cut a wide, curving the Crooked for trout. There was a tree where gap into one ancient bed of basalt, and then, thirty-odd turkey buzzards had gathered to when the Cascades dumped a fresh load of lava snooze after bathing in the river. Turkey that filled the first canyon halfway, the river buzzards are a common sight in the area. carved another, narrower chasm into the new Usually, you see one or two of them gliding basalt. Since the inner canyon was cut along one silently overhead, or maybe a half-dozen in the Cliffhangers 47 distance sending signals with their circling that That’s when LaVelle startled me with her some poor critter is dead or dying. It was question, then left me to my private session something, Lonnie said, to see so many of them with the abyss. in one place, muttering to each other and taking I had to get the fuck out of there. But how? The the waters. He suggested that we hike down ground I’d covered to get to this point was just into the inner canyon and take a look. LaVelle as slippery and steep as the ground ahead of me was interested in seeing them, too. that I no longer dared attempt. In fact, the We set off around 9:00 in the morning. The ground in every direction was slippery and desert sun was already hot, but not too hot yet steep. buzzed again impatiently. for a hike. We found a break in the lip of the The trail we’d left continued on a gentle incline lower cliff and made our way down to the in the same westward direction as our own grassy, dirt slope that briefly interrupts the cliff’s unbeaten path, so it was probably above me. It perpendicular drop. A deer trail provided good was probably closer to me straight above than footing. Occasionally, there were places where back along the way we’d come. I had to get to rock or sagebrush made the going more the path now. Straight up it would be. difficult, but it wasn’t really a problem. It was hotter down in the canyon than it had been up I had a pair of binoculars in a boxy leather case top. slung on a strap over one shoulder. Until now, it had rested unobtrusively against my back. We stayed on the trail for maybe a half mile Now, as I clawed my way upward, it swung before Lonnie recognized the spot above the wildly, banging my ribs and dropping again and buzzards’ tree. He left the trail and headed again off my shoulder. I cursed it furiously. toward a point lower on the slope where we’d Even “motherfucker” had no effect on it. be able to see over the cliff. I followed, and Irritation fed on fear and grew into a white rage. LaVelle brought up the rear. I wasn’t thinking Rage pried open the gates holding back fear. about much of anything, although I was paying attention to where I placed my feet. Even on I scrambled up the slope. Thought was almost the trail, I’d been conscious of where I was impossible in the surge of panic and anger. Get stepping; now, without the trail to guide my to the trail was the frantic mantra. I grabbed at decisions, I was even more focused on the clumps of slick, dead grass. My feet planted choices. themselves willynilly. I was still able to understand that if I gave in to the fear Lonnie forged quickly ahead and disappeared completely and rushed too fast, the danger of around a grassy bend. I’d gone fifty yards off losing my footing increased. (Or was that the path when I lost my footing twice in a row understanding simply another, more cunning, and abruptly realized how steep the slope form of fear?) I slowed down. Now I was angry actually was and how close we were to the edge at the necessity of patience. I had to get to the of the cliff below us. One false step, and I’d be path now. sliding toward perdition. The path arrived. I was safe. I was already worked up from the exertion of the hike, but now adrenaline added its jolt. The The fear began immediately to subside. edge of the cliff came into sharp focus, no My embarrassment at the fear had begun doubt making it look closer than it really was. already when LaVelle startled me in the first Panic rang the buzzer, ready to answer. I moment of panic. With the fear dissolving, planted my skinny butt on the slope, unable to embarrassment took over. I quickly set out regain a sense of balance. along the trail in the direction that Lonnie and LaVelle were traveling, hoping to regain some 48 Thy Life’s a Miracle portion of face by looking at the buzzard tree When we returned to the deck, I told Dad and from my higher vantage. “I was having some Lonnie the story of my moment of panic. “I trouble on the slope, so I decided to stick with almost lost it,” I said. the trail.” Harrumph, yes, stiff upper lip and all “Well, I don’t think the slope that’s steep,” that. Lonnie said. “If you slipped, you’d be able to I quickly came even with LaVelle, who hadn’t catch yourself before you went over.” made much progress below. I caught her “I guess so,” I said. “The edge sure looked close attention, and she immediately climbed to join to me.” me. Good. Now I wouldn’t be alone in my inability to follow Lonnie. Face was regained. Lonnie shrugged. “It would’ve been easier if We continued along the trail until we saw you’d been wearing hiking boots. Your tennis Lonnie returning below. He saw us and climbed shoes don’t have enough tread on them.” up. Dad agreed. He showed us the worn treads on “I saw the tree,” he said, “but the buzzards his shoes. “These don’t work for climbing at weren’t there.” all.” “Can we rest in the shade?” LaVelle asked. So we talked of shoes, not fear. We strolled to a big juniper nearby and sat on It is, of course, easier to talk about shoes than the boulders beneath its branches. The last of fear, especially since in retrospect I can see that my adrenaline burned away in the cool shade. I I wanted absolution for my fear. More than wanted to say something about what I’d just that, I wanted to find something valuable in it, gone through, but I was still embarrassed — something that made it worthy and not not to mention stunned by the sun and raw shameful. Indeed, a couple of days later, as I feeling. We rested for five or ten minutes, then hiked the paved path to the routine crises of climbed up to the lip of the canyon and work back in Seattle, I told myself that the fear immediately found a place where we could had been a sign that I love life and that the easily scale the last fifteen feet of rock. whole episode had been a revelation and a gift. I love life! It’s all good! “Need help?” Lonnie asked. That just seems like confused thinking now. “No,” I said. “I can handle this part.” Fear of death is not love of life. Back at the house, a half hour later, the young So it was more practical, after all, to just get a golden eagle who had been born in a cliff aerie good pair of hiking shoes and forget about just below the deck landed at the old nest. absolution. Lonnie immediately pulled on his boots and climbed out on the outcropping of rock at the cliff’s edge to take a look. “Nice day,” Terry said. “He has no fear,” I said to Dad. “Beauty,” I agreed. Lonnie reappeared to beckon us, and we put on She shaded her eyes against the desert sun with our shoes to join him. We peered over the lip of one hand and scanned the floor of the canyon, rock and saw the young eagle perched only ten then she went back inside the house. I took a feet below. It was unaware — or unafraid — of sip of coffee and scanned the words of the us. As with all raptors, odds were fifty-fifty that paperback I held open in one hand. it would be dead before it was a year old. It was unaware and unafraid of that, too. It really wasn’t unusual that Lonnie hadn’t returned from the river yet. He was fishing. Cliffhangers 49

Still, it had been hard enough climbing that descended over a rough scramble of boulders creaky ladder down the cliff with the crawdaddy and down to our old friend, the deer trail. trap in one hand. How much harder with the “I guess I won’t bring Ryan down with me trap in one hand and the fishing pole in the tomorrow when I come back for the trap,” he other? And if the loose rock had slid once, it said, referring to his six-year-old son. “This is could slide again. rougher than I remembered.” I picked up the binoculars and studied the lip of “This would probably be pretty tough for him,” the inner canyon. I agreed. We made our way easily to the ladder. It is a The summer after our exciting adventure in rusted, zigzag structure of metal poles and steps search of buzzards, Lonnie and I went down miraculously bolted who knows how long ago the cliff to the river. Earlier in the day, we’d and at what cost in human life to the naked gone into Redmond so that he could buy a new basalt of the lower cliff, and it is showing its fishing pole, and we’d stopped at a brewpub to age. The shudders and creaks as we climbed test the quality of the local ale. We downed a onto it promised eventual, likely imminent, couple of pints apiece and headed back to the collapse. I held the crawdaddy trap — four feet house for dinner. The wine served with the in length and one in circumference — out in meal left me in a mellow, happy mood. front of me with one hand and grasped a rail with the other. Because of the trap, I took the “I’d like to throw the crawdaddy trap in the precipitous steps face forward, as though on a river and leave it there overnight,” Lonnie told stairway, which meant that I could only get the me. “Want to come along? I’ll drop the trap in, heels of my feet on the narrow, flat rungs. It try a couple casts with the new rod, then we’ll occurred to me that this had all been a fatally come back up.” drunken error in judgment. “Sure,” I said. But it was a piece of cake. At the foot of the Mom and Terry (Lonnie’s wife) rolled their eyes ladder, artesian water roared from the base of at us when we tossed a couple of Lonnie’s the cliff, splashed across a scree of boulders, homebrews into the backpack. and streamed into the river. We scrambled over “You guys be careful,” Terry said. the slick, mossy rocks and came to the trees on the riverbank. “Piece of cake,” the wine said, using my mouth. I donned my new chunky-treaded boots. “It’s darker down here than I thought it’d be,” Lonnie said. The sun was setting as we left the house, but the clear sky was still full of its fading light. We We had entered a well of dusk, with twilight still drove to the lower level and parked by the visible higher up the canyon wall. I sat next to a pasture that’s all that’s left, aside from the house concrete structure that supported the probable and barn, of the cattle ranch that once ruled the cause of the ladder: a rusted hulk of machinery canyon. that looked like an old generator, although there was no sign of a waterwheel or any other There are a couple of ways to get down the cliff mechanism to tap the flow of the river. all the way to the river, but we had agreed to try the old ladder below the ranch house. Lonnie I popped open a beer, lit a cigarette, and sat grabbed the backpack and fishing pole, and I silently in the deepening dark beneath the trees, took the crawdaddy trap. We traipsed across the while Lonnie tossed the trap in the water and pasture, found a break in the rim rock, and then flipped lures expertly into promising pools and currents. The only sounds were the 50 Thy Life’s a Miracle rattlesnake buzz of his reel and the dull roar of the river. Across the water, the opposing cliff towered four hundred feet into the sky in thick strata of vertically striated rock. Bats skittered I heard Lonnie drive away at dawn the next low over the river, whizzed past my nose, and morning, on his way to collect the trap. When I darted into the shadow of the generator’s got up a couple of hours later, he hadn’t crumbling foundation. Everything but the returned. I could see his car parked by the ember of my cigarette melded in shades of gray. pasture below. Lonnie threw back the one trout he caught. It I ate breakfast and went out on the deck with a was middling small. He put his fishing gear book and a cup of coffee. Every few minutes, I away and drank his beer, and we talked about looked to see if he was coming up over the lip nothing much. of the cliff or crossing the pasture. Dad came out to look once, and Terry came out a couple “We better get going before it gets too dark,” he of times. Fear wormed its way into my heart. said. He left his rod and tackle box, since he’d be coming back for the trap in the morning. Lonnie has always pooh-poohed the idea of taking a cell phone along on his fishing Back to the slimy scree, where we paused to expeditions on the river in case he gets in watch water spray from the cliff into moonlight. trouble. It had never seemed like a big deal to Lonnie vaulted from one rock to another, which me before, but I now found myself irritated at turned out to be loose, and landed on his his nonchalance. What if he did get in trouble? backside. He looked sheepish and said he was What if he fell and broke a leg? Or worse? Two okay. fatherless sons, and Terry a widow. Without the hindrance of the trap, the ladder Could one atheist pray for another? To whom was easier to negotiate, though it still trembled or what? I formed prayers without address and under our weight. We climbed to the deer trail, tried to focus on the book. where I made the mistake of looking down at the river and was seized by dizziness. My knee A half hour later, he returned, as he always has. stung from a nettle’s kiss. The crawdaddy trap had been empty, but he’d caught a couple of trout. “I don’t know about you,” Lonnie said, “but I’m not really interested in walking all the way Fear had spoken to me again. The message this back the way we came. Let’s just go up here, by time was very different from what I’d heard the the ranch house.” year before, and this time it really was a message of love: I love my brother, and I don’t want to “I’m with you,” I said. lose him. Up we went, and home again, home again. We But the way he keeps dragging me out onto sat on the deck and plucked seeds that had cliffs, I’ve got to wonder whether he’s trying to hitchhiked on our socks, then crowned the lose me. evening with whiskey on the rocks.

Turtle Energy (Previously unpublished; courtesy Lonnie Byers and the Byers family)

Lonnie asked for a turtle for his birthday. Theo told me Michael was angry, but I don’t think he explained what the anger was about. He got one — and how! Theo then told us about the hawksbill turtle. When we were on Yap in 2002, Theo asked The Yapese don’t like the meat as much as the Lonnie what he wanted for his birthday. Lonnie green turtle’s, but Theo wanted the shell to use said he wanted a turtle, meaning a sea turtle. So for jewelry. Would it be acceptable for Lonnie’s Theo asked his cousin Michael to get Lonnie turtle? Sure. Would we prefer to have it turtle, as a family favor. that night rather than Monday (which was the When Lonnie and I got back from fishing on actual day of Lonnie’s birthday)? Sure. Well, the Sunday before his birthday, we met Michael then they would go kill it and drain the blood on shore. He and Charles had gone out in a and bring it to our house to cook. boat (which belonged to the EPA in one of the They didn’t come and didn’t come. Terry and many ironies in this episode) and looked for a Jolie were at the dance in Maap with Antonia. turtle. They had seen two, but Michael hadn’t Lonnie cooked some of the fish we had caught, been able to properly spear either one. and we and the boys ate it with rice. Terry and Michael was very angry, Theo told us later when Jolie got home around 7:30 or 8:00, and Theo he stopped by the house. At the time, it didn’t and Michael showed up right behind them with mean much to me. Michael certainly hadn’t a half case of Bud Light. looked angry. When I told him that Theo was Theo was very apologetic. They had picked up thinking of going out spearfishing later, he told the turtle and stopped at the little store at the me he didn’t know if he’d go, maybe he’d just intersection to buy some beer. There they ran have a beer. When I reported this to Theo, into a relative who was very drunk and talking 52 Thy Life’s a Miracle crazy. He wanted to know if they were trying to “That’s true,” Lonnie said with a shrug and a hide the turtle from him. Why were they trying laugh. to hide it? Theo laughed too. “There you go!” “I’m not trying to hide anything,” Theo told Michael got up and said, “Shooting stones.” He him. “I’m just trying to buy something.” disappeared to take a leak or smoke a cigarette. The guy was insistent that he deserved some of Theo laughed again. “In Yapese, we say that the turtle. Some other people there wanted in you’re throwing stones at the conversation.” on it too. Theo didn’t want to bring the drunk guy to our house, because he was talking a lot of Well, that didn’t sound good, but at the same nonsense. So they all went down to the time both Theo and Michael had laughed. basketball court above Sunset Park and divided There’s something about my sense of humor the turtle up. that Theo really reacted to, and I’d seen it in Antonia and now Michael too. I didn’t quite He was very sorry that he didn’t have a turtle understand what I was doing that was so for Lonnie, but he had a new plan, naturally. different. Was it irony? Sarcasm? Was it the way Early the next morning, on Lonnie’s birthday, of challenging opinions with humor? maybe at 7:15, or maybe 8:00, we would go out in the boat with Michael and look for a turtle. I don’t think it’s irony, because the Yapese Lonnie could be Michael’s partner — his sense of humor seems very ironic to me. They bodyguard — in the water, and I could sit with delight in understatement or the way that things Theo in the boat and try to come up with a turn out different than expectation. They’re also magic potion to attract turtles. very much into teasing, which I suppose is what Theo was doing when he compared me to those “But hey, Theo, tomorrow’s a Monday, don’t two old men in The Muppet Show who sit in the you have to work?” Lonnie asked. balcony and make comments about the show3. “Tomorrow’s a holiday, right, Randy?” Theo And as we discussed our turtle expedition, said with a grin. I wasn’t sure whether he was Michael told me we could use my head to teasing me for saying that every day was a attract fish. holiday for me on this trip. “Yeah, it’s very shiny,” I said. “That’s right,” I said. “It’s Lonnie Byers’ “We just point it, and the fish will come,” he Birthday.” said. So it was agreed. We talked about this and that. Then he apologized. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I Theo opined that turtle eggs were better than don’t mean anything.” chicken eggs. Ryan asked what turtle eggs tasted like, and Theo said they were good. I asked “I hope you don’t mind the teasing,” Theo said. Lonnie if he’d ever had them. “There’s a guy in our village who is very bald, and we always tease him. We go out fishing at “Yeah, I’ve had them,” Lonnie said. “I can’t say night, and when we come back in we tease him I preferred them over chicken eggs.” about how bright his head is. He’ll say, ‘Can “How were they cooked?” I asked. somebody give me a comb?’ And we go, ‘Hey! “They were actually raw,” Lonnie said. Why do you need a comb? You have no hair!’ And he’ll say, ‘Where I had hair still needs to be “Ah! Have you ever had raw chicken eggs?” “Nope.” 3 Mr Waldorf and Statler, according to Jolie. I asked her which one I was, and she said that Statler was kind of “Well,” I said, “then you can’t say you prefer pissy while Mr. Waldorf was more jocular, so I was more raw chicken eggs to raw turtle eggs.” like Mr. Waldorf. She stays in my will. Turtle Energy 53 scratched!’ We tease him for fifteen minutes “Wave a stick?” I said. Theo had said something before we settle down.” like that the night before. In retrospect, I think he meant the stock of a speargun. I felt a little awkward when Michael apologized, because up until then I was feeling very warm Michael had a hard time getting the boat’s and fuzzy about the teasing. One of the guys engine started. First he pounded the side of the and all. Why did he have to apologize when his casing, but that didn’t help. Then he filled the teasing was actually a lot of fun for me? Maybe I tank with gas. Nope. He popped a small round wasn’t participating enough. I needed to tease cover off the top and adjusted something. Now myself a little more to show that my feelings the starter didn’t even click. Completely dead. weren’t hurt. Or maybe it was just Michael “That’s the way it is,” he said to no one, looking being perverse. off in the distance. I think it was a little earlier when he turned to He popped the casing off the engine, made me and said, “You’re coming with us another adjustment, and that finally did it. But tomorrow?” when we stopped by our boat to pick up the “I think so,” I said. “If I can stay awake that spare tank of fuel, he stopped the engine and early in the morning.” had to pop the casing off to get it started again. “Ah,” he said. “I’ll tie a string to your toe, and “That’s not good,” said Theo. “If we knock I’ll pull it every once in a while to wake you up.” three times and the engine doesn’t start, we won’t be able to get away from that guy.” They left around 9:30, after we’d had a few beers. I went to bed. I had mixed feelings about He and Michael had told more stories the night joining the expedition, mostly because I felt I before about fishing rights. It all starts to sound had nothing to contribute and was just being like a game after a while, but it does seem to invited because I was Lonnie’s brother. I’d also have serious consequences occasionally. They been out on the boat for quite a while that day told a story about Sylvester, who had once and wasn’t sure how much fun another boat trip gotten permission to fish at Rumung. It was just would be. Still, how often do you get to observe like a story Theo had told us before about a turtle hunt firsthand? But then again, it could himself. The same chief who had challenged be four hours of tedium if we didn’t find any Theo’s right to fish there came out to challenge turtles. Sylvester, except this time, instead of being alone and facing Theo and his crew, he had Theo showed up at 7:15 on the dot, and we some friends and Sylvester only had his young drove down to the village to pick up Michael. It son. Sylvester told them he had permission, they was an overcast morning, and Michael said the could ask the other chief, but they dumped him water would be cold. Theo was worried that the and his son in the water outside the reef and water would also be rough, but he thought that towed his boat into shore. Sylvester and his son if the sun came out it would calm the waves made the long swim back to shore — down. I asked Michael questions about spearfishing in the FSM Games, and he something I’m not sure I could do, especially explained some of the rules. When we got down without fins — and went to a friend’s house. His village still had to pay ransom for the boat, to Sunset Park, I stood around with Lonnie. which Theo said can be as much as ten “What do I do if I see a shark?” he asked, in thousand dollars. It’s organized by the chief of that pretend-fear voice that I often use myself the village, who has his second-in-command to express real fear. contact someone of the same rank in the other village. Eventually the command works its way 54 Thy Life’s a Miracle down the traditional chain and the boat is “I tell my boys that we should go look for turtle released. over there, and they say, ‘I don’t want to go there, that guy will catch us and take us in to “If we get stopped tomorrow,” Theo said, “you land.’” Theo got a big grin on his face. “I tell guys will be released because you aren’t Yapese, them, ‘Don’t worry. I know all his tricks.’” but me and Michael will be strung up on a coconut tree where the mosquitos will have Lonnie remembered that Pong was a pain in the their way with us.” butt for Dad as a student at Alau when Dad was the principal. A troublemaker. When Lonnie But I still didn’t understand all of the nuances and Terry came out in the ’80s, he ran a pool of the Great Game, because they went right on hall in Colonia, and they spent time there. When to talking about contests with Pong (referred to the whole family went out in ’98, he gave us a as “that guy,” not by name), who was very bunch of lobsters, with apologies for not being protective of his (questionable, they said) rights able to visit. He ran a store in Keng now, near to a part of the reef by Fanif. He had three the hospital. boats: a jet ski, a little fishing boat, and a speedboat. His aggressive claims to the reef eventually got him in trouble, according to Theo. He pissed “We know all of those boats and all of his off enough people that his rights were tricks,” Theo said. “Sometimes he’ll see you out questioned. He claimed to own property on there, and he’ll get on his speedboat and head in Fanif, and this was the basis of his claim to the the other direction, like he’s heading somewhere reef. else. You just see one white line of foam, because you’re looking at the side. Then he gets One side of Pong’s family had connections to outside the reef, and he turns and comes Fanif4, and one side had connections to Maap. straight at you. Our friend said, ‘Hey, he’s The area he claimed rights to was around Miil coming for us! I can see white lines on both channel, which runs between Maap and Fanif. sides of the boat.’ Then everybody jumps in the Eventually his claims were challenged in a boat, and we run away.” municipality-wide hearing. It was argued that he But one time Pong pulled a trick on Sylvester was exercising more control over the area than and Michael. They went over by his place to do his lineage actually gave him. The judgment some turtle fishing. They didn’t see his boat, but went against him, and he was expelled from the that was because he was further out to sea, area, although I can’t remember all the details. trolling for tuna. Michael went into the water A serious game, in any event. while Sylvester stayed on the boat. After a Both Michael and Theo seem to think that the while, Sylvester heard the sound of Pong’s boat, current state of affairs is a travesty of the past. but he was looking toward the shore and “They’ll hang you up on a coconut tree and let couldn’t see it anywhere. Suddenly there it was, the mosquitos have at you,” Theo said again. right on top of them. Sylvester pretended to be “In the old days, if you were caught, you were busy working on a lure. Michael stayed a taken to the men’s house and given food. The distance from the boat, clinging to the float, just chiefs of the village would contact your chiefs, keeping his mask above the water, trying to hide and they would negotiate. Some payment would behind the ocean swells. Pong was focused on be made, a little money would be given, then Sylvester. Eventually he decided that Sylvester you were released. They didn’t throw you in the was just fixing a lure, and he left. It’s okay to angle anywhere on the reef, although even that is more and more subject to challenge. 4 His father was Dabchuren, if I remember correctly, and Dabchuren was from Fanif. Dabchuren may have been Is it a game? the one that got in trouble with the village council. Turtle Energy 55 water outside the reef, because maybe the next didn’t blame him. From above, it was hard to time you would catch them on your piece of see what was lurking down there. Not only that, reef.” but his role still hadn’t been clearly defined. So, of course, we headed up to Fanif to hunt for “You’re Michael’s bodyguard,” Theo said. turtles. “I don’t know if I’ll be much use as a We bombed up to Miil Channel inside the reef. bodyguard,” Lonnie said. “What do I do?” We were really zooming, like those cigar boats “You just swim parallel to him, maybe fifty feet on . The mangrove forest north of away. You swim by the reef, and Michael will Sunset Park was quiet as we sped by, and the swim out in the deeper part, where the turtles water inside the reef was smooth, mirroring the sleep. You look around. If you see a turtle, give morning sky. I sat on the prow, which lifted a shout. Like, ‘Hey!’ He’ll hear you and swim high in the air. Sea raced beside us. At Miil over.” Channel we saw a Yap Divers boat, no doubt delivering divers to visions of manta rays. He grabbed one of the six-foot spearguns. “You Michael asked me to move to the back, because better take this with you.” we were about to hit rougher water. Now the “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” boat pounded against the waves in the mouth of Lonnie said. “I’m more likely to shoot myself the channel. than anything else.” We went outside the reef. The water turned an “You might need it in case a shark or some incredible navy blue — the wine-dark sea — other character gets closer than you want. If and the swells got higher than our heads. “It there’s any trouble, wave your hand, and we’ll always reminds me of motorcross,” Theo told come pick you up. We’ll wait until you get about me. “Up and down over the hills.” We came two hundred feet ahead, then we’ll follow. We back to the south some distance. As we headed don’t want to get too close or the engine will south, I pointed to a landmass to the northwest. scare the turtle.” “Is that Rumung?” I asked. Lonnie got into the water. It looked like a lonely “The Forbidden Island,” Lonnie said. “The place to be, and I was glad to be on the boat island of mystery.” with Theo. “The island of crazy people,” Theo said. “Should I tie the string to your toe?” Michael asked. Eventually we anchored in an area where you could just make out the bottom. “I think I’m awake,” I said. “Hey, look at that!” Theo said, pointing in the Michael got in the water. He had one of the distance. I got a glimpse of brown skin in blue long spearguns, but it had more rubber straps water and thought they were sharks at first. than the others, for greater shooting range. The “Dolphins are good luck,” Theo said. I strained thin metal spear had a barb which popped out to see them more clearly, but they were gone. I when the spear hit something. The spear was never did get a clear look at any dolphins in my attached to a leader, which was attached to a stay. rope. The rope was coiled around a three-foot, tubular float made of styrofoam. When the “How deep is it here?” Lonnie asked. turtle was speared, it would dive. The rope “Maybe fifty feet,” Theo said. would uncoil. If it was a particularly large, strong turtle, it would uncoil all of the rope and Michael and Lonnie prepared to get in the pull the float down with it. Either way, it would water, putting on flippers and spitting in their have to fight that float. Eventually it would masks. Lonnie looked a little nervous, and I 56 Thy Life’s a Miracle exhaust itself. If it went deep with the float, the “Hey, Michael must have shot something,” float would pull back to the surface, and we Theo said. would search for it. I looked and saw the float and saw that the rope Lonnie and Michael swam off to the north. had uncoiled. Theo throttled up to bring us Theo prepared a betelnut to chew and sang over to the float. songs to lure turtles and chatted with me about “It must be a small one,” I said. “It didn’t pull motorcross and the tactics of turtle hunting. the float under.” Before long I lost sight of Michael and Lonnie. Theo popped the betelnut into his mouth and Theo got us close. Lonnie had his mask in the looked up. water, trying to see the turtle. Michael was by the float, also looking down in the water. Every “Where are they?” he asked. now and again, he rolled the float to spool up “I don’t know,” I said. “I lost track of them.” I some rope. Theo had told me that if the turtle felt worthless, but at the same time it was clear started to pull the float under, you had to decide that I wasn’t being held responsible. I was just whether to hang onto it and try to fight the along for the ride. turtle or let it go and let the turtle exhaust itself fighting the float. If you let it go, it meant there “There they are,” Theo said. was more rope to pull up later. I looked where he was pointing and saw only water. The turtle pulled the float a couple of feet down a couple of times, but it never made a serious go “Do you see them?” he said. of it and Michael never let go of the float. I didn’t say anything. Finally, I caught a glimpse I tried to take a couple of photos of the action, of the float disappearing over the crest of a but the morning sunlight was gleaming brightly wave. I couldn’t make out either swimmer. on the surface of the water. Lonnie took the “There’s the float,” I said helpfully. camera from me and took some underwater “In just a minute we’ll follow them,” Theo said. shots. Theo put on his mask and fins and jumped in the water to help Michael. Suddenly He started the engine. “Pull up the anchor,” he the turtle surfaced, and Theo and Michael said. rushed toward it. It quickly went back under. I pulled on the anchor rope. The anchor was Theo told us later that you try to prevent the stuck good, and I pulled harder. turtle from taking a breath, because then they get tired faster. Michael continued to reel the “Don’t pull so hard,” Theo said. “If it’s stuck in rope in. The turtle surfaced again, and they the coral, just shake the rope until it comes jumped at it. It went under. loose.” Pretty soon Theo dove down and came up with It came loose, and I hauled it up. the turtle. He explained that the trick is to put “I’m the captain, and you’re the chief engineer,” what we would call a full nelson on the animal. Theo said. You get your arms under its front flippers and then lock your hands behind its head. This “I’m Scotty, eh?” limits the motion of its powerful front flippers. “Beam me up, Scotty!” he said. If you can pull its head toward your chest, at the same time pushing the tail out with your legs, it We puttered along slowly, riding up the swells will be pointed toward the surface, and it will and sliding down the other side. I mostly take you up to the air. If you grab it anywhere couldn’t locate the swimmers, but could else, such as the rear flippers, which are only occasionally catch a glimpse of the float. Turtle Energy 57 used for steering, it will use its front flippers to that he couldn’t see Michael or the turtle when take you deeper. he shot it. Michael is, of course, renowned for his diving abilities. Once Theo got the turtle in his grasp and up to the surface, Michael came to help. They each “He can hold his breath so long,” Theo told us, grabbed it under a front flipper and wrestled it “that the fish fall asleep and then he can just over to the boat. Lonnie got into the boat with shoot them. Bing!” me. We each took a front flipper. The turtle was All told, it probably took us less than an hour naturally mad and tried to bite me. Lonnie and I from the time we left shore till we got the turtle pulled, and Theo and Michael pushed. We onboard. We were all elated. somehow got it into the boat without capsizing. “I’m glad that I’m still a good luck charm,” It was actually pretty damned big. Maybe four Theo said. He had told us the night before that feet long and three feet wide. It weighed a both Michael and another turtle hunter always couple hundred pounds easy. liked to go out with him because they always got It thrashed around while Michael climbed in the one when he came along. “I’m still a charming boat. The three of us flipped it onto its back fellow!” with some difficulty. Even then it was capable “How was the swim?” I asked Lonnie. of thrashing around. After getting slapped on the leg a couple times by the front flipper, I “It was great,” he said. “But I don’t think I kept my distance. That was after we removed helped Michael any.” the spear. Well, Michael asked me if I could do Michael headed the boat south along the reef a it, then did it himself when Lonnie and I little ways to get out of the big swells, but we couldn’t figure it out. The barb made it difficult. stayed on the outside. When he found shallower The spear had gone through the rear flipper water, we threw out the anchor. near the shell — a perfect shot, as I understand “We’ll rest here a little bit,” Theo said. He and these things. Michael chewed betelnut. Theo hauled himself aboard with great effort. “You should take a look in the water,” Lonnie “Good exercise,” he huffed. said. “It’s pretty amazing. You can use my mask Lonnie and Michael discussed what had and snorkel.” happened. Michael had been looking for a turtle So I borrowed his mask and snorkel and an sleeping on the reef when he saw this one extra pair of fins from Michael, and I got in the swimming between them. Lonnie didn’t see it water. It was the first time I’d been in the water until he saw Michael diving toward it. The turtle outside the reef. The coral actually wasn’t as saw Michael and went deeper. He had to go nice as in some of the holes inside the reef, but back up for air. For some reason, the turtle the fish were bigger and there were different didn’t dive straight down, but circled back a kinds. There were seemingly zillions of parrot little. fish. There were zillions of edible fish period. “Maybe it had never seen such a white guy Looking at all this juicy abundance, it was hard before,” Michael cracked. to believe that this reef could ever be fished out. “Look at those white thighs!” I joined in. Just behind the end of the boat, the reef sloped down into the deeps. I crept to the edge of the “Yeah, it couldn’t believe what it was seeing and drop-off, with cinematic images of monster had to come back for another look,” Theo said. sharks jumping out of the dark playing through Michael dove again as the turtle circled slowly my mind. The reef went down and down. I down. Lonnie said that the two went so deep could see the bottom right at the edge, but it 58 Thy Life’s a Miracle disappeared in the distance. Here I was at the By the time I got back to Theo, he’d gotten edge of the wide open ocean. another and was stuffing it in his back pocket. He got another — both little brown surgeon I swam back into shallower water and swam fish with gold on their tails — and stuffed it in parallel to the edge. Pretty soon I looked over his back pocket as well. He reloaded and went and saw a black tip shark — maybe four or five down after another. Those kind of surgeon fish feet long — cruising along at the drop-off. It are a favorite of his. Suddenly a little three- or didn’t seem very interested in me and quickly four-foot white tip shark reared up from the disappeared ahead. It was the first time I’d seen coral in front of him. It had sensed one of the a shark so close without a pane of glass and a surgeon fish wiggling in his back pocket, he told lot of air between us. I got a bit of a jolt, but me later. He brandished his speargun, and the from what I understood there really wasn’t shark went away. much of a threat from a reef shark in this situation. I kept swimming, although I tried not When I looked back at the boat, I saw Michael to get too far away from the boat. in it, and he beckoned me. I signalled to Theo that I was going back, thinking that Michael Before long, I saw Theo swimming nearby with wanted to leave. But when I got back in the one of the long spearguns. I watched him fish. boat, Michael was in the water with a speargun. He would dive down in maybe fifteen feet of Lonnie had gone in with his fins and a crappy water and grab onto some coral, hiding behind spare mask and snorkel. He quickly came to the it. The speargun went out, and he tracked a fish, boat and claimed his own mask and snorkel. waiting for it to swim closer. He told us that the trick is to get them to swim toward you. If you I lounged in the bow of the boat, but when I chase after them, all you see is the tail fins — a got bitch-slapped by the turtle once again I small, narrow target. If you wait for them to moved to the stern. I sat back by the engine come to you, they eventually turn sideways, while Lonnie ferried in a steady stream of fish, giving you the biggest possible target. lobsters, clams, and top shells that various of them caught. All told they speared seven fish The spearguns don’t have much of a range — there, including a rabbit fish that I pricked my from three or four feet to around six feet, toe on. Their spines have a toxin, and my toe depending on how many strands of rubber you stung for a good fifteen minutes. use. They are also accurate only to the length of the spear. Once the spear gets out of the Michael wanted to move back to home territory, groove, water turbulence and the pull of the so we pulled up anchor and moved. Theo cut leader will throw it off course. into a parrot fish he’d speared to get at the liver. “It’s the best part,” he said with great relish. “I The spears fire with a distinctive metallic shink always eat the liver of the parrot fish.” He — which sounds again if the spear strikes coral pulled a small lump of shiny brown flesh out of instead of fish. Theo’s first few shots missed, the fish, and it slipped out of his fingers and fell and the process of reloading the spear was overboard. elaborate. Fishing is always a lesson in patience and the requirements of the gear. “Ay,” he said, crestfallen, looking in the water after the lost liver. “That’s very bad luck.” He Finally he got one. I swam closer because it looked up and stared glumly ahead before didn’t look like he had a stringer with him. Sure recovering himself enough to fillet the rabbit enough he tossed the fish to me. I swam it back fish and cut it into sashimi. to the boat, watching blood stream out of its gills and wondering whether it would attract a “It’s good with copra,” he said, cutting some shark. I glanced toward the deeps a time or two. coconut that he’d brought along. Earlier we had Turtle Energy 59 eaten banana and copra. “Everything tastes at an area near the tail and then indicated I good with copra!” should hold the fish near the gills. I grabbed it and took off for the boat, but the fish hadn’t The rabbit fish and copra really did taste pretty quite kicked the bucket. It gave a spasm and damned good. wrenched itself out of my hand. I grabbed at it We stopped at another shallow place outside the and hoped I wouldn’t grab whatever Theo had reef. This time I was stuck with all the spare warned me against. Fortunately, I got it by the gear. The snorkel was particularly problematic. middle. Theo told me later that it has a spur — There wasn’t any way to fit it under the band of or a “knife,” as he put it — near its tail that can the mask and get the mouthpiece in my mouth, give you a deep, painful cut. so I had to hold it in one hand. Even then it After that, I went and watched Michael. He didn’t fit well in my mouth and leaked a lot. The fished in deeper water, near the edge, where the mask leaked, too, so I practiced the mask bigger fish were hanging out. A school of clearing technique that I’d learned in diving brown parrot fish wandered by, then a school of class. The fins were loose on my feet and lacked the green and blue ones. I’d never seen a school the power of my own fins. of parrot fish before. There was a school of And yet I didn’t really mind, because what I was something silvery lurking off the edge, but they seeing was so damned incredible. This part of never came close enough for me to get a good the reef had very little outgrowth of coral. look. Instead it was like a flat floor of coral. Here and When I first went over to watch Michael, I saw there were enormous fissures, some of which another enormous fish just below him. I wasn’t led to deep holes. There were all the usual reef sure what it was, maybe a grouper, but it looked fish along the bottom, and there were schools like sixty pounds of fish. I asked Michael later if of larger fish hovering nearby. An enormous he’d seen it, and he nodded. He agreed that jack passed through, and I just about swallowed maybe it was a grouper. Was it too big for a the crappy snorkel. It looked like it was three spear? Yes, when they’re that big you have to feet long. Hell, it looked four feet long. The worry that if the spear doesn’t kill them right off blue fin trevally I caught the previous Saturday you’ll have to fight the fish. If it doesn’t exhaust was 25 inches, and this fish made it look like a itself before you need another breath, you might minnow. have to abandon your speargun, which is Theo had asked me to move the boat whenever attached to the spear by the leader. he and Michael got too far away to throw fish in So I watched Michael descend, wondering it. I was supposed to do this by throwing the whether he would go after the monster, and anchor in the boat and towing the boat by the then saw that he was focused on something anchor line. I frankly did not see that I was slightly higher up. He was behind coral at 25 or strong enough to do this, crappy fins or no. 30 feet. He hugged the bottom, motionless Lonnie tried to do it once, but he was unclear except for the tip of his spear, which subtly on how far to take it. Theo eventually did it tracked his prey. Shink! himself and hauled the boat at least fifty yards A large brown fish on two different occasions. One time I heard began to thrash, and I couldn’t help but give a yelp of triumph into the snorkel. I swam over to him shouting, but couldn’t figure out what was going on. I saw him swim over to the boat and where he surfaced, and he heaved the fish to haul it, and I decided that it had been dragging me. It was a unicorn fish. the anchor and headed for the open sea. I took it to the boat, streaming blood, and when I got back to where Michael was diving, I saw Theo shot a lovely yellow and black striped fish, and I went over to take it from him. He pointed that a shark had appeared off the edge. And another. And then a third. Michael was on the 60 Thy Life’s a Miracle bottom taking bead on another fish when he was the male, because the insides of its front saw the sharks. He pulled up and drifted away. flippers were bruised from its clenching of the It was too dangerous to shoot a fish near those female’s shell in their long bout of sex. “What a sharks. I went and found Lonnie, because he way to go,” Lonnie said.) Since I was in the seemed interested when I told him about the water this time, I could see the action better. two sharks I’d seen earlier. By the time we got The rope disappeared into the depths. Michael back, Michael had moved away from the sharks. hovered in the water with his hands on the I ferried at least two more fish for him before float, reeling rope in when it slacked and letting he went back to the boat. it out when the turtle pulled. He said later that the trick was to keep even pressure. If you pull After that, I just snorkeled around looking at it too tight, the barb might snap. If it’s too the fish and the neon blue mantles of the clams slack, the turtle won’t exhaust itself fighting the on the bottom. Suddenly I heard a shout. float. Michael was up on the boat, moving furiously. I swam toward the boat. By the time I got to it, “Randy,” Theo told me, “watch out for sharks. Michael and Theo had headed out to sea, Give a shout if you see one.” swimming side by side. “Okay,” I said. I had a job! “Michael saw two turtles having sex,” Lonnie Wait a second! Watch for sharks?! told me. “They’re going after them, and we’re supposed to follow with the boat.” So we I scanned the blank blue water, but my eyes hauled the anchor up and threw it into the boat kept going back to the rope running down its and began to tow the boat in the wake of the taut line. Lonnie swam over to the float, leaving hunters, out into the depths of the open sea. me with the boat. The turtle made a little run, and suddenly everybody was thirty feet away. I Theo told us later that he reached the boat first put the anchor line over one shoulder and held after Michael shouted. Michael told him that the crappy snorkel with the other hand and did there were two turtles. “You shoot the female, what I could to haul the boat toward the float. and I’ll shoot the male.” “Ay!” Theo called. He swam over and took the “What will I use for a float?” Theo asked. anchor line from me. With his powerful legs, he “Shoot it in the front flipper,” Michael told him. pulled the boat behind him. The theory is that if you incapacitate one of the I scanned the water and saw a little shark appear front flippers, the turtle can’t dive straight out of the blue and then turn and disappear down. It can only with one flipper, so it back into that dark blue. just goes in circles. Once the other turtle has been exhausted and captured, you spear the “Theo!” I called. “Theo!” injured one again with the spear that has a float. He had his face in the water and couldn’t hear I’m not sure if Theo didn’t understand what me. Michael was thinking or whether he was I swam to him and tapped his shoulder. He worried that he’d make a bad shot and lose his looked at me underwater. I pointed down where spear and gun. When he told this story later — I’d seen the shark, put my flat hand twice, in my hearing — his punchline was, “In perpendicular to my head like a dorsal fin — a my mind, I thought, ‘I still don’t have a float.’” sign Dave Vecsey had jokingly made when he Which tends to support the first theory. taught us hand signals in the dive course — By the time Lonnie and I caught up with them, then I pointed back down. Theo popped his Michael had speared one and the rope was head out of the water with a quizzical look, and uncoiled. (Later, Michael concluded that this I said, “I saw a shark down there.” Turtle Energy 61

“Get in the boat,” he said immediately, no joke. leaped again, and then once more. A lone mullet took a fourth leap. I grabbed the side of the boat, tired from recent exertions, and hauled myself up till my waist “That one flunked out of school,” said Theo. was bent over the edge. Imaginary sharks Michael’s wife, Lucy, and his two year old son, chomped at my feet. I fell into the boat. Jerod, were there to greet us. Lucy had prepared “Lonnie!” Theo shouted. “Lon!” drinking coconuts, which tasted wonderful. She started weaving a basket to carry their share of Lonnie was apparently trying to wrestle the the fish. There was some government issue turtle to the surface. Theo got the boat to the food that someone brought — a package of float and got Lonnie’s attention. minestrone, another of chicken fillet, and “Get in the boat,” he said. “Randy saw a shark.” another of “nutrition biscuit.” Lonnie joined me in the boat. Theo let go of the Michael looked at the slab of chicken. “Do you anchor line and dove for the turtle. He wrestled think it’s still good?” it up, and, just as before, he and Michael each “Probably as good as it ever was,” I said. grabbed it under one flipper and swam it to the side of the boat. Lonnie grabbed it under one He took a bite. flipper, and I grabbed it under the other. We “How is it?” I asked. pulled, they pushed, and we got it over the side, on top of the other one, which immediately “Pretty good.” He looked at what was left began to thrash furiously in protest. The second doubtfully. “But I’m very hungry.” one was much quieter, probably worn out from We rested for a while at a table in the shade. sex. Gear was slowly recovered from the boat, and Michael and Theo got into the boat quickly. the boat was secured. Eventually Theo came Nobody wanted to mess with excited sharks. As over and said to Lonnie, “If you don’t mind, if to underline the point, Michael noticed that maybe we’ll take the other turtle into town and one rear flipper on the second turtle had been sell it to cover the cost of the fuel.” As if we bitten off by a shark in the past. had a right to either turtle! But this was addressed to Lonnie, for whom the whole Theo sank onto the bench beside me and held expedition was a gift — one of the best up an open hand. We exchanged a high five. goddamn birthdays he’ll ever have. What a day! We had over ten fish, three large clams, three (probably illegal) trochose shells, “Certainly,” Lonnie said. “No problem. You two lobsters, and not one but two turtles. guys did all the work. If you want to sell both of them, go ahead.” “That’s enough,” Michael said. “If we catch any more, we’ll sink.” “No, no,” said Theo. “We’ll just sell the smaller one to cover the cost of fuel and mabye some Indeed, with two turtles aboard, the boat was other things. Maybe some human fuel.” riding much lower in the water. Theo had me put a plug in the drain hole on my side of the “Rocket fuel,” I said. boat as we took off for home. We got the turtles onto the bed of Theo’s We had been much closer to Sunset Park than I pickup with some exertion. On the second one, realized. We were back in ten minutes. As we Theo yelped and said, “It kicked me in the pulled up to the concrete boat ramp, a school of balls!” silvery mullets leapt in unison across the We drove up to our place, where we had to wait channel, followed by a sting ray. The mullets for the telephone technician to (finally, over a month after the first request) install the phone 62 Thy Life’s a Miracle and get his pickup out of the way. It was okay. he heaped coconut husks on the belly and got We drank beer and ate the smoked salmon that them burning. Once there was good ember Terry brought out and yick-yacked about this action going, the husks were spread across the and that. underside of the turtle, leaving only the head, tail, and flippers exposed. Michael had never had smoked — or any other kind of — salmon before. “This would be good The “burning” of a turtle, which only cooks the with taro,” he said. top layer of flesh, takes about two hours. Our other guests began to arrive. Antonia came with “Yes, it would,” Theo agreed. He’d had it Juliana, Ryan’s fifth grade teacher at before. Dalipebinaw. Her Yapese name was Mitag, We talked about the life cycle of salmon and which is what the recent typhoon was called, so about the amazing six hours we had just spent these days people teased her by saying, “Here on the boat. Eventually Theo and Michael comes typhoon Mitag.” headed into town with the second turtle. Theo’s brother Tony came with a bottle of “It’s illegal to sell turtles on Yap,” Lonnie told wine, a bottle of Special Blend whiskey, and a me. “And Theo is one of the people who is bottle of scotch blend. Antonia had invited him authorized to keep an eye out for it.” because, we were told, he likes turtle so much. We laughed. “Ah, Third World corruption at Theo had invited Peter and Charles, because work,” I said. And in this situation we thought they were in charge of the boat somehow. It it was funny. was an EPA boat, and Peter worked for the Ryan and Cody were croggled by the turtle. Jolie EPA. I wasn’t sure how Charles was connected. was amazed. Terry had come over after Ryan He worked for Public Works. led her out of the house for show and tell, and Anyway, everybody was hot about the turtle. she demanded of Theo, “What do you mean by This was the first time I’ve seen Theo’s two ‘small’?!” She turned to Lonnie and me. “I asked middle boys, Figir and Falthin, up here, Theo if you’d caught any, and he told me, ‘Two although his youngest, Lani, is a frequent small ones.’ I imagined something like this.” She visitor. Tony could hardly wait to get a taste of made a little foot-wide circle with her hands. the turtle. “When you eat turtle meat, you can’t “They’re huge! When I glanced at the truck and get drunk,” he said. “Straight shots of whiskey saw the white, I thought it was some plastic that have no effect.” you’d thrown over the turtles.” Later he was talking about the bus stop near his After Theo and Michael left, I took a shower house — a traditional Yapese building that and fell in bed for a brief nap. I got up and collapsed in the typhoon. “We’ve been talking played solitaire for an hour while Terry about lifting it up for weeks now,” he said prepared the base for bouillabaisse. She and sheepishly. “Maybe tomorrow the turtle energy Jolie had already made bread and rice pudding. will fill me up, and we’ll do it.” Theo and Michael returned around 6:00. Theo’s Michael, of all people, was the only one who boys came along. While Figir dug a pit, Michael wasn’t excited about the cooking turtle. “I don’t killed the turtle by slamming a 2X4 into its really like to eat them,” he confessed. But he throat. It retracted its neck, of course, so Lonnie helped with the cooking. “I can cook them,” he had to pry it open by shoving on its chin with said, “but you’ll have to operate.” another board. The twitching corpse was then hauled over to the pit, and the shell was fitted I didn’t know what he meant until the turtle was done and Theo pulled it out of the pit. While into the hole. Michael carefully moved dirt around so that only the shell was buried, then Michael, Figir, and Peter struggled to get a light Turtle Energy 63 set up on a coconut tree, I held a flashlight on “Seaweed,” Theo said. “Some jellyfish. They the turtle and Theo cut around the baked inner come up to the beds of seaweed near the shore case, near where it joined the hard exterior shell. and graze.” He ripped at the leathery skin, but it was too Once Peter got all the guts out, we took a break hot to grab for long. Tony brought a bucket of to eat turtle sashimi. Antonia had made her water, and Theo ripped the charred skin away, special sauce with soyu and lime juice. She loves dipping his fingers in the water to cool them the turtle fat. Even Terry tried some meat this off. time, she told us later, and a bite of fat. She When he was done, Peter came in with a knife admitted that the meat tasted pretty good. She and cut the turtle up. He quartered it by the had been revolted by the whole spectacle at the flippers first, which brought out all the cooked Yap Day party, so she got a lot of teasing from white meat that was good for immediate Lonnie, Theo, and me this time. consumption. Some of that was still on the raw, “This is Lonnie’s turtle,” Theo told her. “It’s bloody side, so Theo called it sashimi. Some of traditional that the wife eats the first slice of the the quarters didn’t want to come off easily, so turtle.” Peter had to rotate them in the flipper sockets to get them loose. Terry made a face, and Theo laughed. There was no such tradition, most likely. I had been telling the kids and Jolie that the best part was when you could see the still-beating Peter, Charles, Tony, Michael, Figir, and Falthin heart. After Peter got the first quarter off, we all sat in the koeyeeng and ate. They talked to could see the heart, and sure enough the heart each other in Yapese. Up on the patio, Terry, was still beating. The boys and Jolie were Jolie, Antonia, and Juliana sat at the picnic table suitably impressed. Jolie got ready to take a with the rice, taro, yams, bouillabaisse, and picture. bread. The younger kids wandered from the house to the koeyeeng and back. Cody brought “It won’t show the beating!” I said. some of Antonia’s sauce out to the remains of “I can tell people about that,” she said. the turtle, where Theo, Lonnie, and I were standing. Theo carved pieces of turtle off, half- “Wait, wait,” Theo said. “You can see it better cooked and half-raw, and split them among us. in just a minute.” Lonnie asked how often he ate turtle, and he Peter removed the other front quarter, which said not often. He doesn’t crave it as much as exposed the whole heart. he did when he was younger. If it’s around, “Why is it still beating?” Cody asked. sure, it’s been a while, let’s eat some turtle. “The turtle doesn’t know it’s dead yet,” I said. Antonia would eat all the fat, then he and the boys would eat the meat. He repeated Tony’s Once Peter got the flippers and associated meat comment that when you eat turtle, you can’t get off, he started working on the guts. The drunk. intestines were pulled out length by length and put into a dirty pot that we had pulled out of “You might as well stop drinking beer,” he said, the cooking area of our koeyeeng. He was very “because it won’t have any effect.” careful, because he didn’t want to break the When I talked to Tony while the turtle was loops of gut. cooking, we discussed our day on the boat. I “The contents would smell very bad,” Theo told him about the sharks and gave a little story said. about each incident. I mentioned moving away from the edge of the reef when the three “What do they eat?” I asked. 64 Thy Life’s a Miracle showed up at once, and I said I did it because I Christ, I don’t know what I would have done if was afraid they’d be attracted by the blood. I’d seen a hammerhead or something bigger than four or five feet long! “No, no,” Tony said. “I think that sharks are very, very sensitive to sound. They hear the fish After we’d munched on turtle meat for a while, thrashing on the spear. If you panic, they can Peter came back out and cut the head and tail hear it.” off. They both connected directly, via vertebrae, to the shell. The shell is the spine, and it also “Hear your heartbeat,” Peter said. contains the ribs. You can see the bulge of the “That’s right,” Tony agreed. “They hear your ribs on the inside of the shell. heart. As long as you are calm, they won’t With all appendages removed, it was now time bother you. One guy told me about a time he for the pièce de resistance: blood soup. The was out on the reef. He speared a fish, but he turtle shell was about a quarter full of blood. didn’t have anywhere to put it. So he started Charles now came out and, with Theo’s help, swimming back to the boat. The fish was scraped the fat and ligaments and other tidbits flopping around on his spear. Pretty soon he off the side of the shell and dropped them in looked back, and there’s a shark. He got scared, the blood. There were quite a few tidbits, and so he started swimming very fast. He swims and when they were done, the mixture was pretty swims and swims, and he gets to the boat and dense. pulls himself up. He’s pulling his legs up when the shark comes and — grom — bites him on Meanwhile, Michael had started another the foot.” coconut husk cooking fire in the barbecue area of the koeyeeng. He then diced half an onion “No!” I cried. on a plate. Charles cut up some lemon leaves. “Yes,” Tony said, grinning. “He was wearing They put the turtle shell over the fire to cook fins, so that protected him a little. But he still the blood soup. got some bad cuts on his foot and his ankle.” “It’s getting late,” Theo said. “If you folks are Theo said that different sharks behave getting tired, you can go to bed. We’re just differently. A few of them can be very going to cook this blood, then we’ll go down.” aggressive. One time they were spearfishing But none of us was ready to go to sleep. I went somewhere, maybe Gagil. A shark came and to get some whiskey to test Tony’s theory. swam right by him — pew! He made a sidestep “Turtle meat and straight shots of whiskey,” I motion, getting out of the way of the shark. As said to him. “Sounds good to me.” the shark swam away, Theo raised his speargun and aimed it defensively. The shark turned When I got the splash of whiskey, I told Jolie around sharply and came swooping back for she had to come see the soup. She followed me another close shave. Theo and his friends down to the koeyeeng, and as we walked into decided to get out of the water. the cooking area, Michael said, “Randy, could you stir that and throw another husk on?” Michael asked me if I’d seen the sharks when he was fishing, maybe three or four of them. I stirred it while Jolie took a picture, and I threw another husk on. “Yeah,” I said, “I saw three of them.” “Kammagar,” Michael said, and Charles echoed “You drifted out over the edge of the reef,” he him, “Kammagar.” said with a grin, as though that weren’t the smartest idea in the world. “Dariy,” I said. I just loved being given a job! Yeah, and who went charging off into deep Jolie sat down, and I stood sipping my whiskey. waters to chase the turtle? We talked to Michael about the fishing. Turtle Energy 65

Something was a little wrong. Just as I figured it Jolie brought out bowls of rice pudding, and I out, Michael said, “Randy, you can sit. Why called Theo over. He and Terry and Jolie and don’t you sit?” Theo had once told us that Antonia and I sang happy birthday to Lonnie, Yapese don’t like it when they are sitting and with the kids joining in from inside. you are standing, because they feel that you’re Back in the koeyeeng, Michael said we should trying to hold a dominant position and put hunt something else next time, maybe land yourself higher than them. crabs or fruit bats. Jolie left, and I sat. Michael and Charles sat Okay, I said, agreeable to everything. Last of the nearby talking in Yapese. Lonnie and Theo sat a great white hunters, just like Hemingway. little way off talking in English. Beyond them, Tony and Peter were talking in Yapese. Smoke “I don’t like to eat turtles,” Michael said, “I just from the fire wafted through our end of the like to hunt them.” open-air koeyeeng. It was a very peaceful scene. He cut a beer can in two with his very sharp I took a sip of whiskey, and suddenly I was in knife. He got up with one half and put some another world. I didn’t know any of these blood soup in it. “Here’s your blood,” he said, people, I didn’t know how I’d gotten into this and handed it to me. strange situation, and I wasn’t sure I “You better watch out,” Theo told Michael. remembered how to talk. What language were “He might start to fly, with a big cape on his we speaking again? I hoped the guy next to me shoulders.” — whoever he was — didn’t say anything in my direction. “Right,” I said, “and a big red S on my chest.” I stared into my cup, looking for a clue, and saw “He might suck your blood,” Theo said. a small puddle of whiskey. So much for the Ah. Dracula, not Superman. turtle theory of sobriety. I took a sip, careful of the sharp edge of the Michael spoke to me, and I snapped out of it. aluminum. “Not bad,” I said. “It’s actually He told me about missing the two turtles the pretty good.” There were a couple of blobs of day before. I can’t remember what happened on something and very little liquid. It tasted like the first one, but on the second one he hit one beef stew. of the ribs in the shell. The spear didn’t pierce far enough for the barb to come out. He was Lonnie declined a portion. Charles preferred it still galled by his failure. “drier.” Theo, however, took a bowl. “Make sure I don’t turn into a vampire,” he said. He “Well, you made up for it by getting two today,” took a spoonful. “I used to watch those old I said. movies. Black and white.” “If I got the other two, I have four,” he pointed “Ready for some more blood, Randy?” Michael out. asked. I went back for more whiskey. I was drinking it “Sure,” I said and handed him the half can. out of a coffee cup, since that was the only clean receptacle I could find. “How do you like it?” “Are you drinking coffee?” Terry asked in a “It’s better than the fat, I’ll say that.” I had tried singsong voice. the greenish fat at the Yap Day party, and I was in no hurry to repeat the experience. “Yes,” I said. “I’m trying to stay awake.” Tony had gone up to the porch to talk to the Antonia rocked and laughed. They were all women. We could hear them laughing. drinking vodka and fruit juice. 66 Thy Life’s a Miracle

“I’ve got some more of your blood,” Michael “Oregon,” Lonnie said. said. “Oregon? Wow, man! My wife and I lived in “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got enough.” Portland.” Theo said something in Yapese. I think this had “Yeah?” been Michael’s little test. Theo had acted all “Portland, man. I know Portland backward and along as though we probably didn’t want to forward.” stick around for the blood part. The implication was that it would bother us. But we didn’t leave. Michael started talking to me, so I missed much Maybe we were trying to say that we could of what followed, but Lonnie filled me in later. handle it, we were like Yapese. Maybe Michael Lonnie told him that he lived in Corvallis, and was pushing me: “You think you’re Yapese? Eat Bernard said, “Corvallis? Really? Where that guy some blood. Eat some more blood. Here’s did that thing?” some more. Still think you’re Yapese?” “What thing?” Or maybe not. Maybe it was just another of his “You know, that big deal?” little games. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” Theo told us again we could go to bed if we were tired. “We’re just going to keep doing this “And you say you live in Corvallis?” over and over until it’s gone.” Incredulous. We laughed and stayed put. “I’ve lived there since 1972.” A pickup pulled up on the road. Someone got “And you didn’t hear about this?” out and we heard voices. Theo listened intently. “Hear about what? You haven’t told me a name Terry had invited Thomas & Berna and Dave & or said what he did.” I heard Lonnie say this, Terry, but they wouldn’t have parked on the and he was clearly already pissed. road, since they were neighbors. Bernard said something about the Rajneesh. Suddenly Theo said, “Shit!” He looked extremely unhappy. This was so far out in left field that it took Lonnie a couple of repetitions to hear the name. “What’s wrong?” Lonnie asked. “The Rajneesh? Are you talking about “Shit!” Theo said again. I’d never seen him look Antelope?” so distressed. “It’s that crazy guy I was telling “No, man, I used to go fishing out there.” you about who wanted the turtle the other day. The pain in the ass relative, whatever he is.” He “You mean on the Deschutes?” said something in Yapese to Michael. “No, man, you go out of Portland and you turn “Bernard,” Michael said. at that one bank.” “His name is Bernard,” Theo said with disgust. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lonnie said with disgust. Bernard wandered up to the koeyeeng. He looked like he was having a hard time focusing This end of the party was going south fast, so I his eyes, but he saw Theo and sat next to him. went up to the patio and joined the women and They talked in Yapese, and Bernard said Tony there. something that made all the Yapese laugh. Theo They asked me about the blood soup, and I said introduced him to Lonnie. I liked it better than the fat. “Where you from, man?” Bernard said in an “Maybe you should keep some,” Tony said. American hipster voice. Turtle Energy 67

“For what?” Terry asked. They raced for the water and got tangled in the tent ropes. The guys looked around and saw the “For a snack,” I said. tents crawling across the ground and started All the Yapese laughed. yelling. They thought the tents were possessed “When I wake up at 3:00 and I’m hungry,” I by evil spirits and ran away from the frightened said. turtles. Oh, how they laughed! Hee hee hee. They Now it was getting late. Juliana was nodding off, looked at Terry, and I got the feeling I had and Antonia looked tired, too. They were committed sexual innuendo somehow. waiting for Theo, who was still babysitting Bernard. Terry offered them a ride, but they Lonnie joined us shortly. He’d had enough of said they’d walk. Bernard. Michael was dividing up the “dried” soup. Peter and Charles disappeared with their “We’ll sleep at the school,” Antonia said. shares. Michael disappeared with a bagful that “When we get up, we’ll already be at work.” he was taking to his wife. Theo stayed below Eventually, Antonia went down to the with Bernard. koeyeeng. Bernard came up and joined us at the Tony told us a story about some Yapese guys picnic table. Tony was cracking wise, and who went fishing on Ulithi. They went to one Bernard was howling and punching him on the of the little uninhabited islands on the atoll and shoulder. Theo was clearing cans and plates out set up camp. They made tents out of blankets of the koeyeeng, and Lonnie went to help him. hung on ropes. It was a very dark night, and Theo came up and saluted, his face gleaming in they didn’t have any lights. After they fell asleep, the porchlight. He and Antonia and Juliana and some turtles came ashore to lay eggs. Without Bernard left. Tony finished his scotch and water knowing it, they had gone to one of the nesting and followed them. islands. One of the guys woke up because he It was 11:30 pm. The best goddamned birthday heard a noise. He woke the other guys up. The Lonnie had ever had was over. turtles heard them stirring and were startled.

An Uneventful Day (Littlebrook 2, April 2004)

[In 1966, my father took a teaching job on Yap The jungle-covered hills, the grassy hills, the Island, in what was then called the Trust mangrove mudflat swamps, the palm-lined Territories of the Pacific Islands and is now shores, the tin houses hiding in the trees. The called the Federated States of Micronesia. We smells, too — the rot of the jungle, of the lived there for four years, from ages six to ten mudflats and the sea, of moldy paper and for me. In 1998, we all went back for a ten day mildewed plywood. visit, and the visit induced a mid-life crisis in my More often, however — and increasingly this brother, Lonnie, who returned in February 2002 last week — I have felt friendless and homesick. with his wife, Terry, their two sons, Ryan and I miss good beer, good coffee, and movie Cody, and our niece, Jolie, for a six month stay. theaters. I miss and the Pacific Inn I joined them for two and a half months. Many and the Elysian. I miss my garden and watching people on Yap looked after us, but our the townhouses go up across the alley. mainstays were Theo Thinnifel and his wife Antonia. The following is adapted from the I don’t have any of my own friends here, except journal I kept while I was out there.] for my family. Lonnie and Terry have Theo and Antonia. Theo is my friend, too, but mostly

because I’m Lonnie’s brother. He and Lonnie April 2, 2002 have a lot in common, especially the love of fishing. Whenever I have reminded Theo of our There have been a couple of times when I have childhood friendship, he has said, “I’m sorry, stared out to sea from the front yard and found but I only remember Lonnie, maybe because he myself feeling that I have lived on this island my was older.” Makes sense to me. The only thing I entire life. Everything feels perfectly familiar. remembered about Theo before we came out here in ’98 was his name and the fact that we An Uneventful Day 69 played together for a while. I’m not sure I even Learn and Leave to Serve. There were two kids remembered that or whether I was reminded of by a tetherball pole and one sitting alone in a it by my parents at some point. koeyeeng. It has always appeared abandoned before. Was it possible that they only had three Jolie has made friends with some Anglo twenty- somethings, particularly Chris, Tommy, and students? But when I passed on the way back, Kathy. Ryan and Cody have Theo’s boys — and the yard was full of kids. Marney and John from up the road. Past the exit to Maap I came to the Marine Sciences campus of the College of Micronesia Okay, so I’ve been a little bored lately. The first — former site of the US Coast Guard station few weeks here were eventful and exciting, what back when I was a boy. There were people with Yap Day, the typhoon, the dance at preparing for a drill of some sort. On my return Gachpar, and the turtle hunt. Since then, we’ve I saw that they had started a big fire in an open settled into more of a routine, which has laid concrete structure and were practicing putting it bare my lack of options — or rather has out. exposed my lack of a plan. Other than snorkeling with Jolie and writing in this journal, Beyond that was the Yap Sports Complex that there isn’t much activity that I originate. was built for the FSM Games and has otherwise apparently been largely unused. Some of the Whine, whine, whine? schools in the area will be using it for I feel restless. Last Thursday I wanted to go to graduation exercises. The gate on the high fence the computer lab at Alaw, but it wasn’t open to was actually open as I drove past, and I saw a the public until 1:00. By that time, the car would pickup parked inside. Probably a maintenance be needed to pick up people at school. So I gave man. up on the computer lab and went into town It becomes a dirt road at this point. No villages anyway to run some errands and see what I in sight. I passed a big utility truck and could see. I picked up the mail and filled the gas exchanged waves with the driver in the middle tank, which made me feel useful. There wasn’t of Bumfuck, Yap (you laugh!) The road much else to do, so I decided to drive to Gagil narrowed, and I hoped I wouldn’t run into any to look for the beautiful sandy beach that we more big trucks. Here were signs of cultivation went to several times in ’98. I left the milk and habitation. The atmosphere was decidedly purchase for later, since I didn’t want it getting more intimate, more private, and I began to feel hot on the drive. like an interloper. Did any of this look familiar I drove north into the countryside of Tomil. from previous trips? Vaguely. I passed the The red clay hills reminded me of Theo’s turnoff for Gachpar in both directions without comment that if you look at a collection of zoris spotting it. outside a door and any of them is crusted with Here were houses and a school. The kids red clay, you know that somebody from Tomil watched me drive past, without waving. A car or Gagil is inside. The sights along the road pulled over to let me by, or perhaps to park, and were familiar from the drive to Maap over the the woman at the wheel watched me drive by. I weekend. There was the muddy complex with feel watched in the villages unless I’m with a the electronics repair shop, store, and open-air Yapese. People study you. pool hall — the Yapese equivalent of a strip mall. I had a fleeting desire to check out the I rolled down to the seaside and saw the church, pool hall, maybe shoot a couple of games, but it but didn’t remember seeing it before. There was was hard to imagine doing so as a stranger and a a nice house on the grounds, made of concrete foreigner. There, further on, was the Seventh blocks and raised up on pylons. I turned onto Day Adventist school, where you Enter to the coral road that runs along the beach. This 70 Thy Life’s a Miracle looked more familiar, with hedges and old stone relic from bygone days. That source of past platforms and stone money lying flat on the pleasure can no longer be accessed. ground. This village is called Wanyan. There are They want money if you use the beach. There some nice houses on the beach, many on wasn’t anybody around to take money. Were pylons, probably as protection against storms. eyes watching to see if I jumped in the water? There is evidence that the typhoon hit this area Later, Lonnie reminded me that you pay at the — on the eastern side of the island — pretty little store down the road. I hadn’t even noticed hard. Most of these nice houses are made of it as I drove past, but I saw it on the return. A concrete blocks. I couldn’t identify the one woman was stepping out and looked to be where Steve the hydrologist lived in ’98, where closing up. She gave me a stern look as I drove there was a joint party for a retiring Filipino by. After Lonnie’s reminder, I wondered if she carpenter and for Dad. I did not remember the had been on her way to ask me for money. nice wood house that looked like it was pulled from a suburban tract in the US. I vaguely Back at the main road, I looked at the church remembered the traditional Yapese house with from the front. There is a mural above the door. the stone money, obviously uninhabited and Christ is crucified in mid-air. On either side, displaying a sign that said you cannot take Yapese men are offering gifts — the nativity photos without getting permission from and the crucifixion rolled into one. The painting Pitmog, with his phone number listed below. is like a primitivist Dali. Everywhere, debris from the storm. A group of I drove back to Colonia and ate lunch at older men sit fatly in a roadside koyeeng and Pathways. John and Madeline were sitting out watch me drive past. A woman drives past front with Jimmy . I chatted with without looking at me. Two girls walk along the them a bit. John has “cousins” who go to the side of the road and do not look. Was it really University of Washington. One of them has this far? The road is so narrow that I’m not sure been going to school for ten years and keeps two cars could get past each other, but there’s stopping to make money. He was laid off from always somehow a way. There aren’t, however, Alaska Airlines a year ago. any more cars. I ordered the fish and black beans special, and it Finally, I found the old beach. As reported, it is was delicious. (“Filipino food,” the Filipino not what it once was. The diving platform and waitress told me proudly when I praised the the walkway that led to a covered seating area meal afterwards.) I read Barrington Bayley’s over the water have disappeared completely. delightful pulp science fiction novel, The Grand The roofs of the little beachside cabanas have Wheel. A couple of men sat down at a table come off and are sitting in the old sand behind me. They were joined by a woman. volleyball pit. The stand where they sold beer “Did you see that man out front?” she asked and pop is more or less intact, although closed her companions. “He looks like a native, and I up. There is nobody around. The area appears guess he is. But he knows all about [she named abandoned. a California city which I recognized but can’t I pulled into an open space by the hedge and remember], where I’m from. He lived there, and parked. I walked down to the beach. It’s still a he worked for AT&T.” nice, sandy beach, which is something that Ah, that would be Jimmy California. I smiled Sunset Park doesn’t have. The water looks clean smugly at her ignorance. Why would she think and clear. The deep hole where Jolie saw the he was a native after she heard his stateside shark looks much closer than I remembered — accent? much closer than the holes at Sunset Park. Seabreeze Beach, it’s called. It seemed like a An Uneventful Day 71

One of the men began to talk about a problem But everybody was having fun, including the he was having. I caught only snatches of the kids in the audience. The props and costumes conversation, but it became clear that they were were quite clever, especially the bird wings made divers (as almost all tourists out here are) and out of palm fronds. They had also worked out that he was suffering from an unknown malady. some funny routines, such as the one for I never caught what the symptoms were. He Rumpelstiltskin and his Shadow to express foot- was trying to decide whether to stay on Yap or stomping, falling-down rage. That one, try to catch the late plane out. however, was tricky and required a pause for them to get in synch. The second time they tried “Ultimately,” the other man said, “it boils down it, it was taking so long to get in synch that the to how badly you want to dive.” kid who played the prince came over and “Oh, I want to dive,” the first man assured, man tripped Frank from behind. Frank went down to man, let there be no mistake about my and pulled the prince’s royal robe off on the commitment, “but...” way. All the kids hooted with laughter. I didn’t hear the rest. A strange trio. What was It was a disneyfied version of the story. the relationship? Why the need to impress? I Rumpelstiltskin is only lonely for a friend, and took the milk back to the house, relaxed for a in the end the prince and the peasant-princess bit, then drove to the school to see the play that invite him to live with them and be their child’s Jolie’s class was performing. It was playmate. Hooray, hooray! I wondered if it “Rumpelstiltskin,” and Jolie had grown would have helped the kids to translate the play increasingly despairing about it as performance into a traditional Yapese context. day approached. The boy playing Rumpelstiltskin would be a spirit of the jungle Rumpelstiltskin, Frank, had not memorized his or a warlock, the girl would be a commoner, the lines. Nobody was into it. Nobody understood prince a high caste chief. what was going on in the play. There I got stuck because I wasn’t sure what the It was pretty funny. Nobody was able to deliver implications of intercaste marriages were. their lines naturally. Frank and the girl who Maybe the girl wouldn’t need to spin gold from played the other lead had to read their lines straw, but would rather need to weave stone from the script. Both of them also read the money from dried pandanus fronds. After the stage directions — to themselves, not aloud, but marriage, the two families would go through a it still led to gaping pauses before each bit of series of ritual exchanges of food and goods, hot dramatic action. Some of the intonations with different levels of each lineage line were priceless. Every occurrence of the word providing its relevant part in a carefully “oh” was declared with a distinct and peculiarly calibrated sequence of visits that lasts for days, Yapese form of surprise, even when the whole while Rumpelstiltskin stands off to the side and phrase was actually “oh, well” or “oh, no.” loses the plot. So went an uneventful day.

Fallen (Shebang, April 2001)

This isn’t the end of it. am part of that larger whole. I’m in the material Has it been over two years now? Time spent thick of it, for this is the world, nor am I out of forgetting more than reflecting. it. Tami tells me she’s not afraid to die. She says Tami’s fear of loss makes me think (though she that death is just a return to the larger, universal would not agree): this life is not mine. I was being of which our selves are just a given form in the world, and I will return to the manifestation in this particular world. mix, the mulch, the dead matter from which all things form. I did not choose this form, and I I tell her that I once heard of a Buddhist sect will not choose to lose it. If this life is not mine that meditates on corpses in the belief that if to begin with, how can I lose it? they focus themselves properly in the face of I don’t want to fear death. death, they will carry the knowledge of their current incarnation into the next one. Two weeks after he fell, the other construction Otherwise, I took it, such knowledge is lost. workers sprayed the words GOD BLESS YOU MIKE S. on an I-beam, and they bolted and That does it. She admits that she’s afraid to lose welded it into place above the one off which the memory of herself. When we return to our he’d stepped. They wore harnesses cabled to the greater being, we are absorbed, so she’s been new wing’s steel skeleton, but still they strutted told. We do not remember this life, this self, and on that high beam, displaying their defiance — that makes her angry. but of what? Fear? The price of carelessness? I don’t believe in an afterlife or reincarnation or The futile desire to hold onto a gift that isn’t a return to universal being, but I do believe that yours to keep? the universe is bigger than my hopes, fears, What can it mean to let go of it and fall free? memories, understanding, and will; and that I Fallen 73

I remember a dream I had when I was nineteen said that he’d been trying to step down onto a and had gone to Europe with my brother to ladder when he lost his balance. They also saw look for a raison d’etre. (Yeah, that’s how him strike the ground, whereas from my pretentious I was. And I didn’t find one, vantage he had disappeared behind a big, black although I grew up a little nonetheless.) In the pickup. Pat remembered that he’d struggled to dream, there is a snake — a cobra — that I get up after he hit the ground, but Raul and think is a mink, but it’s really a ferret. The ferret Michelle said his body just bounced. appears out of the night , crosses a I had never paid attention to him before, bright green lawn, and enters my friend’s house. although he’d apparently been working on the It is chased out by a , then attacked by a dog, construction site for at least a week. At the who says, “Go back to Bulgaria!” (Don’t ask session, while the baggy-eyed counsellor led us me.) The ferret spits and circles back toward the through a cautious process of discussion, a house. The cat spits and slashes the ferret’s woman whom I couldn’t quite place showed up. throat. Once she started talking, I recognized her as a Blood jets from the gash. A man staggers member of the window-washing crew that had toward the house, his neck bleeding wildly. been working on our building. She’d come There’s a hole in my neck. My heart pumps through our office to wash the insides of the blood out through the jugular breach, drains life windows, and I remembered a friendly smile into a growing dark, as, with each pulse, and wry small-talk. thoughts grow weaker and smaller, shrinking “I didn’t see it happen,” she told us, “but I saw toward nothingness. Helpless, terrified, I watch him working up there last week. He wasn’t myself disappear. wearing any safety gear, and I thought about Wake up, it’s time to die. saying something. I thought about turning him I wasn’t ready for nothing. Was Mike S.? in.” A week to the day after he fell, I woke in She moved to the front of the table, threw darkness with the conviction that I would die herself into the chair next to mine and grabbed any second now and that death is an absolute a Kleenex. “But I didn’t do it. I didn’t fucking erasure. Panic is not subtle enough a word for it. do it, and I keep trying to figure out how this I was terrified of losing everyone, most isn’t my fault.” definitely including myself. Had I learned No one said anything. The counsellor looked at anything since that first dream? With only a her blankly. I wanted to hug the woman; I second to prepare, I formed a desperate image wanted to flee the room. of my love for all of us — a kind of prayer, all I “The ‘men’ I work with,” she said, making could do, not nearly enough. quotation gestures with her fingers, “do this I had thought the impact of his fall was fading. kind of shit all the time. I tell them they’re going to get hurt, but they just laugh at me. They go The day after his fall, Pat called and asked me to ahead and do it, and then they say, ‘See, I didn’t come to the counselling/debriefing session that die.’ I’m so sick of the macho bullshit!” the University was holding for employees who had seen it or had felt disturbed by the “It’s normal to feel some anxiety,” the aftermath. I’m glad she called, because I had counsellor said to the rest of us, only glancing at talked myself out of it, thinking that my tears the woman. “You may find yourself going the night before had released the anxiety. through a whole series of different reactions.” Pat had actually seen more of it than I, and she “It’s funny where your mind goes,” the woman was one of the three people at the session who said. “I keep thinking that if I hadn’t washed

74 Thy Life’s a Miracle your windows, you wouldn’t have seen it so Auburn is a working-class town on the south clearly.” shore of Lake Washington that for some reason Laughter broke out of us. has escaped the white-trash reputation of its neighbours: Renton, Kent, and Burien. “I keep thinking that maybe I should have covered the windows with mud.” Bare context for an event that had been so hard to interpret at the time. How bad was it? A When the fireman hosed off the I-beam, a wall broken arm? A broken back? How far had he of red mud washed into the street, where it fallen? It couldn’t have been that far. Surely he collected in puddles. Upset workers from my couldn’t have been killed by it. building called to complain, and cardboard was thrown over the puddles. Someone said that if the ambulance turned off its lights, that meant he was dead. The lights Before the session, Tom went across the street went off as it pulled away. to look at the memorial of flowers that various people had stuck in the gate of the site’s chain- There must have been a dozen cops, firemen, link fence. and paramedics in the immediate aftermath of the accident. They worked on the man, directed “I can’t believe it,” he told me. “There’s a card traffic, interviewed witnesses, examined the site, from the School of Social Work that says and talked amongst themselves. I searched their something like, ‘He shed his blood for the faces for answers, but they revealed nothing. Or construction of this building.’” did they? Did that one’s smile mean that the The first thing I’d done when I got to work that man was still alive? day was to grab a copy of The Daily. I was All I could see through the side window of the looking for information that would make sense ambulance was the occasional movement of a of what I’d seen. paramedic. Someone unfolded a white sheet, but I couldn’t see what was done with it. “Construction worker Michael W. Senescall fell I got a good look at him only briefly, when, to his death yesterday morning while working at strapped to a stretcher, he was brought out the School of Social Work on the corner of from behind the pickup and taken to the Medic N.E. 41st Ave. and 15th Ave. One ambulance. His bloody head was wrapped in white cloth, and one paramedic held an “Senescall, 39, of Auburn, fell 15 to 20 feet oxygen mask over his bearded face. His shirt from a ladder onto a steel beam lying on the had been stripped off, revealing a soft, beery ground below him.” torso, and another paramedic pumped the chest with overlapped hands. The dusty jeans and work boots looked lived in, worn from Senescall is an unusual last name, suggestive of common use. “seneschal” — a medieval steward in a noble household. The counsellor told us that he was Who was the young man who sat and cried, the foreman of the welding crew. who gave the HoneyBucket a savage, almost comic kick, who threw himself on the ground The president of the contracting company was while the other workers stood looking on in quoted in The Daily as saying, “It’s really shock? In the first seconds, he screamed “Fuck! disheartening. You spend time and money on Fuck!” and ran to grab a cellphone, while two safety, and to have something like this happen is others rushed to the body. very disappointing.” What was it? What did I see? Was it the first At 39, he was only a year older than I. flash of motion? Did I hear a startled shout?

Fallen 75

I looked up from the computer screen and out pickup, and I knew, as though I’d struck ground the window and saw a form plunge behind the myself, that someone had fallen.

Memories of the Gay ’80s (Dry Ice Factory, October 2005)

This morning, when I got out of bed with a full shake my ass to that fine, funky beat — “in my bladder and climbed the stairs to the toilet, it daddy’s car, it’s you I really wanna drive” — but struck me how easy it is for Denys, who has the I was worried that they’d think it meant I was bathroom right outside his bedroom door. He available and that I would just look like an idiot. doesn’t have to climb the stairs just to piss! That Steve and his friend did some dirty dancing in thought reminded me of Steve H., who lived the cramped aisles of his apartment, while I sat here briefly in the ’80s and wanted to put in a chair and looked like an idiot anyway. Later another toilet and shower in the basement, I bought a copy of the album and shook my ass where my room is. I hadn’t thought of Steve in to it in the privacy of my own home. (Yes, I did a long time, and suddenly I was struck by a like Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself,” why do string of memories about a legendary time in my you ask?) life. I can’t remember the exact sequence of Steve’s Steve was a friend of Denys’ whom I met via moving in with us. When I first moved to the gay potlucks that Denys hosted at our house Seattle, paul l. still lived in the house, and I can’t a few times in the ’80s. Steve was a sweet, even remember how long it was before he friendly party boy, pale-skinned and blonde, moved out. It’s likely that Steve moved in as a raised Seventh Day Adventist in one of the replacement for paul, although once Steve Dakotas, and with a hard thing for black men. moved out again, Denys and I decided we could One memory I have is visiting him at his handle the $320 rent between the two of us and apartment on Capitol Hill. A black friend of his didn’t need a third housemate anymore. got us very stoned and put on Prince’s Dirty Anyway, Steve didn’t live here long, and all I Mind and shook his ass like he just didn’t care. I really remember is that he was a great cook. We wanted to not care like that — to leap up and would get baked and watch nature Memories of the Gay ’80s 77 documentaries on PBS while he fussed and caught it from a trick (as they were so delicately crowed in the kitchen over the preparation of a called) that he picked up at a club. Not exactly a tasty meal. I’d wash the dishes afterwards. I poster boy for responsible behavior. carl also remember that we got called by a survey said that it’s possible Steve is still alive, because company that wanted to know what TV show he got AIDS just as the first effective we were watching right then. “Animal movies!” treatments (presumably AZT) were becoming I cried. I could practically hear the person on available. the other end of the line rolling her eyes, but All of which seems like news from an ancient Steve and I thought this was howlingly funny. era now. My first few years in Seattle were the Well, I guess the other thing I remember about most difficult period in my life, as I formed a his stay here is that he’d bring home guys he new social network pretty much from scratch met in the clubs. One time I got up early one (although with fandom as a built-in base) and morning and went out to walk to the coffee also dug through my self-hatred and shop and saw a young black man sitting in a car inexperience toward an adult independence, out front, trying to stay warm. “You can sit in However, it was also a period of rich discovery, the living room, if you want,” I told him. not least on the sexuality front, where despite “Naw,” he said, “I’m alright.” I didn’t my own frustration and reticence my understand how it worked. Steve may even have constrained view was exploded by the many gay asked me to invite the guy back in, because I’m men I met and befriended. I had gay friends not sure I would have done that on my own before I moved to Seattle, but Seattle was the initiative. I envied Steve his ability to get laid, first place where I really saw gay culture at work but the social awkwardness around it seemed in a relatively friendly environment — albeit unbearable. Seemed to work just fine for Steve, also an environment ravaged by AIDS. (RIP however. Craig, who cut and dyed checkerboards in my hair, and RIP Sam, Bruce’s kind, quiet After he moved out of our house, he moved to boyfriend.) My gay friends, along with (and New Orleans. I talked to him once on the inside of) fandom, helped me along in my phone after that, and he complained that after a voyage of self-discovery — and discovery of the shower, you were sweaty again before you could weirder, wider world. Well, at the very least they towel yourself dry. I think he stayed in touch helped me learn how to shake my ass. with Denys for a couple of years, but eventually they fell out of contact too. I asked Denys years Steve was a part and party of that. Hadn’t later if he heard anything about Steve anymore, thought of him in years, and the details have and he said the last he’d heard, Steve had gotten scarily blurry. But here’s to you, Steve. contracted AIDS. Denys assumed he was dead Thanks for the Prince and the good food. by now. It was a cold shock to come out of Thanks for being a goofy sweetheart from nowhere. Poor, sweet Steve! unimaginable white hinterlands who followed some strange path to the gay nightclubs in Well, maybe not so sweet as all that. According Seattle and the Big Easy. Here’s looking at you, to carl, Steve moved to New Orleans because kid, even if only in the cracked and foggy mirror he thought he had contracted AIDS and wanted of memory. to party like it was 1999. It turned out he didn’t have AIDS at that point, but then he actually

Norton and Re-Norton (Chunga 10, June 2005)

As with many science fiction readers of a in memory: ancient alien races that have long certain age, I first found my way into the genre disappeared, leaving only mysterious artifacts through Andre Norton. She was my first behind. favorite SF writer, and when I was twelve (in I began to study her bibliography and search the , if not in memory), I worked my way web for clues as to which titles I wanted to read. through the shelf of her books in the Children’s There was also the matter of finding copies of Section of the Salem Public Library. Maybe that the books, so the fact that my housemate, location is a clue to why, when I stopped Denys, owned a Gregg Press edition of Sargasso reading her, I never went back to reread. I had of Space was one of the reasons I decided to start moved on to the grown-up stuff and left there, despite the fact that I was pretty sure I childhood’s end behind. hadn’t read it before. (My sense is that I read When she died this year at age 93, I experienced very little of her ’50s work as a kid.) I soon a rush of nostalgia for bygone reading thrills, so found myself immersed in a thwacking good I decided to revisit her work at last, after thirty adventure story aboard a Free Trader ship with years. I wasn’t completely sure which of her apprentice cargo-master Dane Thorson. When hundred-odd titles I had read back in the day, the stalwart crew was enveloped in an and I couldn’t remember any plot details or unexplained fog on the planet Limbo and characters. Instead I had vague notions of forced to tie themselves to a mechanical crawler telepathic connections with animals, the threat with a preprogrammed route to find their way of blasters and needleguns, the riddle of through the cloying murk, I knew I had found Forerunner relics in dead ruins, and the eerie my way home. drifting descent of people in grav shafts. The When Dane and a couple of crewmates idea of Forerunners was what most excited me descended into a subterranean Forerunner Norton and Re-Norton 79 installation that was shaped like the Minotaur’s take them to the limits of endurance. People maze — and then the lights went out — I knew I die, people are tortured, their scars tell tales. was in heaven. Victory is usually a compromise with a more powerful force — usually the Patrol, in the end Other fans of Norton have commented that it is — the mood she creates that sticks with you, and where safety is guaranteed by giving up any I’m finding that I’m never happier than when treasure gained. her characters are crawling around in the dark In short, these books are surprisingly dark, over ominous and incomprehensible alien although the main characters always come machinery. (The story of my life!) through in the clinch, and gain confidence and self-reliance (if no treasure) from surviving their Three more of the books I’ve read — Catseye, ordeals. They are not superheroes, and there are Night of Masks, and Dark Piper — feature no conceptual breakthroughs or political sequences where characters crawl through revolutions. To the contrary, the Forerunner underground labyrinths and discover ancient ruins, like the statue of Ozymandias, serve as alien artifacts or ruins. Night of Masks consists of reminders that political empire, civilization, almost nothing but such scenes, and is thus my culture, and knowledge are subject to collapse immediate favorite. and erosion. Furthermore, aliens frequently It doesn’t hurt that the planet Dis on which remain unexplained, if not inexplicable, as those most of the action occurs orbits an “infrared on Limbo and Dis; likewise for the Forerunner sun” and is completely dark to humans without relics, even when the characters find a use for special goggles. them. The young protagonists use reason to The juvenile protagonist and his even younger work themselves out of jams, but the universe companion have one pair of goggles between remains mysterious and threatening. them, and so one of them must always rely on Norton works in a loose future history with the other to lead him safely through a darkness many features that recur and are examined from teeming with Deathworld-like dangers. different angles in later books. The basic It’s all very intense, in its bracing, pulpy way, furniture is the Patrol, the Free Traders, the and I’ve also been struck by the post-war sense Thieves Guild, with the related piratical Jacks, of dislocation, disfigurement, and loss in these the Forerunners, the scholarly alien Zacathans, stories. the Dipple, the Waystar (a thieves’ den), and much paraphernalia: blasters, flitters, hoppers, Four of the novels take place after a planet- coldsleep, E-rations, credit chips, grav lifts, destroying interstellar conflict called the War of snooper rays, tractor beams, and on and on. the Two (or sometimes Four) Sectors. (Shades Along with subterranean ruins (and surface of Berlin?) The main characters are orphans of slags), almost all of the books I read had animal the war, and Nik, the protagonist of Night of companions, usually in telepathic contact with Masks, literally lost his face when a space the protagonist. Sometimes the animals are freighter carrying refugees crashed on a deserted uplifted, and sometimes they are intelligent moon. Like Nik, most of these orphans end up aliens. Psionics appears in many forms, in the Dipple (short for “displaced people”), a including the ability to read the imprint of the refugee camp on the planet Korwar, where their past on objects, which Ms. Norton crankily options are to find scarce employment locally, insists in the preface to Forerunner Foray is a real ship themselves offworld as indentured possibility, now being studied scientifically. In servants, or join the criminal underworld, called the later books, the grappling of mind with the Thieves Guild. Different novels follow mind encompasses questions of identity and different of these paths. The characters undergo intimacy. Personality becomes a mask, and one desperate adventures, struggles for survival that can get lost in the labyrinth of the Other. At the

80 Thy Life’s a Miracle end of Uncharted Stars, the alien-animal confusion from lack of information in dire companion transforms into a Girl, and there is a emergency, the Free Traders, the rogue navies, psionic whiff of sex — just barely. the victory through compromise, the hurt/ comfort cycles. Indeed, all of us who found our Norton herself never got married, as far as I can way into science fiction through these books are tell, and I find myself shamefully curious about her children, and it seems that at least late in life her private life. It seems as though she was she went to conventions and called herself always the old lady who lived with , at least Moonsinger, so perhaps she had fandom as well to all us kids, but how did she get there? Not as cats to keep her company. that it really matters, no doubt. Her writing certainly engendered children: I was struck over In any event, I find that after thirty years her and over in my reading by the thought that here books are once again keeping me up after was where C.J. Cherryh got that mix of riffs: the bedtime, still searching for Forerunner treasure elusively-inscrutable alien, the chaos and in the dark.

The Early Days of a Better Genre (Sense of Wonder Stories 1, December 2007)

Where did the Tharks come from? scientific romances of Wells in the 1890s, and then jumps to the scientifiction of Gernsback’s That was the question I was left with when I reread Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars Amazing in 1926, with perhaps a nod to the for the first time since I was a teenage planetary romances of Burroughs along the way. It’s no wonder that Burroughs fans like to think Burroughs freak. I could now see how much he came out of nowhere, because he is Burroughs had taken from Percival Lowell’s completely different from the predecessors in theory of Mars as home to a dying civilization, the standard thumbnail history in his approach but whence the giant, oviparous, semi- to world-building. But what else was going on telepathic, four-armed green barbarians who in early science fiction before Burroughs burst rode the mossy plains on their multi-limbed on the scene with “Under the Moons of Mars” thoats and camped in the ruined cities of in The All- another race’s (indeed, another species’) Story magazine in 1912? glorious past? Where did they get their gold Alright, alright, you can all put your hands armbands, their sleeping silks, and their long- down. Just because you know the answer doesn’t range radium rifles? mean I can’t have some fun finding out on my own. So I’ve been reading old proto-SF lately They certainly didn’t come from H.G. Wells. — The standard thumbnail history of science EoSF, as Rich likes to call it. What I’ve learned so far (I’ve only read a half dozen books fiction starts with the voyages extraordinaires of Verne in the 1860s (or maybe a little earlier with and a couple of reference works) is that there was a lot more going on in the two decades Poe or Mary Shelley), continues with the 82 Thy Life’s a Miracle straddling the previous turn of the century than “Do you mean to say that angels are massive?” I had realized, even in the sub-genre of “They may be as massive as they like provided they interplanetary travel and encounters with the keep well away from the great centers of alien that particularly interest me. The gravitation.” magazines of the day — from The Strand and “But Venus is such a center — then there can’t be Pearson’s in the UK to Cosmopolitan and the any angels there.” Munsey magazines such as Argosy and All-Story in the US — published a great deal of proto-SF, “I hope to find something better than angels,” was much of it by writers who are little known Edmond’s smiling reply. today, although certainly also including writers such as Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle and H. This little jab is only fair, as in A Honeymoon in Rider Haggard. Meanwhile, the number of early Space, when the married couple land on Mars SF books began to increase appreciably in the after a battle with airships in which their own 1870s, and by the 1890s it seems to be a full- antigravity ship is victorious, the American wife fledged genre, if it hadn’t already been long is dazzled by the opulent splendors of the since. Martian city and exclaims, “If we don’t find Certainly writers were already talking back and these people nice, I guess we’d better go back forth to each other through their stories. Garret and build a fleet like this, and come back and P. Serviss’ Edison’s Conquest of Mars (1898) was take it.” written as an unofficial sequel to Wells’ The War To which echo of Edison’s Conquest of Mars, her of the Worlds, and Wells’ warning about the British husband laughingly replies, “There fragility of human civilization and dangers of spoke the new American imperialism!” hubris is rebuked in this energetic tale of humanity taking the battle to Mars and kicking Antigravity drives seem to have been the Martian ass, thanks to good old Yankee know- preferred method of spaceship propulsion in how in the form of Thomas Edison’s invention this era, apparently following in the footsteps of of antigravity spaceships and electric Percy Greg’s 1880 novel, Across the Zodiac. disintegrator rays. In Serviss’ 1909 novel, A Amongst other things, the concept of Columbus of Space, about a trip to Venus on a antigravity opens the door to much expository nuclear-powered spaceship, he seems to call out and didactic discussion of gravity, mass, and the British writer George Griffith. Griffith had orbital mechanics. Thought experiments about published a series of short stories in Pearson’s how various heavenly bodies interact, react, and Magazine in 1900 that were collectively called counteract seem to have been a great game for Stories of Other Worlds (and then fixed-up into a the writers, like playing billiards. John Jacob novel called A Honeymoon in Space). His Astor (a fourth-generation scion of the Astor connubial protagonists travel around the solar empire who went down on the Titanic) thinks system in an antigravity spaceship, and on big in A Journey in Other Worlds (1894), where Venus they find a race of winged humanoids engineers are moving masses of water and that are compared to angels. They are explicitly Arctic ice around on Earth in order to found to be without sin, in fact, and the humans straighten out the axis of rotation and thus decide to leave before their own share of temper the seasonal variations in weather. In the Original Sin can corrupt these innocent souls. long term, they have their ideas set on In Serviss’ novel, two characters whimsically regularizing the Earth’s around the sun as discuss the mass and gravitational attraction of well, for similar purposes. Even Wells got on angels, much as earlier philosophers might have the bandwagon with the antigravity metal argued about the number of angels dancing on cavorite in First Men on the Moon (1901), and the head of a pin: while Burroughs imagined metaphysical means

The Early Days of a Better Genre 83 for John Carter to travel to Mars, once he got Astor’s footsteps, finds Jupiter still in a violently there he found antigravity airships cruising volcanic era and Saturn “peopled by huge through the depleted atmosphere. animals, mastodons, bears, giant tapirs, myledons, deinotheriums, and a score of other If gravity and Newtonian physics were on the species too strange for them to recognize by any minds of this generation of SF writers, so too earthly likeness.” (I note that the mylodon was was Darwin and evolution. One of the an ancient ground sloth. What was the disappointments of Edison’s Conquest of Mars is fascination of sloths with these writers? Was it a that the Martians are essentially just very large displaced concern with the sin of sloth in an era humans, but even here Serviss is at least of new industry?) thinking about how gravity (of course) might affect evolution. The Martians are taller than But while Griffith’s intelligent aliens are all humans because they have developed under humanoid, he does put some thought to Mars’ lighter gravity. The Earth expedition also evolutionary variations on the form. On the sees a woman from Ceres who is forty feet tall moon, his protagonists find the ruins of a dead — much taller than the Martians — because lunarian civilization, and beneath the surface Cerean gravity is even lighter. The large, they find remnants of atmosphere, water, and humanoid (although bald and brainy) Martians life, including humanoids that “might have in A Honeymoon in Space even speak English, passed for some strange type of the ape tribe, because: “After all, what we call speech is only but its skin was smooth and of a livid grey.” the translation of thoughts into sounds. These These humanoids have evolved feelers in place people have been thinking for ages with the of fingernails, to find their way in the dark, and same sort of brains as ours, and they’ve for the same reason a more developed nose and translated their thoughts into the same sounds. sunken holes where their ancestors’ eyes used to What we call English they, I daresay, call be. Of course, Griffith isn’t above the standard Martian, and that’s all there is in it that I can pulp gambit of creating an alien monster by see.” mashing two earth creatures together. The lunarians are preyed on by something that’s This concept of parallel evolution — that “like the head of an octopus joined to the body evolution will take a similar course under similar of a boa-constrictor.” No effort is spent to conditions — seems to have been widespread. rationalize this in terms of evolution, although it In Astor’s A Journey in Other Worlds, a voyage by does cause the characters to reflect moodily antigravity ship to Jupiter discovers it to be upon that “same old brutal law again” of life following Earth’s evolutionary path at an earlier preying on life. stage, with mammoths and sloths roaming the planet, albeit preyed on by giant ants. Saturn is Perhaps not surprisingly, Hugo Gernsback is a even more primitive than Jupiter, although it bit more methodical in the Baron Münchausen features flying, fire-breathing serpents that are stories he published in his magazine The explained scientifically. (The souls of the human Electrical Experimenter between 1915 and 1917. dead who have migrated there lead to a rather The Baron and his companion, Flitternix, travel more religious discussion in the latter quarter of first to the moon, which is similar to Griffith’s the novel. Griffith wasn’t the only SF writer except without any sign of humanoid life, and who still had sin and the spirit world on his then to Mars, where the basically humanoid mind.) Perhaps parallel evolution is the reason inhabitants exhibit a number of strange features that the Mars of Edwin L. Arnold’s Lieut. that are anticipated by the Earthmen on the Gullivar: His Vacation (1905) is inhabited by basis of what they know about the features of humans and subtropical animals (including the planet Mars. In Münchausen’s speculation sloths again!), although Arnold isn’t concerned about the likely physiology of the Martians they to explain the coincidence. Griffith, following in are about to encounter, Gernsback

84 Thy Life’s a Miracle demonstrates, however clunkily, how to use the threshold of comprehension, but yet it scientific or pseudo-scientific concepts to guide evaded me, like forgotten words whose general the imagining of alien beings. It’s an older sense dimly irradiates the mind, while they planet, so the civilization is older, and therefore refuse to take a definite shape, and keep flitting the heads of the Martians are bigger because just beyond the reach of memory.” brains get bigger over time. Because the heads Here we are getting very close indeed to are bigger, so are the eyes. The thin atmosphere modern strategies of stfnal fantasia. In fact, A means larger ears to catch the fainter sounds Columbus of Space, which was originally serialized and bigger lungs (and thus a bigger torso) to in All-Story Magazine in 1909, just three years absorb the scarcer oxygen and bigger noses for before Under the Moons of Mars ran in the very a larger intake. As in Serviss and Griffith, the same magazine, is the closest of any of the early lighter gravity means larger bodies as well. All of SF books I’ve read to Burroughs, right down to these differences add up to a pretty strange- the tropes of hidden civilizations, a looking humanoid that is definitely headed in beautiful princess, and her devious, scheming the direction of the truly alien, if only consort. Serviss does not attempt much in the cautiously. (Not that Gernsback is incapable of way of swashbuckling, nor does he make the wilder fancies, as when he cites Arrhenius’ fundamental Burroughsian move of a heroic theory of universal life, in which minute life- protagonist who fights for the love of the carrying spores travel between the stars and princess, and to that extent he is actually more seed receptive environments, as an explanation modern than Burroughs and less of a standard for why there is life on different planets.) pulp adventure writer. But Burroughs’ great Interestingly, Gernsback’s Martians also have a talent was welding formulaic pulp adventures to technological form of telepathy, which involves a wildly imagined world, and it is the imaginary sensor plates attached to their temples to pick world full of strange aliens that is of most up brain waves which are then broadcast locally interest. Serviss is headed down that same road by radio and tuned in by whoever wants to as well, except from a more scientific point of receive that particular person’s thoughts. There view. His darkside Venusians (like Stanley seems to have been an interest in scientific Weinbaum’s, his Venus has a dark side and a rationales for telepathy in this era sun side) are brute humanoids with immense (foreshadowing the psi powers of Campbellian eyes to see in the faint light and little ears that SF), because Serviss has one as well in A are all that’s necessary to hear in the dense Columbus of Space. His humanoid Venusians have atmosphere. Serviss even realistically calls a vestigial spoken language but have advanced attention to features that the scientific genius in to a telepathy which is compared to nonverbal the group cannot explain, such as the fact that human communication: “Do we not use signs the darkside Venusians have black hair, while and gestures as well as words?” asks the the fur covering their bodies against the cold is inventor-genius of the story, Edward. “And white. The primitive society of these creatures, what do we mean by ‘silent converse,’ when whose sacrificial religion is focused on the mind speaks to mind and soul to soul without periodic appearance of the Earth in the eternal the intervention of spoken language?” Yet the night sky, even has a faint whiff of the Thark to Venusians also have enormous, literally it. luminous eyes that seem to speak meaningfully Of course, the proper answer to the question, and to read one’s innermost thoughts. “I could “Where did the Tharks come from?” is “From a see that thought came out of her eyes,” says the post office box in Schenectady.” (Hard to say narrator, “but it escaped all my efforts to grasp how they all fit in there.) Burroughs doesn’t it; it was too evanescent, or I was too dull. seem to have borrowed them from anybody; he Sometimes I imagined that the meaning was at made them up out of his own imagination.

The Early Days of a Better Genre 85

(Which isn’t to say that Burroughs borrowed Gernsback in 1926. All he did was reprint a nothing, as there are a couple of aspects of bunch of early SF (including Wells and Serviss Edwin L. Arnold’s Lieut. Gullivar: His Vacation and Burroughs) and say, “This stuff is called that are too similar to be believable scientifiction, and I want more like it.” The coincidences, particularly the river of death.) portrayal and exploration of the alien got more Pursuing the question, however, has led me to sophisticated after that, but in these dinosaurs discover some fascinating forgotten futures (in of pregernsbackia (in David Bratman’s own Marcus Rowland’s memorable phrase). It has memorable phrase), we see how the alien — also led me to understand more viscerally that and the genre — began to evolve. science fiction was not invented by Hugo

Punking the Diva (Head 8, March 2009)

I recently had the opportunity to see the movie broached. There’s a certain studied coolness and Diva again for the first time in probably twenty globalized hodgepodge and punk-zen attitude, years or more. Luke McGuff and I braved a on top of the thriller info-plot, that seems rainy January night and, appropriately enough, similar to what Bill Gibson in particular got up an opera crowd convening at McCaw Hall next to starting around the same time as the movie door as we made our way to Seattle’s SIFF came out. (I’m pretty sure he has acknowledged Theater to see the film. Diva was a movie I liked the impact of Escape from New York and Blade a lot when it came out in 1981. I saw it several Runner, so it’s easy enough to imagine further times back then, all in the theater — back cinematic influence.) before videotapes and DVDs killed off the What I also hadn’t really noticed before was repertory theaters. what a mash-up of genres it is. An erotic-art- Luke told me that his old friend Karen Trego, thriller-romance? I guess another similarity to from the days when he lived in Minneapolis, Gibson is the way that the caper-thriller plot always argued that Diva was proto-. seems like an excuse or skeleton for just The maguffin that drives the plot is, as in much showing us a bunch of cool shit. On the artsy cyberpunk, information — in this case, a tape side, there’s an almost dadaist sensibility at that exposes a drug cartel, which is furthermore work, throwing off snappy non-sequiturs for confused with a bootlegged tape of a the sheer hell of it. The characters and plot performance by the eponymous diva. All this elements are a mélange: Taiwanese music pirates information — both the incriminating evidence in mirrorshades; an African-American opera and the bootlegged music — wants to be free. I diva (speaking heavily accented French) who had never thought of it that way before, but I refuses to record because music is of the could certainly see it once the idea was moment and not a commodity; a cute teenage Punking the Diva 87

French-Vietnamese shoplifter who uses nude diva is described: “His heart was pounding like photos of herself to distract attention from her Bartók’s sonata for two pianos and percussion.” crimes; a free-spirited mail courier who makes The movie not only modifies Gorodish and the bootleg tape and steals the diva’s gown and Alba and moves them slightly behind the then pays a prostitute to wear it while they have courier in the character hierarchy, but it also sex to the music; a shaved-head thug called the restructures the nature of the crime kingpin Priest who wears leather and doesn’t like (effectively combining two characters from the anything (in a terse running gag); and a rich book) and changes the Japanese record label French guy who is into Zen — “he wants to representatives into the enigmatic Taiwanese. stop the wave” — and who gives a great riff on Much of the romantic and philosophical matter how to properly butter your bread and then surrounding the American diva remains, totally tools the bad guys like some kind of however, including the wabi-sabi spirit of her upper class ninja using the cutting edge resistance to recording, which she expresses this technology of the day: a Sony Walkman. way in the book: “No recording can ever “Les caprices,” says a character at one point. measure up to my standards of how a voice “What?” asks the American diva en anglais. should sound. But even if that were possible, I’d “Whims,” she’s told. Indeed. still be appalled at the idea that a moment of The movie is based on a novel by the Swiss magic could be reproduced tens of thousands of writer Daniel Odier, writing under the times. That’s not art. And there are always little pseudonym Delacorta. Odier is himself an imperfections that are acceptable only because interesting figure whose first book was a they’re unique; I wouldn’t want them to be recorded and played over and over.” collection of interviews with William S. Burroughs and who has become a convert to Another thing the movie takes from the book is Shivaic Tantrism and written books on tantric its fascination with surfaces and commodities, sex and Buddhist and Taoist meditation which is another similarity with Gibson. Diva techniques, as well as opening a Tantra/Zen was one of the first movies in a mini-movement center in Paris. The novel Diva was part of a in France that came to be called the cinéma du series he wrote about Gorodish and Alba, who look — all sleek and shiny and reflective, grungy are the upper-class ninja and the teenaged at times, but with an eye for the designer label: shoplifter in the movie. In the book, Gorodish Rolex (and Swatch) watches, Rolls Royce, Swiss is an ex-gangster who has struck out on his tape decks, seductive mountains of Gitanes own, and Alba is not of Vietnamese descent but cigarette packs. It’s a very sexy look, also seen in a blonde, budding Lolita, just thirteen years old, Besson’s Subway (1985) and Carax’s Mauvais Sang whose platonic relationship with Gorodish is (1986) and, much later, as a kind of homage, not completely innocent of carnal thoughts and Assayas’ Demonlover (2002). Visually, it’s all feelings, at least on her side. (This aspect of the about the play of light: distorted reflections, book is actually captured in a different movie, refractions, and diffractions in chrome, multiple Luc Besson’s Léon, where Natalie Portman’s 12- mirrors, waxed floors, rain-slicked streets, the year-old Mathilda harbors inappropriate feelings glass of pinball machines. It’s a perfect style for for the hitman played by Jean Reno, who, like depicting a world of shattered grand illusions. Gorodish in the book, is not interested in As the lights came up in the theater at our exploiting the vulnerable girl.) The novel is very January viewing and the credits rolled over a stripped down in its language (at least judging beautiful aria, the theater manager came in and from the translation) and almost seems ready- warned us that a fire alarm was about to go off. made for movie adaptation in its simplicity and Sure enough, a siren was soon shrieking a duet compactness. Still, it has its punchy lines, as with the diva. It seemed appropriate somehow when the courier’s anticipation at meeting the

88 Thy Life’s a Miracle

— a melding of noise and music. We stumbled rain-slicked streets out front. We looked around outside into an inexplicable mass of excited for thugs in leather jackets and inappropriate teenagers pouring out of the opera house next mirrorshades, but we didn’t have the equipment door and piling into school buses parked on the to play that old tape anymore, so we moved on.

When Life Hands You Lemurs, Make Lemuria (Sense of Wonder Stories 4, August 2010)

Where do you get your crazy sci-fi ideas? Harlan humans. Four years later, the English zoologist Ellison famously claimed his came from Philip Lutley Sclater put two and two together Schenectady, but it turns out that some of them and named the theoretical lost land bridge took an obscure and tortuous route to get there. Lemuria. The rest was history — or rather They were much transformed along the way, fantasy, as we’ll soon see. and perhaps their transformations tell us First, however, came the pseudo-science. While something about the stfnal imagination, which geologists moved on to the theory of plate certainly seems a promiscuous sort. tectonics to explain how, amongst other things, Our story begins in 1860, when the geologist Madagascar and had once been part of the William T. Blandford proposed a now-sunken same land mass, the idea of sunken Lemuria was land bridge in the Indian Ocean as an taken up by the theosophist Madame Blavatsky, explanation for the existence of identical in her books Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Permian rocks in South Africa and southern Doctrine (1888). Blavatsky was nothing if not a India. The idea of a sunken land bridge was magpie, and Lemuria was just one idea she taken up by the German biologist Ernst threw into her pseudo-scientific occultist stew. Heinrich Häckel, who thought it also explained Interestingly, she also borrowed ideas from why there were fossils of lemurs in India when Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s hollow earth science the only living lemurs were in Madagascar and fiction novel, The Coming Race (1871). In East Africa. He furthermore proposed that particular she borrowed wholesale the idea of lemurs were the evolutionary ancestors of vril, which was a form of control over matter via 90 Thy Life’s a Miracle will-power that Bulwer-Lytton presents as a pseudo-science disguised as science fiction in form of advanced technology, thus anticipating order to make it more acceptable to the Clarke’s Law. She also appears to have been incredulous. Which is to say that Shaver influenced by Bulwer-Lytton’s ideas of believed his stories about underground superhuman created through evolution, civilizations to be true, but at first he could only although she ties this into occult ideas. She get them published in by writes about seven root races, of which modern agreeing to present them as science fiction. humanity is the fifth root and the Lemurians According to Doug Skinner, Shaver was a were the third. The Lemurians were twelve foot devotee of Merritt and believed that Merritt had tall, telepathic, egg-laying hermaphrodites, some been to the underground caverns described in with four arms, which has led to speculation The Moon Pool and had been forced, like himself, that Blavatsky’s Lemurians were the basis for to disguise his writing about the experience as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoomian green fiction. (Thanks to Kim Huett, I’ve been able to giants. Unfortunately the Lemurians eventually read an interview with Shaver in the fanzine discovered sex, which led to their destruction Caveat Emptor in which he says that Merritt, (and the sinking of Lemuria), but not before Lovecraft, and H.G. Wells all had to disguise they gave birth to the culturally superior their underground experiences as science Atlanteans, who in turn destroyed themselves fiction.) In any event, Shaver’s story involves through the development of advanced magical the now familiar Lemurian elements of powers. underground civilizations (in the Caveat Emptor interview he says, “...they lived underground in From Blavatsky many of these ideas passed ancient buried cities that had been buried long back into science fiction via A. Merritt’s The ago by tidal waves during the moonfall,” i.e., Moon Pool (1919). Michael Levy, in his when the moon crashed into the Earth), a introduction to the Wesleyan University Press conflict between good and evil alien races (the edition of the book, makes a compelling teros and the deros), evolved superhuman argument that Merritt, who was a member of giants, fantastic super powers that are the original Fortean Society and proud of his rationalized in the form of advanced reading in the occult field, had read Blavatsky. technology, and the moral decay of civilization. It’s certainly true that The Moon Pool features a similar stew of conflicting superhuman races, And so finally we get to , who some of whom are descendants of the Murians was one of the many fans who derided the (i.e. Lemurians), who moved underground after Shaver Mystery as a hoax and made a fuss until their continent was swallowed by the sea. Amazing stopped publishing the stories and Merritt follows Bulwer-Lytton in making this a forced Ray Palmer out as editor. Yet Ellison hollow earth adventure and in giving the himself made use of the Shaver Mystery in his fantastical powers of the underground races a story “From A to Z, in the Chocolate veneer of super-science. Where Bulwer-Lytton Alphabet” (1976), in which one of the 26 short- was writing a warning satire of human hubris short stories is called “The Elevator People” and Blavatsky was attempting to create a and tells us that “There are five hundred religious text about spiritual development, buildings in the United States whose elevators Merritt takes the same material and turns it into go deeper than the basement. When you have an old school exotic romance in the mold of H. pressed the ‘B’ button and reached bottom, you Rider Haggard. All three writers attempt to pass must press it twice more. The elevator doors off their supernatural ideas as science. will close and you will hear the sound of special relays being thrown, and the elevator will Thus we come to Richard Shaver and I descend into the caverns.” Remember Lemuria (1945), where this stew of ideas reaches a pinnacle of sorts in the form of

When Life Hands You Lemurs, Make Lemuria 91

Of course, there’s nothing but the faintest whiff science fiction as a serious exploration of of Lemuria in Ellison’s story, in which Shaver’s scientific ideas, but the history of the field is ideas are used as ironic literary devices to depict littered with as much pseudo-science as real urban alienation and paranoia. See also Kage science. What’s fascinating about Lemuria is Baker’s 1998 novelette “Lemuria Will Rise!” for how it has roots in all three areas: science, the further knowing in-jokes on the theme, with pseudo-scientific occult, and science fiction Blavatsky’s Lemuria tied to the saucer people itself. You could throw in Shaver’s paranoid that Shaver’s enabler, Ray Palmer, popularized delusions as a fourth source. Some of science in his post-Amazing magazine of the fiction’s crazy ideas are literally crazy! It would paranormal, Fate. seem the stfnal imagination is fired by the fantastic in all its forms. So where does science fiction get its crazy ideas? Sober-minded proponents like to promote

The Ring and I (Chunga 22, January, 2014)

The Seattle Opera is famous worldwide for its Wagner based the four operas of Der Ring des productions of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Nibelungen on Germanic mythology. His which it performed annually from 1975 through sources included the Volsunga Saga and the 1985 before switching to a quadrennial Nibelungenlied, but he also heavily modified the schedule. It always gets a lot of coverage in the material, in particular turning it into a family local press, and I’ve always been curious about saga that largely didn’t exist in the old it, albeit never curious enough to actually look mythology. I had previously read the Volsunga into getting tickets. For one thing, Wagner has Saga and the Nibelungenlied, but I didn’t always seemed like a repulsive character to me, remember a thing about the former. If I nor have I ever been a fan of the Romantic era remembered more of the latter, it was because of classical music that he in many ways I’d watched Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s personifies. But this year I got an e-mail from silent film adaptation of it, Die Nibelungen (1924), my neighbor saying that her boss had a pass to a couple of times. I found that the film biased the dress rehearsals for this year’s production; me against Wagner’s version of the story, even would I be interested? I hemmed and hawed. though many of the differences come from the Was I really up for fifteen hours of opera in five Volsunga Saga and not from Wagner himself. days? Finally I decided to give the first one, Das In any event, one thing was immediately Rheingold, a try. At two and a half hours, it was obvious: I had been soaking in the cultural the shortest. impact of Wagner’s Ring without being more Five days later, I’d gone all the way. I was no than partly aware of it. I mean, I don’t think it longer a Ring Cycle virgin. had even really sunk in before that the Bugs Bunny cartoon “What’s Opera, Doc?” is a

parody of Wagner. (It was only while waiting The Ring and I 93 for Die Walküre to start that I realized: a) Opera’s production of the operas were special “Walküre” is the German word for “valkyrie”, effects extravaganzas, complete with stories in and b) “The Ride of the Valkyries,” which I the local media about how particular effects basically knew only through hearing it in were achieved. I was hooked from the get-go by Apocalypse Now, is the basis for Elmer Fudd’s the incredible sets, elaborate costumes, and famous aria, “Kill the Wabbit”.) As I sat in the strenuous stunts. In the very opening scene of dark trying to digest fifteen hours of opera, I the very first opera the Rhine maidens were kept connecting it to other popular culture. shown “swimming” through the air via wire Here were many of the tropes of genre fantasy, harnesses that moved them around in space and particularly heroic fantasy. (After Das Rheingold, allowed them to somersault as they sang their I overheard an audience member wondering if thrilling airs. Tolkien knew the operas. More on that later.) The sets were huge and superbly detailed, At different times I heard the music of both The evoking dense forests and craggy mountains Wizard of Oz and King Kong echoing from the that seemed copied from the Pacific Northwest orchestra. For example, the Fafner dragon landscape. Another thing that amazed me was theme is used to represent Kong at times, which how these vast sets could be rolled on and off is appropriate as they are both intelligent, stage between acts, completely transforming the feeling monsters. In Siegfried there’s a motif stage in the process. By the time we got to the representing Siegfried that I’m pretty sure John third opera, Siegfried, I was eager to see how they Williams stole note-for-note for the scene would stage the dragon, and I wasn’t where Luke Skywalker walks out of the family disappointed as Siegfried first comically home on Tattooine and looks at the double mistakes the coiled tail in a cave for the whole suns on the horizon. Star Wars is heavily dragon before the massive head and wings hove Wagnerian, both in the way John Williams used into view between two hillocks behind him. motifs in the score and in the vaguely Buddhist Such was the magic of the special effects that I attitude toward the will to power. (On the other was disappointed during Die Walküre when the hand, Star Wars only feints at brother-sister valkyries didn’t actually fly across the theater to incest, where the Ring plunges right in, land on stage. On the other hand, they did following the mythology.) Of course Wagner’s actually bring a horse on stage to play fingerprints are all over the modernist classical Brünnhilde’s steed, Grani. I confess that by that music I’ve been listening to in the past few point I was exhausted enough to hope that the years, from Debussy’s opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, horse would dump some pucky on the which sought to subsume Wagner’s through- proceedings. composed approach to a French sensibility, to Mahler, who as director of the Vienna Court Basically the way it went was that Das Rheingold Opera was renowned for his productions of hooked me with the spectacle and the thrill of Wagner, and on to Schoenberg, who sought to recognizing a cultural touchstone, and Die bridge the tonal worlds of Wagner and his Walküre pulled me along with the tender incest nemesis, Brahms, and then followed Wagner’s and the exciting valkyrie yodeling — Hoyotoho! abandonment of tonal centers down the rabbit Hoyotoho! Heiaha! Heiaha! At least until the hole of atonality. third act, that is, when the long philosophical discussion between Wotan and Brünnhilde The influence of the Ring on modern film began to wear on my patience. I loved almost all blockbusters like Star Wars (and Alex Ross has of the orchestral music in the first two operas, analyzed the Wagnerian influence on Howard but the vocal lines were considerably less Shore’s score for films interesting to me, with too much stentorian too) raises another dimension of Wagner’s declamation and not enough, well, singing, for impact: the spectacle of the production. Seattle my tastes. The individual operas get longer and

94 Thy Life’s a Miracle longer, and by the time we arrived at Siegfried absurd use of love potions and memory potions and Götterdämmerung, I was finding the orchestral to complicate it, the development of music less and less interesting and the vocal Brünnhilde’s character into a mythologically lines more and more wearing. I don’t know how purifying force capable of breaking the cycle of much of this was just the sheer, overwhelming suffering compensates somewhat. As I said, amount of music to absorb. I continued to overall the story kept my interest even when the follow the story with analytical interest to the music and spectacle didn’t. very end, but I also grew increasingly critical of that story, partly because of the way that Wagner diverges from the Nibelungenlied (and For a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, the Ring Cycle is Lang and Harbou’s film adaptation) and partly fascinating because of a number of because I found Siegfried himself a tiresome correspondences with The Lord of the Rings, character and the Romantic ideal of manly particularly in the concept of a ring of power. heroism he embodied deeply ridiculous. I’ve Tolkien famously dismissed comparisons read that Wagner found traditional, Italianate (“Both rings were round, and there the opera too feminine, and certainly even resemblance ceases”), but it hasn’t stopped Brünnhilde is male-identified and has her own people from drawing them. The best article I’ve phallic spear. After 15 hours of this masculine found on the topic is one by Jamie McGregor display, I yearned for something more feminine called “Two Rings to Rule Them All: A and contemplative and less loud and emphatic. Comparative Study of Tolkien and Wagner,” It didn’t help that after the first two operas they originally published in the Mythopoeic Society’s started reusing the sets, which reduced the journal, Mythlore, but also available online. feeling of endlessly inventive spectacle. McGregor makes the argument that, whatever one can or cannot say about direct influence, it’s Still, as much as I felt that by the time the fat fruitful to read Tolkien as a response to or lady finally sang I had been subjected to a critique of Wagner. He quotes Tom Shippey’s grinding, grueling ordeal, I found something to observation that Tolkien felt toward Wagner, as like in all four operas. My generalization would he did toward Shakespeare, “an intimate dislike” be that I liked pretty much all of Das Rheingold, because Wagner “had gotten something very the first two acts (out of three) of both Die important not quite right.” McGregor works Walküre and Siegfried, and the final two acts (out through the two epics finding nine points (or of three) of Götterdämmerung. (Pity that the first stages, as he calls them) of correspondence and act of Götterdämmerung, if you throw in the analyzes the differences in treatment. The whole Prologue, is over two hours long!) Even my analysis is fascinating, full of tidbits such as the least favorite of the four, Siegfried, had plenty of comparison of the innocence of Siegfried to interest, including a wonderfully goofy sense of that of Tom Bombadil (two characters who are humor regarding its naïve hero and a uncompelled by the power of the rings), leading wonderfully diabolical character in the dwarf, to the observation: “Where Wagner idealizes Mime. Wotan is a fascinating character Siegfried’s immunity to greed and ambition, throughout, and his struggle with his own will Tolkien is at pains to emphasize that — at least to power is the central conflict of the whole where the Ring is concerned — innocence of cycle, played out in the lives of his children and any kind will prove catastrophic.” In both grandchildren and finally resolved by his daugh- stories, the ring of power is ultimately ter, Brünnhilde, who actually ends up being a consumed by flames, but in Wagner it is a tragic more heroic figure than the sacrificial Siegfried. act of self-sacrifice, where in Tolkien it is a As much as I disliked the love story between eucatastrophic gift of providence. McGregor Siegfried and Brünnhilde (which is from the writes, “Where both works suggest that the Volsunga Saga, not the Nibelungenlied), with the world will continue to go from bad to worse,

The Ring and I 95 and both locate final redemption beyond ‘the Or maybe a large, commercial sci-fi convention circles of the world,’ Tolkien eschews Wagner’s like should adapt them as implied death-wish for an aching nostalgia for permanent consuite landscapes. One of the life reminiscent of late Mahler.” Certainly things that struck me on this first exposure to Wagner’s vocal music left me yearning for the the Ring was how fannish the audience was. vocal lines of Mahler’s late song cycle, Das Lied These were Wagner freaks of the highest order von der Erde, in which McGregor says a friend — pilgrims traveling from all over the world to has found a spiritual affinity with Bilbo’s see the cycle. Over the four nights I spent at the farewell song in Rivendell. opera house, I saw people striking up friendships and comparing notes of other McGregor also notes the similarities between versions seen. I didn’t see any full-on costumes, Gandalf and Wagner’s Wotan — the Grey but I did see at least one horned helmet in the Pilgrim and the Wanderer — and so perhaps it crowd. One whimsical old man wore a single was no coincidence that Wotan in this feather in his cap, perhaps in homage to the production wore a hat much like Gandalf’s in winged helmets of the Valkyries in this ’s film adaptation of The Lord of production. The gift shop offered silly souvenir the Rings. Then again, this production of the T-shirts, including one advertising “Fasolt & Ring Cycle originated in 2001, probably a few Fafner: General Contractors” — an in-joke on months before the first of Jackson’s movies the two giants whom Wotan hires to build came out. Valhalla in Das Rheingold. I got the T-shirt that reads “Götterdämmitslöng,” with all the excess Seattle Opera will be rolling out a new American umlauts you could ever want. There production of the Ring Cycle in 2017, and this was a powerful sense that those of us who were was also the swan song of the long-time general neos were being initiated into a cult, with the director of the company, Speight Jenkins, who fifteen hours of opera comprising a hazing ritual took over in 1983 and brought artistic credibility that bound us all together as incestuous siblings. to what had previously been the pure novelty of I thoroughly enjoyed that ritual aspect of it, and Seattle’s attempt to become an outpost bastion I quickly developed routines of my own. Tickets of the Wagnerian Weltanschauung. There was a were first-come-first-serve, so I would get to the valedictory air around the dress rehearsals I saw, opera house an hour and a half early, wait in as Jenkins hobbled out before each line for my ticket, then grab a turkey sandwich performance to thank us for coming and warn and a glass of wine at the ground floor bistro. us that the action might be paused at any time After that little meal, I got a martini at the to work out problems of staging. The pauses second floor bar to fortify myself for the ordeal never came, and those of us who saw the dress to come. I also read a chapter of a book while I rehearsals were in fact lucky in that, following ate my sandwich and drank my wine. The book? these performances, the new Brünnhilde, Iain M. Banks’ Surface Detail. It seemed Allwyn Mellor, was struck ill and was replaced appropriate to be reading space opera in an by her understudy for the regular performances. opera house, but, to cap the joke, the novel As for the magnificent sets used in this opens with a dramatic chase through an empty production, I wonder what will become of opera house as well. Turns out that opera is not them. Somebody should make an amusement only fannish but stfnal. park out of them or something. Hm. There might be a fanzine article in that!

Under the Rainbow, or A Pot of Gold (Chunga 7, May 2004)

Due to last minute difficulties not entirely I’ve always wanted to go to Australia, and I unrelated to overbearing new policies on suppose it’s only appropriate that Sharee was foreign visitors to the U.S. (although by no what it took to get me there. The best way to means strictly caused by them either), Sharee see a foreign land is to visit a native, after all. was unable to make the six week visit to Seattle Plus they say that Queensland is a land for that I anticipated so eagerly in the last issue of lovers — yeah, true! Other than the transit Chunga. The course of true love never did run through Sydney airport, my entire stay in Oz hey-nonny-nonny and a hot-cha-cha, but then was in Queensland, the Sunshine State. The trip again nothing has ever gone quite according to can be divided into two main phases (three, if plan with Sharee, love or breakfast. I suppose you count the first three days in Cairns and it’s just as true to say that nothing has ever gone Kuranda as initiatory, if not propitiatory), with quite according to plan, full stop — it’s just that the first phase centered on Quinta Milagro — a Sharee makes a philosophy of changing plans converted horse ranch in the bush country and the need for adaptability. So it was a beyond the Atherton Tableland, well to the west demonstration of philosophical expertise when, of Cairns — and the second comprised of a on January 18th, only three weeks after learning roadtrip from Quinta Milagro to Brisbane, with that she couldn’t come to Seattle, I made my many stops in between. Or you could look at way onto an airplane headed to Australia. (And the whole trip as one long phase of hanging out thanks to Tami for the ride to the airport!) with Sharee, for love and breakfast — and a few pots of Gold. Under the Rainbow, or A Pot of Gold 97

On my arrival Down Under I flew three hours which is probably a good part of what I liked from Sydney to Cairns, where I found Sharee about it — although I also liked the Pacific- wearing a black T-shirt with the caption, “She diaspora feel to the place: the mix of Pacific Who Must Be Obeyed.” Yes, it’s all very funny Rim and island people, plus the pommie until somebody gets made into a love slave! But backpackers and other Europeans. The Pacific she didn’t wear the shirt for long, because it had Rim folks include Americans, both North and sleeves (albeit short ones) and this was the South, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, and other tropics. As I staggered into the dazzling Asians, and Queenslanders themselves, sunshine and heavy humidity, she stripped to a including aboriginals, of course. sleeveless top and whisked me off to a place Cairns advertises itself as “where the rainforest called Dunwoodies, where we ordered a meets the reef,” and although I didn’t get out to crocodile and mango chutney pizza and, after the reef (it was irukandji jellyfish season, so not much brainstrain and translation, a stubbie, not real safe to get in the water, at least without a a pot, of XXXX Gold for my beverage. After stinger suit), this convergence of ecologies lunch, Sharee indulged the national mania for reminded me of Yap Island in Micronesia, gambling and played a pokie. She won a $120 which is the tropical locale I’ve spent the most jackpot, too, which I guess was our first pot of time in. Cairns has higher hills than Yap, so you gold. get the classic jungle-covered hills shrouded in It was all too strange, of course. It had been five mist and cloud. Queensland also has huge sugar months since we’d last seen each other at the cane plantations, so there was a definite South stirring conclusion of a whirlwind romance, and American or Caribbean feel to the area. I it was less than a month since our carefully built immediately felt at home in the tropical languor, plans had collapsed and forced our imagination, although the pace and pulse of the city was considerations, and decisions into a completely certainly faster than Yap’s, and there was different hemisphere. Now, after all the intense undoubtedly more wealth in the infrastructure. planning and the longing phone conversations It was fascinating to see how a modern, and e-mail, it was a little awkward to finally find Westernized economy adjusts to the heat and ourselves in the same place again, and still humidity. For some reason one of the perfect learning how to be together — all the little images of it to my mind was the interstate details and negotiations of hanging out with truckers dressed in shorts, tanktops, and foam someone ... and with a new lover, no less. (After flipflops, so unlike the truckers in jeans and all these years, we are basically new to each boots I’m used to seeing in the US. other again.) Throw on top of that the complete We spent two days in Cairns, giving me time to change in location, landscape, climate, time recover from jetlag and the both of us time to zone, culture, and people that I was begin to adjust to each other, and then we drove experiencing, and it was all just a bit up to Kuranda in the rainforest above Cairns disorienting. I can’t recommend it highly and spent the night at Sharee’s friend Alfonso’s enough as a tonic for jaded souls! house. Alfonso, an architect, grew up in Mexico, I actually enjoyed Cairns, what little I saw of it. but he’s lived in Australia for over twenty years, Not that there’s a whole lot there to see, I guess, maybe more like thirty. Sharee met him because but I was surprised at how cosmopolitan and he’s the boyfriend of Fiamma, whose property global it felt for a city of that size — 90,000 in Sharee lives on when she’s not at sea. He made Cairns itself, with probably two or three times us pizza and gave us his bed, and we fell asleep that many in the immediate surrounds, although to the strange sounds of the night forest. I never got a confident answer on that from the In the morning, we headed west through cane several people I asked. It’s a growing city, as so fields and mango orchards until we arrived in many in Queensland are. It’s a tropical city,

98 Thy Life’s a Miracle

Mareeba, “where the rainforest meets the housemate, Chrissy, and they invited another outback.” Here Queensland began to feel a bit friend of theirs, Marie, to come out to QM for a like Central Oregon to me, with a definite sense bit of adventure and vacation from her teenage of tourists mixing with farmers and ranchers. sons. What an adventure she got! Sharee and I This sense grew even stronger west of Mareeba, stopped for a skinnydip in Eureka Creek, and where the farms turned to cattle ranches, and I’m not sure we ever got dry again after that. the landscape to scrawny gum forests, rock The rain began to fall as our two SUVs headed formations, and grassland. But meanwhile, in toward Petford. Most likely it had been raining Mareeba, we connected with Fiamma, who had in the area for a while already by the time we hit just had some dental work done and was feeling the storm. The next day Fiamma read her rain a bit rubber-faced. I had heard so much about gauge at over 120 ml, which is close to five her — and had such odd conversations with her inches. In any event, when we got to the first on the phone — that the meeting was almost swollen creek on the dirt road that leads from mythic. the highway to QM, we decided that the SUVs couldn’t make it even in four-wheel drive, but How to describe Fiamma? Definitely a force of we’d try hiking the last two kilometers to the nature! Definitely mysterious, probably self- house. We grabbed a few things that might spoil made that way. She was born in New Zealand or that we just couldn’t do without, like milk and, with an ambassador father, has lived all and Marie’s fresh pies, and headed into the around the world, including West Africa, tropical downpour. Portugal, New York, and Tokyo. She’s short and strong and looks great at age fifty- Sharee was wearing a sarong that she didn’t something, but after various illnesses and near want to tear, so she took it off and strode naked deaths she has a shot immune system, a pain- and barefoot through the mudpuddles — “like wracked back, and a fierce will to seize the day an Amazon queen,” as Fiamma remarked later, and get things done, despite the physical price “with her butt going badda-bong badda-bong, she pays for hard work. She owns sixty acres in god, there’s an image you’ll never forget!” We the bush west of Dimbulah, where she has made it through two smaller creeks, while converted an old stable into a rambling, funky Sharee insisted that this was a brilliant house. The past seven years have been spent introduction to the savage beauty of the bush turning this swath of dusty gum forest, termite country, and then we got to the last major creek mounds, and pastures into an oasis of lush before Quinta Milagro. It was, to quote Fiamma gardens and bohemian splendor. She calls the again, “a bloody Mississippi.” Even the guide place Quinta Milagro — the land of miracles — wires that are meant to help one wade through and on my last night at QM, she argued that floods were submerged. We were forced to turn Australia as a country could do much the same back. as she was trying to do, by diverting its rivers We ended up back in Dimbulah, where we were inward to turn the outback desert into treated to a royal feast of leftovers and fresh productive farmland (she invoked Israel in this oddments by Marie and another friend, Gioia, regard), taking immigrants from all over the who both opened their houses to us in yet world to invest their lives in this work, and another example of the Australian hospitality asserting an independence from foreign powers that is justly praised in song and story. like the US. The waters had receded when we returned to But that was three weeks after my first arrival QM the next morning, but we discovered that — or actually near arrival, as our attempt to the house itself had been flooded when the new reach QM from Mareeba that first day was fishpond overflowed. We spent the next day thwarted by a flash flood. We had stopped in drying the straw mats and sweeping and the cowtown of Dimbulah to pick up their

Under the Rainbow, or A Pot of Gold 99 mopping the red mud from the floors. That was Perhaps needless to say, the hippie lifestyle isn’t a pretty good introduction to the rustic life of exactly the norm out in ranchland, and Fiamma QM, which has electricity and a phone line, but and her girlfriends apparently have a reputation where the gravity-feed shower only runs hot if a amongst the locals of being a bit crazy, possibly fire is lit under the raintank. They had recently witches, and (as one might guess from their lack unclogged the toilet drainpipe, so I didn’t have of interest in the local men) probably lesbians. to shit in the creek as they’d been doing lately This led us one night — when Alfonso was (after an apparently very confused young lady visiting from Kuranda, and he and Fiamma flushed her underwear at a party), but it was were speaking to each other in Spanish — to made clear that pissing was to be done in the come up with an alternative name for Quinta yard, anywhere except on the plants. Sharee and Milagro: la casa de las brujas lesbianas (the house of Fiamma were both comfortable lounging the lesbian witches). Lesbianas y locas, I guess. around half-undressed, which was undoubtedly What struck me, as I settled into the place, was cooler in the heat. I wore as little as possible that Fiamma was running something of a house most of the time myself, while also trying to for wayward girls. One powerful impression I avoid burning my fishbelly skin. The house was had at first — no doubt a result of my own full of an incredible variety of alien bugs and most ancient insecurities — was that Sharee had beetles, as well as the inevitable mosquitos, or a lot more to learn from Fiamma than she did “mozzies,” which in turn fed the usual tropical from me. What was I but just another fun- array of geckos on the ceilings and the less usual loving party boy? Fiamma gave regular and squadron of bats that swooped through the useful lectures to Sharee and Chrissy (who was house at night. getting away from complications in Cairns) on responsibility and diligence, self-reliance and Sharee frequently quotes her friend Andrew’s assertiveness. adage, “Scratch a punk and find a hippie.” Most of you who met Sharee when she lived in the Sharee’s room was an old caravan out by the US will remember her mohawk and tattoos and shed in a wire enclosure that we shared with fashionable thriftstore outfits. Now you’re more Ziggy — a blind wallaby who was rescued from likely to find her dressed in a sarong, or in the pouch after his mother was shot, Indian or Guatemalan peasant clothing. More of decapitated, and left by the side of the road. a gypsy look, in general, and bighod if she (His eyes were burned by the sun before the doesn’t even perm her hair. (Well, mohawks are rescue.) Cohabiting with a wallaby was high maintenance, too, so not a big difference interesting, not least because in the rainy there, I guess.) She also, like half the women weather of the wet season it was hard to keep I’ve ever fallen for, follows a loosely new age the wallaby shit swept away from the doorway spirituality, as well as an interest in herbal of the caravan, so we tended to be wading in a medicine, organic food, and Whole Earth thin gruel of roo shit more often than one alternative/natural lifestyles. But she smokes might prefer. Ziggy also likes to grab and hold cigarettes, eats beef, and drives a gas-guzzling onto you, usually licking any exposed skin vehicle, so it’s not like she’s a hardcore new age within reach of his raspy tongue, which is hippie puritan or anything like it. Her friendlier behavior than I tend to want from an preference for living in the countryside may animal, but I’m sure that he missed the constant become an issue if we ever manage to inhabit physical attention and grooming he got from his the same continent, but I did my time as a mother, despite Fiamma’s daily attempts to proto-neo-quasi-hippie when I went to school compensate. in Eugene, so I’m at least somewhat The caravan was quite nice, and Sharee had accustomed to this aspect of her world. spent a great deal of time painting the inside and redecorating it in anticipation of my visit.

100 Thy Life’s a Miracle

“I’ve never seen the girl so nesty,” Fiamma said. enormous red cedars and strangler figs with vast The place was shaded from the sun, so it was water pipes and buttresses for roots, past a usually quite comfortable inside. After many creek where several dark fish hung in crystalline trials and tribulations, we were able to set up water above a white bed of sand, and, on the videotape and DVD players and consummate wildlife front, into encounters with a small the long planned Deppfest. The idea for this slatey-silver snake that wasn’t the least scared of was planted the first night that Tami and I us (even when Sharee tried to shoo it out of our visited Sharee in Victoria the previous summer, path with a stick) and a Boyd’s forest dragon, when we all went to see Pirates of the Caribbean, which ran on its hind legs, much to our surprise whereby Sharee and I discovered our shared and delight. As the cascades of rain reminded us love for Johnny Depp (who, in a movie with why it’s called a rainforest, we jumped into the Orlando Bloom, proved that it was in fact he Mossman River (well, I had to be coaxed, who was still the prettiest). We agreed that the because it was surprisingly cold) while thunder next time we saw each other, we’d watch as crashed and rolled in the hills above us and many Johnny Depp movies as we could teenagers smoked dope on a huge boulder together. We ended up watching eleven of them nearby. in the caravan, eight of which I hadn’t seen Any awkwardness and hesitancy between the before. John Waters’ Cry-Baby and Jim two of us was worked out in the three weeks at Jarmusch’s Dead Man were my new favorites, on Quinta Milagro. Far more than that, we top of the Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam films established an intimacy the likes of which I’ve that had made me a Depp fan to begin with. never experienced with anyone else. We quickly It wasn’t all movies, of course. We did some became partners in everyday tasks like cooking work around the property, although not as and cleaning, and there was none of the much as Fiamma would have liked, I reckon. defensiveness and fear I’ve always encountered (Fiamma herself was laid up twice from in my few and scattered relationships. After overworking, and the second time had a relapse years of sleeping alone, I found myself utterly at of Ross River fever — a form of malaria that ease with somebody else in my bed, perfectly in she contracted years ago.) We also took tune even in the vulnerability of sleep. I sidetrips to Chillagoe, to see the caves and an observed more closely Sharee’s own brand of abandoned smelter, and to the Daintree — one shrugging off unpleasant or difficult choices of the last remaining sections of more or less (something I’m a master of), her obliviousness intact rainforest in Queensland. We didn’t to the impact of some of her decisions on other actually spend a lot of time in the Daintree people, and her tendency to talk tougher than itself, since we were put off by the backpackers she walks, but I was also able to see her hotel that had been recommended to us. We powerful dedication to her friends, her ended up spending the night at a mosquito- openness to discussion and criticism, and her infested Koala Club on Cape Kimberly that had great curiosity and desire to learn. Life is an only one other couple staying there that night. adventure for Sharee, and that’s exactly the The nice thing was that we were left alone to thing I seem to look for in a lover. play billiards after the staff went home, and at So after our three-week idyll in Quinta Milagro, midnight we shucked our clothes and jumped we set off on the road to Brisbane, where I quickly into the swimming pool (pursued by planned to catch a plane to Sydney, and thence mosquitos) for a moonlight skinnydip. to Seattle, in ten days time. But by far the highlight of that particular little Sharee wanted to show me as much of trip was the hike at Mossman Gorge — another Queensland along the way as possible, most bit of rainforest that has been protected — definitely including as many country pubs as we where a 2.4 kilometer circuit trail took us past

Under the Rainbow, or A Pot of Gold 101 could find. I really haven’t said a lot about beer auspicious start to the trip, even if there was no yet, so I’ll take a minute to focus on this pot of gold (or Gold) in sight. important topic. Sharee warned me before I We failed to see a platypus from the viewing arrived that Queenslanders drank the platform in the picturesque postcardy town of Queensland brew, XXXX (pronounced “four Yungaburra, and then we headed up the ex”), not Victoria Bitter — and certainly not winding Gilles Range Highway towards Cairns. Foster’s, which she says is only for foreigners. In the dark of the dusk, Sharee spotted a large So I dutifully drank almost nothing but XXXX python crossing the road and swerved off to the Gold or Bitter on my arrival. Not long after I shoulder and stopped. It must have been seven got there, however, we ran into her mechanic or eight feet long, and it had apparently stopped and one of his mates in a pub in Mareeba, and I to enjoy the dissipating heat of the pavement. noticed they were drinking Victoria Bitter. Sharee grabbed it by the tail and flung it into the “I thought Queenslanders only drank XXXX,” jungle, instantly regretting that she had thrown I said to them. it too hard. But sure enough, another car came whizzing by a half minute later, and she “Nah,” said Jojo, “VB tastes better. XXXX is probably saved the snake’s life. She’s always for abos.” been fond of the damned things. I didn’t get a Well, that settled that! Of course, as a great good look before she tossed it, but she said it believer in political correctness, I decided to was a carpet python. stick with the abo beer. Besides, I have to admit The next day, we skipped the Babinda Boulders that I got an unseemly amount of pleasure from and went to Josephine Falls instead, then on sitting down in a pub and asking for a pot of (and on and on) to Townsville, where we caught gold. I can say that it actually tasted better than the last ferry to Magnetic Island, as a flock of either VB or XXXX Bitter, but that’s not really black cockatoos raucously urged us on. In the saying much. morning, we took the bus to Horseshoe Bay, Aside from trying various pubs, however, our which I insisted on calling “Horse’s Hoe” after trip was all about seeing the country. On our having been corrected on the pronunciation of way out of Quinta Milagro, we dropped Chrissy Ravenshoe the day before. We hiked in mad- off in Dimbulah, where she was going to start dogs-and-Englishmen heat over rocky ridges to work in a pawpaw packing plant. We drove Radical Bay and Balding Bay, where Sharee, south to the Curtain Fig — a massive strangler exhausted from all the driving she’d done the fig with a boardwalk around it. I finally learned past two days, slept in the shade and I that strangler figs are the same thing as banyans, contemplated the beautiful pine and rock which are trees I knew from Yap and which left scenery, as perfect as a Japanese print. such a mark on my young imagination that I We busted ass back to the mainland in the late once wrote a story about a boy who was lured afternoon and hit the road again, making it all into one and never came out again. We the way to Airlie Beach that night. Brekky at the wandered the Atherton Tableland for the rest of Village Deli the next morning was good, but the the day, looking at various waterfalls and a trendy backpacker feel of the town did not haunted pub. On the way to the Cathedral Fig, impress. Wet T-Shirt Contest! said one sign. driving across the hilly country, the end of a Not my cuffa copy, said I. Probably if Eric rainbow appeared outside the front window of Lindsay and Jean Weber had been there, they the Nissan. Neither of us had ever seen the end could have shown us the more interesting parts of a rainbow before, and I didn’t even know it of the area — gateway to the Whitsunday was possible. It hovered ahead of us, maybe ten Islands on the Great Barrier Reef — but they meters away, so close it was tempting to reach were in the States at the time. out to touch it. It seemed an altogether

102 Thy Life’s a Miracle

Back on the highway, I became fascinated by We spent the night in Yeppoon and then the blunt signs warning about road fatigue. headed for Bundaberg, where we were to meet “REST OR R.I.P. — Tired Drivers Die,” said a Sharee’s mom, Sheilla, and her boyfriend, Jack. common one, and another: “Rest Stop or Death They were actually staying in a resort outside of Stop.” We drove all the way to Yeppoon, which Bundaberg in Bargara. I finally got to swim in is a nice little resort town where Sharee used to the ocean there, because we had finally gotten go with her old boyfriend, Elwin, when they south of the irukandji zone. Sheilla and Jack had worked a fishing boat together. They used to been travelling for a couple of months, having trade prawns for cover charge to see their been to Fiji and New Zealand before coming to favorite band in a local pub. Australia. It was fun to hang out with them and treat them to a feast of seafood fresh off the Elwin was apparently fond of saying that Sharee local boats. This wasn’t the bush, doll! For isn’t backward about being forward. She isn’t breakfast we ate mangos — dream food of my afraid to make her wants and opinions known. childhood on Yap — and life was very good One of her opinions is that Mercury Dry Cider indeed. is much better than Strongbow, and she said as much to the woman at the bottleshop in The four of us went to the market town of Yeppoon. The woman was of the opposite Eumundi on Valentine’s Day, and then Jack and opinion, nor was she afraid to say so. She’d Sheilla bid us adieu and continued on to gotten more bad bottles of Mercury than she Brisbane, while Sharee and I headed up to cared to remember and couldn’t be bothered Pomona to take a look at Australia’s first silent anymore. Sharee’s experience was just the movie theater, the Majestic, est. 1921. In the opposite: she’s had to send back far more hotel in Pomona, we ran into Sharee’s friend bottles of Strongbow than of Mercury. The Mick, who invited us to spend the night at his other woman just didn’t like the taste of house. I was a little miffed that we wouldn’t be Mercury. Sharee thought Mercury clearly had having a romantic evening on our own, but it the superior taste. They exchanged these views ended up being a great deal of fun, despite for a while, completely without rancor, but Mick’s tendency to explain his philosophy of without any acknowledgment that tastes might life at greater length than necessary. He and his vary. wife have built their own house (including making the lumber) at the edge of a national I’d seen the same thing a couple days before at forest, where we saw enormous old growth the Bush Tucker Café (no relation to Bob) just Flooded Gums the next morning. That night, south of Cairns, where the woman who ran the however, we went to a mate’s birthday party, place exchanged diametrically opposed views of and I was introduced to real ocker Ozzies, who Townsville with Sharee for a while. (Sharee weren’t sure what to make of my name. “You’ll thinks it’s a pit, while the other woman thought need to change it if you live here,” Mick it had “a nice sense of community.”) I always advised. When he heard my middle name is read these exchanges as pigheaded, but as I say, Dean, he said that Deano would be perfect. it doesn’t seem to lead to any bad feelings. One of the funniest instances was in a hotel in The next day we went to Dave and Bess’s house Mareeba, where Sharee asked the woman in Tewantin, on the Sunshine Coast. Dave and behind the counter if the fish in the fish and Bess immigrated from Britain to Australia after chips was fresh. It wasn’t. WWII, and Bess (who grew up in the Shetlands) had some great stories about the tribulations of “I only eat fresh fish,” Sharee explained their first years in the country. “There weren’t pointedly. enough houses for people, so we lived in a “This is the bush, doll,” the woman replied. glorified tent. The roads were terrible things, “There isn’t any fresh fish.” just a patch of gravel. I was so naïve. I ironed

Under the Rainbow, or A Pot of Gold 103 our sheets like a good middle-class wife. The I was already thinking wildly that I would just other women must have thought I was crazy.” pull up my deep roots in Seattle and move down there. Sharee makes a philosophy of We stayed at their house that night and then changing plans, so I have no doubt that these took the scenic route through rolling hills to tentative ideas will evolve in new directions. their son Dave’s in Gympie the next day. Dave, She’s back on the fishing boat now, and we’ve like Mick, is a friend that Sharee met through already begun talking about getting together in Elwin, and I heard a lot of Elwin stories on this Mexico in July. Fiamma and Alfonso will be leg of the trip. Bess thought he was a savage and visiting his family there for a few months, and a terrible chauvinist, and everybody spoke of she has been encouraging Sharee to come stay the great strength and fierceness of this former with them. If she’s going to be that close to Commonwealth (or perhaps only Queensland) Seattle, I might as well go spend some time with boxing champ from South Africa. Mick thought her! he had some Zulu in his heritage, but Sharee is sure it’s Malay. Dave had a roomful of stuff that I’ve been pretty much a loner all my life, and Elwin had finally agreed to let Sharee have from the only relationship I’ve had that was remotely their life together. We spent two days driving like a regular boyfriend-girlfriend thing was the through the hinterlands of the Sunshine Coast, year I lived with Molly in college, over twenty where Sharee had lived with Elwin for a time years ago. I’ve had other loves and lovers since and where she’d love to live again. The beautiful then (although not many), but it has always emerald green hills and valleys looked like the been partial, confused, uncommitted. Sharee Irish countryside, and it was pretty easy to and I seem to form a circuit which sends the imagine a peaceful life there, far from the love around and around in a continuing flow — madding cities, but still close enough for the an amazing feeling that I’ve never experienced occasional taste of urban pleasures. before, as though we are simply elements conducting a basic energy, passing the tai chi We spent two nights with Dave Jr., who was ball of love back and forth. As much as these preparing to undergo radiation therapy for lung metaphors suggest sex, and as undeniably great cancer after chemo had failed to kill the tumor. as the sex is, it’s much more than that, of Sharee was going to go back to spend more course. There’s a sense that we’ve been given time with him, and to go through the stuff that the chance to do things over again and get it Elwin had left for her, after she saw me off in right this time, to say the things we were never Brisbane. Another long drive got us to the able to say (or hear) in the past. (“I thought you outskirts of the big city, capitol of Queensland, were a bit immature.” “Well, maybe that’s where we found a motel near the airport. We because I was only nineteen?”) Beyond that, sorted and divided the photos the two of us had there is also the sense that the time we’ve spent taken over the course of my visit, and we finally together now has been such a great gift and faced the fact that our beautiful adventure great joy that it fulfills itself — together was over. that it’s already enough, even though there’s more yet to come. The tentative plan we discussed was for me to return for three months in December, although And so it grows.

From Troy to Toronto: Return of the Living Dead (Way, February 2007)

So I’m back from my trip to upstate New York quite good. The highlight of this part of the trip, and Toronto. As anticipated, I had a fricking however, came the next day when we rented a blast at all stops and at all points in between. car and drove into the Berkshire Hills in Funny how good, clean fun (ahem) leaves one western Massachusetts. We drove out on Route so exhausted. Yet I have crawled to my 2, also known as the Mohawk Trail — a keyboard to bring you the tale of my travels. winding, wooded road through the rolling hills (Well, this is after a hike to Kidd Valley for a and dells and picturesque rural towns of the bacon cheeseburger and then to Bottleworks for Berkshires. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and a supply of local beer. Good, clean fun, I tell the woods were doing their best to paint you.) themselves in every possible variegation of light green. My first stop was in Troy, New York, which is near Albany. I was visiting my friend, the We stopped at Williams College for a quick visit incomparable Ron Drummond, who moved with Paul Park, who teaches there, and then we there from Seattle in 2005. The most common continued on to Shelburne Falls, where we met question I heard throughout my visit was . Shelburne Falls is the model for variations on, “Why the hell did he move from Blackbury Jambs in his Aegypt quartet, and he Seattle to Troy?” But Troy is an interesting led us across the Bridge of Flowers and showed post-industrial city in its own right, and the beer us around the town, including Nancy L. Dole’s at Brown’s Taproom, where we met Ron’s wonderful Books & Ephemera shop, where I friend Kevin for dinner Wednesday night, was found ancient tinted postcards of the Mohawk From Troy to Toronto: Return of the Living Dead 105 Trail. Once he had determined that I was not an people I wanted to talk to that I ended up axe murderer or otherwise unkempt, Crowley sitting in a corner anxiously trying to figure out invited us back to his house, where he and Ron where to start. With a much smaller crowd in looked over the proofs of artwork by Peter Toronto, I was paradoxically able to spend Milton that will be used to illustrate the 25th quality time with more people. Yvonne Rowse anniversary edition of Little, Big that Ron’s and Ian Sorensen were the token Brits in Incunabula Press is publishing. (I had carried attendance, and I ended up hanging out with the proofs with me from Seattle, where I’d them quite a bit, which I hadn’t been able to do received them from John D. Berry over a at either Corflu Titanium or at Interaction last couple of pints of Whoville Weizenbock at the year. Ian was in fine form and kept me in Elysian.) Crowley seemed genuinely delighted stitches whenever he was around. Yvonne keeps and excited by the artwork and by the prospect him in stitches, but that’s from hitting him of this special edition of his most famous book. whenever he makes a terrible pun or rude comment, which is approximately every 30 After we left his house, we roared back to Troy seconds. on I-90 to meet Sarah Prince for East Indian food at the Shalimar across the street from Friday night, I helped Colin Hinz load and Ron’s apartment. Sarah delivered stencil artwork transport goods from his house, and I thereby for me to take to Corflu. I was a mule for quite got to see the Gestetner that went spung. It was a number of items with a number of impressive that Colin wasn’t killed in the destinations on this trip! It was great to meet accident. Can’t remember what that style of Sarah after all these years and to hear about life house is called, but I really like it: narrow, deep, in the Adirondacks. She had a lovely dog, too and two stories on top of a finished basement. — a mix of black lab and chow, with short hair, This trip to the Annex neighborhood was pretty a curly tail, and a black tongue. much the most I saw of Toronto. Otherwise I joined several expeditions around the Next day, after breakfast across the Hudson downtown hotel for food, including Ethiopian, River with Ron, I was picked up by Geri Chinese, Middle Eastern, Japanese (for the Sullivan for a roadtrip to Corflu. My geography convention brunch) and New York deli meals. lesson continued, as we traveled due west on I- (Do they really serve something called “peameal 90 across the widest part of New York to get to bacon” in NYC?) I was one of the auctioneers Toronto. I guess I’ve always thought Toronto for the TAFF auction, joining Murray Moore was due north of New York, but I guess I was, and Andy Porter. That was fun, and we you know, fucking wrong. Montreal, in fact, is collected over $300 for TAFF, which was pretty due north of New York. Geri and I had a darned good for such a small group. The wonderful gabfest for most of the nine-hour fannish slideshow that night was great, with journey. She sure does know what’s going on in many gasps of astonishment at thirty-year-old a lot of different fannish communities! Reader, I photos of friends who were once thin and dark- now have your number. We also stopped at (not to mention long-) haired. Many laughs Niagara Falls, which I hadn’t seen since I was a were to be had as Mike Glicksohn barked baby. Nothing looked at all familiar, oddly “Next!” every time Taral tried to show a enough. landscape photo from one of his roadtrips. Not Then we hit the convention, and as usual the infrequently, this would become, “Next! Next! linear narrative went nonlinear. It was a small Next! Next! Next! Next! Next!” Mike was in Corflu, with only 26 in attendance, but I’ve great form, and the loss of a kidney did not never had a bad time at a Corflu and that’s still seem to slow down his consumption of peaty true. Actually, last year in San Francisco was single malt one whit. almost too much of a good thing, with so many

106 Thy Life’s a Miracle

Hope Leibowitz was the random guest of on how the horrific Saskatchewan dustbowl of honor, and I took great pleasure in prodding her the ’30s led to an overrepresentation of about her speech as often as I could. She Saskatchewanians in the political elite was a seemed to enjoy the teasing and ended up giving sociological masterwork. Then there was Janet a wonderfully Leibowitzian speech from Wilson and her son, Paul, who knows way more scrambled notes. It was very cute and very about mimeos than I do even though he’s half appropriate, and a chance for her to think about my age. He and Colin worked hard on the and summarize her experience in fandom. program souvenir book throughout the You’re free now, Hope, and maybe I’ll follow convention, and Geri, Andy, Hope, and I played your lead and try to get it over with as soon as mimeo groupies Sunday night as we watched possible in the future rather than bribing my them wrestle with Gestetners while Geri found way out of it! entertaining items to peruse on teh internets. It’s probably no surprise that Murray’s There weren’t a lot of zines at this fanzine suggestion last week, when I announced the convention, but Ian brought copies of his roadtrip with Geri, that I ask her about the Snapshot 7 and Pete Young’s Zoo Nation 7, Jim status of the issue of Science-Fiction Five-Yearly Caughran had an issue of A Propos de Rien, and I that is due this November has resulted in my handed out a few extra copies of Lilian being invited by Geri to co-edit. Ted White told Edwards’ final Floss! from last year. (Another me it would be a good rite of passage, and I great issue of ZN, Pete. I read most of it on the said, “Sounds like more of a hazing to me.” But flight back, and I’m especially wowed so far by I know that working with Geri is going to be a the piece on the Toynbee Tiles. Dude, that’s a lot of fun (she’s already talking about a collation brilliant editorial score!) party in Massachusetts), and wow, it’s really Okay, I’m running out of steam here, so I think something to be working on a Lee Hoffwoman I’ll end with something Don Anderson told me zine. It’s enough to make a fan doubt his in the consuite Friday night. I mentioned that worthiness! But if Geri and Ted think I can Geri and I had taken I-90 much of the way hack it, I guess I’ll give it a go. Thanks, Geri! from New York and that it led all the way to my The chance to get to know a bit more about hometown, Seattle, on the other end of the Toronto fandom was also welcome. I finally continent. Don said that it has always met the very genial Lloyd Penney, with whom I comforted him to think that from his house in got to talk quite a bit. Lloyd was quite handy Rochester, NY he could, if he wanted, drive a around the convention as well and kept track of few blocks to I-90 and head west across the the winning bids and collected the money at the country, get off in Issaquah, WA and drive a auction amongst other things. One person I few blocks to get to Wally Weber’s house. I-90: hadn’t heard of before the convention was Phil Roadway to the Fans. I had a great time on the Paine, who turned out to be quite a database of eastern ends of it, and now it’s great to be back Canadian history, sociology, linguistics, at the western end that I call home. economics, and just about everything else. I Thanks to Ron for all his hospitality and think I learned more about Canada in three friendship, and thanks to Catherine, Colin, and conversations with him than I had learned in Murray for a small but perfectly formed Corflu. my previous 45 years on this planet, and it was See everybody next year in Austin, TX. fascinating stuff, at least to me. The discourse

Twin Peaks in the East (Way, February 2007)

It took Geri Sullivan and me (myself & I) very slowly over the course of days in a process approximately three-and-a-half days to print very different from the reproduction of Chunga, Science-Fiction Five-Yearly 12, starting with several which consists of sending a PDF to a printshop sides printed on the color inkjet at her house, and picking up the printed, collated, and stapled Toad Woods (which was built in 1973, of result later the same day. The communion I course), on the Sunday evening and Monday achieved with Mr. G on Monday, Tuesday, and morning after Thanksgiving. We were still the first part of Wednesday was very calming printing (and Geri was still laying out) the final and made me feel all accomplished and pages as the collation started in the NESFA craftsmanlike and earthy and everything. clubhouse in Boston Wednesday night, with “It’s now literally true that this zine has my most of the final sides printed on the new Dell fingerprints all over it!” I crowed to Geri, as I color laser printer that Geri in the meanwhile looked at an ink-smudged page. I had already bought from our hostess with the mostest, Deb felt that my editorial fingerprints were all over Geisler. In between these bookends, I printed the thing, but they’re harder to see unless you side after side on Mr. Gestetner, aka Mr. G, the know they’re there. NESFA mimeo copy-printer, which is not in fact a Gestetner at all. As the collation party time of 7 p.m. approached on Wednesday, however, the sense This was the first time that I had ever taken part of peace and reproductive bliss (ahem) began to in printing out a fanzine one side at a time like fray under the pressure of actually getting the what they did in olden days, except they used damned thing good and damnit done. The hand-typed stencils and hand-cranked mimeos NESFAns began to appear and to clamor for rather than this fancy automated stuff. It was work to do. Two of the earliest arrivals, Tony fascinating to watch the zine take shape very, Lewis and Ted Atwood, started to tape Pantone 108 Thy Life’s a Miracle chips and Rotslers, respectively, to the inside of side that were blank on the other. I ran them to the back cover. I fed Fibertone to the laser Mr. G to print the other side, trying to get the printer, while Geri tried to finish her editorial paperfeed realigned after several NESFAns had amidst one distraction and interruption after used it to print their apazines, which had been another. As more collators arrived, we decided printed and collated already that evening in a to collate the completed second half of the zine separate room. first, while Geri and I finished off a few pages About then Ron Drummond called to say in the first half. Others were set to work putting “Boo!” labels and stamps on envelopes, although Geri was anxious that stamping an empty envelope “So are you having fun?” he asked, after I was a recipe for mailing an empty envelope. explained the wall of noise in the background. Somewhere amidst the growing sense of chaos, “Actually, it’s not very fun at the moment,” I a strapping young man showed up at the front said. I was feeling exhausted and stressed out. door of the clubhouse and emitted newbie The clubhouse was buzzing with motion and signals. Geri rushed over to explain that this talk, and it was hard to think straight. Somehow was, indeed, the NESFA clubhouse and that we Geri sailed through all the madness with calm were collating a fanzine. As he looked at the purpose, directing the various jobs and well-oiled NESFA machine grinding with answering the host of questions. I managed to practiced, telepathic efficiency through the help with the collation of the first half of the process, a look of panic and confusion zine, and thus got back a bit of focus. When inhabited his face. I turned away to feed more that was done, I jogged the fully collated zines Fibertone into the printer, and when I looked for Dale Farmer, expert stapler, who stapled back he had vanished in a flurry of speed lines. almost all of the approximately 340 zines that Seemed a bit ironic, considering the number of resulted from a total attempted print run of 350. articles in the second half of the issue (then (A pretty damned good completion-ratio, too, it under collation) about recruiting new fans. But seems to me.) NESFAns began to leave with we old-timers are kinda scary looking, aren’t we? cheery good-byes and tearful hugs. By 10:30, three and a half hours after the collation party Collation of the second half was completed, and began, we had all of the zines stapled and all of we were not yet done printing the first half. the approximately 340 labeled, stamped “You're going to lose your helpers,” Deb envelopes stuffed and sealed. Neat piles of warned Geri. finished zines teetered atop the work table. I slumped into a couch and chatted with Tony I ran a last side — the inside front cover — to and Dale while Geri wearily packed everything Mr. G, praying that he wouldn’t choose this up. moment to jam or mangle the page. When half the copies were moistly printed, I ran them to The bloody zine was finally, really done. It was, the collating table to get that process going in fact, dead. As the material had come in over again. Meanwhile I shouted at Geri that she the months of editorial work, and then the needed to finish printing the page still in revisions, and then the artwork, I had grown progress in the laser printer, but it ended up that increasingly excited at the quality of what we I’d fed the sheets in upside down, so I had to were getting. In the days before printing began, yank the tray before we misprinted all 75 sheets it seemed to me that we were in the process of remaining. Geri tracked down an expert stapler creating a truly awesome zine that was going to and got the stapling going on the first blow everyone who loved fanzines away. I was completely collated copies. The collators giddy with pleasure at the creative blast of it all, discovered about forty sheets with the beautiful and I only got more giddy as Geri started color header of Christina Lake’s piece on one working her design magic, capping it all with

Twin Peaks in the East 109 that amazing color photo montage in the header Metro-North train into the city. The tracks ran of Christina’s piece. Maybe I simply got too right along the Hudson, and we passed through excited, but by the end of the collation party I a land of many connections, including the island had lost all sense of whether what we’d actually ruins that were the scene of the great party in managed to create and send out into the world Crowley’s Aegypt. (Or was the party in Love and was any good or not. It was just a bundle of Sleep?) And then here was Yonkers, and didn’t furry paper, and I was just a bundle of fried John D. Berry grow up there? Didn’t realize it nerves. was so far north of the city. (Turns out it was actually nearby Bronxville where he grew up, It was in this mental state that I proceeded to but we were close anyway.) I looked through a Logan International airport the next day, thanks photocopy of the first pages of the hand-written to a ride from Deb, and proceeded via first draft of Crowley’s Little, Big as we passed Philadelphia on to Troy, NY to visit Ron. I slept through the Platonic landscape informing the for close to twelve hours that night, which was fantastic geography of the book, tracing good food. A day spent bopping around Troy Oberon’s trail to the City. and Albany, visiting a bookstore, eating a Pakistani dinner (accompanied by a genuine We detrained in Grand Central Station — the New York roach), and catching a showing of first time I’d ever been there, as far as I can The Fountain helped further restore my blasted remember. It was dark by the time that we senses, although I didn’t like the movie very climbed out of the subway at 79th and much, in contrast to Ron who loved it. We Broadway. Twenty minutes later we were sitting chewed over our differences with the help of in the Hi-Life Bar and Grill on Amsterdam with beer at two different bars, including Brown’s Chip Delany, eating nachos and raw oysters and Taproom, a brewpub that anyone visiting Troy drinking a brown ale brewed in Brooklyn. Chip would do well to visit. was taking a short break from making The next day, Saturday the 2nd, was the second corrections to the galleys of his new novel, Dark peak of my trip out East. We had rented a car Reflections (if I’m not misremembering the title). the day before and had debated taking a daytrip Typical of Chip, the “corrections” had into Vermont or up the Hudson River Valley apparently already included 2,000 additional north of Troy. In the end we decided to take a words. It was a blast to see him on his home jaunt into Manhattan instead. The so-called plan turf, and he enthused to us about a couple of was hatched at the last minute, with everything movies he’d seen recently, Happy Feet and, evolving on the fly. We had been up into the against received wisdom, the recent adaptation wee hours watching Pedro Almodovar’s of All the King’s Men, which he reckoned was the perverse creampuff of a screwball comedy, Tie best political movie he’d seen in yoinks (or Me Up, Tie Me Down, on DVD, so we slept late perhaps in Yonkers). He also told us about the again. Ron made a couple of calls to friends in nearby Thai fusion restaurant called Rain, which NYC after we got up, and we hit the road by he said was spendy but worth the trip to the noon. The first leg of the journey was a drive city. Both judgments were confirmed when Ron down I-87 along the Hudson River heading and I ate there a little later. Ron’s green curry, in south, although the river was generally out of particular, was amazingly good, with an extraordinarily subtle but vivid heat, and the sight of the freeway. It was a gorgeous sunny day, miles away from the reputed snows of waiter was a complete gas who earned himself a Seattle. We listened to the new Beatles mash-up very nice tip with an energetic, personable album, Love, which set the spirits soaring with performance. its reimagining and remixing of familiar old From there we headed to the Lincoln Plaza songs. An hour and half after we left Troy, we theaters via a walk through Strawberry Fields cut over to Poughkeepsie and caught the 2:30 memorial to John Lennon in Central Park and a

110 Thy Life’s a Miracle quick stop at the liquidating Tower on Or was the absurdity of the crime, or at least its Broadway. At the theater we discovered that the complete detachment from realistic 9:30 showing of Almodovar’s new movie, consequence, the point? Volver, was sold out, so we bought tickets for Then it was a race via subway to Grand Central the 10:30 showing and went back to Tower. I Station to catch the last train to Poughkeepsie, walked around the store feeling glum at the departing at 1:50 a.m. I dozed on the train, spectacle of such large quantities of unloved, which was full of drunken twenty-somethings apparently unsellable commodity. Buried in the returning from a night out in the big city. We anonymous masses of plastic, I did discover a arrived in Poughkeepsie after 4, and we drove stray copy of 7 Year Bitch’s Viva Zapata and felt back to Troy with the Beatles blaring on the somehow salved. Almodovar’s movie was very excellent car stereo, which kept us awake. I hit charming, if strangely structured with thriller the couch at Ron’s place at 5:45 in the morning, elements that are completely subsumed within a and was up five hours later to head to the melodrama of women surviving, and helping Albany airport. each other survive, a host of trials and traumas and revelations of the sordid past. He has I was fried again, and life was pretty damned become a master of melding genres in good. The zine is, come to think of it, pretty unexpected and compelling ways, although I damned good too, isn’t it? Yeah, what the hell. think Live Flesh and Bad Education are better at It’s all good! incorporating the thriller elements than this one.

Potlatch Snapshots (Apparatchik 75, March 1997)

Here’s one of Ron. He’s stretched out on his + This one’s a standard panel shot: Howard back on a bed in the smoking consuite, eyes Waldrop, Eileen Gunn, and Ellen Klages sit closed, battered hat crushed between his head behind a long table. A toy rat sits on the mike, and the mattress. It’s late; he looks exhausted. A guarding against unwanted feedback. Howard bearded man sits by his head, lips parted to and Ellen are looking at Eileen. Eileen is form a word that has no origin or closure, that pointing at the camera. The white linen that circles and circles around the void. In the center covers the table could be the shroud of the of the photo there is an almost unnoticeable undead stories that haunt this room. It is just as distortion. It hovers in the air above Ron’s face. likely the birth sheet of a long labor. At the Is it a warp in this cheap camera’s focus? A bottom of the frame is the unmistakable crown patch of stale cigarette smoke? Or is Ron of Deb Notkin’s head. Hm. Was she even in the seeking to project himself into an astral escape room at the time? from the eternal drone of loneliness? + I wouldn’t believe this if I hadn’t seen the + Oh, this is a good one. It’s a long shot of the picture. Who is more astounded, Chairman dance floor. To the left, Apak Shakur, aka DJ Luke or the puckish Tami? Luke’s bare chest Vacuo, looks up, startled, from a neat array of peeks through a white frock coat. His bare willie CDs. His eyes have the feral red glint of the peeks over the waist band of his outlandish giant rat of Sumatra. To the right, Jerry alone golden harem pants, which Tami has tugged lifts a foot in a Spanish step. In the middle down from behind. Tami’s face has I-thought- distance, Lesley and Heather gesture, though I there’d-be-underwear written all over it. Luke’s can’t quite make out whether they are amazed willie has Yikes! written all over it. To the side, or alarmed. That must be my foot straying from Jeanne Bowman leans over to read it. behind the speaker, definitely alarmed. 112 Thy Life’s a Miracle

+ Here’s another one from the smoking suite. blurry background, that’s Lesley not paying any On the right, A.P. McQuiddy is laughing at attention. something outside the frame. Sheila lounges in + Ah, here’s one of the few not taken at the the middle, looking as though she feels three hotel itself. The setting is the Elysian Brewpub. hours older than most everybody else. Victor, In the middle, we have Fast Tommy Ferguson, on the left, is looking at Sheila and rubbing his come to us from Belfast via Toronto. On his shoulder; in his eyes, the dreaminess of pain. left are Ron and A.P. again. On his right, carl is + Here are three bushy beards. Chuck Garvin’s making an enigmatic sign with one hand. He’s is stained with nicotine that has transmigrated probably trying to protect his soul from the from his restless fingers. Mark Manning’s rides hunger of the camera, but it probably won’t do his stout chest with Tolkienesque irreality. Art’s him any good. Tommy is grinning, because he evokes Walt Whitman, Santa Claus, and God believes he has discovered that American fans Almighty in rapid succession. By all accounts, it like to have sex at conventions. The pint glasses was the latter incarnation that showed up for are empty of pale ale. the Friday night poker game. + Ooh! Here’s one of Hooper staring at a + This, of course, is David Hartwell. His eyes blurry dog. Or is it an ape? Andy’s eyes are red are alight with holy fire, for he is telling me in this one, too. Must be the camera. about Phoenix Café, the new novel by Gwyneth + How sad. Here’s another one of the dog, or Jones, just out in the UK. Yes, that’s the back of ape, but now it’s dead. All around the carcass, my head, inclined in an attitude of attention, or not quite coming into focus, is the real world. of prayer. My left hand reaches for the book, Looks like a picture of a hangover. which isn’t here yet. I look like a fanboy’s dream of a hipster, but it’s only an illusion. In the

Hugoing, Going, Gone (Chunga 11, January 2006)

Welcome back to fandom, babe! One of the bloody Hugo losers’ party with a bad babe on great pleasures of this Worldcon was my my arm, oh yes, I did. Sharee was only too personal transformation from the one and only happy to accept the invitation. It seemed a Randy Byers, two-fisted TAFF bureaucrat and brilliant enough award in itself — and obviously internationally-acclaimed winner of the FAAn the only award I was going to get that night. I Award for Best Hugo Nominee, into someone was under no illusions that Chunga had any whom Ian Sorensen, with bland glee, took to chance at winning a rocket. calling That Guy With Sharee — a forgotten Of course, what I hadn’t planned on was China appendage of the hottest, freshest, loveliest Miéville arriving at the pre-Hugo reception with photographer, gypsy punk, pirate queen, and a bad babe on his arm. Next time maybe I’ll try degafiating faned in all Australia, if not all the a smoldering look, since it certainly worked for world. him. All I could manage this time around was a Sharee and I had originally planned to meet in moon-eyed panic-stricken look. Or at least Mexico City in July for the wedding of some that’s how I felt I looked. While Sharee — who friends, but when Fiamma and Alphonso looked absolutely stunning herself in a fuchsia postponed the wedding, my thoughts satin party dress — compared tattoos with immediately turned to Glasgow, which I had Miéville’s Amazonian consort, Jesse, I wandered been pining for as soon as Chunga was through the hordes of friends and strangers, nominated for the Hugo and Claire Brialey lamely teasing David Hartwell that his typically asked if I’d be there. “As Sue Mason remarked,” garish ensemble was actively evil, and feeling Claire wrote, “at least the losers’ party should be utterly nauseous with nerves. Hadn’t really a bloody good piss-up.” I wanted to attend the 114 Thy Life’s a Miracle planned on that part either. Was this supposed was weird? Then there was Suzle up at the to be fun? podium announcing that Plokta had won. Of course. “How quickly the Hugo went from seeming completely irrelevant to being, surprisingly, “Some day all this will be yours,” Dave actually quite important,” as Mark Plummer Langford said, indicating with a sweep of his observed. What was worse was that even hand a table full of smudged, empty pint glasses though I knew Chunga had no hope of winning, — but I wasn’t ready to clean up just yet, I still desperately hoped it would. The hors obviously. Anyway, that was the next day, the d’oeuvres were served, but my stomach was in last day of the convention, in the fan lounge. such a knot that I couldn’t begin to imagine (The Plokta Cabal deserved a Hugo for Best eating anything. Fan Lounge, too.) “Good,” said Alison Scott, with grim David Marusek, who was sitting to my left in satisfaction. “I’m glad I’m not the only one.” the dark of the ceremonies, leaned over and said, “Sorry you didn’t get it.” However, it seemed that going to the ceremony on an empty stomach was a terrible idea, so I I gave him a plastic smile. “That’s okay,” I lied, nibbled a couple of dainty morsels ... and although I followed it with the truth: “We didn’t immediately felt calmer. So of course that’s expect to win.” I wanted to sound cool and when Mike Scott and Flick excitedly told me ruefully accepting, but instead I sounded like a they knew how many rockets there were and crushed, discarded styrofoam cup. David that clearly at least one category was going to flinched away from my naked pain. have multiple winners. It was impossible to tell The Hugo losers’ party was pretty much a if it meant two winners in two categories or complete bust after that high point. I got in three in one. However, three was possible, ahead of most everyone for a plate of more which meant that perhaps Plokta or Chunga had hors d’oeuvres, but the drink line was a mile won. This news sent my desperate hopes long for a glass of crappy wine. Thankfully the spinning out of control. I tried doing the math ever cheerful Sharee, who after all still looked myself while Flick tried to distract me with her absolutely ravishable in her amazing fuchsia shiny new engagement ring. Numbers and rings dress, winged her way to the outside bar and whirled meaninglessly through the unplumbable brought me a beer paid for by the Hugo- abyss of my mind. winning Susannah Clarke. I sat at a table that Sitting in the darkness at the ceremony shortly had been quickly redubbed the Plokta Spaceport thereafter, I wrestled with sheer, raw, pulsing, and tried to be cheerful and congratulatory, or sweaty terror. I had written A Little Speech Just at least wryly amusing. In Case (Not That It’s Likely, Of Course), but I “That’s it,” I said mournfully. “If we’re going to couldn’t imagine delivering it now. If we won, be snubbed for the Hugo, I quit. Fuck it. I’m my heart would start jackhammering against my done with fanzines.” ribs and ricocheting into my throat, where it would block the passage of words, which would Steve Davies gave me a look of mounting only escape in a weak, stuttering, pinched incredulity. “Try losing six times in a row first!” falsetto. I-I-I-I feel. I-I-I-I should apologize. To the he cried. He laughed maniacally and went back Plok-k-k-k-k-ta Cabal before they take me. Out to the to obsessively fingering the subtle flaw he’d car. P-p-p-park and work me. Over. discovered in his rocket. Oh, the humiliation! I writhed in agony in my The Cabal soon disappeared, and if I’d been seat and wondered whether I could ask Sharee paying attention to my surroundings rather than to go up in my place. Would people think that pretending to be chipper while I secretly

Hugoing, Going, Gone 115 wallowed in gloom, I would have told Sharee Bacon shouting Mehinghe! with Stef. There was we should follow them. Dave O’Neill cuddling his special bottle of Glenmorangie like a baby. There was Anders From what I heard the next day, the celebratory with an ancient, dusty bottle of Calvados that party back at the Fan Lounge was one of the he’d been saving for a special occasion. Here we highlights of the convention. Instead I all were at a special occasion. Here, in fact, was exchanged mobile phone texts with Alison the bloody good piss-up I’d been dreaming of Fairchild, who was kind enough to send a clever (although perhaps not quite as good as the consolation message from London. I whirled bloody good piss-up the night before.) Here around the Hilton ballroom a bit trying to help was Sharee still looking radiant in her gleaming Lilian Edwards get past the door monitors into fuchsia dress. the party, but I was afraid to ask Janice Gelb if she’d do me a favor. I mean, what had I ever I was in Glasgow, at the World Science done for her? So GUFF god Damien Warman Fiction Convention with Sharee frickin’ Carton. asked her instead, while I stood back feeling Who’d’a thunk it? Who’d’a dreamt it? Was it all useless and GUFF goddess Juliette Wood stood a dream? back beaming admiration at him. Two nights before, at 4 a.m., we’d said ta ta to Somewhere along the way, Hugo administrator our lovely friends at the convention and Paul Dormer announced that the vote tallies stumbled out into the night. Our hotel looked had been released. so close on the map, but we got lost (my fault) and wandered quite far in the wrong direction. “Don’t tell Randy the fanzine results!” Jerry Somewhere in the middle of Glasgow at 4 a.m. Kaufman warned. we ran into a brawl outside a nightclub. A “Why not?” I asked. “Did we come in last?” It young man came running in our direction with didn’t seem possible that my heart could sink another in deadly pursuit. Someone was any lower, but it exceeded expectations. shouting, “Murder! Murder!” The first young “At least you weren’t beaten by No Award,” man hit the concrete not far from us, and the Jerry observed helpfully. other started kicking him in the ribs. Another guy rushed up to join him at the task. The guy Sharee returned from working the crowd in her on the ground was bleeding, he was screaming usual gregarious and effervescent manner. “Do for mercy, trying to explain. We edged around you still love me even though I lost the Hugo?” them and continued up the sidewalk as more I asked her in another pathetically lame attempt young men came running down the street, to be wry. “I love you even more,” she said dodging past us on the way. Nobody paid us matter-of-factly, and she kissed me on the cheek any attention. We threaded our way through the with her glossy fuchsia lips. Dang it, things were people standing outside the club, and nobody looking up all of a sudden! reacted in any way to our presence. We were So we wandered out of the ballroom and into clearly invisible, although we were both dressed the madding crowd, and there were our friends as pirates. A young woman swung her purse partying on the floor. There was Anders wildly at a young man who raced past her, and Holmström with an ancient, dusty bottle of the screamed a hot curse after him. Oud Beersel brewery’s Oude Geuze Vielle that We were lost and invisible in the dark streets of he had been saving for a special occasion. There a strange city, and the boys cried out in pain and was Tobes Valois with his ever ready flask of anger, and the streets ran with rivers of Scottish Calvados. There was Doug Bell and Christina blood. But I was with my pirate queen, and I Lake and Lennart Uhlin looking all cute and was riding high on her smile, with her arm cherubic and happy as hell. There was James looped through mine; she’d be there on my arm

116 Thy Life’s a Miracle at the Hugos too, and I might be her forgotten — but I tell you, my friend, it was all good. Oh appendage, you might no longer remember who yes. It was fucking glorious. I am, if you ever knew — just another nameless Sic transit gloria mundi. TAFF functionary and meaningless-Hugo loser

Twenty-Five Things About Corflu Silver (Beam 1, June 2008)

1. How I got there! Last time was Corflu Badger in Madison, if I don’t misremember.

2. Introducing the Corflu 50 3. Leigh, Lee, or Lorelei of the Red Mists — The first fans I saw at Corflu Silver were Steve it’s all the same and Elaine Stiles, who were registering at the hotel as I arrived to do the same. Steve and “Is this WAHF from Leigh Brackett for real?” Elaine were attending the convention courtesy Frank Lunney asked in the consuite, referring to of the Corflu 50, a new fan fund created by the WAHF column in Chunga 14. “Earl said that Rich Coad. The idea is to get a group of fifty she just died last year, so it was possible. But people to contribute $25 each annually toward that doesn’t seem right!” the expense of bringing a worthy fan to Corflu. “Um, what? No, the Leigh Brackett WAHF The awardee is agreed on by consensus within isn’t for real, although she did write what we the group of contributors. We have not yet quoted. And she didn’t just die last year, did reached fifty members, so if you’d like to join she? No, she died before The Empire Strikes Back this worthy effort and sway our choice of next came out, whenever that was. 1979? 1980?” year’s beneficiary, please contact Rich Coad. Maybe Mr. Kemp was thinking of Lee Oh, and thanks again for the bacover for Chunga Hoffman, who did die just last year, may she 14, Steve! Nice to see you again, too, Elaine. rest in peace. Lord knows I used to confuse the 118 Thy Life’s a Miracle two all the time. Great minds confuse alike? Outlaw Mutation Boogie 65, ed. Mark Plummer; (Yes, Geri, this is a nudge. Pub your ish!) No Award 17, ed. Marty Cantor; Void 17, ed. Greg Benford, Ted E. White 4. CorFandom? Just what the hell is it that fandom is supposed 7. Where have you gone Charles Burbee? to be correcting? I bought the copy of Void 17 listed above in the auction. It appears it was published in 1959 or thereabouts. This copy was addressed to Charles 5. Brought to you by Dr. Byers’ Lizard-brain Burbee, and the following items are checked off Tonic in the You Are Receiving This Because column: It’s cupcake time again in Akron, , and all I got * We’d muchly like a contribution from you for a future was this lousy lizard hindbrain. issue Apparently Ken is now summoning fen, plucking them * This is a complimentary copy from the aether by circulating rumors * We still have hopes of reviving you from your mummy- of their arrival. I have seen Widner sing the blues, I have like current state of suspended fanimation sympathized with Andy Hooper’s existential horror at being named GOH, I have heard vicious rumors about the alleged 8. Meanwhile in the Virtual Con Suite... arrival of Shelvy. It’s pushing two a.m. on Saturday 08:00 ceemage : I think we have the first morning, and the party persists in the interactive smoking lounge. None of this addresses the giant badger 08:00 ceemage : we had an excellent view of problem, easily the most divisive Mark’s bum issue of the entire convention, if not the most pressing 08:01 ceemage : for the first 10 mins matter of our time. Lizards are as 08:01 BohemianCoast : What are they looking nothing in the face of a giant badger. Yes, this is how I at? chose to spend my meager allotment 08:01 BohemianCoast : Are they looking at us? of lines, why do you ask? 08:01 BohemianCoast : You need to look at the — JoHn Hardin, Nine Lines Each 52 camera 08:01 ceemage : we know, randy 6. Fanzines brought home from Vegas 08:01 Absarka : We hear you... Motorway Dreamer, ed. John Nielsen Hall; Been 08:01 IanSorensen : Talk to camera guys There Done That!, ed. Steve Stiles; Future’s Past, 08:01 ReplyHazy : Always the director... ed. Elaine Stiles; Inca 3, ed. Rob Jackson; 08:02 BohemianCoast : Hogsback Burma Star Random Jottings 3, ed. Michael Dobson; Light in Ale the Bushel 7, Richard Brandt; Skug 17, ed. Gary S. Mattingly; Whistlestar 7, ed. Lenny Bailes; Nine 08:04 ustreamer-25992 : Has the con stopped Lines Each 51, 52, 53, ed. Ken Forman, JoHn now? Hardin, Ben Wilson, Andy Hooper; Amazing 08:04 eFanzines : Shelby Vick has left the room Instant X-Ray Egoboo Scanner, ed. Graham Charnock; No Sin But Ignorance 48, ed. Claire 08:12 DianCrayne : Show us your knickers, Brialey; Cow is giving kerosene, ed. Nic Farey; then!

Twenty-Five Things About Corflu Silver 119

08:13 I-94 : Commando 08:13 jpurcell-1 : nice art 10. The reason for the visit 08:13 ceemage : steffan covers are like Where else would you see Murray Moore, macroons Sandra Bond, Bill Bodden, Shelby Vick, Gregg 08:13 IanSorensen : Show us Trend, Pat Charnock, and Ross Chamberlain in the same room? 08:13 ceemage : you can never have too many of them 08:13 I-94 : Shiny 11. What did you think the slots were for? 08:13 CurtPhillips : It's always Charnock... This was my first visit to Las Vegas since the family passed through on a roadtrip when I was 08:14 PeterVorzimmer : Lollocs, hmmm.... a child. I was fantasted by the utter ubiquity of 08:15 jpurcell-1 : Andy H: loved the play slot machines. There were slot machines in the reading airport. There was a slot machine in the taxi. You had to pass through banks upon banks of 08:15 ceemage : we saw the rehersals at least slot machines to get to hotel registration. There 08:15 CurtPhillips : I see Marty! Hi Marty! were slot machines in the hotel elevator. There was a slot machine in the headboard of my bed. 08:15 IanSorensen : Hear play fine. Didn’t get a When I threw back the sheets, I found a slot lot of the jokes machine in the bed itself. Boy, did the bells ring 08:15 jpurcell-1 : something is making me want when I fed that slot! All night long! to put in callout balloons with the words POW and ZANG! in them 12. Mundane politics 08:15 AndyPorter : Nice suspenders While splitting an apple fritter with Robert 08:16 IanSorensen : I LIKE bad jokes Lichtman, I sat talking with him and Elinor 08:16 IanSorensen : Known as the Thief of Busby and Don Anderson about the US Badgags presidential campaign. Don said this was the first time that none of the candidates interested him, and he didn’t know who he was going to 9. Everybody’s a critic vote for. Elinor and Robert were both of the school that they were happy to vote for anybody other than a Republican. I missed my opportunity to explain that this is the first time I’ve ever been excited about a presidential candidate: Obama. My apologies to John Hertz for this intrusion of mundane politics into the fannisphere. Double apologies to Nic, Mark Plummer, and , who were subjected to my drunken rant on the subject at one of the Unusual Suspects gatherings. Perhaps a little bit more excitement than’s good for me!

120 Thy Life’s a Miracle

13. Not seen on the Pine Creek Canyon hike (Copies of Ah Sweet Laney are still available from led by Ken Forman on Friday Pat Virzi. All proceeds from sales go to support Yurawanka Arch. But I saw it on the map and Corflu.) sniggered with Charnock. 17. A damned good question 14. Branding Fandom® Got on the elevator with a bag of fanzines and This space reserved for a cartoon by Dan beer. I discovered Pat Virzi and a stranger. “I’m Steffan. going to drop a load of Chungas on the Fishlifters,” I said to Pat. “They’re handling the British mailing.” She grinned appreciatively. 15. Undormanted fans Later I saw her in the consuite, and she told me This was Lise Eisenberg’s coinage for fans like that after I got off the elevator, the other Graham Charnock and John Nielsen Hall who woman asked, “What’s a chunga?” return to the fold after decades of gafia. Or was it Hope Leibowitz’s coinage? Now if we could 18. Accentuated differences only make them undemented too! “Pile isle,” Mark Plummer said.

“I’m sorry?” said the waiter. 16. Early days of a better fandom “I’d like a pile isle,” Mark explained carefully. I had the pleasure of sitting in a group with Jack Speer and Art Widner in the non-smoking “A pale ale,” Rich suggested to the waiter. consuite Saturday night. I had never spoken “Now you sound like an Aussie,” I told Mark. with Jack before. They wanted to know if I had heard Art sing on Friday after opening “Anybody from Northern England who comes ceremonies, and I said that I had. here can’t help it,” Jim Young claimed. “They hit the American accent, and it immediately “Did you hear the words?” Jack demanded. makes them start sounding like an Aussie.” He’d caught me there, because I’d actually been But I thought Mark was from the Midlands! talking to the Virtual Con Suite while Art sang, And that infamous Queenslander, Nic Farey, is and hadn’t heard the lyrics. I stammered before most assuredly a London boy. Jack’s peremptory question. Turned out later that Art, fellow First Fan, had been singing a filk that Jack wrote back in the day. 19. Radio, radio “Wanna fanzine?” I asked quickly, reaching Andy asked me to perform in his radio play, The into my zine bag. Price of Pugwash. I had played a lead role in his “Got one,” Jack said, and both he and Art play at Boston and had been scarred for life by laughed at me. But he took my zine and looked the stage fright, but he assured me that Baldy through it. Art told him it was worth reading. Walloon was a minor part. Not that he was typecasting for that name! I’ll tell you what, I felt pleased, all in all. Jack Speer was reading though, Aileen Forman is da bomb onstage. my fanzine! On Art Widner’s recommendation! Lise Eisenberg, Lenny Bailes, Lloyd Penney, Wish I’d told Jack how much I liked his piece and the Millses were all terrific too. Bill Mills is about Laney that was reprinted in Ah Sweet indeed a bit of a ham, which went very well with Laney. It’s pretty damned brilliant.

Twenty-Five Things About Corflu Silver 121

Andy’s faanish cheese. But Aileen, Lise, and The last fan I saw at Corflu Silver was Nic Lloyd were the true stars. Farey, aka the Werewolf of Fandom. Nic gave me a werewolf hug. But hold on, actually the

last fan I saw at Corflu Silver was Dr. Rob 20. Going with the flow Jackson, who shook my hand relatively limply Belle Churchill told us about a friend on Hawai’i after Nic’s hug. Except, no, the last fan I saw at who lived by a lava flow. You had to walk Corflu Silver — well, in Vegas anyway — was across it to get to his house. She told us that one Lloyd Penney, whom I saw at the airport night she was tired enough that she slept on the heading purposefully toward what I supposed lava. Boy, was she steamed when she woke up was his gate as I waited in line for food in a in the ocean! terminal restaurant. Not that the restaurant killed me!

24. E-mail message dated Tue, 29 Apr 2008

Hi, Mark. Terrific to see you at Corflu, as always. I 21. Fandom of the grayin went upstairs in my house last night expecting to find Like Andy Hooper said on the panel about you and Claire and Nic with a bottle of Jim Beam, but whatever it was that the panel was about, it isn’t all I found was my housemate sipping some orange juice. that fandom is graying, it’s that fans these days are coming to fanzines after they are already gray. Yes, Bill Mills, I’m looking at you! Harder 25. A quarter century of Corflu to tell with Roxanne. And I’m a good example It’s worth celebrating the fact that Corflu has of this myself. I mean, when was the last time lasted for 25 years so far, with no signs of we gave Best New Fan to a teenager? (Um, hang faltering. All hail the Mothers of Convention, on...) Lucy Huntzinger, Allyn Cadogan, and Shay Barsabe, who started the ball rolling in 1984, and to everyone who has taken their turn in the 22. Here’s mote in yer eye barrel and kept the ball rolling since. All hail When Nic mentioned that he had stayed with Joyce Katz, the Queen of Corflu Silver. All hail John and Eve Harvey on his trip to England for her minions, too, especially her three right his mother’s funeral last year, it suddenly struck hands, Arnie Katz, Teresa Cochran, and James me that when I had stayed there on my TAFF Taylor. Special thanks to James for much trip in 2003, the Jim Beam they offered me had sensible advice and information. Y’all put on been left there by Nic. another terrific edition of Corflu. We’ll try to return the favor! “That was Black Label, wasn’t it?” was his response when I asked. I met the Harveys for the first time at Nic’s 26. Corflu Zed Corflu Valentine in 2002, and at the end of the So next year it’s my turn. Corflu Zed in Seattle, con Eve suggested that I run for TAFF. Just so details TBA. Come to our house, and we’ll I’d finish off the bottle of Beam cluttering their throw a party for you. Come be the life of the shelves, I suppose. Fair enough! party. Find your way into a conreport, even if you have to write it yourself. Let’s have a ball, and keep it rolling. 23. Such sweet sorrow

Less Innocent Abroad A Yank Attempts to Suss the Brits (Banana Wings 24, November 2005)

I normally rely on the kindness of the Internet for Pickersgill at all on my TAFF trip, for example, gossip about distant fans, but there’s nothing like but I had a couple of good chats with him at gossip in the flesh to set the heart racing and the Interaction and also saw him in action on a imagination reeling. Certainly my recent trip to the number of panels. My superficial impression of UK, which ended up at the Glasgow Worldcon, Greg in the past was that he was cranky and left me staggered by everything I heard and emotionally volatile and thus a source of wariness. everything I learned. In the wake of the I was also wary of his apparent belief that most convention, I felt that the Atlantic veils that fans are a horrible disappointment in their inability typically obscure British fandom to US eyes had to measure up to the jiants of the past, and I was parted with a thunderous crack, leaving me with a curious how this attitude would play in a Fan brave new vision of the nature of British fandom. Guest of Honor. In the end, I thought Greg was a Two months later, with the excitement and terrific guest of honor. He made himself available adrenaline of the trip long worn away, I am left to anyone who wanted to talk, and while he with a handful of impressions that I originally expresses a relatively elitist view of fandom, it was received from Victor Gonzalez in several late- easier for me to see the wounded experience night bull sessions five years ago. So much for behind it — the sense that fandom is a refuge brilliant new insights! Ah, but the gossip was still from the cruel, foolish competence of mundanity. good. Greg confessed that he reads a lot about autism and Asperger’s on the web out of the sense that In fact, much of that lost sense of new “he’s one too.” I found this self-doubting glimpse understanding came from building on my TAFF beneath the Viking helmet rather endearing. trip of 2003 to get to know various fans better the second time around. I barely talked to Greg Less Innocent Abroad 123

But, aside from getting to know some of the and Robert Stanek.) Now, there are a number of major players better, the main thing I came away philosophical issues at stake in the argument, and with this time is the sense that British fandom is no doubt there are lots of political aspects that I being reinvigorated — or at least shaken up — by am oblivious to. Lots of people have an interest in waves of newcomers. Lately there has been much the national convention, so there’s plenty of room talk and writing about Third Row fandom, of for controversy. However, it appears that at least course, but they obviously represent only the latest part of the current conflict is generational. There arrivals in the limelight. Before them, it was Ang is a level at which the older and newer generations Rosin and Douglas Spencer, Flick and Max and simply don’t know each other, which results in a Pete Young, Tony Keen and Doug Bell, Yvonne lack of communication and trust. On the other Rowse and Alison Fairchild and Claire Brialey. hand, there do seem to be some honest This is getting us back to the 1995 Worldcon, at philosophical differences as well. (We will ignore least, and at that point I’m not sure whether parts the aspects of it that seem to be about alpha males of the plokta cabal might be included in the list of seeking dominance.) new young turks. The point is that to my eyes the One thing about recent British fanhistory that fanzine-producing part of British fandom has had came up in conversations on both my TAFF trip a steady stream of interesting newcomers in the and this Worldcon adventure was the small, silly past ten years, and as a result one can easily convention. Again, I don’t know of any equivalent imagine a Hugo ballot that included Plokta, Banana in US fandom. By the time I started paying Wings, and Zoo Nation — with Meta now showing attention a few years ago (following the Seattle early promise as it tests its wings. Corflu in 2000), I read without comprehension The US doesn’t have anything remotely like this about cons like Aliens Stole My Handbag and current engagement of a sizeable group of They Came And Shaved Us, but I was given to younger fans with traditional, truffy fandom, at understand on my TAFF trip in 2003 that cons least as far as I’m aware. I’m not sure what like that had been organized for years by folks like explains the difference, unless it is related to the Jim de Liscard and Chris Tregenza. There were renaissance in written SF in the UK in the past even dark rumors that sober figures like Claire had twenty years — which may in turn be related to once been involved in running such cons. From a the economic renaissance there as well. (Yes, distance, these cons did not seem my kind of thing that’s it; it’s all Margaret Thatcher’s fault!) Or at all, as they involved a lot of dressing up in possibly there has always been this steady stream, outrageous costumes and creating and I’ve only become aware of it as I’ve become extemporaneous tableaux vivants and carnival more aware of British fandom. Maybe the influx is games. I’m not much for the theatrical side of life, more noticeable in the UK than the US because but I couldn’t help noticing that many of my (cue lesson from Victor) British fandom is more favorite British fan writers were addicted to this compact and thus easier to see as a whole. Maybe type of convention. there is nothing remarkable going on here at all. So one of the things that seems to be happening is One clue that something remarkable is going on is that ideas from these small, silly conventions have the Matter of Eastercon, which came up again and been imported into the Eastercon, and the again on this trip — partly because I kept asking Eastercon is having a bit of an immune response. people about it. But both James Bacon and Peter But this is also something of a generational thing, Weston volunteered lengthy observations about as older and more traditional fans such as Peter the argument over Eastercon, and Dave Langford Weston and Rog Peyton ask what this has to do was about the only person I asked who wouldn’t with science fiction, and younger fans such as admit to having a position or even an opinion. James Bacon and Max wonder what the big deal (Dave is rather elusive that way, which may be is, since it’s just a bit of fun and entertainment. why his only enemies are the Scientologists. Oh,

124 Thy Life’s a Miracle

I’ve written elsewhere about my own ambivalence I spent a fair amount of time at Interaction in the toward the trufannish tradition, so I tend to company of so-called content providers such as sympathize with the young turks in this debate, Anders Holmström, Jim de Liscard, and Tobes even though the dress-up-and-play-games part of Valois. I’ve begun to see what they and the James their programme isn’t of much personal interest. Gang do as a kind of performance art. That idea However, as I’ve been chewing it over lately, it has resonates interestingly with D West’s notion of struck me that British fans in general — including fannish performance — the idea that everything Peter, who made a fine gangster in Ian Sorensen’s we do in fandom is a performance with which we musical at Corflu Valentine — are much more try to draw attention and egoboo upon ourselves interested in theatrical-style performance than at as well as to entertain and impress our friends. least the parts of US fandom that I hang out with. Whether it’s writing a book review or dressing up Both British conventions I’ve been to have had like a pirate at a convention party, all fanac is gameshow parodies as programming items, and performance. Perhaps traditional and new-fangled fans like Dave Hicks and Tony Keen have made a fandom aren’t so far apart in the end. reputation of doing well at them. British fans like So I hope that British fandom can mend their to dress up for a party, too, and I will confess that generational fences at the Eastercon. If not, I can I truly enjoyed dressing up for the pirate party at always cue another lesson from Victor: Eastercon Interaction — even if, according to Doug Bell, I is bollocks so skip it and go to Novacon instead. looked more like a gay biker than a pirate. (What can I say? I was found living feral in the straight Sorry that these insights are all second-hand. world and raised by gay men.) I was amused to Perhaps Victor should have written this piece find out after the convention that one of the instead. All the same, I hope to make it to a private parties hosted by an actual publisher of the Novacon one of these days to see whether the mother literature also had a pirate theme. Well, as third trip’s the charm that will finally part the my housemate, Denys, used to like to say, damned veils for real. everybody at a convention is in drag. The Brits seem to have a special fondness for it!

The Floating Worldcon (Banana Wings 40, November 2009)

A con, particularly a Worldcon, is a sandbox to which we come with our own pail and shovel. — John Hertz in correspondence

It was a world of artificiality, superficiality, frivolity, and such – a world that existed in daydreams and not of reality, a world where trivia was taken seriously. — Nina Wilhelmina, “Ukiyo”

And so we returned once more to the Floating “Right,” she said dubiously. “You’re just good World Science Fiction Convention, which friends who only spend every single minute hovered this year over Montreal. Sharee Carton together.” was with me again, always hovering just out of “It’s complicated,” I agreed. Besides, it wasn’t reach even when I had both arms around her, strictly true anyway. Sharee spent plenty of time but always there when I needed a good friend to with her other boyfriends too — Tobes, Ranger share a laugh with — a refuge from the Craig, Dave Kyle. (Funny how he didn't say she crawling, gibbering, gibbous chaos that is global couldn’t sit there.) fandom in all its eldritch glory. Sharee and I arrived in Montreal a few days “Have you and Sharee gotten back together?” early. It’s a city I have always wanted to visit, at Alison Scott asked at the end of the convention. least going back to my days of studying French “No,” I said, “we’re just good friends.” in high school. Not that I had to say much more than “Parlez-vous anglais?” in Montreal, 126 Thy Life’s a Miracle although my accent was apparently good Brisbane. But before the gothic excursion we enough that saying “merci” could get me a were joined for a dinner excursion by my old barrage of French in return if I wasn’t careful. A friend Ron Drummond, who had just learned barrage of rain on the Sunday before the that Steve Erickson wanted to buy a story of his convention kept us pinned in an Irish pub (ah, for the literary magazine Black Clock. Ron was the sacrifices we made!) until we made our way justifiably stoked, and he read us the story while to Dunn’s Restaurant for the meet-and-greet- I reshaved the right side of Sharee’s head, which and-smoked-meat with TAFF delegate Steve features a gothic tattoo. This was a much Green that was hosted by the Montreal Science more auspicious prelude to the convention than Fiction and Fantasy Association. Steve was in the late night visit with Catherine Crockett and fine form — a far better public persona than I Colin Hinz at the Hotel Delta Centre-Ville the had been on my own TAFF trip — and we met night before, when Sharee accidentally spilled several local fans whom we never saw again water on Danny Lieberman’s Macbook, which except once or twice from a distance across a caused it to fritz out. Oh, the trauma! crowded convention center. On Monday we Thankfully that wasn’t a harbinger of things to took a brief turn through Vieux Montreal, the come. old city, where we ran into the Plokta Cabal. They told us they were doing the convention newsletter and were concerned that the concom And so it began the next day. The first person wouldn’t approve of their approach. What do a we saw at the convention center was Dave bunch of bloody fanzine fans know about O’Neill, but the familiar faces came in waves convention newsletters, never mind that they’d after that. Lenny Bailes, Geri Sullivan, Jeanne done them before? After they took off for a Bowman, Bill Burns (who told us there would fannish party at Jo Walton’s house, we be no Moshe Feder, much to our wandered on aimlessly and found our way to disappointment), James Bacon, Chris Garcia ... Rue St Denis, which ended up being one of our ChristOpher J GarCia! Our host for a dinner favorite pre-convention hangouts, full of cool party that evening. The wunderkind had made a people and restaurants and pubs. Although I reservation at the restaurant Au Pied de Cochon knew the wonders of the Unibroue brewery, I’d thirteen months previously, after Kevin Roche had no idea what a great beer town Montreal and Andy Trembley saw an Anthony Bourdain was over all before I got there. Sharee, on the show about it. Apparently the chef sat Bourdain other hand, was crushed to discover that down and told his staff to start at the top of the Quebec is nothing like France when it comes to menu and keep bringing him dishes until it the cider selection. Tant pis! killed him. This is the kind of fancy French place where braised lard is considered a delicacy. On Tuesday we spent most of the day with a The foie gras poutine hardens your arteries from native guide named Robin, with whom Sharee a distance. The atmosphere was exciting and the had connected via the social networking group food exotic, but I mostly enjoyed this Couch Surfers. Robin gave us a lot of insight expedition for the company. Along with Chris into the city and showed us some great shops and his better half, Linda Wenzelburger, the along other trendy neighborhood rues. Well, the South Bay (San Jose) contingent included Andy shopping was mostly of interest to Sharee, and Kevin and the amusing, whipsmart Jason although I did buy a second-hand party shirt Schachat. There was also an Israeli fan named that came in handy at the convention. Robin Abigail Nussbaum, who wasn’t ready to commit also pointed out a goth club named Passeport to a Tel Aviv Worldcon yet, and Niall Harrison that we visited late Wednesday night, briefly (who later in the convention became a giant watching the young goths in all their finery. spleen) and another woman whose name I Sharee reckoned they weren’t as fine as in didn’t catch, but who wore a T-shirt with a giant

The Floating Worldcon 127 squid holding a Loch Ness Monster head above of them has sex with somebody else, the other water, apparently trying to lure cryptozoologists has to be in the room, even if he isn’t to dinner. (Reliable sources inform me that this participating in the sex, even if he’s just would have been Niall’s partner, Nic Clarke. sleeping. It’s not an open relationship, Kevin The young woman, that is, not the giant squid.) informed me, because open relationships mean that one partner has sex with a lot of people We were there for three hours, which was long while the other feels like a martyr. enough to get to know Andy and Kevin a lot better. Not sure how I’d never really met them I found this agreement utterly fascinating and before, although I was introduced to them found myself thinking about it quite a bit during briefly at the end of the 2006 Worldcon in LA, and after the convention. I don’t know that I’ve where they were presented as the instigators of ever run into such an arrangement before, but it the Hollister hoax Worldcon bid. They’re very makes a curious sense, especially as a guard good value. When they both ordered a against feelings of exclusion, although I’m sure I Tremblay ale, I asked Andy, ‘Isn’t that your last would still feel like the odd man out in such a name?’ situation. My capacity to feel like a martyr is epic. Still, the sexual calculus that others are able ‘Yes, I’m drinking my husband,’ Kevin said proudly. to formulate always appeals to my sense of wonder and reminds me that the floating world Well, close enough. Which led me to ask if they is full of incomprehensible, if transitory, really were married, and it turned out they had delights. Maybe I’ll learn how it’s done one of indeed gotten married during the brief period these days. I hope there isn’t a test! when it was legal for them to do so in It was later that first night of the convention, if California, before the H8ers had their day at the my memory doesn’t fail me — polls. They’re confident it will be legal again in long after I’d California very soon, and they briefed us on the delivered a pot de crème au chocolat noir from Au current state of play, in which their marriage is Pied de Cochon to Geri Sullivan, which was the still recognized by the state even though it is last I’d see of her until the last night of the currently illegal for other gay or lesbian couples convention, although she hovered in the near distance throughout and even sent me bananas to get married. through intermediaries — sometime past I had a number of interesting conversations midnight already, how time flies, in the raging with these two over the course of the party that was the Fanzine Lounge After Dark, convention, including one with Kevin that yes, it was later the first night of the convention started when he asked me if Sharee and I had an that Ron told me he’d just seen Geoff Hartwell exclusive relationship. He was concerned, he at the Tor party. Let us pause a moment while said, because he had just seen her disappear my past self recovers his blown mind. I first met with Pretty Jack, whom he had been cruising, or Geoff Hartwell (Editor Guest of Honor David’s so Sharee told me later. “Actually she’s just my son) at the 1993 Worldcon in San Francisco, beard,” I told him, or at least I wish I had. when he was still sixteen. We hung out quite a Actually-actually I explained that although bit in the next few years, including his Sharee and I had once intended to get married, memorable visit to Seattle in 1997 when Tami we were no longer in a relationship, exclusive or Vining and I took him and a couple of his otherwise, although I was pretty sure that Pretty girlfriends on a pilgrimage to Jimi Hendrix’s Jack was just another one of her smoking grave. Geoff and I determined that that trip was boyfriends — I mean, no — I mean, he was the last time we’d seen each other until now, smoking hot, yes, but no, they were just and he told me the story of how at the end of smoking buddies. Anyway, Kevin explained to that trip, back in New York, he dropped the me that he and Andy have an agreement: if one pencil rubbing he’d made of Hendrix’s

128 Thy Life’s a Miracle gravestone in a puddle of water while he kissed seating, this ended up being a pretty good deal, one of the girls goodbye. Seemed a fitting all in all. It was a convenient location for sacrifice under the circumstances. I’m sure Jimi touching bases with various friends and faneds would have approved anyway. I can’t remember during the day, and it did seem to attract a fair if that was the “girl” who Geoff told me is now number of people who were curious about a molecular biologist or some damn advanced fanzines and wanted to see what they were all scientific thing far beyond my ken. about. All the copies of Chunga that I put out (ten each of the past two issues) were gone by Since then Geoff himself has gone to college the end of the convention. Lloyd and Yvonne and become a professional musician. He was Penney did yeoman work setting up the lounge already a great guitar player as a teenager, but area, stocking the tables with fanzines (both free now he teaches guitar as well as making albums and for sale), and manning their stations as and playing shows. He had a copy of his latest hosts. They presented a friendly and informed CD, Hate to See You Go, which he traded for a face to everyone who filtered through. This was copy of my fanzine, Chunga. I introduced him to also where Colin Hinz put his Gestetner for Sharee, and he introduced me to Annie, his display and to run off the one-shot that he and longtime girlfriend and someone he’s known Sharee put together Saturday night and Sunday since she was a fetus and he was a toddler. morning, assembling stenciled contributions (Great stories from him and from David about from over thirty people. their first meeting at that stage of things.) Annie is a total sweetheart, and she’s also a dancer. What the daytime lounge was for the Modern dance, that is. We talked about the convention center, the evening lounge was for recent deaths of Merce Cunningham and her the party hotel, the Delta Centre-Ville. personal favorite, Pina Bausch. Not that I know Catherine Crockett and Colin Hinz presided squat about modern dance, but even I had over the room that rocked till dawn every night heard of those two. It was just amazing to of the convention. Once again the space was a connect with Geoff again after all this time. little cramped, but there were always people He’s all grown up, still has a goofy sense of there I wanted to hang out with. (Holy cow, it’s humor, and has the rock dude look and attitude Marc Schirmeister! I’d never met him before. down cold. He’s a complete sweetheart, too, Cool! Here, draw on this stencil.) Everybody and he and Annie make a beautiful couple. As a pitched in, too. Even sad slackers such as matter of fact, at one point Sharee and I were myself. I made two beer runs over the course of walking down the street with them, and a drunk the weekend (the first a complete ordeal that panhandler looked us all up and down and said, resulted in an extraordinarily pissed-off Sharee, “You people are GORGEOUS!” Hell, yeah! oops, shit), and I played the responsible adult in the early part of Sunday evening, while

Catherine was at the Hugos. (I did the same So that was more or less the first day of the during the day for Lloyd and Yvonne while they convention. During the days we tended to hang went to their rehearsal for the ceremony. Lloyd out a lot at the Daytime Fanzine Lounge, which said their intended shtick was for him to speak was in the exhibition area of the convention in English and for Yvonne, a native Québécoise, center, the Palais des Congrès. When I initially to translate into ... Spanish. I never heard if they heard that the fanzine lounge was going to be a followed through.) There was no fanzine display small space in a larger “Relax Area” (whatever in the evening lounge, but one of the things I the hell that was), I was really put off. Once loved was that both times I heard someone again oppressed fanzine fans are shat upon by demand to know where the fanzines were, a an uncaring committee! Take to the barricades! fanzine was produced. The first was when I However, despite the limited table space and whipped out a copy of Chunga for Pretty Jack.

The Floating Worldcon 129

The second was when Michael Swanwick asked, pipeline), had utterly gorgeous visuals and was “If this is a fanzine lounge, where are the heavy with personal symbolism. She told the fanzines?” and someone whipped out a copy of crowd that this was her first Worldcon but Colin and Sharee’s one-shot, No Idea. wouldn’t be her last. Well, we’ll see about that. “Mimeographed on Fibertone!” I crowed. The other program I went to was the fan fund Swanwick seemed suitably impressed. How auction in support of TAFF, DUFF, and CUFF could he not be? After all, it had a contribution (the Canadian Unity Fan Fund). All the fan fund from Dave Kyle himself, who was apparently winners were there: Steve Green for TAFF, the only one of us who still knew how to type Emma Hawkes for DUFF, and LeAmber hard enough to cut a stencil with a manual Kensley for CUFF. ChrIs GarCia was in fine typewriter. fettle as the TAFF auctioneer. The guy is a Trying to maintain, if not burnish, my performance artist at heart, and it’s always a credentials as an out-of-touch elitist fanzine fan, good thing to hand him a microphone and a I made it to very little programming. Perhaps stage. The big item on the docket was a my peculiar pail and shovel are just not the right tuckerization from Guest of Honor Neil shape for making panels in the sandbox. I Gaiman. It brought the best bid of the day, certainly don’t like to be on panels myself. The $666, but the bidding then blew right past that one program item that had caught my eye in the and ended up well over $700. The money from run-up to the convention was a multimedia the tuckerization was divided between all three presentation by Melissa auf der Maur scheduled funds. for Friday night. Auf der Maur has played bass for Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins, and now has a solo career. She’s a native of Montreal, Other than those two things, the convention and Robin (our native guide) told us that her mostly consisted of people and parties for me. father was a well-known columnist and media (And after all, parties, like , are personality in the city. Her multimedia project is people too.) Friday night was the big UK/Irish called Out of Our Minds, and it includes a short Not-A-Worldcon-Bid party, in advance of an film, music (both a film soundtrack and a anticipated bid for 2014. I had volunteered to separate album of songs), a comic book, and a help run the bar, but I ended up bailing on that, website. The event at the convention was a leaving poor Dave O’Neill to work his ass off presentation of the film, with commentary for six hours. The party was a huge success — about it from her, along with two songs she the one time I spent significant time away from performed solo accompanied only by her own the Fanzine Lounge After Dark. Elaine Stiles bass. Despite an amazing string of technical told me about some of the places that she and difficulties in showing the film, which definitely Steve are thinking of retiring to. They’ll be threw her off stride, she was a fascinating stage checking out New Mexico when they go to the presence. Seems to be deep into somewhat next Bubonicon as guests of honor. At some trippy woman-magic mythologies, but she came point, Geoff Ryman wandered past, or vice across as so sincere and introspective that it was versa, and I said, “Greetings.” Ryman is easy enough for me to go along with it. The someone I’ve talked to in small groups several story part of Out of Our Minds involves time- times over the years, mostly after his readings in traveling Vikings and a swamp-dwelling witch, Seattle, but most recently on the lawn with so it even has some genre interest. The Lilian Edwards outside the convention center at soundtrack she did with neo-psychedelic band the Glasgow Worldcon in 2005. I’m sure he The Entrance Band sounded great. The film, doesn’t know my name or even my face, but directed by someone named Tony Stone (who he’s always an affable conversationalist. This also has a feature-length Viking film in the time was no different, as he stopped and said,

130 Thy Life’s a Miracle

“Felicitations.” I introduced him to Sharee, and just aren’t interested in being initiated, and that’s soon we were talking about Australia, as you do okay too. when Sharee is around. Turns out that Ryman We also talked about the recently-announced had an Australian grandfather (“a hard-drinking, bid for a second Japanese Worldcon. He was at abusive man”) who took his brother’s name to the first one, courtesy of the Hertz Across to join the merchant marines before he was old Nippon Alliance one-off fan fund (hana is enough and who eventually abandoned Ryman’s Japanese for flower), and, while he’s enthusiastic grandmother and mother, only to sire another about the new bid, he has ideas about what daughter by another woman (in Egypt, I think it didn’t work the first time. The big problem was was) and give her the same name as his first a divide between the Japanese members and daughter! The latter family knew about the non-Japanese members, but John is convinced former, but Ryman’s mother didn’t know about that, as science fiction fans, we should be able her sister until they finally met many years later. to solve problems of communication between The details of this story were so bizarre that alien cultures. He also told me that his report they would seem fantastic in a work of fiction. I about the trip to Japan for the 2007 Worldcon have to admit that I gave up on Ryman’s novels would be published soon as part of a new a few years ago (that is, even before I quit collection of his writing, using the last money reading modern SF at all in favor of pre- from the HANA fund to cover printing costs. Amazing stuff) because I began to feel they This is excellent news, because it’s a terrific always led to the same painful climax. This report, which has already been published in two conversation makes me reconsider. He is a parts in File 770 and Argentus. Of course, he also natural story-teller, that’s for damned sure, and took the opportunity to ask me about my TAFF he held us enthralled, amazed, and amused. report, and I told him that I’d written the core I think I talked to John Hertz every night of the of it, published in instalments in Chunga, and convention except Monday, and I had at least decided it was pretentious crap. John one conversation with him during the day at the encouraged me to start over from scratch, but I convention center as well. This was a great can’t even imagine a new approach. It’s improvement over LA in ’06, where I kept something that just didn’t work out, and that’s seeing him in the distance but made very little okay. Sometimes we fail. contact with him. Usually we talked about the The convention wasn’t all serious-minded problems John sees with failures of fannish conversation, however. There was a fair amount outreach — insularity, cliquishness, hiding our of snogging going on, too, and not all of it light under a bushel. I told him he reminded me involved Tobes. Most, but not all. He was only of James Bacon (“I’m going to take that as a too happy to demonstrate the differences compliment,” said he) in his active concern with between kissing and snogging to Catherine and outreach. I’m not much of an evangelist myself, Sharee, and I heard tell that Geri got the same and I figure the best outreach is to have friendly demonstration in the wee hours of some morn fun in public. However, I’m sympathetic to or another. Hell, even I got in on the act, much John’s ideas about insularity and cliquishness. to my surprise. Not really something I do, I’ve found my niche in fandom, but it took me especially with a boy, but hey, he asked, and years, even decades, to build a network of everybody was snogging with him, too. fannish friends beyond my local network in Including Tobes. I blame Unibroue. Ah well, at Seattle (and even that one took time to build). If least I had a beard with me this time. John and James want to hold up welcome signs for the uninitiated, that’s fine by me. It’s worth remembering, however, that sometimes people I had a great time opening the Evening Fanzine Lounge Sunday evening while Catherine was at

The Floating Worldcon 131 the Hugos and Colin and Sharee were still circus pants, and yet we did get to participate in mimeoing No Idea. Especially since I didn’t the anticipation and excitement of the really have to open it. When I got there at the announcement of winners. Dave was reading scheduled starting time of 7 p.m., the door had Niall Harrison’s twitterfeed, and Niall got already been opened (somehow — it was never grumpier and grumpier as the awards were rung really explained how) by Dave O’Neill, off. “Now he’s becoming a giant spleen,” Gaspode, and Gaspodia. Dave and Gaspode quipped Tobes as ’s Graveyard Book promptly went down to the consuite to raid it won for Best Novel, causing Niall to tweet for food, too, which solved a problem that I “Argh” or “Bah” or maybe it was “Bleaurgh!” It hadn’t personally felt up to solving. Handy was a good show. Afterward Lenny Bailes and I people to have around! And thank you, Joel participated in ancient fannish tradition by Phillips in the consuite, too, for donating the arguing about the awards, and specifically about goodies. John Scalzi’s win for Best Fan Writer the year before. Lenny doesn’t think Scalzi is really a fan, Meanwhile I chatted with Gaspodia, whose real and he isn’t sure Worldcon represents his tribe name is Rita Medany and who turns out to be anymore. I tried to cheer him up with the story the chair of the next Eastercon, which is being of Rita’s interest in how Corflu picks the Guest held in London in 2010. Rita is very much of of Honor. the mindset that fandom is too insular and cliquey and hidebound, echoing John Hertz on I think it was later that night/early the next that score, and we had a fascinating morning when James Bacon came to me under conversation about her experiences with the impression that I was still in charge of the fandom and ideas for changing how it works, at room and asked if the teens from the Teen least at the level of how British conventions are Lounge across the hall could come over and use run. She told me that she’s considering the upstairs of the fanzine lounge. They were dropping the Fan Guest of Honor for a future being kicked out of their own lounge and told Eastercon, although she knows it will be a to go back to their rooms, but they wanted to controversial move. She fears that it fosters a stay up and hang out like the rest of us. sense of elitism to single out one fan to honor “Are they going to have sex?” I asked. above all others. I explained what I thought the objections would be, pointing out that honoring “Nah,” said James, who was acting very worked fans is a way to signal that a convention is run up and anxious, “if they wanted to do that, by fans as a volunteer activity, as opposed to they’d do it in the public restrooms.” for-profit conventions such as many media cons Why hadn’t I thought of that trick? Maybe I’ll that are run for money. One thing that made me learn how it’s done one of these days. Well, I happy is that she had heard of Corflu’s method agreed to let them in, not that it was any of my of choosing a Guest of Honor by picking the business. I figured that James was just drunk name of a member out of a hat, and she is and delusional regarding some imaginary gorgon intrigued by it. It’s intended to promote who was trying to chase the kids back to their egalitarianism, and it’s nice to know that the rooms. Oops. Suddenly the responsible adult idea may be spreading out to other areas of gorgon showed up at the fanzine lounge and fandom. chased the kids back to their rooms. Or into the Once the Hugos got going, Dave reported the public restrooms, more likely. results as he received them on his phone via Twitter. This turned out to be one of the best uses of Twitter I’ve run into so far, and one of Monday night was the great unwinding. The the best ways to experience the Hugos. We Floating Worldcon would soon move on, didn’t have to suffer through the pomp and leaving us all stranded in the great non-trivial

132 Thy Life’s a Miracle mundane. Sharee decided she need a bath to only the night before. The Plokta Cabal was prepare for the transition. I headed off to meet gone by now. Tobes was nowhere to be seen, Ron and Del Cotter in the evening fanzine probably teaching somebody else about lounge for a dinner expedition. When I got out snogging — or worse. Marc Schirmeister had of the elevator, I ran into the Plokta Cabal, who left the building. Rich Coad had never been in had just been to the lounge and found a note the building. Ron had given me a hug on the from Catherine taped to the door saying it way out the door and out of town. The party wasn’t going to open until 9 p.m. was almost over, and Geri was exactly the “I’ve got a key,” I mentioned nonchalantly, person to bring closure, with a cluster of jostling party balloons clutched in one exhausted fist, as experiencing a sudden delusion of importance. the sky brightened with what the guy who called “Hooray!” said the Plokta Cabal in well- himself Moebius insisted on dubbing sacre bleu practiced unison. So we opened the room, and — the blue light of pre-dawn. beer and brandy was found or acquired while I waited for Del and Ron to show up. When the three of us got back from dinner, we found The Floating Worldcon is always dying. When I Catherine Crockett and Steven Cain getting out first entered fandom the old guard said it was of a cab with bags of beer. I gladly volunteered dying because invading barbarians had turned it to help with sherping the beer upstairs. Up in into an overpopulated nine-ring circus that had the lounge, Alison Scott and Sue Mason were nothing to do with true fandom. Now younger presiding over a roaring party. Leave the Cabal fans say it’s dying because it’s controlled by alone for a couple of hours, and a party ensues! insular greybeards who won’t change with the Before I knew it hours had passed and I was times and won’t reach out to the Dragon Con having a drunken conversation with young generation. I say that if it dies, so what? Jonathon Cain, who wasn’t drunk himself, Everything dies. The 14th century Japanese although he’s a child, and what’s the difference? Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenko wrote, “If He was explaining to me about the hardest human beings were never to fade away like the substances in the world, some of which could dew and never to vanish like the smoke, but to be found in stars. He has his mother’s habit of linger forever in this world, how things would saying “yeah?” as a kind of emphatic at the lose their power to move us! Things are beginning of his sentences. I have my own habit valuable to us precisely because they are so of talking drunken bollocks. “I don’t get you,” fragile, temporary, impermanent. Think about he eventually explained. all creatures: is there any that lives as long as Well, that seemed a sure sign that I should go to humans? A fly born in the morning never sees sunset, cicadas have a livelong summer and bed. I had been up till five or six in the morning every night of the convention, and surely it never know what spring or autumn is. A would be better for my well-being to call it quits thousand years is a single night’s dream.” So I early on the last night. It was a good theory, say let’s enjoy it while it lasts. Let it run its own very scientific. In so-called reality, however, I course, and don’t worry so much about how it’s hadn’t been back in the room very long before changing or not changing enough. Do your Sharee brought Geri Sullivan by to pry me back thing, with your pail and shovel, and then let it into action. Geri had finally freed herself of the go. responsibility of running the Reno in 2011 So in the end I had to let Sharee go — as if I party, had packed her car with the help of ever had a hold on her to begin with. She had Ranger Craig, and found her way to the Fanzine come to Canada in February to spend time with Lounge After Dark, which she had supplied her dying mother, Sheilla, and I played my role with leftover brandy and Basque food from afar as the temporary surrogate son-in-law, doing

132 The Floating Worldcon Thy Life’s a Miracle 133

I couldwhat to I lendcould support to lend in support a difficult in a time. difficult time. footsteps.footsteps. We Wehad hadthis thisbrief brief time time together together again, again, MeanwhileMeanwhile Sharee Sharee was wasinevitably inevitably cast castonce once and andas always as always it contained it contained all the all world,the world, with with all all againagain in the in rolethe roleof muse. of muse. Now Now it was it wastime time for for its sweetnessits sweetness and andsorrow. sorrow. Who Who could could ask forask for her herto head to head back back to Australia to Australia and andan uncertain an uncertain anythinganything more? more? future.future. We Weshed shed hot hottears tears at our at ourparting, parting, caught caught Yeah,Yeah, OK then.okay then.Who Whowants wants to go toto goMelbourne to in thein illusionthe illusion of broken of broken connections, connections, broken broken nextMelbourne year? Maybe next tomorrow year? Maybe or the tomorrow day after orcan the hearts,hearts, lost lostchances. chances. What What does does it matter it matter if I if I be putday off after until can after be put the offnext until Floating after the next nevernever see hersee heragain? again? Tomorrow Tomorrow or the or daythe dayafter after Worldcon.Floating” Worldcon. we’llwe’ll both both be dead, be dead, following following in Sheilla’s in Sheilla’s

Keep Me Lifted (Apparatchik 80, June 1997)

Behind every Past President of ffwa stand better Virgo than I was at the time. Thanks to dozens and dozens of heroic people. On the Jerry Kaufman and Suzle Tomkins for the Red way home from the May Vanguard, it hit me & Black party, where many fates were set. that I’d been neglectful of everyone who has Thanks to Tami Vining for the dress shirt, the played a part in my rise to power and prestige. magic pouch, the silver chain, and the fire. So, I herewith give my thanks to a typical few. Thanks to Jane Hawkins for encouraging me to Above all, thanks to Mrs. Azari for the clear take a romantic flight and for applying salve premonition of a future past presidency when when it crashed. Thanks to Kate Schaefer for she wrote of a shit-scared seventh-grader, posts to rass-eff that make me LOL. Thanks to “Someday others will look to you for advice & Constance Maytum for the reminders that I was leadership.” As for other teachers, thanks to cuter when I was nineteen, and to Eileen Gunn Alan Ball for Camus and for the Gitanes and for sensible advice and creative accoutrements. whiskey on the back porch, to Linda Robertson Thanks to Vonda McIntyre for blushing. for the Dorothy Parker act and the first paid Thanks to Karrie Dunning for numerous publication, and to Jim Manuel for the retort: “I dances and ongoing lessons in health and submit to you, Mr. Byers, that a nuclear weapon humanity. Thanks to Jessica Amanda is not just a big rifle.” Salmonson for at least one obscure and Thanks to carl juarez for knocking on the door maddening book. Thanks to John Berry for and for many leaves turned and burned since. reaching heights of design, and to Katherine Thanks to paul lemman for the giggles that got Howes for the winged cat and wicked words. me through the first year in Seattle. Thanks to Thanks to Amy Thomson for a Twicky ride on Ron Thomas for the snow and for tales of acid a rainy day and for sunscreen on a sunny one. vengeance, and to Barbara Edie for being a Keep Me Lifted 135

Thanks to Sharee Carton for laughing at my Thanks to Andy Hooper for wit, unseemly poor pose, and to Lucy Huntzinger (and Dave kindness, and drunken song. Thanks to Hazel Clements, RIP) for being cool and funny when for beauty beyond the call of duty and for the the tire went flat. Thanks to Ted White for the hugs and free ale, and to Dick for brewing most observation that King Crimson’s Red of that ale. Thanks to Lesley Reece for the represented a direction that heavy metal could smofffing and for the perfect illo of an empty have taken. Thanks to Caroline (or was it gondola. Thanks to Steve Swartz for turning me Carol?) for the squalid moment in the back seat on to gardening. The weeds look almost like of a car. flowers sometimes. Thanks to Ian Hagemann for responding to one number with a another. Thanks to Ron Drummond for timely and Thanks to Mark Manning for the terrifying and musical conversation. I love it when you talk terrific story of family visitation in Jupiter Jump dirty to me. Thanks to A.P. McQuiddy for 27, and to John Hedtke for the suggestion that I books, beer, and bonhomie — and for at least measure the bottom rather than the top. one other thing that starts with a B. Thanks to Victor Gonzalez, Castle Rock cowboy, for Thanks to Geri Sullivan for taking an Independence Day by the Bay and unexpected inspiration and then giving it back. Thanksgiving in Manhattan. Thanks to Luke Thanks to Tommy Ferguson for pushing the McGuff for hoeing the row and making a go of (virtual) envelope in TommyWorld, and to Robert it, and to Art Widner for out-burping Luke. Lichtman for the LOC and other egoboo. Thanks to Frank Lunney for making the Thanks to Spike for the Mona Lisa grin. Thanks L.A.con corridors friendlier, and to Sheila to Glenn Hackney for compelling reading in Lightsey for — you know, I just realized the Men’s Apa and FELLAS, and for looking good other day that you were the one hanging out in a hat. Thanks to Carrie Root for the calm, with Nevenah and Barnaby at ConFrancisco. level-headed presence, even in absence. Thanks Thanks to Michael Stearns for charming the to Don Keller for the comment, “It’s trying to women at the dinner party and then droning on be a Wolfe story,” and to Tom Weber for and on about Paul Auster. Mercy! helping to finish the keg before it spoiled. Thanks to Denys Howard for the invitation to Thanks to Robyn Roberson for making the first Seattle and for doing the grocery shopping. move. Thanks to Brad Matter for spastic Love & rockets, comrade! grooves, and to Marc Olsen and Chad Shaver for tricky licks. Yeah, and thanks to the Bitches Thanks to Jay Salmon and Elonna Lester for for the bruises. Thanks to Molly and Frank barbecues, Xena parties, and the jungle of Blades for the upstairs smoking room and flowers. Thanks to Mom, Dad, LaVelle, Jolie, everything that has happened there, and thanks Lonnie, Terry, Ryan, and Cody for being a to Don Fitch for the feather in the cap. Thanks family and lovable. Weirdos! to Nancy McCann for the occasional Sherman And lest I forget, thank you. Yeah, you. You and for once and future operas. Thanks to Cliff know why. Wind for conversation at Mr. and Mrs. Bear’s house that was just right. Thanks to Nahid (With apologies to Spearhead.) Katla for the tears.

He who awaits his time, who submits When his time is done, In his life there is no room For sorrow or for rejoicing. Here is how the ancients said all this In four words: ‘God cuts the thread.’

Chuang Tzu (trans. Thomas Merton)