Becoming Superman

by J. Michael Straczynski

  But the best reaction came when I ran into someone from church. “Everybody is saying you got beat up because God’s punishing you for spreading lies about Ken Pagaard.”

  It was as if the universe decided to take a year of my life and kick the shit out of me, emotionally, spiritually, and literally. I went into a downward spiral: beyond anger, beyond reason. I couldn’t eat or sleep. If anyone even looked at me wrong, I would shake with rage, going from calm to fury in a second. I was already prone to taking long midnight walks around Chula Vista, but now I ranged farther afield, going into the worst parts of downtown San Diego when it was still the tenderloin district, home to addicts, drunks, and muggers. I think I was looking for trouble, hoping somebody would take a swing at me so I could come back with everything I had at someone who meant to hurt me.

  Sometimes I would stay out all night and greet the dawn sitting at a bus stop by Horton Plaza as the drug dealers, hookers, and homeless faded into the shadows, replaced by secretaries, businessmen, students, and others on their way to work. It was as though there were two different worlds, two San Diegos switching places in front of me. There’s a story here, I thought, but it would take decades before I figured it out.

  Lacking a clear target for my rage, I turned on anyone unlucky enough to come within range. Eventually I realized that I was reacting the way my father would, acting out against people who had nothing to do with what happened. So I turned my anger inward, going radio silent rather than inflict civilian casualties. But it was still there, tearing me apart from the inside. I had to do something with it or lose my mind.

  I decided that if I couldn’t fight my way out of it, then I’d write my way out, and funneled my rage into the work. Until that moment I’d played with the writing, I’d enjoyed the writing, but never used it as a way to express what I was feeling: my hopes for the future, my anger at my past, and my doubts about the present. Emotion was the final ingredient that had been lacking in my work, that’s why it was shit. Having never been able to adequately express my emotions, my stories were cool to the touch, more about the plot and the gimmick than what the characters felt. But now my emotions were pouring out, with rage at the head of the line, and I was totally fine with that. A writer can be motivated as much by fury as by love, as much by anger as affection, as long as there’s something driving him to tell this story at this time about this character. And rage I had in abundance.

  I continued to accumulate rejection letters, but now that there was more meat to the stories I started receiving personal notes from editors suggesting changes, or saying that while the story didn’t fit their current needs I should come back to them again with something else. It was just enough to keep me at the typewriter while I burned through everything that was going on in my life.

  Sooner or later, things had to get better.

  Right?

  Chapter 17

  When the Light at the End of the Tunnel Isn’t a Train (For a Change)

  I’d intended to get my bachelor’s in psychology by twenty-one, but I’d fallen way behind due to the difficulties in transferring credits between schools, my limited funds, and the crater left in my life by recent events. So I once again began taking ridiculously heavy course loads. Students weren’t allowed to take more than twenty units during regular registration at San Diego State University, so I resorted to crashing classes and asking the instructor to add me to his roster à la carte. That way no one in administration would know what I was up to until I was already doing it. Where most students took twelve to fifteen units per semester, I took twenty-one hard-core academic classes my first semester, hit twenty-seven credits in the second semester, then dropped to twenty-two in my third semester when an academic adviser discovered what I was doing and told me to knock it off.

  One of my classes was a writing workshop taught by Richard E. Kim, one of the few members of the creative writing department with actual published novels to his credit, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright Award. Knowing that a working writer would be critiquing my work, I ratcheted up my writing regimen, turning in a new story every week.

  One day, after dropping off my latest salvo for his review, Kim said, “Thanks,” then added as I turned to leave, “you’re a real word machine.”

  I was halfway down the hall when I stopped, turned, and walked back to find him sitting at his desk, smiling.

  “Was I just insulted?” I asked.

  The smile broadened. “That you can recognize that means there’s still hope for you.”

  I got the message: better to take the time to write one good story than three adequate ones.

  The only student in Kim’s class who could go toe-to-toe with me on the volume of material was Mark Orwoll. Mark was really good, and most classes turned into a shoot-out between us. He’d write something amazing, which challenged me to write something even more amazing, in turn forcing him to work even harder. He was so talented that by all rights I should’ve been conspiring to drop arsenic in his water, but I was excited to have someone to push against. Besides, it was impossible not to like Mark. Where I was quiet, mumble-mouthed, and skinny, he was bigger than life, gregarious, and classically handsome. As our fierce competition turned into friendship, he began dragging me to parties and bars. Determined to Hemingway-up my life, he was horrified to discover I didn’t drink, and more horrified still when he learned that I didn’t drive because of depth perception issues. I’m fine when traveling on foot, but in a car going at speed I can’t tell if I’m two or two and a half car lengths behind the vehicle in front of me, which is crucial if one doesn’t want to end up in the backseat of a stranger’s car.

  “This whole depth perception thing is a crock,” he said. “You just haven’t had the right teacher.” So we drove to a secluded part of town where he put me behind the wheel. By the end he was as pale, and terrified, and neither of us ever tried it again.*

  My other liabilities—shyness and a pronounced lack of social skills—came back to haunt me when my instructor in science fiction writing, Elizabeth Chater, assigned us to write a short story that we would read aloud to the class. Terrified by the prospect of public speaking, I wrote the shortest short story I’ve ever written, just five pages. If I could’ve just typed a period on the page and called the story “Dot,” I would’ve done it.

  When my turn came, I stood before the class, cheeks flushed and sweating profusely, and began to read. I stumbled over my words, reading faster to try and make up for my incoherence, which only made things worse. Someone in the back called out Louder! I kept trying to push down the fear only to become even more incomprehensible.

  Halfway through the reading, Mrs. Chater put her hand on my arm. “It’s okay,” she said, putting me out of my misery, “that’ll do. You can sit down.”

  I was humiliated and angry at myself. There were things I wanted to do with my life that could only happen if I was willing to do what scared me. I’d returned to the street where I was attacked because otherwise the fear would have had power over me. This was no different.

  So that summer I signed on with the university’s orientation counseling program, which put incoming students through a grueling faux registration and counseled them about their academic choices. At the end of the day the students would break into groups of twenty or thirty and each of us would take our group on a walking tour of the campus. I was so terrified at the prospect of talking to large groups of strangers that for the first three weeks I threw up almost every morning. But you can only throw up for so long; after a while you run out of ammunition. By week four I was able to speak in public well enough that the fear no longer had power over me. I was still nervous in front of groups, and remain so to this day, but that’s okay; I didn’t have to do it perfectly, I just had to do it.

  By fall ’76 I had burned through enough classes to qualify for my bachelor’s in psychology, but the achievement felt anticlimactic since the term would end in November and there wouldn’t be a graduation ce
remony. Worse still, I was dead broke. I hadn’t made a single sale for money, and my father took full advantage of this to grind down my ambitions of a writing career.

  If you were going to sell something, you’d have done it by now.

  Do you want to end up starving out on the street, begging for money?

  When are you going to stop this nonsense and focus on getting a real job?

  And the ever-popular You’re just another kid from the streets. Who the hell do you think you are, Hemingway?

  It was a valid question. Who the hell did I think I was? Was I kidding myself?

  Worse still, my father insisted that I get a master’s degree once I knocked down the BA so he could show off to relatives. But the time, energy, and money necessary to get a master’s would preclude me from doing the volume of writing necessary to become good at it. A master’s in psychology was of limited value in any event; to make the effort worthwhile I’d have to go into the PhD program, for a total of five years where my writing would have to be done piecemeal if at all.

  By now my student loans and library work had allowed me to move into a tiny apartment on Cherokee Avenue in El Cajon, but my sisters were still living with my father. If I refused to get another degree it would raise the temperature in ways that could rebound badly onto them. I had to figure out a way to stall long enough for something to happen with the writing.

  Then a solution hit me. My father wanted me to get a second degree, but did it have to be a master’s? Doubling up on my course load had given me nearly enough credits for a second BA in sociology, philosophy, or literature. While I liked the idea of a degree in philosophy, it would be easier to justify a second bachelor’s in an allied field. But even if I managed to sell him on the idea, it would provide only a brief reprieve; the coursework needed for a second BA could easily be covered during the next semester, after which I’d be facing the same dilemma all over again.

  I don’t know what I thought would happen in the next six months that hadn’t happened in the previous four years, but I had to try, and with some effort convinced my father to sign off on a BA in sociology. Shortly afterward, I got a message from Bill Virchis at Southwestern College asking me to stop by his office. I assumed he wanted to know if I had any more one-act plays that would, like the rest, be produced for free.

  I was wrong. He wanted to hire me to write a play.

  For several weeks each summer, Southwestern College produced a full-length children’s play for an audience of kids bussed in from schools across San Diego County. This year, Bill wanted to mount a version of Snow White that would be evocative of the Disney movie while telling a funnier and more hip story, and would I write the play on commission?

  I asked what the gig paid.

  He shrugged a smile. “Joe, I got a hundred bucks in the budget. That’s it.”

  One hundred dollars was 100 percent more than I’d made on anything I’d written before, so I responded with an enthusiastic “Yes!” As we shook hands I realized I was shaking. At last somebody was actually going to pay me to write something! A week earlier I’d despaired that in twenty-two years nothing like this had ever happened. But what had never happened before had just happened! Holy shit!

  As I walked back across the chilly, deserted campus, I passed a bulletin board where a flyer announced that Israeli psychic Uri Geller would be performing there in a few nights. I’d heard about Geller’s alleged ability to bend spoons with his mind and was curious to check it out. It would be a great way to celebrate my very first assignment. Best of all, I still had a Southwestern ID that would let me get in free.

  Given the vicissitudes of bus schedules, I arrived early for his performance on a wet October night. Rather than stand out in the rain for an hour I managed to talk my way into the theater, where I overheard a publicist tell a reporter with a local radio station that Geller would be available for an informal press conference and interviews after the show.

  Press conference? Interviews?

  Waitaminnit . . . didn’t people get paid to write that stuff?

  Summoning my courage, I introduced myself to the publicist as a freelance reporter with the San Diego Reader, a free weekly newspaper that catered to the college crowd, and asked if I could interview Mr. Geller. I was sure she would see through the lie at once but with the rest of the audience waiting to be let in she was sufficiently distracted that she didn’t ask to see my credentials. “Come around back after the show,” she said, “and he’ll give you twenty minutes.”

  After the performance, which did little to convince me of his abilities, I went backstage and interviewed Geller, jotting down his answers on the back of the program before hurrying home to write up a five-page article.

  The next day I visited the offices of the San Diego Reader in hopes of talking to an editor, but the receptionist wouldn’t let me past the front door. She told me to leave the article with her and one of the editors would get back to me. I dropped the manila envelope on a pile of mail and headed home, figuring that was the end of it.

  They called the next day to buy the article for the princely sum of fifteen dollars. But the amount was irrelevant. After years spent fruitlessly trying to sell my work, I had now been paid as a writer twice in a two-week period. I didn’t cash the check from the Reader for months because I needed to hold that rectangular validation in my hand for a while.

  This means something, I thought, staring at the check. This is where it starts.

  It occurred to me that if I could turn my skills to journalism, I might be able to earn a living while working on my prose. Unfortunately, all my training to this point had been in fiction and live theater; I lacked the training, the experience, or the ego to think I could go from a standing start to working full-time as a journalist. I had a lot to learn.

  But if Clark Kent could become a reporter, then by god so could I.

  So get started, I told myself. You know what you want, you have the momentum, go and get it.

  Great, I thought. How?

  A few weeks later, at the start of the spring ’77 semester, the weekly humor columnist for the Daily Aztec, the official newspaper of San Diego State University, announced in print that he was quitting on the grounds that he wasn’t funny enough, an opinion few students would have disputed. And one columnist walking out the door meant there was room for another columnist to walk in.

  You wanted to learn how to write for newspapers, well, here’s your chance.

  I skipped class, commandeered a library typewriter, and banged out three columns. It was typical college humor: sophomoric, simplistic, and self-indulgent, but it would have to do. Eager to beat out any competitors, I ran to the Daily Aztec offices—crowded and loud with the clatter of typewriters, telephones, and chatter—and introduced myself to entertainment editor David Hasemyer. When I said I wanted the humor column, he stared at me like something unpleasant he’d just found on the bottom of his shoe. It was an understandable reaction given that I was trying to leapfrog the meritocracy. Reporters start at the bottom of the ladder by writing individual articles; only after proving themselves over time are they given the prestige of a weekly column. But he reluctantly agreed to read the columns then booted me out the door.

  Several days later he called me in for a meeting. As expected, others were angling for the job, but he was inclined to give me the Friday humor column. He said he liked my style, which was surprising because I didn’t know I had one.

  “Have you ever written anything on a weekly schedule?” he asked.

  When I said no, his lips pursed sourly, worried that I’d flame out after one or two installments and they’d have to find somebody else. I assured him that hitting deadlines wouldn’t be a problem. He was still dubious but agreed to give me a shot and asked how I wanted my credit to appear. For the Reader article I’d used J. M. Straczynski, but that felt too anonymous, as though I were still hiding. Joe Straczynski looked lopsided, a whisper of a first name ambushed by a last name big enough to scare
a cat, and Joseph Straczynski was too hard to say. So I went with J. Michael Straczynski: a single letter, followed by a friendly two-syllable name that would give readers a moment to work up their courage for the final assault on that Mount Everest of a three-syllable last name.

  My column, “A View from the Rabbit Hole,” premiered in the Daily Aztec on February 11, 1977, and I hit every goddamned deadline for as long as I had it. Dave was thrilled to receive each new installment, not so much for the quality of the writing, which was fairly dreadful, but because many of his other writers tended to flake out, forcing him to fill the gap with stories from wire services. This taught me the most important lesson about being a writer: get the damned thing done well enough to print and turn it in on time, because others won’t. So when Dave once again found himself stuck after another reporter failed to deliver, I offered to fill the hole with an updated version of Ambrose Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary” to be called “A Modern Cynic’s Dictionary.” He agreed, and I pounded out the piece in about twenty minutes. It went over surprisingly well and became my second weekly column.

  Then Dave called to say that a writer who was supposed to review a local concert had fallen ill, and could I go in his place and write the review?

  I said I’d love to but didn’t have tickets to the show and couldn’t afford to buy them.

  “You don’t have to buy a ticket,” he said. “Reviewers never pay for tickets. The guys who review plays, books, movies, and music for the Aztec get all their stuff free, it’s just that half of them never turn in their fucking reviews.”

  It took me several seconds to process this information. I’d assumed that reviewers paid for everything so they wouldn’t be beholden to the subject of their critiques. The idea that they could go to plays and shows and get books for free had never occurred to me.

  When I broke out of my paralysis, I said, rather loudly, “Why the hell didn’t someone tell me about this before?”