An Edge in My Voice

by Harlan Ellison

  INSTALLMENT 49: NOVEMBER 82

  I was working on the screenplay when the phone rang, and I had a pencil in my mouth, having just made a correction on page 134, and when I snatched off the receiver I forgot the No. 2 Ticonderoga and said, “Grzzmpf?”

  “Is Harlan there?” It was the voice of my pal Tom Nolan, who writes the “On the Town with Mister Los Angeles” column for Los Angeles magazine.

  “It’s me Tom,” I said, removing the pencil as I recognized his voice. “Talk about telepathy, I was going to call you today about your buddy Mister Los Angeles and that little sf writer, Hubbel Nordine.” Tom groaned. “Please! No more,” he said.

  “Look,” I said, “Hubbel’s a sometime friend of mine—though God knows he could make an itch nervous—and Mister Los Angeles is a friend of yours, and if he’s driving you as nuts as Hubbel is driving me, then it’s in the service of our mutual sanity to get together and see if we can find some way of building rapprochement between them.”

  Tom laughed. “I wish I’d never written that damned column about the two of them.” It had been in the October 1982 issue of Los Angeles. “You know,” he added, “it was a much longer column; and they broke it in half. Second part is in this month’s issue.”

  “I read it,” I said. “But it seemed to be about a run-in Mister Los Angeles had with an actor named Dane Trevor. I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” Tom said wearily. “No such person. I got such static on the first column, that I caught the second part before it ran, and rewrote it using a mythical actor instead of Hubbel Nordine. At least I don’t have to go through this maelstrom twice.”

  “Smart move,” I said. “Anyhow, let’s go have some lunch together…and see what we can work out between us to pull the fangs of these two clowns.”

  “Great,” he said. “In fact, that’s why I was calling. I figured you must be pissed at me or something.”

  “Why’d you think that?” I was surprised. Tom and I had been friends for years, always on good terms.

  “Because you looked right through me at the party last night.” The night before had been Halloween, and I’d gone down to Lydia Marano’s Dangerous Visions Bookstore for a little while. I didn’t remember even seeing Tom there. But then, I hadn’t recognized most of the people: they’d been in costumes that included masks.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding,” I said, chagrined. “Jeezus, I’m sorry, Tom. Did we talk?”

  “No. I didn’t want to impose. You looked distracted.”

  “Yeah…well…it’s been a couple of the worst weeks of my life.” I said. “Not the least of it being that this woman I was in love with gave me my walking papers a week ago Saturday. And I’ve spent most of the time since all doubled over. I hadn’t expected it to hit me so hard, but I’m really desolate. So please forgive my seeming rudeness. But you should have said something, man. Never gunnysack that kind of feeling, specially with good friends.”

  “Forget it,” Tom said. “No need for petty pique between us. Where do you want to eat, at Shain’s? Or maybe we can do Fran O’Brien’s Restaurant out in Santa Monica. I hear the Greek food there is terrific.”

  “I ate at Fran’s last Thursday,” I said. “The reports are accurate. The pastisio and the moussaka are brilliant. Also, the portions are big enough to stun a police dog. Nice to have a top line Greek joint as friendly as that so close to home. But I can’t do Greek so soon again. Why not the Maryland Crab House. It’s just up the road on Pico from Fran O’Brien’s.”

  There was a catch in Tom’s throat. “Fresh crab?”

  “Absolutely. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of this place. They opened in July, and if it isn’t one of the ten best joints in town, then I’m not the winner of the all-expense-paid trip to the next Slim Whitman K-Tel recording session.”

  Tom has one of those larky, terribly infectious laughs, and he gave me a primo sample. “Okay, how about this afternoon?” I said okay, and told him the Maryland Crab House was located at the corner of 25th and West Pico in Santa Monica. I told him to ask for Judy or Herb Cohen if he got there before me, to use my name and they’d put him at a good table. “Will I need your name?” he asked.

  “If the crowds haven’t abated you will. The word’s been spreading about this place and even though the wait isn’t a long one, they know me and it might help. You’ll recognize Judy: she has a head of hair that looks like the Malibu Canyon fire.”

  “How’ll I recognize Herb?”

  “He looks like a guard for the New England Patriots. Also, his head looks like the aftermath of the Malibu Canyon fire.”

  So at 1:00 (which was too early for Tina from Wessex, just abaft Stonehenge, to be serving the tables, dammit) I walked into the Maryland Crab House to find Tom Nolan already gorging himself on the incredible rum buns filled with raisins and cinnamon, drizzled with the faintest angel’s touch of sugar glazing. The menu —only slightly smaller than my fear of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor—was open in front of him on the Formica-top table, and the glaze on the rum buns vanishing down his neck was reflected in the glaze of his eyes; eyes as soft and brown as a Pooh bear’s soul. Confronted by the shellfish cornucopia contained in the bill of fare, he had slewed into a raptus as deep and profound as nitrogen narcosis.

  “Hey, Tom,” I said, standing above him. He reached up with a vague gesture and touched the sleeve of my hand-embroidered 100% satin tour jacket. The message of sensual grace his fingers received shocked him back to reality. “My God,” he deitifically demulcented, “that jacket is gorgeous! Turn around. Is it, perhaps, hand-embroidered?” I spun on one toe, permitting him the full vision of the leaping tiger done in a freshet of colors, applied by master crafters in a variety of subtle stitches. (I’d wanted Over the Hump to Burma, 1941 stitched in, but hadn’t had a chance to go back to The Cloth Tattoo in Silverlake to have them do it.)

  “Sensational workmanship,” Tom vociferated. “Where’d you get it?” I told him, pointing out that I’d seen the ad The Cloth Tattoo had placed in the L.A. Weekly and, determined to ascertain the reliability of some of the Weekly’s advertisers, had run my own consumer research project. “I only went down there to look at their shop,” I said “but the jackets they make are so dazzling I wound up buying one. You should see what they can do with parachute silk. The operation’s run by the Krupnick family, and if you see a knockout satin jacket on some rock star or sitcom heroine, it’s probably one of theirs.”

  He asked me if he could wear it, just through the meal, and I peeled out of it to the envious stares of the gourmandish horde. Tom slipped into it, purring like an infant whose bottom has just been buttered. All through the meal he kept touching the satin in a manner only James M. Cain or Raymond Chandler could have metaphored. “I was afraid you wouldn’t recognize me,” he quipped.

  “Listen,” I said, “about Mister Los Angeles and Hubbel Nordine…”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” he staccato’d. “Tell me about this menu first. I can’t believe this. Fried jumbo softshell crab, fried clams, backfin crab cakes; crabmeat and shrimp Norfolk; my God, I haven’t seen a shore menu like this since I was last in sight of the Chesapeake. I’m utterly at sea, pardon the pun. Don’t know what to order. What do you recommend?”

  “Start with a cup of the clam chowder. Not a bowl. Bowl’s too much. You’ll be porking out with other goodies, don’t toss it all away on the pottage. Besides, the clam chowder is thick and chockablock with pieces of clam bigger than the potato cubes. Then, for an appetizer, try the Backfin Hard Fry.”

  “Which is what?”

  Salivating like an Aztec priest contemplating a freshly ripped-out heart of virgin, I said, “The backfin of the crab is the hump cavity. They produce the most delectable meat in there. Well, Elio the chef adds even more backfin lumpmeat to the already bursting cavity, then they dip the whole schmeer in a heavenly batter and deep fry it. What I mean, it is to die!”

  “Yes, yes, go on, you silver-tongu
ed balladeer!”

  “For the main course you can’t go wrong with the spiced shrimp, absolutely heady with the taste of ginger. They try to serve them to you cold, but take my advice, Tom, get them hot. Or just buy a half dozen or a dozen hardshell crabs, done up with the famous Old Bay seasoning. They give you a mallet to crack them, they spread butcher’s paper on the table so you can make a Visigoth of yourself, a roll of paper towels…and it’s suck and smash and savor till your stomach shrieks, ‘Kamerad!’”

  When we revived him, Tom ordered all of it, and we sat there in unfettered camaraderie for two hours, smiling and gulping. And finally, when all about us was mere debris, he said, “Now. About our friends.”

  “Yeah…what’re we going to do about them? Mister Los Angeles really has his nose out of joint about what he thinks is snubbery from Hubbel. And Hubbel is bewildered and upset even though he cops to meeting so many people that some of the less wonky faces slip out of his memory. What’s to be done to reconcile these two wonderful galoots?”

  Tom Nolan picked a bit of buttery crab from between two molars, thought about it for a second, then said, “Why don’t we just ignore them?”

  And that seemed peachy keen to me. Life’s too fucking short.

  Interim memo

  Credit for the quote in this installment goes to André Gide.

  INSTALLMENT 50: 7 NOVEMBER 82

  Because my nausea threshold is woefully low, I will not dwell long on a postcard I received from someone named McAuliffe in Hawthorne. It was vaguely in response to the two recent columns about CasaBlanca Fans and Joanne Gutreimen’s successful one-woman crusade against their advertising. The card was one of those “You’re a sexist asshole, Ellison” beauties. (Response to the columns has run pretty nearly 50–50 from women. Half understood and agreed, half understood and didn’t agree. I can live with that.) But the card said something like “A kike will always let you down, but a CasaBlanca Fan will never hang you up.” Or something.

  The reason I can’t quote it exactly is that I did with that missive what I learned to do with similar mail about ten years ago. (And, yes, this is a long-overdue dip-into-the-mailbag column you reivers have been asking for.) Most mail requires no response: people praising or panning and simply wanting to be heard, which is swell. A few pieces I answer personally, usually if there’s some human pain in it, or a particularly kind thought that compels a private thankyou. Much of the mail gets dealt with in these columns, openly and at length. But every once in a while something arrives that is so exemplary in its ugliness, that I give it the special treatment, which I commend to your attention for use when such a pustule arrives in your mail.

  I return the offensive item with a form letter that reads as follows: Enclosed please find a dismaying item I received in the mail today. I felt you would want to see it. Clearly, some certifiably brain damaged idiot is writing crazy letters and signing your name to them. I thought you might want to have this so you could contact the appropriate postal authorities—in an effort to stop this clown before your good name is further devalued. All best wishes, Harlan Ellison.

  You’d be surprised how little one hears from such communicants thereafter.

  Robin Podolsky, along with several other readers, took me to task for saying Gone With the Wind should not have been lobbied against by collegiate women’s groups who didn’t want it included in university film programs, because it was sexist, on the grounds that it was an accurate portrayal of the position of blacks and women during the Civil War. Ms. Podolsky made a strong, if occasionally paralogical, case for GWTW being a sentimentalization of the situation. I agree, but still contend that a film such as GWTW, made in 1939, probably reflects the attitude of America at that time, even if it isn’t historically correct about the Civil War period, and for that reason has significance for us today. Her carp that GWTW isn’t Art I choose not to deal with. I’ve never liked the film, though I recognize its continuing impact on generations of film goers.

  What Ms. Podolsky does grind my gears by saying is as follows: “Your fucking credentials? Since when does a list of yesterday’s accomplishments (even one as genuinely impressive as your own) protect us from today’s complacency? By the way, I usually have a good memory: when was the last time you devoted a column to an exposure of racism?”

  To pull your fangs for one moment before I go at the underlying text, Ms. Podolsky, my last column on racism was three or four weeks ago when I reprinted that first gun control essay, the stated and implied thrust of which was that it is the racist fears of Californians at the stereotypical image of rape-crazed blacks and psychopathic greasy Latinos that scared them into voting down Prop. 15. When the NRA talks about “guns in the hands of killers” they sure as hell ain’t talking about all those good old redneck boys who hang out in beer bars and will off you with their snubbie should you accidentally spill a Miller Lite on them. Those guys all go to make up the 250,000 members of the NRA who live in California. What they’re talking about, but are too hypocritical to put right out on the plate, is the shadowy racist fear of that great, lumbering black beast whom they believe actually exists in amoral deadliness. What they’re talking about are all the swarthy vatos locos who live only to rape their jukebox roadhouse Dolly Parton-surrogate girl friends.

  An exposure of racism? Where the hell have you been living, Ms. Podolsky? Richard Wright and James Baldwin and Chester Hines and Piri Thomas and Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes all exposed it thoroughly, fifty years before you wrote your letter. What more is there to say that hasn’t been said, save to keep writing about specific instances that occur every day? I wish I could find the author of that quote I’ve used before in these pages, that “Everything that can be said has been said; but we have to say it again, because no one was listening.” I’ll do a column on racism when something very special and horrible comes to my attention, lady.

  As for my credentials as a card-carrying knee-jerk humanist, well, I’m forced to agree with you again. Yesterday’s good deeds only buy so much. The coin is good, but time dulls its luster. One does the best one can. I’m not going to keep running a litany of my activities in service of the commonweal just so you can find it in your heart to trust me. What went down with Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King, Jr., was yesterday’s payment on my right to sleep peacefully.

  What I did today and what I’ll do tomorrow—which you’ll never know about —are my business. But I suggest before you come with claws at someone whose past credits stand up, that you consider I write this fucking column every week, and all I hear from you is that I haven’t dealt lately with what you want dealt with lately. At least I’m out here every week, Ms. Podolsky. Match my credits, Ace.

  Now for something completely different. Terri Mitchell of Los Angeles sent me a postcard about the Great Hydrox / Oreo Cookie Conspiracy a while ago, and I’ve been hanging on to it for just such a moment as this, when levity is needed.

  “Harlan, honey: I’m truly impressed by your taste in cookies. When I was little, my father divorced my mother when she brought home Oreos one fateful afternoon. He railed against Oreos over &. over. I’m not kidding. Hydroces are definitely the way to go. But you missed an absolutely vital aspect. That is, you do not simply eat a Hydrox—oh noooo! What you do is tenderly, carefully pull the contraption apart and lick the white stuff off—then you pop the soggy chocolates into your mouth quickly before the spit grows green stuff. For people like you who don’t like the white part, what you do is flake it off onto the floor &. step on it & track it around the kitchen. Incidentally, you said the white stuff looked like elephant cum. How do you know what elephant cum looks like?”

  Your faithful columnist chooses not to reveal the specifics of his sex life here in front of Gawd and Podolsky and everyone. But, after that business about licking off the white stuff, you got a lotta nerve even bracing me on the subject, Mitchell.

  I’ll be calling for a date later this week.

  Right now I’m getting ready to fal
l down on the floor in a paroxysm of laughter at a coupon I received in the mail offering me 25¢. off on any package of Schick Blades that will give me a “Macho Close” shave.

  Hoping you are the same…

  Interim memo

  A letter from Mr. Michael Lawler, the chap who objected to my gun control columns, appeared in this issue of the Weekly. Mr. Lawler was upset that I took him to task for his pro-weapon stance. What Mr. Lawler never seemed to notice was that I never specified him as a gun-crazy. What I said, repeatedly, was “people like Mr. Lawler.” Nonetheless, he took umbrage, which was fine by me, and he wrote that I was a nasty sod for holding him up to public contempt, which I didn’t. I do think it’s interesting to note, however, that he suggests violence (spanking me soundly) as a proper response to my public utterances. I rest my case.

  Letters reprinted with permission from the L.A. Weekly

  INSTALLMENT 51: 15 NOVEMBER 82

  If, like me, you find the onset of Major Gift-Giving Holidays more a pressure in the fundament than in the fun-producing center, then perhaps you, too, have adopted the policy of bestowing largesse all-year-round, when a certain item glimpsed in a store cries out to be purchased for this friend or that lover. It has been my passport to sanity in these parlous times of economic laryngitis. Coupled with an unrelenting stricture to my friends that they eschew any buying of gifts for me, it has made the slide through the holiday season an easy one.