An Edge in My Voice

by Harlan Ellison

  Did the police and the FBI even seek the advice of a good psychologist? Did any of them sit and sum up the realities…not the maybes and the what-ifs…just the realities of what Norman Mayer was doing? Nowhere in the reports do we hear of such action being taken. Just the gunslinging bravado of the O.K. Corral. Ending in the hail of rifle fire that killed old, crazily-committed Norman Mayer.

  Were we not one with Richard Nixon, someone would have said, simply, “He wants to make his point. He wants to be heard.” And in my deranged fantasy I see them telling Ronald Reagan that one of his people is in pain, is hurting with fear so much for the rest of his species that he wants a chat. And Ronald Reagan would have said, “I understand. Let’s take a walk.” And he would have crossed that short distance across the Mall, and he would have walked up to Norman Mayer, and he would have said, “Mr. Mayer, I understand what you’re trying to do; but this isn’t the way to do it. You’re scaring people, Mr. Mayer. And you’re getting yourself in terrible trouble.” And Norman Mayer would have been so amazed that for the first time his existence had been validated, that he would have put aside that pathetic model airplane control box, and he would have walked back to the White House for a cup of tea and a quiet conversation with the leader of his nation, who had demonstrated that even the least of his countrymen was worth postponing lunch.

  But that’s a fantasy. And kindness is a fantasy. And common sense in the face of cocked guns is a fantasy. We are a nation of SWAT teams and too little open conversation.

  I know I am foolish to suggest Ronald Reagan might have had the personal courage to end the “emergency” by bold leadership. I hear the snickers and the repeated phrase, “We couldn’t take a chance,” even though they knew they were in no danger of the bluff being genuinely threatening. I know I am alone in feeling that there was something noble and courageous and infinitely humane in Norman Mayer’s act. Nonetheless, I have cried for him since I saw them open fire on his van.

  And I cannot but consider the irony of his having died so near a monument to the President who said, “If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

  SANE is worried that Norman Mayer’s strange behavior might “tarnish the image of the entire antinuclear movement,” but in every progression of social reform, from Joan of Arc to Martin Luther King it is the mad endeavor of a John Brown or a Spartacus that demonstrates the depth of angst most of us can only pay faint obeisance to.

  Norman Mayer was presented to us by tv and by the authorities as a bad man. He had been arrested in Hong Kong in 1976 for trying to smuggle a small amount of marijuana; he was a drifter and a low class hotel handyman; he had been jailed for civil disobedience distributing antinuclear leaflets on college campuses in Miami Beach; he had tried to buy dynamite in Kentucky; he was a deranged fanatic. All that may be so…and common sense tells me it is so. But as I see Ronald Reagan seeking to discredit the Antinuclear Movement in this country and across the planet, I cannot fight back the certain knowledge that Norman Mayer was a Great American. He died as he lived, futilely; but at least for me his death was a martyrdom that illuminates with a sickly pallor the cowardice and inhumanity, the inflexibility and disregard for the plight of our people that keynotes Reagan’s administration and the Imperial Presidencies that have preceded it.

  And though I know you won’t, I would be remiss if I did not suggest that at this holiest of holiday times, whether it be Christmas or Channukah, that you light one extra candle this year. For Norman Mayer, a sad and driven mad old man who cared enough to take a few too many steps in our behalf.

  Maybe that should be two candles. One for him, and one for us. Because as Norman Mayer knew, we are in terrible danger.

  Interim memo

  The letter following this installment, objecting to my takeout on the Miss Tush Contest (Installment 54), is of small historical note because at the same time Ms. Giegerich was upbraiding me for writing a conundrum column which was actually about the lines we draw between group minority rights and personal human rights (more than it was about a lingerie contest), I was being awarded a medal by the National Organization for Women for eight years of service in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, in a public ceremony at the Century Plaza Hotel.

  Letters reprinted with permission from the L.A. Weekly

  INSTALLMENT 56: 22 DECEMBER 82

  They’re killing me with these deadlines, folks. No sooner do I hand in installment 55 than Phil Tracy is on the horn telling me that this issue of the paper has to go to bed the next day. Would that profundities came to me unbidden; but the truth is that epiphanies happen only once every fortnight for your columnist; and so this week’s ramble is precisely that: fill-in. Perhaps it’s time to answer some mail and correct some stupid errors I’ve made, and clean the slate for the New Year. So rest easily…I won’t trash anyone this time.

  One point I would like to make, however. I attended the Weekly’s annual Christmas bash last week, at which gathering I met, for the first time, many of the people who put out this estimable journal. To my surprise and considerable pleasure they were all, with one exception, affable and complimentary about these auctorial outings. The one exception was a harridan whose name does not appear on the masthead (nor will it appear in this column) who braced me and began giving me stuff. Her cavil with me, considerably slurred either from the effects of too much bad dope and booze, or from tertiary brain-rot, was that I was posing as “an ’80s person” (her phrase).

  I don’t really know what she meant by that. As the decade is barely two years gone, I doubt that a stereotype, or even a viable somatotype, can be projected as prototypically “’80s.” But whatever it finally turns out to be—and if she’s the model we are definitely on our way to joining the dinosaurs as an unworkable biological experiment—I ain’t a candidate for inclusion. I was born in the middle Thirties, was a kid in the Forties, stumbled through the horrible Fifties, reached belated puberty in the Sixties, and began to grasp some small part of what life was all about in the Seventies. Though I wrote for the Free Press in the ’60s and ’70s, I was in, rather than of the paper or that milieu. I have too much history in my skin to identify much with any Now Generation.

  So the croaking by the Fedco Discount Wicked Witch of the West utterly bewildered me. If others of you out there share a folie à deux with her, and perceive intimations of my trying to shoehorn myself into the punk technopop spiked hair shmatah-clothing negative affect ingroup, please reread. I’m too old and cranky to run with a gang.

  Not to mention that if my compatriots in such a pursuit turned out to be this high priestess of the intellectually destitute, I would rather spend my remaining years as a caretaker at the Crystal Cathedral.

  Onward. A minor glitch two weeks ago caused the deletion of the photo credit on the Miss Tush of 1983 picture. The photo was taken by Fritz Ptasynski, who broke his butt, or tush, or whatever, getting the photos of Shallon Ross to me before deadline. Apologies for the oversight herewith tendered.

  Cindy Little of L.A. points out, much to my chagrin, that I referred to Eugene Ormandy as “the late.” She writes, “If he is, then the photograph in Time last week had him stuffed, sitting next to Gene Kelly on a couch.” She is correct, and I’m fuddledly wrong, of course. My brain did one of those skip-logic tricks and I was thinking about Arthur Fiedler. I think parts of my head need a long vacation. Papeete, here I come!

  Two letters blown in on a Santa Ana personify the extremes of opinion re the Miss Tush essay. I quote them without comment, save to hope the mid-range of responses yet to come will elicit somewhat more intellectually-searching considerations, which is what was intended by the column. The first letter is from Don Morris of Santa Monica, who writes:

  “Cease and desist and perhap
s refrain from ignoring then denying the biologically-determined, physiologically and psychosexually conditioned characteristic differences between the sexes that are as different as cats and dogs, Mr. Tush contests and Chippendale’s women’s nights notwithstanding.

  “Despite your excellent writing gifts, try to climb out of that quagmire of quasi-liberal social causes (Feminism, etc.) that cause you and your Reader (me) such terrible Tylenol-of-Chicago headaches.

  “There is no great Philosophical Contradiction to hold over men’s heads when a small segment of our masculine grouping takes a vacation from the preoccupation with our mistresses’ G-spot, and perhaps slobbers and salivates (as rutting animals) over ‘hot’ chicks in fetishistically tantalizing sweet nothings.”

  The other far outpost of comment comes from Diane Street of Los Angeles, who wrote, crumpled, threw away, and then decided to send a note that reads:

  “Ellison, don’t let erections fool you. You were used. We aren’t ashamed of our basic drives, but crap like tush pageants make us want to be. You know it’s quite one-sided in this country (planet). There is no artistry in oppression. ‘Pedestal’ femininity is a hoax. Those events show women who are used to satirize being female, and they don’t even realize it’s happening. There are no questions in my mind on any of these things.”

  Received in the mail a dandy little booklet of some 66 pages titled EVERYBODY’S GUIDE TO NON-REGISTRATION. Written by attorney Carol Delton and community economic planning consultant Andrew Mazar in late 1980, this publication is an exhaustive information primer that provides military draft age persons, counselors, teachers, parents, etc. with all the data one needs on how not to register for the draft. While I advise no one either way on registering or avoiding doing same, I must tell you that I was drafted for two of the most ghastly years of my life in 1957, and were I of the ominous age today, I would send $2.50 (including postage, handling & tax) at once (check payable to EGNR) to 2000 Center Street, #1091, Berkeley, California 94704. At once I’d send it. Or run like hell.

  Continuing interest from a substantial number of you anent the kind of monies being paid for freelance writing in America prompts my reprinting the following figures from the Authors Guide Bulletin of last February–March. The freelance life, whatever its other rewards, is no way to get rich. What many writers don’t realize is that pay scales only seem to be getting better. Actually, when inflation is taken into account, the freelancer is much worse off than twenty years ago. The fees magazines really pay are frequently different from (and usually higher than) the rates that they announce as standard in writers’ reference sources. This chart may be outdated already. I understand the N. Y. Times Magazine is now starting out at $2500 for first acceptance.

  Several people inquired what happened to my romance with the woman for whom I said I would crawl through monkey vomit. It ended. Nice of you to ask, though. Maybe the grail is out there for me, but as of this writing…the search goes on. You see, we’re not very different, you and I.

  Some of you in the music industry noticed that on the preliminary Grammy ballot there was a nominee in the Spoken Word category labeled Jeffty Is Five, read by Harlan Ellison. Yes, that’s your columnist, delighted and trepidatious about being this close to a Grammy nomination. As I’m up against Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson, I don’t hold out very much hope that when they hold the big Grammy spectacular in February I’ll be picking up any awards; but I must confess to a genuine thrill. I’d try and buy your votes, but I’m as tapped out as those of you who work full time in the recording industry.

  Don’t you hate those form letter hustles from the publishers of magazines to which you subscribe, urging you to re-up at once, before you lose even one precious copy…and then you notice on the computer replication of your mail sticker that you have eight months, or two years, or a decade to go before your previous sub runs out? Don’t you hate it? Don’t you wish they’d knock off that shit? Gee, I sure do.

  Well, I see by the albatross on the wall that we’re coming to the end of the year, as well as nearly a full year’s installments of this column, so I’ll invoke that mystic power I acquired in the Orient which enables me to cloud men’s minds, so they cannot see me, and wish you the following for 1983:

  Chances.

  That’s all you need, kiddo.

  —————LETTERS—————

  Jill Sez…

  Dear Editor:

  Harlan Ellison is a pretentious, dim-witted, cliché-minded jerk. I can’t stand it any more! His last article on The Miss Tush Beauty Pageant was too much. Listen, Harlan, do us women a favor and from now on stay off our side! It’s no joke, Harlan. Women’s rights are serious business and you clearly aren’t up to it. Being such a devil-may-care, rebellious, crazy, walk on the wild side kind of guy must make it hard to take life seriously. So why don’t you just step down from the podium and go about your business? We don’t need the aggravation. Seriously.

  —Jill Giegerich

  Los Angeles

  Interim memo

  The turnout for the radio script reading described in this column was sensational. They filled the restaurant and had to set up video cameras for the overflow in other rooms. It was one of the best evenings of my life. You shoulda been there.

  INSTALLMENT 57: 3 JANUARY 83

  You are isolated on a remote plantation in the crawling Amazon jungle. And an immense army of ravenous ants is closing in on you…swarming in to eat you alive! A deadly black army from which there is no…ESCAPE!

  Tired of the everyday grind? Ever dream of a life of romantic adventure? Want to get away from it all? I offer you…Escape! Designed to free you from the four walls of today for an evening of high adventure!

  Next Wednesday night we escape to the Amazon jungle…and to a creeping, crawling terror as the Variety Arts Radio Theater presents the classic adventure tale, “Leiningen Versus the Ants” by Carl Stevenson, featuring in the title role…your terror-stricken columnist.

  When you pass a record shop and see a sign in the window advertising the latest Who album for $1.98, and you dash in to save three dollars on the purchase, that’s called a loss-leader. When Cal Worthington shows you a 1982 Lancia Zagato with the fold-down rear-roof section on The Late Late Show, and he swears on his sainted mother’s name that it has only 3000 miles on it, was driven by a quadraplegic who only took it out to attend Agent Orange protest rallies, and it’s down there at Worthington Motors for $2395, that’s called a loss-leader. When a schmuck no sensible woman would go out with manages to con a traffic-stopper into a date by waving third row center seats to the Itzhak Perlman concert under her nose, that’s called a loss-leader.

  In service of introducing you to the joys of the Variety Arts Radio Theater, a group that performs Golden Age radio scripts live all through the year, I have happily, willingly, even enthusiastically consented to be a loss-leader by performing in their production of “Leiningen Versus the Ants” next Wednesday in the Tin Pan Alley cabaret theater of the Variety Arts Center at 940 South Figueroa.

  Let me tell you about the Variety Arts Radio Theater, the Center, and about this moment stolen from the past.

  Some time ago I began receiving invitations from a nice man named Bob Farley, to come down to The Society for the Preservation of Variety Arts, to attend one of the performances of this talented group of actors and audial thespians who, for five seasons, have been recreating in the plush and charming environs of the Center, the lost thrills of attending a radio drama studio presentation.

  Finally, on a Wednesday evening last November, in company with a few friends who were also curious about what a “live radio show” might be like, we drove down the Harbor Freeway, got off at 6th (and found ourselves close enough to The Pantry, which is catty-corner to the Variety Arts Center, to have a late night T-bone), and entered the sumptuous, festive building, which was worth the trip itself. The Variety Arts Center was built in 1926, in a much more elegant era, and was converted into its p
resent form in the mid-Seventies. There is a spiffy Variety Roof Garden restaurant on the top floor, a W. C. Fields bar, an Earl Carroll Lounge, a library of irreplaceable theater tomes and memorabilia, the Tin Pan Alley cabaret theater where old films are shown, and a 1200 seat theater on the main floor.

  It is a splendid building, oozing eclat, lustrous and gorgeous, resonating to memories of times gone by when the ash had not settled quite so thickly over good taste in this land. It’s the physical manifestation of scenes from Jack Finney’s superb novel TIME AND AGAIN. It is the sound of Louis Armstrong playing “One of These Days” with Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra on an 80-groove-per inch 1924 shellac disc. It is a world away from Chuck E. Cheese video game parlors and plastic paraphernalia. It’s the sort of place to which you would wear a Borsalino hat, where you’d sit quietly reading poetry by Hillaire Belloc, tales of archy & mehitabel by Don Marquis or a James M. Cain novel.

  And it was there, one Wednesday night last November that my friends and I ascended in the little elevator to the third floor where, in the Tin Pan Alley cabaret theater, with its tiny bar set into one wall, we saw a splendid group of performers under the direction of Roger Rittner recreate episodes of Doc Savage and The Green Hornet.