by Jesse Miller

Every so often, in life, an obnoxious person crosses through our time and place. Once in a while, a fellow human being rankles only you. There are instances when one individual is repeatedly obliged by circumstance to interact with another. Sometimes, a strange man or woman seems to aggressively alienate practically everyone, not just a few.

I am one of those whom many find repellent. Worse, in the early 1970s, I was in my early twenties, and I was a vociferous, African American Science Fiction Writer. The way I presented myself as a writer of Science Fiction and as a human being was an intolerable embarrassment to my own community. In effect, I fouled my own nest, though I didn't know it.

For example, Mr. Damon Knight had regular annual writer's conferences in those times. One year, such a conference took place in at the William Kellogg Estate in Battle Creek Michigan. I felt lucky and happy to be there, and although I stated as much, such declarations ("It's wonderful to be here with actual writers and talk about ... writing.") served only as another form of embarrassment. Most of the time my method of communication was more overtly nauseating.

When Harlan Ellison asked, in a conversational tone, if I was familiar with Marshall Arts, or Karate, my fast response was, "No, but I know ashtray and table." (There were heavy glass ashtrays placed about the room. Those ashtrays were potential murder weapons.) Mr. Ellison called to George Alec Effinger, The author of "What Entropy Means to Me," and repeated what I'd said. I nodded and smiled, pleased with myself.

Those were the days when James Brown was singing, "I may not know Karate, but I know Ka-razor." Mr. Brown was talking about a reaction to the Jim Crow condition and institution. I was responding to Mr. Ellison as I'd learned to respond over four years in barracks around the world. I was not acting appropriately for someone basking in the comfort of the sumptuous William Kellogg Estate, where sail boats plied the lake, and a family of huge swans enjoyed their own pond.

I kept asking Mr. Effinger to explain what "Entropy" means. One of his answers was, "I can't say, and that is what it is."

"But what does it mean?" I kept asking. I was too stupid to be embarrassed for myself. I thought my ashtray response was snappy. I thought it showed honesty to keep asking what entropy meant. "Is it is it like ... like vestigial?" I persisted.

After four years in the Air Force, I was an honorably discharged veteran and I was twenty-one. I had taken my high school GED on a whim over four afternoons in Tech School at Amarillo Texas, mostly in order to avoid afternoon PT.

After getting out of the service, I wrote three stories and sold three stories. I had never tried to sell my writing before that time. I was batting 1000 in an arena where some may spend a life time and never get a hit. I knew no different.

The first (and last) Sci Fi convention I attended was in the aforementioned early seventies. I was one of the nominees for the John Campbell award for Best New Writer. I had the honor of being introduced to Robert A. Heinlein, who asked me what I sought. "Fame," I responded.

Mr. Heinlein advised me that if I achieved fame, I would regret it. I wanted the chance to be able to say the same thing ... from the vantage point of fame. "Practically all famous people say they wish they aren't famous," I thought. "Wouldn't that be like saying, "I wish I didn't have millions of dollars ... '? Give me a chance to say these things."

At the convention, I created a disruption, striding into a hall where distinguished panelists, including Joe Haldeman, were engaged in a scheduled Question and Answer with the paying public. "I am the greatest!" I yelled as I came swaggering down a side aisle. The fact that I'd been unable to garner an entourage did not deter me. I had a big fluffy Afro. I was dressed like Shaft.

One nice lady confronted me. She had an entourage, and in the style I'd adapted, (stupid, and proud to be that way) I played to her friends. "Just who are you?" the woman asked.

"I'm Jesse Miller," I said. I threw back my head and broadcast it all around: "...and I am the greatest!"

Once, in the city, from across the street, I'd seen Mohammed Ali getting out of a car on Lenox Avenue near 112th Street. Everyone was mobbing him and adoring him. I admired his style. "Hey Ali!" I yelled. The great man heard me somehow and turned. When our eyes met, I felt I had to say something. "I'll kick your ass!" I yelled. His response was a nod and a wave. I was a crackpot, and to some, this was immediately clear.

"Jesse Miller?" the lady eyed me levelly.

"Jesse Miller!" I shouted back.

"I see," said the lady. "You are a monster."

"A monster?" I was confused. I thought of myself as a nice person. "I'm not a monster," I said. "I ... I am the Greatest!" I was looking for Howard Cosell type verification.

"We'll just see about that," the woman announced and she turned away with finality ... taking her entourage with her.

True friends advised me that it would be better if I did not win the award. I discarded that counsel as it seemed impossible to miss. Three submissions ... three big hits.

Back in the hall at the convention with Joe Haldeman, I stormed the dais, brushing aside a little attendant who tried to stop me with, "Sir, you can't go up there."

"You can't stop me," I shouted. "I want to talk to my friend." Then I embraced Joe Haldeman, and not knowing what else to do, but thinking I was supposed to do something, (The lights are out in the tunnel, let's step on the gas!), I took Joe back in an anteroom and turned him on to what had to be rated among the most outrageous and powerful grass on the planet. Mr. Haldeman was not used to marijuana like that, and he had the paranoid jitters for the rest of the convention.

I thought I'd done him a favor. I continued around yelling, screaming and strutting. I smoked grass in the halls of the hotel, on the probably accurate assumption that as one of the nominated writers, I had a kind of temporary immunity in the matter of victimless crime.

In retrospect, today I reason the term "victimless crime" always allows for that single, central victim: one's self.

Back at that convention, by the time of the awards dinner, I was confident of winning, and I wanted to win. I thought it would be best not to have an acceptance speech, I'd just be spontaneous. Yeah, I'll just yell, "I am the greatest," I thought.

When it came time to read the names of the nominees for the John Campbell award, my name was on the list. I looked around, assessing my path, so I wouldn't have any embarrassing stumbles on my way to accept.

"Here's a surprise," I saw no surprise possibility ... unless the surprise was that I'd lost.

"We have a two place tie for the second place!" I was neither of the second place winners, so now I knew I had won. I cleared my throat and adjusted my tie.

"And the winner is ..." I got ready to rise ... "Spyder Robinson!" Spyder made a nice acceptance speech, turned and looked right at me and said, "You wuz robbed."

Of the five or so nominees, I was rightly last.

As the years go on, the expression, "It is an honor just to have been nominated," takes on more and more significance for me. Back at the Kellogg Conference, Gene Wolfe had tried to speak on my behalf. He read from one of my offerings and claimed "We all know this young man." From the tears in his eyes I knew and appreciated that he meant support, although I did not understand his meaning.

Looking back now it seems the unspoken fact was that there was one among us who did not know that young man: The young man himself. It is a hopeful given that obnoxious young people will gain an appreciation of their own environment ... that some moderation and temperance may come with knowledge and understanding.

Through providence I had been boosted to a place where the only qualification I could properly cite would have been dumb luck. I was an instinctive writer. I wrote from the habit of writing. I was without craft or knowledge. When George Alec Effinger attacked one of my stories, saying "This is nothing!" I nodded and smiled, knowing the story he was attacking had already been sold. What Mr. Effinger was giving was only his opinion. My wife says, "Opinions are like thumbs ... everyone has at least two." Who cared what Mr. Effinger's opinion was?

I flaunted my idiocy like a flag. Today I would have asked, "What's the matter with the story? This is a writer's conference after all, 'I don't like it,' is not an argument that helps anyone." But then, the ugly me only smiled because I knew I was getting mine. The story had been sold. It was "Phoenix House," in Damon Knight's Orbit series. Still, there are valuable, valid reasons for not liking a story. When someone cares enough to express rejection, that is an opportunity to mine that rejection and gain tips on ways to improve.

But no. I cared nothing for anyone's argument or feelings. It did not occur to me that my writing could be improved.

I was the clown in the China Shop. Today that shop which for a time let me wander freely in the glittering aisles, has moved on without me.

Now I truly understand more about what made me monstrous. I'm no longer the clown ... perhaps only because to be a clown, one needs an audience.

No today my condition is merely grotesque, because I can not stop writing, all the time. Writing writing writing ... and sometimes, by the grace of God, I think what I've written written written is pretty good ... but no one will read me.

At night on the floor in my separate bedroom, my wife often hears me cry out in apparent terror and fear, and we've been trying to remember what scares me in those dreams. "I keep dreaming of great and wonderful things," I tell her. "I dream I'm able to fly back to any era and interact with any railroad in any capacity, and I go back to the 1930's, and ride on a flatbed railroad car with a bunch of friends, pushed by a 4-6-2 Pacific, and the wind is in our hair, and we party, sweeping though turns and little towns ... by crossings and Doppler bells!

Then in the end of the dream, all the rolling stock I've encountered gets put in a box, because it is a dream, and I get to look at the cars, hold the perfect little steel jewels in my hands where I see even the detail of little springs and cushions. This to me is a dream of joy. Why would I cry in apparent terror and fear in the middle of an ocean of what to me would be particular joy?

It has come to me; this reason for weeping in the night: It is because I must leave that wonder-dream and rude awaken.

I must come then, back to this keyboard, sit here and write write write ... with no one to read read read, and in my head living on half an equation, I hear, the fool calling out loud, "I'm not a monster."

My friends are repeating "It would be better for you if you did not win."

And then "This is unusual, we have a tie for second place!"

Nevermore.

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