Here's Christina Lake, Victor Gonzalez, Lenny Bailes, and Vicki Rosenzweig. Christina is a writer, intrepid world traveler, and fanzine editor. Victor is a newspaper reporter, and fanzine editor. Lenny is a writer, teacher, and fanzine editor. I don't know what Vicki does for a living but it has something to do with computers, and hey, she's a fanzine editor. I met up with them at the fanzine lounge tucked away at the Baltimore Hilton where we caught up on recent gossip, crashed the Hugo Losers' party, wandered around looking for the best room parties, argued and dissected fanhistory, debated the merits of online fanzines, drank up all the sodas, admired the historical fanzines on display, and sat up until the wee hours every morning talking our fool heads off. You know, the usual things fanzine fans do.
On Friday night it was my turn to run the lounge, so I made sure there was lots of food set out, made coffee, feverishly snapped photos with my new digital camera despite its dying batteries (thanks, Kip Williams, for loaning me new batteries -- they kept it going long enough to save the images), begged Christina, Frank Lunney, and Ted White to bring me decent beer which they did (my heros), and promised to join a mailing list called Timebinders as soon as I returned home. That turned out to be an excellent suggestion. I've been enjoying it ever since. I don't contribute much, but I love fanhistory and keeping up with current events. I don't receive many paper fanzines any more. I don't send letters of comment, generally, so I get dropped off the lists. Timebinders is a very decent substitute.
On Saturday, it transpired Teresa's bum foot had developed from a bad sprain to a possible fracture so she'd been given a nifty little motorized scooter with which to attend the con. She was allowed to take it outside the convention center, too, so she and Patrick and I went to lunch across the street at the Wharf Rab brew pub. Elly Lang, publicist for Random House, joined us for beer and crab sandwiches, and made us all squeal with a squishy toy she'd bought at the aquarium. Afterwards, I walked Elly back to her hotel room and offered useful suggestions as she organized her authors' dinner at a nearby seafood house. The last time I'd seen her, I ended up driving her and Harry Turtledove around Nashville playing native tour guide. She's a dynamo, whip smart, funny as hell, and I adore her company.
Saturday night, my pal FarSide drove up from the swampy depths of southern coastal Virginia to have dinner with me. We ate at Philips where the ambience was intense, which is to say we could barely see our plates, the waiters were discreet to the point of being absent, and the wind off the bay practically blew our crabcake dinners into our laps. At the fanzine lounge he caught up with Vicki whom he knows from ElderMOO. I love it when my social groups intermingle. We eventually joined the Tor crowd over at the Marriott's bar where we barely got one drink apiece before closing time. Last call at 1am is the pits. FarSide and I wound up sitting in the lobby of my hotel for a long time, talking about life, and love, and virtual reality. I wish he lived closer to us, he's such a thoroughly decent guy.
Did any of that have a thing to do with those photos? Well, no. I'm not illustrating a story here, I'm setting down the bare facts of what I did and who I saw. It's boring for you, though, I'm sure. Let me tell you something about the con that won't turn up in anyone else's report, then, how about that? A sidebar, a cautionary tale, a sighting that reminded me of how life takes some odd turns.
Once upon a time I had a friend. He was a popular guy, bright and witty and withal a fine fellow. I shared a house with him and two other people 16 years ago for a few months. We had some laughs at that house in Seattle's U. District. We were in our early 20's, and stayed up late talking fanzines, and went out dancing, and smoked a lot of pot, and held parties, and fell in love with the wrong people, and generally had a good time. I moved to San Francisco, and thereafter only ran into him at cons or big parties. I heard he was ill, and had been unable to work. The word went out: he needed help. I helped raise money to pay his rent or buy groceries or whatever the crisis required. He didn't thank me. I heard he got well, but didn't go back to work full time. He started leaning hard on others to take care of him, eventually moving back to New York when he'd used up all his favors in Seattle. This didn't stop him from being incredibly, and inexplicably, arrogantly self-important. It was as though we were not supposed to notice he was screwing up a lot on the basic social functions. It was as though he couldn't believe being witty wasn't enough to get by.
Time passed, and he discovered Usenet where he became ubiquitous on a truly amazing number of groups. He managed to fuck up a really good job in the field he'd always wanted to go into; he couldn't give up his self-importance long enough to pay his dues. Everyone who wasn't mad at him felt sorry for him. He was still smoking a lot of pot. He got depressed. He stopped even pretending to job hunt, and spent his entire day on Usenet. He begged and pleaded charmingly, and went to stay at friends' houses for a few weeks, ending up staying for months until he was kicked out, but he didn't bother to take responsibility for himself. Soon he discovered he was ill again. Now he had to take drugs to combat the depression, which gave him an excuse to avoid doing anything but complain that he had no money, didn't feel good, and was afraid he'd wind up on the mean streets of New York. And still, and always, he spent his days and nights posting to Usenet instead of pulling his shit together. He only got off his butt when faced with immediate, catastrophic disaster of which there were an increasingly number of incidents. Any set-back in life convinced him there was no use in even trying any more. He turned his back on everything he could have been, and he could have been a good and useful man.
I saw him at the Worldcon this year. He generally manages to get some money together from temping here and there in order to pay for food, and his internet access, and show up at cons although not nearly as many as he'd like. I am civil to him in person, but I don't talk to him unless not talking to him would make everyone else uncomfortable. He has been killfiled for a couple of years now on my Usenet groups, and for the last year on my mail program. He believes that expressing his opinion on numerous topics is enough to make him a desirable member of our community. He doesn't believe he has to take care of himself. He would rather manipulate, and bargain, and wheedle than just do the boring, unpleasant thing and get a job. He would rather complain that he is misunderstood and only temporarily having hard luck than face up to reality which is that he is nothing more than our community's town drunk. It's computers, not alcohol with him, but it's the same thing. Everyone else carries his load, and he expects us to keep on doing it.
I'll never understand why some people just give up in life. I've lost two friendships to drug habits, and this one to selfishness. Once upon a time he was a real joy to be around. Now, he's just a joke.
I'm not laughing very hard.
