What went before: CONTEXT: Last night after I said good-night, I made the mistake of checking my mail in which there were not one, not two, but no less than four . . . ill-worded “requests” that I do Just This One Thing that would make the asker’s life “easier.” And I snapped. Because it’s not like I don’t have Stuff to Do.
Response follows posted to FB follows.
Sigh.
Apparently, it is again time to remind (some) people that, just because it would make life easier for you if I did X, does not mean that I will do X. In fact, it pretty much guarantees that I won’t do X, because I’m Just. That. Contrary.
Also? I am not the Nice One. I have never been the Nice One. That would have been Steve. Who you pushed at your peril, I might add. Black Knight in this corner, and the only things that keep me from knifing you rather than look at you are Good Manners and a disinclination to clean up the blood.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. My apologies to all the perfectly reasonable, kind, and polite people out there who did not need this reminder.
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Monday
Oh. A question regarding last night’s TED Talk: “Did Steve know you are mean?”
Good question.
ANSWER: No, he did not know that. Because? I’m not mean. As a measuring stick we can use the fact that Steve did not, in fact, care for mean people. I believe this was because he thought meanness was banal. I also think that Steve — who believed that we only get to do this life once — thought that meanness was a waste of time and resource.
Now, while that was a good question, a better question would be: Did Steve know I am a Black Knight?
And the answer to that is: Yes. Yes, he did. And he celebrated that. I am for instance today wearing a pair of tights he gave me — stick with me, now — which have a graphic on the right thigh. Of a dagger thrust through a garter.
So, yeah, Steve knew who I am. Thank you for asking.
Relative to the notion of nice.
Some time ago, I was part of a panel — I think it might have been at COsine — dedicated to remembering the late Anne McCaffrey, as a person, and a force of nature, a mentor and friend to younger writers, and so on. The idea that came around more than once was how generous Anne was with her time, and how kind and accessible she was to those writers who were younger than she in our craft.
And as I was leaving the panel, a man deliberately stepped out into the aisle, blocking me on my way out (Why me? is the question I always ask at times like this), and said, rather belligerently: “You were all up there talking about how nice Anne McCaffrey was (NOTE: We were not. Anne was not nice. I say this with love.) and not one of you mentioned that she took a guy’s house away from him! That’s not what I’d call nice!”
ASIDE for those who may not know the story: This is true, as far as it goes. Which wasn’t quite the whole distance. The guy in question was infringing on Anne’s work, and she was legally bound to stop him.
CONTINUING: “That’s right, she did,” I said to Belligerent Guy. “She told him to stop or she’d take his house. He didn’t stop, she took him to court, and he lost his house. Being ‘nice’ doesn’t mean you let people steal from you.”
. . . which was about the time that Steve arrived at my side and the guy withdrew, apparently not willing to continue this discussion with another guy present.
Circling back a moment to Steve . . .
One of Steve’s Gifts was that he took people as he found them. If he liked you — or if he was interested in you — he tried to help you . . . strengthen your reality; to be the best You you could be. It was my great good fortune that he liked and was interested in me. He stood between me and YOU SHOULD. He gave me room and time to learn and to grow into myself . . .
. . . while also making sure I knew exactly how hard it is to get blood out of a carpet.
Here endeth today’s discursion.
