Becoming Superman

by J. Michael Straczynski

  I acquiesced, but it was consent in name only. I would write what I needed to write, even if that meant doing so secretly.

  Such difficulties aside, there was much good to be said about Larry. He was always willing to talk, and in the early days he worked hard to help me fit in.

  And then there was the night I awoke to the familiar sound of my father’s car roaring up in front of the house.

  I dressed quickly and bolted outside as my father throttled the engine up and down. “Get in the car,” he yelled drunkenly, “or I’m gonna ram the fucking house!”

  He hit the gas and the car lurched forward a few feet. I jumped out of the way and yelled at him to stop. As other members of the household raced outside, we surrounded the car, trying to pen him in, but he kept jumping the car forward, driving us back then slamming on the brakes again, inching closer to the house.

  Then I heard the ga-thump ga-thump ga-thump of Larry’s slippers on the sidewalk. Roused from bed, half asleep and wrapped in a robe, he asked “What’s going on?”

  “My dad says he’s gonna ram the house unless I get in the car.”

  He looked at the car, at my dad, at the house, and back at the car again.

  “Let him,” he said. “We’re insured.”

  “But . . . no, we can’t—”

  “He won’t ram the house,” he said, then gestured to the others. “Everybody go on back inside, morning comes early you know.”

  We looked at one another, hesitated . . . then started back inside.

  Larry patted the hood of the car. “Go for it,” he said, “we could use a new kitchen.”

  Shouting obscenities, my father backed the car down the street to build up speed, then floored the pedal. The car roared forward then screeched to a stop at the curb, tires smoking.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you assholes?” my father yelled. “You want me to get killed? Is that it?”

  Rather than reply Larry closed the front door and padded down the hall to his bedroom. Ga-thump, ga-thump, ga-thump.

  My father remained outside for a while longer, throttling the engine up and down menacingly before finally driving off into the night.

  As I lay in the upper bunk of our room, I kept running Larry’s actions through my head. My father had come to instill terror. But Larry beat him because he didn’t show even a flicker of fear. Go for it.

  Never let them see you’re afraid, I decided. Ever.

  Though I had shared my short stories with friends and teachers, I hadn’t yet dared to submit them anywhere for publication, fearing the rejections that would inevitably follow. But now that I had a new credo, Never let them see you’re afraid, I began sending my stories to various magazines, using a friend’s address for the submissions. I soon had shoeboxes full of rejection slips from Analog and Fantasy and Science Fiction as well as Playboy and the Saturday Evening Post. I even submitted to the New Yorker on the theory that if you’re going to fail, fail big.

  And I was failing spectacularly.

  As months passed without selling anything I began to wonder if I simply wasn’t good enough. I’d finish a short story, read it, tear it up, and start something else, hoping that this time I’d get it right. The stories felt empty because I lacked a firm sense of identity as a man and as a writer. I’d spent my life defining myself as everything my father wasn’t, by being his opposite, or by being invisible. But now that I was on my own, who was I? What did I want to say as a writer? Did I believe in God or did I simply want to believe? Did I belong in Community or was it simply a convenient escape route? I was riddled with doubt, and there weren’t any other writers in my life to whom I could turn for advice.

  Then I remembered that one of Harlan Ellison’s essays contained what he said was his home phone number. I agonized over whether or not to try it. What if it was just a gag or a wrong number? Scarier still, what if it really was his phone number? Harlan was legendary for his inability to suffer fools gladly; he could dissect me and hang the innards out to dry before I even knew what happened. He was a gunslinger, I was the town fool. This was not the best-case scenario for first contact.

  Screw it, I thought, and dialed the number.

  The line rang for what seemed like a very long time, then click! a voice came on the line. “Yeah, what is it?”

  I stammered for a moment, then managed, “Is this . . . I mean, is this Harlan Ellison?”

  “Yeah, what do you want?” Only he said it “yehwhaddoyouwant!” as in stop wasting my time.

  I realized I was sweating heavily. “Uhm, Mr. Ellison, my name is Joe Straczynski and—”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “—and I’m a writer, but the work hasn’t been coming out right and it’s not selling and I thought you might have some advice.” For the record, that is the stupidest question anyone can ask a writer because generic advice given without actually seeing the work is useless. And every writer knows it’s a stupid question because they get it all the time from idiots like . . . well, like me.

  “Your stuff’s not selling?” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “And you want my advice, is that it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, then here’s my advice: stop writing shit.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Because if it wasn’t shit, sooner or later somebody would buy it, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So if your stuff isn’t selling, then it’s shit. Consequently: stop writing shit.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Ellison,” I said, my voice thin in my ears. “Thank you.”

  Click!

  I hung up and prayed for the earth to open up and swallow me whole, leaving not a trace behind.*

  Sandy’s birthday was coming up in July, and I wanted to buy her something nice. She had a fondness for Russian lacquer boxes sold by a small shop in La Jolla, but the cheapest was eighty dollars, which was more than I could afford on an allowance of five dollars per week, so I sold some of the books I’d brought with me when I moved into Community. When Larry found out what I’d done, he told me to give him the money because the books and any money that came from their sale belonged to the household, not to me. After confiscating the cash, he imposed a bunch of penalties for doing this in secret, even though he only found out about it because I told everyone else in the household about it because I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong.

  It was profoundly unfair. But on the other hand, the situation pissed me off just enough so that I didn’t look away a few days later when everything exploded.

  Since some of the participants are still alive, I will only say that when I came back to the household earlier than usual one day, when the house was supposed to be empty, I discovered that Ken Pagaard was using it to facilitate affairs with several women at the church. The indiscretions had grown out of Ken’s inner healing ministry, during which he would meet with women alone and encourage them to share their feelings about personal and sexual matters. As the sessions became more intimate, he crossed the line into physical contact, then sexual activity.

  I wasn’t sure Larry would believe me given our strained relationship, so I told the head of the Elders, Emery Fryer, what I’d discovered. I assumed he would intervene once he knew what was going on. Instead he said that I was the problem, that I was possessed by a spirit of rebellion to spread false rumors designed to tear down God’s servant. He knew that I had come to him instead of Larry because of the bookselling incident, and seized upon this as evidence that I was trying to get back at the church for being disciplined. The only way I could exorcise this rebellious spirit was to cease my defiance, submit to authority, and admit that I’d made the whole thing up.

  It had been a long time since I’d felt the Superman symbol burning beneath the skin of my chest, but now it roared back to life. I knew what I’d seen and wasn’t about to back down. Truth, Justice, and the American Way were on my side and sooner or later that would make a difference. To encourage me to admit m
y error he assigned me to clean-up duties, including hand-washing the church floors and toilets. When these tactics failed, I was reminded that not only could the church revoke their blessings for my relationship with Sandy, they could also block my imminent transfer to San Diego State University. I just dug in deeper. Finally came the ultimatum: if I recanted, I could remain in Community with the people I had come to care about. If I refused, I would have to leave under a cloud of spiritual rebelliousness, meaning that every friend at the church, the only friends I had, would be told to break off contact with me in order to minimize the risk of contamination. I would lose everything.

  What the Elders didn’t understand was that I’d spent my entire life systematically losing whatever I owned, so the threat held no fear. I think that to get anywhere we sometimes have to go back to nowhere, that to achieve anything we have to be willing to let go of everything.

  So the next day I left Community with nothing more than the clothes on my back and two grocery bags of science fiction books.

  Friendless and broke, I had no choice but to return home. My father treated this as a personal victory and took every opportunity to ridicule my decision to leave home in the first place. But by moving out I’d demonstrated that he couldn’t control me, and that I was capable of making other people aware of his violent tendencies. This triggered his well-honed instinct for self-preservation, and he dialed back the beatings, at least when I was around.

  Depressed and angry over everything that had happened, I began taking long, late-night walks around Chula Vista. The night suited my mood. During one of these excursions I decided to check out The Golden Voyage of Sinbad playing at the Fiesta Theater. The film was bloated, portentous, and dull, but there wasn’t a lot of competition for my attention so I stayed to the end, around ten thirty. On any other night I would have walked up H Street to Broadway to catch the bus home. But it was now over a month since I’d left Community, and I was feeling lonelier than usual, so I decided to walk by First Baptist in case I ran into anyone willing to acknowledge my existence. The closer I got, the more foolish the idea became. Nobody was going to listen to me, it was over. So one block shy of the church I turned left and went up F Street from Fifth Avenue.

  Before continuing, I must make clear that I do not believe in the supernatural. I’m not a woo-woo kind of guy. I believe in what I can see, hear, and touch. I believe in science. That being said, quantum mechanics suggests that we perceive time as a straight line only as a matter of perception, that all of those moments are happening simultaneously. Right now I’m hanging onto the roof after being thrown off by my mother; right now I’m standing in the snow trying to sell chocolate bars; right now I’m moving into the Mitscher household; right now I’m writing this book. Though I don’t have any evidence to back it up, I believe that the veil of perception between those moments is gossamer thin, and sometimes one bleeds over into the other.

  Which is the only way to explain the fact that as I started up F Street, an urgent thought bubbled up from somewhere deep inside. The thought was: Right, let’s get this over with.

  I was so intent on trying to figure out what that meant that I failed to notice six guys crossing the street half a block in front of me, coming my way. As the nearest guy came abreast of me I looked up just as he slammed a fist into my face.

  They swarmed me as I fell to the ground, kicking and punching as hard as they could. I put my back against a fence, instinctively balling up to protect my internal organs, arms crossed over my head. A light switched on in a house across the street. I yelled for help. A figure came to the window, saw what was going on, then turned off the light and disappeared into the shadows, choosing not to get involved.

  The attack escalated. One of them pulled out a belt with a buckle honed to razor sharpness and used it as a whip. A knife flashed and my ear was cut in half. I put my hand in front of my face to block a steel-toed boot and bones snapped. Another whip of the buckle tore through the back of my head. There was blood everywhere. I fought the instinct to flee. They wanted me to try and run because as soon as I stood I’d expose my organs and I’d be dead in a minute. I’d learned a long time ago how to bite back the pain and endure, but even with that experience I couldn’t take much more. If I moved, they’d kill me; if I stayed, it might take longer but they’d still kill me.

  A boot caught me hard across the forehead and the world kicked slantwise, then turned to a soft blur. I felt myself blacking out. Then a porch light went on in the house behind me as the owner came outside. Believing someone was trying to break into his car he yelled that he was calling the cops, and the attackers took off.

  Lying on the sidewalk, blinking back blood, I drifted in and out of consciousness, barely aware of the wail of sirens and the faces of onlookers, washed in red and blue light, circling the scene now that it was safe. Then: a floating sensation as I was lifted up onto a gurney. IV tubes and compression bandages moved quickly at the edge of my vision.

  From far away I heard the voices of the ambulance attendants. “Goddamn, he’s lost a lot of blood.”

  I struggled to move my jaw. It didn’t seem to line up properly. “How much blood?” I managed to ask. He looked away and didn’t answer. I was shivering, in shock.

  The ambulance screamed through the streets as he radioed ahead. “Multiple lacerations, possible concussion, torn right ear, broken bones in right hand, probable internal bleeding . . . Christ, another few minutes and they would’ve beat him to death.”

  The world turned soft and insubstantial. I closed my eyes.

  He shook my arm. “Don’t fall asleep, okay? Stay with me.

  “What religion are you?” he asked.

  Okay, this is bad, I thought.

  “None,” I said. It felt like I was talking in my sleep. “Not now.”

  As they wheeled me into the hospital I thought about the randomness of the attack. Another few minutes and they would’ve beat him to death. And I got angry. I began fighting the anesthetic, the pain, even the nurses trying to hold me down. I’d been through too much to get this far, I would not lie down. I had too many stories in me to let this get in the way.

  Then a needle found a vein and the world went away.

  The next thing I remember is waking up to see a nurse standing over me. “How do you feel?” she asked. “Can you hear me okay?”

  I nodded, heavily medicated to cut off the pain. That would come later.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “Pen . . . paper.”

  She stepped down the hall and returned with both. My right hand and arm were in a cast, so I forced the pen between my index and middle fingers and touched it to the notepad, writing a few words that would later become the first line of a short story. A down payment on work yet to come.

  As I lay there, the anger that had been building during the last few months spiraled into a black, destructive rage. I’d lost my friends, my communal home, my faith, the woman I thought I would marry, and after spending most of my life getting pounded by bullies, six guys I didn’t even know had just tried very hard to beat me to death.

  Enough, I thought. Enough. I’ve had it. I’ve had it with all of you.

  If the only way to get through life was to be stronger and meaner than whatever the world threw at me, then that’s what I would do. I wasn’t going to let anything stop me from being the writer I believed I was meant to be: not this, not the people who had turned against me, not my father, no one.

  In that moment, all the gentle things I’d ever believed in or cared about went away.

  Only the rage remained.

  As soon as I was released from the hospital, I went back to the spot where I’d been attacked. I knew I had to go immediately or I’d be too afraid to go later. They’d tried to wash away the blood, but some had dried into cracks in the cement. Across the street the same figure who had looked out at the scene and done nothing came to the window to peer out again.

  Face swollen, one eye shut, arm in
a sling, I met his gaze hard. I saw you.

  He retreated into the shadows.

  I went back every night for a week to stand on that spot. Part of it was proving to myself that I wasn’t afraid, but on another level I was hoping to run into the guys who had done this. I didn’t care if it ended up again as six against one, this time they wouldn’t catch me by surprise. This time I’d be ready, and while I might still go down, I would not go down easy and I would not go down alone. But they were gone without a trace.

  The police suggested they were aspiring gang members looking for someone to kill as part of an initiation, which was not uncommon in San Diego at that time. A fatal shooting or stabbing would get you in, but beating someone to death showed you were seriously tough and you came in with more respect. More than the violence it was the sheer randomness of it that horrified me the most. They didn’t know or care who I was, they just needed a body on the deck that would let them check off one of the items needed to join a gang. It was like some kind of goddamned scavenger hunt. Get out there and bring back a chicken leg, a basketball pump, a Ping Pong ball, and oh yeah, kill some random guy. Annnnnd . . . go!

  The attack was so violent that some of the local newspapers got involved to try and find the guys responsible. In an editorial published August 3, 1975, the Chula Vista Star-News said, “Joseph Straczynsky* of Chula Vista is a pretty quiet 21 year old student. He’s been on the Dean’s List of Southwestern College for years and now he’s going to San Diego State. That’s why, as his bloody, broken body lay across a gurney in the emergency room of the Bay General Hospital Wednesday night, he couldn’t figure out why six hoods beat him so furiously.”

  Rather than being sympathetic, my father was embarrassed by the incident. He’d spent years going out with drinking buddies to beat up “queers,” and couldn’t process the idea that someone could be attacked without cause. When he demanded to know what I’d done to make them mad, I became too angry to speak and stormed out.

  The library where I worked asked me to take a few days off. “Your face looks like five pounds of ground round,” one of the librarians said, trying to be gentle.