Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed
Page 21
“Hello?”
“Hi, this is Harlan Ellison. You ran my tape at Great Expectations?”
“Oh, hello. That was just the other day. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon.” A sweet, warm voice. My heart melted. I kicked myself in the ass intellectually and warned myself, don’t let your gonads rule your brain, turkey!
“Well, listen, I, uh, I came in today and ran your tape…”
Silence at the other end. Expectant silence.
(Hold it a minute. Dammit, I hate to break up the flow right at “the good part,” but here’s something that should be pointed out. Great Expectations is terrific in one respect, if no other. The way the system has been set up, there is virtually no rejection. If someone runs a tape and decides he or she doesn’t want to respond to that person’s request, no one says, “He didn’t want to go out with you.” Instead, if you turn down a request, the other person is advised you “are not available.” No more is said. Not Available really does mean the person requested is dated up, is seeing someone regularly, is going inactive, is out of town, has come out of the closet…whatever. For all but those too paranoid even to sign up for Great Expectations, a “not available” means no points lost, means you’re still acceptable, means no one has looked upon you and found you unworthy. It wholly and totally eliminates the crushing aspects of swimming in the dating pool.)
“…I ran your tape, and uh I thought you were very nice, and God knows you’re beautiful, but uh er I don’t think you really want to go out with me.”
“I don’t?”
“No, I’m sure you wouldn’t like it.”
“Why do you say that?”
And I realized my tricky, duplicitous, sly and treacherous nature had outwitted me again. Of course she would be intrigued by such remarks. Which shows you what a swine can lie so close beneath the surface of even those of us who want to be responsible. Instead of simply having Estelle tell D. I was “not available,” I’d set up a situation where I had to go out with her or make her feel rejected, thereby defeating the sane and sensible Great Expectations system. I had used my privileged relationship with Estelle and Jeff—a journalist gathering material—to get a phone number I should, by all rights, have been denied.
“I say that because I can see from your tape that you’re just too nice a woman.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
God, this was impossible! I was trying to ride two horses at the same time.
“Look: I don’t know you very well, just what I got from the profile and the tape, but I can tell from my past that a woman as nice as you would only be miserable going out with me.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been me a long time. I know.”
“That’s a pretty negative attitude.”
“I don’t mean it to be. I mean it to be positive. I assure you, nothing would please me more than to meet you; if nothing else, you are an absolutely dynamite looking woman.”
“And smart, too,” she said. I chuckled. Yeah, smart, too.
“Nonetheless. It wouldn’t be a good thing. See, I’m doing this article on Great Expectations and—” I laid out the background. And by so doing intimated that I was afraid to date her because I might actually get involved, which wasn’t anywhere in the ground rules.
“Why don’t you give me a chance?” she said.
Now let us pause for a hot second, folks. Examine that sentence, in the light of the situation. Give me a chance.
Jeezus, that’s all any of us want! A shot at the Holy Grail. Just let me get near the bloody thing, let me know it exists, let me make my best move. And that is the big secret of why Great Expectations works like a Swiss watch. Remember I said there was a response I give to those who ask me why I’m so high on Great Expectations, an artificial system of meeting possible mates? Here is that response:
When you need a job…when you’re so goddam desperate to pay those bills, to bring a little food into the house, to be employed and not an out-of-work bum that you can taste it…employers smell it on you. We are, remember, close to the veldt and the jungle. We can smell desperation on each other. We can smell the loser. And the more desperate you get, the harder it is to get that job. Employers don’t want those who stink of failure. It shines out of the eyes, it permeates our sweat, it reveals itself subliminally in the body language we employ all-unknowing.
And the more rejections we get, the worse gets the desperation. And the cycle continues.
The same in love. Have you ever noticed: when you’re in love, or getting laid regularly, or content with your current situation, potential lovers come out of the woodwork? You can’t beat them off with sticks. But when you’re dumped fresh and pink and squalling out of a scene with someone, and you go back into the dating pool, you can’t get anyone to respond to you no matter how hard you try. And you do try. Desperately. Frantically.
Here’s the philosophy, folks: we spend most of our lives in pursuit of two ephemeral wraiths. The first is security. I promise you: there is no genuine security this side of the grave. And that’s okay. If we get secure, we get stagnant. We stop reaching, we stop creating, we stop growing.
The second utterly worthless goal we grope toward is looking good.
Got to look good. Got to look sharp. Got to prevent rejection. Got to keep up that feeling of worthiness. God forbid our clothes are a little shabby, God forbid our nose leaks in public, God forbid the haircut came out lousy and we don’t feel beautiful. In a society maddened by youth and looking good, to be less than scintillant is to get the dregs of life, to swim alone and unloved in the dating pool.
And so, when we cruise those parties, those singles bars, those blind dates set up by our friends, we have to wear the mask of I’m not really looking. We have to play at being all booked up, at being so popular it’s only an amusement for us to be receptive to the offers of a stranger. God forbid he or she thinks we’re available. We’re phonies of the worst sort. We lie with everything in us, but our bodies and our desperation give us away.
But at Great Expectations that’s stricken from the record. By the single act of putting yourself on tape, you say, “I’m looking.” You say, “I’m here, for good or bad; and I want something meaningful in my life. I don’t want to die unloved and alone.” Everyone on those tapes, popular and unpopular, attractive and plain, male and female, is stating by his or her presence: I’m open and receptive. That is personal bravery. And by destroying that barricade, the videotape dating program uses software technology to establish human relationships. That’s what I found out about Great Expectations. and that’s why I think it’s sensational.
It is a direct and open way of saying Give me a chance.
Which is what D. said to me.
And so, I said we might get together for a cup of coffee and discuss it. The vulnerability everyone on those tapes willingly demonstrates, is an unstated social contract that only a viper would violate. Give me a chance.
I think I dated eleven women in all. K. and I spent several evenings together and we talked. It never went any deeper physically, though I rather thought K. wanted a more permanent relationship. We talk occasionally, and I feel she is a friend. If Great Expectations provides nothing greater, friendship is no measly treasure. G. and I had a berserk weekend that ended badly. Tantrums, name-calling, hysterical scenes straight out of a bad novel. I don’t see her any longer. She has problems that don’t mesh with my problems at all. She’s pure poison for me, and I for her. I understand she has gotten into a strong relationship now, and I wish her well. But stay away from my door, lady.
D. and I still date once in a while. We were compatible, and knowing her has been a delight. But I was right that she needed someone less volatile. She has two young children, she has an understandable and laudable need for order in her life and, as Steve Martin says, “I’m just sort of a rambling kind of guy.” But what a terrific lady!
Of the other eight, I’ll only anecdote briefly.
Of the other eight, my luck was no better or worse than that which would have obtained had I met these women at a party or had I been fixed up by my Aunt Sophie. One was a righteous flake who (like guys I’ve heard about from some of my women friends) professed undying love for me on the first date and showed up the next day with her suitcases. One was so defensive over the phone, so ready to pick a fight with me, that I backed off, saying, “Lady, you’re too mean even for me!” One wanted a daddy. I ain’t nobody’s daddy. One was in her early twenties and, though I made the error of once marrying a teenaged muffin, I have tasted the fire and no longer wish to smell the smell of burning psyche, especially my own. One was smarter than I and stopped seeing me. One was dumber than your faithful correspondent and I stopped seeing her. Also, she was a McDonald’s freak and if I hadn’t had a vasectomy some years ago and if we’d had children, all those toadburgers would have produced brain damaged children, I’m sure of it. One was this. One was that. I was a lot of other things.
And that’s my story.
Let me clean up a few last points.
The price structure of Great Expectations is somewhat fluid. The reason for that is simply that Jeff and his mother Estelle are dealing with people, and sometimes there are accommodations that have to be made.
Membership is two hundred dollars a year. For that sum, and for twelve months, a member has unlimited access to the tapes. Reel out as few or as many as one needs.
For the first three months you get five active choices a months. That is, you can request dates with fifteen different people. You can accept as many dates as you get requests in the passive mode. After the first three months, to stay in the active mode, you must renew for twenty-five dollars a month. Jeff Ullman says the average number of renewals is between one and two. Actually, there isn’t anything between one and two, but…Particularly for women under the age of thirty-five, experience shows hardly any renewals at all.
He also says he’ll discourage too many renewals, because it means the service simply isn’t right for that person.
And just stop to consider: where else can you have access to so many potential companions without spending every waking hour hustling and having to go out on dates that may turn out to be nightmares, considering how little data we have when we accept a date with a stranger? And if you can’t find someone suitable out of fifteen-plus possibilities in just a ninety day period, then you’d better start checking out your face turned toward the world.
Great Expectations is now an authorized franchise dealer. They’ve spent over nine thousand dollars getting themselves checked out by the authorities, to establish themselves as a responsible service. A “relationship store” has been opened in Newport Beach by Kersh Walters and Susan Iannitti; another will soon open in San Diego. Such services, in less sophisticated form, already exist in New York and Washington D.C.
And despite media vultures like John Ettinger, whose will was so weak that he dated extensively in “gathering background” for his Channel 7 documentary (remember, I said I’d tell you about Mr. Ettinger?) and had positive experiences, nothing but positive experiences, but still had to seek out one disgruntled little lady who would whip out some bad vibes for the minicam…I see operations like Great Expectations as a breakthrough in human relations.
Mr. Ettinger understood that a rave notice like this article would not be nearly as titillating as a report that included a shadowy undercurrent of duplicity and weirdness. So he found a young woman who had been offered a cut rate membership—apparently because she couldn’t afford the going price structure—and don’t forget this is a business, not a charity—and she revealed herself on the TV screen by saying she had saved the two hundred dollars and found herself a guy on her own, and used the two hundred bucks to buy new drapes, so for the money she found a man and decorated the apartment. Well, that’s nice, too.
Great Expectations will not be right for everyone.
It takes some courage to sit there and say Give me a chance.
Maybe some day again, I’ll have the courage to say it.
NOTES
YOU DON’T KNOW ME, I DON’T KNOW YOU. Harlan has even more to say about Leiber, and he says it in “Fritz Leiber: A Few Too Few Words” elsewhere in this collection.
EPIPHANY. Even the casual reader may notice that Harlan draws on this quote by Beaumont twice in these essays on television (see “Down the Rabbit-Hole to TV-Land”). A writer is often asked who has influenced him, and it is obvious from their inclusion in two essays written fifteen years apart that these casual words by Beaumont have had a lasting effect on Harlan’s thinking.
EPIPHANY. “Darkroom” was cancelled after airing only seven episodes, so the “Killing Bernstein” script was never produced. Harlan says now that he deliberately dawdled when it seemed that the series might die, so that he would never have to see his script butchered. He no longer has to worry that ABC might resurrect it, since the rights have reverted to him on turnaround.
DEFEATING THE GREEN SLIME. The North American Science Fiction Convention, which is held in those years in which the convention rotation system takes the WorldCon overseas.
HOW YOU STUPIDLY BLEW. See the previous article, “Defeating the Green Slime.”
HOW YOU STUPIDLY BLEW. The SFWA Forum is a privately-circulated publication available to SFWA members only, in which, according to Harlan, intramural warfare is waged.
HOW YOU STUPIDLY BLEW. The only item in the drama category that legitimately garnered enough actual members’ votes to win a place on the 1976 Nebula finalists ballot was HARLAN!: Ellison Reads Ellison (Alternate World Recordings AWR 6922). Fearing embarrassment either to Science Fiction Writers of America, or to Ellison, several of the officers of the organization arbitrarily added the films Logan’s Run and The Man Who Fell to Earth. Their reasoning was that because the membership was so disinterested in the category, the Ellison album would appear on the ballot challenged only by “No Award.” But even with the addition of the films, SFWA’s voters opted for “No Award” in the 1976 Dramatic Presentation category. Ellison’s prediction that neither the sound recording nor the films would win the Nebula was hardly a self-fulfilling prophecy; it was based on simple observation of SFWA and its voting patterns on the Nebulas over many years. But not even Ellison could have foreseen what happened at the Nebula Awards banquet on the evening of the day he delivered this impassioned lecture. Word having been passed to SFWA President Andrew J. Offutt, and to Nebula banquet coordinator Thomas Purdom, of the content of Ellison’s presentation that afternoon, they assumed the moment of “No Award” winning in the Dramatic Presentation category would provide a setting in which Ellison might well cause an embarrassing scene. So they did not even announce the nominees in the category, as had been policy every year before. Ellison had no intention of making a scene; he had said what he wanted to say, and had taken all the action he intended to take, that afternoon. Nonetheless, those present at both Ellison’s lecture, and the Awards presentation, recognized that he had been gifted with yet another indignity by the timorous governing body of SFWA.
HOW YOU STUPIDLY BLEW. This bon mot is expanded into an essay which Harlan wrote the next year, and which appears elsewhere in this collection as—you guessed it—“Face-Down in Gloria Swanson’s Swimming Pool.”
HOW YOU STUPIDLY BLEW. Harlan’s position on Hollywood’s insatiable hunger for SF product can be considered not only justified, but conservative, in light of the volume of SF films released since this statement.
HOW YOU STUPIDLY BLEW. In October of 1977, Michael Moor
cock also resigned from SFWA, considerably more politely than Harlan, but indicating in his resignation letter that much the same feeling as that expressed by Harlan prompted his leavetaking.
VOE DOE DEE OH DOE. The photo described was taken on a day spent with McQueen which Harlan chronicles in “Centerpunching” elsewhere in this collection.
VOE DOE DEE OH DOE. Isaac Asimov and his wife, Janet O. Jeppson.
ROBERT SILVERBERG: AN APPRECIATION. If the meaning of this obscure word eludes you as it did me, Harlan offers that it is to be found on page 1043 of the Oxford Universal Dictionary.
TRUE LOVE: GROPING FOR THE HOLY GRAIL. Harlan expands on this theme in “Revealed At Last! What Killed the Dinosaurs!” elsewhere in this collection.
TRUE LOVE: GROPING FOR THE HOLY GRAIL. Find out what he does with it in Harlan’s short story, “Grail,” which he actually wrote three years later. Available in Stalking the Nightmare, Phantasia Press, 1982.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Editor’s Introduction by Marty Clark, copyright © 1984 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. You Don’t Know Me, I Don’t Know You,” copyright © 1977 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2005 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Stealing Tomorrow” by Tom Reamy, copyright © 1974 by Torn Reamy. “Down the Rabbit-Hole to TV-Land,” copyright © 1967 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1996 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Revealed at Last! What Killed the Dinosaurs! And You Don’t Look So Terrific Yourself,” copyright © 1978 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.