a friendship, some allegations of heinous shit, and what i believe

[elisem]

I’ve known Neil Gaiman since the very early nineties, when Mike said a friend was coming to a local book-centric fantasy convention and that we should look after him.  Apparently he sounded trepidatious or something; Mike said something about how of course there were the comics but the friend said he’s only written one book and he only wrote half of that. Sure, Mike, we can make your friend welcome. So we did. I wrote elsewhere about how this left me for some years with a habit of checking in on Neil at events or when he had a recording session where I worked. I'd go by to see how he was doing, ask whether he'd eaten lately, see if he needed anything. I didn't quite march over and tell him to put on a sweater, but it was like that. (He always had a leather jacket; a sweater wasn't necessary.) 

 

Over the decades there were shared meals in various cities, late night convention conversations, visits to the house, gatherings and parties, some with musicals written by Mike because Neil had made a typo on the invitation too good for Mike to resist. For many years I've navigated to Neil’s house by singing  the American Pie filk Mike wrote about Neil's invitation to his annual Guy Fawkes Day party which contained the driving directions. One verse ended “The tower lights will be alive; you’ll see the house as you arrive. But do not park upon the drive!” because that last bit was emphasized on the invitation.

 

Mike and Neil meant a lot to each other. Back in the day, watching the two of them talk writing at a restaurant or sushi bar or a room at a convention late at night was a true delight. When Mike died, Neil helped me through the aftermath. He gave one of the eulogies. He did kind things. He wrote a foreword for Mike’s posthumously published book Aspects which was pretty much another eulogy. He told me it was the hardest thing he ever had to write, and that we were very lucky to have had Mike in our lives.

 

One time at the house Neil gave me beeswax from his beehives. I used it to make pendants where meteorite dust was sealed into tiny corked glass bottles with the beeswax and sterling silver wire. Stardust in a bottle.

 

For decades, my metric for buying a new pair of glasses was that whichever one made me wonder what Neil would think of it was the one I'd probably buy.

 

He took me to my first Tori Amos concert many years ago.

 

So yeah, I’ve been friends with Neil for somewhere upwards of three decades.

 

After the news broke, I walked through my house, and every room had something Neil had written, or some art or music that he had introduced me to, or something he had given me. He's woven through so many memories, with Mike and without. I looked through various correspondence, all the notes with "So much love to you," all the snippets of news and shared silliness. Years. Decades.

 

And you know what? Not one bit of that cancels out any of what the survivors say. He's been my friend for a long time. And I believe them. Which is a tangled set of feelings from one angle, but from another perspective what rings true to me is clear. I believe them.

 

When I see people saying “Oh, everybody knew,” I shake my head. Everybody did not know. I didn’t know. Nobody in any of the whisper networks told me, or warned me, or asked me to help anyone who had been hurt. And I never figured it out for myself. When the news broke, I was shocked.

 

Thinking back, I wondered whether anyone had thought he must be OK to be around because of people like me who were his friends. It's happened before. I don't like being used as cover. 

 

I went through the house gathering the silly goth keepsakes, birthday party souvenirs from New Orleans, bottles and bottles of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab prototypes of scents inspired by his work which he’d had me on the test squad for, and the books. The souvenirs went in a storage box. They can sit there until I know what I want to do with them. All I know right now is that I do not want to look at them every day the way I used to. I took the stardust pendants out of my Etsy shop. The books that were signed but not personalized went up on eBay. I was already planning to put these up to pay bills. Did you know that RAINN is one of the charities to which eBay will automatically route a percentage of your choosing when the item sells? Now half will go to bills, and half* to RAINN.

 

What I say to my friend when we next talk will be between me and him. What I most want to say is "You know fairy tales. You WRITE fairy tales. What did you think was going to happen??"

 

I’m angry. I’m sad and I’m angry. I’ll probably be sad and angry for a long while. None of my sadness and anger matters one one-millionth as much as the survivors and how they are doing. They are what's important here. 

 

I believe the survivors. I believe the ones we’ve heard from, and the ones we haven’t heard from, and the ones we will probably never hear from because, as the songwriter said, this world is shaped to have his back. It took more courage for the survivors to speak out than most people will ever know. Listen. 

* (edited to add) Now 100% is going to RAINN on the things that are left.

Comments

[ursa_cerulean]

I appreciate you so much.

[anne]

I'm sorry your friend wasn't who you thought.

[lydy]

I just want to say I am so sorry. The level of personal betrayal here is painful and staggering. I don't mean to equate it with the things he did to the women coming forward, but I also think that it is important that he not only harmed those women, but he betrayed everyone who loved and cherished him. I remember how kind he was to you, and I am just...at a loss. I am so sorry.

[cavyherd]

Thank you. Yes. Exactly. I was trying to figure out how to articulate this, and 'betrayal' is exactly the right word.

[sovay]

Love.

[china_shop]

I'm so sorry.

[rushthatspeaks]

Thank you.

Love and support.

[queenbookwench]

Oh, Elise. I read this and I am thinking of you.

[chanter1944]

Ever so many hugs offered, Elise. Ever so many.

[heavenscalyx]

What an awful loss. I’m sorry for you, and the survivors.

[ljc]

*squishes you with love*

[keshwyn]

Thank you for writing this. It's a horrible place to be, when you discover that the parts of the friend you knew covered other parts that you would never have tolerated. Hugs to you, may your burden, and the burdens of the survivors, be eased someday.

[mrissa]

I've said this more privately, but I feel like I can't say it enough: I'm so sorry.

The thing about the people who are saying "everyone knew" is that I think they are more comfortable with the idea that some people are super-evil than with the idea that knowledge can be patchy and uncertain. "Everybody knew" makes the world horrible in a way that's more manageable: clearly none of the speaker's friends might be like your friends, everybody always has perfect knowledge of what their friends are doing, so they don't have to worry that they might have mistaken someone's character. They don't have to have the entirely human experience of finding out that their interactions with someone might be different from other people's interactions with that person. If "everyone knew," trust is never misplaced.

Whereas here in reality, it is. It really is, and you have to accept that you might be wrong, not morally wrong as in defending an abuser, but factually wrong about who someone is. I think that that's very uncomfortable for a lot of people--hell, it's uncomfortable for everybody! I am uncomfortable with it! I just...don't try to rewrite history to make it not exist. Which is I think what is going on with "everyone knew."

[matociquala]

This, so much this, and what Lydy said above as well. I don't know Neil well at all (in fact, as I recall, it was you that introduced me to him) but I did like him and I was entirely wrong about him.

The other thing about the "everybody knew" narrative is that abusers are very good at keeping everybody from knowing. To quote Neil himself, in re serial killers, "We don't shit where we eat."

I'm so sorry, Elise, for this betrayal of your trust. Among all the other betrayals of trust going on in this narrative.

[(Anonymous)]

Neil groomed some women he knew to be victims he could prey on sexually and he groomed other women he knew to be his alibi, so if accusations of the former were ever made, the latter women would step up and defend him by saying "He can't have done this, he's so kind and thoughtful and genuine!" or "But he's a feminist!" or "He's never abused me!" or "If he'd done that I'd have *known*!"

But you weren't *supposed* to know and that was entirely by Neil's design.

It speaks to your personal integrity that you didn't follow his script and that you support the victims. I am sorry this is so hard on you.

[batwrangler]

Sad and angry, indeed. Sending you love.

[rosefox]

I've also had a longtime friend turn out to be a predator, and it fucking sucked. I'm incredibly sorry you're going through this. Grappling with it this way is the only honest path, but it's so hard and requires a lot of strength, and it's not like you were sitting there going, "What shall I do with all these extra emotional resources and energy I have?"

And for what it's worth, I was pretty tapped into a lot of whisper networks for a long time and I didn't know either.

Sending you infinite support.

[rachelmanija]

Thank you.

The trail of wreckage he left is just astonishing.

[solcita]

Sending you love. You are doing the right, brave thing by speaking up, I'm so sorry for how this must feel.

[edschweppe]

I am terribly sorry; you deserve so much better than this.

[fireriven]

Thank you.

[laurel]

Much love to you and I appreciate you posting this. Have been thinking of you (and others) and not sure what to say privately or publicly. As I’m sure you understand, I’ve been reeling.

I also wound up watching out for Neil occasionally at cons and events. (Heavy sigh.) Trying to make things easier for him. (So much sighing.)

What you said about being sad & angry is where I’m at too. So angry and sad.

I think it actually is a sign of progress that at least in the places I hang out online, I’ve not seen people defending or excusing Neil. There’s been silence in places where I think if this had happened years ago, we might’ve seen “but he was always nice to me” sorts of comments, implying they didn’t believe the stories.

And one reason I think the silence is impressive is because Neil was nice to a lot of people. Which makes this all so shocking and appalling and bad. He’s tied into so much stuff in so many places (comics, SF/Fantasy books, TV, movies, music) and so many communities. The fallout and repercussions are enormous (if you had a thing tied to Neil in each room, well it’s a bit like that in the larger world of the arts too).

I have seen some people say “he was always nice to me” but only after saying how horrified they are over what has come out and that they had no idea. A lot of people were fooled.

I’ve sent a couple private messages to people I know who publicly said basically “I liked him, he was my friend, I had no idea, maybe if I traveled in comics or science fiction/fantasy circles I’d’ve known” and I write to tell them that no, that wouldn’t have helped. Lots of people in those circles had no idea. Not that I had the heart to go out and try to confirm that, but I have to have a bit of faith in my community. What a horrifying and heartbreaking idea to think that everyone knew.

I first met Neil when I was 19. I first went to a party at his house when I was 22. So. Yeah. I would hope if our mutual friends also going to those same parties knew anything, they would’ve warned me.

You know where to find me if you ever want to rant/vent/talk about this stuff. I haven’t talked much about it publicly because it’s very hard (and I didn’t know Neil as well as you nor did we have nearly as many interactions as you did). I believe the survivors. I’m angry and sad. Looking back and reframing interactions over 3 decades and trying to figure out if I missed signs has not been my favorite, that’s for sure. (But as you say, our sadness and anger doesn’t matter as much compared the survivors. It still really sucks though.)

[oracne]

I'm so sorry.

[davidlevine]

::hugs::

[cavyherd]

It's just so damn heartbreaking. I don't know Neil at all, never been in the same building with him, far as I know, but we have a lot of mutual acquaintances. His public personna is so sweet, and he's had such a good reputation. He was supposed to be one of the good ones! To find out—this. How *could* he??

And the poor women he did this to. How COULD he???

[(Anonymous)]

I'm so sorry. Never having been a personal friend of his, I can only imagine the depth of sorrow and anger at such a betrayal.

I'm angry on behalf of the survivors. But I'm also angry on behalf of those who called him friend and trusted him and had no idea.

Thinking of you,
--Nicole L-L (without DW account to reply from)

[djm4]

Thanks for writing this, however hard it was. Not everybody knew.

[bunny_m]

Thank you for sharing some of your deeply personal and painful feelings on this matter, and as stated in an earlier comment, I am very, very sorry that your friend turned out to be someone and something very far from who and what you thought he was.

The experience completely and utterly sucks, and I very much wish that nobody ever had to go through it ever, but just wishing does not make it so.

[(Anonymous)]

Linked here from a post on Tumblr.
I'm so sorry. It must be horrible.
It's an obvious fallacy that everyone knew. Just to pick the most obvious example, Tori Amos has been one of his best friends for years, and if she, the singer of Me and a Gun, had even an inkling of all this? Yeah no. She would not have been friends with him. It just goes to prove that abusers know the difference between vulnerable people and not vulnerable people.
It sucks realising you were wrong about someone to this degree.
💜

[wednesday]

One of the most consistently shocking parts of learning that a charming person is also a predator, even when we see it over and over again like clockwork built from a kit, is how effectively the glamour works on people who, for whatever reason, aren’t part of the victim pool. The ability to silo your corruption is a predator’s most important survival skill, and an utterly alien mindset to almost everyone else — even when we’ve seen it before with others, from the outside or not.

I know you know this, painfully so, and I desperately wish you didn’t have to. But I wanted to contextualize a remark which might otherwise come off as pat or trivializing:

I hear you. I’m so fucking sorry you’re going through this, Elise. He did you deeply wrong.

[vass]

What lydy and mrissa said, and so much respect and empathy for you.

I'm so sorry

[jesse_the_k]

for your pain. Thank you for your brave response.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for writing this. I came here via a Tumblr link, was just trying to wrap my head around it. Was hard to accept almost. Reading your account of it made it easier somehow. I'm sorry you have to go through it on such a personal level. I was just a long-time fan and I feel betrayed on some level. Can't imagine how the victims must have felt all these years. I hope there will be closure for them, and for everyone who was blind-sided by Neil's actions.

[rainbow]

i just realised i never commented over here, so here i am sending more *lovelovelove*, *tacklehugs*, & *bells n ribbons* to you as well as all the strength vibes and support.

xoxoxox

chris

[wordweaverlynn]

Thank you.

[anef]

Thank you for posting, and I'm sorry for your loss of the person that you thought your friend was. I hope he does have the courage to talk to you.

[starlady]

I'm sorry that you're also suffering because of his actions. It's just deeply, deeply shitty.

[magister]

I hope I don't seem presumptuous for commenting here. I've read Neil Gaiman's books and watched his tv shows for 30 years. I met him once at a signing- he was warm, friendly and generous. I feel fury at him for what he's done and also at myself for being taken in.

I can only imagine how you must feel having discovered this about a man you've considered a friend for so long. I'm so sorry .

[speaker_to_managers]

Elise, I’m so sorry that the friendship you gave wholeheartedly (and I know it was because I know the kind of friend you are) was returned by betrayal and deceit. But I’m proud of you for standing with the women who’ve come forward with those allegations. It’s not at all easy to accept that what seemed real for so long was a lie, and many people hide from that acceptance. I wish I could say that “of course we believe the women” was a universal sentiment, but I’ve been too close to too many of these situations to believe that. And I’m glad you said it so clearly.

[ailbhe]

I'm catching up bit by bit and Rob (https://rrc.dreamwidth.org/) told me you'd done a post on this yesterday when we were discussing Bujold. I had wondered, since the Gaiman news broke, how you were doing. This post is... much what I would have predicted you'd have written. Much love to you.

[rosefox]

Thinking of you with love today.