If You See Me Holding Court At The Convention, Recognize The King Has No Clothes

The elevator doors slide open, and I walk out into the convention bar.  The room’s filled with the chatter of happy authors, people standing in small groups, smiling, ordering drinks.
My brain locks up.
I see an author whose work I enjoy, and my brain stabs me with the thought of: She doesn’t want to talk to some random schmuck.  Why would you bother her?
I see a person I stayed up with until 2:00 in the morning at the last convention, talking until we finally had to slog off to bed, and my brain shrieks: He doesn’t remember you. You’re going to introduce yourself, and get that long awkward silence, and then slink away.
I see someone who I’ve been friends with Twitter on forever, with strings of long @-exchanges that made me laugh, and I go, Well, that’s Twitter, we’re not real friends, and besides, they probably don’t remember our interactions as fondly as I do.
And on the rare occasions I see someone I do know really likes me, who’s told me they actively want to speak to me at this convention, they’re talking with other people I don’t know, and the thought of shouldering my way into that talk feels like poking grizzly bears.
I stand outside of the elevator, blushing furiously, feeling this dumb animal need to run back to my room and call it all off.  Except I’ve spent the last hour in my room psyching myself up for this, sweating, telling myself that this is what I came here for, it’ll be fine, it usually is fine once I break this frozen river of ice, trying to buy into my own hype that yes, people actually want to see me sometimes.
I pick a target.
I step out.
If I do my job right, they never realize that literally four hours of effort have gone into crafting that first casual “Hello.”

 
At this year’s ConFusion, at least three people said they wanted to talk to me, but they saw me “Holding court.”  I get that a lot.  I tend to accumulate groups of people when I’m chatting.
And I realize as I write this essay that part of the whole “holding court” thing comes from the fact that I try to be aware of my surroundings.  If I see someone creeping up on the edges, I try to welcome them in.  I know how scary that shit is, hanging around the periphery, listening, hoping not to intrude… and so I tend to talk in groups of five and six.
But man, I am not holding court. Or if I am, I am a naked and terrified king, never quite sure why anyone’s here in my presence, thrilled to see you but eternally bewildered.
The thing about breaking the ice is that for me, once I get going, the bravery snowballs.  If I talk to three people, I can usually strike up a conversation with the fourth at no effort.  If I’ve talked with six people, I can snag an invite to dinner.
Yet that effort evaporates ludicrously fast.  I remember spending all of Thursday and Friday chatting effortlessly once I’d finally broken into my first conversation – and then I went up to my room on Saturday for an hour’s nap.  When I returned, I was freeze-locked again, and my good friend Amy had to come down to help me through my anxiety.
I love people, but man, they terrify me.
Yet what I hear over and over again is how well I do at conventions. I always seem to be talking with somebody, or several somebodies, I always seem to be in the thick of social situations, I always seem to be making friends –
– and sometimes folks tell me this with a secret degree of envy, as though they wish they had the trick.  And there are tricks you can deploy; have a rock-solid friend you’ve hung out with outside of conventions to be your wingman, chat a lot on Twitter so you know people without “knowing” them, recognize that you can be scared and still act.  (Also, sometimes? Anti-anxiety drugs.)
But mostly, it’s just stepping out onto the killing floor and discovering that on the whole, people are more welcoming than you’d thought.
And so if you see me holding court, please realize that this isn’t a fiefdom.  It’s a shelter.  If you’re as socially anxious as I am, I want you there.  I’ll welcome you as best I can. I’ll introduce you around. I’ll say hello and be friendly, because man, I’m in the zone now but I am one nap away from being knocked back down to feeling like the out-of-town kid walking into a new classroom full of hostile students.
But if you have to view me as a king holding court, then please view me as a benevolent leader wishing to knight you.  I come from humble origins.  My skills are overrated.
Please. Step into the circle.  Speak “friend,” and enter.
Because you and I are knotted by the same stupid fears.  The only difference between us? Is that maybe I have a little more experience navigating these anxious waters.
I’ll talk to you.
I’ve been there.

You Can Always Find A Couple Of Assholes On Twitter

Here’s a “news” story I despise:
1)  A Newsworthy Event happens.
2)  Intrepid Journalist goes out onto Twitter to hunt for the dumbest, most upsetting reactions possible.
3)  A clickbait article then presents these Twitter reactions, going, “PEOPLE HOLD HATEFUL OPINIONS LOOK AT HOW STUPID THEY ARE.”
Look. There’s lots of places that do genuinely attract cesspools of hateful reactions – Cleveland.com had to shut down comments on Tamir Rice news articles after being swamped with racist assholes, and certainly if you look through Anita Sarkeesian’s @-replies you’ll find tons of loathesome sexist comments.
But this is a big world, guys.
Even when 99.9% of the world agrees this is fucking awesome, there’s always going to be a handful of douches who react like a fucking moron to any news story.
And I think making a habit of seeking out the twenty dickwads in order to engineer rageclicks actually hurts us. I think it’s a variant on the “local news” segment, where reporters go around finding every break-in and mugging and car accident and report it until people feel like they’re under siege in their own homes, even in a safe suburban town.
There are incidents that indicate a genuine outswelling of distressing behavior, of course – but those are because there’s hundreds of thousands of people, say, believing Trump’s lies that “thousands” of mythical New Jersey Muslims were cheering on 9/11.
But there’s also news stories where 99% of the population goes, “Eh, no big whoop” – and these clickfuckers go out searching for the dumbest, most racist/sexist/homophobic reactions because they know you’ll get pissed.  And I think if you treat these clickbait articles as though they reflect real life, like Fox gins up the terror of Muslims, you become convinced the world is out to getcha, when in reality it’s probably the same massively overwhelmed and outvoted segment of the population expressing some opinions their Facebook friends would probably consider douchey.
(And it’s also impossible, out of context, to know how many of those people were trolling.  There was a lot of baby boomer outrage when Paul McCartney played with Kanye West and folks went, “Who’s that old dude?” – and at least some of those accounts were purposely trying to piss off people.  Not that there’s anything wrong with a seventeen-year-old kid not knowing who Paul McCartney is anyway.)
And I think that the “find the douchebags” game presents a burn-n-slash presentation of “winning” – because it implies if you can find one moron shouting out in the wilderness, we have yet to achieve victory.
Which is never going to happen.  That goal implies a thoroughly Orwellian world, and it’s the same world where fundamentalists think they can make every single person love Jesus.  Humanity is messy, and sloppy, and it is impossible to get everyone believing what you do, no matter how noble you believe your cause is.  It just doesn’t happen. It never has happened.  There will always be dissent.
The best that rationally happens is to have these people so overwhelmingly outnumbered that they’re not taken seriously.  Sure, there’s always gonna be some idiot who thinks the world is ruled by snake people – and you can find their Twitter, too! – but that guy’s never gonna muster voters into overthrowing the snake people, his core values are never gonna be taken seriously by the press, he’s never gonna live his dreams.
He’ll find a cluster of snake-people-haters online, and he’ll be thoroughly convinced he’s right, and nobody else will care.
That is victory.
And like I said, because people tend to get pissy about these things and then shut down their reading comprehension, I’m not discussing stuff where there are thousands of responses and people polling significant digits in the populations and elections at stake.
But there are also issues where really, pretty much everybody’s like “Yeah, whatever” except for this handful of idiots.  And if you shine a light on these idiots, then suddenly people feel like they have to have opinions, and you get a ginned-up wellspring of idiocy like The Starbucks Cup controversy, where nobody fucking cared until people realized you might be pissed off about it, and they found That One Moron, and then it became a Cultural Issue where morons started climbing aboard because hey, if liberals are against it then I must be for it…
And realistically, what happened was that websites converted your outrage into advertising dollars, and you felt like the world was full of maniacs, and the truth was that there were like six maniacs total, living out where nobody cared, until people hunted them down to scare you.
And sure.  Those maniacs exist.  But they didn’t have any real power.  And blowing them up into the Next Big Assault makes it seem like you’re continually under siege, and it blends into the real sieges, and the next thing you know you’re as paranoid as a Fox News viewer.
So yeah.  Not a fan.

Things I Don't Understand: Ranking Sexual Conquests.

“‘I’m going to analyze my own experience with women in order to shed some light on what women are really like,’ Jared had written. What followed was a list of his sexual conquests, evaluated with a numerical score that ranked each woman’s face, body, and personality, as well as a brief description.”
And all I can think is, “…why would you do that?”
Yet I know that a lot of men – particularly the Red Pill dudes referenced so lavishly in that article – in fact, *do* rank everyone they sleep with.
And all I can think is, “Man, that has to be the saddest sex ever.” Because when I’m with someone, I’m looking to be swept away by sensation – I want that kiss so fierce it shuts out the world so all I think about is this moment. I want it to feel so good when she touches me that my sole remaining thought is more. I want to lose myself in her body, to create this vibrating loop of organic and orgasmic feedback that leaves us both spent and shuddering.
I’ve watched Star Wars as a young boy. I’ve also watched Star Wars as a critic. And lemme tellya, walking into the bedroom with a critic’s eye carries a certain intellectual satisfaction, but it sure gets in the way of cheering for Luke.
Fucking them while also accumulating the data to later tally whether they were a 5-face or a 6-face seems like you’re not so much a sexual partner but a polling method using a dick instead of a phone call.
More importantly, gaining that critical knowledge seems like a way to never be satisfied. While you’re in the bedroom, you have to be thinking, “Could I be doing better? Why have I settled for a 7 personality tonight?” And I doubt the guys who do this think that far down, but their subconscious has to be burbling with thoughts of “Am I so desperate for affection that I’ll lower my own standards just not to be alone? Why can’t I consistently nail a 10/10/10? What will I do if I ever find the perfect woman?”
Man, I think those guys have to be roiling with bizarre insecurities. This isn’t connection; this is grinding Achievements on X-Box.
Which is not to say I don’t have flashes of scientific thought in the bedroom – those dim ignitions of Oh, she liked that move, maybe I should try that on someone else later on –
– but when I’m with someone, it’s because I want to be wholly with them. I’m not comparing and contrasting them against everyone else I might have slept with, I am appreciating what is there before me. They’re revealing themselves, and I’m revealing myself, and together we’ll see what sorts of unique chemistry we can unlock.
I think ranking like that always means a part of you is elsewhere, hoping for a better experience, leaving you itching for novelty even when you’re kissing someone for the first time. Whereas I think it’s far superior to focus on extracting the joy and passion and sweetness that can be gotten from a partner who you’ve decided to be with not because you wanted to see if you could fuck them, not because you wanted to check off a new tally on their score, but for the simple reason that they turned you on.
It’s easier. And I think, ultimately, brings you to a better and less bitter place. And I wonder if so many Red Pill guys seem miserable from a distance because they’re not actually connecting with women, but instead are playing this constructed strategy game with their ego where accumulating bodies serves as a replacement for self-worth, and they get increasingly angry when they realize they’re getting everything they wanted but it’s like seawater – you can drink, and drink, and drink, and drown.
Maybe the only solution is to walk away. But I don’t know if any of them could do that.

Martin Luther King: Recent Ancient History

They taught me about Martin Luther King in fifth grade. I would have been ten years old.
Funny thing is, normally they never would have mentioned Martin Luther King.  History was all old things, like Washington and Lincoln; I don’t think I heard the words “Vietnam War” in school until I was in tenth grade, minimum.  But MLK had woken a lot of people to the concepts of prejudice and equality, so they shoehorned him in.
Which was weird.  Because they talked a lot about Martin Luther King, and how he made the world safe for black people, in that reduced blend of facts and mythology we always hand out to young kids.  And they talked about how great he was, and all the work he did…
But fifth grade, for me, was 1979.
Martin Luther King got shot in 1968.
And what the teachers never made clear was that he’d been shot the year before I was born.  The echo of that shot was still ringing through our lifetime. Things hadn’t been solved.
But because MLK had been slotted in, MLK acquired the patina of all the other historical figures we talked about, like Washington and Lincoln, these ancient struggles that we won.  We won the war for American Independence, and we won the Civil War, and we won the war for equality – these distant, dusty struggles we should be grateful are now over.
Nobody made it clear that people who’d marched in the Civil Rights Movement were, in many cases, younger than my teacher.
And I wonder how much of the Black Lives Matter movement is an extension of that weird-ass historical shading.  The teachers meant well.  But they made it sound like MLK was some ancient event, not something ripped from yesterday’s headlines, and as a result they taught us the inadvertent lesson that the whole prejudice thing had been fixed.
I think a lot of white people my age today are so upset over Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movement because they got taught that Martin Luther King fixed this shit.  And to them, going back and discussing it again is kind of like fighting England all over again for independence, we did it, don’t these people realize we won?
And what the teachers didn’t, perhaps couldn’t, perhaps didn’t want to say, is that MLK’s blood was still drying on the pavement while we were in class, and the ramifications were still spilling outward, ever outward, and things were never as closed as we would have liked to believe.
But we like to believe in closure. And we sure like to believe that MLK shut a door that we never have to open again.  We like to believe that a lot.

In Which I Sell The Impossible Story To Uncanny Magazine!

I have three distinct personalities as a writer: scribbly-guy, edity-guy, and marketroid. I don’t let the three talk to each other.
Scribbly-guy just writes. I don’t really know where the stories come from; I just get a weird first sentence and I roll with it.  Likewise, Edity-guy doesn’t question the submissions he’s getting: he’s got a story on his desk, and it’s time for him to make it better.
Mr. Marketroid, the part of me that actually has to go out and find a place to buy these stories, gets the final product and weeps.
And no story made him weep harder than “Rooms Formed of Neurons and Sex,” because it’s a story about a phone sex operator who falls in love with a BDSM-obsessed brain in a jar. Not only is this story extremely sexually explicit, not only do the words “brain in a jar” appear unironically and repeatedly throughout the work, but it is also 6,400 words, roughly 1,500 words more than most story markets will take.  (For the record, this whole post clocks in at a hair over 300 words.)
Yet after years of reworking, the fine editors at Uncanny Magazine just sent me back the contract, so “Rooms Formed Of Neurons And Sex” will appear in a future issue of Uncanny.  Which is awesome, because every short story writer has a couple of markets they long to be published in, and Uncanny Magazine has been knocking it out of the park lately with kick-ass stories from some of the authors I admire most.
It’s not out yet, obvs; the wheels of publishing grind slow and fine, and they’re committed with stories through February.  I’ll letcha know when this absolutely psychotic weirdie of a story will be available for your perusal.
But I sold it! And you’ll see it. In a place where I’m in great company.  And soon you’ll be able to put your eyes on Lydia and the Naughty Nurse Hotline and how she comes to fall in love with, yes, a brain in a goddamned jar.

My Book FLEX is $2.99 As Part Of B&N's "First In Series" Sale!

Looking for some awesome sci-fi and fantasy series? Well, Barnes and Noble is trying to lure you in to reading pure awesomeness – and so as part of that, they’ve discounted Flex on the Nook to $2.99 to get you started!  (And don’t forget the sequel The Flux, which is currently out, and Fix – which isn’t even up for presale, but will be arriving in September of 2016.  I’m a series, you see.)
(You can also start on some awesome series like Mirror Empire, which I’m currently reading, and Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter, which has been highly recommended to me.)
Anyway, my book’s on sale for a short time, so I’d go purchase it post-haste, were I you.