Dead In Three Minutes; Or, I Met Harlan Ellison & Survived

Originally posted in October, 2001 

Dead In Three Minutes; Or, I Met Harlan Ellison & Survived

A few minutes after arriving at MadCon this weekend, Neil Gaiman introduced me to Harlan Ellison.
Three minutes later, I was dead. But laughing.

A minute or so after being introduced, I turned around to see Harlan glaring at me.
"Why are you dogging my footsteps?"
"I'm not dogging your footsteps, I'm dogging his footsteps", I explained, backhanding a thumb at Neil.
He demanded to know why.
I explained that it was 'cause he's better looking.

Harlan stared hard at me for a split second.
"You... are dead to me."
Dismissive hand gesture.

He starts to walk away, but decides to make another pass.
"You're one to talk. Look at you. Have you seen my wife? She's gorgeous..."
~ insert five minute rant here that covers the futility of my existance given my figure, face, intelligence, and general contribution to life in general~

He stops a moment to take a breath.

"Well, it's the body I have, and like I've told Neil, it's the only personality I've got", I laughed.

"Where's the Goddam car? I'm standing here in a t-shirt!" demanded Harlan, who was indeed standing in the doorway of a convention center in Madison, Wisconson, in late October, in a t-shirt. How dare the weather expect to be dressed for!

I offered him my jacket, as I had another in the car.

He waved his hand at me again, disgusted that I was not devasted, or maybe appalled that I was still willing to be nice to him. Maybe just mad that I was pretty unaffected by the Declaration of Death. It does make a good story, after all.

~~~

At the end of the convention, I asked Neil to ask Harlan to pose with him for me, in front of the board that had all five pages of the story they'd been working on for three years on it.

Neil: "Harlan, this young lady who is dead to you would like a picture of the two of us together in front of the story board."

Harlan just waves a hand back at me and says "Yeah, whatever."

I tell Harlan that he's partially responsible for me being the way I am, which is very true. I was Harlanized at the age of two or three.

"That's like being accused of being Dr. Frankenstein!"

I reflexively tried get in the last word.
"Yeah, and look what happened to him!"

Harlan got the last laugh, though.
He disappeared.
The picture only has Neil, and the board.

Neil's volunteer assistant for the weekend suggested that Harlan might be hiding behind the board. I would not have been surprised.