Unveiling the Real Neil Gaiman: Beyond Allegations and Celebrity
I know Neil Gaiman.
Neil Gaiman is a friend of mine.
And believe you me, you’re no Neil Gaiman.
Up til now I’ve been keeping my mouth shut about the allegations being made against Neil Gaiman, mainly to avoid adding fuel to fire. These rumours have taken on a life of their own. In this age of short-attention span memes and conspiracies, even the most unfounded accusations can gain traction. This happens because people associate truth with what they last recall hearing or reading.
I have nothing to say about the actual accusations. I don’t know the women making the allegations and I see Neil so infrequently, that it would be irresponsible for me to speculate one way or another as to their credibility as I really have no idea.
I do have a very clear idea of who Neil Gaiman is and how he is or is not capable of behaving. I’ve known Neil since he was a struggling journalist in the 1980s. He tried to carve a living out of writing SF book reviews for porn mags in London. Most nights, he scraped the train fare together to get back to Maidenhead.
I used to buy Neil drinks (scotch and American, as I recall) because as a publicist I had an expense account, and Neil was terminally broke.
In return, Neil introduced me to Douglas Adams (for whom he was preparing The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion), Terry Pratchett, John Brosnan, Lisa Tuttle, CliveBarker and later Alan Moore.
Neil was a sharp social butterfly at the time and although he was always on the hustle for paying writing work, he was a kind, funny guy who always had time to make useful introductions while keeping the conversations going with his wit and easy charisma. His eternal black leather jacket and devotion to Lou Reed became his recognizable brand.
I don’t think he ever took that black leather jacket off and it’s most probably now hanging in some comics museum somewhere. Neil introduced me to his first comics collaborator Dave McKean, a visual genius in his own right who actualized Neil’s first graphic novel, Violent Cases and later all the comics covers to his Sandman opus.
These were heady times. Great talents like Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz, the Hernandez Brothers, Dave McKean, and Neil himself were radically redefining the nature of the comics medium. These guys were artists who were intent on pushing boundaries and they did they succeeded,as demonstrated by the last 25 years of graphic storytelling.
At the time, I worked for Titan Books and once Neil had conned (ahem), convinced Publisher Nick Landau to publish Violent Cases as an album (pre trade paperback, Graphic Novel times), I was paid to publicize the “book”. Quotes around “book”. because Violent Cases was more of a long short story than a novel in the classical sense.
But Neil’s narrative emphasis on the role of childhood memory and mistaken memory was captivating, bringing a literary approach to ‘just another comic’ that was groundbreaking for the medium. I had never read such a theme and it’s exploration in a comic before and of course Dave McKean’s artwork, in its early representational realism style (combing mixed media of photos, sketches and painting): was sunning. No one had ever painted a comic like that before.
So I got to work alongside my buddy Neil, and my soon to be friend Dave for a few months while I wrote press releases, arranged interviews, organized signing events.
And I got paid for it.
To be honest, my best efforts only produced mixed commercial results for the album. It was too wide for most bookshops to shelve and the lessons learnt in it marketing Violent Cases is what led to Nick and DC comics settling on the standard of trade paperback for graphic novels.
But Violent Cases had a much further reaching impact: it got both Neil and Dave into DC. First with the tenuous Black Orchid limited 3 issue series (albeit featuring a stunningly handsome villain in a dark suit) and then of course Sandman.
Sandman is the reason I’m finding these accusations of sexual aggression on Neil’s part so suspect. People forget that Sandman was a break thru comic.
I actually didn’t like it at first, as I found it prosaic and flowery (inspiring me to create and write a parody of his style for Britain’s 2000AD entitled The Clown, a self obsessed, flowery speaking clown seeking revenge for the killing of his pony, Toby.
Compared to Sandman, that was a terrible strip, btw)
But in hindsight, it was groundbreaking because there were no superheroes in Neil’s fantasy Dreamscape. The Sandman was more a figure of fragile pathos than hero. More importantly, Neil’s voice was speaking not just to boys, but to girls as well at a time when, well girls just didn’t read comics.
Alan Moore once described Neil’s writing as “feminine writing” and his prose as somewhat effeminate. It sounded like an insult at the time as the big burly masculine Yeti from Northampton was busy during stakes in the hearts of boys own superhero’s in Watchmen.
But he wasn’t being condescending, he was profoundly right. Neil wasn’t just writing for boys, he was writing for boys AND girl. By the 12th issue of Sandman, boys were buying it to show to their girlfriends demonstrating the cross gender value of graphic story telling.
And remarkably, girls started buying and reading comics and then writing and drawing and publishing comics! By the late 90s female attendance at Comics Conventions was normal and Cosplay began to be a regular thing.
I’m not suggesting that Neil did this by himself. Karen Berger helped considerably. More and more male artists started to write for a gender wide audience and more and women became auteurs.
And Neil had a lot to do with this. I personally witnessed Neil going out of his way to open doors, make introductions and help women artists and writers break through the glass comics frame.
Of this I assure you with all certainty: as night follows day and day follows night, Neil Gaiman respects women. He loves women to which his daughters can attest and has supported women his entire life.
Now I’m not saying that this demonstrated respect discredits the standing allegations. What I am saying is that knowing Neil, having been around Neil, I find it highly suspect that he would commit acts of aggression, sexual or otherwise to women, regardless the circumstance.
Neil just isn’t made that way.
Now sex is a funny thing at the best of times.
So is celebrity.
I think the parameters of sexually appropriate behavior between men and women have changed radically over the past 30 years and for the better.
I myself have been called out by younger men for inappropriate attitudes towards young women when within my generational context, I was paying an innocent compliment. I’ve had to change my behavior and adapt.
Why? Because times have changed and women have the right to more succinctly determine how and when they will entertain male attention, and on what terms. Now is the time when sexual attention must be overt and clearly permit-able. Men cannot assume, we must ask if it’s OK. If our attentions are welcome or, in fact, an annoyance. We also need to know when to back off without rancor or retribution.
In the end, making love means just that, having love, affection, and respect for the object of your desires.
So maybe Neil has to adapt to his own generational context as well, but I doubt it. Neil was always ahead of the curve when it came to gender sexuality. He connected with trans people before it became a thing and promoted the sexual diversity of all people, regardless, both professionally and personally.
So these facts about Neil that I know first hand leads me to the latter conclusion. That the issue here being raised is more about celebrity than sexuality.
Celebrity is after all, merely a surplus of attention.
Most if not all the women accusing Neil of improprieties concede that their relationship were not just consensual but mutually initiated. That’s a big deal and very different from the Harvey Weinstein or Donald Trump’s sexual assaults.
Nor does there appear to be much basis for coercion or the undue use of a professional power dynamic, which has often been true in such situations. Sex used as power is not love at all.
In reading these women’s accounts of what they hold Neil accountable for,what comes through is a tone of regret and disappointment.
Now with all due respect to their pain, I know of no human being on this planet who does not regret some sexual encounter they’ve had in their life, myself included. the pain is all part of growing up, of maturing personally and sexually. Of learning what we don’t want and do want out of intimacy.
Inevitably, this requires making mistakes, regretting them, and correcting those mistakes.
I suspect that if Neil wasn’t a celebrity author caught in the media spotlight that these allegations (some over 20 years ago), would have taken a less public form. Not that they shouldn’t be brought forwards. On the contrary, I would invite any woman I have known in my life who feels that they have been subjected to my abuse, sexual or otherwise. They are welcome to confront me. They should come forward and receive my apologies for their regret and my behavior.
I’ve made some serious mistakes with the women in my life.
I am separated from my English wife with whom upon reflection and hindsight I did not treat as well as I should have or she deserved to be treated. I cannot undo the past, but I can recognize my mistakes, apologize for my trespasses and try to live and be a better person.
Hopefully, be a kinder person who does no harm.
When it comes to Neil, all I can really say is that in the time I have known him, he has proven to be an artist, a man of integrity who’s generous spirit has improved the lives of others for the better, especially women.
He’s no saint, but he’s no demon either and his demonization is not only injust and unfair but does nothing to help the lives of his accusers.
We are all hopefully entering a gentler, kinder and more honest political and personal age. The personal is political and if I stand to be corrected for anything I’ve written above, I invite you to do so with the kindness and compassion my words invite.
Respectfully, Igor Goldkind
August,2024
The Masque of Tragedy
It’s been two years to the month since my life irrevocably changed.
It’s been two years to the month since I was forced to confront an armed SWAT team on the front drive way of a suburban swelling in the once working class neighborhood of Clairemont in San Diego. The SWAT team had been called in by a mentally disturbed, alcohol dependent woman who failing to capture my attention to her satisfaction, tried to damage one of my mother’s paintings.
She succeeded in getting my attention.
When I confronted her and seized back my property, locking my bedroom door, she smiled, exited to the front of the dwelling and called the police claiming that I was an armed and dangerous villain who had assaulted her with a baseball bat.
In retrospect I almost wished I had as the following two years consequentially proved to be a total assault on my life, my mind and my emotional well being.
Regardless of my gun point explanation to the police as to the actual reality of the situation and my accuser’s mental condition, I was handcuffed, arrested and detained in a holding cell for 4 hours. Upon my release, I was illegally locked out of my home by a lunatic I had once known in college. Months of litigation and on going harassment by the ‘Baby-Man’ and the police resulted in all charges being dropped and a meager financial settlement for the harassment I had endured.
Nonetheless, covering the bail money fees alone quickly bankrupted me financially and an injury I sustained in my right leg whilst fleeing yet another sheriff’s deputy intent on detaining me solely on the basis of one lunatic’s false accusation (I has forced to jump out of a window to avoid arrest), left me virtually disabled with a severe limp and constant pain for the subsequent 8 months.
I took refuge with a Poet friend whom I had introduced to the San Diego poetry circuit and later with the family of a motorcycle mechanic who knowing of my situation, took pity on an educated white man being mistreated and allowed me to camp on an outdoor sofa in his front garden, shielded from the rain by a shed like open roof. His generosity permitted me to recover from my subsequent hip replacement that was the only solution to my leg injury.
It was during this period, I lost my job teaching autistic teenagers poetry for San Diego City Schools last year due to my injured leg curtailing my ability to chase kids down if they ran into traffic on one of our frequent outings. So I quickly found myself flat broke and virtually homeless apart from the safe sofa I could Le in at night, policing the stars and waking to the dawn chorus of flying dinosaurs.
My days were spent either at the library or when closed, one of the two local Starbucks that graciously permitted customers to use their WiFi all day even if we couldn’t afford the price of a cup of coffee.
In San Diego, if you have no social status.
You are effectively a non person.
I learned this pretty promptly and brutally.
That said I was able to subsist on food stamps and small loans from a few sympathetically generous but equally financially challenged friends. But my main social network evaporated as I was perceived as a person in need, a living reminder of the financial precariousness most Californians live under.
However, I found new friends at the library charging their phones and discovered a community of some dozen homeless people surviving on the streets of Clairemont. Sleeping rough in front of the library after it closed. Hanging out in the public spaces of the shopping mall. Charging their phones and keeping each other company with dark humour and bitter sweet reminiscences.
Charlie, an Australian expat, struggling with a walker but usually poised at t bus stop reading a paperback and sucking back cans of Fosters. George, an ex stock broker, kicked onto the streets by his ex wife and once friends with Jack Nicholson whose daughter he dated.
Scotty, an immensely obese younger man who had been kicked onto the streets by his father after he had remarried a woman from Kentucky who didn’t want Scotty around. Scotty was always hungry and downed liter plastic bottles of soda.
Thierry, a long haired, seldom bathed hippie who feigned schizophrenia to get handouts and when not practicing Tai Chi, stacked the pebbles on the mall into precariously balanced rock sculptures.
Tim, also a younger man who had lost his job at Krispy Crème for drinking beers on the sidewalk after work. Tim was eligible for social assistance but when not drinking beer spent most his time either sleeping in his parked van or in the homes of the eldery women who occupied the affordable living tower and benefited from his physical affection.
Harry, a black mountain of a man who when he had a guitar would busk blues and American spirituals in front of the Sprouts grocer. I joined Harry on a occasion, reciting poetry with his musical accompaniment to earn enough to buy food at the grocers. Harry was also always hungry.
A thin portrait, albeit of the disaffected and unwanted inhabiting the neighborhood overlooking the parks and beaches of Mission Bay. However, I found comradely in their disaffection, their ability to survive on nothing and their dedication to helping each other out when chased away by the police or the mall security.
When I could cook in my temporary dwelling, I filled containers of beer basted beans, potatoes salads and beef stew to distribute among my adopted community. On the occasion that a young woman, usually fleeing abuse, found herself sleeping in front of the library or on the patch of green in front of Carl’s Junior. Someone would tell George who would make the first contact and provide viligant protection from the attention of wanton strangers (Usually driving by),
igorgoldkind
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