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angelicbutnotnice · 2 months

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I ended my friendship with Neil Gaiman in January, because, for all his mistakes and flaws and side-eyeable actions over the course of the time I 'knew' him, including taking that fucking flight during covid lockdown, I was unable to rationalize or justify unapologetic, unexamined zionism as just another way my well-intentioned scientology survivor women supporting kind and polite friend Neil could sometimes be a real fucking dick.

After nearly a decade of push-pull vagueness and confusing mixed signals and a peculiar inability to just let the relationship go, I'd been periodically texting with him for weeks appealing to him to say something, literally anything, about Palestine.

From: Courtnee Fallon Rex [email protected] Subject: I want you to know Date: January 12, 2024 at 9:46:07 AM PST To: Neil Gaiman [email protected]

That the first person I think of when I see prose like this, is you.

“Be clear: racism and white supremacy do not die off with time and passing generations. It is inherited and transferred. White people are more concerned about protecting a world that benefits their children than they are about dismantling a world that harms ours.

If everyone can't be included in your definition of "freedom" then it is not freedom you want. It is power. And that's not love. That's hate.“

"I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do," writes James Baldwin.

You say you stand with refugees while ignoring what made them displaced in the first place, while standing with a corrupt terrorist organization feigning to treat the wounds it inflicts to further your career and social capital, and you do it with a smug self importance that makes me sick to my stomach, while encouraging your audience to vote for a warmonger who has violated the trust and sanctity of a country you can’t even vote in.

I can never see you or your work the same way again

Fast forward to now, where it all makes sense why I couldn't let it go until it got that irreconcilable, why I was so confused and attached, and not only that, why I felt so *broken* when I was going out of my way to include him in my life.

My communications with Neil mirror those of the two women who have come forward so far, overtly positive, peaceful, kind, affectionate. It's frustrating and painful to look over our messages now because the other things NEEDED to happen outside of that container with him. I needed to attempt to resolve my fears and my mixed feelings with people other than him because he DOESN'T FUCKING ENGAGE in the real shit.

In our last exchange, when I asked him to unfollow me here because I was no longer comfortable with him viewing my lefitst, anti-capitalist posts, where I said straight up that I felt insecure and needed a real conversation with him somewhere safe, like in person or on an encrypted platform, to talk about things in order to remain friends -- he didn't answer. He didn't even acknowledge what I said.

He ignored it and picked some random aside to respond to -- a 'quirky' tactic he has displayed over and over again -- leaving me to fill in the actual message being sent: No, I will not make time to talk with you in order to keep you in my life. I told him I understood, KISSED HIM ON HIS FUCKING FOREHEAD and told him to 'be careful', believing he was a good person surrounded by fucking pirahnas.

And this, in a nutshell, was what it was like trying to be real with Neil.

I'd told him I didn't even like his fucking books, and still we spoke regularly for another decade. That meant we were real friends, right? Even though I'd talked with a handful of people over the years because I couldn't figure out why the fuck he kept in touch with me, why sometimes he'd respond and others he wouldn't, why I kept asking his advice when it was me the majority of the time filling in the blanks around some vague platitude an AI could have written -- unless I communicated in some way that I was really about to drop him, of course -- we were friends, right?

I delved into his projects periodically trying to get over my aversion to them because Neil Gaiman was my friend. Neil is the reason I have an account here at all, to mainly engage in his ask replies and so on. I like many others dismissed the sexual assault in the ending of GOS2, trying to find deeper meaning to it, trusting he'd speak to it in S3 and set it right, seeking out GO memes to send him (in part because he almost always responded to subject matter about his work), and on and on.

I praised the success of his work and his societal position, I picked for things to say nice stuff about. I oscillated between seeing him as a peer, potential lover, a famous guy doing famous guy shit, and a dad. I went back and forth from trying to be a fan to being proud I wasn't, to feeling like we had a genuine friendship to feeling like I was using the guy, and back, and forth, and back, and forth.

I'd be doing ok for months, years sometimes, without thinking much about him, but when something bad happened or my mental health suffered, I would instinctively seek him out for the quick hit of dopamine if he happened to respond this time (this tactic is called intermittent re-enforcement btw), have a 'lovely' exchange with the nicest white male feminist ever, only to ultimately feel worse than I did before reaching out to him.

How was it that when I turned to the nicest guy on the planet when I was in pain that he managed to cause me to feel so hollow and weird afterward? I kept moving toward the uncertainty imagining he knew something vital that I didn't. But it turns out the answer to my question is: because he wasn't nice. He was never nice. He watched me flail and strung me along even when I was directly questioning him about us, he offered no genuine vulnerability or connection -- he used me. And it was Palestine that helped me finally come to terms that the only peace Neil ever gave a shit about was his own.

Friendly reminder to myself as much as anyone that 'maybe' means No.

I met Neil in my mid-30's, under circumstances you can read about in Amanda's book Art of Asking -- I am the massage therapist she wrote about meeting on her birthday. I'd had the discernment to reject her for years over her ableism, her racism, her narcissism, her shitty white feminism, HER.

When faced with the reality of them in the flesh requesting a service from me, I decided to take the high road, to be the bigger person, to be peaceful and kind, to be what Neil referred to me at the time as "A real grown-up".

.. "We're all grown-ups here" ..

Somewhere in the archives of the internet is a buzzfeed interview with Amanda that she took in my car as I drove her to the airport, where she talked about how we were 'friends' now. I flew down to LA to be a part of one of Amanda's book tour stops, wrote an exceedingly saccharine blog about it, felt special and proud, to the point that I even performed for Amanda for free after one of my main points of contention with her was that she was a millionaire married to a millionaire who wasn't offering to pay her fucking collaborating artists.

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And for a while, I thought I'd made the right choice. I thought something real had happened, a genuine connection.

By 2015, I'd already been completely discarded by Amanda. Neil however, stayed in touch sort of, but only, I grew to increasingly suspect, because I continued to contact him. At the time I thought he was the true friend connection I got for getting over my shit with her. He was my prize for being bigger than my anger and opening up my heart to them even though he was 'busy' and inconsistent, and Amanda had swiftly fallen away. It was in part my respect for her and not wanting to engage with any sex without speaking to her about it first that helped keep me from hopping into bed with her husband over most of those years and thank god for that.

Over the years he knew I was largely homeless, living in a van, dealing with extensive health issues, all the same profile of the other people he preyed upon to feel good about himself. In 2014, he retweeted a massive essay I'd written about rape culture, both the recognition of it in others and in how I've contributed to it myself, nary a year after I'd met him. He knew part of the reason I'd written it was that I'd sworn off 'relationships' shortly after meeting him because of rape. Like many, I thought doing things like this made him an ally, but it seems what it really did was what a lot of my previous public deconstruction has done for unapologetically abusive people trying to keep being shitty; obfuscate and make it easier for them.

Eventually, when things got desperate enough for me, I finally outright asked him for money, and he paid for a year of rent for the tiny art studio I lived and worked in during covid lockdown. With that year I created what is essentially my masterwork, facing and transmuting my toxic masculinity through psychodrama, with his name forever and perhaps ironically or perhaps appropriately in those credits. I'm a lot wholer and healthier now because of that project and tangentially because of his financial sponsorship of it -- but I also understand I would have gotten there another way if it weren't for him (and whatever you've been getting at from his persona or his works will come to you another way as well).

Still back and forth I went, now with a newfound fervor because of that resource exchange, feeling like a true person, feeling like a shitbag; why do I keep opening myself up to him, why do I keep telling him so much, why do I keep holding onto someone I'm unsure about? Am I petty and only doing this because he's famous? Am I really only doing this because I might need his wealth again some day? But if that's what I'm doing, why is my underlying motivation to know the actual him? Why am I constantly showing him my tender belly hoping he will show me something real of himself in return once I've made HIM feel safe enough?

Well, I guess we all now know the actual him together.

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I'm 44 years old. I'm conventionally "smart", discerning, even skeptical, a known pattern recognizer. I *LIVE* for unmasking and uncovering the truth beneath lies I can smell but not quite see. I'm well down the path of deconstructing my internalized misogyny, white supremacy, settler colonial mindset rooted in rape and abuse culture -- far enough to recognize the harm *I'm* capable of, and to have adjusted my life to suit. I encourage the practice of deconstruction and restorative justice and believe the only way out of our collective hellscape of a culture is through.

And, I'm writing this ultimately to tell you, whoever you are, that the emotionally manipulative tactics Neil used on the two women who came forward (and the many more who will), the tactics he used on me, and on all of you here on tumblr, work. They work.

The tactics work.

Yes, some people saw through it to avoid him successfully. Some people had the distance that makes it so easy to see what's what observing from the outside, like I so often do, like you probably do too, and good for them for seeing through him. But you're not wrong for having liked his stories, including the ones he made up about the type of person he is.

You're not at fault for taking his periodic activism at face value, thinking he actually gave a fuck about trans people or refugees or the greater world beyond his own comfort and privilege. You're not bad for appreciating how much time he spent on here talking with all of you, and you're not stupid for being hungry and taken in by his breadcrumbs.

And if you were victimized by one of the most famous, 'beloved' living authors of our time, you're not wrong for that either. You're just a malleable, effectable human like the rest of us, trained since birth to look up to powerful white men, and once someone burrows in emotionally, weather by speaking to your lonely tenderness by appearing to give you the queer representation in media you crave or by kool-aid manning through your office door like he did mine, well, a lot of the time you simply end up doing the gaslighting to yourself.

That's the goal of the tactics, and the tactics work.

As the puzzle pieces keep clunking into new places in the your mind now that you have this new information, as his work and your relationship with him changes for you and you can see it in a different light, give yourself grace. We can only perceive what we're ready to see, and there's a reason Neil has mainly targeted/written for young people and children.

You know now, and can move differently now, and protect yourself better now. But part of protecting yourself is knowing these tactics work, that grooming works and can happen in a very short amount of time and to adults, and it can be enacted without the conscious understanding or diabolical premeditation of the perpetrator. And even after you've become acutely aware of the tactics they can *still be effective on you*. They worked on me, even though I 'know' better, I've been groomed before, and I struggled with myself over it.

My therapist tried to warn me when I met him, but I thought I had it figured out then, and I kept holding onto that notion over time even as I watched myself continue to hold Neil above me as having more wisdom or understanding because he has been so successful with his words. I didn't have it figured out. And frankly, neither does Neil -- he's, mostly, just full of his own self-satisfied shit.

Even after it became clear to me it was his lifelong connections and his ability to say so much while standing for so little that marked him for the success he's enjoyed, parts of me still believed in the fairytale of Neil just like you guys. Part of protecting yourself and others is knowing you'll never have it all figured out. Knowing that no matter what you will have to keep checking yourself over and over again, asking yourself: Is this white supremacy? Is this rape culture? Do I understand the danger I'm in? Do I understand the harm I could cause? Do I have the tools and skills to weather this tender situation successfully? Is this where I'm really supposed to be?

Listen to the quiet voices, the well meaning friends and supporters you have, and when you've managed to ignore them to your own detriment, be kind to yourself about it, if not for any other reason than that no one else can do it for yourself like you can. We are all struggling to birth new ways of being, to unlearn where and what and who we learn from, and giving birth to something generally hurts like fuck.

Keep Going.

From: Courtnee Fallon Rex <[email protected]> Subject: Now I understand Date: July 5, 2024 at 5:22:29 AM PDT To: Neil Gaiman <[email protected]> Neil, Welp, I guess I finally know why in 11 years you never *really* shared anything significant with me about your personal life. I can imagine after I’d made you aware about my piece on rape culture and after seeing how I grew as a person upon those reflections, you knew exactly what I would have said if you’d confided this was the ‘mistake’ you made which had you flying around the world during a pandemic https://www.tortoisemedia.com/audio/master-the-allegations-against-neil-gaiman-episode-2/ I guess in hindsight you would know better than some why calling coercion rape might upset people who had ‘really’ been raped eh. And pulling the naked thing on me the first day we met after Amanda ‘gifted’ you half her massage… boy. So much makes sense now, including why I was periodically so confused and questioning about our friendship and how I might categorize you in my life. One by one the people who held space over the last decade for me to talk about how fucked up I felt about you are coming to see if I’m alright. The collective ‘aha!’ is resounding. Listening to these accounts and recognizing some of the same patterns in how you interacted with me is really sobering and, frankly, embarrassing. Thank god I was already in my mid 30’s before we met, but I sure feel for the people who weren’t. I believe the women who have spoken out about you and Amanda. I’m embarrassed by my proximity to you both and how much of myself I shared with you over the years. I’m embarrassed that I allowed your asshole ex wife who I fucking hated for good reasons into my studio, into my head and heart. I’m embarrassed to be in her insufferable white privilege book as some kind of example of reconciliation when you’re both fucking terrible and selfish and predatory. I’m embarrassed that your name is credited on my art project about facing toxic masculinity and taking responsibility for nurturing it back to health. None of the positive I spent the last decade thanking you over was worth abandoning myself and my intuition by accepting either of you into my life. May all your victims, including those who do not come forward openly, see justice in your downfall. May the good people in proximity to you survive unscathed, and may this world witness the stark and immediate obscurity of you and every other psychotic piece of shit you’ve aligned with to get to the position of sunken power you’ve been in. Whether you see it clearly yet or not; The time for people like you to be running this world is over. Free Palestine. Courtnee Fallon Rex, CGRS Orchestrator, Artful Touch https://linktr.ee/courtnee

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