THE WORD

Dispatches from the Maelstrom
byline: Yelena Rossini

Fine.  Here.  Now Stop Bothering Me.

People still write to me about Spider Jerusalem.  The man's been dead
for thirty years, quit writing years before that, but the letters keep
coming in.

"Why don't you write like Spider Jerusalem?" they ask.  "Why don't you
screw with the Establishment like he did?  Or at least talk about him?
 You knew him, didn't you?  You were his protegee, weren't you?  Tell
us what he was really like."

And for every day of the entire nineteen years I've been writing this
column, I've ignored it.  I have never once written one single damned
word about Spider Jerusalem.  But I am.  And on the thirtieth
anniversary of his death, no less. 

Why?  Hell, I don't even know.  Maybe it was a slow news day.  Maybe I
feel some long-forgotten bit of myself that yearned to be like him
making itself known.  Maybe I simply think it's time for me to say it.

What was Spider Jerusalem really like?  In words of one syllable: he
was a piece of shit.

Probably you never met Spider Jerusalem.  But rest assured he hated
you.  He hated you with conviction, with a firm and undying certainty
that you were brain-dead, cattle-like lemmings who would follow
anybody with the insanity to cry out, "Follow me!"  He hated you like
Hitler hated the Jews, like Weisenthal hated the Nazis, like Charles
Manson hated . . . . well, everybody.

Why?  Same reason as Hitler hating the Jews -- no reason.  He just
thought you were idiots.  And he held you in total contempt.

"But," some of you are saying now.  "But Spider Jerusalem's my hero!
My role model!  He spent his life standing up to the truly wrong
things in society!"

To which I say, in the tones learned from my mentor: bullshit.

 Spider Jerusalem shouldn't be anybody's hero.  He did what he did
because he needed to fight somebody.  He was, in the final analysis, a
selfish, self-centered drug addict with a guilty conscience.  Sure, he
was a great writer.  A wonderful writer.  Arguably the best writer of
his generation.  Possibly one of the best writers in the history of
journalism.

That doesn't change the fact that he was a hateful, horrible unfit
excuse for a human being.  He beat up old women . . . . well, he beat
up every kind of person, including old women.  He did every drug ever
invented and mixed up a few new ones just to see if they'd send him
aloft. 

And you loved him for it.  "You bastards," he'd call you, and you'd
revel in it.  You were all sure that he didn't really mean it, those
of you who never got to meet him.  It was just a shtick, a gag, a way
to sell newspapers.  Everybody knew that.

It wasn't, though.  Take it from me, Spider Jerusalem meant ever
horrible thing he ever wrote or said.  It wasn't tongue in cheek; it
wasn't with a twinkle in his eye -- unless what he was saying was
hurting someone.  Then you'd see the gleam.  Then you'd see him smile,
see that flash of happiness across his miserable face.

I know.  You don't want to hear it.  He's still your hero.  He took on
the Beast for you.  He was Spider, your own personal Jesus Christ in
red and green sunglasses.

What Spider Jerusalem did, he did for himself and nobody else.  I
know; I was the one who cleaned up after him, carried his bags, took
his shit, and got hammered with him.  I was there, day in and day out.
 And nights.  Spider Jerusalem was garbage.  He was a great writer,
but a horrible human being. 

Well, I've done it.  Now you know.  Now, as Spider would have put it,
you bastards know some Truth.  Try not to squander it or forget it too
quickly.  Because whether we like to talk about it or not, Spider
Jerusalem was everything I've said he was.  In fact, he was worse. 

And you know what?  I miss the crazy bastard.

--30--



------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, here it is.  The first Transmetropolitan fan-fic that I've ever
seen.  I had to write it myself, but I finally found one. 

That number at the end of the story, before you dismiss it as a
typographical error, is a journalistic reference -- it's something
newspaper folk write to show they're done with the piece.  I once knew
why this was done, but I don't think I do anymore.

 I feel compelled, in a way totally unlike the subject of this rancid
little piece, to explain something.  I feel about Spider Jerusalem the
way that Arthur Conan Doyle once said that he felt about Sherlock
Holmes: "I love him from a discreet distance, but I know that I should
hate him if we were to meet face to face."  That's how I feel about
Spider.  I dearly love reading Transmet, and watching the antics of
that bald-headed terror brings some much-needed laughs into my life,
but I also feel the need to point out that Spider Jerusalem IS a lousy
excuse for a human being, and if I met him, he'd disgust me. 

But just like Yelena, I'll miss him when he's gone.  Sick, isn't it?


LEGAL DISCLAIMER, at the end where it belongs:
Spider Jerusalem, Yelena Rossini, the Word, and the world that
Transmetropolitan exists in belongs to DC Comics.  I just got them out
to play
with for a little while.  I'll put them back before Warren and Darick
need them for the January issue, I promise.  Suing me would serve
little or no purpose; I have about $400 and a passel of student loans
and a car debt to my name.  That having been said . . . .

--
"Oh, yeah, Mr. 'How-Can-I-Get-THESE-Characters-To-Sleep-Together'?"
Tapestry, to me, in #subcafe on IRC

Yours,
Falstaff
gypsys_beloved@yahoo.com