Neil Gaiman and the misogyny of the geeks

One of the worst ways to form a good first impression of someone is when they’re chasing the same woman as you, so in the interests of total clarity I’ll divulge that the first – and only – time I met Neil Gaiman was way back in the twentieth century, at the Groucho Club, when we were both after the late Kathy Acker. (I wanted to hurl when he called her ‘Tweetie Pie’.)

I’ll tell my Acker story first because it’s a funny one. That Christmas she was a guest at a lunch at my bohemian in-laws. My second husband’s mother had failed to turn the stove on, thanks to an even greater cannabis fog than usual, and so lunch wasn’t served until dusk. As the afternoon wore on, and the brandy and Babycham ran out, I began to feel…warmly, shall we say, towards Miss Acker. To cut a long story short, my second husband was not best pleased when he found us playing tonsil-tennis upstairs in the marital bedroom.