When Independent Publications Were Real

The other day I sat at one of the few independent coffee houses in my neighborhood and I realized that at the door there is a table dedicated to flyers and publications that I hadn't really noticed before.  Above the table there is a sign that says: PLACE ALL PUBLICATIONS ON THE FLOOR with  an arrow pointing to a pile that I had perviously thought was merely trash.

On that day there was a young guy using the Indie publications as a pad for his knee while he worked on a chalkboard that was propped up against the wall.  He would would rub the colored sticks against the freshly washed back surface, and then blend the colors the the tip of his finger. When he messed up he would rip a piece of paper from the pad below his knee, dab the paper on his tongue, and use somebody's thoughts and words to fix his mistakes.

When I started the idea for The Reading List, it was going to be a print publication.  I guess old habits die hard, and I suppose I like the feeling of paper.  I like seeing words in print.  There's something about the idea that a letter in ink is tattooed on the flesh of a page; and that letter came from a punched button, which was punched by a finger, which was cued by a thought.  Once that ink is on a page there's no undoing it. It's out there for the world to see, with or without typos.  

Print publication actually meant something once.  It was real.  It meant that you were a writer if you wrote for a publication, and you would strive to actually be in print.  You would pitch a story to an editor, who would then tell you to send over your book of tear sheets, and then would make a point of telling you that online publication didn't count.  Writing for a website just wasn't the same, as if it was a larger bucket that somehow held less water.  But now, that isn't really the case.  People are proud to be published online, and in fact online is the only place some are "in print."

For me, being in print was a sense of permanence and immortality, I guess.  Somewhere, your thoughts and words were out there, and people were reading them.  I remember once, a long time ago, walking down Belmont towards the train and across the street I noticed two girls reading a magazine together as they walked, followed by two guys who were each holding the same magazine the two girls were reading.  The  two girls strolled slowly while one read out loud to the other, and I could clearly see the page facing the one being read.  It was an illustration - and not only that - it was the same illustration that faced the page of the piece I had just published in that same indie magazine.  I was watching someone read my words aloud to someone else while walking down the street.   The feeling was overwhelming and I had to fight the urge to run over to them an offer them an autograph.  

I was famous, obviously.  

Unable to withstand the curiosity, I ran across the street and caught up to the two girls and followed closely behind, straining to hear the one girl read to the other.  I stayed close by, nearly walking next to the girl who was listening to her friend, listening to be sure that the laughs were coming in all the right places.  I wasn't really paying any attention to how close I was getting to the girls, or where they were walking, until they turned into an ally that lead to a nearly hidden storefront.  They turned into the ally, and so did I.

A blunt blow to my lower back rocked my head up quickly and for a split second I saw nothing but tops of buildings and sky.  And then a second blow to my side immediately followed and the next thing I knew I was looking at the scuffed wheel of a dumpster.  Somebody pinned me to the ground with what felt like a knee in my back, and hands wove into my unkept, shaggy hair and gripped it while pushing my face into the broken glass and asphalt stones on the pavement.

  I heard a girls voice screech something like: what the fuck are you doing?  And I didn't know how to answer.  In fact, I really didn't know what was going on at all.  And then I heard a guys voice say something like: he was trying to steal your fucking purse. And then another guys voice saying: "Yeah!"   At first I thought I was being mugged, but then it dawned on me that I wasn't being mugged ... I was the mugger, and I had been caught.

The one with his knee in my back was light, I could feel that much, and when I stood up there wasn't a whole lot of resistance.  After getting my bearings I realized that I had been jumped by a couple of young kids who couldn't have been more than seventeen or eighteen, complete with acne and braces.  They stood there, ready to fight, both taking their shopping mall "position one"  karate stances, and hoping for dear life that I'd attack by taking one giant and deliberate step forward and reach for one of their right wrists.

What had happened was the guys who were following behind holding the magazines were the boyfriends.  The four of them had just taken the train into the city from Skokie together and were on big-city-high-alert status.  

After brushing the rocks and safety glass off of my clothes I explained to them that they shouldn't go around jumping on people. For some reason I had completely lost interest in telling them that I was the person who had written the piece the other two were reading.  No sense in letting them know they had just assaulted a celebrity, I thought, and so I went on my way.

And now, so many years later, it's sad to think that those days are coming quickly to an end.  Suddenly, seeing a stranger walking down the street reading an independent publication is less likely than seeing a stranger with his knee in the back of some words that will never be read out loud.