Letter

I got my second shot Wednesday morning, then went home and waited to be laid low, but nothing happened. A little soreness around the area where I was pricked, but not much else. I almost felt cheated. I spent the whole day watching movies.

The next morning I got up early and went to the airport to rent a car and drove to Michigan. It was my fourth trip to Dekker Bookbinding. There was no one available to help me load boxes because it was their lunch hour, so I drove to Russ’ for a piece of pie. I’ve eaten at this place every other time I’ve picked up books, so it would’ve been wrong to skip this part of my publishing ritual. I drove back to the dock and ate pie and drank coffee while waiting. A few minutes a young guy drove up a pallet with my boxes and we stacked them in the back of the SUV. The whole thing took less than five minutes.

I drove south to Kalamazoo to meet Jessi for coffee. We haven’t seen each other in over a year and a half, when she’d left Chicago for Michigan. She was the first friend outside a small circle I see regularly that I’ve seen in the flesh since lockdown. It felt normal, but also welcome. She bought a book, then we said goodbye and I drove back to Chicago.

I took advantage of the car and hit Rogers Park and Evanston to drop off book orders. I left them in foyers and mailboxes, handed them off into a few people’s hands. It’s the most time I’ve spent in a car since driving to Boston last fall, but because of the multiple stops, it reminded me of food delivery and cab-driving. I spent fifteen years doing those jobs, which now feels utterly unreal, absurd. How did I not kill a single person in all that time? Driving is a horrible thing for the human psyche.

I got home and unloaded the boxes, then returned to Midway with the car and took the Orange Line back. I was spent but satisfied with the day.

The next morning I packed and labeled out-of-town orders. It took hours. Thankfully, I passed a USPS truck en route to the mailbox and gave them my garbage bag full of packages. I spent the rest of the day biking books about. I hit Bucktown, Wicker Park, Logan Square, and Little Village. I caught up with old friends along the way. It felt like a holiday, as if I was Santa Claus.

I’m happy with how the book turned out. If it’s the last one I publish, I can live with that. We’ll see. Feels like the end of something in a way I need some time to get a grasp on.

So if you haven’t bought one, now’s the time. Or, if you don’t like reading, just get the t-shirt.

When I first walked to the end of my street to the water, I thought I’d return regularly. I didn’t go back till last week. It’s been almost ten months. Perhaps this was like the Christmas resolution to exercise, cast aside before it finishes leaving your mouth. I had good intentions.

It was a warm sunny day. There was a woman lying on the grass reading, a small dog sniffing around nearby. A few geese walked the pier, then jumped in the water. But was mostly interested in the other shore, with the crane, silos, and downtown skyline off to the right. Before starting to paint, I had to walk back home for bulldog clips, because the wind was whipping my paper around. Then I got a bit done. I hope to return in less than ten months next time.

Next door, the neighbor has turned his tiny front yard into a used bike lot. It used to be just a koi pond, plants in various states of growth, bags of soil, and scavenged-looking bricks. Now there is a riot of clashing colors from kids’ Huffys, Schwinns, and whatnot. I don’t know all the brands anymore. Used to seem very important when I was growing up.

Masked passersby stop all day and snap photos of his stock, note the phone number written on the FOR SALE sign fastened to his fence. I don’t even know his name. We were in lockdown when I moved here, so interactions with neighbors have been minimal. I haven’t even been inside my landlord’s place upstairs. I see the guy next door out back every few days, working in his garage. We wave or say hi and leave it at that. He’s always fixing bikes.

Then, I assume, they’re brought out to the showroom out front.

God knows I tried. I really did. They say, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So I did. Then the hoop-jumping commenced. They wanted to know everything about me, practically down to shoe size and blood type. I gritted my teeth, but complied. They required me to confirm my mailing address by sending me a postcard with a secret code I’d have to input to be verified. Then they didn’t send the card. I waited, then requested another card. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. After over a month, Amazon told me I was allowed to sell my books on their site.

Before I made a single sale, there was a $39.99 charge against my account. After multiple chats, emails with bots, and phone calls with humans, it turned out that Amazon had default enrolled me for a “Professional” account, monthly $39.99 included at no extra cost. I managed to convince them to reimburse the first charge, then downgraded to an “Individual” plan. This meant that an additional 99 cent fee would be tacked on to every (theoretical) sale, in addition to the pile of charges “Professionals” and plebes alike are saddled with.

A few days later I made my first sale. It was for a copy of my forthcoming book. I looked at the order. The price is $20. Amazon took $5.70 for nothing more than processing the sale and allowing a postage stamp-size image of the cover to appear on their site. I wrote to the buyer to tell them when I hoped to ship their book and tried to put the rest out of my mind.

I opened my Seller account one day and noticed my account was in the red. How could this be? Didn’t they still owe me for my one sale? Turns out that in their UK, Australia, EU, and Japan marketplaces, I was still a “Professional”, which meant they could charge me a monthly fee. Never mind that I’ve never sold anything in those countries. I stupidly assumed that downgrading to a mere “Individual” in the States would make me regarded as same worldwide, but apparently the Everything Store is sees its supplicants as unique and different in every corner of its world.

Another round of chats, calls, and bot email followed. A second sale was also pending. I canceled it and directed the thwarted buyer to my online shop. No final accounting has happened yet. When I try to delete my account, an automated message informs me I must have a zero balance and wait 90 days after that one sale I made.

I’ll wait the 90 days. Then I’ll never use Amazon again. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.

—I wrote about the Peacock Network’s new John Wayne Gacy docuseries.

p.p.s. Thanks to Neutral Spaces and Maudlin House and Vol.1 Brooklyn and Chicago Reader and Hello America for running excerpts from Old Style. The printers tell me the book should be ready Wednesday or Thursday. I’ll start biking them over to Chicago residents and mailing out the rest by the weekend, if everything breaks right.