I Did it All for the “Bookie”

Last year, at this time, cms and I signed a book contract. It was the first contract for him, and the sixth for me. As a sidebar, this book contract would probably be the last one that I’d do for awhile. Books take time to write. Make that lots of time to write. I’d been wanting to pursue other things, maybe like living a little. (Yes, you’re wincing if you know me; but it’s true.)

cms and I had been discussing writing a book for a little bit over a year, so this project seemed like an excellent way to exercise our writing chops, whilst working on subject matter that we’d both been drawn to. After one publisher had passed on our prospective book, I’d sought some referrals, and we’d ended up signing with another publisher. The “deal” in and of itself seemed to be virtually identical to what we’d have signed with the other publisher. What a deal. Or was it?

We started writing pages in February 2003. At the same time, I’d started a relationship with S. cms had been married the fall before. For a book of 500-pages — which we’d contractually bound ourselves to oblige — we didn’t have much time, seeing that the manuscript was due in August 2003. This left us less than 5 months to produce 500 pages of text (our draft was due before August 2003), assuming many things on our part(s).

At first, it went smoothly on the writing front. I was able to produce pages. My day job wasn’t too demanding at that time. I had some free time. I was amazed that I could find some level of balance with these many things. I was hoping that my Libra self wouldn’t, well, stumble into its Virgo cusp.

Within weeks, things started to fall out of balance. Cusp never sleeps.

It became apparent that I was unable to balance everything. Work became more demanding. I wasn’t able to write anything worth going into a book. My relationship was on the rocks (yes, it was my fault, almost entirely). I was frustrated with cms, because he hadn’t really produced any pages at all. (It wasn’t that cms wasn’t inclined to produce pages. I’ve since learned that he was stuck: very, very stuck.) I was extremely disappointed in myself, as I’d been a pretty good balancer up until the Spring of 2003. Suddenly, I turned into a brutal dictator. I’d become Brutal Dictator of Time Utilization and Page Production. I’d begun to mass produce Weapons of Time Consumption.

Fast forward, 10 months later.

cms and I learned that we’d have to complete revisions to the manuscript to accomodate changes for the “Panther” release of Mac OS X. Since our editor had insisted that we update the manuscript that’d we’d submitted in August 2003 to accomodate changes for “Panther” (which, to date, I’ve counted as *four* changes to the text as written), we were compelled to start the writing process again. This amused me exactly not at all, seeing that about 400 pages of the (then) 568-page book were mine. Until I saw the book on the shelves, I didn’t even want to look at it.

So, we started the process again. I’d decided that I’d begin immediately and conclude my updates by Thanksgiving 2003. Our editor was beginning to get nervous, I guess, so she scheduled a conference call. cms and I asked her to reschedule. We never heard back from her.

I mean “never”. Not literally ever. Let me clarify. Even after I’d submitted an “epic” rant/flame (email) to her before I’d left for the holidays on 12/24/2003, we heard nothing back. Nothing. Not literally anything. We kept waiting. And waiting. Quietly, cms and I wondered if she’d died, or had gotten bogged down in the process of editing — which she hadn’t attempted until this point.

(Note that its now January 2004. The book was supposed to have hit stores two months ago. It’s practically in menopause, not speaking in technical terms, since it won’t exactly bring fruits to the publisher’s loins when it hits shelves — if at all — 6-9 months from now. If we were rock stars, or crack addicts, abysmal delays like these would be expected due to rock ‘n’ roll lifestyles or crack addiction, or both. We are unimportant insofar as I can tell. So, the previously-mentioned delays have left us irritated and confused.)

As of last Friday, when we were finally “done”, I’d attempted to upload the book files to the publisher’s site. Problem? I was unable to do so, for reasons that are too boring to mention here. Besides, fuck all if I knew why it “wasn’t working”, considering that it had worked in the past. After further attempts at book content submissions, and subsequent waste of time, I sent a missive to our, well, “missing” editor.

Today, we’ve come full circle, folks.

We learned that — pursuant to our inability to upload our manuscript to the publisher’s site — our editor was no longer working for the publisher. We were then asked to try to resubmit the files.

Sound of screeching tires.

Did this fellow just point out that our editor no longer works for the publisher? Would this be the same editor who never actually read the manuscript that her employer had paid us thousands of dollars to produce? Now, we’ll have to deal with another “publication-type”, who’s not an “editor”, but who will be our liaison for the book from now on? Does this mean that they’ll read our manuscript? We’ll start to sort this out later tonight, when I craft another flame/missive to the publisher.

This whole thing brings tears to my eyes, really. I just had to go outside, because my eyes were welling up. It really blows my mind that I put something so insignificant (and clearly on a path that was fraught with danger and/or malaise) before things in life that were important and fun. While I was disappointed in myself for being unable to balance love, work, family, friends, and text, I’m a hundred-fold more disappointed in myself for this.

Will the publisher release their death grasp, and cancel the book? Or will I travel the country selling it out of the trunk of my Saturn? Or will I just put its contents up on a website and ask passerbys for donations? Too soon to tell. But I’ll tell when I can.

Teach, teach your children well.
Their Father’s Hell was Authorship.

Mittengating Disaster

Driving in Boston makes me very prone to road rage. Not only is traffic heavy (that is, when it’s not plain standing still), but drivers here are nonsensical, and driving conditions are frequently hazardous. When I first started driving in the Boston area, it was a tremendous challenge. I really liked driving way over the speed limit, and it was a treat to rarely see any state police pullling a motorist over for speeding.

Unfortunately, the novelty of fast driving wore off when I moved out of the city and the Big Dig was implemented in full force. Instead of miles and miles of fast driving and reckless abandon, it brought confusing re-routes and traffic standstills. No matter how good the music that I’d brought along with me, driving in Boston had lost of all its charm.

Exit charm, enter road rage. Like all venerable rat races, the one that’s Boston traffic features exhibitions of middle fingers, and other indiscernable driving behaviors.

A few days ago, during this most recent cold wave, I was doing what I do every Monday: leaving work at 3pm, driving as fast as possible to separate myself from the traffic before the 93/95 interchange.

Pump Club

The first rule of Pump Club is that you don’t talk about Pump Club.
Or is it?

On my final days in my parents’ home, before departing for my freshman year in college, my father presented me with a manilla envelope and told me to open it. I did, and inside was a 7-page document that was entitled:

Of Monkeys and Men
(Words of Wisdom from a Father to his Son)

Huh.

He told me to read it. I did. Inside the pages of this father-to-son manifesto was useful advice about staying away from drugs and alcohol, and practicing abstinence (forget condom use; this was an abstinence household). There was also a section on behavior in the classroom and workplace. One of the important bullet points was related to sexually-explicit (or implicit) conversations, and why they should never be had in the classroom or workplace, or even out of the classroom or workplace when you go out with fellow students or co-workers. Made perfect sense.

Years later, after moving into my first home, I discovered that the beloved manifesto had been traveling with me in a box that I’d been carrying around since college. I, of course, was compelled to read it. And of course, my mind couldn’t get past the bit about sex talk in the workplace. People don’t really have such conversations at work, did they?

Note that I’ve been working professionally for 9 years now, and aside from admiring the occasional attractive female co-worker, I’ve never known anyone at work to utter anything more significant than innuendo. Maybe I’d been leading a charmed or morally upstanding life? Or maybe the manifesto was the result of a father’s own paranoia about “the big, bad world out there”, and had lead me wrong, purely out of fear on the part of the writer?

Anything was possible. The day after S and I parted ways, I learned that I had to work the late night shift. What else is new, right? Well, on this evening, 8 men from three different groups would be packed into a 30′x40′ “server room” at our other campus. Seems like a big enough room to spread out, right? No. It’s loaded with racks of servers and network gears. It’s packed.

I knew and liked a few of the people who I’d be working with that night. This was a relief. We kibitzed a bit whilst we waited for the other groups to finish their work. And suddenly, out of the blue, they started to talk about sex: blatantly.

The first story wasn’t all that unexpected in its premise, actually. This large fellow, who plays the drums, spoke of a sexcapade he had after he made the “ocean sound” with a cymbal on his drum kit. Of course, he also made sure to explain how he’d received oral sex while playing a Foo Fighters song at a party once, too. That was a real treat of a story to hear, I assure you.

The second story came from the most unlikely source. There was this short fellow with a crew cut who’d make insightful statements at technical meetings. He was jovial and affable, but seemingly not over the top. Imagine my surprise when he explained how he and his service buddy “tag teamed” (his words) a female lieutenant when he was in the Army. Oh, and this story was complete was grunts and hip thrusts. Yeah, it was definitely one sweet story, and I was happy to have been the captive audience.

Oh, and another important point… in “server rooms”, you must have air conditioning units — big, powerful, LOUD air conditioners — since so many machines will generate enough heat to fry your servers if you don’t. This meant that these stories were delivered in loud voices that could be heard OVER the air conditioners.

At first, I didn’t know what to think. I’d navigated the waters of having a career for several years, and never had been in a situation like this. I have no problems talking about sex. I just didn’t want the perception to be that I’d been having “sexy talks” at work. But then I realized that I’d also made an important transition. I had become “one of the club”. With a “grunt grunt” and “nitch nitch”, I’d been allowed into the world of music, drug, and sexual discussions. While I didn’t have any stories to share about sex or drugs, that wasn’t important.

What was important was that the manifesto was right. I talked about glam metal instead.

Needless 3000

The best part about urination during travel has got to be reading the graffiti in public restrooms. In general, I ignore the entries that implore you to call a number for a good time, as do I allow my eyes to circumvent the medical book-quality, hand-scribbled pictures of male or female anatomy. That’s so boring. I need to be entertained for a few minutes while in the stall, graffiti artists! My bladder is gigantic, such that I’ll be occupied for 3 minutes, or more.

On my way home from Western New York, I found that I’d loaded myself up with fluids, so I needed to stop three times between my parents’ and NH. The first two stops were uneventful. The graffiti sucked, and there was nothing else of interest to read in the stall. The third stop, at least initially, also sucked. And then I came across something that intrigued me. It read:

Rollmaster 3000

What could this be, I asked myself? Oh, but of course — it was a toilet paper dispenser. But why did it have to be so fancy? And more importantly:

What was wrong with its predecessor, the Rollmaster 2000, if such a thing existed?

And why did New York State go through so much trouble to buy a branded toilet paper dispenser that was, in the end, just a fucking toilet paper dispenser? It had two rolls of “tissue” just like every other dispenser that I’ve ever seen in a public bathroom.

In my mind, I thought of a politician and a salesperson for Rollmaster, Inc having a meeting. The salesperson spoke of the merits of the Rollmaster 2000 but quickly noted the smooth operation of the ball bearing mechanism in the Rollmaster 3000. The politician was mesmerized by how he could give a firm tug on the paper when using the Rollmaster 3000 and the wafer-thin, rest stop wares wouldn’t tear one bit! We’re giving the public what they want! Forget that New York is a welfare state who’s also in a budget crisis! We’ll take as many Rollmaster 3000 units as you’ve got!