The Monthly Rag

Without so much as a pause for commercial break, production went forward again. I spent a huge amount of time up at the Memo office, which quickly also became The Rag office (which was also shared by the Nuclear Free Future people–quite the ensemble), learning the ropes from Marco, helping him with his paper by showing up to type columns. He was generous and paid me for the time, even though I would have done it for him regardless. The building was old and crumbling, but it was cozy and had heat and a working phone. There was also an old phonograph present, which my new boss used to fire up while editing–everything from Led Zeppelin to Frank Zappa to Heart to Todd Rundgren to the most esoteric shit I had I ever heard (sometimes just a man making music with industrial power tools, or spoken word female folk). The record selection was vast, but there were only about three that I found myself putting on regularly. I decided The Rag needed some of its own tonal inspiration, so I went downstairs to Windsong, where you could by old LP’s for a buck or less. There I found a copy of Pyromania sitting in the used bin. Now we were talking. I took that classic back up and blasted it from the speakers, probably waking up half the building, playing it so damn often that Marco finally had something of a breakdown right in the middle of Rock of Ages. He just tossed his keyboard aside and started banging his pony-tailed noggin around, repeating the chorus in the must dunderheaded mock-job imaginable. Despite his repeated claims otherwise, I still think it was growing on him.

We started our advertising campaign halfway into writing, sending at least three of us out on different occasions to get local shops to help pay for our printing costs. Selling ads is just bloody awful, by the way. There are people out there that do it well and enjoy the whole pitch, but snaking people into spending money just isn’t for me. I feel all cagey and manipulative afterward, even when I do a decent job putting their display together. Consequently, I befriended a lot of local owners who were good to us and we had this mutual buddy system working. Oftentimes, I would run their ads for free if business was tight, and when they could pay they’d buy bigger sized spaces or several at a time to make up for the delays.

Issue 5 ran and was released to similar response late April. We also trumped one on the school, having found out from an ACLU brochure that as students we could LEGALLY pass out any kind of material on campus as long as it wasn’t during classtime. Our covert operations took a much needed backseat at last, and all they could do really was watch and shake their heads while six hundred or so papers were handed out freely to the kids. Business and feedback remained good, and we simply kept refining what we had. A decision was made to bump the paper size up to eight pages from of the current four, and to accomplish this we had to cut back on the run quantity. It meant a few less stops along the way, basically, but a more satisfying end product. More room would have to be filled up once again, so several more contributors were invited to join the party.

Summer was getting close. Change was in the air, and it would be one of my most memorable and progressive years as a young adult. We were meeting people all over the place, tons our age from Mendocino and other areas where the paper had preceded our reputations, and with that came all sorts of new experiences. For the dreaming teenager, suddenly having a bit of the limelight was intoxicating. Our first imitator also appeared at our high school. Shoved to me literally out of nowhere was a hand-stapled, photocopied, did-it-ourselves fanzine called The Bootleg–which bore a striking resemblance to a few of the skeletons in our closet. Honestly, I think it made me proud, though other people were asking me “are you pissed–dude, they’re ripping off your idea!” Well, good for them! At least they’re doing something.

If there was ever a time to enjoy the rewards of all our previous toils, this was going to be it. We finished and released Issue 6, the first Rag ever to be eight pages in newspaper length, and stocked it up the local laundromats and coffee shops before finishing with a strategic hit at all the high schools. At just a week shy of vacation, teenagers are crazy with energy and release, and we rode the vibes accordingly. It was also the introduction of the mass tourist scene to our printed oddity, which actually ended up carrying us to all corners of the country. Everything was happening so fast. At the time I was riding around (passenger only–I still to this day don’t drive a car) with a friend that had written a guest spot in our latest issue. We’d frequently end up in Mendocino or just at someone’s random house, as neither of us liked staying at our own, and we lived this sort of bohemian lifestyle on couches and floors and wherever. We were stone broke most of the time, spending what little we did get on gas, Safeway’s day-old dozen donut boxes and Dr. Skipper, but hell we were having a good time. His beater of a vehicle didn’t have a fancy CD player–rather a wired-in tape cassette deck that sounded about as sonically imbalanced as any boom box from the early 80’s. We’d zip around playing Queen and Leppard, probably looking much like the car chorus scene in Wayne’s World.

Also suddenly, there were girls. Lots of them! Marco once told me that “chick’s don’t like guys who can play the accordion–they like guy’s who can roll a joint with one hand.” They seemed to like underground newspaper guys, too. You wouldn’t think it by nature–it’s not like the high school journalism board is on top of the social ladder, off banging the volleyball team every weekend. We were a little different however, and girls like “bad boys” whether they beat the shit out of people, roll joints with one hand, or get kicked out of multiple establishments for producing low grade pornography (also, to help, none of us could play an accordion to save our lives). So there were plenty of chicas hanging around, sending in letters with lipstick marks, wanting to write their own columns, listening wide eyed and “ooh!” faced as we recounted tales of pissing off the system. My absolute favorite was how many would come up out of nowhere and tell me, quite honestly, how “in synch” we were with their own schedules. I guess it was some sort of secret handshake I had to be in on, just for having used the title of their gender-only function.

Consequently, I had my first girlfriend that summer. And by first I mean like serious relationship first…full experiencing of sexuality and emotions and all that other fun stuff that goes with the territory. How did I meet her? Through my acquaintances with fans after the paper took off. The rest of the boys were going through the same bit of metamorphosis, fording along into their own domestic partnerships, their minds seduced and captured by the warm jiggly things attached to these new audience members. Attitudes and written output began to reflect these shifting nuances, making the paper a two-way mirror to the gossips and going on’s of our private lives. We didn’t mind sharing. We didn’t mind giving the microphone over to the other side–we largely went in as clueless gentlemen, supporting the lib and basically hailing at the temple of all things woman. And of course it came around to bite us in the ass. Production would shine for an illuminated moment while the groups formed and the feelings flew, and then suffer fantastically as the creative lifeforce was pushed into trying to learn to simply coexist (girls, we love you more than anything, but damn if it’s not a complicated artform to get shit accomplished when you’re part of the equation).

Despite a successful three month vacation in adolescent soul searching, a few specific areas of the future remained uncertain. Allow me to demonstrate the kind of deep academic shit I was quickly sinking into: my GPA for the previous semester was a staggering .05. Yes, you read that correctly. POINT FIVE. It takes hard dedication and work to achieve this ranking, in fact, you have to pretty much never show up to class (and even when you do manage to on those rare occasions, writing and distributing alleged smut helps). I got my report card during second period, oddly on a day I was present, and I sat there while some jock came over to measure his intellectual dick-size. Prepared likely for a “dude, you’re a geek” assault, you can imagine his shock when he saw my high scores on life’s video game were marginally worse than his own.

“I thought you were like…smart?”

According to that particular review, I wasn’t even bright enough to tie my own shoes. It fed my willingness to underachieve with flying colors, however, and I would have framed that damned thing if it weren’t for the D minus staining what was otherwise a flawless failure. Not wanting to repeat an extra year at FBHS, I looked into the option of transferring down to Mendocino. Sure it was a pain to get to every morning, but having made a few friends there and seeing first hand how their system differed, I was ready to make some sort of a deal. Andrew suggested the GED, which he had fully planned on doing himself, but I figured I could take another nine months of abuse so long as it wasn’t in my hometown. Then a few weeks before school started, I got a call from my independent study teacher. Turns out the saintly man had gone and pulled a Presto-tour sized rabbit out of his magic hat. Basically, Chuck (a.k.a. the great Charles Moton) liked The Rag and was one of those rare few in the adult teaching world that stuck up for it openly. He also felt that the work that went into production and management was worth some much needed credit in my dried up well of scholastic merit, so fudging a few rules, I got thirty units for my totally non-endorsed enterprise, which put me in the black again to still graduate on time if I hauled ass for my final year. Thanking the man repeatedly and offering him several of my first born, I agreed to oblige.

A wet fall emerged from a chrysalis of warm summer days, and with it hatched a new Freshmen class. It must have been an interesting initiation in those first few weeks for them, adjusting to the already alien atmosphere. The game was a very different beast suddenly, and they were players with new responsibilities and privileges. Gone were the tortured hours of pre-algebra and campus restricted hot lunches–they could leave the grounds for break and read the alternative underground newspaper that used the word “sphinctometron” like it was a real thing. The world was our bearded clam while the paper continued steadily, all of us giving it our full attention. The rest of the gang were older and had day jobs to contend with, while I worked diligently on my homework and produced in the rest of my free time. With the help of some general assistance and my dear mother, I rented my first apartment, which our own cartoonist would soon quickly join in to help share the bills. Things were fun. The all hours hanging around at the pad with no parents or teachers, the creative work, the girls, the music, the long sessions of Super Nintendo and Real World marathons (openly, we hated that fucking show, yet we could never seem to pry our eyes off of it when it was 2 am and we needed something to do between episodes of The State). Seems something was always going on back then, overly dramatic or otherwise, even if indeed the highs and lows of those precious years flew by in an inconsequential few seconds.

Still, a few things had undeniably changed. Andrew and I split ways as co-editors, and for a time, as close friends. Sometimes it’s just an unavoidable casualty in a work-related partnership; one simple disagreement at the right moment can fracture one of the delicate fault lines in your foundation. Our quarrel had been over an article topic, which was really no big deal, but there was already friction developing in that we were in different places and wanted different things out of the journey. That’s the hardest part about growing up, I’ve always thought. Realizing just how alone you are in your personal ambitions.

CONTINUE TO PART 8