The Monthly Rag

Aside from a small stack of that was left out of the distribution pile for archive purposes, our third edition far outdid the two that came before it. The readership was climbing, the school was somewhere near the point of realizing that if they just could shut up about the stupid thing, it might simply run its course. Nothing screams advertising more to teenagers than mass parental condemnation.

But since we had the floor for the present being, we weren’t about to drop the ball that we had been so furiously fighting for control over. I took a copy of our latest achievement to the small studio building in town where the long-haired 30-something guy had said he worked on his endeavor, and, quickly scrawling a phone number on the face, slipped it quietly under the door.

Lo and behold, get back to me he did. Within twenty-four hours, I received a message on my home answering machine from Mr. Marco Angelo McClean over at the Memo newspaper, saying that what the school had done to us was absolute bullshit. Incredibly, he added that he wanted to make me a key for his office and have us assemble our next issue there for real release. Our luck was about to change a hundred and eighty degrees, and it couldn’t have happened at a more critical moment.

A couple of nights later, I met with Mr. McClean at the now departed Pasta House on main street, where he kindly treated me to a scrumptious meal. We discussed the history of The Rag, and of his paper Memo, and talked about days long gone where he had been a pirate radio personality. The man was quickly a savior in my eyes, and I recall his willingness to help out a couple of teenage boys impressing me on such a vital level. The carefree compassion and guidance helped to build a similar ethic to strive for within myself, and no matter how long I roam this earth, I’ll never forget all he did for us.

With our fourth issue slated to be released in a few weeks, on real newsprint, delivered to the same stops the Memo went to all over the county (a far cry from our exclusive high school-only predecessors), the management quickly went through another revision. To produce the first professional Monthly Rag, Marco enlisted help from his delivery man and contributing story-writer Jef Fanning. Because we’d be on four real newspaper pages, which were much larger dimensions then we were used to, we had to get some more writers on board to fill out all the space. My old Howl movie-review rival, who was now actually starting to talk and let me hang out near him, jumped the wagon to produce what would be a personal favorite column of mine in the upcoming years, and our behind the scenes agent stepped up to carry the extra article load as well. We even got our first female writer–Jef’s teenage daughter Caitlin, who was two years younger than I and already a published scribe.

In total our team was now up to seven, with Marco aiding production and Jef producing funds. It was like we’d landed our first record deal; our scratchy demo had gotten air play and now one of the pros had turned us loose in a studio with a bunch of gear to see what kind of damage we could cause under a layer of polish. The gracious editor of Memo showed me the age old tricks of the trade–everything from cutting and waxing to tedious page-layout over a fluorescent light table. Hand drawn titles, computer made titles, xeroxed photocopies, slicing with the x-acto knife, typesetting, half-toning…the craft was instructed to me hands on and in a way that I’d be wishing for all that time ago in The Howl room.

In early March, the new and improved Monthly Rag sat emblazoned on two full layout sheets, ready to go to press. Jef came early on a weekday morning, picking me up at my house to take me along with him to the printers. I’d never seen a printing press in person. We arrived at 8 am in Willits, met with the folks that ran the business, paid for the run, and were told to come back in about an hour. We went for coffee and breakfast in that span of time, talking about this that and the other, until at last we returned again just as they were shooting the last of my paper on to negatives for the printing plates. I watched them like a curious cat, striking up conversation with a press hand, who’s dark coveralls read “Manual” on the little identifying patch. He was eating a hostess chocolate pie and drinking a Mountain Dew at 9 a.m., and I decided just for that he was my kind of company. He noticed my old Def Leppard concert shirt, which I was still wearing from having slept in, and made some comment about having seen the band live as well. Then we talked about Metallica. And some other bands we liked. And before I knew what was happening, nearly two-thousand copies of The Rag were rolling off the steel conveyor belt while the giant machine churned and undulated.

Manual picked up a copy, studying it.

“How’s it look?”

I had nothing to say other than “it looks fucking beautiful!” with a Cheshire cat-sized grin spread across my face.

“Alrighty, can we keep some? Looks interesting. We usually run off an extra hundred anyway, because the first few are always a bit faint.”

“By all means.” I said, flipping the real newspaper in my fingers, looking at stuff my friends and I had written, watching my fingers turn black from the fresh ink. I was off in some little world in my head where I could barely hear the guy.

“Cool.”

Yes Manual, indeed it was.

Off they went, 1500-plus newsprint quality Monthly Rag’s, from Willits to Ukiah to Navarrow to Albion and Caspar and everywhere in between. Jef and I drove along, the obscure way through the mountains to Boonville, taking our slow ass time as he seemed to enjoy the scenery and a few other “natural things” in the isolated country. Mendocino would be last for the day, since the sun was setting when we arrived home, and although my arms were tired (newspaper stacks are heavy) and my feet sore, I was somewhere still deadlocked in euphoric overload.

Before I could stop to eat, though, I had to hit a few areas in the Bragg just for my own sense of accomplishment. I got a few of the majors off the list (this was before we had  a Denny’s, mind you–YES, we are that old)–namely Safeway and Harvest Market. Celebrating with some fine hot deli food, home I went again to a quiet empty house with my three remaining stacks of reserves. I turned on some music, took a shower to scrub off all the ink, and slipped away into blissful catatonia.

The next day would culminate into what would be the first of only a handful of sheer nirvana moments in my thirty-seven years. Gathered in the quad, stacks depleted and ballsacks hung low, Matthew, Andy, Summer, and myself stood watching as the ENTIRE SCHOOL shifted through newsprinted Issue 4. Laughter was breaking out. Clusters were forming around copies. People were grabbing them in doubles and triples, stuffing them into their bags to carry home for later. And I swear to you, when the bell rang and the crowd finally cleared, there was not a single one of them left to have to go fetch and throw away. Members of the HOWL had come out to watch the malady, looking livid. I didn’t want to stew in some over-righteous moment of self glory, but sweet damn. If I’d gotten laid that day it would have been one for the books.

Now, I saw what happened next. Or rather, heard it. Our double agent-turned columnist was in the middle of the quad, perhaps having his fifteen minutes of personal fame, when Lindsay, the daughter of our wretched ex-Journalism teacher (and go figure, the current editor-in-chief) marched up to him and said something along the lines of a Hollywood “HOW COULD YOU!”. The resounding snap of hand on face brought my attention fully around, and there was Matt, finger pointing up, a look of justification frozen forever at its point of conception under a red palm print. The female thespian exited stage left, sniffling. Cue dramatic pause…then violin strings…then close-up.

Later that day I walked down Chestnut street as school dispersed for the afternoon, headed towards anywhere I could think of to celebrate. Cars of juniors and seniors, some already friends and far more many that I barely knew, passed up and down the lane beside me, waving MONTHLY RAGS out their windows, honking and whooping like it was Spring Break. The feeling of triumph sailed higher on its mast while the adoration continued, burying years of personal angst and loneliness for a few wonderful moments. My brain said I didn’t need any approval, already having trained itself hard to find no comfort in social recognition, but my heart was fluttering uncontrollably. I felt like I had finally accomplished something I was meant to do.

Could success be an addiction, I wondered? It was easy to see how celebrities learned to exist on a fame high, which scared me outright watching my own stubborn will similarly tempted even on this much smaller of scale. A personal mantra started to loop, like most of my disorder-related repetitions, reminding me to stay focused and keep doing what I felt was right for my own reasons. I didn’t want to congratulate myself too much or for too long–my own creative well depends so dearly on my innate sense of anger and self reproach. There was no affording narcissism and vanity at this stage, even farther beyond the obvious dangers of turning into a grade A asshole.

Which leads to a second problem: trying to top yourself on the next misadventure. All these pressures start to run against you, at first unknowingly, and then all too openly. People start coming up and telling you what you could do, or NEED to do, because you sparked an open nerve and “should strike while the iron was hot.” All this input, all these possible avenues start to influence your aims, sometimes for the best, but rarely. When something accidentally works, everybody has an opinion as to why it did.

The game would get more complicated as time marched on and more papers made it into more hands, but thankfully we were young and naive. It was a moment to enjoy the taste of our reward, if even for just a little while. The crew gathered together later that evening, still stoned on the well-received homecoming, with the intention of living it up in style. It was a great day to be alive. Our single was number one on the station, and the appreciating groupies were at the door just waiting to get a backstage pass by any means necessary.

It took all but a few hours to be totally out of positive aura. We weren’t partiers. Only two of the staff had girlfriends at the time. None of us even drank (at least at the time–the whole lot of us were either fatherless or the kids of alcoholics, so we had a mutual displeasure for the trade). Our little broken egos and idiosyncrasies returned, and there we were, basically sitting around and going “so…what the hell now?”

No better time to start on Issue 5 than ever. It was briefly discussed and agreed that looking back would be a fairly useless exercise, and indeed, stopping a moment to give each other handjobs might just put a halt to our current momentum. There was only one way to stay happy and centered on this tight little ship, and it appeared to be keeping ourselves in constant working misery.

Our follow-up edition had two hurdles to overcome now. One, WE had to sell the ads to pay for it (Jef had lit the torch and sent us on the dash line, but  that was it), and two–probably more frightening to us at the time, we had to make something even better. Or, at least, we had to FEEL it was some sort of an improvement. Writing is self cleansing in that way, and by nature it tends to usually evolve, but a grammatical and aesthetic achievement was a lower hit on the board than an entertaining one. What good was it to refine the cosmetics without the content?

In the end, we just simply tried not to think. Our greatest weapon was entirely ignoring calculation and logic, putting it straight out from the weirdo zone. We were at our best when we shot from the hip, or, in the RAG’s case, the huge erect penis (sorry Caitlin–we did admire your shotglass of estrogen, of course). We used to say that our only goal with each release was to make each other laugh out loud, because then the invisible strain of critical performance disappeared.

This formula worked very well for the first six months, before all the rules began to change.

CONTINUE TO PART 7