cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Who actually gives a shit that I show up somewhere and get teargassed and write the truth? I was on my way to the bookstore, stopped at a gas station to get a cup of coffee and a bite to eat, when I got a text from an editor at the NYT. Am I available to cover the protests at UV@? Immediately I texted "yes." By the time I was done with the cup of coffee I was walking towards the sound of chants and bullhorns. It reminded me that I actually do not miss doing that job. I'm still officially a stringer for the Times, one of two people they call on when news happens in Ch@rlottesville. Very rarely does something come up but when it does it is big. I'm mostly out of journalism now. I own a bookstore now. I spend every waking hour getting books, moving boxes of books around, researching and pricing books. Yesterday I found a signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, priced at $500. I spend about 30 to 40 hours a week, after hours, doing carpentry on the building and constructing new bookcases. People come in to ask me questions, to hang out, to call at the court or salon or whatever this place is. I like that a lot better than doing civil rights journalism. Just a few months ago I got far enough past the PTSD to stop carrying my voice recorder with me everywhere. I stopped in the bookstore on my way to the protests to get it. I lamented the lack of my riot bag, with goggles, a power pack for my phone, extra batteries for the voice recorder, a spare "PRESS" t shirt. It all came back to me. I reminded myself that I am already dead. That I expect to die doing this and that all I have left is how I act on this day. That I do my job to the best of my ability, that I get as close as possible to the conflict, take every productive risk, and die with my boots on. The protesters were entirely peaceful and law abiding. The police were in riot gear, lined up, and teargassed people with abandon, arresting people at random. There was no cause whatsoever to do any of the things that they did. These were just regular people, students, faculty, a few locals, standing around and expressing themselves. It started to rain. The Times people wanted me to set up Slack and Whatsapp on my phone and send them updates there. Meanwhile I'm soaking wet, my hands are numb, the phone is glitching from being wet and the screen is cracked and there's kind of a lot going on and this really isn't a good time to find my way around Slack, which I've only ever used on a laptop. I caught some teargas. It wasn't too bad. I limped the three miles back to my book store. I hurt my right foot last week. I wore socks that were too thin with my Docs and worked for over 17 hours straight, mostly on my feet, and got two blisters. I kept the boots on for too long and one of the blisters got infected. Then the next day I was limping, and the off gait caused all sorts of other things in the foot to hurt. It was almost better, and then that three mile walk in the rain just fucked it up all over again. Then I holed up in my office and banged out my story to file with the Times while my people ran the bookstore downstairs. Then I went over to the jail to find out how many people had been arrested, what they were charged with. Activists mostly acted like assholes because I was affiliated with an actual journalistic institution and not just posting third hand rumors on Twitter. There were a few old hands among them who I knew, and we talked off the record. I suppose that the Times is going to pay me something. I have no idea how much. I've never done this for the money. I've done nearly everything I have done for the last dozen years or so because it needed to be done and I was the person available who was able to do it. The work with inv@sive species, the journalism, working at the lab at UF, H@bitat for Humanity, all the guerilla gardening, now the bookstore. I would literally have made more money by being at the bookstore, because I know a lot about what we have and I can find and sell books to customers with conversations that my people aren't able to. Me being there on a Saturday adds about $200 to the total, and sometimes more. I really like my people. My employees and volunteers. I am very protective of them. Part of how I see the purpose of D@edalus is as an oasis for them. A place where drama and conflict and politics do not exist. My staff are mostly queer, trans, goths and educated misfits. I got rid of the bottled water and now we all use the Brita and drink from tankards. We have free candy and crayons and a sketch pad and sculpy on hand at all times. Anyone working the desk picks the music. We use a CD player and a turntable. Lots of The Dresden Dolls, Bat for Lashes, The Cure, Kate Bush, This Charming Disaster, Please Don't Tell. The volunteers are all in their 70's and 80's. Except for Trish. My ex-wife asked to start volunteering in the bookstore. I am not sure what she wants. She came to me in tears asking that the good Lindsay not come to our daughter's wedding because she thought that for some reason she would be humiliated by this. Made no sense to me, since Trish walked out on me and rebuffed every attempt at reconciliation. But ok, I don't want drama at the wedding. So I said that Lindsay would not be there. Then she wanted to start coming to the bookstore. Then a few days after that, Lindsay got it into her head that a lesbian employee at the bookstore was flirting with me. And she demanded that I fire her. I refused, because that would be wrong. So Lindsay said she wasn't going to come to the store. Ok, well that is where I always am. The following weekend she came in on a busy Saturday, dragged the lesbian up into my office, confronted her, and June (my right-hand person who is a trans 24 year old and whom I adore like a second daughter) put a stop to the whole thing right away. It was a huge scene. And then it came out that Lindsay had been making comments about our 16 year old intern "dressing like a whore," when she just looks like any other teenager. And had been acting jealous of another female employee who I work with a lot. And her rampant jealousy of any female in the bookstore just became untenable. I told Lindsay that she needed to apologize or otherwise make things right with everyone here or else it would be functionally impossible for her to come here, and if she can't come in to the bookstore then it is impossible to be in a relationship with her. She couldn't handle the apologies. Which is surprising from someone who has made AA meetings her entire life. So we broke up. And now Trish is here two times a week. And I don't know where she is trying to go with that. Mary M, my oldest friend whom I have known since I was 8, and is also close with Trish, thinks that she is trying to get back together with me. Whatever Trish didn't like about me when she left is entirely gone now. I have seen a hell of a lot of life. I have travelled far and wide. I've seen terrible things. I've taken people out of car wrecks, had long conversations with people who have been through hell, I've made films and written books and been stalked by right wingers, had someone try to kill me, fed impoverished people through the pandemic, rebuilt the institution that D@edalus is. Me, in person, on any day in the bookstore, is extremely kind, patient, understanding, and hardworking. I have never walked in there in a bad mood and inflicted anything on the people around me. I have never said or done anything there that I have ever regretted. I arrive to continue creating a magical setting out of time and place where my people and our customers can escape the world. People come in sporadically throughout the day to seek my counsel about their research, academic problems, relationship issues. I am a steady holder of the office who simultaneously creates new, wonderful things in the building on a weekly basis through carpentry and artistry. I am a fucking saint in my present life, drawing on years of travel, writing, film making, and caring about people. I occupy an office and I take that office very seriously. This cannot help but be attractive to Trish, who is 46 and hasn't taken especially good care of herself and is working a temporary job at the university library and is clearly smoking too much weed. I am now single. I think that I would respond to her making a move. I don't know. I want to go home. She was home. I hope that she still is. She's done nothing of note with her life. She's watching me in command of an institution, writing for the NYT, selling a book, dabbling with NPR when I have time. Of course the man who could make her cum on command looks really good now. The piece on Th1s Ameic@n Life ran. The black widow piece. It prompted a literary agent I'd been talking to last year to reach back out. We had a call a few days ago and she's supposed to be sending me stuff and I'm supposed to amend my pitch based on that. But I'm still waiting for her to send the stuff. Meanwhile I have a new thing I'm working on sending to TAL. It's about escaping fate, scientifically. I do not understand my life. I am sick of being alone. I am weary from being the rock-solid support for all of these people who depend on me. I have so many true stories that I want to tell from history, especially culinary history, and I have no place to put them. I am so fucking sick of going out to protests and rallies and riots trying to tell the stories of left-wing activists who act like total assholes when I attempt to give them voices. I am so glad that what I did today is not something that I have to do tomorrow. That I can wake up and go in to the bookstore and try to act like I'm ok and research antique books and find things for June and Trish to do. I am not ok after what happened to me during and following a year of civil rights journalism. Everything that I had worked for, over years, was taken from me. My years of work for Sm1thsonian and Sl@te and the W@shington Post meant nothing because nobody wanted someone with a target on his back in their newsroom. When I moved to Florida for a year, they put up posters with my face on them and said that I was wanted for drugging and kidnapping and raping women in Northern Virginia. I was stalked and harassed relentlessly. I did not want to be brought back into this world. I don't know what I was thinking when I responded, "yes" to that text from an editor whose name I didn't even recognize. I hate everything about doing this. I have this feeling that I am serving a cause and a people, but who are they? Who actually gives a shit that I show up somewhere and get teargassed and write the truth? Why do I say "yes" to this? 1:04 a.m. - 2024-05-05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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