29 April Thursday: I’m driving toward Los Angeles. My car rides low like I could be cruising el barrio now with hydraulics ready, but loses flavor when la migra stops me at the San Onofre border checkpoint. Usually after passing those warning signs with the shadow family dashing across the freeway the border patrol waves me on, today the man says “Stop.” He wants a closer look. He scans my possessions in the back seat --  scattered clothes and mail, several copies of my Dennis Cooper interview in the Gay & Lesbian Times, a heavy box of We Rock, So You Don’t Have To on the front seat, Mr. Border Patrol looked at me, my skin tone darker than white (mom says I was switched at birth with a Mexican baby.) My sunglasses are the blackest opaque. “Where are you coming from?” he says. I want to say, “a liberal world view” or “Tijuana” or “none of your fucking business” but take the safe “San Diego” while removing my sunglasses. I either pass the English test or win him over with my shallow blue eyes as he signals me on without opening the trunk.
 
Inside the trunk is a 200 pound mermaid, the statue I’m bringing to Steve Abee’s casa to live in and liven up his backyard. The statue is too heavy for my Honda and causes it to ride low; she shifts and thumps on sudden ac/de -celeration.
 
In Echo Park Steve and I lift the statue out of the trunk. My lower back is glad he has the heavier end. We set it under the shade of a thick tree to watch over the garden. Later we went to Skylight books and performed like trained seals to a well attended reading with journalist Dennis Cooper, playwright Sander Hicks and Incommunicado Superstar Barry Graham who has driven all the way from Phoenix. I felt like a seal because my publisher Babyface Hustlit said, “We need to start this show with a bang!” It seems I’m always called  on to invoke riot and inspire chaos in children even when I want to read quiet stories about the Laundromat. People I respect like Weba Garretson showed up late and missed my set (I’ve been around enough to know that half the crowd who saw me perform first could have split after Sander’s 30 minute play about Shitballs.)
 
The coolest distribution  racket of them all (Last Gasp) is throwing a party at Wacko and the free beer and hommus yummy. Coincidence: the keg beer and spiked punch is being served by mermaids. You’re already asking Is this a business trip or a party? Of course I told the family it was a business trip, and studies have shown that most of the really big deals are made over cocktails. I suppose I have expectations like maybe finding a literary agent or to sell out to a bigger press. I drank with cool people like Rachel and Simone who showed me her hip dragon tattoo which still itched from healing who I met last year at the BEA and old friends like Juliette Torrez, and I also stood in the corner not talking to anyone stuffing one brie cheese cracker after another into my hungry mouth.

30 April Friday: I wake up in Echo Park at dawn to the crowing of rooster. I may have a hangover. I fall back asleep to be woken later by the sweet sound of children playing. Three year old Penelope’s voice says, “Where’s Jimmy Jazz?” I’m awake but not ready to stand so I read a chapter of Che Guevara’s biography. He’s traveling up the Amazon to a leper colony where a encounters a leper band. One man plays the accordion with sticks tied onto the stumps of his hands in place of fingers. Guevara notes it in torch light flickering on the slow dark water of the Amazon (before dot com.) Mrs. Kat Abee makes me a waffle with the waffle iron. Yum.
 
I drive around the convention center looking for free parking. Men with orange vests want me to make a hasty commitment to 15 or 20 dollars for a slot. Eventually two blocks over behind the Mercedes dealer I find unlimited free parking, which proves the cliché “Don’t Panic.”
 
The Book Expo is the largest collection of publishing industry suits you will ever see. Three halls at the LA convention center, 5000 booths of publishers, an agency shark pool, 35 cattle gates and a 40 score suits lining up for Western BBQ. It’s no secret that I don’t like rich people and that I love books. This convention merges the two, it places them as much in concert as in opposition. Is it about books or about money?
 
The Incommunicado/Soft Skull booth stands out like a sore on the ass of American publishing. Sander Hicks in publisher mode has traded in his mohawk for some snappy window graphics on the back of his head and a Trotsky™ goatee. He looks fucking cool in a vintage brick red zoot suit. With Agent Kris and Agent Cat from the New York bureau he spends the day trying to explain Sparrow and LA Roucco to booksellers from Iowa City. Gary “Babyface” Hustlit, the flesh pressing virus in capitalism's bloodstream, spends the day trying to replicate the dollar signs that appear to be in everyone’s eyes. Later we discovered that publisher Baucsh & Laumb were giving away free green tinted contact lenses with tiny red “$” signs over the pupil.
 
Picture aisle after aisle of books that you wouldn’t get off the couch to prevent the nazis from burning, then tiny enclave islands of hope like City Lights and Last Gasp which you’d raise an army to defend and happily be shot or contract exotic fevers in defense of. England’s Creation Books has a thick friggin’ tome bearing the jolly roger on its cover. I want this pirate anthology. City Lights has an interesting text on the history of genocide. Cinco Puntos Press has a children’s book by Subcamandante Marcos. Money flows down the aisle like garbage in the East River.
 
Special Agent Casey Kait, the new Incommunicado editor skirt, takes on the job as my handler. She leads me to the cattle gates where I am giving away autographed copies of my classic novel The Sub: anarchy versus order, authority versus rebellion. I start telling the Lady in the Green Room that I need a pillow for my back, a cup of coffee and a massage. Casey arranges it all. Ms. Green Room Commander looks at my blue nail polish and sunglasses with contempt, another ego-maniac author she thinks. Authors almost have to be ego-maniacs, since they are treated as such an insignificant obligation by the publishing industry. It’s a black and white metaphor. They are the whites (the blank pages) we are the blacks (the content text) taken for granted after building a nation.
 
Fortunately several substitute teachers and a real school nurse show up to get a copy of my book. The people in line behind them are annoyed that I stop to talk to each person, they want the signed book so they can get to the next cattle gate. I sign each book: “Cattle Gate Tour ‘99.” While signing her book I ask the school nurse about this circular scab like a crusty donut on my daughter’s tummy. “Ring worm,” she says confirming my suspicions. I cry out, “My daughter has ring worm!” and put my head down on the autographing table. It feels like such a shameful thing, but the nurse assures me it’s common. Casey pats my back. A woman at the back of the line turns and walks away. Most of the people say “Just sign and date please” which I find offensive. I find giving my books away to these people who have no idea who I am or what they’re getting as offensive as selling my books to the hip kids who come out to my readings. I try to give back to the proletariat by signing a book for the Security Guard and the Teamster who carried the books out.
 
Tires screech as I swerve, turn abruptly left but Trotsky™ Agent Sander Hicks in the white car can drive and stays on my tale. We can’t shake him. Babyface Hustlit is in the shotgun position navigating. I wish we still had The Rambler instead of this Honda Accord. But the radio is playing “Let’s Spend the Night Together” as we speed down Wilshire toward Hollywood proper. The white car gets stuck at a red light, makes a radical left turn a surreal U-turn, a reactionary right turn and is back on our tail before we can shake him. I can see that the agents (Kris, Cat & Casey) in the white car are shaken up, maybe angry. We pull over in front of the El Rey Theater, last bastion of a Hollywood gone by, abandoned the car chase and duck inside. El Vez, the Mexican Elvis is already on stage starting his first set. We order garlic turkey burgers and beer. Tough guy Michael Madsen  saunters in. Babyface schmoozes him up. Introductions. Madsen doesn’t remember me from his book release party. The only words he said to me there were, “So… you’re the assassin.”

Virginia Madsen is here too, but I don’t talk to her realizing that I’m wearing the same Marty Feldmen tunic she clowned me for at her bother’s book release party. “Go go go Zapitistas!” El Vez rocks. The Firecracker Alternative Book awards are just boring. MC Beau Sia is not funny on stage with his pants down, he can feel it from the non responsive audience who huddle in the shadows at the back of the theater (all performers know what it’s like to have that big empty hole in front of the stage.) Incommunicado Superstar Pleasant Gehman looks like high explosives in her dress as she gives away the Drugs award. Madsen wins the Poetry Firecracker which exposes the phony bull shit that the FABS are (I’m still miffed for not buying enough votes in ‘97.) Jeff McDaniel’s poetry book The Forgiveness Parade is actually the best poetry book to come out last year.

Michelle Serros looks like an Incommunicado  Superstar in her pink poly knit gown as she presents an award. Cockney cowboy Barry Graham, the man in black, gives away an award to Tinky Winky of the Tele-Tubbies. T-W couldn’t be bothered to show up to accept. I heard he was playing saxophone at a bath house in NYC. I’d like to ask Gates of Heck publisher Katherine Gates which the bigger thrill: winning several Firecracker Awards or being singled out for serenade by crooning El Vez.  I’d choose El Vez. Justin Chin sits down next to me for a few minutes, he’s coincidentally in the neighborhood on a book tour. I’m having a fine time until 2.13.61's Carol Bua and one of PGW's Intellectual Property Dealers Leslie Davisson walk in. It looks like they just came from the Secret Betty Page Society meeting: men across the country would kill and worse to find out the secret location of those meetings. Carol’s presence unnerves, she’s wearing an aura of melancholy or contempt. Her boss Henry Rollins didn't show his face around the book expo, even though he was scheduled to do a book signing. It must be frustrating working for a literary superstar like Rollins. Last year 2.13.61 won a Firecracker for Indie Press of the Year; this year they've "restructured their operation." Drink to forget, dance before you calcify.
 
El Vez is the hardest working Elvis impersonator in the business.
 
Later our ragtag crew of misfit publishers & writers boards the HMS Bounty in the basement of the Gaylord Hotel. Resident barfly Jason Katsafrakas buys me “the only vodka tonic I’ll need.” “Membership has its privileges,” he says, as I clink my glass to his pale cape cod. Maybe I’m drunk, but the “friends” here at the bar seam to be exceptionally beautiful and above average. Casey, the new editor skirt at Incommunicado, Susan Enochs the ambassador of the Library Association, Craig Foltz, poet, the Betty Page twins Carol & Leslie even Babyface looks good in the ambient light of this bar. I have no consciousness of myself as anything but the receptacle for this drink. When you’re hanging out with Craig Foltz, poet there’s a touchy-feely vibration, a closeness that infects everyone. Okay, we’re crammed into a bar booth, tipsy, shoulder to shoulder, but it’s something more than that. You feel an affection that crosses many boundaries: monogamy, sexual preference… It’s a metasexual closeness. Truism: different rules apply on tour. Everyone seems to be touching everyone else on some level. Even though we’re having a good time, we decide to leave the HMS Bounty and drive across Los Angeles to a bar in Chinatown. We plan to meet (ex Incommunicado editor skirt #1) Agent Sandra Zane. By the time we get there the party is over and it’s time to go “home” [note figurative term for the couch surfing hipsters of American Publishing.] Craig, Gary, Casey and I get invited to stay with Susan at her hotel. A sweet and generous gesture. Susan even puts the parking bill on her company expense account.

1 May Saturday: Coffee and orange juice in the hotel restaurant. It seems that none of us slept soundly or long enough. Craig, Susan and I take the shuttle to the convention hall. Babyface is long gone, and Casey shortly gone to “work.” Craig found a loose pair of panties in the hotel room. Susan claims that they're not hers. I look suspiciously at Craig. "Maybe the maid left them." Susan had borrowed Hustlit's jacket, so we decide to stuff them in the pocket. Craig and I have no real purpose at the Book Expo except to walk around and look at books. There’s a weird vibration of suits and stinginess here inside the convention center, in radical juxtaposition to the kindness and Foltzian amor that pervaded outside. Most of the people here guided by the express purpose to sell books. Peter Plate is here, though, a genuine human being, a living writer and Incommunicado Superstar. He has a new book Police and Thieves on 7 Stories press. We are now forever connected in a clash of reference to old Jamaican reggae. I first see Peter instructing Stacey from City Lights on how to battle Eviction. He’s giving her detailed specific instruction and hope.
 
Hours of meaningless standing around and conversation pass leaving everyone’s “dogs” panting and worn out. The suits steal our energy as we explain the books, schmooze. I meet, Miriam Wolfe, an editor at the Bay Guardian and do some schmoozing of my own. “Here have a copy of my classic novel The Sub: anarchy versus order, authority versus rebellion… yes, as a matter of fact, I do write book reviews.” I can’t tell whether she’s annoyed or impressed. If you see my byline in the Guardian soon...

I'm standing next to Barbie getting my Poloroid snapped. Her feet really are stuck at that obscene angle so that she teeters forward in her heels. Dark roots bleed through her bleach job. I'm actually standing on top of a ladder since she's 18 feet tall. Shortly after the photo she showed me the scars from where she had her breast implants removed. Her and Pamela Anderson have been hanging out a lot lately. I haven't seen scars like that since Pleasant Gehman took the boys of Incommunicado on a field trip to Jumbo's Clown Room on Holywood Blvd.

(Tradition: see BEA 98 Ironic Poloroid.)

When I get back to the Incommunicado/Soft Skull booth Pleasant is about to sign copies of The Underground Guide to Los Angeles which has just been published by Manic D Press. I stand in line for a free copy and she writes: "To the King from the Princess" next to her trademark lipstick smooch on the title page.
 
Babyface and Casey are off to find a bowling trophy. I drive Craig and Susan to the Chateau Marmot for cocktails in the penthouse. This must be a letdown for Susan and her friend Sub Rights Director Jenny from Harcourt Brace who soiréed at the Playboy Mansion Grove/Atlantic  party the night before “touched a monkey” and mingled with peacocks and bunnies before stealing a tennis ball from the courts. I heard Salmon Rushdie was in the jacuzzi with two Playboy bunnies. Entering the Chateau I’m bound to keep a low-fi profile, as the Madsen Book Release Party bar tab remains unpaid (see DBS' Fame Grabbing in Hollywood.) There’s a narc at the door in dress shirtsleeves checking names of the invitees, but he lets us crash anyway. Probably because Susan is really hot and Craig Foltz works his voodoo amor charm sardonic smile on the guy. All bases are covered. Inside are the expected free drinks and chi-chi salmon whor-de-voirs on wait help trays, but unexpected sublime view of Los Angeles, the smog yellow moon rising over the city. We look down on a Marlboro man that everyone else is forced to look up to. A jazz combo plays under the conversation soundtrack of the suits making talk. Craig and I stand in the corner and have perhaps the first real conversation of our five year relationship.
 
Sunset Boulevard is a long street. We define the buzz word “sprawl” driving from Hollywood to Eaglerock on the surface streets. We stop in Echo Park or Glendale for tacos. LA taco shops are nothing like San Diego where the best Mexican food in the world waits on every other corner. This is too authentic with “Narrowguts” tacos, tripas and lenguas on the menu. I chicken out with the pollo taco which seems to take forever. We’re in Mexico now, American business time and rush do not apply.
 
Maybe I’m tired, but the Indie Press Bowling Party is not as happening as the Fireside punk bowling party last year. It’s equally well attended, this time with Incommunicado Superstars like Iris Berry chic in leopard spot faux fur shoes and coat and the poetic heartbeat  of Los Angeles Steve Abee. Abee and I bowl against Babyface and Foltz. He performs admirably but I can’t roll more than a few gutter balls. I think I hurt my biceps arm wrestling Susan &  Casey (at the same time) back in the hotel room. Babyface took Craig Foltz on to the bowling finals where he lost the 1999 Indie Press Bowling Trophy to Daniel Power & the boys at Powerhouse books (who reputedly raised the funds to start their press after a seven grueling years on the Pro Bowler's Tour.)  Sander doesn’t show himself on the lanes after last years agonizing defeat.
 
I continue my parody of bowling with Casey while poet J. Tarin Towers and Susan take turns wearing my maroon corduroy get-away gangster bedroom slippers in place of proper bowling shoes. We perfected a slow bowling technique that our agents picked up from the Japanese Buddy Holly specs literary agent archetype on Lane 17. One time the ball hit the head pin and bounced back toward us. I’m feeling weird and anti-social, tired yet wandering around the bowling alley. I find myself sitting alone, but never for more than a few seconds, wandering past conversation cliques with literary demagogues like Jennifer Joseph, Jon Longhi, SA Griffin and Rafael Alvarado.

Among the spotted at the 2nd Annual Indie Press Bowling Party: Colin from Verso, Andy Jenkins from Bend Press, author Mike Daly, Stephan and Nicole from Zoland Press, Johnathan Moberly from Ellipsis, punk Legs McNeil and Mad TV's Phil LaMarr.
 
It’s back to the hotel. Unlike last year in Chicago all of my stuff is here in one place. I feel like I’m messing up everyone’s good time. Casey leaves with Babyface and Indie Press of the Year Firecracker presentress & nomadic bookseller Amanda Chappell who needed a ride downtown; and I’m with Foltz and Susan. If only humans mated in threes. So we’re all stuck with Foltzian amor which is safe and satisfying. After some really pleasant conversation we actually sleep.

2 May, Sunday: Craig heads down for breakfast while Susan and I finish primping and gathering our stuff. Of course we find another pair of underwear, this time we're sure belong to Craig. I wrap them up in a roll of bubble wrap and plan to present them to Mr. Foltz in the hotel lobby. The presentation goes off as planned but without fanfare as Craig quickly stuffs the white Froot of the Loom briefs in his backpack. We ride a cab to the BEA. The vibe in this convention center is weird. I walk around like a sponge trying to get some free books. The ones that are readily free, I don’t really want. (I only got one book -- Inga Muscio's Cunt  which won a Firecracker for non-fiction -- from the cattle gate, after somehow missing Francesca Lia Block.) I had to schmooze really hard to get the Subcomandante Marcos children’s book eventually traded my classic novel The Sub: anarchy versus order, authority versus rebellion for it. Susannah Byrd at Cinco Puntos Press handed me her baby boy who mesmerized himself in my sunglasses and decided that gripping my nose would be the best thing. His mom was very cool and threw in  as a gift a tiny Subcamandante Marcos worry doll made in the southern part of Mexico.
 
I walked over to Creation Books booth hoping to get that Pirate Book, but Miranda Filbee (who made the deal with me again in trade for my classic novel The Sub: anarchy versus order, authority versus rebellion) was not in yet. Apparently she was out drinking with Steve Buscemi. I was compelled to leave Day 3 of the Book Expo convention hall scene by ennui and a desperate fear of deja vu, without hope.

3 May, Monday: There’s a message on the machine from Agent Zane. She toted home to San Diego a book for me about pirates… there is hope for the world.

4 May, Tuesday:  Casey sends an Email from Incommunicado headquarters in NYC. Apparently Babyface felt something out of the ordinary in his jacket pocket while at dinner with his father, and summarily produced a mysterious pair of black panties. As of yet no organized groups have claimed responsibility.