I liked my job at the bank, and I was glad we were out of debt, paying our bills, and saving money, but I was discouraged about my progress as a writer. I felt like I was falling further and further behind.

Brenda encouraged me to print up and mail out pamphlets, as I had done in Fort Walton Beach. That way I'd hear back from readers and feel like I was keeping my hand in, as a writer.

I got such a good response to my pamphlets, I decided to publish a book.

John Bennett, Vagabond Press, Ellensburg, Washington, said if I was going to raise the money to pay a printer to let him publish it cooperatively as a Vagabond Press book. That way I would avail myself of his experience, as a publisher, his knowledge of the small press scene, and contacts among independent bookstores, and avoid the stigma of self-publication.

Now, small press books are stigmatized, the independent bookstores are gone, the small press scene is defunct, replaced by zines and ezines, but hardly the same as when Bukowski wrote for Open City and the L. A. Free Press, his poems were printed in magazines like Olé, Open Skull, and Wormwood Review, before being collected and published by Black Sparrow Press, and sold in bookstores in big cities and college towns across the country, as I thought Screed would be.

This was not John Bennett's fault. It just happened.

Once the Vietnam war ended, there was no more reason for small presses and independent bookstores. It was time to get rich and vote for Reagan.

I borrowed the money from my mother to publish Screed, sent it to John, and, by and by, I received a book from MacNaughton & Gunn, so many hardback, so many trade paperback. A proper book.

I was a published writer.

When Screed came out I quit my job, not because I had insulted my mangers or co-workers at the bank, but because I had blown my cover. I had written it at work, and could not do that anymore.

One day I saw my old dentist, Doc Moore, at the post office, and he asked me why I wasn't at work.

"I left the bank," I said. "I'm going to be a writer. I have a new book out."

"You'll find something," he said.

"I'm not looking for anything," I said. "I have a new book out. I'm going to be a writer."

"You'll find something," Doc Moore said.

He was right. I did find something.

Free-lance copy-editor for minimum wage, no benefits. And newspaper columnist and book reviewer for the hometown paper, for $25 a week.

It was like Isaac Bashevis Singer being paid to proofread the Yiddish daily, Forward.

I could barely bring myself to do it.

I would put it off, and put it off, and, at the last hour, do a slapdash job.

Finally, they quit giving me manuscripts to style for the typesetter.

I had a $19 tape player and two $1 tapes: The Best of Merle Haggard and The Best of the Statler Brothers.

Not Merle Haggard and the Statler Brothers. People imitating Merles Haggard and the Statler Brothers.

But the songs they covered were the ones Merle Haggard and the Statler Brothers recorded.

No, wait. I had a third tape. Ornette Coleman and the Master Musicians of Morocco. Dancing in Your Head. That music was used in the soundtrack to Naked Lunch.

I played those three tapes, over and over, and when I hear any of that music I think of editing monographs and scientific journal articles for an academic publish-or-perish mill, CRC Press, Boca Raton.

I used to ride my bike out to Military Trail to pick up and deliver manuscripts.

I'd eat at Town Center Mall and buy a new book at the bookstore in the mall.

Stephen King says he defines rich as being able to buy new books.

So did I. So I was rich even before I inherited a house and got a job with IBM.

I was rich when I was a copy-editor at CRC Press.

When I left the bank I submitted a guest editorial on the D word, disintermediation, predicting the dot-com boom, and bust, and the stock market bull market, and 1987 stock market crash. The editor invited me to write a weekly column. And a weekly book review.

I got paid $10 for the column and $15 for the book review.

I used my column to beat up on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, and the Palm Beach County Council of the Arts.

It was a bully pulpit.

Imagine being paid to flog your bêtes-noires.

I got paid to read at Winter Park, in a beer joint called Uncle Waldo's, and John Bennett flew me out to Ellensburg for a publication party for Black Messiah, which I gave the title to and had some material in, and then he and I drove to Seattle, Portland, and Eugene, Oregon, selling Black Messiah, Screed, and the Vagabond Anthology out of the back of his Econoline van.

So I said my book tour for Screed was bicoastal.

Then I started looking for a job because I was running out of money.

I enjoyed what I was doing, but $100 a month was too little pay to do it on. Even living in a hovel.

I enjoy what I'm doing now, but $1,000 a month, social security, is not enough money to do it on, even living in an older house, Brenda's old home place, and when my grant runs out, I'll look for a job.

I found one then, maybe I'll find one now.