NEXUS OF REALITY:
How Plaza News changed my life forever

  From time to time, one discovers in one's past a tidbit of extreme importance that has long been overlooked, suppressed, or simply forgotten. A person, place or thing, that upon reflection, resonates throughout one's life, and has left it altered forever.
    Recently, while reminiscing with members of the Toasty-Fried Co-Op, I realized that such a touchstone existed in my own life. This one thing that gathered up the disparate threads of my life, tied them together and spewed out a veritable fountain of influence that continues to resonate even today.
    In 1984, I took a part-time job as manager of Plaza News, a small newsstand/ comic book store in Fort Myers, Florida.
    I had been working there part-time on a very casual basis for about half of 1983. The owner, whose name shall remain unspoken here for reasons more obvious as you read, was a small-time "entrepeneur" and ne'er-do-well, who opened this store (actually bought it from a previous owner) to appease his parents. They wanted him to pursue at least some semblance of employment, and as a somewhat spoiled kid with no marketable skills, he chose what he thought would be an easy way out. He bought a newsstand, and through a combination of bad sense, bad investments, and extremely poor customer skills, proceeded to drive his business into the ground. Within months, his seed money (donated by his parents) was gone, and he was deeply in debt.
    He was eager to have employees around that he could pay under the table with store credit, and as I was very strapped for cash at the time, and had a comic book addiction, we came to an under-standing which led to my employment there.
    There was one full-time paid employee, a man named Steve Bergstrom, whose name shall come up again later.
     The store was a disaster when I started working there. I remember one of the first jobs I was given was to completely reorganize the layout of the store to increase floor space, which was crammed with paperback books, greeting cards (most in unsaleable condition) and boxes of comics, not to mention two large magazine racks and store counter. This in itself was not a difficult project, though it did involve much scrubbing and heavy lifting, and we managed in fairly short order, to rearrange the store so that we had easier access to all areas, and we also significantly increased floor space by eliminating most of the greeting cards and paperbacks (which sold very poorly). My next project (which began simultaneously with the first, and took much, much longer) was to completely reorganize the storage room and make a comprehensive inventory of everything in it. Since things had been pretty much just thrown back there, it was a project that lasted for about 3 months of non-stop labor, mostly on my own, with only Steve helping me.
    I should mention at this point that the owner was living (illegally) in the back room of the store at the time, and due to the lack of a shower and the addition of a half-wild but sometimes affectionate feline answering to the name "Cat", the resulting odor in the store made shopping there problematic for some. This was, at best, the typical stereotype of a slovenly comic book store owner and his hovel. The owner often wondered aloud why business was not better, and it wasn't long before I grew impatient with his short-sightedness and began making not-so-subtle sugegstions that perhaps he should consider moving himself and Cat into an efficiency apartment somewhere nearby, and seriously airing out the place. Undaunted, he decided that the way to acheive this goal much more cheaply was to begin spraying around an inordinate amount of Glade around the shop, which served not to cover up the smell, but to linger on with the unholy combination of litterbox and fake rose petal scents. It wasn't until around the end of 1983 that I finally managed to convince him to get an apartment.
    Around this time, the owner had decided that the store was inevitably going to shut down. The store was losing money, and with his spendthrift habits and poor management skills, he was probably right. He made several attempts to make money "the easy way", all of which failed miserably, and things really looked bleak. He even had to let Steve go, which improved Steve's prospects greatly, as he could make a lot more as a full-time waiter, and did so! An attempt to get into the music promotion business (which included an expensive 2-week-long seminar at a broadcaster's school in Ohio) was proving to have been a huge waste of money, as his lack of any sense of how to deal with people scuttled deal after deal. At last, in a desperate attempt to flee and get away from Fort Myers, he resolved to move to Tempe, Arizona and get a clean start there. Besides, he owed over $50,000 to various creditors and their patience was running out. However, his lack of income or prospect made closing the store problematic. In his desperation, he asked me if I'd be interested in taking over the management of the store and keep it alive long enough for him to become established in Tempe. Masochistic (or as naive) as I was, I said yes. He hired me as manager, showed me how to do the few store jobs that I hadn't done, raised my salary to a princely sum of $50 a week plus store credit, and told me to hire a new employee to cover the day shift (since I already had a daytime job). Steve wasn't interested in coming back, So, I offered the job to my friend Richard Castelli, since he needed the work, and as he was a regular customer and all around cool guy, I saw him as a good prospect. I had to fight the owner, though. He wanted one of his friends, a dodgy teenage dropout (who stole cigarettes) to be the employee.. eventually he agreed to let me hire Richard "to see how it works out"..I never told Richard how tenuous his employment was, but I knew he was gonna be more reliable than the other guy. So, with that, the owner left for Tempe, sans Cat, who remained in the store.
    Richard and I had a very busy 2 weeks following the owner's departure. We scrubbed the store from floor to ceiling, replaced rotten ceiling tiles, repaired and repainted store fixtures, cleaned the carpet, and generally gave the store a massive makeover. All that without spending much money. I must say that Richard did the bulk of the work and did an excellent job. Anyway, in 2 weeks, the store was a different place, and when the smell of new paint faded, the old odor was gone too. Funny what changing a litterbox once in awhile will do. We also made Cat an inside cat, which eliminated most of the problem we'd had with fleas.
    In addition to cleaning, we also made other changes. We made a decision to get rid of poorly-selling merchandise. Out went the paperbacks, out went the greeting cards (mainly to the dumpster), and in a decision fought tooth and nail by the owner, I got rid of the vast majority of the magazines, keeping only those that sold well. By returns alone, I managed to pay off $12,000 of the store's debt, which I was pretty proud of. We also scraped up the funds to send Cat to Arizona to live with the owner, against the protests of the customers, who really liked the kitty. Besides, having Cat was a violation of the store's lease.
     Another change was expansion. Our role-playing games and supplies sold well, but as yet, we hadn't kept a very large supply on hand, and we were continually special-ordering things.So we enlarged the role-playing supplies a great deal. We also took some of our newly-created space and made it into a small gaming area, where people could come and role-play during store hours, or simply sit and chat.
     Slowly, the store's business increased. Gamers began to make up a larger percentage of our business, and finally overtook the newspaper and magazine section of the store. We also began a word of mouth campaign that increased our comic business by quite a bit. By June of 1984, the store was not only hanging on, but making money.  I managed to work out payment plans with the creditors and began making payments each month and reduced the debt by another $15,000 by August. Things were looking good, except for one thing. The owner was secretly withdrawing money from the store account to pay his rent in Arizona, and as he was not working, was literally eating up the profits from the store. When the store's rent check bounced one month, I decided to confront the owner about his leeching from the store bank account and he promised to stop. He didn't. Two weeks later, he accused me of "mismanaging the business" and not paying back the creditors fast enough. Even having the accountant call him and send copies of all of our records did no good. I told him bluntly that if he continued to leech off of the store ,then the store would go under, and that if he continued, I would quit. the following Friday, Richard received a phone call telling him to tell me I was fired. He refused. I called the owner and asked him to tell me what I had done wrong (which he couldn't), handed Richard the keys and then quit. That was officially the end of my association with Plaza News. Within a month, Richard was fired (why, I don't know) and replaced with the sleazy teenage cigarette thief I mentioned earlier. Within 2 months, the store was out of business, and everything in it trashed. The owner had his friends move out anything valuable, and then the teenagers friends had gone on a rampage in the store, destroying all the fixtures, breaking all the lights, kicking holes in the walls, and Odin knows what else. Plaza News was dead.
   
     Now, after that long tale, I suppose you're wondering why this brief, and somewhat ugly experience has acheived such resonance in my life. This is why -- Virtually all of my most important social connections, hobbies, etc. for the next 10 years arose directly from the crowd that hung out at Plaza News.
     Richard Castelli, my faithful employee, and I worked together to create 4 Peace concerts which happened in 1984-1986. The first ones were planned right in the store. Rich was a local musician, who introduced me to a lot of cool music, some of which I still listen to today. Richard is responsible in part for my love of Celtic folk music, my enjoyment of REM and U2, and other types of music rooted in the 80's. Richard also introduced me to Randy Stack and Michael Griffin. Through Michael, I embarked on the exploration of industrial music and noise art which permeates the majority of my musical listening today.
     Through Randy Stack, I met Peter Kreutlein, Jeff Stachowski, Scott Cook, and other local musicians, who not only were involved in the whole Peace Concert business (see my essay on my Political Activism here), but were also my earliest experience of the Toasty-Fried Co-Op.
     The Toasty-Fried Co-Op is probably the single most influential group of folks in my life. To this day, my friendships with the Toasties help to define my world. For more on the Toasty-Fried Co-Op, visit my links page. As I have said in the past, I cannot overstate the influence that they have had (and to some extent still have) on my life.If not for the Toasties, I would not write, I would not create art, and I wouldn't be an actor.
     The gaming groups that met at Plaza News also had a strong impact on me. Steve Bergstrom, the former employee (remember him?) became a good friend.. a very good friend. In fact, Steve was my first boyfriend and was instrumental in beginning my whole coming-out process.
      Steve and I started a gaming group involving us, and three other people, two of which were members of a group called the SCA (Society For Creative Anachronism, a medieval re-enactment group). I joined the SCA in 1986, and remained a very active member for the next 3 years, and less active after I started doing theater in Florida. the gaming group itself lasted for about 3 years before it died a slow painful death at the hands of universal apathy about it. But the gaming connection persisted, taking me through several different spheres of gaming influence, including one that touched upon the Toasty group. It even persists to this day in some respects. Most of the first friends I had in Cleveland after moving there in 1992 where made via gaming connections, and even some of my friends at school date from that period.
       The gay angle on this nexus is extremely pervasive. I owe Steve a lot. I suppose a negative-minded sort could say that Plaza news wrecked my marriage....perhaps that's so. I wouldn't say that, but some people might. It was definitely a big step on the road to self-acceptance as a queer man, and brought me into the gay world, at least provisionally. Steve and I saw each other on and off for about 2 years, and remained good friends for years after that. I lost track of him about the time I moved to Ohio.
      Plaza News even influenced my best friend, Paul. Through Steve, I introduced Paul to the woman who became his first wife. Although I'm not proud of that now, and it's never spoken of, Paul wouldn't be where he is today without this. You see, that first marriage and the aftermath taught Paul a lot about life, and if he had never moved to Atlanta with her, would never have met his second and current spouse, Mari, and moved to Finland.
       This connection pervades my life again. Without Paul being in Europe, I would not have traveled there in 1988, 1994 or after. Therefore, Plaza news, through the gaming group, and through Paul, is responsible for my travels, my photographs, and my second major, in International relations.
       
       To sum up. I have to say that this is an excellent example for young people. It's very easy to classify my time at Plaza News as just another crappy job that was a horrible experience. But as you can see, that crappy job which caused so much stress in my life, was actually one of the nexii that has made my life complete, and a huge stepping store in a spiritual sense, to making me what I
am today. It brought me to self-realization, the Toasties, world travel, cultivated an interest in games and art and literature (and indirectly into my involvment in the APA scene), and fueled my involvment in political activism. In short, I owe everything to that crummy, smelly comic shop in Fort Myers, Florida.