From Walking Man, a Novel

By Tim W. Brown
http://www.amazon.com/Walking-Man-Tim-W-Brown/dp/0978984706

From the same metafictional universe as the films Best in Show and This is Spinal Tap,
Walking Man documents the life and times of Brian Walker, publisher of the zine “Walking
Man.” Through a fateful encounter between his foot and a yuppie's BMW, Brian becomes the
most famous zine publisher in America and a rabid defender of pedestrian rights. Meanwhile,
he must juggle the ambitions of his sexy actress girlfriend with his soaring celebrity. Written
in the tradition of the scandalous tell-all biography, Walking Man satirizes so-called
"alternative" culture while it fondly recollects the 80s and 90s zine scene.

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Zine Scene 89
Chapter from Walking Man, a Novel
By Tim W. Brown

Four hours and ten minutes after taking off, Brian’s plane landed at San Francisco
International Airport. The rapid descent caused pressure to build in Brian’s ears, “making me
feel like somebody was jabbing knitting needles into them.” He complained that he couldn’t
hear for most of the weekend, that “everybody sounded like they were talking inside a toilet
with the lid down.” All told, flying was a disappointment. “When you watch an airplane take
off or land, it looks so graceful as it floats on pillows of air. But inside an airplane the reality
is far different: flying is like riding in a bus down a rutted gravel road.”

Greeting Brian at the gate was an individual who identified himself as “Ratboy,” a slight
rodent-faced guy who said he published a zine called Rat’s Ass. Ratboy, a Bay Area native,
was one of a half-dozen volunteers who met zine VIPs at the airport and took them to their
hotels. “I recognized you from the picture the Chronicle runs every time somebody is shot
after kicking a car,” he said to Brian, directing him to baggage claim. Brian had become so
accustomed to seeing his picture in newspapers beside reports of driver-pedestrian
altercations that he did not comment.

Once they had retrieved Brian’s duffel bag, they walked to the parking garage and got
into an orange Volkswagen Beetle. “You rarely see these anymore,” Brian said admiringly.

“Yeah, I know. This one belonged to my parents originally. It’s got about two hundred
and ten thousand miles on it. Still runs like a top, though.”

The duo cruised up Highway 101, exited onto Interstate 80 and drove onto a large
suspension bridge. “Is this the Golden Gate Bridge?” Brian asked expectantly.

“No, that’s over there,” Ratboy said, pointing. “We’re on the Bay Bridge.” Brian craned
his neck in an attempt to view as much of the famed bridge as possible. He also glimpsed in
the distance the pyramid-shaped Transamerica Building, which over its brief life had evolved
into San Francisco’s second-most-recognized landmark. A sense of wonder and disbelief
overtook him as he realized that he was actually in San Francisco. He cracked his window
and greedily inhaled the salty sea air.

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 About ten minutes later they entered the city of Berkeley. As they drove through town,
Brian noticed many blocked streets, buildings covered with scaffolding, piles of rubble and
other signs of construction. “That from the earthquake?” he asked, referring to the recent
Loma Prieta quake.

“Yeah, probably. Fucked a whole lot of shit up.”

“When it happened I was afraid they were going to cancel the conference.”

“The planners talked about it. But the city got shit cleaned up enough that we decided
the show could still go on.”

“Where were you at when it hit? Was your place damaged?”

“I was in a bar in Oakland―that’s where I live―waiting to watch the World Series on

TV. Luckily, there wasn’t any structural damage to my apartment. Just some broken dishes
and glasses. I don’t have too much shit, and even less shit that’s breakable.”

“That must’ve been something, living through an earthquake,” said Brian.

“I could’ve done without it.”

A few minutes later, Ratboy dropped Brian off at the Shattuck Hotel, located about a
block away from the University of California campus. Behind a card table inside the lobby of
the handsome historical landmark hotel sat a pale, dark-haired young woman with prominent
eyebrows. She wore a black tank top whose printed message was too peeled off to read. She
lounged with her hands clasped behind her head, sharing with the world a view of her hairy
armpits. “BRIAN WALKER!” she called, then motioned Brian to approach. “I’m a huge-
huge-HUGE fan of your zine!” With each utterance of the word “huge,” her “bra-less boobs
bobbed,” Brian noted. She introduced herself as Suzie Q, publisher of a zine called Virginia
Dare. “It’s a personal zine about a woman just out of college―me―reborn in the urban
wilderness.” She took up several sheets of paper from piles on the table and handed them to
Brian, along with a newsprint souvenir program detailing every Zine Scene 89 activity
scheduled for the weekend.

Brian thanked Suzie Q, and then he checked himself into the hotel at the front desk
across the lobby. His room was part of a block reserved by the conference organizers on the
third floor. As he entered the elevator, Suzie Q raised her hand and waved. Brian waved back,

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wondering if she moonlighted by posing for photographs in fetish zines he had heard about
that showcased female body hair.

Once inside his room Brian went straight for the mini bar and pulled out a can of
Budweiser. He needed something to settle him down, for, in addition to lingering pain in his
ears, “the stress and strain of flying made it feel like somebody clamped pipe wrenches onto
my large intestines and twisted and turned them. I needed to relax.” He sat at the mahogany
desk and skimmed the materials Suzie Q had given him, noting the days and times he was
supposed to appear at various events. After finishing his beer, he retrieved another from the
mini bar and stuck it into the inside pocket of his leather jacket, which he put back on and
headed downstairs to take a walk around the nearby campus. While passing through the
lobby on the way out of the hotel, he noticed that Suzie Q had packed up for the night and
left. As he ambled past a cluster of UC athletic facilities, his mind began to wander like it
always did when he walked.

Mainly, he thought about the two zine conference participants he had met that night and
how they had recognized him immediately. He found it remarkable that “two strangers from
a city two thousand miles away from Chicago seemed to know everything about me.” It was
true that, back home, a coterie of literary types, theater people, and journalists recognized
Brian’s face when they encountered him in public. But these people weren’t really on his
side; they viewed him as a hot-tempered curiosity whom they couldn’t wait to see lose his
cool and attack something. To them he was like a rock star or movie actor whom the
paparazzi chase, hoping to photograph his latest misstep.

With backpack-wielding students passing to and fro around him, he settled on a broad
expanse of grass identified by a sign as “Memorial Glade,” and he opened the beer he had
pocketed earlier. “I allowed myself a moment of ego to silently toast myself and my
accomplishments,” he writes, adding that he looked forward to taking the zine world by
storm beginning at nine the following morning.

••••

As instructed by conference literature, Brian left around one hundred Walking Man zines
with the organizers of The Great American Zine Sale, a combination flea market/swap meet
for zinesters held outdoors on the sidewalks surrounding the main library in the center of the

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Berkeley campus. Already at nine in the morning, dozens of individuals milled around
drinking coffee and colas or sat behind folding tables heaping with zines for sale. A few
tables featured attention-getting devices like flags, placards or, in the case of a death metal
zine, a headless GI Joe doll with bound wrists lying on a miniature guillotine spattered with
copious amounts of red paint. Zinesters themselves drew attention to their wares via multiple
tattoos, fluorescent hair, and body piercings. An invited guest, Brian was spared the burden
of manning a table and selling his zine; Walking Man and a few other select zines were sold
by student volunteers at a table near the entrance of the library in a spot assured of abundant
foot traffic.

Brian writes in Walking Man that, even at this early hour, the sweet smell of marijuana
wafted overhead. Knowing of his predilection for smoking the evil weed from reading
Walking Man, two guys wearing down vests and stocking caps despite the sixty-some-degree
temperature, invited Brian to “smoke a doob, man.” Glancing around and seeing no one
stinking of authority, Brian agreed. He took the joint and discreetly smoked it and passed it
around while his new buddies introduced themselves as Oleo and Ken. They published
Commercial Fodder, a poetry zine out of Minneapolis. Brian reported that they punctuated
every sentence with the word “man,” as in “The earthquake must’ve sucked, man” or “Do
another hit, man.”

As the trio smoked, Oleo and Ken marveled at their good fortune. Oleo said, “Wow,
man, we’re actually smoking with Brian Walker!” Ken replied, “Everybody’ll shit, man,
when they hear about this back home!” Flattered by this encounter and others like it, Brian
writes appreciatively in Walking Man of the widespread respect accorded him at Zine Scene
89. He admitted that he was uncertain about what to say in response to words of praise, “after
getting my ego bashed in every day by my bitch boss Layla and a never-ending parade of
asshole attorneys.” Aware of how “the fake” is disdained in zine circles, he resolved to offer a
simple thank-you and returned the compliment only if the situation truly warranted it.

Good and buzzed, Brian entered a small auditorium inside Wheeler Hall, home of the
Berkeley English department, where most conference events were to be held. He was
directed to take a seat at a table down on the stage. Sitting beside him were the other heavy
hitters of the zine movement in 1989: Stet, publisher of Ned’s Feat Live; Steve Knudsen,

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publisher of Jumpin Jesus of the Cornfields; the Reverend Arnold Hammer, publisher of
Underground Watchdog; and Annie Nooney, publisher of Pillbox, a zine devoted to
recreational pill popping. Scattered in the audience were about ten men and women clutching
pens, notepads, miniature tape recorders and cameras. A bearded guy with a red bandanna
tied around his head whose black tee shirt barely covered his beer gut zigzagged through the
room videotaping the proceedings. Brian did not see any TV station markings on his
equipment and concluded that he was “somebody’s brother’s cousin taping important
moments at the conference.”

Brian and the others introduced themselves to each other while they waited for the press
conference to begin. Brian noted that he and Stet were the only reasonably normal members
of this motley crew. Stet appeared “downright preppy” in fact―clean-cut and wearing a polo
shirt, stone-washed jeans and jogging shoes. The other three, however, showed up in full
costume. Steve Knudsen wore overalls over a green John Deere tee shirt and a yellow De
Kalb Seed Corn baseball cap. Annie Nooney, regaled in a black and white striped tee shirt,
oversized pearls, leather miniskirt and pumps, “was unbelievably gaunt,” he writes. “Her
sunken eyes and dark circles ringing them made her look like a raccoon.” As for the
Reverend Arnold Hammer, “he actually looked like a reverend, dressed in a black suit
complete with a minister’s collar.”

An aging hippie professor, who wore an Indian-bead headband, tie-dyed tee shirt and
sandals, stepped up to the podium and welcomed the media representatives assembled in the
room. He asked if there were any questions for the conference’s special guests sitting at the
table. With the exception of a few basic questions for Stet intended to provide the appropriate
context for audiences unfamiliar with zine culture, all of the questions were addressed to
Brian, who reported feeling overwhelmed by all of this attention, not to mention tongue-tied
from smoking marijuana earlier. Nevertheless, he plowed forward, answering the questions
as fully and openly as he could. His answers, quoted in a variety of newspapers and
magazines appearing soon after the conference, open a window into Brian’s thoughts and
beliefs without the exaggeration and embellishment of his statements in Walking Man.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian did the best job of distilling Brian’s thinking from the
press conference. In the Bay Guardian we learn more about Brian’s life of the mind.

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Regarding his influences, he said, “During my semester of junior college I read a lot of
William Blake’s poetry. Blake self-published his writing in limited editions, just like zinesters
do today. I love his poem ‘London.’ It captures my life so well it could’ve been written
yesterday and called ‘Chicago.’”

When asked what his favorite book was, Brian answered that he didn’t really have a
single favorite, but he “loved a book that came out recently called The Songlines by Bruce
Chatwin.” “The author tracks the origins of the Australian ‘walkabout’ phenomenon,”
explained Brian, “where aborigines retrace the steps of their ancestors. Legend says that the
landscape didn’t exist until their ancestors sang songs about it when they first explored the
island. I think that’s a really cool concept, the perfect combination of walking and
imagination that I strive for.”

During the forty-five or so minutes that Brian answered reporters’ questions, it gradually
dawned on the Reverend Arnold Hammer and Steve Knudsen that nobody was showing any
interest in them or their zines. Annie Nooney might also have thought this, but it was difficult
to tell, because her head was on the table cradled in her arms. The glares, frowns, and scowls
that Hammer and Knudsen shot at Brian grew fouler as time wore on. When the hippie
professor dismissed the audience after the allotted hour was up, neither would shake Brian’s
hand nor speak to him, and they hastily exited together, murmuring their disgust. Stet, known
for his diplomacy in an often-rancorous subculture, good-naturedly shook Brian’s hand, and
the two walked out as Stet attempted to secure an interview with Brian for a feature article in
Ned’s Feat Live. Meantime, the hippie professor jiggled Nooney’s shoulder in an attempt to
revive her.

During the rest of Saturday Brian strolled the Berkeley campus examining the multitude
of zines on display and collecting kudos for his brave, if quixotic, struggle against maniac
drivers. He also attended several panel discussions taking place inside Wheeler Hall. These
were divided into practical and theoretical topics. The former discussed tips for improving
the look of a zine, boosting circulation, obtaining bar coding and ISSN numbers, avoiding
copyright law hassles, and speaking the language of printers and copy shop operators.

The latter explored free speech issues and the historical roots of the contemporary zine
scene. During the free speech panel a female zinester/performance artist stripped naked and

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recited a poem laced with graphic sexual references, daring anyone to arrest her for obscene
behavior. “It sounded less like an appeal for free speech and more like a plea to get her face
on the evening news,” Brian quips in Walking Man. The history panel was populated with
aging hippies waxing nostalgic about the good old days of the 1960s underground press
movement when publishing the wrong thing might earn you a visit from the FBI. “I frankly
got sick of hearing them boast how they were more committed in the 60’s than we are today,”
Brian writes. “The bottom line is that society is more content nowadays. Either that or we’re
more cynical now and don’t believe in that fairytale peace and love crap anymore. And I
didn’t like it when they suggested that publishing with an old-fashioned mimeograph
machine is somehow more genuine than using a full-feature Xerox copier.”

On Saturday evening the action shifted to San Francisco proper as scores of zinesters,
including Brian, traveled under the San Francisco Bay in BART trains to attend a conference-
related party at EndUp nightclub in the artsy SOMA (South of Market) district. Regarding his
rapid transit trip, Brian writes that he “was amazed at how smooth, silent and clean-smelling
subway travel can be. No loosened molars, no ringing ears, no singed nose hairs from urine
stench.”

Standing outside EndUp greeting conference goers (who received free admission) and
the general public (who paid a three-dollar cover charge) was a burly, goateed bouncer with a
shaved head. Brian noticed a metal spring coiling through multiple piercings around the
circumference of his right ear. He wondered in Walking Man whether this improved his love
life by “increasing the amps to his personal electrical field.” The club was festooned with
miniature Christmas tree lights strung throughout the dark interior, bohemian decor on a
budget. Welcoming guests to the weekend’s key social event were magic marker-scrawled
poster board signs duct-taped to walls and support columns.

As he entered the crowded dance floor where zinesters stood around drinking and
gabbing, Suzie Q came up from behind and hooked her arm through his. “I took this as a sign
that I was her date for the evening,” he wrote, noting that she wore the same outfit as the
night before and smelled of a potent mixture of alcohol and body odor. Although it was only
about eight o’clock, and the Zine Scene 89 program was scheduled to last until midnight,
Suzie Q was already drunk, slurring her words and leaning into Brian. “You know why I

7
publish a zine?” she asked him. “So I can meet interesting people and have sex with them!”
Brian, disgusted by her condition, wriggled free and headed towards the bar. She called after
him with a garbled request to buy her a beer. When he returned, she was hanging all over
another unlucky male zinester; Brian overheard her informing him that she was a
nymphomaniac. Since it appeared that Suzie Q had forgotten all about both Brian and her
beer, he turned tail and headed to another corner of the club.

Soon a sponsor of the conference ascended the stage and introduced the first entertainer
of the evening, Kit Chamberlain, a San Francisco poet who published a zine called Dead Cop
Sky. Dressed in a camouflage tee shirt and fatigues and wearing a pair of black combat boots
that reached halfway up his calves, Chamberlain ranted for the next thirty minutes about the
“racist, militarist, imperialist, colonialist, expansionist / government / about which I’m
pissed.” Next, he made a veritable arsenal of sounds with his mouth, including fighter jets,
exploding bombs, snarling police dogs, raging fires, rumbling tanks and launching rockets.
Brian “turned to the guy standing next to me, who seemed to actually enjoy what was
happening on stage, and asked, ‘I wonder what that looks like laid out on the printed page?’
He looked at me like I was the absolute biggest square in the bar and snapped, ‘It’s
performance poetry. It’s not supposed to be written down.’ Well, excuse me!”

Next on the program was the SOMA Erotic Dance Troupe performing a piece called
“Fountain.” This act consisted of nine nude dancers―five female, four male―who danced
around an inflatable kiddie pool with a raised circular platform in the middle. Four of the
males paired off with four of the females and danced an eighteenth century cotillion-style
dance to the airs of Handel’s “Water Music.” The fifth female stood on the platform and
struck classic Greek statue poses. Despite the lewd hoots and hollers rising from the
audience, the dancers concentrated on their steps and performed flawlessly. When the end of
the first movement of “Water Music” approached, the eight men and women took up
positions around the pool. The men remained standing and the women kneeled and craned
their arms toward the ninth dancer, who gracefully stood on her head and slowly spread her
legs. Then, as the harpsichord and strings played the final few notes of the piece, in unison
the men began urinating into the pool and the woman in the center began urinating a great
stream straight up into the air. Brian admits in Walking Man that “they looked a lot like one
of those old fountains you’d see in a European town square.”

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 Exclamations of shock, amazement and disbelief erupted from the crowd, followed by
vigorous applause and loud cheers when the dancers broke their formation and lined up at the
front of the stage to take their bows. After they disappeared backstage, the bar lights came up
signaling intermission. During the break, three club employees cleared and mopped the stage.

The crowd continued to buzz about the scene it had just witnessed while Brian roamed
through the club searching for a familiar face. As he proceeded, he wished he could clip a
clothespin onto his nose. Every other person he passed, it seemed, had a bad case of body
odor. In the pages of Walking Man Brian tried to account for this fact:

I’ve been inside plenty of crowded bars in Chicago and I never smelled this level of B.O.
It can’t just be that San Franciscans don’t bathe or use deodorant, because there were people
at the conference from all over the country. Then it hit me: The zine scene is mostly made up
of broke young people who evidently don’t spend their limited funds on deodorant. Either
that, or they’re convinced that using deodorant is selling out to bourgeois values. Whatever, I
say next year the planners ought to line up Right Guard as a sponsor.

Upon returning to the bar to order another beer, he ran into the Reverend Arnold
Hammer and Steve Knudsen shooting the breeze. He hailed them with a friendly “What’s
happening, dudes!” Far from returning his greeting, they turned around, scooped up their
drinks and scooted away without saying a word. Not taking this snub lying down, Brian
shouted at their backs, “You know, Reverend, you come off as a complete asshole in your
zine. I’m not sure why I thought you wouldn’t be a complete asshole in person, too.”

“Oooh,” a woman standing nearby said. “You’d better be careful, or else he’ll give your
zine a bad review.”

“Fuck the Reverend and his reviews,” Brian said, loud enough to be heard by Hammer.
“I don’t need his fucking reviews. I had the New York Times interviewing me today. You hear
that, Reverend? I don’t need your fucking reviews!”

Without turning around, Hammer flipped the middle finger over his shoulder at Brian
and disappeared into the crowd. Brian claimed to have “seriously considered seeking him out
and kicking his ass up into his shoulder blades,” but the lights dimmed again and the Artballs,
a punk rock trio, hit the stage.

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 Brian stayed for a couple of songs, but quickly grew tired of hearing the same three
chords and run-and-gun guitar riffs. The only apparent difference between songs was the
lyrics, which the guitar player and bass player traded off in screaming. Brian was not averse
to loud guitar rock (witness his affection for Cheap Trick), but he did take exception to stupid
music. When he listened to the lyrics of the third song of the set―which consisted of the
single phrase “Goddamn motherfucker son of a bitch!” sung repeatedly―he decided to call it
a night. “Better,” he thought, “to leave all these freakzoids behind, go back to my hotel and
phone Tracy.”

Brian rose the next morning at nine o’clock. After a quick continental breakfast, he
strolled over to the university. He was not scheduled to appear in any other events, so he
planned to attend a few panel discussions and browse the zine sale tables further. “On the
way,” he writes, “I passed a fruit market and was seriously tempted to pick up lettuce and
tomatoes to take to the zine reviewers’ panel and throw at the Reverend Arnold Hammer.”

Upon arriving on campus, Brian faced a disturbing development. On every tree trunk,
light pole and information kiosk was fastened a WANTED poster with a caricatured image of
his face square in the middle. The text on this poster read:

WANTED!!!
DEAD or ALIVE
BRIAN WALKER
Crime: Selling Out
For more info go to the
Special Press Conference
in Wheeler Hall Room 208
Sun. Dec. 3 High Noon

Brian reported this poster made his blood begin to boil. He decided to pay a visit to the
“Special Press Conference” to learn who was responsible for this prank, although he had a
pretty good idea already. However, since noon was almost an hour and a half away, it was
necessary for Brian to kill some time. He ambled over to the Commercial Fodder table in
hopes that Oleo and Ken would share another joint with him.

10
 Oleo and Ken’s enthusiasm toward Brian had waned noticeably as they muttered “Hey,
man” and “How’s it going, man” while looking around warily to see if anyone saw them
conversing with Brian. No dope was forthcoming. Embarrassed by the awkward silence that
followed, Brian picked over back issues of their zine and drifted over to the next table where
he basically received the same chilly reception, a far cry from the warm greetings upon his
arrival in San Francisco. Frustrated by this turn of events, he wrote, “It was clear what was
going on. Everybody knew the source of the wanted posters was the Reverend Arnold
Hammer. So as not to piss him off, they gave me the cold shoulder, the brush off, the silent
treatment.”

At “high noon,” Brian took a seat at the back of Wheeler Hall Room 208 and surveyed
the room. None of the media representatives from the day before was present except one.
Brian presumed they already had gathered the information they sought about the conference,
wrote and filed their stories, and moved on to their next assignments. Scattered around the
room were a handful of zine publishers who waited for the fire and brimstone eruption to
begin. The Reverend Arnold Hammer stood stiffly behind a lectern; beside him sat Steve
Knudsen, his co-conspirator. Hammer, accoutered in his minister’s costume, glowered at
Brian “like I was a witch and he was itching to burn me at the stake.”

After a few more stragglers entered the room, including Stet, the Reverend Arnold
Hammer began to speak. “My fellow conference goers,” he said in his high (Brian calls it
“unmanly”) tenor voice, “we are gathered here today to discuss the actions of a member of
our flock, Brian Walker, a.k.a. Walking Man.” He continued in the same sermonizing vein:

Brian previously lived the life of a faithful and orthodox zine publisher. He published
a zine relying on good old-fashioned production methods. He wrote the text, did the
layout and bound the zines himself. He distributed the zine by walking to neighborhood
bars and record stores and dropping off copies in person. He freely gave of his time and
talent in a mission of self-expression worthy of the do-it-yourself ideal. In short, he lived
an enlightened life free of evil mainstream convention.

But soon the world and its large number of corrupting influences tempted Brian. The
world said, “Be not fooled by the zine maker’s art. You are missing out on the fruits of

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 your success. Join together with me and receive the money you are due for your efforts.
You only have to make this change in your zine, and this, and this.”

Brian succumbed to temptation and six months ago took his first step toward hell. He
signed his soul away to Underground Ink, a distributor that promised him riches and
recognition. He took a second step toward hell when he changed the cover of Walking
Man from black-and-white to four-color printing in order to appeal to the masses. He
took his third step toward hell when he began to put bar coding on the cover of his zine.
They say that bar coding is necessary if you want to sell your zine to more than a handful
of readers. I say that bar coding is nothing less than the sign of the Anti-Christ, which is
foretold in the Book of Revelations to be necessary to buy and sell.

Yesterday, Brian took his biggest step yet toward hell. His toadying to Satan’s
minions at the New York Times and Village Voice during yesterday’s press conference has
tarred him as a traitor to zine principles. He has proved himself a willing collaborator
with the mainstream press, and for this crime he should be cast out of the zine community
and into the commercial wilderness. Our communicants have a difficult time resisting the
temptation to sell out, and they sacrifice much to remain pure of mind, body, and spirit. I
call on zinesters everywhere to turn their backs on Brian Walker and shun his zine
Walking Man.

May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord lift up his eyes upon you and be
gracious unto you. May the Lord’s countenance shine upon you and give you peace.
Amen.

Everyone in the audience sat quietly for a few moments as he or she digested Hammer’s
words, which were “delivered with the verve of a sermon by Cotton Mather himself,”
according to the Bay Guardian, the only publication aside from zines that reported on the
controversy. Next, Hammer offered to address any questions. Brian raised his hand and kept
it raised while Hammer ignored him and answered, without cracking a smile or betraying his
inspired performance, two sarcastic questions from the Bay Guardian’s reporter: “Is it
common to excommunicate zine publishers who sell out?” and “Are you going to force Brian
Walker to wear a big scarlet ‘S’ for ‘Sellout’ during the rest of the conference?”

“Well, if there’s nothing else,” said Hammer, attempting to wrap things up.

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 “As a matter of fact there is,” said Brian, jumping up. “It sure is ironic that you’re
accusing me of selling out when you’re the one standing there pulling off a big publicity
stunt to get your own name in the newspaper. What’s that line from the Bible? Something
about pointing to the mote in your neighbor’s eye when there’s a big damn log in your own
eye?”

The Reverend Arnold Hammer did not respond to Brian directly; rather, he covered his
ears with his hands and started to sing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Steve Knudsen
immediately stood and joined him in singing. Brian could only marvel at their audacity;
feeling like he had been “run over by a bus load of zine fundamentalists on their way to a
revival,” he left Wheeler Hall.

Not willing to stick around a place where he wasn’t wanted, Brian collected his zines
and the two-hundred-odd dollars he made from the zine sale, packed his duffel bag, checked
out of his hotel room and caught a taxi to the airport. There he alternated between two
activities until his flight to Chicago boarded late in the afternoon. He drank beer in the tiny
bar near his gate while watching the 49ers game on TV. When that got tiresome, he sat in the
waiting room by his gate and watched airplanes take off. After lifting off the ground, they
flew straight toward a mountain before making a hard left turn. Brian prayed to no deity in
particular that his pilot had good reflexes and had practiced that turn.

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