Wednesday 4/3/24
It's lovely to get yesterday's mail--which came late--before the dawn of the new day, and receive no less than three letters from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Thanks, Wall Street Journal. I'm about to open up and unload on this venue in these pages and spill all of it. Because this five year tax nightmare is the least fucked up thing about my dealings with The Wall Street Journal.
I'll tell you about a couple editors, one of whom regularly verbally abused me, and then, when I finally, politely asked him to stop, not only refused to ever respond to pitch or piece again, but went around the office telling others to do the same--and of course that's what they did, because that's how these people are--and a guy who asked me for naked photos of myself and to call him "uncle."
I have a small mountain of correspondence here from the IRS and the state of Massachusetts. I bet I've spent fifty hours trying to rectify this tax matter. I should be paid by The Wall Street Journal for all of that time. To say nothing of the stress. All of the trips to the post office, the hours on the phone on hold, the labyrinth of government red tape I've had to try and navigate my way through, all of the federal and state employees with whom I've had to speak, going down to the mailbox not knowing what will be in store for me in the middle of an already very difficult day, seeing letters that I owe well over $100,000, seeing enormous penalty fines for lack of payment for the money I don't owe.
And while this is happening, a despotic, anger-consumed editor is making me the bad guy because I asked him not to shit down my throat when he spoke to me? Which wasn't how I put it, obviously.
If you're going to do me like this, discriminate against me, tell others to discriminate against me, and create a government nightmare for me lasting multiple years because of your error when all I've done is be professional, kind, willing, and the author of the best work there is, I'm going to light you up here because why wouldn't I at that point?
You know what the problem is with me? I'm so non-confrontational, and committed to the doing of my work, and the creating of my work, and I've been through so much that would have destroyed anyone else, that I let people get away with things for years. I let Mark Warren get away with things. I let Carolyn Kuebler get away with things. I let Sigrid Rausing get away with things. I let Michael Ray get away with things. But that is changing.
I'm in "last chance to dance" mode with a number of people, venues, presses. One last chance, then I'm going to do what I need to do. Others have already had that last chance. There's a lot to get to. And I'm even going to get to people outside of publishing who are up to no good. Let their employers or would-be employers see that in these pages.
I don't want to have to hold you accountable, but I will. Here's what is going to happen, though. At some point, I am going to want to hold you accountable. What that means is I'm going to be eager to do it, rather than doing it, as I am now, against my wishes.
These are not the words I want to be writing in this journal. Not pleasant things. Even now I'm trying so hard not to have to do this. I just want to be treated fairly and that means have my work be treated fairly, work whose quality more than speaks for itself.
