Listen . . . y’all gotta cool it with this! Especially Bex!! God forbid a dude’s friends are 95% women!!!

I woke up this morning to this text from Bex (a Bex Text) . . . “felt an ease”, she says! Well, the people have spoken: evidently it is much easier to decipher Star ★ Mail . . .

. . . when I use a typewriter. If you’ve never received a letter from me, I do have ornate cursive penmanship. And if you HAVE received a letter from me, apparently some of that letter may have been difficult to decode, being that my penmanship resembles that of some dude named Timothy Matlack, who inked the Declaration of Independence. Hey man . . . that’s how I was taught long ago. I don’t know how else to swing it!

I have, for something like fifteen years now, used fine-point Sharpie pens to write hundreds (maybe thousands) of letters and postcards to friends and strangers all over the world. They look like this:

I have amassed dozens of them from various office gigs I’ve had. The operations manager will say: “Ryan, which office supplies do you need?” and often those pens are the only thing I ask for. And when I eventually jump ship, I take those pens with me. I haven’t had to buy any new ones in many years:

Anyway: these pens, coupled with my flowery handwriting, have proven to be a deadly combination for some of you out there in Starland. And so for the cursive-challenged, I reckon I will use my new typewriter for at least some of my correspondence . . . I refuse to use it every time. For one thing, writing by hand feels so good. A typewriter feels good in a different way, but I am also limited on when I can use it since it is extremely loud. I actually have no idea if my neighbors can hear it, but I would be surprised if that rhythmic key pounding did not register at least faintly in their homes. And there’s no one more dangerous to piss off than a German. They love their peace and quiet, bless them (even if they have no problem telling you, a stranger, that your dog is not allowed to trod across a particular patch of grass that bears no indication of this so-called rule).

Hemingway awoke very early and did all his writing in the morning, and then he would get on with the day. I seem to recall him saying in A MOVEABLE FEAST that he finished writing before his wife woke up. That would be great, I think, to get all the work over with and then to have the rest of your waking life to do whatever you want, which I assume for him meant watching bullfights and hunting water buffalo with a double-barrel shotgun.

Alas, I do all my best writing at night, and by “at night” I mean I usually begin writing well past midnight. For instance right now it is 6:20 a.m. here in Central European Time, and this is when I have begun writing. I will cease, as is my wont, AT DAWN . . . or whenever I finish this post, whichever comes first.

So if I am going to utilize my Olivetti Lettera 35, I should probably wrap it up around eight p.m. And that is precisely when I finished writing a letter to dear Bex, my fiancée. It was the very first letter I had written using my new typewriter, and I told her as much in the letter. She was able to read and parse this because I had used a machine to communicate it.

Many years ago, I received a red Olivetti Lettera 35 for Christmas. I loved that thing and used it all the time. But in fall 2019, seven years ago now (oh my GOD . . . seven years), I sold it to some nerd from Craigslist because 1) I badly needed the money for my imminent move to Berlin, and 2) that thing weighs like ten pounds and I figured I’d be shipping everything over here, and I wanted to get rid of as much Heavy Stuff as possible. It was painful to sell it. It was beautiful:

. . . yet many of my things remain still in the United States, all these years later, so I could have hung on to that typewriter. And then something happened where typewriters began tripling and quadrupling in price on eBay and Etsy, and for many years replacing it eluded me. There was no way I was going to drop $400 on a typewriter, as much as I wanted one.

However: I recently visited Italy with Bex and Jamal and Nicole Olivetti . . . as in THE Nicole Olivetti, great-great-granddaughter of Camillo Olivetti, who founded Olivetti S.p.A., which began manufacturing typewriters in 1908. For those of you at home, that was 118 years ago. When I first met her, and upon learning her last name, I said: “Oh, Olivetti. Like the typewriter company. I used to have one of those typewriters. But I accidentally ruined my life and losing that typewriter was part of it.” And that’s when she told me of her (to me) mythic parentage.

And so I had met and befriended the heiress to the Olivetti typewriter fortune . . . typewriter royalty! But she quickly corrected me: the money was long gone, and what remained of her family’s legacy was “a bunch of barely functioning typewriters in my parents’ basement.” Still, I thought: “Whoa . . .” And so in August when I finally visited Casa Olivetti, which is a forty-minute drive from Milan, I saw some of those typewriters. She had overstated their decay, at least the ones I saw. Many of them were proudly displayed in the living room, including one of the first ones ever produced:

They even had what I assume is an old ad featuring my hero Dante Alighieri, patron saint to not only me, but to all Italians, pointing solemnly at that very same Olivetti model:

I resisted the impulse to rob the Olivetti family of their family heirlooms. And so once I was back in my detective’s tower in Berlin, I started searching around for a new Olivetti Lettera 35. I figured because I was in Europe where they had originally been produced in the early 70s, they might be more plentiful and thus cheaper. At the very least, shipping wouldn’t cost $100. Sure as you were born, I found some on eBay that were about $150 (€130~) shipped. I called Olivetti and told her as much. I figured she was perhaps the greatest resource on earth for picking out an Olivetti typewriter. I sent her some pictures of the ones I had been looking at, and said I was thinking about getting the purple one:

She said: “I’ll be honest . . . I hate that one. The other colors are nicer.”

And of course she was right . . . that’s Easter egg purple. I’m more of a Tyrian purple kind of guy. And so I bought a hot-red Lettera 35 that was similar enough to the color of my old Lettera. Some German dude in Spain was selling the thing. He said he’d painted the thing himself, and that it had been serviced recently and came with a brand new typewriter ribbon, and so on. It arrived very delicately packaged the day after I got back from London a few weeks ago. Behold:

(I actually did not mean to take a near-identical picture as the one above. It just seems like the best angle to show it off is all . . .)

I like this one better, to be honest . . . more of a ruby red lipstick red than a pastel red like my old one. And it has a tab key!

Listen: using this thing feels so good. Writing with a typewriter is necessarily slower than using a keyboard, because obviously it’s all mechanical and punching too many keys too quickly causes the key slugs to jam together. I am a very fast typist, and so having to slow down a bit is nice. That, coupled with the fact that there’s no backspace on a typewriter, makes writing feel more deliberate. You really have to think about what you’re going to say, because if you fuck it up, you’re going to have to rewrite the whole thing. A built-in bottleneck for my own stupidity is good news for everyone.

All this is to say: I want to use this thing as much as possible. If you’d like a letter from me, be you an old friend or a new freak, let me know by clicking / tapping on this cute image I made last summer:

. . . or, whatever, here’s this thing:

ryan[at]starsailor[dot]co

(If I don’t put the @ and . in brackets, the amount of losers who email me literally every day offering to SEO-ify my website will increase by orders of magnitude.)

And if you don’t feel comfortable giving out your address to some random-ass dude from the internet, just say hello anyway! I love it when people do that.

Well! Dawn approaches, which means it’s time to climb inside my velvet-lined coffin and succumb to the long, dark dream once again. And so . . .

A LONG TIME AGO NOW . . .

I was friends with a band called Those Darlins. I saw them play in probably a dozen cities over the course of three or four years . . . there was something sincere and unpretentious about them that I liked. I eventually befriended them simply by showing up and hanging around. And every time we reunited, I’d give all three of them a novel each. I figured that was a good thing to give someone who spends half their life driving from one city to another all over the country. And whenever we met up again in some venue somewhere, however many months later, they’d tell me they’d finished the novels I gave them. And then invariably I’d help them break down their equipment and carry it out to the tour van.

I was in love with Nikki on the right and I’ll bet she sensed it. How could you not be? We were from the same area and had a lot to talk about. I usually ended up hanging around her and Linwood the most . . . Jessi was more mysterious and seemed to keep to herself. But when we did talk, she was very sweet to me. I can still remember her twangy Tennessee accent.

One winter, about a week before Christmas, I flew from Oakland to Nashville and stayed with my friend Carrie in her big house in the country. At night we’d drive into the city and hang out with our friend Robbie from Deer Tick, who had introduced me to my good friend Kate the previous fall.

I was going to a Those Darlins show late one night, and wouldn’t be able to make it back to Carrie’s, so Linwood said I could crash with him after the show. I had brought everyone a new novel again, all wrapped in newspaper for Christmas. I took two buses to this little venue on the outskirts of town. I got there early and downed two beers in mason jars. I was trying to work up the courage to flirt with Nikki. Before they went on, I found Nikki in the crowd with her younger sister. They flanked me, and I towered over them. I remember they had these insanely bright blue eyes, outlined in eyeliner. I remember they had these insanely bright blue eyes outlined in eyeliner. I told Nikki I was staying with Linwood that night . . . she said everyone was going to meet up at her house after the show, and that I should come. I felt my face grow hot. Maybe, I thought in that foolish way only a young man thinks, she was in love with me too.

It was a small bar show . . . I reckon there were maybe forty people there at most. I always liked going to shows like this. They were more fun. And since Those Darlins lived in Nashville, this was a hometown show, and so the crowd was mainly comprised of their friends. That made it even better.

I remember befriending this beautiful Canadian goth girl named Jessica who told me she had come all the way down from Toronto to see them. (I am a magnet for Canadians.) She was friendly in that uniquely Canadian way. She took my hand and led me all around the bar and into the backyard, where it was below freezing and lit with heat lamps. Outside she told me she worked at Kops Records there and gave me her business card, and asked that I come visit her there sometime. I had intended to and really wish I had. She was a lone traveler, a Mad Maxian drifter like me, and we liked that about each other. I still have her card in a cigar box somewhere in storage. I found a picture of it I took around that time. I remember I kept it and my Nashville MTA bus card in my pocket for something like a year:

She stood next to me the entire show and held my hand. I said, “Hey, I’m down and all . . . but if Nikki glances our way, you gotta temporarily let go of me. Because, after all, I’m in love with her.” She understood.

Afterward, I said good-bye to the Canadian hottie and helped the band carry their guitar cases and amps to the big white tour van. We all piled into the back. Linwood announced he was likely too intoxicated to drive. Since I was the most sober, I had to drive us home. I remember having to ferry a handful of their friends back to their respective houses, and then Linwood and Nikki and her sister and her sister’s boyfriend and I headed for Nikki and her sister’s place. Jessi didn’t come with us . . . she had left the place alone. But I had given her her Christmas present and hugged her tightly.

Nikki led us inside. I remember the walls were painted forest green and she had an easel set up and was painting a portrait of John Waters, her hero, which she later gave him in person. Her other paintings and drawings were hung on the wall. It was a cozy place. She had me follow her into her kitchen where she poured me a glass of Scotch whisky, which I had always regarded as a vile spirit. We toasted and I took a sip. It was a Herculean effort not to make a face of total revulsion. She said, “Pretty good, huh?” I white-lied: “Oh, yeah.” I was still maintaining a beer buzz from the show, so I said something brave: “Nikki, may I see your bedroom?” She smiled and asked me why. I said, “Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m just curious is all!” . . . which was true, OK? She took me upstairs to see it.

In the center of the room was a big white antique bed with one of those sheer canopy fairy nets over it. The whole room was lit by Christmas lights. Nikki said: “You’re always giving me books, so now I want to give you one.” She went over to her bookshelf and took out a book. It was Groucho Marx’s autobiography. I found it so endearing she had chosen that out of all her books. I told her I’d give it back next time I saw her but she told me to keep it.

Sometime later, I found between two pages a Frontier plane ticket stub from Albuquerque to Denver from August 27th of God only knows what year. Of course, I still have the book, and inside still lives that ancient plane ticket:

Back downstairs, we all got drunk as hell and partied. There were only five or six of us . . . until some nerdy bald dude showed up. He obviously had the hots for Nikki, but I wasn’t too worried about it. I would soon learn that my complacency was misguided.

Nearing three in the morning, Linwood said we ought to get going. Nikki’s sister’s boyfriend was Linwood’s roommate, so he and Nikki’s sister came along with us. I hugged Nikki and gave her a kiss on the cheek, and we departed. Back in the van, I realized I’d left my backpack in the house, and went back in to retrieve it. To my great surprise, I walked inside and found Nikki sitting right up against the bald dude with her leg over his. It was undeniably romantic. I said, “Oh, uh, sorry . . . I gotta grab my bag.” They seemed to not really notice me. I walked back out into the dark cold of winter, and amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolved round me, I felt my little heart shatter into a thousand pieces. I had underestimated my opponent. Well, I thought, wooing Deer Tick’s John McCauley’s ex-fiancée was always going to be a long shot. Such is my tale . . .

At Linwood’s, he made a bed for me on the couch, and the three of them headed upstairs. I fell into a dark and dreamless winter’s sleep. I was a little despondent about the whole Nikki thing.

I awoke eight hours later and found myself alone in a completely silent house. I lay there for a while and considered my fate. Eventually I crawled from the couch to the floor and over to the bookshelf. I pulled out Hunter S. Thompson’s FEAR AND LOATHING IN AMERICA, which, among other things, is a collection of his letters. I remember he frequently signed his correspondence with:

OK for now,
Hunter

. . . which I borrowed for a while afterward.

I folded the comforter on the couch into a square and placed the pillow atop it, glugged down a liter of water in the kitchen, and took out a pen and notebook from my bag to write Linwood a little note. I thanked him for letting me crash and told him to tell Nikki and Jessi I said hey. I signed it:

OK for now,
Ryan Starsailor ☆彡

Back outside, it was colder than hell, grey and overcast. I had that ghostly feeling you sometimes get when it seems like it could start snowing at any minute. I walked a mile or two back into town and got a bagel and a cup of coffee at a cafe until it was time to board a Greyhound bus to Knoxville.

Six months passed. I saw Those Darlins again at a now-defunct venue in Temescal in Oakland called Leo’s. My best friend Laura Rokas had just moved from Montreal into my house in the Bay Area and so I took her along with me. We got in for free.

After the show, I pulled my cursed decommissioned police car around front and showed Linwood and Nikki and Jessi. I introduced them all to Laura. And I approached Nikki and gave her a Mellow Yellow from my breast pocket and put one in my own mouth. I lit our cigarettes and we stood side-by-side with our backs against the building. She was and remains the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life and, with nothing to lose, I said as much to her right then and there. She smiled and looked at me with that smokey eyeliner and red lipstick she always had on and I nearly had a stroke. By then I had accepted that Nikki and I were probably not going to get married, but I flirted with her anyway, and she flirted back. (She ended up marrying a bald comedian and moving to London to have a bunch of kids, where apparently she remains to this day. I have a lot of hair. I never stood a chance . . .)

Back in the long-gone past, on the dark and wild streets of Oakland, in the final days of the city I once knew and loved, Laura and I hung out on the sidewalk with Those Darlins for an hour or so. When it was time to go, I hugged them all and then Laura and I headed back to our fortified compound in Ghost Town in West Oakland. That was the last time I ever saw any of them . . . the band broke up a few months later.

Not long after that, Jessi announced on Instagram that she had been diagnosed with cervical cancer following a routine gynecologist visit. I was devastated. She began chemo soon after while still living at home. I reached out to Linwood and Nikki and asked them to keep me updated. She seemed to be all right for a while, and it looked like she would pull through. I remember her posting pictures online of her wearing a handmade “I Ain’t Afraid” T-shirt, which was the name of one of her songs.

But at one point, she started going downhill fast and was hospitalized. Linwood told me he was visiting her multiple times a week. They even brought her dog in to see her. I mailed him a book to give to her since she was bedridden . . . it was THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER AND FORGETTING. Jessi was pretty small to begin with, but now she began to look visibly ill and Linwood said she probably didn’t have much time left.

My friend Jessi Zazu died on September 13th, 2017. She was only 28 years old. She was brave until the end.

I thought it was important to pay tribute to my friend on the anniversary of her death. I cannot believe that was nearly a decade ago now. I’ve been tearing up the entire time I’ve been writing this, but upon thinking of her again and hearing her voice in my head for the first time in a long time, I burst into tears. She was a beautiful person. She was a real individual, tough and sensitive at the same time, which is a difficult thing to be. I miss her.

Rest in peace, Jessi. I love you. Thanks for always letting me hang around.

I don’t wanna watch you waste away
I’ve seen you fall and forget it all
You don’t wanna watch me do the same

thanks brother jackson . . . love the kettle lol