Please Mr. Postman

last night, before going to the gym to work out, i went to pick up my mail from the post office, where my post office box is located. i've had a p.o. box for 16 & half years. i decided to get a p.o. box way back in 1989, when i wanted to do creative mail experiments, such as write to fringe-type people & organizations to learn more about their activities going under an assumed name, plus the fact i was still publishing my fanzine, cops hate poetry, plus a few other publications.

i was still living at home at that point & my eldest brother louie became a little concerned, when one of my mail art projects started attracting contributing letters from incarcerated men. so, off i went to purchase one. at that juncture of my life, where the p.o. box was located was entirely central too. it was a perfect place, right smack-dab in between college and home. whenever, i came back from school, i would stop off & pick up my mail & then catch a bus & go home. simple as that.

one great thing about having a p.o. box, is you cannot be contacted directly by someone whom you don't want to get in touch with you, like say, the fbi, cia, your local police department, creditors or someone you've fallen out with, ex girlfriend, friend, enemy or stalker. the only downfall of having a p.o. box, is you may not get your mail on time, if you have lousy mail delivery, which i have had from time to time.

though, i've never had any terribly awful experiences with having it, i can say, it did save me a mountain of headaches a few years ago, when i lived in a basement apartment, where the landlady never bothered to give me my mail on time or at all. not giving someone their mail is a federal offense, to say the least. however, back to the subject matter at hand. she used to give me my mail sometimes up to two months late! two months late! what was she waiting for, a reminder? after finding subsciptions, things i ordered online via the internet & most importantly, checks from mom not arriving on time, if at all, i decided to have ALL of my mail forwarded to my p.o. box.

to give you a rough idea of how she treated my mail, in 2002, i graduated from a local citizen's police academy & was waiting for my graduation photo i had taken with the police chief & the mayor of the city. the police department was only six blocks away from where i lived & yet i waited for three months, until i called the departmental coordinator to tell him the photograph never arrived. i told him to send it to my p.o. box instead. it arrived within one week of speaking to him! other times, i found my mail opened or varying liquid stains on it, mostly orange juice. she couldn't care less about me, apparently, let alone my mail.

so one day, i confronted her & asked for my own mailbox. she told me she couldn't do that. i asked why couldn't she, to which she responded that my apartment i was living in was illegal. i knew then, i had to get out of there, which i did on, ironically, september 11, 2004, but i will save that moving day account for another time, it's a whopper too, i guarantee it!!!

so, in my eyes, having a p.o. box is the best thing money can buy. besides, they are pretty cheap too & no one seems to want them, because of strides the internet has taken over the past several years, making people drop snail mail over email. rent is dirt cheap & besides, you get to meet all kinds of people when picking up your mail, including old postmen, the homeless & famous local people, whose p.o. boxes are synonmous with everybody.