MELISSA ETHRIDGE’S AUTOGRAPH
by Dawn Bedore Proctor
I didn’t go looking for Melissa Ethridge’s autograph. But for $3.85, it seemed stupid to protest. Melissa’s autograph was being auctioned off with Dave Grohl’s.
If we met on the street and I only had a minute to introduce you, I would say, “This is Dave. He plays guitar.” More precisely, Dave Grohl is a rock star. He began his career in the high school marching band, survived the death of more famous band mates, and now packs stadiums around the world. His songs are electric, heartbreaking melodies, and when things were not going very well a few months back, I listened to his music all day long.
One day, I entered his name into the search engine on my computer and was shocked to find out I was not the only person to have strong feelings about Dave Grohl’s music. In fact, I was offended to discover quite few people were fanatical about all things Grohl; from the meaning of his lyrics to why he wears his hair like that.
The search led me to an offering on E-Bay for Dave Grohl’s autograph. The current bid was $3.85. The obligatory item description wove the romantic tale of a small Florida radio station that had existed “forever” in the radio culture, or 5 years tops. According to the E-myth, the dj/owner of said station was being forced out of the music business by some greedy, unnamed media conglomerate. Now, he was sadly selling his slice of the air along with every last scrap of equipment and memorabilia that had comprised up his one true dream; to finance his retirement home in wherever people who live in Florida go to retire. South Florida.
The centerpiece of the sale was a set of autographed index cards. Not signed photos, just ordinary 3” by 5” index cards with famous names written on them. No dates, no “To George, rock on” tag lines that would give them “provenance,” as those savvy in the E-world know is key to legitimate unseen sale. Simply index cards signed by musicians who I supposed had visited the station promoting their latest commercial release. Now, some anonymous broker was selling off this one-of-a-kind collection, but not as a collection or even one at a time, but in pairs.
Why Dave and Melissa had been paired would never be explained. Had they both made appearances at the station in the same week? Was it alphabetical? E for Ethridge and G for Grohl? Or was it a sales and marketing decision? Everything had to go and time was pressing. If so, what was the marketing formula? Was one considered the stronger artist whose sale would carry the other? Was it like-minded, pairing “rock with rock”? Or an attempt to appeal to one camp or another by pairing opposites, as simple as boy with girl? If so, which one of these two did the seller think was stronger? Or was the pairing more of a trolling strategy…surely someone will like one of these two people? If it was trolling, it had worked. I’d been snagged by Dave. I bid a whopping five dollars on the Dave/Melissa pair.
I was surprised to be electronically notified that I was the winner of the autographs with a high bid of $4.12. For those who don’t shop E-Bay, if your bid turns out to be the highest, even if you bid ten dollars more than the next lowest person, you will only be charged a penny over whatever the next highest bid was. This is an outstanding feature of the system and reason alone to justify its existence. It is also why my modest home is overflowing with Japanese prints, African carvings, and French textiles. My greatest E-Buy has to be an allegedly eight-hundred year old rice bowl. Sent directly from a small shop in Shanghai, it looks like it belongs in a museum. For only $5 plus shipping, I hold eight hundred years of human history in my hands. Running my fingers over its clay cracks gives me goose bumps. If I choose to believe it. For only ten dollars, plus shipping, I bought a 1950’s navy blue coat from a very nice woman in northern California. Just as she promised, it’s mysterious material is soft and light as air. The designer label reads, “A Genuine KashMiracle.”
Shipping for the pair of index cards was an additional $4. Shipping costs make up the shadowland of E-Bay. Shipping prices are usually posted right up front on the selling page, or you are given the chance to calculate shipping by entering your zip code. There is an un-American suspicion afoot that some sellers make more money collecting the “shipping” cost than they have invested in the object they are selling. Trust me. I was shocked to be the high bidder when I offered to pay $1 for a pair of Chinese carvings, only to find out shipping from Beijing was $199. Interesting addition. Lucky for me, the seller, in stilted English, let me out of the deal, but I had learned a valuable E-lesson. If you don’t want to pay (shipping), don’t play. Or like in Vegas, only bet what you can afford to lose (to Fed Ex).
Triumphant, I went right out and bought a money order for $8.12 at my local convenience store. I surrendered my money order to the protection of the U.S. post office along with a nice little note, which I always do with E-sales. The note stated simply how thrilled I was to be the winner of the autographs and promised I would take good care of them. Karma may be another myth, but better safe than sorry.
I had never bought an autograph before. I got one free once from John Wayne. My father was seeing me off after I had spent another precious vacation trying to re-establish some kind of relationship with my mother. I know now he was about to leave her himself. I think I had been brought in for a second opinion. Waiting to board my flight back home, I overheard two stewardesses at the sink in the lady’s room. The first was casually telling the second that John Wayne had just ridden in on her flight from somewhere. I made the mistake of telling Dad what I had overheard, and even though they were calling my flight, he insisted on tracking down the flight from somewhere. Jogging through the busy terminal, we came around a corner and there was John Wayne and his wife, standing alone in the center of an endless orange carpet in an otherwise empty reception area.
No one was talking to the Duke and the missus, but there was lots of peripheral gawking going on. Never content to watch, Dad decided he wanted an autograph, and he wanted ME to go get it. Downplaying my protests, he ordered me to “take advantage of the situation.” Nervously, I obeyed, gripping my American Airlines ticket jacket in one hand and Dad’s pen in the other. In front of a rapidly growing audience, I managed to cross the lonely sea of orange and whisper, “Please, Mr. Wayne, may I have your autograph?”
Mr. Wayne was wide and weathered, as towering in life as at the outdoor movies. Suddenly, I was back in pajamas, packed into the wayback our blue Ford station wagon with my five brothers and sisters, venturing out to the playground set beneath the soaring white screen, aware of the audience of cars, eager for the feature to start and sure not to see the end.
True to some imaginary script, Mr. Wayne rescued me with a deep voice. “Sure,” he said. He graciously received the pen and ticket jacket and began to write. But the cheap pen, most likely lifted by my dad from some auto parts shop, wouldn’t write on the glossy paper. I watched helplessly as he kept trying painfully aware of his wife restlessly shifting her weight.
I tried to fill the awkward silence with words and only the truth occurred to me. “It’s really for my Dad. He made me come over.”
Hesitating for only a second, the Duke drawled kindly in return, “Oh, he said, “and I was really hoping it was for you.” Looking up to meet his eyes, I saw I could believe him. Limping back to the visibly-impressed ring of onlookers, I tried to give my father the ink-smeared jacket. “No,” he said, “you keep it”. It would take me years to understand he had something he wanted more than the autograph. A story to tell. And I had John Wayne’s autograph, which, like Melissa’s, I hadn’t gone looking for to begin with.
Why did I want Dave Grohl’s autograph? A pathetic attempt to get close to a famous figure? A desire to imagine a connection to someone I wish I knew but never would? Sure it was. But more importantly, would the reality of pen and paper assure me Dave’s lyrics were as deep and meaningful as I believed them to be?
But my money order never arrived in Florida. After three weeks of waiting patiently, I was coldly informed that I was on the brink of receiving a “non-payment” strike against my E-Bay account. This is the equivalent of having your car repossessed with your neighbors watching, only E-Bay would remind you this neighborhood consisted of 80 million people around the world, any one of whom may one day have something you need or want. Hardened by the years I spent reviving my credit rating from school loan defaults to Platinum status, I beat the bushes of the U.S. Postal service only to come up empty. The money order would arrive in a tiny postal body bag back at home months from now with a badly-xeroxed apology defensively noting the volume of deliveries they get right. Florida was very sorry, but they just hadn’t gotten the money. And something in their cyber-sentiment made me believe it. Who rips someone off for $8.12?
But E-Bay had considered this possibility and devised a magnificent fail-safe. When a sale is complete, E-Bay requires “feedback” from both the buyer and seller. The buyer (me) is asked to rate the seller’s performance. Was the merchandise what was promised? Did it turn out to be fairly priced? Was it packaged properly and arrived in one piece? The buyer has to record a positive or negative “strike” towards the seller. The average of positive and negative strikes for all that vendor’s sales on E-Bay is displayed as a percentage right next to their name. You can tell instantly, before you even bid, if your seller has a good or bad reputation. If you are not happy, you can register your complaint, along with specific comments that remain on the seller’s record, available to anyone who wants to look them up. Anytime. Forever. You can also enter a few words describing a POSITIVE experience, which people love to do. If pleased, I might write, “Prompt delivery, would do business with them again, A+.” Obviously, sellers want as close to a 100% positive rating as they can muster, and it didn’t take me long to figure out most will do whatever is necessary to correct a “bad” sale, including refunding your money and letting you keep the merchandise, just to get a positive “strike.” It’s a ver”E” competitive world.
Adding to the drama, the reverse is true. The seller can leave feedback about the buyer(me). Did she pay? Did she pay on time? Was she a jerk to deal with? It all comes out in the end. Buyers receive a mark, in the form of a colored star, that tells other sellers whether or not she can be trusted. I once had a seller forward an antique snow globe to me in advance of getting paid based on my “purple star” or exemplary buyer history. I needed it in time for Christmas. After that, I took the “feedback” part of E-Bay pretty seriously. And I wasn’t so grown up that I still didn’t love getting an A+. From anyone.
Ultimately, E-Bay runs on the honor system. It will only work if people trust each other. In order to save this particular sale and my international reputation, I would have to trust Florida, and pay again. Or step aside and allow someone else to buy my Dave/Melissa pairing. I reexamined my motives to begin with, and in the end, two things stood out… I absolutely cherished my credit rating, and Dave Grohl’s music had helped stitch the ragged wound of my mother’s death. In her final year, she had fought hard to forge a bond between us, validating an avalanche of abuse and apologizing as best she could. But by then, curious as I was to see what all the mother-daughter fuss was about, I no longer needed what she had to offer.
This time, I sent cash. A faded ten-dollar bill. Keep the change. An envelope arrived at my door in just five days along with a nice little note of its own. Florida appreciated my trust. True to tale, two 3” by 5” cards, lined on the front, were adorned on the back with only the artistic, cursive strokes of two very different musicians who had both arrived with records to sell. Melissa’s was in black pen. Dave had used a Sharpie.
Somewhere in a shoe box in my closet is a faded American Airlines ticket jacket signed plainly, “Happy Trails, John Wayne.”
Melissa Ethridge’s autograph roams my house. Too hard won to abandon, I move it from basket to bin, waiting for the day when it will be just the right gift for the occasion. Looking closely, I can see the envelope both autographs had come in clearly postmarked with the shipping charge, “Priority Mail – $1.23.“
Dave’s index card has been tenderly framed and sits next to my bed. It’s a busy, delicious slash of ink. You can’t really read his name. You have to take it on faith.