Ward - Renegades: my wild trip from professor to new journalist with outrageous visits from Clint Eastwood, Reggie Jackson, Larry Flynt, and other American icons

I was thrilled to learn that Ben LeRoy, major honcho of upstart and super-hip Tyrus Books wanted to put out a collection of my journalistic pieces from the fab 70s and 80s. I mean how many scribes get their perishable magazine and newspaper work collected in book form?

Yep, a collection of my best pieces. Perfect, thought I! That is, until I began to ponder what this endeavor might entail.

Boss Ben wanted me to write a companion essay along with the pieces. Something that might give the inside poop on the life of this particular New Journalist, as he waded his way through the muck and double dealing of the high-powered journalistic world of sharpies, slicksters, and general freaking editorial maniacs.

Sounds a-okay to me, Ben, says I.

But then I started to write and a sick, twisted feeling spread through my bowels.

The very idea of revisiting my younger self, the mustachioed, cowboy-haired, ill-kempt, bourbon-drinking, wild man who would go anywhere at a moments notice, meet total strangers, get them to reveal crucial things about themselves, sleep two hours a night, come back home on the red-eye with a filled notebook and then sit down and lash together a ten-thousand-word story over the weekend, while still finding time to play the guitar, go to all-night discos with Morgan Entrekin, Jay McInerney, Bob Datilla, David Black, John Lombardi, Lucian Truscott, Richard Price, Mike Disend, John Eskow, Terry Southern, Rip Torn, Bob Asahina, and anyone else we happened to pick up along the merry way just thinking about that younger version of myself was exhausting. Plus, Id have to relive the doubt and fear I felt every time I went out on a piece.

The question every freelance journo (without a trust fund) asks himself: What if I blow it? What if my subject refuses to talk to me? What if all he or she says is, We play them one game at a time, Bob. Or I just thank Jesus Christ for my movie career. Or, even worse, as one former NFL quarterback once told a friend of mine: I love playing football and the forward pass is my favorite play. Well, no fucking shit! My friend Hicks then asked his subject to think of something that really made him mad, just drove him nuts, the idea being he might be able to squeeze a soupon of passion out of this meathead. The QB agreed to try and think of the thing that bugged him, that drove him batshit, like no other. My friend called him back the next day, and the great QB said: Jack, I got it. I really got it. The thing that pisses my ass off more than anything in this goddamned world! Good man, Jack said, getting pen ready to scratch paper. And what is said thing? Careless drivers, the QB screamed. Careless fucking drivers really make me angry, pal! Whereupon Hicksie saw his entire piece, career, life fall apart. This was the big reveal? This was what someone would plunk their money down for? Careless fucking drivers?