Fourth time now. Same seller, same slip. My name typed out from the cover and mangled along the way. A z turns into a tz, and just like that I'm someone else.
The lovely part isn't the typo. Typos happen. The lovely part is the promise hanging over it. Catawiki advertises experts you can count on, more than 240 in-house specialists who sift through thousands of objects every day and let only the best go to auction. Trained eyes, a connoisseur's glance, a quality filter.
And those 240 pairs of eyes fail, four times over, to read a name set in finger-thick letters across the cover.
I like to picture the inspection. A specialist leans over my book, studies the cover, nods in approval, then types with all the care of a man whose mind is already at lunch. Check mark. Next object.
Sometimes I think I should have come up with a pseudonym years ago. Become an erotic photographer under something other than my real name, something of my own, something invented, something with a ring to it. But honestly, I'd probably have changed more than just a z into a tz.
So I'm left with good old Simon Boltz. There's no such person, just that one extra letter that turns my work into a stranger's. A tz, and suddenly none of it is mine.
Should this text ever land on Catawiki, I'd have just one request for the next of the 240. Take a look at the cover. My name is right there. Even spelled correctly.