Roger and Jeremy

My childhood friend — my roommate — and I were extremely lonely.

Not Netflix-and-chill lonely.

More like two fish in a tank at a dentist’s office, watching life happen on the other side of the glass.

We had no social life.

None.

Zero.

Even our shadows had stopped following us.

This was before GPS.

Before smartphones.

Before MapQuest.

Back then, getting lost was a lifestyle choice.

All we knew was that somewhere in New Jersey there was a Turkish community.

Supposedly in Paterson.

For several weekends, we tried to find it.

Every time, we failed.

We’d drive around, get lost, and somehow end up in the Spanish part of the city.

Wrong language.

Wrong signs.

Wrong food.

We’d look at each other thinking, this can’t be Turkey… but the music is good, then drive home in silence.

* * *

Finally, one Sunday — with slightly better directions and dangerously high optimism — we found it.

The Turkish community was concentrated along Main Street in South Paterson.

I parked my beat-up Honda Civic in front of a tiny hole-in-the-wall place called Çiçek Video.

Inside, a guy was renting bootleg Turkish VHS tapes — two-month-old news from Turkey, pirated movies, and enough nostalgia to trigger instant homesickness.

We rented a few tapes and crossed the street to the Turkish butcher.

Now, I should explain something.

I have a big mouth.

Always have.

Silence makes me uncomfortable, so I fill it with words — usually the wrong ones.

I said,

“We’ve been looking for the Turkish neighborhood for weeks. We finally found it. We’re roommates. We don’t know anyone in America. It’s time we meet a nice Turkish girl and get married.”

* * *

The butcher didn’t say a word.

He simply vanished into the back.

A minute later, he returned carrying half a lamb — legs, chops, everything — and handed it to us like we’d just won the grand prize on a daytime game show.

Then he waved his hand and refused to take any money.

We walked out holding a dead animal, trying to understand which part of the conversation had gone wrong.

Before leaving, I went back into the video store and explained what had just happened.

A few Turks immediately started laughing.

One guy laughed so hard he had to sit down, like he’d been waiting his whole life for this exact story.

Finally, the owner said,

“He has six daughters at home. He thought you came to ask for one of them.”

We got free lamb.

No phone numbers.

No daughters.

But still — it felt like progress.

Traumatized, embarrassed, and suddenly responsible for a large amount of meat, we avoided Paterson for a while.

It felt safer that way.

* * *

Not long after, my roommate discovered another Turkish community — this one upstate in a small town called Chestnut Ridge, right on the New York–New Jersey border.

Close enough to feel familiar.

Far enough to pretend the lamb incident never happened.

He asked if I could drive him there.

* * *

Every Saturday night, they held social gatherings.

One family would cook for the entire group in a restaurant-sized kitchen.

The community revolved around a Turkish mosque, with many families living right on the property.

It was organized, warm, welcoming — and best of all, nobody tried to give us livestock.

* * *

We found the place, and I dropped him off.

He said,

“Come back and pick me up around midnight.”

Midnight.

Perfect.

Just enough time for me to feel productive while doing absolutely nothing.

* * *

I drove to the nearest movie theater at the Spring Valley Marketplace and watched a movie I barely remember.

I ate popcorn and wondered whether my roommate was meeting the love of his life — or being offered another free animal, possibly larger.

When the movie ended, I picked him up and we drove back to Jersey City.

The trip took an hour to an hour and a half, depending on traffic and how much time I spent thinking about how strange immigrant life could feel.

* * *

We were grown men.

Employed.

Living in America.

Yet our weekends were spent driving long distances just to hear our own language and feel normal for a few hours.

Looking back, it was awkward, lonely, and slightly ridiculous.

At the time, though, it felt like progress.

My roommate knew exactly what was going on in my life.

I was working a full-time job while trying to launch a magazine, sell ads, design layouts, and figure out how I was going to fulfill subscriptions I had no idea how to deliver.

Somehow, he turned my stress into a sales pitch.

* * *

Apparently, he told the community about the “serious business opportunity” I had fallen into — and how it desperately needed help.

The community was led by a highly respected, scholarly older man.

When he heard my story, he didn’t hesitate.

* * *

He told my roommate,

“Tell your roommate to rent the mosque’s standalone garage on the street and move out of his apartment. It’s fully finished — heat, air conditioning, everything. A perfect office.”

Then he added,

“He also has a full staff here. Let him meet Jim Morgan.”

* * *

Jim — whose Turkish name was Jamal — was an accomplished graphic designer and the son of a rabbi.

At the time, I thought I was barely surviving.

I didn’t yet realize I had just been handed office space, staff, and a professional designer — courtesy of a mosque garage.

The move took planning. The phone was already ringing nonstop at my townhouse in Jersey City. Carmen had practically moved in and was working twelve-hour days out of my living room. My home had quietly become a call center with furniture.

* * *

I paid $500 a month for the garage office, and Jim set up his Mac there.

We even installed a phone line — this was before cell phones, back when wires still mattered.

When the phone rang, we answered confidently,

“SYS-CON Production. How may I help you?”

It sounded so official we almost believed it ourselves.

* * *

Fast forward twelve months.

We had published six issues.

I produced the first one myself in my bedroom, surrounded by coffee cups and panic.

By the second issue, Jim Morgan had taken over the layout — and thankfully never gave it back.

About a year later, the garage door opened and a tall, confident guy walked in, as if wandering into random garages was part of his daily routine.

He stuck out his hand and said,

“Hi, I’m Roger Strukhoff. I live in California. I publish Sybase Magazine. I do custom publishing. Companies pay me, I produce the magazine, and I mail it to their readers.”

I nodded like this made perfect sense — two professionals meeting in a converted garage in New Jersey.

I said,

“Nice to meet you, Roger. This is Jim Morgan, our art director and vice president of production.”

At that point, we were still adjusting to the idea that people from California even knew we existed — let alone treated us like a real company.

* * *

After some small talk, Roger got serious.

He explained that he had been publishing Sybase Magazine as a custom title.

Sybase paid him to produce it.

But then Sybase acquired Powersoft — and suddenly everything changed.

* * *

“They’re telling me,” he said, “that there’s a publisher in New Jersey producing a monthly magazine called PowerBuilder Developer’s Journal. A well-respected publication.”

He paused.

“And it’s not costing them a dime.”

He looked straight at me.

“And that publisher,” he said, “is you.”

* * *

That’s how I met Roger Strukhoff.

In hindsight, he was the first friendly competitor we ever encountered — though we didn’t know we were competitors yet.

As SYS-CON gained traction, the industry around us began to shift.

A few rival publications disappeared along the way — some we knew about, others we discovered only in hindsight, long after they were already gone.

* * *

By then, the garage phase of the company was behind us.

We made a deliberate decision to bring sales, accounting, customer service, editorial, and production under one roof.

In theory, we were becoming a real company.

* * *

We found a building in Pearl River, New York, at 39 East Central Avenue.

Our offices were on the second floor, above three street-level businesses: an antique shop, a barber, and a bagel store.

The space was in rough shape — worse than the bootleg video store in Paterson, which I had once believed set the absolute bottom for commercial real estate.

* * *

The building was owned by an immigrant pizza man and his wife.

They treated ownership like an open-door policy.

They showed up unannounced, wandered the halls, and occasionally picked arguments with random employees, as if workplace tension were included in the rent.

* * *

Eventually, I’d had enough.

I called their realtor, Steve Bernasconi, and asked whether the owner would consider selling the building.

Steve called back with a number.

I wrote a check and became a landlord overnight.

That’s when I learned another lesson of entrepreneurship: solving one problem often creates a more expensive version of it.

Suddenly, tenants were calling me to change light bulbs and unclog toilets.

This was not the kind of vertical integration I had in mind.

* * *

So I handed the keys — and the headaches — to Abraham, one of our designers who also happened to be handy with home remodeling, and put him in charge of managing our three ground-floor tenants. That freed me up to get back to the business I actually knew how to run. By then, our editorial operation had its own structure. M’lou Pinkham was our senior editor. She reported to Jim Morgan, but she ran editorial hiring independently. Writers, copy editors, freelancers — if they passed through the door, M’lou had brought them in.

* * *

That’s when I first noticed Jeremy.

He was sitting in production next to the printer on what could generously be described as a chair.

It had no back.

One arm was missing.

And it looked like it had already lived a long and difficult life before arriving at our office.

* * *

I asked Alex and Robert who the new guy was. “M’lou hired him,” they said. “We think he’s a copy editor.” I noticed the accent immediately. It stood out in a room full of New Jersey voices.

* * *

“Where’s he from?” I asked.

They looked at me like I’d just violated an HR policy that didn’t exist yet.

“You can’t ask that.”

I listened to him talk for a moment.

Whatever his title was, I thought, that accent is doing half the work already.

I didn’t know what we were going to do with him yet — but I knew we were going to do something.