A national stink has been created by the School Board in Provincetown’s recent decision to allow children as young as five access to condoms without their parents’ permission. As a frequent visitor to Provincetown, I have a few thoughts on the matter that might be different from the standard take. I think we should definitely hand out condoms to young kids. Here’s what they might do with them:
1. Make Water Balloons
In the 1970’s, in my early teens I founded an environmental group for kids with the grandiose title, Society for the Prevention of Environmental Corruption. We met on Saturdays in a Drug Rehab Center/Free University called Everyday People, in the same room that the Sex Education class met. One Saturday, bored with talk of saving the planet, or at least with plans to clean up Hinkson Creek, we poked around our room and opened one of the closets where we found a trove of sex education paraphernalia, mostly condoms and birth controls pills. We broke out the birth control pills and most of us, boys and girls alike, popped a couple each, pretending to be high (it was the 70’s, after all), then broke out the condoms and filled them with water. A popular fish and chips place next door, Alfie’s, had a lunch rush going on. Perched in the windows of the second floor of Everyday People, we shouted in unison at a group of college kids making their way to the restaurant. “Look up! “ They did and then we rained down upon them as if from heaven the giant distended condoms.
I only wish that Columbia, Missouri and Roger the Youth Minister (who ran Everyday People) had been as progressive about condoms then as Provincetown is now. It would have been so much nicer for me if Roger had simply said, “Not that I approve, but I suppose that none of your parents need to know about the condoms.”
2. Trade Them for Candy
A couple of years ago, I was in Provincetown with my wife and four daughters during the annual Mardi Gras celebration, which in Ptown is celebrated in August. The theme that year was the Wild, Wild West. The floats lumbered by to deafening music as men and women in cow folk regalia threw beads and candy and drag queens dressed like Miss Kitty and her girls waved at the enthusiastic crowd from convertibles. Mardi Gras beads rained upon us, and soon my daughters were draped in them. Then the Bacardi Float passed sporting bare-chested men dressed in tight shorts, cowboy hats and boots. They tossed handfuls of packets to us and my five-year-old Shoshie dove for them. Some sweet treat?
They were not. They were condoms.
A young dancer appeared in our midst and knelt beside Shoshie, “Hi, what’s your name?” he asked.
She told him without a hint of shyness.
“Oh, that’s a nice name, but you’re too young for this, sweetheart” and he gently took the condom from her. “Here, have some candy.” She took some, thanking him, just as I had taught. Always thank the stranger when he takes the condom and gives you candy instead.
3. Put them on Sticks
Years ago, I read a story about a village in a country (I forget which) with a population problem that was visited by a social worker who talked to the villagers about birth control. He handed out condoms to the men and told them how they could prevent their wives from having more babies. Demonstrating how to put on a condom, he placed a condom on a stick. “When you have relations with your wife, you put the condom on and you won’t have babies.”
A year later when he returned, the men complained that the method had not worked at all, though they had all followed the social worker’s instructions precisely. To prove it, they led him to a field covered in sticks draped in condoms.
The villagers of course were not stupid. They were simply following the instructions of the health worker. They had no other context for condoms.
Neither do five-year olds.
Not many five year olds would ask for condoms, but I wonder so what if they do? Condoms are good for grownups, a really good idea for sexually active teens, and best of all for five year olds, who are more inventive than the rest of us. I plan to give a dozen to my now seven-year-old daughter Shoshie and tell her to go wild, to do whatever she wants with them. Personally, I think she’ll still prefer candy.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
A Day at the Prefecture
It's been quite a while since I've posted on my blog. I'm now in France with my family, supposedly teaching for the semester at the University of Montpellier. The beginning of our time in France has been fraught so far . . . Not especially fun to live but perhaps worth reading about? So here's my first entry . . .
I thought I’d give you a little taste (or reminder) of the legendary French bureaucracy.
Last week, I was told by Madame Loretz in Personnel at The University of Montpellier where I’m teaching for several months that I had been given the wrong visa by the Chicago Consulate. It’s actually NOT the wrong visa, but it was impossible to convince Madame Loretz of that. The visa is a three-month visa with a note attached (in English though it should be in French) stating that the three-month visa was not a mistake, and that I needed to report to the Prefecture within a week of entering French territory and apply for a Carte de Sejour. “No,” Madame Loretz insisted. “You need a Scientific visa.” As a result, she told me that they couldn’t pay me until I applied for my Carte De Sejour successfully and at least returned to her office on Friday with a receipt.
“Do not leave the Prefecture without a receipt!” she told me.
Actually, I understood none of what she said, but my handler, Phil Carr, originally from Edinburgh, but living in France for the past eleven years, translated for me. Phil is a few years older than I am, has bushy white eyebrows and gray hair and a muted Scots accent. His wife is from Belgium, but she pretends she’s from England because the French make fun of her accent even though, according to Phil, the Southern French have accents that deviate from standard French too, Instead of C’est bon,” for instance, they say, “C’est bongue.”
Madame Loretz told me that if I returned on Friday (today) with a receipt, they would be able to give me an advance for twelve days to last me the entire month of February. Twelve days?! I had been expecting the better part of a whole month’s pay. That’s what my predecessor had reported and what I had assumed would be the case for me since the pay never changed for visiting professors, I’d been told.
So today, Phil and I met near the gate of the university at Le Ranch (a brasserie) and took the tram to the center of Montpellier.
At the front of the Prefecture, a lone policeman with a metal detecting wand gave us the once over and let us through without a word.
The Prefecture teemed with people applying for this and that, the majority of the applicants North Africans, women with head scarves, some with children. The French officials sat behind their counters like Legionnaire’s defending a dusty outpost.
To our right was a set of chairs where most of the crowd waited and a little deeper in the hall was the Welcome Desk (Welcome in this case means Go Away). We timidly approached the Welcome desk and Phil explained to the man there my situation. I knew that this wasn’t going to be easy and I thought, Okay, go ahead, tell us we’re in the wrong place.
That’s what he did. He said I needed to go to the place that fills visas for students.
“”But he’s not a student!” Phil said. “He’s a professor.”
“Same thing,” the man said. “Same place.”
That didn’t sound right to Phil. “They hear a foreign accent,” he said, “and then they screw around with you.” I suggested that we ask one of his colleagues, two equally chipper and welcoming women.
One, a woman in her early fifties, told us that we needed to go to the “Offis” where they handled international students and scholars, and she gave us the address: 29 Rue de La Wild Goose (or something similar).
“She was nice this time,” Phil told me after we had left. “Last time I was there she was absolutely horrid to some North Africans. But you have the right color skin.”
We trekked about half a mile to the Rue de La Wild Goose and found #29, a building called Place du Martin Luther King that housed many offices, all of them deserted, and none of them the one we wanted. We walked into the building, climbed stairs, peered into windows, tried to find someone alive, but could find no one.
Finally we gave up and headed back to the Prefecture. An African man was wanded by the policeman at the gate and briefly searched, but when it was our turn, the policeman waved us through.
“And the French say they’re not racist,” Phil remarked.
Phil tried to tell the sometimes nice/sometimes nasty woman at the Go Away Desk that the place didn’t exist and she shrugged. She accused him of lying. “Don’t tell me you were unaware this isn’t the place to apply!” she said and called over the next person in line. I feebly tried to show the other woman my little note in the passport stating that I should apply for the Carte de Sejour at the Prefecture. She said she understood and then told us to bugger off. “We’re not going to deal with you two all day!”
But before we left I told Phil to get the phone number from them of the place where we were supposed to go. Reluctantly, they gave us the number and we buggered off.
With the number in hand, Phil called the office and they told him that no, they were not at Rue de La Wild Goose, but far away in another building.
Phil was incensed. “I’m going to go back and tell that woman at the Prefecture that she has the wrong address for the Offis.”
“Right,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll care a lot.”
We took the tram to the center of Montpellier to the Place de la Comedie,, and eventually found the right building and office. The woman there told us we had to go to the Prefecture. “But we’ve already been there,” Phil said, “and they told us to come here.”
“This is not the place,” she told us.
Phil asked her to call the Prefecture and I asked her for a note. A colleague of hers went to a back office and supposedly called the Prefecture and she put a little sticky note in my passport stating that they did not handle Carte de Sejours, that it was the Prefecture’s job. And then she affixed the most important thing in French life to the note: the Tampon, a little stamp making it official. The French are crazy for these things. A saying in France goes. The basic things in life are wine, bread, cheese, and the tampon.
My friend the writer Bret Lott made his own tampon when he taught a semester in France. It was a rubber stamp of Oscar from Sesame Street, which he’d smudge a little, and with this stamp in hand, he never had any problems with documents.
Phil and I were both deathly afraid of returning to the Prefecture Go Away Desk for a third time. He told me about a woman from New York who had been on the faculty two years ago. She never received her Carte de Sejour, he told me, though she went six times. She finally received her appointment for an interview three months after she had returned to New York.
“Well, this will be my third visit to the Prefecture, and all in one day,” I told him.
I gave him my passport and suggested he walk up to the Go Away Desk with my passport open to the page with the tampon, brandishing it like a vampire slayer might hold it to ward off vampires. He thought this was a good idea.
At the gate of the Prefecture, the policeman seemed to take notice of us for the first time.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“To the Prefecture,” Phil said, with an implied, “you Git,” appended to the sentence.
“What’s your business?”
Phil said something about an American professor and the policeman waved us in.
This time, we faced neither of the women at the Go Away Desk, but the first man who told us we had to go elsewhere. We showed him the note and he kindly told us that maybe we should go to the window where all the North Africans were waiting and talk to someone there.
“But once the number reaches a hundred, they will be done for the day, and all the numbers have been given out. You should come back in the morning. Or you could cut in line and ask them to help you.”
That was a lot of help. We went up to one of the windows just as the woman behind it was finishing with another customer. She said she wouldn’t help us without a number and that maybe we should go back to the guy we’d just spoken to and speak to him again.
People had been lining up for numbers since 5 a.m. A person who had arrived at nine received number 99. It was hopeless.
We gave up and decided we would try again another day, but as we were leaving, the policeman at the gate stopped us and asked us what the problem was. Phil told him in great detail and the policeman listened , then reached into his pocket and Voila! produced a ticket with a number! But it had already been called. So he reached in his pocket and pulled out another crumpled number. Number 56.
What? What had just happened and why? Phil and I were both baffled. But now Phil told the formerly indifferent, racist policeman (who might still of course be racist and indifferent to others, and of course by osmosis I was racist and indifferent for accepting the number when others had lined up since 5 a.m., but I was also tired and crumbling emotionally and I hadn’t eaten anything and it was nearly noon) he was tres gentil and we entered the Prefecture again. This time we waited with the North African women, who were laughing and joking among themselves, even as they were turned away, brushed off, and generally derided by the women in the windows. Phil chatted with several and we all commiserated and compared numbers. By this time, Phil had missed both his classes and was going to also miss a lecture he needed to supervise at one.
We waited an hour and a half. We were afraid that we might get the same woman who had told us she wouldn’t see us without a number. Phil worried that she might turn us away even with the number so we concocted a story that I, had taken a number idiotically , with no purpose in mind, just because that was my habit (some mild form of OCD) and that when she had asked him for a number, I had been too much in my own American world of numbers (56 being a favorite of mine) to realize that my number actually had a purpose.
It wasn’t quite that bad a story, but almost.
There had been only two women behind the window all morning, but eventually they put three on the job and the cases started moving rapidly. Usually, the scenario was this: North African man or woman pleasantly greets the dour woman behind the window. She asks for a dossier and papers are produced, after which she looks at the people as though they have asked her to serve them a coffee when obviously she has no coffee to give them. Why are they asking her for coffee? She, shakes her head, shrugs, and waves the person away.
Next!
When it was my turn, another dour woman took my passport and looked at it with great disapproval. We were summoned to a back room then where another official, a man, explained that we were in the wrong place.
Again with the wrong place.
This time, he produced a form, an actual form with all of the requirements I needed to bring and an address of the place I needed to bring it to. Not Martin Luther King Place. Not Rue de La Wild Goose, but somewhere new.
“Huzzah!” Phil and I cheered. “You mean we get to go somewhere else? We so love this type of day. We are filled with fondness and appreciation for all your many kindnesses.”
Or we might have looked at one another in astonishment.
But we did learn at least that I had, indeed, the correct visa, whether Madame Loretz believed it or not. He pointed to a capital “D” and gave us a nod of approval.
We asked if the man would call Madame Loretz for us. He wouldn’t because that would be seen as putting pressure on his office. We asked if he might then write a note to her explaining that my visa was correct. He consulted with his boss who said absolutely not because that might jeopardize their office’s good relations with the university.
At least, we had a piece of paper, though it was not the piece of paper Madame Loretz had asked for.
Back at the university, Madame Loretz was, of course, unbending. Yes, it was a Scientific visa, but not the correct scientific visa. Even when and if I ever got my portfolio together, it might still be rejected. And then she delivered the coup de grace. Yes, she would give me a pay advance still but now I wouldn’t receive it until February 10th.
They would only give me twelve days advance because she had been aware of my physical existence with twelve days left in the month. My payment started based on the day Madame Loretz first set eyes upon me, December 18th. This was something that no one had bothered to tell me. Or Phil. Otherwise, he would have brought me to see her the day after I arrived in Montpellier on the 11th. Still, I should have known this even though there was no way of knowing. It was a well-known fact, at least to Madame Loretz, that until you see Madame Loretz, you do not exist, and in fact, you still might not exist, no matter how many times you present yourself to her.
And by the way, she needed my birth certificate.
But I had sent it to Phil and he had given it to her.
“No,” she said. “I don’t have it.”
I probably looked ready to burst into tears when I left her office.
“Courage!” Madame Loretz called cheerily after me.
I thought I’d give you a little taste (or reminder) of the legendary French bureaucracy.
Last week, I was told by Madame Loretz in Personnel at The University of Montpellier where I’m teaching for several months that I had been given the wrong visa by the Chicago Consulate. It’s actually NOT the wrong visa, but it was impossible to convince Madame Loretz of that. The visa is a three-month visa with a note attached (in English though it should be in French) stating that the three-month visa was not a mistake, and that I needed to report to the Prefecture within a week of entering French territory and apply for a Carte de Sejour. “No,” Madame Loretz insisted. “You need a Scientific visa.” As a result, she told me that they couldn’t pay me until I applied for my Carte De Sejour successfully and at least returned to her office on Friday with a receipt.
“Do not leave the Prefecture without a receipt!” she told me.
Actually, I understood none of what she said, but my handler, Phil Carr, originally from Edinburgh, but living in France for the past eleven years, translated for me. Phil is a few years older than I am, has bushy white eyebrows and gray hair and a muted Scots accent. His wife is from Belgium, but she pretends she’s from England because the French make fun of her accent even though, according to Phil, the Southern French have accents that deviate from standard French too, Instead of C’est bon,” for instance, they say, “C’est bongue.”
Madame Loretz told me that if I returned on Friday (today) with a receipt, they would be able to give me an advance for twelve days to last me the entire month of February. Twelve days?! I had been expecting the better part of a whole month’s pay. That’s what my predecessor had reported and what I had assumed would be the case for me since the pay never changed for visiting professors, I’d been told.
So today, Phil and I met near the gate of the university at Le Ranch (a brasserie) and took the tram to the center of Montpellier.
At the front of the Prefecture, a lone policeman with a metal detecting wand gave us the once over and let us through without a word.
The Prefecture teemed with people applying for this and that, the majority of the applicants North Africans, women with head scarves, some with children. The French officials sat behind their counters like Legionnaire’s defending a dusty outpost.
To our right was a set of chairs where most of the crowd waited and a little deeper in the hall was the Welcome Desk (Welcome in this case means Go Away). We timidly approached the Welcome desk and Phil explained to the man there my situation. I knew that this wasn’t going to be easy and I thought, Okay, go ahead, tell us we’re in the wrong place.
That’s what he did. He said I needed to go to the place that fills visas for students.
“”But he’s not a student!” Phil said. “He’s a professor.”
“Same thing,” the man said. “Same place.”
That didn’t sound right to Phil. “They hear a foreign accent,” he said, “and then they screw around with you.” I suggested that we ask one of his colleagues, two equally chipper and welcoming women.
One, a woman in her early fifties, told us that we needed to go to the “Offis” where they handled international students and scholars, and she gave us the address: 29 Rue de La Wild Goose (or something similar).
“She was nice this time,” Phil told me after we had left. “Last time I was there she was absolutely horrid to some North Africans. But you have the right color skin.”
We trekked about half a mile to the Rue de La Wild Goose and found #29, a building called Place du Martin Luther King that housed many offices, all of them deserted, and none of them the one we wanted. We walked into the building, climbed stairs, peered into windows, tried to find someone alive, but could find no one.
Finally we gave up and headed back to the Prefecture. An African man was wanded by the policeman at the gate and briefly searched, but when it was our turn, the policeman waved us through.
“And the French say they’re not racist,” Phil remarked.
Phil tried to tell the sometimes nice/sometimes nasty woman at the Go Away Desk that the place didn’t exist and she shrugged. She accused him of lying. “Don’t tell me you were unaware this isn’t the place to apply!” she said and called over the next person in line. I feebly tried to show the other woman my little note in the passport stating that I should apply for the Carte de Sejour at the Prefecture. She said she understood and then told us to bugger off. “We’re not going to deal with you two all day!”
But before we left I told Phil to get the phone number from them of the place where we were supposed to go. Reluctantly, they gave us the number and we buggered off.
With the number in hand, Phil called the office and they told him that no, they were not at Rue de La Wild Goose, but far away in another building.
Phil was incensed. “I’m going to go back and tell that woman at the Prefecture that she has the wrong address for the Offis.”
“Right,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll care a lot.”
We took the tram to the center of Montpellier to the Place de la Comedie,, and eventually found the right building and office. The woman there told us we had to go to the Prefecture. “But we’ve already been there,” Phil said, “and they told us to come here.”
“This is not the place,” she told us.
Phil asked her to call the Prefecture and I asked her for a note. A colleague of hers went to a back office and supposedly called the Prefecture and she put a little sticky note in my passport stating that they did not handle Carte de Sejours, that it was the Prefecture’s job. And then she affixed the most important thing in French life to the note: the Tampon, a little stamp making it official. The French are crazy for these things. A saying in France goes. The basic things in life are wine, bread, cheese, and the tampon.
My friend the writer Bret Lott made his own tampon when he taught a semester in France. It was a rubber stamp of Oscar from Sesame Street, which he’d smudge a little, and with this stamp in hand, he never had any problems with documents.
Phil and I were both deathly afraid of returning to the Prefecture Go Away Desk for a third time. He told me about a woman from New York who had been on the faculty two years ago. She never received her Carte de Sejour, he told me, though she went six times. She finally received her appointment for an interview three months after she had returned to New York.
“Well, this will be my third visit to the Prefecture, and all in one day,” I told him.
I gave him my passport and suggested he walk up to the Go Away Desk with my passport open to the page with the tampon, brandishing it like a vampire slayer might hold it to ward off vampires. He thought this was a good idea.
At the gate of the Prefecture, the policeman seemed to take notice of us for the first time.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“To the Prefecture,” Phil said, with an implied, “you Git,” appended to the sentence.
“What’s your business?”
Phil said something about an American professor and the policeman waved us in.
This time, we faced neither of the women at the Go Away Desk, but the first man who told us we had to go elsewhere. We showed him the note and he kindly told us that maybe we should go to the window where all the North Africans were waiting and talk to someone there.
“But once the number reaches a hundred, they will be done for the day, and all the numbers have been given out. You should come back in the morning. Or you could cut in line and ask them to help you.”
That was a lot of help. We went up to one of the windows just as the woman behind it was finishing with another customer. She said she wouldn’t help us without a number and that maybe we should go back to the guy we’d just spoken to and speak to him again.
People had been lining up for numbers since 5 a.m. A person who had arrived at nine received number 99. It was hopeless.
We gave up and decided we would try again another day, but as we were leaving, the policeman at the gate stopped us and asked us what the problem was. Phil told him in great detail and the policeman listened , then reached into his pocket and Voila! produced a ticket with a number! But it had already been called. So he reached in his pocket and pulled out another crumpled number. Number 56.
What? What had just happened and why? Phil and I were both baffled. But now Phil told the formerly indifferent, racist policeman (who might still of course be racist and indifferent to others, and of course by osmosis I was racist and indifferent for accepting the number when others had lined up since 5 a.m., but I was also tired and crumbling emotionally and I hadn’t eaten anything and it was nearly noon) he was tres gentil and we entered the Prefecture again. This time we waited with the North African women, who were laughing and joking among themselves, even as they were turned away, brushed off, and generally derided by the women in the windows. Phil chatted with several and we all commiserated and compared numbers. By this time, Phil had missed both his classes and was going to also miss a lecture he needed to supervise at one.
We waited an hour and a half. We were afraid that we might get the same woman who had told us she wouldn’t see us without a number. Phil worried that she might turn us away even with the number so we concocted a story that I, had taken a number idiotically , with no purpose in mind, just because that was my habit (some mild form of OCD) and that when she had asked him for a number, I had been too much in my own American world of numbers (56 being a favorite of mine) to realize that my number actually had a purpose.
It wasn’t quite that bad a story, but almost.
There had been only two women behind the window all morning, but eventually they put three on the job and the cases started moving rapidly. Usually, the scenario was this: North African man or woman pleasantly greets the dour woman behind the window. She asks for a dossier and papers are produced, after which she looks at the people as though they have asked her to serve them a coffee when obviously she has no coffee to give them. Why are they asking her for coffee? She, shakes her head, shrugs, and waves the person away.
Next!
When it was my turn, another dour woman took my passport and looked at it with great disapproval. We were summoned to a back room then where another official, a man, explained that we were in the wrong place.
Again with the wrong place.
This time, he produced a form, an actual form with all of the requirements I needed to bring and an address of the place I needed to bring it to. Not Martin Luther King Place. Not Rue de La Wild Goose, but somewhere new.
“Huzzah!” Phil and I cheered. “You mean we get to go somewhere else? We so love this type of day. We are filled with fondness and appreciation for all your many kindnesses.”
Or we might have looked at one another in astonishment.
But we did learn at least that I had, indeed, the correct visa, whether Madame Loretz believed it or not. He pointed to a capital “D” and gave us a nod of approval.
We asked if the man would call Madame Loretz for us. He wouldn’t because that would be seen as putting pressure on his office. We asked if he might then write a note to her explaining that my visa was correct. He consulted with his boss who said absolutely not because that might jeopardize their office’s good relations with the university.
At least, we had a piece of paper, though it was not the piece of paper Madame Loretz had asked for.
Back at the university, Madame Loretz was, of course, unbending. Yes, it was a Scientific visa, but not the correct scientific visa. Even when and if I ever got my portfolio together, it might still be rejected. And then she delivered the coup de grace. Yes, she would give me a pay advance still but now I wouldn’t receive it until February 10th.
They would only give me twelve days advance because she had been aware of my physical existence with twelve days left in the month. My payment started based on the day Madame Loretz first set eyes upon me, December 18th. This was something that no one had bothered to tell me. Or Phil. Otherwise, he would have brought me to see her the day after I arrived in Montpellier on the 11th. Still, I should have known this even though there was no way of knowing. It was a well-known fact, at least to Madame Loretz, that until you see Madame Loretz, you do not exist, and in fact, you still might not exist, no matter how many times you present yourself to her.
And by the way, she needed my birth certificate.
But I had sent it to Phil and he had given it to her.
“No,” she said. “I don’t have it.”
I probably looked ready to burst into tears when I left her office.
“Courage!” Madame Loretz called cheerily after me.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Lawrence Reid's Do Over Story
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm sponsoring a new contest and giving away five copies of Do Over. all you have to do is tell me what you'd do over. Send me an email at Robinhemley@gmail.com
Below is a do over story from my friend, the well-known linguist Lawrence Reid:
Anything other than a cup of coffee on a hot summer’s day.
I had spent three of the best years of my life, straight out of high school, mixing with a small group of highly motivated young musicians struggling to complete a music degree at what was then, fifty-five years ago, Canterbury University College in Christchurch, New Zealand. Although not a talented musician myself, I had acquired some skill as a pianist and watched with awe, as one of my best friends competed for, and won the piano concerto contest which gave him the right to tour the country with the National Symphony Orchestra, performing Grieg’s A minor piano concerto. I had worked on the concerto myself, but knew I would never have mastered it well enough to even enter the first stage of the competition.
Growing up on the other side of the tracks, in Sydenham, one of the poorer neighborhoods of the city, my first purchase, on time payment, as soon as I got out of high school was a new piano, on which I used to teach the neighborhood children how to play. It provided me with enough income to pay the monthly fee for my piano, and to buy the scores I needed for my classes at the University. But as I looked to the future, I decided to re-evaluate my life. What did I really want to do? I knew first, that even though I would have loved to be a performer, I simply didn’t have the talent for it. Secondly, I knew that even though I enjoyed teaching, I felt guilty about taking money from parents whose children had no interest in the instrument, and who came to see me every week at the insistence of their parents, and apparently without ever having practiced the work that had been assigned them the previous week, and the week before that. Was that what I really wanted to do, month in and month out, in a small, back street studio, in a little town, at the bottom of the world?
The answer was clear. I needed to break away from it all, and begin anew at something I wasn’t sure I even knew what. The opportunity came at just the right time. My oldest brother had gone to Australia several years earlier, and sent me an invitation to be the best man at his wedding. The biggest problem however was where I was going to get the money to pay for my fare on the Wanganui, the steamer that plied the Tasman Sea between Wellington and Sydney. I had managed to save some, but it wasn’t enough. It then occurred to me that I probably no longer had use for the piles of music scores that I had diligently studied through the previous three years. Within minutes I had prepared a pin-up sheet with the names of all the works, carefully listed from Beethoven to Bartok, my telephone number and a willingness to accept any offer, as long as it included everything on the list. This I stuck on an announcement board in the music department of the University, and anxiously waited for my first caller.
A few days later it came. A young woman, with a warm, pleasant voice called me and offered a sum that was way beyond anything I could have dreamed possible. And it was just enough to make up what I needed for the fare to Australia. I accepted eagerly, and with pencil in hand asked for her home address so I could personally deliver them to her. When she told me where she lived, I immediately understood why she had offered so much for my music scores. She gave me an address in Fendalton, the suburb where the rich and famous of the city had their homes. I had often ridden through it on my bike, admiring the beautiful homes, set among lush gardens and carefully trimmed hedges. But this would be my first time to set foot within one of the gates.
As the weekend drew near when I would deliver the scores, I was beset by a rush of uncertainty. Was I doing the right thing? I had carefully looked at each piece as I packed it recalling the themes and the harmonic progressions that I had had to memorize for my classes. It was like saying a final goodbye to close friends. It was almost like attending a wake for family member who had suddenly passed away. But the decision had been made, and finally after carefully wrapping and tying them, I attached them to the carrier of my bike and began the five mile ride to Fendalton.
I reached the address, picked up the package, and slowly headed up the long, carefully raked gravel pathway to the door. My heart was beating faster, and I was breaking out in a sweat with nervousness as I pushed the door knocker. And then the door opened, and the young lady who had called me appeared. She was a vision of loveliness, dressed in a light, summery gown, with her long, auburn hair swept back and tied with a bow. She welcomed me with a smile that struck my heart, and invited me in. I begged off, but she insisted. It was a hot summer day, and surely after a long bike ride wouldn’t I like a drink?
She took the package I had brought her, and escorted me into the lounge, carpeted with a magnificent white rug from wall to wall, the windows tastefully covered with drapes in cool summer prints, and a Steinway grand piano against one wall. I had never been in such a luxurious home, and was tongue-tied as her mother came in and offered me a cup of coffee. A maid appeared bearing a tray with a plate of small biscuits, and several fine china cups and saucers into which she poured the coffee. I was never good at small talk, and in this environment and under these circumstances I felt completely out of place.
And then it happened. Was it my nervousness, or did the young lady brush against my elbow, or was it her father offering me his hand? All I remember is the shock, the blood rushing to my face and my stammering my apology as the fine china cup slipped off the saucer I was holding, spilling its contents in a great brown splash across the carpet. I made my retreat as gracefully as I could manage it under the circumstances. I don’t ever remember being paid for the music, although I must have, as I left for Australia and my brother’s wedding the following month. But after all these years, I do remember thinking, that if I could have done it over, I would have asked for a glass of cold juice that I could have held in my hand, rather than accepting a cup of coffee on a hot summer’s day.
Below is a do over story from my friend, the well-known linguist Lawrence Reid:
Anything other than a cup of coffee on a hot summer’s day.
I had spent three of the best years of my life, straight out of high school, mixing with a small group of highly motivated young musicians struggling to complete a music degree at what was then, fifty-five years ago, Canterbury University College in Christchurch, New Zealand. Although not a talented musician myself, I had acquired some skill as a pianist and watched with awe, as one of my best friends competed for, and won the piano concerto contest which gave him the right to tour the country with the National Symphony Orchestra, performing Grieg’s A minor piano concerto. I had worked on the concerto myself, but knew I would never have mastered it well enough to even enter the first stage of the competition.
Growing up on the other side of the tracks, in Sydenham, one of the poorer neighborhoods of the city, my first purchase, on time payment, as soon as I got out of high school was a new piano, on which I used to teach the neighborhood children how to play. It provided me with enough income to pay the monthly fee for my piano, and to buy the scores I needed for my classes at the University. But as I looked to the future, I decided to re-evaluate my life. What did I really want to do? I knew first, that even though I would have loved to be a performer, I simply didn’t have the talent for it. Secondly, I knew that even though I enjoyed teaching, I felt guilty about taking money from parents whose children had no interest in the instrument, and who came to see me every week at the insistence of their parents, and apparently without ever having practiced the work that had been assigned them the previous week, and the week before that. Was that what I really wanted to do, month in and month out, in a small, back street studio, in a little town, at the bottom of the world?
The answer was clear. I needed to break away from it all, and begin anew at something I wasn’t sure I even knew what. The opportunity came at just the right time. My oldest brother had gone to Australia several years earlier, and sent me an invitation to be the best man at his wedding. The biggest problem however was where I was going to get the money to pay for my fare on the Wanganui, the steamer that plied the Tasman Sea between Wellington and Sydney. I had managed to save some, but it wasn’t enough. It then occurred to me that I probably no longer had use for the piles of music scores that I had diligently studied through the previous three years. Within minutes I had prepared a pin-up sheet with the names of all the works, carefully listed from Beethoven to Bartok, my telephone number and a willingness to accept any offer, as long as it included everything on the list. This I stuck on an announcement board in the music department of the University, and anxiously waited for my first caller.
A few days later it came. A young woman, with a warm, pleasant voice called me and offered a sum that was way beyond anything I could have dreamed possible. And it was just enough to make up what I needed for the fare to Australia. I accepted eagerly, and with pencil in hand asked for her home address so I could personally deliver them to her. When she told me where she lived, I immediately understood why she had offered so much for my music scores. She gave me an address in Fendalton, the suburb where the rich and famous of the city had their homes. I had often ridden through it on my bike, admiring the beautiful homes, set among lush gardens and carefully trimmed hedges. But this would be my first time to set foot within one of the gates.
As the weekend drew near when I would deliver the scores, I was beset by a rush of uncertainty. Was I doing the right thing? I had carefully looked at each piece as I packed it recalling the themes and the harmonic progressions that I had had to memorize for my classes. It was like saying a final goodbye to close friends. It was almost like attending a wake for family member who had suddenly passed away. But the decision had been made, and finally after carefully wrapping and tying them, I attached them to the carrier of my bike and began the five mile ride to Fendalton.
I reached the address, picked up the package, and slowly headed up the long, carefully raked gravel pathway to the door. My heart was beating faster, and I was breaking out in a sweat with nervousness as I pushed the door knocker. And then the door opened, and the young lady who had called me appeared. She was a vision of loveliness, dressed in a light, summery gown, with her long, auburn hair swept back and tied with a bow. She welcomed me with a smile that struck my heart, and invited me in. I begged off, but she insisted. It was a hot summer day, and surely after a long bike ride wouldn’t I like a drink?
She took the package I had brought her, and escorted me into the lounge, carpeted with a magnificent white rug from wall to wall, the windows tastefully covered with drapes in cool summer prints, and a Steinway grand piano against one wall. I had never been in such a luxurious home, and was tongue-tied as her mother came in and offered me a cup of coffee. A maid appeared bearing a tray with a plate of small biscuits, and several fine china cups and saucers into which she poured the coffee. I was never good at small talk, and in this environment and under these circumstances I felt completely out of place.
And then it happened. Was it my nervousness, or did the young lady brush against my elbow, or was it her father offering me his hand? All I remember is the shock, the blood rushing to my face and my stammering my apology as the fine china cup slipped off the saucer I was holding, spilling its contents in a great brown splash across the carpet. I made my retreat as gracefully as I could manage it under the circumstances. I don’t ever remember being paid for the music, although I must have, as I left for Australia and my brother’s wedding the following month. But after all these years, I do remember thinking, that if I could have done it over, I would have asked for a glass of cold juice that I could have held in my hand, rather than accepting a cup of coffee on a hot summer’s day.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Susannah Charleson’s Reading Disaster Story
Infectious Prose
A reading. On a Friday afternoon. In spring. Not even the most optimistic of us could say the house was packed when seven of the faculty were invited to read from their recently-published work to an audience of fellow-faculty and students, most of the latter bribed or threatened to attend. There was nothing inspired in this setup. The auditorium could seat 400, and there were probably 100 students there – most of them slumped in the back rows – which from the rostrum made the back-heavy room appear to be sinking, like the Titanic.
I was scheduled to be the seventh reader, and by then many students (and some of the faculty) sat in a brown stupor. A poet read before me. A fine poet, a celebrated guy, but this audience couldn’t even manage the little unnhs of appreciation that generally follow the last line of a poem.
Since I have a book on working search and rescue coming out, I thought I’d read from that, and I had bookmarked several passages. Right here, right now, the group seemed to need a little bang. So I decided to read a particularly harrowing account of a house fire. Just as I was heading to the rostrum, a late student came in, pushing her way to an empty seat in the middle of one of the back rows. I saw the ripple of students moving to let her in and briefly wondered if her teacher would really give her credit for attending the last ten minutes of an hour-long event.
And then I started reading about a late-night flight home, piloting a Cessna 172 and overflying what I first thought was a lakeside campfire, then realized was a house - a house that exploded with such violence that the hot, rising air thumped the underbelly of my airplane at 4500 feet.
The reading seemed to be going well. I read on, about contacting air traffic control and emergency services, about circling the fire and looking for survivors, about coyotes creeping forward to the brightness, about watching the double-twitch of light flashing from a single fire truck winding through the dark toward the blaze. The audience appeared attentive—especially in the back rows, where I could see a double handful of students leaning forward in uncomfortable postures, some with their arms gripped on the seats in front of them, as though they clung to every word.
Wow, I thought. Score!
When I finished reading, there was applause (which I’d hoped for) and mass exodus (which I’d expected), but a few came forward to talk to the readers, among them the late student who’d plopped herself in the middle of one of those back rows. I was speaking to someone else when she touched my shoulder, and as I turned she beamed at me and honked a little – a young woman with a face like a swollen, streaming gourd – the mother of all head colds, or worse. This was the spring of Swine Flu, and suddenly I could understand those back row students and their attentiveness, their strained postures and fixed expressions. They weren’t leaning toward my story; they were leaning away from her. And who could blame them? She was sick-on-a-stick. A right mess. “Wudderful,” she shouted, a literature lover clearly deafened with mucus, “zo eggziting.” She tilted close so I could hear her, smiled wide and clasped my hands.
Broadcast writer Susannah Charleson’s Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search and Rescue Dog will be released in April 2010, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
A reading. On a Friday afternoon. In spring. Not even the most optimistic of us could say the house was packed when seven of the faculty were invited to read from their recently-published work to an audience of fellow-faculty and students, most of the latter bribed or threatened to attend. There was nothing inspired in this setup. The auditorium could seat 400, and there were probably 100 students there – most of them slumped in the back rows – which from the rostrum made the back-heavy room appear to be sinking, like the Titanic.
I was scheduled to be the seventh reader, and by then many students (and some of the faculty) sat in a brown stupor. A poet read before me. A fine poet, a celebrated guy, but this audience couldn’t even manage the little unnhs of appreciation that generally follow the last line of a poem.
Since I have a book on working search and rescue coming out, I thought I’d read from that, and I had bookmarked several passages. Right here, right now, the group seemed to need a little bang. So I decided to read a particularly harrowing account of a house fire. Just as I was heading to the rostrum, a late student came in, pushing her way to an empty seat in the middle of one of the back rows. I saw the ripple of students moving to let her in and briefly wondered if her teacher would really give her credit for attending the last ten minutes of an hour-long event.
And then I started reading about a late-night flight home, piloting a Cessna 172 and overflying what I first thought was a lakeside campfire, then realized was a house - a house that exploded with such violence that the hot, rising air thumped the underbelly of my airplane at 4500 feet.
The reading seemed to be going well. I read on, about contacting air traffic control and emergency services, about circling the fire and looking for survivors, about coyotes creeping forward to the brightness, about watching the double-twitch of light flashing from a single fire truck winding through the dark toward the blaze. The audience appeared attentive—especially in the back rows, where I could see a double handful of students leaning forward in uncomfortable postures, some with their arms gripped on the seats in front of them, as though they clung to every word.
Wow, I thought. Score!
When I finished reading, there was applause (which I’d hoped for) and mass exodus (which I’d expected), but a few came forward to talk to the readers, among them the late student who’d plopped herself in the middle of one of those back rows. I was speaking to someone else when she touched my shoulder, and as I turned she beamed at me and honked a little – a young woman with a face like a swollen, streaming gourd – the mother of all head colds, or worse. This was the spring of Swine Flu, and suddenly I could understand those back row students and their attentiveness, their strained postures and fixed expressions. They weren’t leaning toward my story; they were leaning away from her. And who could blame them? She was sick-on-a-stick. A right mess. “Wudderful,” she shouted, a literature lover clearly deafened with mucus, “zo eggziting.” She tilted close so I could hear her, smiled wide and clasped my hands.
Broadcast writer Susannah Charleson’s Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search and Rescue Dog will be released in April 2010, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Welcome and New Contest
Hello. Welcome to my new blog! I've decided to migrate to this blog format from my website (Robinhemley.com, which is still fully operational) on the advice of some internet guru friends.
Please take a look through the posts. I've transferred my feature on book tour disaster stories here, so you can read them together. Well-known writers have shared with me (and you) some of their worst reading experiences. We've all had them. I'm always looking for more, so if you have any good anecdotes of readings and/or signings going terribly awry, please send me an email at Robin-hemley@uiowa.edu.
Likewise, I'm sponsoring a new give away of 5 copies of Do-Over. If you know of anyone who might like a free copy, please have them drop me an email relating an emotional fender bender from their childhood, something they'd like to do over. I'll post them on the website and when i have about fifty or so, I'll put everyone's names in a randomizer and give away the copies. THIS contest is open to anyone anywhere in the world, not only the U.S. and Canada.
A couple of truly eccentric contests to follow, so stay posted for chances to win books by the some of my book tour disaster story authors and cash prizes.
Please take a look through the posts. I've transferred my feature on book tour disaster stories here, so you can read them together. Well-known writers have shared with me (and you) some of their worst reading experiences. We've all had them. I'm always looking for more, so if you have any good anecdotes of readings and/or signings going terribly awry, please send me an email at Robin-hemley@uiowa.edu.
Likewise, I'm sponsoring a new give away of 5 copies of Do-Over. If you know of anyone who might like a free copy, please have them drop me an email relating an emotional fender bender from their childhood, something they'd like to do over. I'll post them on the website and when i have about fifty or so, I'll put everyone's names in a randomizer and give away the copies. THIS contest is open to anyone anywhere in the world, not only the U.S. and Canada.
A couple of truly eccentric contests to follow, so stay posted for chances to win books by the some of my book tour disaster story authors and cash prizes.
Sybil Baker's Book Tour Disaster Stories
The Reading That Was
On a recent trip to my husband's native South Africa, my Lorraine, mother-in-law (who lives in Johannesburg), offered to set up a few book readings for me. One of the events was at a ritzy wine café where Lorraine bribed thirty friends with free wine and hors d'oeuvres to come and listen to her American daughter-in-law read from her novel. The scheme worked. We let the guests drink for an hour, I read for twenty minutes, the drunker people bought my book, and we carried on drinking for about four more hours.
The Reading That Wasn't
The other reading was arranged with Lorraine's dear Auntie Athley, who lived in a retirement community about 45 minutes outside of Joburg. I was to attend the weekly gathering of Auntie Ath and the other women from the community and peddle my novel, THE LIFE PLAN, which is about a 29-year-old drinking her way through Thailand as she deals with her crumbling marriage. Oh, and there's jungle sex too with a hot English bloke. Seemed like a good match. We were to arrive between 3 and 5 pm, and--this was the important part--bring two cakes. Unfortunately, a late doctor's appointment, rush-hour traffic, and a sudden thunderstorm brought us to the retirement village just at 5. Although I'd optimistically packed a stack of books, I only brought one book in so as not to get the others wet. Rowan could run back to the car and retrieve the books once I'd wowed the women with my reading.
I entered the room sopping wet to meet the gaze of 15 grandmothers obediently sitting a long table. Some were knitting. Auntie Ath informed us the women had stayed at little later because they didn't want to go out in the thunderstorm. After she introduced me and Rowan, one of the women asked--so you wrote an article or something? Before I could answer, the woman, along with the others, abandoned me for the cakes Rowan brought in. Auntie Ath put the kettle on for tea and instant coffee while another woman cut generous portions of the cake and placed them on china plates. One woman told me how she'd escaped boring Britain and become a nurse traveling the world. Another discussed the beauty of South Africa. Another wrapped her cake in a napkin, saying she was saving it for dessert that night. And then they were gone. At one point my novel was passed around the table like some strange artifact from an unknown world. But as soon as the cake and the rain disappeared, so did the ladies--after all, at their age, their Life Plans were working just fine.
The Reading That Should Have Been
A few days later, I was in a truck with 12 other tourists from Australia, Canada, and South Africa beginning our incredible two-week trip through South Africa, Botswana, and Zambia, when I had an "aha moment." Most of the tourists were reading books, we would be in the truck 4-8 hours every day, and these tourists were the demographic group for my novel. Did I have any copies of my book with me? Of course not, I was on vacation, damn it, and I wasn't going to pimp myself another day. A rookie mistake, for I've since realized that a writer with a book is a pimp 24/7. An author carries copies for just that kind of moment--a captive audience, with cash, and desperate for reading material. Every night around the campfire I could have read another chapter, who no doubt would have been begging for more. And I should have also had copies to leave at every lodge we stayed at--after all how many writers can say their novel is being read in Zambia?
Sybil Baker's novel THE LIFE PLAN was published by Casperian Books in March 2009. You can read more about her at her website at www.sybilbaker.com
On a recent trip to my husband's native South Africa, my Lorraine, mother-in-law (who lives in Johannesburg), offered to set up a few book readings for me. One of the events was at a ritzy wine café where Lorraine bribed thirty friends with free wine and hors d'oeuvres to come and listen to her American daughter-in-law read from her novel. The scheme worked. We let the guests drink for an hour, I read for twenty minutes, the drunker people bought my book, and we carried on drinking for about four more hours.
The Reading That Wasn't
The other reading was arranged with Lorraine's dear Auntie Athley, who lived in a retirement community about 45 minutes outside of Joburg. I was to attend the weekly gathering of Auntie Ath and the other women from the community and peddle my novel, THE LIFE PLAN, which is about a 29-year-old drinking her way through Thailand as she deals with her crumbling marriage. Oh, and there's jungle sex too with a hot English bloke. Seemed like a good match. We were to arrive between 3 and 5 pm, and--this was the important part--bring two cakes. Unfortunately, a late doctor's appointment, rush-hour traffic, and a sudden thunderstorm brought us to the retirement village just at 5. Although I'd optimistically packed a stack of books, I only brought one book in so as not to get the others wet. Rowan could run back to the car and retrieve the books once I'd wowed the women with my reading.
I entered the room sopping wet to meet the gaze of 15 grandmothers obediently sitting a long table. Some were knitting. Auntie Ath informed us the women had stayed at little later because they didn't want to go out in the thunderstorm. After she introduced me and Rowan, one of the women asked--so you wrote an article or something? Before I could answer, the woman, along with the others, abandoned me for the cakes Rowan brought in. Auntie Ath put the kettle on for tea and instant coffee while another woman cut generous portions of the cake and placed them on china plates. One woman told me how she'd escaped boring Britain and become a nurse traveling the world. Another discussed the beauty of South Africa. Another wrapped her cake in a napkin, saying she was saving it for dessert that night. And then they were gone. At one point my novel was passed around the table like some strange artifact from an unknown world. But as soon as the cake and the rain disappeared, so did the ladies--after all, at their age, their Life Plans were working just fine.
The Reading That Should Have Been
A few days later, I was in a truck with 12 other tourists from Australia, Canada, and South Africa beginning our incredible two-week trip through South Africa, Botswana, and Zambia, when I had an "aha moment." Most of the tourists were reading books, we would be in the truck 4-8 hours every day, and these tourists were the demographic group for my novel. Did I have any copies of my book with me? Of course not, I was on vacation, damn it, and I wasn't going to pimp myself another day. A rookie mistake, for I've since realized that a writer with a book is a pimp 24/7. An author carries copies for just that kind of moment--a captive audience, with cash, and desperate for reading material. Every night around the campfire I could have read another chapter, who no doubt would have been begging for more. And I should have also had copies to leave at every lodge we stayed at--after all how many writers can say their novel is being read in Zambia?
Sybil Baker's novel THE LIFE PLAN was published by Casperian Books in March 2009. You can read more about her at her website at www.sybilbaker.com
Peter Nelson's Book Tour Disaster Story
I did a signing at a bookstore in Manhattan (I want to say Benedettos or Bennitons or Brentonios or something like that --- I think it's out of business now) when I was nominated for an Edgar Award by Mystery Writers of America for a book I wrote called "Scarface," a YA about a kid who finds Al Capone's treasure. I was there with a large group of fellow nominees including luminaries like Elmore Leonard and Laurence Shames and Carl Hiassen, and felt more than a little flattered to be in the same room with those guys. I wasn't expecting anything like an equal amount of attention. In fact, more people stopped at my table than any other, because I was stationed on the landing by the top of the staircase, where several dozen people asked me where the bathroom was. Not one asked me about my book.
I did another signing in a cavernous exhibition hall at a place called The Big E, in Springfield, MA, which was home to what might be described as the western Massachusetts state fair. The room was full of booths with people selling lawn care services and Florida time-shares. Across the aisle from me was a man with a very loud microphone, selling miracle no-stick cookware. I almost bought a set --- he was very convincing. The woman who'd prepared my display (a professional author-escort --- I didn't know there was such a profession) had ripped the cover off one of my books and scotch-taped it to a piece of poster-board, upon which she'd written with a red Sharpie, "Author Signing." She didn't even form the scotch tape into concealed loops to stick to the back of the cover --- she just plastered a piece of tape across each of the four corners. For a while, she hung out with me and told me how she cuts up half a year's worth of onions and green peppers at a time and puts it all in her freezer because it's cheaper that way and why the hell not? More often, she left me alone a lot because she smoked three packs of Benson and Hedges cigarettes daily and needed to step outside for frequent "ciggie-breaks." She had a gravel voice and sounded a bit like Tom Waits or Louis Armstrong. Mostly I sat there, alone, and people would come up to my table, pick the book up, glance at the cover, make sounds of disgust and toss the book onto the table like they were throwing away a used Kleenex --- I don't think they realized I was the author. I did this for six hours.
I heard a story once the some university invited Stanley Elkin to come give a reading, but showed him very little respect or hospitality. Ultimately, after a lame post-reading reception at a dorm lounge, some young college girl dropped him off at his hotel and told him he could order dinner from room service if he was hungry and charge it to the university. According to the story, Elkin was so annoyed that he ordered dinner for 200 people and flushed it all down the toilet. I wouldn't do that, but I get it.
Pete Nelson writes books and magazine articles and lives in Westchester, NY, with his wife and son. For more info, go to: http://members.authorsguild.net/ipetenelson/
I did another signing in a cavernous exhibition hall at a place called The Big E, in Springfield, MA, which was home to what might be described as the western Massachusetts state fair. The room was full of booths with people selling lawn care services and Florida time-shares. Across the aisle from me was a man with a very loud microphone, selling miracle no-stick cookware. I almost bought a set --- he was very convincing. The woman who'd prepared my display (a professional author-escort --- I didn't know there was such a profession) had ripped the cover off one of my books and scotch-taped it to a piece of poster-board, upon which she'd written with a red Sharpie, "Author Signing." She didn't even form the scotch tape into concealed loops to stick to the back of the cover --- she just plastered a piece of tape across each of the four corners. For a while, she hung out with me and told me how she cuts up half a year's worth of onions and green peppers at a time and puts it all in her freezer because it's cheaper that way and why the hell not? More often, she left me alone a lot because she smoked three packs of Benson and Hedges cigarettes daily and needed to step outside for frequent "ciggie-breaks." She had a gravel voice and sounded a bit like Tom Waits or Louis Armstrong. Mostly I sat there, alone, and people would come up to my table, pick the book up, glance at the cover, make sounds of disgust and toss the book onto the table like they were throwing away a used Kleenex --- I don't think they realized I was the author. I did this for six hours.
I heard a story once the some university invited Stanley Elkin to come give a reading, but showed him very little respect or hospitality. Ultimately, after a lame post-reading reception at a dorm lounge, some young college girl dropped him off at his hotel and told him he could order dinner from room service if he was hungry and charge it to the university. According to the story, Elkin was so annoyed that he ordered dinner for 200 people and flushed it all down the toilet. I wouldn't do that, but I get it.
Pete Nelson writes books and magazine articles and lives in Westchester, NY, with his wife and son. For more info, go to: http://members.authorsguild.net/ipetenelson/
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