I just got back from my book tour this week which included the usual series of humiliations. I always bring my camera and take pictures of my audiences at my readings and this time photos include a black man's naked ass (at my Barnes & Noble reading in New York), a photo of my ex-boyfriend and his girlfriend who looks exactly like me (at my reading at Powell's), and sixty empty seats (it took two photos to get both sides of empty seats at my reading at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA).
On a book tour, you're greeted at the airport by an escort everywhere you go and taken to readings and interviews and things. I always ask each escort very casually who is the worst, most vile author he or she has ever had to tote around and I've heard some great stories. Here is perhaps the best: What extremely famous author asked his escort in Portland, Oregon, to drive him to a certain street to pick up transvestite prostitutes, bring them back to the hotel, and then wait to bring the TP (transvestite prostitute) back to the certain street, until she finally refused to do it anymore and had to quit working with him altogether?
I think I'll wait to reveal the answer until day five of this blog so you'll have to stay tuned.
Sometimes the escorts only want to tell you nice stories about how wonderful this author was or how generous this author was ? she bought me this bracelet! ? or how gorgeous Ethan Hawke was or how intense and popular Chuck Palahniuk was ? we had to sneak out the side entrance! ? and those stories infuriate and bore me and make me fall asleep in their cars. No author wants to hear about another author unless it involves slamming car doors and refusing to do readings and trashing hotel rooms and procuring transvestite prostitutes.
I'm going to discuss this with my friend Arthur Nersesian at lunch tomorrow. He wrote The Fuck Up and Chinese Takeout and Dogrun and he's someone who loves to tell me who made Granta's best writers under forty list or who won a MacArthur Genius Award and likes to say things like, "Did you really think you were going to make Granta's list?"
I am only thirty-nine, after all.
I'll let you know what happens at lunch tomorrow.
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Jennifer Belle is the author of Going Down, High Maintenance, and Little Stalker. She lives in New York City.