No Cooky for Amesy

Last night, my writing group met up at the Make-Out Room for the this month's installment of the Progressive Reading Series. The idea is that attendees donate money that goes to funding campaigns for Democratic candidates. In exchange, we reading geeks get to see some literary big guns strut their stuff. I love seeing writers read their work. When it's good, it's better than most any rock show. (When it's not good, it makes a girl pine for a decent rock show.)

Last night's lineup of readers caught my eye because of two names: Jonathan Ames and Curtis Sittenfeld. Regular readers of S&T may already know of my fondess for Ames. He's my favorite living writer, which is a bit embarassing--he can be wildly funny, but also wildly self-obsessed and repetitive. Penis, ass, balding, bowels, trannies, boobs. Repeat. He writes very tenderly of his family, which is a nice change of pace...but he's known as the perverted writer, not the family writer.

And yet this guy is my favorite writer! Why? He makes me laugh. He maked me feel better about myself, and when he's really on he makes me feel better about this larger-than-life character called Jonathan Ames.

As for Curtis Sittenfeld, I read her bestselling book Prep because my dearest friend went to boarding school with her. Prep is set at a boarding school, and though it's not an autobiography, Curtis' time at the real-life school had to color a great deal of Prep. Reading it, I felt privilaged to special window inside the book that the average reader wasn't.

So I saw this Progressive Reading Series lineup and decided I had to be there. No big deal about that. No, the deal is that I also decided I should say hello to Curtis and to Ames. And the bigger deal is that I decided to make them cookies.

Every year around Valentine's Day I make sugar cookie hearts and ice them in pink frosting. Then I pipe names on the cookies in white icing and give them away to whoever the name corresponds to. It's fun; I like to bake, I like cookies, I like pink things, I like hearts. So after piping names across a dozen or so cookies I realized there were lots of leftover hearts, and I piped "Curtis" and "Ames" on two of the hearts on a whim.

Joe and I went over the the Mission last night with the heart cookies in a plastic bag (I had also made name-cookies for the people in my writing group, people we were meeting at the reading). I wondered if I'd go through with the cookie exchange. Why am I compelled to be such a dork? If I were a well-known writer at a reading and a fan gave me a cookie with my name on it, I'd be touched. And creeped out. I'd not want to eat the cookie.

I've done this cookie-fan thing before, at a special Valentine's Day show with a bunch of bands. I made a bunch of cookies, one cookie for every member of every band playing that night. I also made dozens of unnamed cookies for the concertgoers, so I guess that tones down the scary-fan factor.

The reading we packed. Five people read in all. Ames read the thing he always reads, an essay called "Bald, Impotent, and Depressed." It's his greatest hit; he's been reading it for years, that and another essay called "I Shat My Pants in the South of France." He's honed his timing on these essays down to a science, and he elicits lots of guffaws and gasps from the crowd. They make for good reading readings. I felt sort of beyond it, though, as he described his erectile disfunction and flatulence for the umpteenth time; I knew that this man was capable of more. Still, when he was up there the audience was his, and after his reading I felt proud of my Ames. I smirked to myself, thinking how I knew about him way before most of the people in the room, and that made me cool somehow.

Curtis read after Ames. Compared to Ames, whose reading style is deadpan and affected with a charming but unsettling old-timey diction--as if he were a political figure of the early 20th century giving a speech--Curtis' reading voice was natural and comfortable. She read a short--too short, maybe--passage from her book, then skittered off the stage. Maybe she's shy.

Tobias Wolf read last. He seemed like a great guy, a guy who can chum it up with younger folks and gruff old dudes like my Dad. It's nice when really famous writers don't come off as dickwads.
I didn't have a cookie for Tobias Wolf. I wonder if his friends call him Toby.

After the reading, it was still crowded and dark in the club. Curtis Sittenfeld sat in a banquette very close to where I was standing. I stood there stupidly, waiting for just the right moment to tell her--to tell her what? That I knew an old schoolmate of hers? That I remember reading her stories in the boarding school's literary journal? Why did I feel so compelled to say these things to her?

But it was too late. I was in the hole and the only way to get out was to speak to Curtis. I did so, clumsily, like a kid at a high school dance asking their crush to dance with them. The exchange was kind, civil, unextraordinary. I didn't give her the cookie, but I was proud of myself for accosting a writwer whose book I admired.

Then it was on to Ames. The last time I saw Ames read, I asked him to sign my copy of "The Extra Man," my favorite book of his. It's charming and depraved and sweet all at once, and one of its main characters, the extra man of the title, is perhaps my favorite literary character of the 1990s. I've read the book a few times, and my paperback copy is stained with brown spots of hot cocoa that leaked out from my thermos when I worked at Scharffen Berger. I handed the book to Ames to sign, and I said, "Sorry about the spots--it's from hot cocoa. I work at a chocolate factory."

"Are you sure it's chocolate?" Ames said, eyeing me with suspiscion. Stange folks are attracted to that man, and I think he's learned to keep his guard up around fans. But a part of my Ames dream of us being writerly chums crumbled right then. That's life--and that's fandom, just a daydream fancy. Ames has written a books that I treasure, and that's good enough in the end. He owes me nothing. He signed my brown-stained paperback without further comments about the brown spots.

So last night I was especially reluctant to bestow him with the cookies; beside, I'd already spent a chunk of my resolve on taking to Curtis, who seemed much more down-to-earth. How could I have the guts to face Ames? As I exited the bar I passed the booth where he sat with three women. He looked skittish. Maybe he did not want to be around those women. Maybe he did and his wanting to be around them made him nervous. Maybe he was tired of the bar, and the women were his supportive friends. In any case, there was no way I was going to give him the cookie right then, in front of his lady friends--I might mortify him! And me! Why am I compelled to be a giant dork?

My writng group met after the reading, and Joe went home on his own. After our meeting ended, I walked to the BART station and ate Curtis' and Ames' cookies while waiting for the train. They were too sweet, and I felt thirsty and slovenly after gobbling them down. Ames' heart-cookie was broken when I took it out of the bag. I broke his heart. Once I got off the train I walked home briskly, thinking of Joe and how I loved the anticipation of seeing him during the lonely, quiet walk home from the BART station in the dark.