Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [79]
Now, whenever I see an old lady on the street, my mind involuntarily plays the old jingle from Dr Pepper. “I’m a Pepper, she’s a Pepper, wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper, too?” A gigantic sphincter lip-synchs the words.
The trouble with writing a book is that you don’t get to choose who reads it. Sometimes I wish I did get to choose. I wish people had to fill out an application and provide a brief biographical summary.
If I’d been allowed to personally select my readers, I wouldn’t have had the confrontation with the Crosswalk Lady.
I was simply crossing the street to go to the shoe store when I was grabbed on the arm. “Hey, I know you.”
I tried to escape with a smile. “Hi,” I said and continued walking. But she followed.
“You wrote Running with Scissors. I just read that. Oh my God.”
I made it to the other side of the street, and now she was standing next to me.
“You know, your book really helped me. Because I am in the middle of, well, actually let me take that back. I am at the end of a horrible, horrible divorce. You know, I caught my husband fucking our building super up the ass, right in our living room. Can you imagine? Well, of course you can, being gay and all. And by the way, I thought those scenes of you having sex when you were such a little boy were so alarming and beautifully written. But anyway, like I was saying, my husband, whom I had been married to for seventeen years, was fucking the super up against my Steinway piano. I mean, I have nothing against gay people, but I honest to God do not want to be married to one, no offense.”
It was impossible to escape her. She provided no natural break in the conversation, and she spoke with such intensity that I would have had to abruptly shout “SHUT THE FUCK UP,” punch her, and then run away in order to be free. But I couldn’t do that. It would be rude. So I listened to her, hoping that she would come to her senses and stop talking and leave me alone. No wonder your husband left you, I was thinking, You would never shut up.
Eventually, she did stop talking but only because she happened to glance at the building across the street and see the digital clock. “Oh my God, I’m going to be late to the lawyer’s office. Well, it was so nice talking with you, and I’m going to read everything you write from now on.”
It was very nice that she liked my book so much and felt comfortable telling me the details of her crisis. But at the same time, I wouldn’t have been sad if she’d slipped under the wheels of a garbage truck.
Would I have done this if the tables had been turned? Would I stop and approach Donna Tartt on the street and tell her that when I was a little kid, I was fucked up the ass by some guy who used hair conditioner as lubricant? Oh, and your little bob is adorable, by the way.
I know for certain that I would never send an author a picture of my dick.
It’s amazing to me how many gay guys send me photographs of their penises as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. Frankly, I find it odd when somebody who’s read my book e-mails me a picture of their face. Why do I need to see what they look like? As a result, I am often tempted to objectively comment: “Thanks for the picture. You have a bulbous nasal tip and should get that surgically repaired.” Or perhaps: “Please don’t write me again until you have had a chin implant.”
But to send a picture of your dick reveals an entirely different pathology.
“Hey. Loved the book, man. And you’re cute. Here’s my pic,” one e-mail read. “Here’s my pic.” As though this was simply a snapshot taken by his mom.
One man from Italy sent me a photograph of his penis with a glass eyeball tucked into the folds of his foreskin, so that it appeared his penis was looking at the camera. He wrote, “As he say in the movies, here looking at your kid.”
In addition to their penises, gay guys also send me pictures of their arms. This, because in my memoir, out of three hundred pages, there are a couple of tiny sentences about how as a child I was entranced by Tony Orlando’s arm hair.
“You like furry arms, and I got ’em!” one