Author, book doctor, raker of muck

David Henry Sterry

Category: Memoir

A Foole’s Rules to Live by from Satchel Paige, Michael Caine, Groucho & Me

Satchel_Paige

groucho_2363267kMichael's FistsGet the money up front

Don’t ever be too full for dessert

People with happy pets live longer

The only way around is through

Never underestimate the power of a great apology

Trust in a kind universe, but hide your valuables in a very safe place

Bitter failure, brutal rejection, and relentless misery are fantastic fertilizer for comedy, and laughter is the shortest distance between two people

Listening is easier to do with your mouth shut

Learning the rules is the best to understand how to break them and get away with it

Don’t keep swinging when a fight’s all over

Age is a question of mind over matter.  If you don’t mind, it don’t matter

Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching

Sincerity is the most important thing in life, and once you’ve learned to fake that, you’ve got it made

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about

Fool me once, I’m an idiot, fool me twice I’m twice as big an idiot

The bigger they are, the harder they can hit you

Killing time turns you into the living dead

Outside of a dog a book is man’s best.  Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read

Don’t mistake a short memory for a clear conscience

Be like a duck.  Remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath

If you think that something small cannot make a difference, try going to sleep with a hungry mosquito in the room

A human without passion is like apple pie without the apples

Never make a decision when you’re angry, or shop for food when you’re hungry

A friend is someone who tells you when you’ve got a piece of stray food on your lip

You can’t stop the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can stop them from building nests in your hair

People are like teabags… you never know how strong they are until you drop them in hot water

If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.  If you haven’t worn it in a year, throw it away

Use your body for more than carrying your brain around

When you surround yourself with people who are smarter than you are, you prove you are smarter than they are

Never trust a dog to watch your food, and never try to baptize a cat

One cannot change the past, but one can ruin the present by living in the future

People are divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move

One good father is worth more than 100 star athletes

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of preachers

Never spit when you’re on a roller coaster

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups

Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things

Your character is your destiny, and your refrigerator is not the place for science projects

Never interrupt when you are being flattered

In disagreements with loved ones, deal with the current situation, rather than everything that’s wrong with everyone except you

Read between the lines, think outside the box, and be nice to old people, cuz with a little luck you may be one some day

Memorize your favorite poem

Don’t judge people by their relatives

When you lose, don’t lose the lesson, and when you win, be nice to the loser learning the lesson, cuz sooner or later that loser will be you.

Giving and receiving love makes humans happy, therefore it’s the hardest thing to do

It’s very important to smell good

The wise person is the one who knows how little they know – when I finally realized I didn’t know anything people started telling me how smart I was

Drugs, Litquake & the Edinburgh Castle

I just got home from the Litquake Writers on Drugs show, the place was packed, jacked and wacked, 200 litquakin’ loons crammed into the Edinburgh Castle, where the ghost of Irvine Welch pukes in the bathroom, and oh man the joint jumped, rumbled, rattled and rolled, 9.8 on the Richter Scale.  Alan Black the masterful master of ceremonies, was the very model of Scottish hospitality, all nettles and good cheer and the blackest of humor, invoking the dead who’d perished in the Castle from overindulgence and intemperence.  What a wag that Alan is, if you’ve never met him, do yourself a favor, introduce yourself at the Caslte and have a blather, he is a true Olde School wit.  BTW, Litquke was actually conceived at the Castle, in the front room, i’m not sure what bodily fluids were exchanged but the fetus was made and life began there.  From such humble beginnings, Litquake has become such a huge amazing phenomenon.   I was very happy to be at the Castle for Drug Night.
 

Before the show I was hanging out all alone, rehearsing, in the upstairs back room where they normally have readings, when I met another of the evening”s performers, Ed Rosenthal, one of America’s most famous marijuana advocates and a writer and publsiher.  He asked me if this was the place to smoke weed.  I said I thought this was as good a place as any.  He kindly asked me if I would like to join him.  I thanked him, and explained that I can’t perform as well when I’m stoned, it throws me off my game.  Funny to be performing a drug story in a night full of drug stories, and not be able to be on drugs because it would make my performance suffer.  At one time in my life I would have said yes, got stoned, and agonized about it, got all FREAKED OUT, and been all tight and weird and destroy my own self, then fall deep into a funk and go engage in some Behavior, as my AA friends call it, that stuff you do to destroy yourself.  I was happy to have evolved enough to recognize what was in my own best instance, and to act accordingly. That made me happy. But when Ed pulled out his pipe and happily lit up, getting quite lit up in the process, I was suddenyl sad.  Imagine how great Ed Rosenthal’s weed must be.  Later when he went out to perform he confessed in a tiedied stoner voice that he didn’t really remember anything of his life up to about a week ago.  He got a big laugh.  I was struck by how he had evolved enough to make comedy out of his life. And I thought, ahhhh, yes, that’s why I moved to San Francisco.  Ed did a mad rant about how insane it is that the government is sinking all this time and money into  fighting the war on drugs when so much else is mucked up in the world, and thanked San Franciscans for helping him make legal history in fighting the evil bastards of the Dark Side. Jayson Galloway, Professor of English author of Viagra Fiend, deconstructed his six favorite drugs, from acid (worst) to ecstacy (favorite), elborating on the pluses and minuses of each.  Favorite line: Cocaine is a dillatante drug.  Quite right.  Fascinating that meth (#4 on his list I believe) got booed.  Meth apparently is no longer sexy.  Unless you’re on it.  Before you crash and just want MORE METH.  R.U. Serius, looking deliciously Hobbitty and puckish, read a hysterical story about growing up and doing drugs.  Favorite scene: He’s listening to some local dude talk about eating some girl out, and he has no idea what that means, so he assumes it’s about cannibalism and wonders why there were no arrests afterwards. Favorite line: Something he learned that has stayed with him the entire rest of his life: When you’re in a group experimenting with drugs, NEVER GO FIRST.

Then came the break, and I was disturbingly nervous as I did my warm-ups and stretches.  They’re going to hate me.  I could see it so clearly.  Kept flashing on this time I was performing in a nightclub in Edinburgh and they turned on me, I was so bad, I sucked so hard, I bombed, I died, I crashed and burned.  It kept recurring, that flashback of the sick cold failure clamming all over me, wrapping its icy fingers around my neck with an ever-tightening chokehold.  I fought the image as best I could, using Jedi mind control techniques: I countered the failure flashbacks with memories of when I had fun, when I flowed sweet and easy.  At the Assembly Room at the Fringe Festival.  Last year at Litquake when Furlinghetti opened (yeah right!)for me.  Doing a sketch for HBO where I was a leach lover. Emceeing at Chippendales one Saturday night when I was whipping the Ladies into a frenzied froth.  Every time I did, the failure flashback faded.  Still, it was exhausting.

So after the break, the music finally gets turned off, and Alan makes the crowd shut up.  He’s like a great dominatrix, he just demands respect.  So naturally he gets it.  They shut up.  He’s giving me a great intro, and I take a moment to look out at the crowd, all baited with anticipation, so much human energy waiting to have fun, and I have a profound sense of well being, like where in the world would I rather be? 200 humans just waiting be to entertainment, desperatley wanting to be entertained, and I didn’t have to lift a finger to get them there. I had a deep feeling of gratitude to the universe, so lucky to be there in the now of that moment, and I felt a sense of accomplishment, like I worked so hard to get there, the years of stand-up and the years of writing and writing of writing, and the hours and hours I spent working on this story I was about to read,the revising, the re-writing, the tinkering, the buffing the polishing, it all lead me there.  As I looked at the crowd, all those faces, eyes shining, souls hungy for something to wrap themselves around, to transport them, make them laugh and feel and be alive with all these other humans, I felt like part of a long line of history, of people gathering to share their stories, to rejoice in the beauty and terror of being alive on the planet with all the other humans.

I was gonna do some sort of introductory remarks, some witty chitchatty small talk, but feeling the crowd, I sensed that I should just dive right into the telling of the story.  It felt like they wanted to be told a story, so I gave it to them.  Right from the very beginning I could feel the room come with me.  It’s hard to describe how you know that, you can’t quantify or measure it, but my God you can feel it.  When a crowd is bored or resistant, or turned off, it’s like when a date goes bad.  You can just feel it, and if you’re not careful you panic and work harder to make it better, only that just makes it worse.  But when you feel them with you, that crowd, it’s electric, and you feel you can do no wrong.  So, at the beginning I was getting laughs from lines that I never got laughs on before in that story, which is always a great sign, but not abnormal, when you have a large jacked up crowd crammed into a small intimate space.  But then when I came to the part in the story where a character makes an impassioned plea for everyone to all take acid together before the big hockey game against the hoity toits at Andover, I really let loose, and shouted out the lines with all my mojo flowing, amd the crowd roared eruptingly, man what a krazee rush that was.  The best drug of all, I thought, this is the best drug of all, being up here and getting all that laugh love and riotous crowd happiness, riding through my veins finer than the finest China White.  I’m getting goose bumpies just stting here typing this, it was so overwhelmingly purely joyful.  Addictive? Perhaps.  Hangover? Never.

So then I got to the part where we’re on the bus going to the game, as everybody waits for the acid to kick in, and in the story it gets quiet. Scary quiet.  I hadn’t planned to, but I lowered my voice to a whisper, and then just stopped talking to let it sink in. Pindrop eery silence fell night over the room.  In a club so crowded that kind of silence is stunning, and for me, pure gold, mana from heaven, mother’s milk, possibly better than an orgasm. No, better than an orgasm for sure, cuz you can have an orgasm in your room all alone.  It takes 200 other humans to create this spooky silence, where no one is breathing, and even the machines seem to be holding their breath.  Again I hadn’t planned this, but I just stopped talking.  Let it sit there and sink in.  Early in my career I could never have done that.  You have to have absolute trust and faith to stop talking like that.  To give the moment its full due takes a kind of blind faith.  But I felt it.  And I just let it be.  Trusted myself and my instincts.  Trusted the crowd.  Trusted the story.  It was like a comedy time bomb.  After a few stunned seconds of stunning silence, the reality of the moment in the story, where everyone is waiting to feel the acid come on, sinks in to the audience there in that room.  And they get it.  They are one with me and I with them, and that is when I feel God in that moment of union and communion transcendent and holy in the very best sense of the word. I scanned the room with wide eyes, feeling that feeling from the story fully and truly, of waiting to feel the acid and watching the faces of my teamamtes to see if they were feeling it too.  And the more I looked, the more they laughed.  It’s just the coolest thing to get that huge a laugh from NOT saying anything.  This is when Einstein is revealed to be a genius.  Time for me becomes palpably relative.  This moment just keeps going on and on and on, the laughter washing over my shores all warm and wet and tall and tan and young and lovely.  When I die and my life flashes before my eyes, I hope this is one of the moments I relive.  As the laughter faded, I dove right back, and I felt myself riding that crowd like a dragon I trained and made my own, flying through the air, with the greatest of ease, swooping and diving, spitting fire at will.  It was just so easy.  Effortless ecstacy. The crescendo happened right where it should, we all climaxed together just like it’s supposed to be. To the golden sounds of the crowd giving it up, I floated off the stage and up the stairs, the high on all the love I’m getting.

The rest of the show was a blur to me, but Kate Braverman, transplendent and noirish in black, and Michelle Tea were amazing.  Michelle read from Rent Girl. I was reminded again what a great reader and writer she is, which is rarer than hen’s teeth, (as my poor dead mom used to say) and she’s so styly to boot.

As we were leaving the club Arielle turned to me and said, “Boy you coulda gotta lotta pussy tonight.”  I smiled at her and said, “Honey, I’ve got all the pussy I want right here with me. ” And I gave her a big wet sexy kiss.  I guess we’re just a coupla knuckleheaded romantics.  The one sad note of the evening was that I invited a writer who I’m working with to come and talk and network.  She’s got, irony rearing its fat head, a terrible drug problem.  She showed up wacked out of her skull.  Didn’t even stay to watch my part of the show, never mind let me introduce her around afterwards.  She called my cel phone while I was actually on stage.  In her message she said she had a headache.  Headache, my eye.  The fact that she had to self-medicate herself to the point of stupification made my heart sink like a sad loadstone.  She couldn’t do what was in her own best interest.  And she’s such a talented writer.  I want so much to help her, but then I wonder why should I bother if she can’t show up.  It’s not enough to be talented and to to want it.  You gotta show up.  It’s nearly 4am now and I should be sleepy but I’m still so high and wired from my performance.  I guess I’ll go read Crime and Punishment.  I started it about a week ago, and man, that bastard can really write.  Thanks San Francisco, you made my night.

On National Public Radio: My Mom Dying, Breaking Down at Ikea, & NPR

solobigsmile soloyoungkidMy mom loved National Public Radio.  Lived for it.  Died with it.  She was always calling me to tell me about some fabulous story she’d heard on This American Life, or some new Peruvian musical group she thought I’d love, or some unbelievable new writer Terry Gross interviewed.  That was my mom all over.  She loved getting all excited about things, and sharing her joie de vivre with those near and dear to her.  It wasn’t enough that she got jazzed, she wanted you to be jazzed, too.  It is a terrible thing that the world has been deprived of the excitement she generated on a daily basis.

So when I got an e-mail from a producer at NPR asking if I’d like to read a piece I wrote about my mom’s sudden, gut thumping death and the resulting grief, I was overjoyed.  Then plunged into yet more grief, as I imagined how excited she would have been, how she would have told all her friends, how proud she would have been, how she would have spread all the love around thickly.  That night I had a dream in which we were all sitting around playing cards, which was one of her favorite things to do.  And she was her usual self, concentrating so hard on the cards that her lower lip curled up over her upper, giggling like a kid, smiling and laughing and telling everyone about me and NPR.  What a happy dream.  Up to that point I had been unable to shake the image of her on her death bed, head on fire from radiation, unable to speak, scared and wracked, gasping for air when her spirit was barely even there anymore but that sturdy Geordie body just not giving up the ghost.  I was horrified to think that this would be the image I would have of my mother for the rest of my life.  It was a depressed prospect, and seemed the opposite of honoring the laughing, joyful, fierce, thoughtful, fearless person she was.  But that dream seemed to break the ice, and after I awoke with a smile, my images of my mom changed to happy ones.
When I went into the studio, the lovely and talented producer, Mark Trautwig, was so nice and generous.  He too has suffered.  Sharing our stories made me feel so much better.  So not alone in me in my pain, a solo freak drowning in my agony.  The recording itself was so easy.  I did what I thought was a warm-up take, then saw the technician wrapping things up.  I wanted another take.  Before I could ask, they discovered I was 6 seconds long.  So I got my second take, and as I did it I could really feel my mom with me, filling up the room, flowing through me, into the mic, and into the giant recording device.  I was all lit up from the inside, the words flowed with no effort, and by the time I was done, I was floating in ecstasy.  The second take was exactly the right amount of time.  I’m including it here if you wanna take a listen. It’s only 2 minutes.  Exacty 2 minutes.
http://www.kqed.org/pgmArchive/RD62
One of my mother’s goals when she got sick was to go to New York and see “Spamalot” on Broadway.  She was a great theater and Monty Python lover, both of which she passed on to me and my sibles.   She just loved the Python’s wacky brand of saucy, sassy, silly highbrow lowbrow comedy.  In fact, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” became her theme song.  Sadly, she died before she could see it.  But we all decided, what the hell, we’ll trek to New York and see it in her honor.  So me and Arielle, brother Craig, his wife Steph, their kids Ruth and Sam, and her life partner Judy went to watch King Arthur battle rude Frenchmen and a killer bunny.  My mom loved to laugh, and this show was hysterical, in the best sense of the word.  As the audience tittered, snickered, chuckled, guffawed, bellowed, and roared in laughter, I could hear my mom laughing with them, with me, with us.
And during the grand finale, when the whole cast comes out and sings “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”, while the rest of the audience applauded, I burst into tears of sorrow and joy.  And when I looked down our row, my whole family was crying, while the rest of the packed theater was clapping and laughing.  I think my mom, would have liked that.

I’m Through With Sex

This morning I’m going to have my blood tested for the human immunodeficiency virus. I’m taking the AIDS test, and I’m sure I’m gonna flunk. I walk into the Bob Hope Clinic in Hollywood, California. Bob himself is not there with a golf club wisecracking about his birdies and hookers. Oh God, Samantha – I did her without a rubber. “Hi Samantha, how’s it goin’…? Excellent… Me? I’m great. Oh by the way I have HIV, and so do you probably. Okay, have a nice life then.” Little vicious mutant warriors hellbent on pillaging my immune system, laying waste to my holy grounds, ravaging my virgins, savaging my knights, and beheading my King. Lori – sucked my unprotected dick. You can’t get it from fellatio, if you’re the fellatee, right? Or is that toilet seats? Wasting away in a hospital bed, a pariah with tubes stuck in every hole, no friends, no family, nobody wants to look at my concentration camp skinny, weeping sore-covered ass. When he died he weighed thirty-five pounds. Janet – condom broke. Snap. Oops. Me and Magic Johnson. Brad Davis. Keith Haring. The Wall of Shame gets a new 8 x 10 hung on it every day. Sophia – We did it about a thousand times without even a shred of protection. Maybe there is a God. Maybe there is a Heaven. And a Hell. And Satan. Maybe that’s where I’m going. Straight to Hell. And what about Arlene? Miss Prim and Proper, Miss I only did it with five people, only one of them just happened to be some lunatic love healer who boffed his way through Africa and Bangkok where everyone’s infected, I mean she had a ton of sex with this rampant loon, nary a condom in sight, shit-filled sperm flying willy nilly.

“Mr. Sterry.”

I jump out of my skin.

Literally.

I’m sitting here and my skin is over there, crawling.

My name sounds like a death sentence.

The Nurse sits me down and starts taking my blood pressure while she does her spiel, like some tour guide escorting me through the Museum of Horrible Deaths. HIV is a virus, she explains. The tests are not legally conclusive. A negative can be a positive and a positive can be a negative. Then why the hell am I putting myself through all this shit? my brain screams to me. The virus can take a long time incubating. A person can be a carrier for years without even knowing it. The incubation period can last as long as ten years. O dear God, I’m an incubator. A warm vessel growing deadly viruses inside me, infecting everything I touch, every time I breathe it’s a deathbreath. I’m cold and hot at the same time now. I can barely sit here. Every infected fiber wants to run.

I sign a stack of papers. I flop sweat. She ties me off. I heave a huge sick-filled sigh. She puts on her latex gloves. Because of my deadly infectious blood. One of the fingers on her gloves rip. She laughs. It’s not funny, but she laughs. I’m not laughing. Nobody else is laughing except her and she stops too quick.

This is not a good sign.

“This may hurt,” she says.

You know whenever anybody tells you that, what they really mean is-

“This is really going to hurt a lot.”

Sure enough, a sharp pain pricks me as she plunges the needle rudely into my plump infected vein. The thick red oil oozes sickly into the syringe. Are they there? The little mutants. I wish they were colored. Black maybe. So you could see them. Pick them out like cyanide sprinkles. The vial is full. She labels is and starts it on its way to the lab. The sealing of my doom. She is very careful to throw away the needle dripping with my poison blood.

That’s it. I’m through with sex.

Lost Sex, Huckleberries, and Heavily Caffeinated Beverages: The Putting Your Passion Into Print 2001 Northwest Book Tour

13 events in 15 days. Here we go. Berkeley Barnes & Noble, we kick off on a lovely sun-drenched Saturday afternoon, followed by a manic 14 hour, 850 mile road race up the 5 in our Rav 4 to Eagle Harbor Bookstore on Bainbridge Island, north of Seattle, where a the drenching turns from sun to rain, a fine mist hanging thick amidst the autumn ruby reds, canary yellows, orange oranges, and of course, the emerald green, green, everywhere green.

We were greeted with a glow of warmth by Mary Gleystein, who immediately made us a cup of tea. Never underestimate the power of a cup of tea after a 14 hour, 850 mile road race up the 5. By the time we started our event, the place was packed, every seat taken, and excitement buzzed in the damp Northwestern air. When we were done, the applause seemed enthusiastic. Either that or they were very nice and really good at faking it. Then there were, as there always are, lots and lots of questions. One guy said, “I have a stupid question.” David said, “There are no stupid questions.” He said, “You haven’t heard my question yet.” He got a big laugh. Turns out it wasn’t a stupid question at all. It was a smart question. In fact these people asked lots of smart questions. They brought up stuff we hadn’t thought of. Stuff we later included our event. Then we signed lots of Satchel Sez: The Wit Wisdom and World of Leroy Satchel Paige-s and Pride & Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austin –s. People thanked us profusely, chatted nicely, and bought books. In short, it was a real gas.

Next Stop: Port Townsend, Washington, where we were wined and dined on garlic chicken and blackberry pie you could plotz dead away from, treated like royalty by the lovely and talented Gillards, parents of Jessica (more on her later). And O my, it was so spectacular there, big huge trees, glorious vistas of Pacific Ocean blue, Monet painting fall colors, surrounded by more green than you’ve ever seen. Arielle immediately wanted to move there. So David, a veteran of the Pacific Northwest who wants no part of living there ever again, craftily took her out golfing the next day and by the time they were done with nine, they were a couple of drowned rats pouring rain out of their shoes. So much for moving to the Pacific Northwest.

Next Stop: Vancouver, Washington, just over the river from Portland, 200 miles later. By the time we started our event, Rebecca at the Barnes & Noble was scouring the place frantically for more chairs, cuz there were already fifty of them filled, and people were still showing up. The highlight of this event was during the Q&A when a tall thin handsome fellow stood, and in a thick German accent, and said, “I am very nice to work vith, unt full of joy, unt I vant to know if Arielle vill be mine agent.” Brought the house down. Again we signed many books, again we were thanked profusely, and again we had a solid solid gas.

Next Stop: Bend, Oregon, 150 miles south of Portland. 6:30 AM, Kristy Miller, perky hostess of “Good Morning Central Oregon”, welcomes us on-air, and interviews us for 7 minutes. She was charming and sweet and we were thrilled and honored to be in all seven homes in Central Oregon who were watching the show that morning.

Next Stop: Bellevue, just outside Seattle, 350 miles later, and 12 hours later, Alison at Barnes & Noble gets David a heavily caffeinated beverage. At that night’s event, a woman told a story about an industrious young man who wanted to get hired by a captain of industry. This industrious young man found out that the captain of industry loved pizza with pineapple, Canadian bacon, and triple cheese. Well, the industrious young man had a pineapple, Canadian bacon and triple cheese pizza from the finest pizzeria in town delivered to the captain of industry. He taped his query letter and resume to the inside of the pizza box, so when the captain of industry opened it, he was staring right at it. The industrious young man was hired that very day. We will subsequently tell this story at every subsequent event.

Next Stop: Downtown Seattle, Northwest Book Fest. For an hour and a half we pressed flesh, made introductions, pitched our books, and met a big bunch of Northwest book buyers.

Next Stop: Paulina Springs, Sisters, Oregon, just west of Bend, 5 hours of hard driving and 350 miles later. By now we had memorized every inch of road between Seattle and Central Oregon. Luckily it’s beautiful country to memorize. Driving south from Portland to Bend, with Mt. Hood posing like a picture postcard through the windshield, and beauty growing thick all around us, we were intoxicated again and again by the gorgeousity of it all.

911 said the sign at the edge of town as we pulled into town. We weren’t sure if that was the population, or a cry for help. This was the only store where we were doing an event solely based around Satchel Sez. This was at the insistence of Kate Cerino, who greeted us as we walked into the store at 4:40 for our 5:00 event. Apart from Kate, none of the 911 Sisterites were there. Our expectations, extremely low to begin with, plummeted as we spied the 30 empty seats sadly facing one lone chair, which was staring off self-consciously.

As we strolled around Sisters, we noticed that all the shops were closed, and no one was around. It was like a Twilight Zone episode. We began to wonder if there really were 911 people in Sisters, or if we were going to be abducted by author-starved aliens who would make us write books day and night for the rest of eternity.

Well, imagine our surprise at 5:00 when we returned to find Paulina Springs Bookstore packed with 35 of its 911 occupants. 3% of the population. If this was LA there would’ve been 300,000 people there. Our jaws hit the floor. Those melancholy chairs were now full and happy, brimming with Sisters bottoms, all waiting for us to say something intelligent, insightful and witty about Satchel Paige.

I scanned the crowd, and it suddenly hit me: there were only two people under the age of sixty in the audience. Talk about your target audience. Afterwards, the crowd shared their own Satchel Paige stories. It was America at its best, oral history flying all around us, right there in Paulina Springs Bookstore, Sisters, Oregon, population 911. Turns out almost everyone there had seen Satchel pitch, which is not as strange as it might seem, since he barnstormed North America from Moosejaw to Miami.

Towards the end of the event the Oldest-Man-in-the-Room raised his hand. In a voice weathered with age but still going gangbusters, he said, “I was the batboy on Satchel Paige’s team. My uncle was his manager. I used to ride in his car with him. He was fast. He would have made a great race car driver, Ol’ Satch.” He stole the whole show in about twenty seconds.

After the event, the Oldest-Man-In-the-Room approached David. He had several hundred thousand miles on him, but his smile was wide, his mind was tack-sharp, and he had incredible posture. Made us stop slouching just looking at him. He thanked us for writing the book. Then he told David that he had one of Satchel’s old gloves. David said he would love to buy it from him. The man said, “No, sir, I want you to have it. Give me your address and I’ll mail it to you.” David insisted on paying for it, but the old man wouldn’t hear of it. He gave David his pen, and David wrote down the address. The Oldest-Main-in-the-Room carefully folded the paper and put it in his pocket. Then he stuck out his hand and David took it. It was old and thin, but the grip was strong, with a nice pump at the end. “I hope I’m shaking hands as well as that when I’m 80,” thought David. After he and the Oldest-Main-in-the-Room said their heartfelt farewells, David was distracted by someone asking him to sign a book, and this led to another signature, then another. As David signed the books, he was so happy that the buyers asked him to make the inscriptions out to their grand-sons and grand-daughters. Then it hit him: this is why he wanted to write the book in the first place, so the next generation would know about Satchel and his 6 Rules for Staying Young. As David signed, he felt a tug on my sleeve. It was the Oldest-Main-in-the-Room. David smiled to myself. He figured the old man probably forgot something. “Sonny, you got my pen.” David cracked up, handed him the pen, and smiled as he watched the Oldest-Main-in-the-Room walk away slow but steady, overjoyed at 44 to be called Sonny.

We thanked Kate, she thanked us, then we all patted each other on the back for quite some time. We promised her we’d be back when David’s memoir Chicken comes out in February, and she said she was looking forward to it.

We sold more books at this event than at any other. And had the most solid of gases. Again proving: You just never know.

Next Stop: Bend, Oregon. David had another highly caffeinated beverage. The highlight of this event was meeting a children’s author who lives off the grid with her husband and her animals, and sometimes gets snowed in for two months in the winter. She was so cool.

Next Stop: Kah Nee Tah Indian Reservation, 75 miles north, home of Warm Springs Tribe, in the High Desert country, eating huckleberry pancakes with huckleberry sause and huckleberries with huckleberry cream looking out over ancient red clay and wild horses that sniff at the laughing wind and the crying sky.

Next Stop: Portland, Oregon, 75 miles north, Reed College, David’s alma mater, where our lovely and talented intern Jessica (who is a current Reedy) sent up a smashing event. Again, by the time we started, the chairs were all full, and students had to sit on the floor. And they just kept coming. About twenty minutes in David felt someone behind him, and there were 3 students sitting there. David was shocked at the turn-out on a Tuesday night. “I woulda never gone to something like this when I was at Reed, I was way too busy hanging out.”

Next Stops: Seattle University Village Barnes & Noble on Friday, 200 miles later, Portland’s Annie Blooms on Saturday, 200 miles later, Seattle’s Elliot Bay on Sunday, 200 miles later, and finally Beaverton’s Border’s, 200 miles later.

As we motored home, we were tired, but it was that good kind of tired. We felt like we did something really hard, but we did it as best we could, and we learned so much about books, ourselves, and life. We loved seeing the country, meeting the people, hanging out with David’s mom and sister, watching their friend Margit dance, feeling the magic, and falling ever-deeper in love. And it was glorious pulling up our driveway, 4,000 miles later, so nice to be home sweet home.

Plus we wrote our next book. It’s called Putting Your Passion Into Print.

State of Satchel: 11/1/01
We’ve just returned from our Northwest 2001 Tour, so we thought we’d take this moment to review what we’ve achieved so far, and what we plan for the future.

Book store Events
Barnes & Noble Colma: South San Francisco
Next Chapter Books: Davis, California
B & N: Fremont, Ca
B & N: Walnut Creek, Ca
SF Public Library:
With a Clean Well Lighted Place for Books, and
The Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Foundation)
B & N: Berkeley
Eagle Harbor Books: Bainbridge Island, Washington
B & N: Vancouver, Washington
B & N: Bellevue, Washington
Paulina Springs: Sisters, Oregon
B & N: Bend, Oregon
Reed College: Portland, Oregon
B & N: University of Washington Village, Seattle, Washington
Annie Bloom’s: Portland, Oregon
Elliot Bay Books: Seattle, Washington
Borders: Beaverton, Oregon
Borders: San Rafael

On Tour: Olympia, Washington to Antwerp, Belgium to the Gold Coast, Australia

Back home again home again, after six weeks on the road: Portland, Eugene, Olympia, Portland again, San Francisco, Palo Alto a half dozen times, Portland once more, New York City, then Belgium: Antwerp, Gent, Brussels, Sint Niklaas, Mechelen, Aalst, Roeselare, Hasselt, Turnhout, Knokke, and Leuven, more NY, then Surfer’s Paradise on the Gold Coast of Australia.

And the one thing everyone has in common overseas is that they are horrified by and scared shitless of Junior Bush, they urged me as an American to make sure he doesn’t get to be emperor for another four years.

The Sex Worker Art Show was half a gas and half a horror. I did the first four shows with them, and I had a blast, met all manner of fascinating human, played to packed houses. Left the tour in SF, then taught at Stanford for the next month. The first night of class we asked who among the 33 students had an advanced degree, master, or Phd., EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM RAISED THEIR HAND. Me and Arielle were the least educated people in the class. The students were so smart and dedicated and they all had great book ideas, we all liked it so much we’re doing another five weeks in April.

Then on to NYC, where I rejoined the Sex Worker Art Show, with the intention of continuing on to the conclusion, only to be blindsided brutally (story soon to follow).

Then on to Belgium, Arielle met me at the Newark Airport and we flew over together. We had no idea what to expect. Imagine our delight when we were picked up and swept away to a five star hotel in the ancient sacred heart of olde Antwerpen, the diamond/fashion center of Europe, where waffles waft their magic aroma from street corners, and chocolates croon your name from sweet boutiques. Turns out I was on the Saint Amour tour, bringing together 10 of the greatest writers from Belgium and Holland. And me. I felt like one of those: What’s Wrong With This Picture things. What am I doing here? Well, the whole tour was about love, so I suppose I was somewhat qualified. Strapping Viking poet babes, and dark brooding novelists, a string quartet doing Bach so beautiful it made your balls weep, three glorious gorgeous female singers who do these ancient sounding songs in Polish Dutch and French, they are food for the ears and the eyes. And the grand old man of Belgian literature, Hugo Claus, this guy was once married to the softporn star Sylvia Kristel, of Emmanuel fame, he’s Arthur Miller, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald all rolled into one.

And me. One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong. What am I doing here? With me is the other token American Jonathan Ames, a fine fellow performing a story entitled, Bald, Impotent and Depressed. He and I fell in together like peas in pods. Every day we got fed breakfast at the hotel, we talked about writing and art and sex and love and getting rid of Bush, who as I mentioned, they’re all utterly disgusted by and terrified of, then we would wander the city, and at about five we loaded into the van, drive an hour, unload into some gorgeous 500 year old multi-tiered cake of a theater that has acoustics so perfect you can whisper into the mike and it will travel to every ear in the place and back again.

At seven we were fed a fabulous gourmet meal. People drank a lot of alcohol. Everyone except me and Jonathan the two sober American freaks. The shows started at eightish. The music is beautiful the singers like angels who tasted a touch of hell. The emcee is a delightfully droll old school intellectual with deep gravel and fine beer in his voice. The terrible thing is everyone reads in Dutch, so I can’t understand a word of it. Eleven nights in a row, hearing what I can only assume are these most beautiful words, and I can’t understand a word of it. In the show I’m last. Jonathan is second to last. Then me. They project the text to Jonathan’s reading, and to mine, on a 20 foot screen behind us in Dutch. The screen consists of 150 antique woman slips sewed together. So every night my Dutch words are projected onto old lady slips behind me while I act them out in English.

I closed the whole show with 12 minutes of the Rainbow hippiechick chapter of Chicken, which climaxes with a cork-popping rip-roaring Tantric climax, and that’s how the Saint Amour show ends, with me orgasming my way across Belgium. A little known fact: writers are treated much more like god/rockstars in Europe than in America, and as a writer I have to say, I like that. I came this close to trashing my hotel room, that’s how much of a rockstar I felt like. One night out for drinks the great man motioned me over. Hugo Claus wants to talk to me. He’s all white mane and old lion skin, magic eyes dancing inside sagging skin, and ancient scarred voice. I ask him what his poems are about. He nods knowingly and says, “Oh you know, love and war and sex and women and money and ice cream and dogs, things like that.” He’s dry on dry, and got the big laugh outta me. Then he says that I remind him of vaudeville, of burlesque. He tells me in his rich voice thick with age that he once saw the exotic dancer Tempest Storm. She was one of the great burlesque entertainers of the 20th century. Hugo told me about the time he watched her stand perfectly still, and make her breasts swing back and forth, higher and higher, and it was like a beautiful poem, Hugo said, watching her beautiful breasts dance all on their own. He was a gorgeous man, Hugo Claus. We saw five hundred year old cathedrals where holy and unholy ghosts fly around the huge ceiling with all that stained light firing through the windows where angels and saints and devils and saviors act out cryptic religious scenarios. We learned the glorious aroma of waffle wiffling around a corner, grabbing you inside your nostril and towing you into the waffle winkle (Belgium for store), and the astonishing warming quality of a sweet hot waffle on a cold European day. I was so sad to leave Belgium, I could have gone on the St. Amour tour forever. Hanging with those mind-boggling writers, eating that damn-that’s-good food, performing in front of all those rapt and appreciative Belgians in those monumentally exquisite theaters, and actually getting paid for it. A slice of heaven. But Australia was calling. 12 hours back to SF. 30 hours later, it’s 16 hours to Brisbane, DownUnder. Luckily the movies “Love Actually”, and the great Dutch soccer documentary about the two worst teams in the world were playing. G’Day! I was whisked off to Surfer’s Paradise, where I was performing in the Gold Coast Art Festival. The ocean the surf the sand immense and exquisite, of course it’s summer Down Under, so it was balmy breezy, easy on the senses. The Aussies were everything they were advertised to be. Warm, sweet, bawdy, affectionate, open, inclusive, generous, curious, sexy, and fun. The first night of my show was a deluge of Biblical proportions, 50 mile an hour winds, lashings of hard rain like the goddesses were whipping the earth in an S&M frenzy. The phones in the theater rang off hooks, and I kept hearing people saying, “No, the shows are going. No, they ARE going on.” As I prepared backstage for my Australian debut, I was interrupted when I stepped into a large puddle where the torrential, relentless rain had pounded its way in. As I dried my feet, and I listened to the tsunami crash down on the Gold Coast, I tried not to take it personally. Was the universe trying to tell me something? Have I offended the gods and goddesses in some way. But somehow people did manage to show up. I did three nights, we had great crowds, and they were lovely. I met more performers, I met people from all over the Gold Coast, and again I was quite sad to go home. Back of course overjoyed to be back in the U S of A. My time on the road and overseas was mind expanding and soul growing. It made me realize how much I want Junior Bush out of office, and that I have to do something about it. At this point America is s a dirty word in some parts of the world. I now prefer when I’m overseas to say I’m from California. But even this is tainted, as now we are tarred with the legacy of the Terminator Governor. This has got to change. In the rest of the world, you really feel like you’re part of the rest of the world. There’s none of that love-it-or-leave-it shit in Europe. They have Euros in Europe. I was also most happy to see that on three different continents, people understood and responded to my very American though apparently universal story of a boy on his own trying to get by. From grrrrrrrrrls in clubs, bourgeois literarti in Europe, dating couples Down Under, queers in bars, UK grannies, SF trannies, tattooed students, mothers and brothers and sisters and husbands and sons and wives. And I met people who have become a part of me, amazing people who made me laugh and marvel and brought great joy into my world, which has become so much bigger. For this, and for all of it, I am so grateful. The HBO deal is being hammered out by lawyers, hammering being the operative word. Me and Arielle will now finish the book Putting Your Passion Into Print. We teach PYPIP again at Stanford. I’m finishing up my a novel, a memoir about my time at Chippendale’s, and I’m polishing up a young adult novel. Then in late April, Xaviera Hollander is bringing me to Amsterdam for about 10 shows. Then to the Brighton Theatre Fest, then three more dates in England. In Philadelphia in June. But here now, it’s great to be home with Milo and Arielle.

April 24, 25 the Gallery Donkersloot – Leidsegracht 76, Amsterdam 8 pm
April 26, 27 gallery Treehouse , Voetboogstraat 11,Amsterdam 8 pm
April 28 – Polanen theater, Polanenstraat 174, Amsterdam 8 pm
April 29 gallery treehouse Voetboogstraat 11,Amsterdam 8 pm
May 1 – Polanen theater, Polanenstraat 174, Amsterdam 8 pm
May 2 – Concordia theater, Hoge zand 42, Den Haag – 4 pm
May 3 – Concordia theater, Hoge zand 42, Den Haag , 8 pm
www.xavierahollander.com/hbtheatre.htm

Wed 5th May – 21 South St Theatre, Reading
Thur, Fri, Sat 6th – Sat. 8th Komedia Theatre – Brighton Theatre Festival
Sun 9th – MAC – Birmingham Cannon Hill Park
Thur 13th – The Point – Eastleigh Town Hall Centre, Leigh Road, Hants

Blue Sky (215-627-1144) Philadelphia – www.blueskyarts.org
Thu-Sat June 10, 11 – Performance and Q&A; Sat, June 12 – Solo Performance Workshop, Performance and Q&A

Thanks. xxox d

Black Sheep, Benedict Arnold Day & So Many Kilts: Holiday in the UK

3 weeks in England and it only rained three times which I take as sign from god that we are leading a blessed life. From london to bath to yeovil to chester to ilkley to howarth to yorkshire to newcastle to edinborough back to newcastle back to london.FleshmarketClose

IMG_0682The vast barren expanses of the lonely romantic moors where you could practically hear Heathcliff crying out in anguished tortured to Cathy –

Fireworks on Guy Fawkes day in Bath – this I really love by the way, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up parliament and they have a national holiday for him – it’d be like having Benedict Arnold Day, a very funny old lady told me, “Too bad he didn’t do a better job of it!” –

Cows herded right past our car on a tiny country road by an incredibly R. Crumb looking woman cowherder –

RoyalMileMime2Scones and clotted cream and jam and tea and honey and crustless cucumber sandwiches at Castle Combe in a serious 17th century castle (fantastic golf course by the way, old and green and enormous hills looking out over the most beautiful bucolic countryside, ponies nuzzling me up the path on the way to the 18th tee box, and the highlight of my trip, a downhill 307 yard drive on a par four which rolled to within 10 feet of the cup, missed the eagle, tapped in the birdie)-scone in rural uk

Sheep ScottishCountryside4A sheep sitting like a fleecy buddah in the middle of the 12th fairway at ilkley –

A ferret eating the guts out of a bunny on the 8th fairway at Islington (an omen apparently, I shot my worst round, I stopped keeping track at 100 on the 13th hole when I chipped back and forth over the green too many times to mention in polite company) – s

So many sausages and beans and eggs O my god and so much great indian food – the curries the lamb the chicken the cardomum –

Visiting newcastle, my roots, was truly inspiring, the thick geordie accents, all my relatives were so sweet and lovely to us, there is a feeling of family and community there which I do not find in america, many of the people having never been more then 10 miles from the house in which they were born. We asked one man how to get to london and he said, “Ya gan up t’ the roondaboot, tayke a left, then, no no ya cannit gan that way – ya gan throo the roondaboot, then when ya see wor Tetchie wi’ his auld dog Wonky, ya gan 3 more streets an’ tayke a left, right? No, no, that doesn’t gan through. Ehn, ya know, I divn’t think ya can get to London from here.” –

Watching the England v Scotland football matches – in Edinborough all the men clad in tartan kilts and royal blue Scotland uniform tops getting totally tanked before the match – lionglasgow

Giving our leftovers to a homeless guy wrapped in a blanket on a bridge in scotland, he looked kind of stunned and said, “For me?” and he gazed up so incredibly astonished and grateful which is frankly how you want a homeless person to look when you give them something, they have a much more civilized class of homeless in The UK I must say –

The most romantic walk over the river thames with a full moon shining down and the lights of london twinkling, it was just so beautiful –

“the ratcatcher”, a scottish film which I would highly recommend –

and by the way if you ever need directions in london, ask a hansom cab driver, they should throw out parliament and fill it with hansom cab drivers, that would put england back on the map –

by the way if you’re in london a great course to play is sandy lodge, 45 minutes from central london and exquisitely maintained –

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at harrods a spice girl wannabe with long straight blond hair wearing aqua and black boots so loud they jammed radar, turned to us at a cash register and said, “I think you should go to another register, this is going to take a very long time.” The woman at the next register told us Rude Spice had asked her for “The most expensive biscuits in the store.” –

in coxlodge, where my father was born and raised, we went to the Legion pup (one cousin was working there, the other refused to go, claiming he didn’t want to get Legionaire’s Diseace) on Saturday night. It was odd, the women outnumbered the men by at least 2 to 1, we thought, what’s all this then, and the emcee, in huge black and white trousers with a black and white fright wig (arielle sais, “david, that would you be you if your parents hadn’t moved to america) introduced 5 members of the Gateshead Fire Department, who did the most amazing strip tease I have ever witnessed, and as most of you know I have witnessed enough strip teases to last a hundred lifetimes. Turns out it was full monty night at the Legion. And they did the full monty. They were a bit clumsy, a little overweight, but had a commitment and passion which I found intoxicating. And one of them had the smallest willy I have ever seen on a man. Now that is courage under fire. – so a grand time was had by all, and we’re in nyc until december 1, then back to la – love and kisses, d

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