Absolute Gentleman

I run a nonprofit writing center, Word Street, that provides free tutoring and writing instruction to kids, and one thing I like to do to raise money is get writers to come to lovely downtown Pittsfield, Massachusetts to read for the people. This year it was Lydia Davis and Amy Hempel on April 17. These two amazing women came to my town to read for free. Lydia lives close by, in a converted church in upstate New York, and I met her through an interview I did for a literary magazine. I contacted Amy through a college and had been emailing back and forth for about a year.

A few years ago, during one of those gratuitous and uncomfortable conversations you have with people just because they happen to be standing in front of the wine table, I mentioned to two directors of another writers’ organization here in the Berkshires, one that also hosts writers who do readings, that I wanted to get Amy Hempel to read for Word Street. They told me not to bother. “Hempel doesn’t read in Massachusetts,” they told me. “We already tried.” Did I mention Word Street is in Massachusetts?

I went to Williams College to hear Rick Moody read a few years ago, and after he finished reading some excerpts from Demonology, I watched the aforementioned wine table blockers bee line to where he was sitting, like vultures on a dead carcass, to get him to do a reading for them.

Maybe that’s why people don’t like you. You think?

I’m wondering off topic, though, like Montaigne on his fourth glass of a nice Rivesaltes.

The reading was fantastic. In fact, it was like going to a small club to hear your favorite band play and find that they decided to try out all their new material on the audience. Lydia and Amy went on stage (separately) with folders and papers and drafts and polished stuff and made everyone feel something.

We had planned to go to the Brix Wine Bar for dinner afterward, and that made me a little nervous because it’s so expensive. We, of course, were picking up the tab for Lydia and her husband, Amy and her friend…God, I forgot her friend’s name, but she was Ukrainian or Bulgarian or French or something — she had an incredible energy, was intense and feisty, and wrote screenplays, I think, and all you had to do to rile her up and send her off on a rant was mention Americans and their government.

I sent the group to the Wine Bar ahead of me, as I had to finish cleaning up after the reading, what with all the blood everywhere. “You will be joining us, won’t you?” said Lydia.

“Yes, dahling. I will be joing the party of…” what? the “party” went from six of us, seven or eight…to something like fourteen when the final count was taken.

We had an after-party a few years ago when Dave Eggers and Jim Shepard came to do our benefit. We set up a volunteer recruitment booth in the lobby of the theater, and the volunteers at the volunteer recruitment booth were instructed to give special after-party passes to those who expressed interest in volunteering at Word Street. The plan flopped, because the after-party was filled with people I haven’t seen at Word Street since the reading, and they drank the cases of free wine we got from a local liquor store.

I raced to Brix to find it closed. Sigh of relief: Word Street wouldn’t be spending $1000 for dinner that night. The crowd went across the street to the restaurant in the hotel where Amy was staying. I walked in and had to find an extra seat to stick on the end of the table. I was elated, though. We didn’t make a lot of money that night, but I got Amy Hempel and Lydia Davis to come to Pittsfield, and now I was having dinner with them.

I read what Chuck Palahniuk wrote about meeting Amy Hempel for the first time, about it being somewhat of a disappointment, but there’s nothing disappointing about her. She’s funny, charming, and brilliant — and during dinner she whispered to the person sitting next to her “Would you switch seats with Frank so that I may sit next to him…”

The food was terrible — flat out terrible, but what does any of it matter when you are the one Amy Hempel bends her head toward when there’s conversation to be had? The only distraction was the woman (not really a woman, more like a girl), 19 or 20 years old, never saw her in my life, French accent, Yoda-type speech and pretentiousness (“From North Adams, I am not”), one of those permanent scowls on her face, asking Amy to buy her drinks because the restaurant made a regular practice of carding annoying jackasses at the table.

So here Amy is, getting drinks for her, and the girl keeps apologizing to Amy for having to get the drinks. Across the room security is eyeing the girl, waiting for her to take a sip so they can bust her, Amy’s friend is cursing the security guard, calling him a fascist, and all I’m wondering is who brought this idiot. Did she pay for her ticket for the benefit? Am I paying for the drinks she’s getting through Amy Hempel?

It’s like the other day at Starbucks. Woman from the adjacent Quiznos comes over with a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and asks for a shot of vanilla for her Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. The ‘Bucks girl was like, “Are you kidding me, Moron?”