Birthday Week started off with a bang. Today I left work at 2:00 and drove down to Chapel Hill for the Chuck Palahniuk (pronounced paula-nick, by the way) reading/signing at the Bull's Head Bookstore on the UNC-CH campus. I got there and parked in a deck on Rosemary Street, then met Jamie in front of Morehead Planetarium. We walked down to Daniels Student Stores and grabbed a good seat at around 3:10. Chuck was already signing for a few people, then he got up, presumably to browse a bit before he had to talk. At 3:30, he was introduced and grabbed the microphone.

Instead of reading from his new novel Lullaby, since he'd been on a book tour since May and was sick of reading his words to people since they could pick up the book and read it themselves, he wanted to spend his time talking to us and answering our questions. He started out with an anecdote about how crazy he thought his mother was when he was a kid living in the desert. She would frantically tell Chuck and his sister to yank the curtains closed at dusk, for no apparent reason. His mother had found a pile of cigarette butts, wads of used tissues, and what looked like bird droppings on the ground outside her daughter's window in the trailer they lived in. Chuck found out later that their neighbor, some dirty old man whose name I've forgotten already, was creeping down to their trailer at dusk and peeping in Chuck's sister's window as she got undressed, his own little live show. You can imagine what was in the tissues and on the ground.

Chuck then told us about a great opening line he came up with in one of the countless airports on his book tour. A ticket agent he was dealing with was acting surly and grumpy, so Chuck asked him what was wrong. The agent said his back was incredibly sore and he'd have to work ten more hours before he could go to the doctor. Chuck remembered the Vicodins he carried with him on his book tour (left over from a kidney stone episode a few years ago, and which he still carried on tour in case the stones ever came back), and said to the ticket agent, "Hey, do you want a Vicodin?" The agent asked, "Are you a doctor?" and Chuck replied, "No, a writer." The agent said, "Okay," and Chuck gave him one right there. It came to him that this was a great opening line for talking to strangers. On the plane, he sat next to a button-down banker business type, the type of guy who looks straight ahead and doesn't say a word for the entire length of a nine-hour flight. So Chuck said, "Hey, do you want a Vicodin?" and the businessguy looks at him and says, "Okay." Chuck put the pill on the businessdude's fold-down tray. Then they started talking about jet lag and the different sleeping pills that they used, and Chuck remembered he had some Ambien pills and offered them to the guy. The businessman said sure, downed all three pills, the two Ambiens and the Vicodin, and started tossing back glasses of scotch. Shortly after that, the guy passed out, and Chuck had to spend the next eight hours staying awake and suffering through multiple viewings of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood to make sure the guy didn't suddenly stop breathing.

The Q&A session started out tentative, then got more lively as more and more questions were asked and answered. Most of the answers are available online in interviews Chuck has done, so I knew some of those. When asked which book was his favorite, he responded, "The next one. I always look forward to the newest novel, because it's private, a secret no one knows yet but me. Plus, what do you love more, your ex-girlfriend or your current girlfriend?" About movie news, Survivor is tough going since September 11; nobody seems in the mood to watch funny hijacking movies apparently. Invisible Monsters and Choke have both been optioned, and Lullaby is being dickered over right now.

The entire talk lasted about an hour, then Chuck sat down to sign books, which lasted another hour. He was nice enough to sign my copies of all five of his books, and thanked me for having a short first name. He had a firm handshake. It was a cool afternoon.

Another thing I noticed; there were a large number of attractive girls there, the most I've ever seen at a literary function. One girl was made up with dark red lipstick, a sleeveless black shirt with a plunging neckline which revealed a lot of cleavage and the hint of a pink push-up bra, bell-bottom hip-huggers held up by a giant belt buckle with a black panther on it, and a red beret. She asked a question and Chuck seemed to know her; either her name was Chattanooga or she drove all the way from Chattanooga for the talk. She looked like the literary equivalent of a rock groupie, something I've never seen at other author readings. The funny thing is, I wasn't attracted to any of these girls. Before I met Janet, I would have been drooling over all these girls, especially the one in the beret. But now, it just doesn't occur to me anymore. I've found the girl I want to be with, who makes me feel like I've finally found a piece of myself that I never knew was missing. Love is strange and wonderful. By the way, Janet and I have been together for three months now, a month longer than my longest previous relationship. Happy threemonthiversary to us!