Cult of Jef

I’d just like to apol­o­gize to David Sedaris for every­thing I did on World Book Night on Tues­day, but it was the pushy drunk gay guy’s fault.

I sup­pose I should start at the begin­ning, which–if I’m really fair–should also cast blame on author Dorothy Alli­son. I had the plea­sure of eat­ing lunch with Dorothy last sum­mer. We were dis­cussing con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians and vibra­tors, as you typ­i­cally do when you’re in con­ver­sa­tion with a South­ern writer and self-identified les­bian femme, when I had men­tioned I had seen an infomer­cial for an intrigu­ing exer­cise pro­gram on my flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles.

““I like the fact that it’s all car­dio and resis­tance train­ing, yet doesn’t require any equipment.”

““Oh, that’s the Insan­ity Work­out!” In yet another exam­ple of the small world we live in, Dorothy’s part­ner works for Beach Body, the com­pany that pro­duces the Insan­ity Work­out. Although Dorothy could care less whether I actu­ally exer­cised along with the DVDs, she did encour­age me to buy them, so she and her part­ner could con­tinue to sup­port their son, Wolf–and she’d appre­ci­ate it if I kept push­ing copies of Bas­tard Out of Car­olina to read­ers while I’m at it.

Well, I filed that way and didn’t really think about it again until a few weeks ago when I real­ized I was bored with the gym and run­ning. I wanted some­thing new, some­thing chal­leng­ing, some­thing dif­fer­ent. That’s when I saw the ad for the Insan­ity Work­out and decided to order under one con­di­tion: I had to com­mit to doing the work­outs six-days per week for the next sixty days.

Since Tues­day was World Book Night, I fig­ured I’d bet­ter leave work a bit early, so I had time to com­plete it before I went to the book­store. I was only three days into the Insan­ity Work­out and fig­ured it would be real easy to skive off, instead. Plus, after my shift at the book­store and Jeff and I grabbed some din­ner at Grant Cen­tral Pizza, I still needed to come home and blog for the next day and write three pages on my man­u­script. I was a man with a plan and noth­ing would get in my way.

When I got home, how­ever, I found my first obsta­cle. The con­trac­tor was at the house fin­ish­ing up the punch list on the laun­dry room ren­o­va­tion, which is a per­fectly rea­son­able thing to do–except I had to do my Insan­ity Work­out. But I couldn’t do the Insan­ity Work­out while some­one was there. What if they saw me? Try­ing to make the best of the sit­u­a­tion, I man­aged to write my blog post until it was time to go to the bookstore.

Later, when I explained my Insan­ity frus­tra­tion to 2Fs, he would ask, “Why couldn’t you just do your work­out with Bran­don there?”

““You don’t under­stand,” I said. “This work­out requires a lot of jump­ing and it sounds like a herd of dinosaurs stam­ped­ing across the hardwoods.”

““I don’t think Bran­don would care.”

““Look, the truth of the mat­ter is I don’t want any­one to see me exer­cis­ing, okay? It’s like hav­ing some­one walk on you in the mid­dle of a prostate exam, while on your back, and admin­is­tered by a young female doc­tor of Indian ances­try with a val­ley girl accent, okay?”

Wisely, Jeff let it go. I watched the book­store and fin­ished the bi-weekly e-newsletter, while he left to hand out free books to light and/or non read­ers for World Book Night.

After we closed and Jeff daw­dled around doing some­thing in the back room that just couldn’t wait, I won­dered if I would man­age to stay awake long enough to do my work­out once I ever made it home. We finally made it to Grant Cen­tral and ordered our food. When we sat down, I decided to ask Jeff what was in the box he was carrying.

““They’re copies of Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris,” he said. “I thought we’d hand them out at Mary’s after din­ner.” I phys­i­cally restrained my hands to keep from smack­ing myself in the fore­head. My sched­ule was get­ting fur­ther behind than a dentist’s office on a rainy afternoon.

““I don’t want to hand out books,” I said, try­ing to sound pleas­ant through grit­ted teeth.

““Then you can carry my box for me.” Jeff smiled. “You seem a bit tense.”

Luck­ily, our food arrived then, because it gave me some­thing to chew.

For those who are unfa­mil­iar with Mary’s, it’s a lit­tle bar in East Atlanta Vil­lage that Logo once named the friend­liest gay bar in North Amer­ica. Loaded with books, Jeff and I entered. Wouldn’t you know, I thought to myself, Tues­day is one of the few nights each week when Mary’s isn’t smoke-free.

It was also karaoke night.

I staked out a cor­ner with the box of books, and Jeff went from cus­tomer to cus­tomer, hand­ing copies of Me Talk Pretty One Day. That’s when the drunk gay guy stag­gered up to me and thrust in my face a black Sharpie and copy of the book opened to the title page.

““Here, I want you to sign this for me,” he slurred.

““I didn’t write the book,” I said.

““It doesn’t mat­ter, just write ‘For my friend Kevin.’”

I sighed and scratched the words out on the title page, then handed it back to him.

““No, you have to sign your name!”

““But I’m not David Sedaris,” I said.

““It doesn’t mat­ter, just sign it.”

Now, I could have eas­ily signed David Sedaris’ name, but it was dis­hon­est. Plus, what if Kevin ever tried to pass this book off as signed copy? On the other hand, I didn’t want to sign my name, because … well, it was a lot like hav­ing some­one walk in on you in the mid­dle of a prostate exame by a young female doc­tor of Indian ances­try with a val­ley girl accent.

I took a deep breath and con­sid­ered what would be the per­fect name to sign a copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day for a drunk guy in a gay bar on World Book Night. Then some­thing came to me and I laughed. I signed the book and handed it back to the drunk guy. He took one look at it and slurred, “Perfect!”

Once we fin­ished and were walk­ing back up the street to the book­store, I told Jeff about what hap­pened and how it drove home that although it’s good to be dis­ci­plined and have a sched­ule, it’s also good to be flex­i­ble and main­tain a sense of humor aboute life.

““So, how did you sign the book?” 2Fs asked.

““‘Love, always. Peter Coxswain.’”