Chuckus Kostermanus Interruptus

Tonight I went to hear Chuck Klosterman read and answer inane questions from young twenty-something groupies. He was hilarious, I nearly peed my pants about ten times. He was really polite about answering questions, some of which were good, most of which were so dumb I twitched.

After about a dozen questions the Barnes and Noble lady steps in and says "One more question." In front of me sitting on the floor (I was leaned up against a shelf) is this young girl, probably 20 (shit, when did I start referring to a twenty year old as a "young girl"??) and her hand shoots up in the air. He calls on her and she says, "Can I have your address?" There's a twitter throughout the audience, and Klosterman is clearly caught off guard.

He says "What, like my email address or like, my mailing address."

"Your mailing address."

"Why?"

"So I can send you letters."

The audience is mystified by this. He says, "Well, uh, you can have my work address, yeah," and he looks out at the crowd and back at her, "yeah, I don't want to be a jerk or anything. Buy a book and bring it to me and when I sign it I'll put my address in there."

What I love about this man is that he's all "Sure, but you'll be buying my book. Nothing's for free, honey." Good lesson for her to learn.


So THEN, of course I'm in line to get my copy of Killing Yourself to Live signed. I'm innocently standing there and then all of a sudden my life blurs into a wild druggie adhd manic freakout. Someone says my name (it may have been Chuck or my friend Erica) at the moment that I hand my books to the Barnes and Noble chick. The girl who has been standing behind Erica and I says "Kelly Flanigan???" And I said, "Uh, yeah." And I turn and look at her and I recognize her but I have NO IDEA where from. Like zero. I don't know if I went to high school with her or college with her or competed against her in speech or had her as a student or ran into her at some other time. What I remember is her hair, and I remember her crying. She had this bushy bushy hair and she cut it short and it was so much cuter short, and I have no idea what the crying was about. She says, "Do you remember me?" And I'm not in the mood to lie. I said "I remember you, but I have no idea what your name is." So she decides to make a huge production about the fact that I don't remember her. She refuses to tell me how we know eachother. She said something about "like the most important person to her in high school" but it might not have been that. As I said, a blur.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Chuck has my books and is signing away probably wondering who the hell I am that I can't take five seconds out of my conversation to say hello and thank him for signing my book. I'm all "Hold up, I'm missing my moment here!!" and then things blur out a little more except I remember thanking Chuck for his reading and for the signings and telling him I'm a big fan and he was just laughing at me and then I walked away.

Strange girl that I know finally tells me her name, after completely screwing up my moment with Chuck Klosterman, and I still don't have the first damn clue about who she is.