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May 22, 2008

Belated Tour Diary, Part 2: Los Angeles

Just writing the title of this entry, I'm aware of how ridiculous "tour diary" sounds. It was only a book tour, nothing like the kind of tour I imagine rock stars head out for, every year or two. The main part of my travels only lasted a few weeks. Still, I have a sense of all the negatives that accompany this sort of thing: not quite as dramatic or depressing as the the way it's depicted in Meeting People Is Easy, but still, filled with nights of terrible sleep, days of awful eating habits (as I said before: tons of French fries; tons of beer), and the overarching loneliness of hitting one city per night.

L.A., however, was fun and sort of fantastic, partly because I made certain I could stay for 4-5 days, and partly because I stayed with my excellent friends Bryce and Eryk. (I discussed LA in an earlier entry, the only one I wrote while I was "on the road." You know, the one where I talked about HER walking into the L.A. bookstore. And oh yeah--for a better idea of Eryk's coolness, I recommend searching out the excellent TV show he's currently producing and co-writing.)

Below: Book Tour Animal Bedmate #2, the lovable and gorgeous GRETA, Bryce & Eryk's dog, and #3, IGGIE, their cat.

The LA weather was stellar. Eryk made an excellent dinners. Daily we walked past the houses of Mark Ruffalo and Cheri Oteri. I drove my rental car to Beverly Hills to meet with my new film agent for the first time. My skin broke out in a weird rash. The air smelled like lemons.

The Book Soup event was small but cozy. I finally got to meet my email pal Matthew Allard face to face, and while he was every bit as kind and handsome as I expected, he was also taller, which I didn't expect. Also in attendance were Amy Wallace, which thrilled me because I've been obsessed with the Book of Lists series that she co-authored ever since I was ten years old, and Scott Bradley, with whom Amy's co-authored the forthcoming The Book of Lists: Horror (in which I was lucky enough to be included... more on this in a couple of months!). Gregg Araki also showed--it was fantastic to see him, so many months after all the Mysterious Skin promotional traveling ended--as well as Beau Genot, who was the production supervisor (and one of the associate producers) on the film. I love Beau. Oh, and after the reading, Gregg, Bryce, Eryk, my friend Waleed Anbar and his boyfriend Hector, and I all went to dinner.

Bernard Cooper, my friend and also one of my favorite writers, not only came to the reading, he also threw me a party the following night at the amazing, amazing, AMAZING house he shares with his partner Joel. I can't even begin to explain how beautiful his house is, and how gracious these guys were for throwing the party. Bernard had even compiled a perfect soundtrack for the party which featured a lot of my favorite shoegaze & electronic bands and a few I hadn't heard before. I met some artists and writers I'd wanted to meet for ages, including visual artist Alexis Smith, and I was elated that one of my favorite poets in the entire universe, Amy Gerstler, showed up too. (Wanna know why I love her poems so much? Here's an example. And here's another. And yet another.)

Unfortunately, I was too excited and tipsy at the party to (a) have my photo taken with Amy or (b) get some good shots of Bernard's mansion and surrounding grounds. I did, however, get the photos below: (1) Timm Keppler and Matt Allard; (2) me with writer D. Travers Scott, whom I totally adore and hadn't seen in years; (3) Bernard and Joel's swell dog Cubby--unlike so many other animals on the book tour, I didn't get to sleep with this one; (4) Waleed with Bryce in Bernard's kitchen (sorry that this photo's a bit blurry).

During all my days in LA, I was continually Skype-ing with Michael, who was still in Brazil on his fellowship. Also around this time, my friend, writer Dennis Cooper posted a sweet blog entry about me on his site. He dug up a bunch of odd photos and web links and an early version of a scene from We Disappear before I revised. I'm forever grateful to Dennis. (Oh, and for "otto": this is for you).

Before I leave LA and go forward with San Francisco, I'll mention that one of my favorite reviews of the book appeared in the LA Times. The review was written by Sarah Weinman. Until recently, I'd only seen the online version; apparently the print edition also had an accompanying illustration by an excellent artist named Nathan Huang. That picture is below. If you've read the book, you'll see how carefully this reflects one of the recurring images.