At the Cool Kids' Table
I generally do not find myself in any type of cool circles. The only red ropes I’ve gotten close to involved a Rembrandt. So the day my manager, Lloyd, asked me if I could work an author event, I said “yes” without hesitation.
In 1999 I was working part-time at Barnes & Noble in Washington, D.C. while getting my master’s degree. The store occupied three glorious floors on a busy corner in Georgetown. I had never been in a bookstore that big, let alone worked in one; to me it was book nerd nirvana. We hosted a lot of author events, which I missed out on because of my evening class schedule. The size and location of the store also attracted “celebrity” pop-ins from time to time. Sadly I was absent the morning when Larry King, the iconic, suspender-wearing, serial-marrying (8 wives!) talk show host, stomped into the store and started screaming at any bookseller in screaming range that his latest book was not prominently displayed in the front window. Again, this was 1999, the Internet was a kernel slumbering in its diabolical shell. Larry King was really banking on everyone actually knowing he was Larry King. To me that was more impressive than the yelling.
I was shelving in one of the fiction sections when Lloyd pulled me aside. The store had won a big contract to supply books for an event happening downtown that Friday. There would be some authors signing, he explained, as well as reps from publishing houses representing titles. The event itself was from 6-8pm, but we would need the whole day to set up. Would I be interested in working the event? My brain bypassed all the logical info-a long day of set up, a nebulous role at this thing, but probably somewhere between go-fer and heifer, no overtime—and went straight to: I would be elbowing it with famous (my word) authors at a cool (my word) book gala (my word).
A small group assembled at the store early Friday morning. A huge Ryder truck idled on the ramp near the receiving area as the stocking crew loaded in the last of the boxes of books that would be headed downtown to the event space. In addition to me and Lloyd there was another bookseller named Carrie and Ally, the communications relations manager who handled all of the store events and programming. We piled into Lloyd’s Jeep Cherokee and pulled into gnarly D.C. morning traffic. I realized I had no idea where we were going. I was so excited to be included that I could have just as easily been opting in to my own abduction. I asked Ally.
“It’s at The Press Club,” she said.
The National Press Club is a D.C. institution. It was founded in 1908 as a members only club for journalists—read: white, male reporters. Over the decades it expanded into a major media and communications hub as well as a place for preeminent public and private events. The Press Club is not just another pretty face; it’s also where media outlets hold conferences and the White House gives daily briefings. There might as well be a plaque on the outside saying: CAUTION! POWERFUL SHIT HAPPENING INSIDE. At the time I didn’t know any of this—the prestige of this place. Ally must have seen the blank look on my face as she adds, “It’s where reporters meet and, you know, news stuff happens.”
My crash course in Press Club etiquette happens the second we roll up in our unsightly Ryder truck and plucky Jeep Cherokee. We’re intercepted by an opps manager, a short, stern-looking woman in a black suit and walkie-talkie molded to her palm like a G.I. Joe action figure. She confers with Lloyd and Ally while Carrie and I yawn and shift our backpacks. The manager speaks into her walkie before sliding through the glossy, glassy doors. Lloyd and Ally wave us over in a pre-game huddle.
“We have to go around back,” says Lloyd, gesturing to an alley on the side of the building, the pavement slick with city secretions. “We’re only allowed to use one service elevator to load in. I’ll show you how to get to our event space.” The phrasing sounds ominous. For the first time I look up to take in the entire building. It is ten storeys high with an even number of windows running along both sides of every floor. It could contain 250 rooms or 12. There was no way of knowing. If I were going to build a secret Evil Corp lair hiding in plain sight, this is the architecture design I would choose.
We follow Lloyd through the leaky, sticky, disgusting ally to a small metal door. Inside is a short corridor that ends at a pair of grey metal doors. The service elevator must be as old as the club itself. It inches up six floors, evidently run on the same city rats that call the alley home.
The doors open onto a long hallway carpeted in plush blue with small gold compasses. Lloyd steps out and draws us around again.
“We’ll be using this hallway that goes behind most of the rooms. We have to be really, really quiet because there are live briefings going on.” As Lloyd is talking Press Club staff, dressed like wedding caterers, whizz by us as silently as stealth bombers. They don’t even glance in our direction or register our presence. Carrie and I try to parody the staff, tiptoeing after Lloyd, both of us trying not to even breathe too loud. At the end of the hall we take a right, walking past another bank of rooms, and at the end of that hallway a second right. Lloyd leads us into a room that doesn’t look any sexier than a school cafeteria. Stacks of long folding tables rest against the walls, next to metal folding chairs.
There’s a very small break-room space with a bathroom at the back of this room. We stow our bags and coats.
“Okay!” says Lloyd. “Sheila and Carrie can start bringing books up. Ally and I will unpack and work on set up.” Oh. I blink. The guys who packed the truck are not going to magically transport the 150-plus boxes of books to this room. We are. Oh.
It takes one round trip for the VIP-ish feeling of this endeavor to evaporate along with most of the liquid in my body. For the remainder of the day, Carrie and I schlep about 3 boxes at a time on our small hand trucks from the Ryder truck, back through the disease infested ally, into the slower-than-finding-the-cure-for-diabetes service elevator, down the hallways (Quietly! Quietly!) to the room. We muscle the books off the cart, retrace our steps, and start again.
There’s barely any time to spare at the end of the day. Carrie and I have just enough time to mash some greasy pizza in our faces and freshen up and change in the small bathroom. Lloyd mentioned I should bring a change of clothes. That I did: from graduate student to lounge singer in the one “formal” dress I owned. It’s a black and maroon cocktail number I realize way too late is seventeen shades of inappropriate for a “work event.” I try not to notice Carrie’s sensible skirt and sweater combo.
As I’m changing, it occurs to me that I have no idea who is going to be at this event. I had spent the entire day focused on emptying the truck, on moving with the silence of a mime through the building, on fantasizing about running into a genie who could magically transport all these goddamn books for me, that I had pretty much forgotten why I was there in the first place.
I ask Ally. She hands me a sheet listing the authors and publishers. There are only two I recognize: Don Knotts, the actor who I mostly knew from growing up watching him as Mr. Furley on Three’s Company and Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer prize winning author of The Shipping News and my absolute favorite writer in the entire universe of universes.
Now I’m sweating all over again from a combination of nerves and excitement, but mostly nerves. I have never met a real author before, but I’m an academic and a writer and it seems like I should know how to handle myself around “my people.” Also, in theory it seems like a writer is more of a benign celebrity figure than, for example, someone like President Kennedy or Bruce Springsteen. The key phrase here being “in theory.”
Carrie and I are mostly expected to float around the room to answer questions, replace books, make sure everyone has what they need. We’re game show models at this point. I ask Ally if it’s okay if I buy a book now and get it signed early. “Sure thing,” says Ally.
Annie Proulx is at this event with her new book, Close Range, a collection of short stories set against the western plains of America’s heartland. In truth, Annie Proulx could have been there with a pamphlet entitled “Zip Codes and You” and I would have raced to buy one.
I take my book and head toward her spot at one of the tables, designated with a little name card, intending to beat the crush of people I am certain will be pooling around this literary luminary. There is no crowd. They are assembling over at Don Knotts’ table, waiting for him to show up. I, on the other hand, am standing at Annie Proulx’s empty table just as she’s arriving. These two types of waiting may seem like the same things, but let me assure you they are not. One is not awkward, the other is painfully so. Annie Proulx is with another woman who may be a publicist or agent. I am in my maroon and black dress as if I have just sprinted from someone’s wedding reception. I’m holding her book, pretending not to notice her, while also trying very hard to look like I just happen to be in this spot for some other reason other than waiting around expressly for her. I don’t have a bag I can rifle through; I don’t even have a shoebox-sized mobile phone to fake a conversation on. I compensate (sort of?) by moving away from the table a little so now I’m standing in the middle of the two rows of tables creating a weird unnecessary blockade. The feeling I have all over my entire body is the same feeling you get when you try to cut your own hair, fail, and then have to keep cutting to try and even it out, which never, ever happens.
Annie Proulx takes off her coat. Her companion does the same and sits. Annie Proulx sits. She takes out a sharpie. It feels safe to approach, which I do with far too much enthusiasm.
“Hi! Hello!” I say brightly and, I hate to say, a little breathlessly. I put my book on the table in front of her.
“Hello,” she says.
"I'm SUCH a big fan. Thank you so much for what you do! I’m Sheila." As I’m gushing, she’s opened the book, slowly turning the first few pages to the one she’ll sign.
"Thank you," says Annie Proulx. She gives a hint of a smile.
"I mean, I know everyone talks about The Shipping News, which was great, but I really, REALLY loved Accordion Crimes. That book was just...incredible."
Her face kind of lifts a little. “Oh. Thank you. That’s so nice to hear.”
Her response emboldens me. I lean down as if I’m getting ready to tell her the formula for turning concrete into gold. I say:
“Your writing is so……chewy.” I accompany this proclamation with a “chef’s kiss” hand gesture, thumb and four fingers folded to a point.
Annie Proulx’s face changes again, but not in a good way, not in a “I want to be your mentor and also best friends forever” kind of way. It is more of a brief cycle from flattery to pity to “do I need to signal for security” kind of way.
By now there are people lining up to have their books signed and, probably, have a non-psychotic encounter with this brilliant writer. I thank her again, gather my book, and retreat to a corner of the room where I belong, far, far from the cool kids’ table.
Lens Zen!
Spring is one of my favorite seasons. I love when it goes full tilt—Nature’s version of a lost weekend. But I also relish this time when spring is just on the cusp of letting it rip. Beautiful and sweet reminders about the time and patience and pay-off of becoming.
This was such a fun read, one that I understand completely. As a freshman in college, I went to a Bette Midler signing for a children's book she had written, asked a few questions, wrote an innocuous feature for a college newspaper, and damn near fainted — especially after she smiled and wrote "Let's do it" on the copy of my book. (I had been a huge fan of "The Rose" and "Divine Madness" in high school, which was another pockmark on my wannabe "cool kid" persona in my Texas Gulf Coast town.) The glow from her inscription faded, however, when I realized she had done the same for a friend's book later in the evening.
Also, and I may write about this one sometime soon, Beyonce's album is great.
Gee... do you like Annie Proulx?