..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

"Your ass is just the other end of your mouth."
-"Guts"

"Did anyone out there feel sick? Fuck yeah!"
-Chuck Palahniuk (after reading "Guts" at U of Pitt)

"I need that like I need teeth in my asshole."
-more "Guts"


okay, this was an interesting evening. check this out. and to build suspense early, let me reveal that the climax of this story involves piss, shit, blood and bees:

so i went to the Chuck Palahniuk's reading at the University of Pittsburgh last night and i saw some things i hadn't seen before at one of these things. actually i saw some things that would be rare anywhere in the world, not just in a college auditorium.

i got there on time even though i'm still a stranger in a strange land. this was thanks to my navigator, i'll call her "B," who works with me at my new job and used to attend Pitt and gave me a quick "this was my life" tour of the campus and the city. dude. anyone ever been inside Pitt's Cathedral of Learning before? incredible. the classrooms have these crazy carved wooden desks and tables and thrones and even the students' chairs had dog's heads (!) carved into them. those rooms are amazing to look at and i'm thinking i could (to quote Chris Rock here) "get my learn on!" in a place like that. but yeah, we got there on time, and that's rare as fuck with me, and we walked in the doors of the Alumni Hall right past the table where a real live Chuck was autographing some of his tiny little books. i glanced at him quick, only seeing a Cheshire Cat flash of teeth as he smiled for a picture with a student and we hurried inside to make sure there were seats left. first, we found a good spot on the floor, but then saw there was a balcony and decided to try our luck up there. this was a good move and i'll explain why in a minute. up in the balcony we killed some time people watching, and there was a good angle of Chuck from where we were sitting. he was framed in the doorway and i don't think i would have noticed if the girl to my left wasn't text-messaging a description of him into her phone. my version: crisp white shirt, sunburn, toothy grin. reminded me of Christian Bale in American Psycho.

so eventually he takes the stage, crowd goes wild, and he tells some anecdotes about his family. then he whips out his story. he mutters an apology (?) about what's to come and people are a little confused at that. until the story starts.

the less i say about his short story "Guts" the better. i think you people should read it, if only because it's got to be some kind of milestone in literature, partly because of readings like Tuesday night. if anyone wants to read it, he said it would be in the February issue of Playboy so there you go. however, there's no way it's going to have the same impact on the page that it did out loud, in a twitchy sweaty room full of college kids.

the story sort of starts out like a darker version of "Jackass," (and i'm thinking he's got to be a fan of Steve-O and the boys) he talks about greasing carrots and jamming them up his ass, he talks of hideous infections caused by candlewax chunks inserted into urethras, he talks about embarrassing moments during the most creative masterbation incidents he can think of. he talks about the horror of getting caught and, at first, it's like Marquis De Sade meets Judy Blume. then things escalate fast.

and this is where my tour guide "B" bails out on the reading. she nudges me and says she'll meet me outside after it's over. are you serious? i ask her. afraid she is. for a flash i'm disappointed and slightly irritated that anybody's WORDS could be affecting her like that. frowning i turn back to the reading and lean forward as it approaches it's morbid climax. here's a teaser: it involves prolapsed intestines and a boy's attempt to chew through them. it's fucking nasty and funny and that's when i hear this thud! behind me in the balcony.

i turn and see some girl drop down and i figure she just sat down hard. i turn back to the show.

then comes the second THUD. louder this time and i have a perfect view of this particular girl keeling over right by the rail. at first i thought it was going to turn into some flash-mob hijinx but it was real. not really a "scene" though. just the concerned friends of these two girls whispering and pushing their way down the stairs for help, the words "I'll pay you five bucks for your bottle of water!" is audible, some heads turn. and then the security guards are pushing their way back up the stairs. it was over fast and only a couple rows by me in the balcony saw what had happened.

then he's finished and Chuck's thanking everyone for "enduring" his new story and suddenly, as if remembering a good joke, he gleefully asks, "anyone get dizzy? anyone pass out?" people in the balcony start yelling excitedly and pointing around where those two girls dropped and now Chuck's almost hopping up and down. "how many! how many!" he yells up at us. "Two!" someone answers.

Chuck's pumps both arms up high, fists in the air like he just sank a basketball at the buzzer.
"Fuck YEAH!" he yells. "Sweet! That makes a grand total of TWENTY EIGHT!!!"

he goes on to explain that people passing out has been a problem with this story for his entire book tour, and that his publishers have asked him to please stop reading it. and that someone puked all over themselves at the last one and started screaming, and that this, sadly, will be the last reading of "Guts" in public. apparently 28 was the number he was shooting for. must mean something to him. how old is anyway? Is he twenty-eight?

so yeah. Chuck knocked some people the fuck OUT. i can't deny what he did. and i wouldn't have believed it if i hadn't have seen it happen right next to me with my own eyes. and while the story was picking up momentum to it's grusome last page, and i watched people turning their heads as if it protected them from it, squinting and hiking their knees up into their laps, i do remember thinking something like "damn. what does it take to gross me out any more? is it even possible?"

i mean, i could recognize that the story was supposed to be disgusting, but i wasn't disgusted by it. does this mean it was wasted on me? have i desensitized myself to the things i love by indulging in too many horror films and splatterpunk novels and goofy shock-rock music? seriously, i might have cauterized those taste buds forever. i felt a little left out when everyone was groaning and giggling and i was thinking "what could he say to make me sick?" he could have pulled out a straw and put one end up his nose and one end in his mouth while he was reading and i would have wanted more. he could have sucked on that straw until his head deflated and i would have shrugged it off and waited for the next trick. and he didn't do any of that. he just had words in his arsenal.

but there was an impact. people swaying and grimacing with the story, nervous laughter to remind themselves it was all just a joke. and the THUDS at the end? his words had power and i felt a little guilty that i might have been angry when "B" sneaked out because apparently she wasn't the only one that was smelling and tasting and touching that story. i just thought it was funny. and as an exercise in nastiness, a complete success. hell, i'll even admit that there was a point to it all. something about how someone would rather their son really was suicidal, rather than just fucking up and killing himself by trying to hold his breath while he jerked off. and some of the lines in that story were instant classics. still, if that piece of wetwork couldn't make me sick, nothing can.

nothing? i really don't think it can be done. i honestly don't think there's any words in any language that could have a physical effect on me. nothing i could see or hear either. smell and taste yes, that could make me sick. touch? maybe. i know that i flinch as if i smell something that isn't there when i have to retrive anything from a toilet or garbage disposal so maybe touch. but words? images? sounds? nope. can't be done.

in case no one understands, i'm throwing down the fucking gauntlet here. please. can anyone out there make me sick?

okay, i'll admit the one thing i saw on a page that did have a physical affect on me. i was doing my lifeguard training and we were going over the manual and it showed where to tie off the arteries on different parts of the body for different wounds. and in the book were black and white drawings of little dudes with gashes and holes on their heads and legs and arms and, even though the drawings of the people were crude, the injuries were detailed as hell. and bright red blood spurting out of them. the only color on page after page after page was bright fire-engine red. and i stopped listening to the instructor and kept turning pages until i was into the next week of reading. finding the nastiest sketches and staring until everything got a little fuzzy.

i still don't think i would have passed out, and if you stare at anything long enough it will fade away, even if it's just a toenail, so who knows what would have happened if i hadn't blinked. what's my point. i don't know. maybe i'm saying that the Lifeguard manual is more effective than Chuck's fiction. no, i will admit that his story was impressive. however, i do think that the Lifeguard manual was longer than any book this guy has written. seriously. you should have seen all those bushy-tailed college kids clutching those tiny little copies of his books. FUCK ME his books are small. and don't give me that "quality not quantity" shit either. you only keep repeating that phrase because it kinda rhymes. if it don't fit aquit this motherfucker.

oh yeah, get this. when he was done Chuck had a box of goodies that he passed out to anyone who asked him a question. santa hats and cat masks and baby bottles and crowns. it was pretty funny. bless his heart, he made an effort to come up with some decent answers to some stupid questions. some kid asked how long it took to write Fight Club and he said that the idea and the story that became the book (Chapter 6) was conceived in the two hours of downtime he was waiting on truck parts at the garage he worked at. later i told "B" about the toys and stuff after i found her outside and she seemed sorry she missed that part anyway. still, i can't blame her for reacting like she did. tangent - when we were driving downtown and she was pointing out all the places she used to read and eat between classes she said something that i thought had a lot of truth to it. she said that she ends up missing things only after she's moved on and she couldn't believe that she didn't appreciate those days at the time. i could tell she was having a flashback moment and i love being around people when that happens to them. i know her observation is something that should be obvious and we should learn to recognize the good times when they're happening and it's probably on a t-shirt somewhere but still, it's very true and i've felt the same way about every stage of my life; larvae, pupae and imago.

here's my theory though. After the thuds but before handing out the toys, Chuck explained that he'd heard stories about how Charles Dickens used to read a tale of a hanging to crowds and then count how many people fainted and he said he never believed it. (No fucking way!" is what Chuck said) i think this reveals alot about the origins of "Guts." even though he didn't come out and admit it, i'm thinking that this story was really the same experiment. and like Young Frankenstein he was thinking, "IT....COULD....WORK!" i'm thinking that reading was a laboratory type situation. now that i think about it, it was VERY hot in there. i'd like to know if someone was messing with some climate control.

if i'd have heard someone whisper "When he scratches his nose, release the bees!" then i'd be real suspicious right now.

okay, morals of the story:

1.) Chuck E. Cheese tore it up. i'm bright green and jealous again so i'll get lots 'o writing done this week.

2.) nothing can make me sick unless i smell it, squeeze it or put in in my mouth.

3.) gotta have three. uhhh. okay. my books are bigger than his. my dick too.

4.) okay, one for the road. this a lesson that i learned after watching an old western the other day:

the saying, "that's no way to treat a white man!" is a phrase that gets a different reaction today than it did in the 60's.

::: david - 6:54 PM [+] :::
...