I think the Evening with Banned Books reading went well. I read a very short selection from HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS by Thomas Rockwell, a children's book that actually manages to make earthworms sound pretty appetizing. I guess it was banned/challenged on the grounds of being a worm-eating primer. I had a chance to meet a few readers: Chris's wife (I signed books for her husband but didn't catch her name); Kami, with a very well-loved copy of LOST SOULS; and Jonathan and his wife, who came all the way from Birmingham, Alabama bearing lovely gifts.

I did slip out soon after my reading, but was intercepted in the act by the organizer, Heather, who said they had been planning to honor me somehow or other for appearing at the event 4 years in a row. Of course then I felt like a prime horse's ass even though she couldn't have been nicer or more understanding about it, but I had parked at my gym and the lot was going to close before the event ended. The possibility of my car ending up in jail was only an excuse, though; at that point I was already headed inexorably bookward. This is what the people who cry about the changes in my work do not and cannot understand: I am not my own boss. The book is my boss. I could not write your Book-To-Order even if I wanted to; I can only write the book I have to write. If this sounds precious or pretentious, the fault is in my phrasing, not in the fact itself, which I'm sure almost every writer would agree is the stark, non-negotiable truth. On the two occasions when I have tried to write Books-To-Order, I have ended up regretting the experience whether the book itself turned out good (THE LAZARUS HEART) or not so good (COURTNEY LOVE: THE REAL STORY). There is nothing wrong with writing media tie-ins or celebrity bios, but it isn't the right thing for me to do, and I doubt very seriously that I will ever do it again no matter how much money is waved at me.

The best of the readings I saw last night was Roberts Batson, who has spent much of his life studying and chronicling the gay history of New Orleans, reading a poem by a black lesbian writer named Pat Parker. He became visibly choked up while reading it, and by the end I doubt there was an eye in the house that hadn't shed at least a small tear. Every time we let straight relatives bury our dead and push our lovers away, it was an act of perversion. Indeed.

Damn, damn, damn. Every week seems to bring another heartbreaking death. Now George Plimpton is gone.

He was an honored guest at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival this past March, and my friend Doug Brinkley was kind enough to invite me along for drinks at the Napoleon House with him, George, and George's beautiful young lady friend. Soon everyone got hungry, but the food at the Napoleon House is dubious at best and they were worried about finding a decent bite to eat in the crowded French Quarter, so I promised I could get us into Marisol. I went and got my car, picked them up at the bar, and drove over to Esplanade, thinking, "George Plimpton is in my car. George Plimpton is in my car!" He loved Marisol and ate more mussels than I've ever seen anyone else consume. I gave him all the mussels off my Tasmanian salmon entree because he seemed to like them so much.

At first I was intimidated by his fame and vast realm of experience, but we soon bonded over birdwatching, one of his many passions. He said his online screen name was Hadada, an African ibis that, when disturbed, flies away honking and shitting wildly. We laughed about the rudeness of ibises, and about the fact that on his earlier panel discussion, when somebody asked him who the best writer of all time was and he said "Shakespeare," I thought he'd said "James Beard."

So that was my single small encounter with a man who managed to impress me about as much as anyone has ever managed to do in a single evening. I'm very sorry to know he is gone, and I like to imagine him reincarnated as a big purplish bird somewhere in the African savannah, taking a large dump on the head of some literary critic trying to enjoy one of those Big White Bwana Safaris.