DINNER WITH THE WRITER

A TRUE STORY ABOUT A DINNER WITH THE PRESIDENT OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC AND A WRITER VERY MUCH LIKE MARIO VARGAS LLOSA AND ALL THE CRAZY THAT HAPPENED AFTER

A few months back I was invited by the New Yorker and House of Speakeasy to participate in the launch event for A Century of Fiction in the New Yorker anthology at Joe’s Pub. (My story, How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or Halfie, had been included in the anthology by editor Deborah Treisman.)

An all-star line-up: ZZ Packer, Mary Gaitskill, and Yiyun Li (with Gary Shteyngart as our quiz-master). We each had to present a true unscripted story in the tradition of The Moth that had to do with our writing career.

We couldn’t read, we had a time limit, and the producers wanted our stories to land somewhere interesting — to have a point of some kind.

I’ve been doing public readings long enough to be comfortable in that mode but this was something else altogether. Took me weeks to find something that made any kind of sense and fit the constraints. I ran through it a few times before the event and my goddaughter C— and the producer L.B. gave me some smart advice.

Still, I was literally shaking before I hit the lectern and my back was barking like a mother after the ride down from Boston. What helped was I knew and loved all the writers I was sharing the stage with and luckily had a few friends in attendance. Plus the audience and the other writers and folks running the event were beyond kind. A server at Joe’s Pub even interrupted their work for a minute to thank me for an essay I wrote nearly two decades before.

Anyway: attached above is what I delivered. It ain’t perfect, but what ever is? The other writers’ tales kick all sorts of ass.

After the event was over and we were all having drinks upstairs (or in my case water) I turned around and suddenly was shaking hands with Kevin Young, who I’ve known a long time. I turned around again and was suddenly shaking hands with Salman Rushdie, whose work has meant the world to me.

For all that he had suffered recently, Salman looked good and was in high spirits, which made me very glad.

What I didn’t tell Salman was that the story I almost told that night was about him — about a night in 1997 when I was invited by my editor at the New Yorker to a clandestine dinner in Salman’s honor. (He was still in seclusion at the time because of the fatwa.) But the tale was too long, both for the stage and for a quick public meet-and-greet.

Maybe another time.

I shook Salman’s hand again, thanked him for everything, and headed out. Picked up my car, drove back to Boston, and a few hours later taught my first class of the year.

courtesy of @joespub, drawn by the extraordinary joan chiverton @joanchiverton.