If you've been thinking to yourself, 'Where might I go to smell teriyaki-scented car fresheners, have rubber, decapitated limbs thrown at me, and have brutally graphic, frequently gory, and often horrific prose read to me?' then I have just the thing for you: go see Chuck Palahniuk read at one of his 'Smell the Meat' book tour stops. Last night I was lucky enough to see this odd, carnivorous event first hand, and I have to say that, while I did not become one of the many people who have actually passed out while he read from his new novel, Haunted, I could certainly see how this was possible.

The event took place in the Grand Ballroom of the National Press Club, which is on the 13th floor of that building. Already, before even entering the room, I was feeling a bit 'haunted' by that fact. I've been to the Press Club for one other occassion: a press conference held by the large non-profit I used to work for, and it was also on the 13th floor. What I found myself wondering then, and again yesterday was this: Why does this building even have a 13th floor? Isn't that supposed to be a no-no?

The Grand Ballroom was already mostly filled by the time I got there, so here is some good advice if you do go to a Palahniuk reading in the future: get there early. He's often early himself, apparently, and will sign books at a leisurely pace before the event starts. He also seems to enjoy standing for odd poses with fans who want a picture with him. I saw him pose with several people, pretending to inject a fake needle into their arms. (This had to do with the fact that one of his fans had given him a pen that looked like a syringe before the event.)

I found a seat near the center of the room next to a mother who appeared to be accompanying her three junior-high aged kids to the event. The first thing I noticed about this woman was that she wore mocassins, and the way she was dressed, it seemed like she had walked straight out of my 1985 elementary school yearbook. She did not look comfortable at this event, and that made me a little uncomfortable, particularly when Chuck told stories about guys caught dead in sex booths, still holding their dicks in their hands, or a chronic masturbator with HIV who was afraid he had killed his dog because the ignorant canine would inevitably find and eat his soiled tissues from the trash-can each morning. Oh yeah. This was some uncomfortable business, alright. Still, most of the people laughed, gaffawed, or at the very least, cracked a smile. Not the mom sitting next to me.

The first thing Chuck did when he got up to the podium was have some helpers pass out these teriyaki-scented car air-fresheners. You quickly learn that the words 'air-freshener' and 'teriyaki-scented' are contradictory in nature. He then asked people to 'touch their meat' and if they didn't have any meat, to 'touch somebody else's meat.' I found this quite humorous, in an MTV, Beavis-and-Butthead sort of way. I like a literary man who can come down bathroom humor now and again, and with Chuck, this is again and again.

Chuck told a couple of stories about past readings, and some of the strange fans he'd met along the way. Then he read from his novel, Haunted. He read a story from it called 'Hot Potting,' which, if it isn't the most grotesque story in the book, it probably ranks pretty high up. The climax of the tale involves a stark, shocking description of the particulars of what happens when a man is slowly killed from falling into a scalding hot-spring that is 200 degrees fahrenheit. The prose from this story is at times crude, and at times scientific, just like most of Chuck's writing. He uses the crude to bring it down to raw basics. Then he uses the scientific language to keep reminding you that this is real. This really could happen to a person.

I was pretty grossed out, but luckily I'm not the kind of guy who becomes light-headed or sick from hearing such verbal descriptions read aloud. But somebody like Catherine definitely would have had to leave the room. In fact, several people did just that. Most stayed, however.

When the reading was over, Chuck opened a big bag of rubber limbs - legs, feet, arms, hands - and began hurling them into the audience. They were shockingly real looking, complete with painted on blood, and bones that jutted out of the limbs. I came very close to grabbing a leg of my own as it spun through the air at a frightening velocity, but it went just over my outstretched hands. I felt the breeze of it touch my fingers. Chuck said these made good dog toys, but I don't have a dog, so they wouldn't have done me much good.

The event closed with a Q&A session. My favorite moment out of this was when a young girl just about to graduate from high school asked Chuck if he thought it was worthwhile to spend a lot of money going to writing programs to learn how to write if you can just go and do it without the formal classroom. I understood what was at the root of the question: what were his thoughts on creative writing programs, MFAs, etc? Were they a waste of time? His response was very tactful and insightful. On the one hand, he didn't want to discourage her from pursuing an education that would probably serve her well. He joked that there were a lot of professors out there who made their living from those sorts of programs and one day he hoped to be one of them, so he didn't want to shoot himself in the foot. But, on the other hand, he told her the only way to have stories to tell is to live an interesting life, choose your friends 'unwisely,' and make stupid mistakes as frequently as possible. But then he made sure to add this at the end: just don't get brain damage and don't die. I thought that was a nice touch.

The mom next to me still did not smile.

I stood in line to have my hardback copy of Haunted signed by Chuck before I left. I stood in line for about 20 minutes trying to think of what I was going to say. When I got up there, it was all very fast, but I managed a brief exchange that went something like this:

"I think it's encouraging that you didn't start seriously writing until you were in your early 30s and that you were published at 35. I'm in my early 30s now and I sometimes wonder if I missed my creative prime because I was too busy living."

He gave some thought to this before he said, "We haven't gathered enough good stories until we're at least 31."

Then he handed me the signed book. I smiled, thanked him sincerely and walked away grinning. I'm 31, I recently left my job to begin writing part-time, and I do finally feel like I have some stories to tell.

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