Barrel Fever by David Sedaris

Author:David Sedaris
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Humor, Form, Humorous, Biography: General, Fiction, Essays, Modern fiction, Short stories
ISBN: 9780349119762
Publisher: Abacus
Published: 2006-07-06T07:00:00+00:00

AFTER MALISON

7:45. I ARRIVE at Malison’s hotel an hour and fifteen minutes before his lecture is due to begin at the Pavilion of Thought. The desk clerk shoots me a look that suggests he might be interested in throwing his weight around. Rather than pass him, I take a seat in the lobby, pull out my journal, and light a cigarette. He gives me another look.

“My husband hates for me to smoke in the room,” I say.

He says, “What?”

I say, “My husband, he hates the smoke, so I’m just going to sit here for a moment before going up to our room.”

The clerk says, “Fine, whatever,” and turns his attention back to a little TV set, one of those Watchmans.

I can’t believe that Malison is staying here at The Chesterton. It’s so ironic, so unlike Malison. It’s perfect. I’d called every hotel in town asking if they had a Malison registered, but of course they didn’t. We’re not talking about Mr. Small Press Nobody here. Malison is MALISON, and he’s got to protect his privacy. I can understand that. I can respect that. I called around again asking if anyone had a guest by the name of Smithy Smithy, the name of all the characters in Malison’s second novel. All the hotel clerks said no. They said, “What the hell kind of name is that?” Really, I think Smithy Smithy would have been too obvious, so I tried again and again, thinking he might have registered under the name of one of the minor characters in Rotunda Surf. I finally found him here at The Chesterton registered under the name A. Davenport, the character who undergoes a needless colostomy in Magnetic Plugs. Malison is here in room 822.

How like Malison to use an assumed name, and especially here at The Chesterton, where he’ll be rubbing elbows with every shallow middle-class cliché you’d never want to meet, the exact type of people he exposes in his novels. How like Malison, how perfectly ironic.

8:04. I had really hoped to catch Malison before he left for the reading, but since nobody answers his door I can only assume that the department heads have him hog-tied at The Crow’s Nest or Andrea’s Butcher Block, one of the upscale slaughterhouses this town calls a restaurant. I can see it now: the dean and his spaniels are shoveling forkfuls of red meat while poor Malison just sits there, tuning out their petty conversation and gagging at the sight of the carnage on his plate. Even the vegetables in this town are cooked in blood. I think it’s pretty obvious that the English Department knows nothing about Malison. They just see him as another feather in their cap, a name they can use to attract new students. It makes me sick. They fly him in for a few days, race him around campus like a greyhound, and then bore him to death with their talk of funding cutbacks and Who’s Who on campus. I’ve been standing outside

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