The Welsh Dragon Bar was situated in the middle of a main street where the road bifurcated in the city center of Wellington. Inside, it featured a classic pub atmosphere festooned with a disordered clutter of brightly colored blinking signs advertising trendy beer and distillates. Positioned opposite the bar was a main room furnished with lacquered tables and hard wooden chairs. When I saw the toilet Amanda had arranged with the book club perched on a platform six feet in the air at the head of the room, I hurried to the bar and ordered a double tequila.
“You’re going to read from the toilet,” Amanda informed me with a gleeful grin on her face, her cerebral hemorrhage of the imagination of adding a real toilet to my performance in her producer mind a creative contribution to the Washed-Up Writers reality TV show, additional footage for the sizzle reel to showcase my increasing descent into literary ignominy, the developing theme of the show.
“It’s going to be hilarious,” Jack, now my Benedict Arnold and Amanda cheerleader, chimed in, slapping me on the back hard enough he nearly knocked me over.
I pointed at the toilet. “Clearly not Hana’s doing?” I shot back with a note of anger at her having left because of Amanda’s brazen, premeditated commandeering of my book tour.
“Amanda riffed on Hana’s idea,” Jack gloated. “I told you not to dismiss her so easily.”
“Hana thought it was a great idea,” Amanda course-corrected, but between an actor and a producer I couldn’t ascertain who was the chief pathological liar of the two worst fabulists the entertainment world had ever given us.
I cast my eyes away from the porcelain throne. A holy trinity of flat panel TVs mounted to the ceiling and angled downward were broadcasting a rugby game between New Zealand’s beloved All Blacks and Australia’s poorer team, the haplessly—and aptly—named Wallabies. I knew nothing about rugby when I expatriated to New Zealand, but I had watched a few games with the Prophet’s Rock winemakers and had come to see American football as a video game played by helmeted gladiators concussing one another for a paycheck, and rugby, contrarily, as a more primitive, and therefore purer, form of the American version.
The crowd in the bar swelled as the game revved up; the rabid fans sardined in shoulder to shoulder, cheek to jowl. I ordered another double shot of tequila, then a glass of wine to take back with me into the event room. Patrons for my autograph signing were drifting in. I had been on the book tour for over a week, and I had yet to be inside a proper bookstore. Had they disappeared from the face of the earth? Well, of course not, but apparently I, and book tours in general, had sunk to a circus side act nadir. Once I had signed so many books at a wine festival my hand cramped. Now, here I was, in the public toilet of Wellington, rebranded as the Welsh Dragon Bar, for a reading before the Public Toilet Book Club, a fitting end to my literary career. “Let’s get it on,” I roared to Jack and Amanda, the tequila hypodermically launched into my bloodstream and enlivening me to breathtaking heights of extroversion. “Let’s kick some book butt.” Jack threw me a cockeyed look. He had an innate sense of when I was recklessly ascending the alcohol ladder and free-falling into the realm of the unwell.
In a bustle of discarded puffer coats and scarves and boxes of equipment, the film crew burst in late to the Welsh Dragon Bar and the cinematographer moved erratically about the pub shooting B-roll footage. “This is so cool,” Kylie, the DP, kept saying over and over. The crowd was composed of mostly young Kiwis. Many were tatted up and down their arms and even in some elaborate cases decorated with tattoos rising up their necks like flames reaching for the sky. Some members of the Public Toilet Book Club were clutching dog-eared copies of my legacy work in their hands, and others came to purchase and have me autograph my new book, which Amanda had stacked on a table beneath the toilet where the humiliating read would take place.
Amanda, gripping my elbow tightly, sat me at the autograph table, where I signed books for the patrons. In a gesture of magnanimity—or stupidity—I waved off their money. Word spread quickly in the packed bar author Miles Raymond was giving away free books, not that that inflamed a stampede to the autograph table. Regulars arriving for the All Blacks-Wallabies contest kept crowding in, making it falsely appear like my book signing was a smash hit.
“Free round for everyone,” I shouted, both arms raised aloft. “Put it on my credit card.”
A cheer went up with raised fists. I don’t know if the All Blacks had successfully executed a try or if my offer of an open bar had ignited their cheering approbation, but the mood had turned festive.
The line for autographed copies of my book grew, snaked out the bar and onto the sidewalk. I was peppered with all manner of well-meaning questions I’d been asked before. “How long did it take you to write this?” (“My whole life.”) “Why did you decide to become a writer?” (“I didn’t choose it; it chose me.”) “How are you finding New Zealand?” asked a thoughtful young woman with owlish spectacles improbably clutching a copy of Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero. (“Beautiful. Brutal. Bizarre.”) “How has fame changed you?” (“It’s worse than failure because at least with failure you know where you stand, you know who your friends are,” I answered in a moment of lucidity, “and besides I’m not that famous,” I finished, pointing to the raised toilet awaiting the spectacle of my indignity). And the questions kept coming. The Public Toilet Book Club was an unforeseen crew of bookish intellectuals. I was surprised to discover I had such a fan base in the cracks of Wellington. Maybe I needed to get back into an urban environment and out of the sticks, and I could be one of those shambling writer celebrities who gets stopped on the street with, “Hey, aren’t you . . . ?”
Amanda and Jack were all beaming smiles. Jack’s producer girlfriend, it appeared, now had two hit shows in preproduction, and the smile plastered on her face was the greedy grin of someone fantasizing investing in additional beachfront property. To Jack, his woman had saved the day.
The glasses of Central Otago Pinot kept coming, sousing me up for the slaughter. Jack’s expression kept whipsawing from the worried (me) and the gleeful (Amanda having taken over and winning). From the Cougars of Christchurch to the Wrekin ball of disaster, he knew the switch could flip in me at any moment, my mood could sour, and I was capable of outrageous behavior. On the other hand, he knew Amanda was compiling great footage, and it was obvious from their frequent hugs and stolen kisses their relationship was firmly back on track, infidelities had been placated with lies and passionate, all-night fucking, courtesy of Big Pharma and endless bottles of bitch diesel—boy, could that Amanda drink, I thought at one point, and could she hold her liquor!
When the books had been signed, Amanda had arranged for four young men, impersonating pallbearers, to hoist me up to the toilet where I was scheduled to read, as per the Public Toilet Book Club’s tradition to reverse the order—first the books are signed, then the author reads. In the main bar, the rugby game was neck and neck, coming down to the wire; my bar tab was ticking upward into another stratosphere, which I would regret in the morning, but at least it was a book signing with more than a dozen jaded attendees, and even if I had to buy their patronage, literature was, for the moment, having its moment in the, well, uh, toilet.
I was half in the bag, but still sentient enough to read, when they plopped me on the toilet on the dais. The view of the packed crowd, squashed together like the front rows of a concert, was galvanic, even, dare I say, life affirming. The owner of the bar, a guy named Gary, accepted a microphone from Amanda and quieted the buzzing crowd with his booming voice.
“From all of us here at the Welsh Dragon Bar, I want to thank the members of the Public Toilet Book Club for coming out on this beastly cold night to hear Miles Raymond, Oscar-winning American author, who has been on a book tour on the South Island, read from his new work, A Year of Pure Feeling.” He turned to me. “And boy, is he feeling it tonight!” A cheer went up. Wineglasses were raised in a toast, libations I had splurged on the fumes of my credit card. “As a bonus,” Gary continued, “Miles will be featured in a new reality TV show titled Washed-Up Writers, so look out for that in the coming months.” He drew his attention to Amanda. “Now, I want to turn it over to the host of this event, Aussie film producer Amanda Robinson.” There was a mixture of cheers and amiable boos, given that her national team was locked in a close match with New Zealand’s beloved All Blacks.
Amanda snatched the microphone from Gary, who stepped aside. She towered above the crowd with her imperial presence. “Thank you all for coming out.” She threw out an arm in my direction. “Ten years ago, Miles Raymond wrote a book that became an Oscar-winning movie that some of you might remember.” Cheers went up. Did they remember it? “Then he disappeared. Like J. D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon, he fell off the face of the earth.” Her voice rose in volume in an effort to compete with the raucous cheers and collective groans of disapproval that came from the bar where the rugby match was in the tense waning seconds of a close contest. “Rumors abounded. Where did he go? Was he holed up in Northern California working on his next masterpiece? Had he fled to Mexico like B. Traven and was now writing under a pseudonym? Had he given up the quill for the bottle and was never to be seen again? No! He surfaced in Aotearoa New Zealand with a new book and a new look,” she boomed, holding up a copy of A Year of Pure Feeling as evidence of my sordid resurrection. “Like Lazarus, he has risen from the ashes of his former self and written this marvelous novel which all of you have been gifted. And tonight he is going to read from it.” Again, the crowd roared encouragement. Cheers don’t resound at authors’ events in the US at bland Barnes & Noble outlets. “The Welsh Dragon Bar,” Amanda continued, “as you all know, used to be one of the glorious public toilets of Wellington until it was transformed into this smashing pub. Tonight, the Welsh Dragon Bar, in conjunction with Wellington’s own Public Toilet Book Club, honors one of the great authors of his generation, Miles Raymond.” Amanda raised the hand holding the microphone and passed it up to me. A packed roomful of young literary types broke into cheers and whistles as I accepted the microphone and raised it to my mouth.
“Thank you, everyone,” I said as the film crew snaked in and out of the crowd. I looked into the ruddy faces of these New Zealand youth. “First off, before I read a passage or two, I want to thank Hana Kawiti, my publicist, who made this night happen.” I took a long quaff of my wine. “She couldn’t be here tonight because she had a nervous breakdown on this book tour from hell, which is now being documented”—I swept around and pointed to the film crew—“by this film crew you see here tonight.” Orating on my toilet-cum-soapbox, I held up my book. “I didn’t think I would ever write another book, not because I didn’t have another book in me, but because I didn’t know where the readers had all vanished to. And then I thought: maybe I’m writing because only in holding a mirror up to yourself do you have any hope of understanding yourself.” I produced a pair of reading glasses and donned them, opened my novel to a page Amanda had bookmarked with a Post-it, and began to read: “Darkness had descended once again . . .” and I read for about ten minutes to a rapt audience of Kiwi youth who, thanks to Hana, had argued her generation hadn’t all abandoned literature for the ubiquity of cell phones and social media. To prove her point, she had managed to round up fifty young people on this bitterly cold night to listen to an American author who had expatriated to their country to revivify his love of the written word.
I closed my book and was greeted by avid—drunken?—applause. “Another round for everyone in the room!” I roared. “Including me.” A wineglass materialized from Gary, and I was restored to my effervescent self. Hands bolted up in the air to ask questions.
“Do you think this will be your last book then?” a young woman inquired.
“I don’t know,” I said thoughtfully, quaffing my wine. “I have to return to California, my home state, for reasons I can’t divulge. Something deep and troubling is calling me.”
“Tell us,” random voices called out. “What is it?”
Over the heads of the young Wellington literati, a fight broke out in the main bar area. A disputed call in the close rugby match seemed to be the cause of the scuffle, which was more of a pushing-and-shoving match than an all-out brawl with fisticuffs. Soon, it appeared there was the Welsh Dragon Bar’s version of a scrum. Men—and women!—clad in their teams’ jerseys, were down on their knees on the sticky floor, closing ranks around the two who were pugnaciously wrestling and throwing punches. Amanda directed the film crew into the bar to get B-roll footage of the melee.
I took the cue and stood from the toilet. Raising both hands in the air, one with my novel and one with a glass of wine, I addressed the crowd. “Thank you all for coming out. Thank you.” I stepped down from the stage and the young people surrounded me, thanked me politely as their compatriots duked it out over a fucking rugby match.
An elated Amanda poured her delight out to me over the headrest as Jack drove us through the freshening new storm back to the Freedom Campground, windshield wipers on high, rainwater streaming across the streets.
“You were fantastic, Miles, brilliantly fantastic,” Amanda blustered.
“I didn’t appreciate your taking credit for what Hana had worked hard to arrange,” I said.
“Oh, get off it, mate. She had barely a dozen committed until I worked my contacts,” she countered, probably lying.
“Still, the Welsh Dragon Bar book signing was her idea,” I said, still peeved about Amanda having alienated Hana and being the reason for her sudden departure.
“Let’s not fight,” interrupted Jack. “It was a great night, the highlight of the tour. The footage is awesome.” He threw me a backward look replete with a flashing grin. “We’ve both got hit reality TV shows in the making,” he said, as if those successes would bind us together all the way to the grave.
“Another smashing episode,” Amanda exclaimed, chameleonically shifting to her boyfriend’s changing of the subject.
I settled back in my seat and checked my phone. Max’s picture blossomed on my home screen, gazing soulfully into my eyes. I worried because he had been left alone in the camper van for more than three hours and would be meowing for food and company, wondering where I was, every strange noise unnerving him.
Amanda threw her mane of hair back at me, her creamy face pinched in its middle. “And I have a surprise for you.”
“What’s that?”
“Dan O’Neill is going to be joining us at the campground.”
“Dan O’Neill?” I brightened.
“Yes,” said Jack. “He wants to talk to you about your book.”
“Tête-à-tête,” added the more linguistically educated Amanda.
“He’s attaching himself to the book as a movie?” I said, incredulous.
With enlarged eyes, Amanda nodded enthusiastically.