wells tower: hot shit

wells tower did a reading in san francisco on wednesday night at the tosca cafe. my thoughts, enumerated out of sheer laziness:

1. wells tower is a hottie. (yes, he looks that good in person.)

2. he also has a great stage presence: casual, appealing, accessible. he was definitely funny, both in off-the-cuff comments and in the pieces he read, both of which i enjoyed very much. in fact, the first one, an essay he had written for GQ, even brought tears to my eyes (though, admittedly, i was pretty tipsy at that point).

3. my friend who also came to the reading saw some chick giving him her number. i wonder how much ass he's been getting on this book tour?

4. amusingly, the cafe had a huge number of wells clones--solemn-looking dark-haired boys with pasty faces gloomily buried in their notebooks. (wells himself was a much more cheerful, though still mild-mannered and shy, version of these.) at some point i realized that what my friend and i were referring to as "wells clones" were in fact just your run-of-the-mill san francisco hipsters.

4a. i hate the questions people ask at readings. "how do you like being a writer?" asked one of the wells clones. "i like it," replied wells. sadly, i had no better questions for him.

5. he made a rather unfortunate remark about nonfiction being less difficult to write because it is less emotionally serious than fiction. i am partly forgiving him for making such a rude comment because his background is in magazine fiction, which is of a decidedly different flavor -- and certainly more superficial -- than the kind of creative nonfiction that i claim to write, or at least want to write, and enjoy reading.

6. thanks to my thoughtful boyfriend, i now have a signed hardcover copy of wells's first short story collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. it says, "To Gwyn, Best wishes." i sigh at the prosaic message, but then again, he has no idea who i am, so whatever.

7. i have made it a goal to become friends with this guy at some point in my career. he seems that cool.

8. final note: the tosca cafe can suck a fat one. they're notorious for their strong cocktails, and i was drunk before i finished my first. so i went up the block to get some nachos and bring them back for my friend and me--we didn't want to lose our table for the reading, though it was an hour before it was supposed to start. (he read to an impressively full house, as it turned out.) the tosca cafe, despite what i consider to be the implications of the word "cafe," serves no food whatsoever. and yet the owner of the cafe (at least that's who i'm assuming she was) came over to scold us for bringing food in because it would encourage others to do the same. "i'm not running a restaurant," she said as she admonished us to shovel the food into our faces more quickly and dispose of the evidence. yeah, bitch, you're not running a restaurant. that is the problem. so you have two options: outside food in your establishment, or an unacceptably high risk of a vomit-covered floor at the end of the night. why do hip little fucking bars in san francisco think they can get away with bullshit like this? also, they don't take credit cards, AND they charged my boyfriend $2 for a club soda. sometimes i hate this goddamn city.

i'm having a shitty few days, guys. chalk it up to writerly moodiness if you like.