Tonight is the last of my book promotion events.

Originally, when I scheduled this event it seemed waaaaaaay far off in the future, and I had this incredibly silly idea that I’d be long done with events by the time this one rolled around. Given I just got back from SF at the start of this week, and left for SF when I’d just gotten back from Victoria, that was clearly delusional on my part.

It’s been cool, mind you, in its way, but I’m tired and I’m quite pleased this is the last of this stuff that I have committed to. My garden is completely overgrown from utter neglect this summer: there is good stuff in there somewhere, but I’ll have to get in under a whole freaking lot of creeping jenny to find it. My bedroom is a maze of laundry and half-unpacked suitcases. My office is such a nightmare that I can’t even bring myself to work in there right now. My back has been killing me for two months solid, and my body feels like it’s living deep inside the Pillsbury Doughboy because it just hasn’t been allowed the time to challenge itself enough in the good ways, and it’s struggling under all the giant stress so badly. Over the last month, half the time Mark and I see each other in the brief moments between both of our travels, we’ve been unable to have sex simply because we’re so snuggle-deprived that snuggles get privileged over orgasms.

I want my life back, man.

That isn’t to say the San Francisco trip wasn’t good.

It was actually great, sparing all the time I spent soaking wet from the rain. I got to hang out with and photograph an awesome reader, and same goes for Melissa, big time, catch up with Carol (and Robert, less briefly than I’d like because the only way for him to carve in time was to ride with us when I got dropped at the airport post-event to go home), spend the time with my editor we knew would be awesome, and which very much was; I had a cool event with great people, including Rachel, who was also in town, and a surprise visit from a young woman who volunteered for me back in the early days, and spent two days put up in an incredibly comfortable and — by my standards — incredibly posh hotel. I even did a very uncharacteristic thing by spending my first full day there in bed. Without company.

The awards ceremony was something else. I don’t tend to take compliments well — even though, as I have prided myself on previously, I do no longer respond with “Are you HIGH?!?” — so trying to do so with the ultimate kind of compliment was not an easy task. There were a small handful of others winning awards, and mine was in the middle. By the time they got to me, I was already near tears from all the amazing things they were saying about everyone ELSE, so when Pepper freaking Schwartz got up and then waxed poetic about ME, I was a goner. I had to open my acceptance speech by making clear that I couldn’t talk much because I was a millisecond away from going all Sally Field on their asses. I barely remember the speech, to be honest, but recall that I ended it by — hopefully without too much bossiness — asking every single person in the room to please, please mentor their youth positively, and that everyone there could do exactly what I do. It couldn’t have been too bad, because the closing speaker was this short-afroed goddess of a minister with a completely inclusive ministry (I have got to remember her name, dammit) whose speech finally got the pent-up tears pouring down my cheeks. As she walked by me after talking, she held her hand on my shoulder for a while: seems my weepery made the poor woman concerned for me. But later on, I ran into her leaving and she said the most marvelous things to me about my realness, and about how she was going to send all her ministries kids to Scarleteen — it wasn’t appropriate to please, please, beg her NOT to, because I was going to send my youth to HER because I have my hands full, so I didn’t say that. I think I just sniffled some more.

I did make a point that night of doing something I tend to be grossly uncomfortable with, which is making clear how flippin’ broke and tired I am (the bio on the awards booklet of course had to call me tireless, which is a nice thing to say, but is really not at all true: I’m fucking exhausted all the time anymore). Often, at events anything remotely like that, when people ask how Scarleteen is doing, I say it’s doing fine, simply because endless money-grubbing and kvetching is tiresome to everyone, myself included. But you know, during a night when you’ve been given the best possible advertising for what you do, to a room full of influential people, it’d just be damn foolish to sugarcoat things because a ton of people in that room had the power to save our ass. So, when asked, I’d say, “Not very well,” and when they asked what we needed, I’d say, “Money and help.” I choked on that the first one or two times, but it got easier after that. Who knows if it’ll result in anything, but we’re just too precarious right now, and I couldn’t afford to waste any opportunities, even if it made me feel seriously tacky.

Speaking of which, I do think I did okay on the dress-like-a-grownup score. While I know it may not sound like a sequinned wife-beater (I know, I hate that phrase too, so give me another, wouldya?) would have looked grownup under a suit, since it was black, no one on earth could have told that I was basically wearing my jammies under there. Plus, I had a very large argument with myself before heading over about how no, polishing your clogs still doesn’t make them appropriate evening wear, and how my feet, at 37, could suck it up and wear decent shoes for one night. I promised myself that once I hit 60, I may wear my damn clogs wherever I want, but until then, I had to step it up once and a while. Small victories, these, but they’re mine.

Anyway, I got sent home with, like, actual awardy-stuff. With shiny, shiny goodness, and two very official-looking pieces of paper.

I refused to pack the glass award in my checked luggage, and wrapped it gently into a Patti Smith t-shirt (I knew I could trust Patti with my baby). I had this “only over my cold, dead body” speech prepared for any security people who might want to rip what may well be the only thing like this I ever get from me — especially since like A Big Stupid, the reading I decided to also have in my bag was an anarcha-feminist book: you’d think I’d have learned my security lessons enough by now to know that announcing that you dig anarchism probably isn’t the smartest thing ever — but alas, I didn’t have to use it. It was disappointing, really, because it was one hell of a speech. Some other time, perhaps.

(Mark and myself were trying to figure out what kind of award this is, as compared to his world of film awards, and we’ve determined it’s the sexuality educator’s version of the SAGs. He was wondering what our version of the Oscars were, and I had to say that alas, it was likely the Nobel Peace Prize. Alas, I don’t think I’ll be having to make room on my piano for one of those anytime soon.)

When I got home, my first sales statement from the publisher is here, and it appears that I have already earned back almost half of my advance including the thousand plus bucks for my illustrator and various other fees. I don’t really know what to compare that to, but it feels like doing that in six months — especially with this kind of book — is a good thing, especially since it looks like book sales are at a fairly slow-but-steady upward climb since the release in April. If I could manage to start earning royalties in another six months — in other words, at least sustain the same amount of sales from here on out, which isn’t an unreasonable thing with books like this which tend to be purchased for those next in line of needing it from the slightly older folks who got it and loved it for themselves before them — even small ones by most folks standards of living, it would change my financial outlook quite considerably. (Translation: this is exciting and good which is why I’m going on about it, but too, in my newly-acquired spirit of not being shy about my circumstances, you should still buy more books if you want to help me out, and help me keep helping the folks I help out. And if you need a reminder about how much teens and YAs really need this book, check out Amazon’s popularity list for teen sexuality books on any given day, and given a few exceptions, note how many of the most purchased are either fables about how terrifying teen sexuality is, fiction, books clearly written for children, not teens at all, or books about the very opposite of sex.)

I came home and got picked up by three of my favorite boys in existence: my sweetheart, one of his brothers, who was visiting, and my sweetie’s best friend and one of my fave people, his pal Heath. I was then whisked to the Copper Gate for an overindulgent intake of aquavit. Didn’t see Jesus this time. Bummer. Got to go indulge in our Sunday ritual of hitting the farmer’s market hot dog stand for a veggie-dog brunch, and yesterday, I had a very awesome conversation with Jennifer Baumgardner about a new project we’re going to unite forces for that’s damn exciting, especially since I think the lady is awesome. And I think my sister actually sent me flowers, which is beyond unexpected (the card wasn’t signed, but it was to “Hez,” which is a nickname only my father and sister use for me).

I also unfortunately also came home to 12 solid pages of unanswered advice questions I’ve been starting to slog my way through, a STILL itchy-dog, a pile of bills I can’t even bear to look at, a pending policy conundrum at the AGA, and a thousand and one phone calls I still need to make. But today, event prep. And tomorrow….tomorrow? There will be sleeping in to be had, no matter what I have to do to my early-riser self the night before to get it (and all the possibilities I’m considering sound rather enticing, so it’s all good).

filed under Heather Corinna
posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

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