How much wood would a good Chuck chuck?

I met Chuck Palahniuk yesterday. Well, I say met, but really all I did was shake the guy's hand and grin too much and get his signature on my copy of Snuff and annoy him.

My new friend Alberto was ultra excited when I told him I was going to the Edinburgh Book Festival to see Chuck Palahniuk. And then he was crushed when I told him all the tickets were sold out. He said he loves the guy's books and thinks he's incredibly sexy. Me too, I said.

I built up this image in my head, as you do with celebrities. From the 4 photographs I've seen, and the 4 novels I've read, I had this idea that Chuck was this kinda beefy, tattooed, all-American-but-
perverted (I mean that in the nicest possible way) kind of guy, that rode around on a motorbike collecting stranger-than-fiction stories from the deepest, darkest parts of the US. I suppose I attached a Henry Rollins type character to him.

So maybe you can imagine my excitement when Alberto told me he was gay! You mean, this incredibly talented, imaginative writer, who kinda reminds me of a big, muscled, intelligently political heavy metal singer, is actually fair game? I mean, I know he writes about homosexuality quite a bit in his books, but I also knew he was obsessive with his research, and simply a very good writer. But gay?! How fabulous!! I squealed.

So I came up with this plan, that when I got him to sign my book, I'd say, only three-quarters jokingly, "...yeah, make it out to Phil, could ya Chuck... and your number, just underneath there..." and I'd shoot him a smoldering look, shrug my shirt ever so slightly to reveal a bit more shoulder, and lean in over the table, smirking in that flirtatious way that I have, that probably makes me look like a stalker.

Ridiculous, foolish, adolescent dreams, I know, but those are pretty much the only dreams I have.

It turns out, Mr Palahniuk is a rather sweet, engaging man, who looks like he works in a Christian Science bookstore. I still think he's an amazing writer, and a lovely guy, but my libidinous fantasies involving a hot and sweaty reading and book signing, a blokey, beery night on Rose St, followed by a trashed hotel room and a bit of light spanking dissolved when he made his way elegantly into the spotlight at the Main Theatre at Charlotte Square Gardens. Sorry if you're reading, Chuck. (Yeah right, Ed.)

That's celebrity, isn't it. It's having too many people think that you're this giant, this super-everything, this fulfillment of all their perfect, Platonic ideals, only to have them embarrassingly admit the next day, on their blogs and to their friends, that you're just like everybody else. It's having people think they know you, and should be your friend, cos they've seen some interview and bought all your stuff. It's no wonder half of them become train wrecks.

He said something nice about celebrity, last night. He said for him, there are only two states of being; isolation, and community, and since he didn't want to end his life thinking how great it was when he was alone, he chose community. Celebrity was just one way of being with other people. "I don't know what the hell to say to you, so here are some stories I've got." It sounded like something you'd hear on Oprah, and the audience awwwws and claps, but I get the feeling with Chuck, he's genuine. I mean, he's genuine in his books, and he seems genuine in person. He was genuine enough to get annoyed when me, trying so hard to be noticed in the long, long line of book signees, I asked him to customise my blow up doll.

After telling a great story about some friends of his, he started throwing male and female blow up dolls into the audience. Signed blow up dolls. I caught one and was suitably thrilled. The first person up to blow up a boy and the first to blow up a girl would win a DVD. I had no idea what the DVD was, but I wanted to be the one he remembered. I wanted to be the one everyone remembered. I wanted to be a star. I blew up mine pretty fast, but came second, so I sat down, slightly deflated (har har) but still very impressed with my souvenir. I sat him on my leg, and settled down for the rest of the show.

Afterwards I stood in the book signing queue, chatted to a few nice people, and thought of all the different ways I could be different, and stand out. I dressed my blow up doll in my jacket, and came up with a name for him: Randy Colt, a good, solid porn star name. But then I thought, he doesn't really look like a Randy Colt, so instead I named him Eunice the Eunuch, on account of the fact that he has no genitalia. Or really anything vaguely sexual about him at all (if you discount the ridiculous printed-on hairy chest). He's about the size of a 12 year old boy, which was made even more disturbing by the fact that there actually was a 12 year old boy at the book signing, dancing with another male blow up doll. I don't know.

Ha, there I go, aping the great Chuck Palahniuk. He told us to. He said that's how he started writing, just freely copying the styles of the authors he admired. That made me think that maybe I could be a writer after all.

My greatest fear, the thing that repeatedly stops me from doing anything, is that people will think that I'm a fake, a copy of someone good. In all aspects of my life, I'm always trying to distinguish myself from everyone else. I'm always trying to win the admiration of others by doing something that they would never have had the courage or imagination to do themselves. The problem is I never try all that hard. It explains why I went to China instead of Thailand, Berlin instead of London, Edinburgh instead of London. It's why I start out all excited about a new project that I'm working on, only to find that two hours later I'm telling myself to give up, because it's been done before, and better. I start writing a fantastic, epic novel about...something ... and after a few pages I can't think of anything except myself.

I can't make art about anything except myself. That's why it's easy(er) for me to write a blog than to do something really creative.

So anyway, I get to the front of the line, after two hours of needing to pee, and I'm all giddy and nervous, and I've borrowed a marker from one of the staff, and I'm so excited about my very original idea, and I say "Thanks for a great reading, and for your amazing books, and for my new friend Eunice..."

The damn woman who was helping him asked me who I wanted Chuck to dedicate his autograph to, and I said Phil and Eunice. And Eunice is the name of the blow up doll. Because he's a Eunuch. And then I mentally bang my palm on my forehead, because my big punch line, the thing that was going to make Mr Chuck Palahniuk grin and be my friend, has been wasted on his assistant. Still I console myself with the fact that in a survey of popular baby names in the US, Eunice is almost always a girl's name, while 0.15% of the time, it's used for boys! How awesome is that!

How sad is it that I googled that?

And I say, "Thanks for everything Chuck and I wonder if I could ask you a favour I know you're tired and you've got shitloads more books to sign but I wonder if maybe you could customise my blow up doll..."

And he says, quite evenly, but I can tell he is annoyed, "But I already did, I signed it, see?" pointing at the doll's disturbingly smooth genital area.

I mean, it wasn't enough that the guy hand signed about 50 blow up dolls and threw them to his adoring fans. It wasn't enough that he is signing my copy of Snuff, by hand, with a thousand more coming up behind me, and including a dodgy polaroid that he must have taken himself of a massive all girl blow up doll orgy (red-eye dog included). No, I had to be different, and get my doll customised as well. No wonder he sounded testy.

And I get uneasy but I tell myself to hell with it and say, "yeah, I know, but if you don't mind, you know, like drawing something on it..."

"Like what?"

"Um, like a mustache or something?" Bang goes the palm on the forehead, again.

So he does. Like a trooper, he draws a mustache and a little goatee and a strange little line on his forehead that I guess is like a dashing one-eyebrow raise. Eunice now looks like a sexy 'continental' villain from a Fifties cartoon.

And I gush and say thank you a million times and walk out, looking for the girls who were before me in the queue. They've disappeared.

I was a kind of celebrity last night, after all. I did definitely stick out from the crowd, at least, as I made my way down George st on a Saturday night, while bemused, amused, frightened drunk people tried to process the sight of a man with a blown up male blow up doll proudly tucked under his arm, strolling jauntily home.