The perks of speaking in front of drunk people — Book tour stop #10: New York, February 24

When I traveled to New York for the first time back in 1994, the very first person I met while riding the subway was Tony Mansfield, a porn actor who had a minor role in the 1978 adult classic Debbie Does Dallas.

How’s that for an opening sentence? It also happens to be a factual detail, which I’ll get back to it in a moment.

As a book tour stop, New York was somewhat of a self-indulgence. Random House didn’t want to sponsor a New York reading (claiming, rightly, that The Big Apple is a celebrity-driven literary market and I didn’t stand to get much publicity there), so I was left to book my own gig. Fortunately, I have a proud personal history of hoisting pints at the Half King, a Chelsea-district pub owned by adventure writer Sebastian Junger (author of The Perfect Storm). Readings and lectures are held at the Half King every Monday night, and I was able to book myself a slot.

Beyond its literary leanings, however, an advantage of the Half King is that it sits just half a block away from my friend Anna’s place (where I usually crash when I’m in New York). Hence, I was able to shuttle between the two places as I set up for my reading. As I set up the slide projector (thanks, Anna!), the Half King began to fill with after-work drinkers — not all of whom had come there for my presentation. Fortunately, fellow travel scribe Tony Perrottet had put me at ease about doing a reading in a drinking establishment. “You picked the best place in New York with the Half King,” he told me in an email. “It really does make a difference, I find, having an audience with proper seats, mellow lighting and a drink or two in their hands, compared to the agony of reading under the harsh lights of a Barnes and Noble.”

So, this in mind, I tried to relax and enjoy the perks of reading in front of drunk people. As the time of the reading approached, friendly faces began to file in, including Anna and her gang, my Thailand expat friend Denise, my Indonesian pal Krissie, my Villard editor Katie, my agent Sarah Jane, my assigning editor Joni, and Joni’s husband Steve (who, since I met him last year, keeps telling me I should cultivate my image as a literary eccentric by referring to myself exclusively in the third-person). By the time I took the podium, there were about 50 people in the audience — a full house — some of whom had brought their own copies of Vagabonding.

I’d meant to lead off the night by reading some Walt Whitman, since Manhattan figures so prominently in his poems — but, since I’d forgotten to bring my copy of Leaves of Grass, I led off with Debbie Does Dallas instead.

My Debbie Does Dallas story goes back to the afternoon of my first day in New York nine years ago. I was on my first vagabonding trip at the time — eight months by VW Vanagon around the USA — and I’d never been to New York before. Neither had my friend Jeff, who was traveling with me at the time. Since the city still had a rough reputation at that time, both of us were a little nervous as we descended into the subway to make our way down to the Village. We were staring at the subway map trying to figure things out when this thin, dark-haired, clean-cut looking guy asked us if we needed help. We told him we were going to the Village; he said he lived in the Village, and that we could just follow him.

The guy was carrying a big bag full of videotapes, so when we got on the subway I made conversation by asking him if he was a movie buff. He told me that, indeed, he loved movies, and that he used to act in movies himself. I asked if he’d been in anything I’d seen, and he informed me that he’d had a minor role in Debbie Does Dallas, which he called “one of the most famous pornos ever made”. His name, he said, was Tony Mansfield, and he went on to tell us about the golden age of porn, the dimensions of his penis, and what it’s like to work with porn legend Ron Jeremy (who, if you don’t know, is kind of like the Cal Ripken, Jr. of the adult movie business). Years later, when I saw the movie Boogie Nights, I immediately thought of Tony.

Interestingly, Debbie Does Dallas has been made into a non-pornographic off-Broadway musical that is currently in the middle of it’s New York run. Hence, I think the audience might have been a bit confused when I told them my subway story. Whatever the case, the reading went well, as did the slides. And indeed the pub setting kept things intimate and informal; the whole room sat and talked travel for about an hour after the slides had finished.

As I walked back to Anna’s from the Half King, it I realized that — for the first time in a month — I was finally in the position to put my own travel advice into practice. I stayed on in New York for an extra week — wandering the streets, checking out museums and shows, hanging out with friends, eating food from all over the world, getting into adventures, and (best of all), taking my time about it.