BootsnAll Travel Community

During a slow time at a registration event today I pulled out my copy of "No Touch Monkey." I suddenly found Ayun in AGONY on the back of a flatulence-riddled, prettier-than-thou camel named Ruffle Blanket. She is about to barf from motion sickness, her crotch is both raw from chaffing and bruised from a saddle that is made out of a what seems to be a packing crate and a blanket. Worse yet, boyfriend Greg is having the time of his life as he lives out a boyhood fantasy. He insists that sick Ayun take many pictures of him atop his steed. Ayun contemplates puking on the camera.

I'm in public reading this little something. I am also unable to control my laughter, guffaws, snorts, hee-hees, HAH-HAH-HAHs and giggles. Those around me look up from their very serious paperwork.

"Sooooooo. What are you reading?"

"'No Touch Monkey,' by Ayun Halliday. It's travel humor." All I want to do is get back to my story.

"Is that like Erma Bomback??" WTF************CK! [stifled: guffaw, snort, hee-hee, HAH-HAH-HAH and giggle]

"Um, yeah," I say, "But a little bit raunchier. I mean she's on the back of a flatulent camel and she's got some chaffing issues."

"Oh. That sounds . . . funny?"

Oh yes, my friends.

Very. Funny.

Jet

hahahah. I wish i was there to see their faces.

I read it in private.

Both times.

In private I read:

Sand In My Bra

Who's Panties Are These

The Thong Also Rises
and

What Color Is Your Jockstrap

But I enjoyed the book-buying experience.

Jet

"That would have been predictable. This way it's poetry." -- Joey the Lips, The Commitments

You could demand that a bookshop in Lethbridge stock copies of it, or, you could wait until you are in Portland and visit one the best independent bookstores in the known universe, Powell's.

And, after you pick up a copy, you can stalk Ayun on one of her book tours and ask her to plant her fire-engine-red lipsticked lips on the Paris Lip story. Of course, it'd take a bit of nerve to get away with that.

oh my god, my ears are burning. actually, my daughter's ears are burning b/c my mother ignored the growing infection in said child's newly pierced ears and now, her right lobe has swallowed the little metal back and it's a very gnarly situation here.

but MY ears! my ears are burning with the glow of other's promotional efforts on my behalf! thanks guys!

I just realized that the funny looks I was getting on the subway were because the back cover of Jeffrey Brown's most excellent graphic autobiography, "Unlikely", says HOW I LOST MY VIRGINITY in letters even the most myopic granny could read half a car away. And I read his first book, Clumsy, on the redeye coming back from San Francisco, sandwiched between two businessmen. I had the covers folded in on themselves in a heart shape b/c I didn't want them to see all the drawings of these incredibly innocent, endearing your characters having clumsy explicit sex. Didn't want to give anyone notions about the mile high club.

i'll kiss your book anytime, ntf Travis!