(젊은글)Take a deep breath. Hold it.

[dumpd]

Take a deep breath. Hold it.

Last night I did something I wouldn't usually do on a Friday night. I didn't go out to a smoky pub and drown the week's sorrows in a pint of cloudy piss-flavoured liquid. I didn't go out to a nightclub to hang around with drug-addled zombies. I didn't even have a quiet night at home with a Chinese meal (Starters for two, chicken fried rice, a special fried rice and a bag of prawn crackers) and watch the slight-better-than-average television.

No. Instead I went out to a bookstore to listen to a grown man read me a story. Being read to is a nice thing; it kind of takes you back to your younger days back in school.

I sat on the floor of a bookstore, with my legs crossed like a good boy, waiting to be read a story. Along with around 200 other people. No kids, all over a certain age (around 15 would have been the youngest) but there were actual grown ups there. With suits! All wanting to be taken back to their childhoods.

The storyteller was late. So we sat and waited, as all good children should.

Finally he turned up. The man we had all come to listen to. The storyteller. Chuck Palahniuk (paul-ah-nik) entered the building.

You know who Chuck Palahniuk is, even if you have never heard the name before. Chuck wrote a novel you may have heard of. It is called "Fight Club" and was turned into a pretty damn good movie by David Fincher. It starred Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. You've seen it.

If you haven't seen it, or at least heard of it, you must have just come out of a heavy coma.

Which leads me back to what I did last night. Mr Palahniuk was in the nearby town of Leeds to promote his new book "Diary". It is his new novel, and takes the form of a "coma diary". I haven't read it yet, so I have no clue what to make of it. Review will come.

But first, let me tell you about last night. Stop fucking sidetracking me.

Chuck decided to give us a reading from an as-yet unpublished collection of short stories. He has done this reading throughout this tour and it has been widely reported in the press. Book-readings are not usually reported in the press on account of them being generally boring and bland, but this was different. The book had a BODY COUNT.

People were reportedly fainting during Chuck's reading. Something was triggering them into falling over in bookstores and blacking out for minutes. Last night, the body count was up to twenty-nine. He was hoping for number thirty in the audience I was sitting in.

I could have been number 30.

The story we were given the privilege to listen to, was entitled "Guts". If you want to find more out about it, you should search in the relevant places. Better still, drag yourself along to a reading sometime. Shame he is leaving the UK now and going over to Italy.

Why don't I tell you the story? Honestly, I couldn't do it justice. Listening to Chuck tell it is bittersweet. It's like hearing the grossest joke you have ever heard. It is making you laugh and feel like puking at the same time. Its like hearing the most amazing urban myth, but knowing that it is all true. Knowing that it could possibly have been YOU the story was about.

No one collapsed last night, but a guy in a suit next to me looked VERY uncomfortable (but that could have been the carrot he had concealed up his ass). All around me there were pained looks and sweating faces. Many, many people should have collapsed.

Did *I* almost collapse? Damn right! That's the mark of a fantastic bedtime story!