The Littlest Hitler | Ryan Boudinot | Talks at Google

All right, we're going to get started, everyone. Welcome to today's Authors at Google event. It's my pleasure to bring to Google Ryan Budino, who's just published his first collection of short stories titled the Littlest Hitler, which also happens to be the title of one of the stories in the book. Ryan has written for McSweeney's nerve and his work has appeared in the Best American Non required reading, which you guys should all check out. His debut collection of stories is funny, shocking, and just altogether awesome. I encourage everyone to read it, especially since it's short and I know we all have very little time here at Google. Ryan is also an editor for the DVD section of Amazon.com up in Seattle. So if you have any questions about Amazon and their dog friendly workplace, feel free to ask him. And without any further ado, I'd like to introduce Ryan Budenow.

Can you hear me? Is this coming through? Does this work? No, no. Now? Okay, cool. I'll also be happy to answer questions about Amazon's beach volleyball course. It's like five times the size of your guys. No. Thanks for having me out here. This is a real treat. I was planning on coming to San Francisco to do a reading tonight and got this invitation kind of out of the blue, which is real cool to me because it's kind of like you guys are my tribe in a way. I've spent the last, God, 10 years in the tech industry in various places at Amazon. This is my second tour at Amazon. Did some time at Microsoft and other dot coms that have come and gone and survived some layoffs and, you know, drank some free beverages, that kind of thing. So no, this is very cool. I'm real excited to be here. The book is the Littlest Hitler. It's a collection of short stories. The title story is about a little boy who decides he wants to be the scariest kid in fourth grade for Halloween. So he thinks there's nothing scarier than going as Hitler. He quickly realizes the error of his ways when he gets to school and discovers that one of his classmates, a little girl, has dressed as Anne Frank. So he wasn't too thrilled about that. But this story that I would like to read to you is something that I wrote and it's one of those things where I sort of envisioned it taking place in the office that I happened to be working in at the time. This is called Bee Beard. Bet wore the bee beard to work on a Tuesday. I typically arrive at the office before everyone else and had the place to myself. The card key scanner beeped, followed by Bet's heels on the parquette. At first I mistook the low buzzing for ambient noise from my computer monitor or a fluorescent light fixture. Morning, Scott, bette said, passing my cube. I mumbled back without looking up. The buzzing grew louder, then trailed off as she headed down the hall. I groped for my cell, thinking it was vibrating. A few moments of office time churned me through its routines. Somebody else arrived, dragging latte smell past my cube. It was Bryce, our analytics maven, his actual title. At the other end of the hall, Bryce punctured the quiet with a screech. I found him standing outside Bet's cube, his coffee dead and wet on the carpet. Bette wore what I had come to secretly call her Star Trek uniform, a hideous white suit jacket with two pointy collars. From her face hung a beard of bees. Everyone's seen these things on TV or in National Geographic. Some farmer standing shirtless in his field, a stalactite of writhing insects dangling from his grinning face. But on Beth, though, our account manager for digital media, I wasn't even aware she raised bees. You like, she said. Stop standing, pivoting in a circle. Bryce, often solicited for clothes related opinions, was speechless, providing no fashion oriented wisdom. Hot coffee steamed off the tips of his diesel shoes. Aren't they gonna miss their hive? I said. Yeah, they'll want to eat, so I brought plenty of honey, Bet said. They're just gonna stay on your face all day, I said. Some of them will probably want to fly around a little and check things out, but they should mostly stick with me. It's kind of like take your kids to work day, Bryce said. Right, I said. Except with bees. Our boss, Dan, five plus years younger than all of us, appeared in the hallway, eyeballs deep in a PowerPoint deck he was reviewing before our 9:30. Whoa, he said. Who frickin spilled the coffee? Guilty, Bryce said, picking up the cup, scooting to his desk. Scott Bet. I made changes to slides 18 and 19. Let's hold on this Q3 long range planning discussion. Bet, were you able to clear up that stuff with the streams and the error messages? Bet said. Yeah, turns out about four years ago they accepted a government grant contingent on a load of security measures. You know the flavor. Total overkill with proxy servers, filters, firewalls. Their system was slowing things way down. Like 20 minutes for a 1.5 megabyte WAV file to load. Good news is the agency that provided the grant was axed two years ago during budget cuts and the client is no longer stuck with the ridiculous architecture. I'm getting a consultation clause into the contract which basically lets us spec out their program on their dimensions and ensure complete buy off on platform integration. Bryce bit his lower lip and raised his fists, knuckles facing away from his body in an expression I had thoroughly analyzed. I theorized that he'd picked it up as a kid from the stage behavior of certain heavy metal bands. Ideally, he should have been wearing studded gauntlets when making this gesture, which indicated a willingness to quote rock, one of Bryce's favorite words. I had a subfolder where I saved emails in which he cited rocking as the primary measurement of success. This team rocks. Patty's presentation rocked. Rock on merchandisers. I just want to publicly acknowledge that program manager Beth O' Grady truly rocked at today's 11:30. Take a look at these FYO4 actuals. They rock you thoroughly rock me. Help desk but for all the supposed rocking, my job bored me most days, so I was happy. Someone had chosen to liven things up a bit by bringing a swarm of insects to the office. And Bet turned out to be right. They tended to stick close to her most of the day. There were a couple mishaps. One of them got trapped inside the third floor break room snack machine. Another showed up on top of my monitor and and proceeded to hump one of the Dungeons and Dragons figurines I keep up there as a joke, not because I'm seriously into Dungeons and Dragons. When Dot Simmons, one of our designers, received flowers because it was her birthday, the bees naturally freaked out and she had to stash the bouquet in her car the rest of the day. Overall, people were relatively accommodating. Once you got past the fear of being stung, it was pretty easy to carry on as usual with a person wearing a beard of bees. Luckily, I found myself in the elevator with BET at 6:30 that night. She leaned her head against the nicer wood than I have in my own house and said, and what day is it? Only Tuesday. God, no kidding. Do you have plans for dinner tonight? Bet said, is a can of minestrone a plan? We ended up at the new Thai restaurant where they make a big deal about customizing your sauce, a place bent on micromanaging the dining experience. I wondered how many hours of training the waitstaff had endured. I imagined the Kinko's binders that must have been involved, the pep talks in the kitchen, after which everyone clapped their hands together and repeated an inspirational phrase in unison. What's new in your life? Scott still Learning flash. The bees look sluggish, occasionally dropping off Bet's face onto the table, then feebly flying back to join their fellow bees. Nah. But I've been taking a class at the community college on this DVD authoring software. That's pretty great. Someday everything you see in theaters is going to be made in people's garages on their computers. It'll be awesome. What about you? I guess you're into beekeeping. You should see my place. The hives. It's gotten a little out of control. Bet laughed. I knew what this laugh meant. It meant no, really, you should see my place. I'm serious. Like tonight. You thinking of getting out of digital media and raising bees full time? Oh, no, she said. Beekeeping is sort of a side thing. Kind of hard to do in a condo, I'd imagine. So. Scott. What I really wanted to the waiter arrived with our customized sauces and spring rolls. Only when he knew that we were satisfied with the proportions of sauce ingredients did he step away to help other patrons. You were saying? I said Dan gave his notice today. You're kidding. Dan? Yeah. He got this big offer from Versatech. Like twice his salary, four weeks vacation offers, counteroffers. They've been going back and forth for weeks. I would have never known. He seemed so dialed in today. What's this mean for you? Bet shrugged and smiled, as if to say she already knew she was lined up for Dan's position, which would make her my boss. Which indicated that I should really initiate the sexual relationship now, before the annual review period to avoid violating the quid pro quo section of sexual harassment. It's no joking matter. Manual. Then I got stung. I must have moved my silverware in a threatening manner. I felt this wicked needle on the back of my hand. There was the bee, its thorax bent in an obscene posture, pumping its venom into me. God damn, it hurt. The bee left the stinger in my flesh, then wobbled off toward the customized sauce to live out its final moments. Bet apologized and fished a dwindling cube from her glass, which she rubbed across the quickly swelling spot. I'm so sorry, beth said. This is embarrassing. No worries, I said. Damn, that hurts. I haven't been stung by a bee since. I guess I can't ever remember being stung by a bee. Wow. So this Dan situation. So last year at my review, I talked to him about potentially taking on radio and print as well as digital media, and he seemed to really encourage the idea. Wow, that's. I started coughing. That's fantastic. You drank all your water Here, have some of mine. As I was reaching for Beth's glass, the entire restaurant appeared to implode, as though I were inside a balloon in the process of having the air sucked out of it. I couldn't breathe and naturally panicked, jerking my arms and inadvertently knocking the spring rolls to the floor, which was where I ended up as well. I didn't have the presence of mind to know I was having a severe allergic reaction to the bee sting. This was explained to me later in the emergency room. By the time I made it to the hospital, I was covered in hives, my eyes burned, I was wheezing, and my hand looked like an infielder's mitt. The admitting desk wouldn't let Bet into the emergency room because of her bees and suggested that she hang out with the smoking nurses by the ambulance bay. I was in there for a couple of hours, getting shots of antihistamines and learning I was one of those rare people who can die from a single sting. After receiving the bee sting brochure and thanking the doctor, I found Bet sitting on a landscape boulder reading Lucky the magazine about shopping under a parking lot while her insects slept. You didn't have to wait for me, I said. I feel somewhat responsible for this. I feel bad you waited. It's almost midnight. Let me drive you back to your car. It's not far. I can walk. You can't walk. It's too late. I'll call a cab. Really, Scott, I'm just a little uncomfortable about the bees right now. Apparently, about 1% of the population is severely allergic to bee venom, and I'm in the 1% within that 1% that can actually die from a sting. Okay, I understand. I'd started the evening sexually attracted to Bette, and I was ending it sort of hating her. Not because one of her bees had stung me per se. Who could have predicted my immune system would react the way it had? But because I knew she was going to take Dan's place on the team and become my boss, and that this bungled pseudo date had 86'd my chances of ever getting her in the sack. Word of my trip to the emergency room would somehow get out, I was sure, because Bet, as she demonstrated sharing this Dan development with me, was a notorious gossip. When everyone found out about the incident, they'd naturally wonder why we'd gone out to dinner together, construe it as an actual, not pseudo date, and then know I had failed to get it on with the new director of digital media. The next morning, Bette had the audacity to show up to work with her damn bee beard again, which was even longer than it had been the day before. If ZZ Topp had pursued beekeeping careers instead of becoming Texas blues rockers, they would have looked like Bet. I checked my Outlook calendar and discovered she was in my subscription email strategy meeting at 3pm I arrived purposely on time and sat as far away from her as I could. Lakshmi, the developer who is supposed to be showing us the new templates, so struggled with the projector. We tried to offer our technical support. Is the cable plugged in? Hit Enter. Did you hit Power Save? Try unplugging it and plugging it back in again. Hit enter again. Is the lens cap on? When Lakshmi finally had the presentation projected in a trapezoidal shape on the irregularly shaped wall, the bees went a little crazy with the sudden change in light, butting their heads into the pie charts like they were flowers. Bet's beard began to sag, misshapen bees crawling over her shoulders and arms under the table, and leftover handouts from the previous meeting. Lakshmi made a joke about bees, thinking the projector was sunlight. Is it just me? I said, or does it maybe seem like a good idea for people to leave their pets at home? I thought we had a dog friendly policy, lakshmi said. I'm not talking about the friendly dog policy. I'm talking about bees. Bet's bees Bet. I don't know. Maybe it's not kosher to bring them to work. Am I out of line suggesting this? Bet squeezed out a withering glance and made some reference to the employee manual. Maybe I wasn't paying much attention or something during orientation, I said. But I don't recall seeing a section on bringing your hive to work. Let's take this offline, bet said. Which is a more productive sounding way of saying, let's talk about this later. I found it impossible to concentrate the rest of the meeting. Immediately afterward, we found the office of some guy who'd been laid off and closed the door behind us. You have a problem with my work? Bet said. Jesus, Beth. This isn't about work. It's about me being afraid of going into anaphylactic shock. I honor diversity as much as anyone around here. I've even got the special certificate to prove it. But this is out of line. I don't know what the solution is. I just know your B's present a health risk to me, and I wish you'd stop to consider that. This isn't about health risks at all. Scott. You want A dance position since the day you started here. You can't stand the idea of me stepping into his shoes. You're looking for any angle you can to make me look bad. You are so full of shit. I saw how you'd reacted when I told you he gave his notice. As if you don't think seniority means they owe you the position. Screw that. We're 79% year to date in digital media sales because of the initiatives I've driven. What have you owned? Some piece of crap animations for the homepage that drive no sales? Give me a break. I don't understand why you're so angry, Bet. I thought we were friends. She settled down a bit and leaned against the laid off guy's desk. On the desk were a can of Diet Coke and a half eaten Krispy Kreme resting on an upside down paper cup. Pompeii. Like remains of the day. The poor sucker got the axe. One of her bees flew off her face and landed on my shirt sleeve. Get it off, get it off. Get it off. Bette used the paper cup to gently remove the bee from my shirt and reintroduce it to her chin. It's because I've fallen for you, Bet. You know that. There, you finally said it. Did you have to get angry to get it out of me? I never thought you were going to admit it, is all. I was going to talk to you about it last night, but you know, the bee sting. Bet drew closer and touched my arm. I've wanted you. It's true. I want to kiss you, Bet, I said, pulling away. But the bees. Okay, she sighed. Tomorrow I'll leave them at home for you. The next day, true to her word, Bette stopped by my cube sans bees. She offered me an Altoid from her Kate Spade bag and said she was sorry about the day before. I said some things I didn't mean. You're a really great friend and I want to keep it that way. Your flash animations are really cool. I mean it. No worries, I said. I know how crazy it can get around here and I hope. Well, I was thinking if you're free this weekend. We'll see, bet said. We'll see. Fifteen minutes later I was retrieving some prints from the copy room when I heard the dreaded buzzing again. Then Dan walked in. What up, Scott? That my print job there? No, sorry man. I'm like a little out of it this morning. Late night, if you know what I mean, he said, his face dripping with bees. So we got like a lot more. It's only 1:21, so we have like 40 minutes of fun left. I'll read a couple short things that I wrote for this anthology called Mountain man dance moves the McSweeney's book of lists. These were from the mcsweenies.net website based in lovely San Francisco. And basically the idea behind this is it's a collection of lists of things that are supposed to make you laugh, like unicorns and bluffs and stuff. So this one Like a lot of people, I like to keep up on current dance crazes, right? So like whatever is going on in the clubs, I want to know about it and I want to learn the moves, I want to master them, and I want to show them off. That's sort of my mo But I compiled this list of American dance crazes that never became dance crazes. The sandwich 1957 to do the sandwich, press your palms together, then tilt your hands to a horizontal position. More adventurous proponents of this dance would often pretend they were eating their own hand sandwich while rapidly gyrating the hips. It didn't help that the band who released this song was named the Lutheran experience. The baby 1958 barely remembered in Chicago, the baby was performed to the song the same name by a combo called the Marmettes. While an archival photo from the Tribune appears to indicate the dance involved thumb sucking, no one has come forward to provide a detailed description of the moves. The song appears occasionally on Lost Treasures type compilations, where its grating refrain of fake sobbing and baby talk appealed to afangianados of esoteric music. The Clam Hunter 1968 song recorded by the Marshmen, this dance involved an elaborate pantomime of using clam digging paraphernalia. In some coastal regions where this dance flirted briefly with popularity, clam digging was a pastime in which large aluminum tubes were jammed into the sand like straws, the exposed end then sealed to create suction and allow the swift extraction of these fast moving bivalves. Imagine this without the paraphernalia on a dance floor with more ass movement. The Sexual Intercourse 1972 the Underground Hit single of the same name by soul band the Freaky Deakies can occasionally be found at garage sales. Arguably a novelty song, many claim to have followed its explicit instructions on the dance floor, though no evidence remains that anyone ever actually did. It was the kind of thing club goers of the time would brag about having done. As in last weekend we went to the Shangri La room and did the sexual intercourse part of the drum track later appeared as a sample on Bel Biv DeVoe's debut album, The Fondue, 1974. One could be forgiven for thinking this one had something to do with cheese or chocolate sauce. There is no reference to either in the sole B side by Bogey Junction. Detroit concertgoers often express confusion about what the fondue actually looked like, as the instructions were somewhat baffling. Move your hip to the left, jump three times. Now slide to the back with one foot right. No, actually left. Yeah, and with your hands in the air. The Human Swastika 1985 this regrettable song was among the most notable of the shock rock anthems singled out by Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center. Recorded by the Shamed, a virulently anti Semitic, Idaho based hardcore band, the song and its shouted refrain predictably found no mainstream attention beyond those whose curiosity was piqued by the PMRC hearings of September 1985. Curiously, many of the same moves in the Human Swastika were uncannily echoed in the bangle's walk like an Egyptian The Sweat Sock 1986 an attempt by New York studio group Pretty Business to cash in on aerobics fever, the Sweat Sock was described by dancer size enthusiasts as being particularly rigorous and great for isolating the glutes. The line come on hon, squeeze that bun got the song banned from more conservative landing radio stations, leading to a couple days of free publicity and a brief spike in sales. The Lombata 1989 one in a tradition of suggestive Latin dances, this one featured the provocative use of no, sorry. This one actually did catch on. The Recycling Shuffle 1997 commissioned by the Greater Boston Natural Resources Committee, this song was performed by anonymous studio musicians and distributed as a CD single to local grade schools. The song, meant to foster awareness of which kinds of plastics are okay to recycle and which kinds are not, was described by various members of the focus group as, quote, unquote, worse than the Barney song. Hella shitty, yo. And completely gay. You know, since we have time and since you were all nice enough to come out, I think I'll read the title story. Is that all right? Is that cool? You have googly things you need to get back to doing. I wrote this story in 1999 and I was sitting in a car waiting for my wife to get out of a Pro Fitness and then this just happened. Then there's the time I went as Hitler for Halloween. I'd gotten the idea after watching World War II Week on PBS, but my dad helped Me make the costume. I wore tan polyester pants and one of my dad's khaki shirts with sleeves so long they dragged on the floor unless I rolled them up with some paints left over from when we made the Pinewood derby car for YMCA Indian Guides. He painted a black swastika in a white circle on a red bandana and tied it around my left arm using the dippity do he put in his hair. Every morning he gave my own hair that plastered parted stuff that had made Hitler look like he was always sweating. We clipped the sides off a 50 cent mustache and adhered it to my upper lip with liquid latex. I tucked my pants into the black rubber boots I had to wear whenever I played outside and stood in front of the mirror. My dad laughed and said, I guarantee it, Davey. You're going to be the scariest kid in fourth grade. My school had discouraged trick or treating since the razor blade and thumbtack incidents of 1982. Instead, they held a harvest carnival not officially called Halloween, so as not to upset the churchy types. Everyone at school knew the carnival was for wimps. All week before Halloween, the kids had been separating themselves into two camps, those who got to go trick or treating and those who didn't. My dad was going to take me to the carnival since I, like everyone else, secretly wanted to go. Then we'd go trick or treating afterwards. There were problems with my costume as soon as I got on the bus that morning. Heil Hitler. A couple of the big kids in the back chanted until Mrs. Reese pulled over to reprimand them. We knew it was serious when she pulled over, being that the last time she pulled over was when Carl Worthington cut off one of Ginger Lopez's pigtails with a pair of scissors stolen from the library. That isn't polite language appropriate for riding the bus, Mrs. Reece said. Do you talk like that around the dinner table? I want you both in the front seats, and as soon as we get to school I'm marching you to Mr. Warnicke's office. But I didn't do anything. I felt somewhat vindicated, but guilty at the same time for causing this ruckus. Everybody was looking at me with these grand expressions. It's important, I suppose, to note that there wasn't a single Jewish person on the bus or in our school, for that matter. In fact, there was only one Jewish family in our town, the Friedlanders. And their kids didn't go to West Century because they were home schooled freaks. When I got to school, Mrs. Thompson considered me for a moment in the doorway and seemed torn, both amused and disturbed at the implications of a fourth grade Hitler. When she called Roll, I stood up sharply from my desk, did the Sieg Heil salute I practiced in front of the TV and shouted, here. Some people laughed. After Roll was taken, we took out our spelling books. But Mrs. Thompson had other ideas. Some of you might have noticed we have a historical figure in our class today. While the rest of you dressed up as goblins and fairies and witches. It looks like Davey is the only one who chose to come as a real life person. I'm a real life person too, Mrs. Thompson. And who would you be, Lisette? I'm Anne Frank. Mrs. Thompson put a hand to her lips. Clearly she didn't know how to handle this. I'd never paid much attention to Lisette before. She'd always been one of the smart, pretty girls who everyone likes. When I saw her rise from her desk with a lopsided Star of David made of yellow construction paper pinned to her Austrian looking frock, or whatever you call it, I felt the heat of her nine year old loathing pounding me in the face. This is quite interesting, Mrs. Thompson said, being that you both came as figures from World War II, maybe you can educate us about what you did. Davy, if you could tell us what you know about Hitler. I cleared my throat. He was a really, really mean guy. What made him so mean? Well, he made a war and killed a bunch of people and made everyone think like him. He only ate vegetables and his wife was his niece. He kept his blood in jars. Somebody tried to kill him with a suitcase and then he took some poison and died. What people did he killed? Everybody. He didn't like Jesse Owens because he was Afro American. Yes, but mostly. What kind of people did he have problems with? He killed all the Jews. Not all Jews, fortunately, but millions of them, including Anne Frank. The classroom was riveted. I didn't know whether I was in trouble or what. Lisette smirked at me when Mrs. Thompson said her character's name, then walked to the front of the class to tell us about her. Anne Frank lived in Holland during World War II and when the Nazis invaded, she lived in someone's attic with her family and some other people. She wrote in her diary every day and liked movie stars. She wanted to grow up to write stories for a newspaper, but the Nazis got her and her family and made them go to a concentration camp and killed them. A concentration camp is a place where they burn people in ovens. Then somebody found her diary and everybody liked it. When Lisette was done, everyone clapped. George Ford, who sat in front of me and was dressed as Mr. T, turned around, lowered his eyes and shook his fist at me. I pity the fool who kills all the Jews. Recess was a nightmare. I was followed around the playground by Lisette's friends, who were playing horse with a jump rope, berating me for Anne Frank's death. How would you like it if you had to live in an attic and pee in a bucket and couldn't walk around or talk all day and didn't have much food to eat? It didn't take them long to make me cry. The rule about recess was you couldn't go back into the building until the bell, so I had to wait before I could get out of my costume. I got knots in my stomach thinking about the parade at the end of the day. Everyone else seemed so happy in their costumes. And then Lisette started passing around a piece of notebook paper that said, we're on Anne Frank's side, and all these people signed it. When my friend Charlie got the paper, he tore it up and said to the girls, leave Davey alone. He just wanted to be a scary bad guy for Halloween, and he didn't really kill anybody. I should just go as someone else, I said, sitting beneath the slide while some kids pelted it with pea gravel. This was Charlie's in my fort for when we played GI Joe. We can kiss my grits, Charlie said. He was dressed as a deadly galactic robot with silver spray painted cardboard tubes for arms and a pair of New Wave sunglasses. This is a free country, ain't it? Stop throwing those son of a bitching rocks, Charlie. Oops. Playground monitor. Time for warp speed. Charlie pulled on his thumb, made a clicking sound and disappeared under the tire tunnel. Despite Charlie's moral support, I peeled my mustache off and untied my arm band. As soon as I made it to the boys room, there were three fifth graders crammed into a stall going, oh man, there's corn in it. None of them seemed to notice me whimpering by the sink. Mrs. Thompson gave me her gray haired wig to wear for the parade. Here, Davey, you can be an old man. An old man who likes to wear khaki. I knew Mrs. Thompson was trying to humor me and I resented her for it. Lisette, for whatever reason, maybe because her popularity in our classroom bordered on totalitarian, got to lead the parade. I was stuck between Becky Lewis and her pathetic cat outfit and Doug Becker dressed as a garden his mom and dad were artists. Each carrot, radish and potato had been crafted in meticulous paper mache, painted, lacquered and halfway embedded in a wooden platform he wore around his waist. The platform represented a cross section with brown corduroys painted with rocks and earthworms symbolizing dirt and his fake leaf covered shirt playing the part of a trellis. For the third year in a row, Doug ended up winning the costume contest. By the time our parade made it to the middle school, I was thoroughly demoralized. I had grown so weary of being asked what are you? That I had taken to wearing the wig over my face and angrily answering I'm lint. I'm lint. My dad made wood stoves for a living. When my mom left, he converted our living room into a shop, which was embarrassing when my friends came over because the inside of our house was was always at least 90 degrees. My dad was genuinely disappointed when he learned of my classmates reactions, but everyone knows you're not prejudiced. It's Halloween, for crying out loud. He folded the bandana looking sad and guilty. I'm sorry Davey. We didn't mean it to turn out like this, did we? Tell you what, let's go to Sprouts Reits and buy you the best goddamn costume they got. We drove into town in the blue pickup we called Fleetwood Mac. Smooth like a Cadillac, built like a Mack truck. The Halloween aisle at 6:30pm on Oct. 31 is pretty slim pickings. There was a little girl with her mom fussing over a ballerina outfit. Last minute shoppers like us, I basically had a choice between a pig mask, some cruddy do it yourself face paint deals, and a discounted Frankenstein mask with a torn jaw. Hey lookit Frankenstein. My dad said, trying to invest some enthusiasm in the ordeal. Don't worry about the jaw. We'll just duct tape it from the inside. Nobody will even notice. I want a mask with real hair, not fake plastic lumpy hair. I said. You don't have a choice here, Davey, unless you want the pig mask. Fine. I'll go as stupid Frankenstein. My dad grabbed me by the elbow and spun me around. Do you want a Halloween this year or not? You can't go trick or treating without a costume and this is about your only option. Otherwise, it's just you and me sitting on our asses in front of the television tonight. That night, the grade school gym floor was covered with the same smelly red tarp they used every year for the PTA ham dinner. Teachers and high school students worked in booths like the Ring Toss, Going Fishing and the Haunted Maze, a complex of cardboard duct taped together. All the parents were nervously eyeing Cindy Dartmouth, who'd come as a hooker. She was the same seventh grader who'd shocked everybody by actually dying her hair blonde for her famous person report on Marilyn Monroe. Her parents ran the baseball card shop in town, and every middle school guy in West Century wanted to get into her pants. She seemed womanly and incredibly sophisticated to me as we stood in line together for the maze. I liked her because she stuck up for me on the bus and one time told me what a tampon was. They let you into the maze two at a time, and Cindy and I ended up going in together. You go first, I said as we entered the gaping cardboard dragon's mouth. She got on her hands and knees in front of me, and for an incredible moment, I saw her panties under her black leather skirt. The maze took a sharp right turn and the light disappeared. Cindy reached back and grabbed my arm. I screamed. She laughed, and I tried to pretend I wasn't scared. The 8th graders had done a really good job building this place. There were Glow in the Dark eyes on both walls and a speaker up ahead playing a spooky sound effects album. I held onto her fishnet ankle and begged her to let us go back. We passed a sign reading Watch out for bears and entered a tunnel covered in fake fur. I started crying. Cindy held me, whispering. It was all just made up. None of it was real. It was just cardboard stuck together with tape, holding my face in that magical place between her breasts that smelled like perfume from the mall. Suddenly, light streamed in on us. One of the high school volunteers had heard me crying and opened a panel in the ceiling. Ross, Mike, check it out. They're totally doing it in there. The guy laughed. I looked up to see four heads crowding around the opening. Leave us alone, you fuckers. Cindy said, and it seemed a miraculous act of generosity that she didn't tell them the real reason for our embrace. We quickly crawled through the rest of the maze. When we emerged, a group of kids was waiting for us. Hey, Cindy, why don't you crawl through the tunnel with a guy who's actually got pubes? I panicked, hoping my dad wouldn't hear. I didn't want Cindy to get picked on, but I kind of liked the idea that the other kids thought I'd done something naughty with her in the maze. When Ross Roberts asked me if I'd gotten any, I sort of shrugged as if to suggest that I had. Although I didn't completely understand what it was I could have gotten. Cindy bit her bottom lip and disappeared into the girls room with three other girls who would end up sending me hate notes on her behalf the next day at school. The rest of the carnival was awful after that. I carried my Frankenstein mask upside down because I'd forgotten to bring a candy bag. Most of the candy at the carnival was that sugarless diabetic crap handed out simply because one kid in sixth grade had diabetes and we all had to be fair to him. My dad walked around the perimeter of the gym pretending to be interested in each grade's autumn crafts project, not really mingling with any of the other adults even though he'd sold wood stoves to a few of them. I could tell he didn't really want to be there and when I told him I wanted to leave, he nodded and said it was time to do some serious trick or treating. I liked my dad because he didn't seem to follow a lot of the rules other grown ups seemed obligated to follow. He let me watch R rated movies, showed me how to roll joints, and told me how to sneak into movie theaters. We bought our 4th of July fireworks from an Indian reservation and used them to blow up slugs. The only time I felt like he was a real grown up were when he was figuring out the bills or being sad about my mom. But tonight we were the closest of co conspirators in Fleetwood Mac. We sang along to the Steve Miller greatest Hits talent and picked the richest looking neighborhoods to trick or treat in with a greasy Burger King bag salvaged from the floor of the truck. We went door to door, my dad hanging out behind me waving politely. Somebody even tossed him a can of beer. I didn't know we were at the Friedlanders house until Mrs. Friedlander opened the door. Word had it they were among the parents who didn't let their kids go trick or treating since the razor blade and thumbtack skill air of 1982. Hannah Friedlander sat on the steps up to the second story of their split level house, leaning over in her sorceress costume to see who it was. Mike, her brother, came up the stairs from the rec room and joined her, breathing dramatically in his Darth Vader mask. I wanted to do something nice for them, wanted to just hand them my whole bag, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'd be too embarrassed. I'd make my father angry. I'd call too much attention to the fact they couldn't go trick or treating. So I chose to do Nothing but accept Mrs. Friedlander's individually wrapped Swiss chocolate balls and thanked her, then walked back to Fleetwood Mac with my dad and drove home, looking at all the Halloween displays through the nostrils of Frankenstein's nose. So, did you have an okay Halloween after all? My dad asked, carrying me upstairs to my bedroom. I nodded and got into my PJs, then pulled the covers over my face and let him bite my nose through the blanket like he did every night. Later, when I could hear him snoring through the wall, I took the bag of candy from my dresser and tiptoed downstairs to what used to be our living room. There was a stove hooked up to each of our three chimneys, one of which was cold, one with some embers inside, the third filled with flames. I opened the door to the flaming stove and thought about throwing my whole bag in there, but then remembered the rule. Wood and paper only. Besides, I had an entire Snickers bar in there. I wasn't insane. I sat for a long time eating chocolates one by one in front of the fire, then plunged my hand into the stove to see how far it could go before it really started to hurt. Thanks. So I'm happy to answer questions and sign books over at the table. Anyone? Did you write that whole thing while you're waiting for your wife? I wrote most of the first draft. Yeah. She must have been in like a long Pilates class or something that day. I don't know. But, yeah, I revised it back over maybe three months or so.

How do you come up with your characters?

How do I come up with my characters? You know, I don't know. It's more. I guess, more the way I think of it is how do my characters come to me? Like, there's a story in here, actually, called the Flautus that is about a guy who plays flute for a sort of karaoke studio. They record, like, jingles for commercials and karaoke songs and really bad smooth jazz. And this guy was a character that I had since high school. Like, you know, I took a break from writing sort of gory horror stories and wrote this little piece about a guy who plays flute for some lame O Muzak company. And then I set it aside and then, you know, years and years, like, I don't know, 15, 20 years later, like, I picked it up again. I picked up that character and I was like, yeah, I remember that guy. I still think that's funny. Maybe I should write something about it. But yeah, the characters kind of. I try to Give them a sense of autonomy and follow them through the story rather than sort of coming up with a list of traits or what they're doing. But, yeah, I've had a lot of fun with the characters in this book.

Do you feel you have to be funny to actually write funny stuff, or is it related to.

It? So. Right. Really? Yeah. So the question is, do I feel like I have to be funny to write funny stuff or in a good mood? Yeah. You know, the thing that it becomes kind of absurd is that when I'm in, like, editing something that I know is a funny story, I mean, not everything I write has, like, funny lines or makes people laugh necessarily. But when I do have something that has something funny in it, I find myself nitpicking over the littlest things in it where you start saying, okay, now what's a funnier brand of potato chip? Is Cool Ranch Doritos funnier than, say, multigrain something or other? And I'll make these little decisions, and they're really quite serious moments for me where I say, gosh, you know, is Mr. Pibb funny? Or is Tabb funny? Which sounds funnier, but. No. And the other part of your question was. Or you mentioned that you heard some people writing funny stuff when they're depressed. Would never consider the state of mind that I'm in as depressed when I'm writing. But there's been awful lot of times when I've been really frustrated. And. No, some days, you know, I mean, your mood writing is just like your mood any other time. It can be all across the map, and it's in the process of editing, going back to the piece while you're in many different frames of mind that eventually the piece comes out the way it is. Any questions about YouTube? Anyone else? Anyone? Anyone? So the question is, how long did it take me to get published? Sure. I guess the most honest answer to that question is 27 years. I decided when I was six that I was going to write books. And so the rest of my education from then was kind of a process of blowing off math classes and really concentrating on writing and doing writing workshops. And I studied writing in college as an undergraduate. I wrote a novel while I was in college. And then in graduate school, I did an MFA program, read like a maniac as much stuff as I could, hung out in used bookstores, had a couple mentors who were really important to me, who introduced me to different authors and writers, and. And then once I graduated from grad school, I realized that my education really wasn't Going to provide me the platform anymore. And I really just had to do it. So that was in 1999. So the day after I graduated, I started a novel. It's never been published. It probably never will. Worked on some stories for a while, then started another novel. That one's probably never going to get published either. By now it was like 2002. Then got an agent for that unpublished, last unpublished novel, and she tried to sell it for three years. Didn't go anywhere. The Littlest Hitler. The story came out in Best American Unrequired Reading around that time, which made it easier to get published in other magazines and other literary journals. Was working on stories, writing during lunch while I was working at an online education company in Bellevue, Washington. Or, you know, at times I was working while I was supposedly working at my real job and then got an. Then my agent dumped me and she said, well, we haven't had any luck with this book. So she let me go. And then I was picked up by another agent and is this all really boring? I don't know. Sounds like. So then I was picked up by another agent about two years ago, maybe a year and a half ago, a guy named P.J. mark Collins McCormick Literary Agency in New York, who's fantastic. And he told me, well, by this time I had a third novel that he said wasn't ready yet. But he said he loved my stories and he thought he could sell them. So then he did a lot of footwork and told a lot of people about my stories. And then my editor at Counterpoint contacted him because she'd heard through the grapevine that he was representing me. And then he sold the book. And yesterday I just turned in that novel, the last one I wrote. So we'll see what happens.

I really liked how you used high tech corporate jargon in your. In the first story you read. And I was running about your reaction to that kind of language and how you chose to use it.

Sure, sure. So the question is about high tech jargon and language. And no, I love hearing the way different people talk. It's really fascinating to me. And especially one of the things I want to do in my own writing is transport the ways people talk into the actual narrative. So I got in trouble a couple times during school for doing this where people would say, that's not literary language, but if it's the language, the way people speak it, then that's beautiful to me. So the jobs that I've had, like for the online education company that I was working for, I was the Manager of the tech support team, which is a joke really because I knew, like I didn't know how to fix anything was going on with that software. They just needed a guy to come in and sort of tell people to answer the phone. But the thing that I found interesting is that I would have these conversations with people who are in charge of the servers and I started to be able to talk a little bit, like I maybe knew what I was talking about and communicate with them a little bit. And, and I found it really interesting that a lot of it's metaphor, right? I mean they talk about things going down pipes. It's like, oh, we'll just put in another pipe. There's not actually a pipe or there's the metaphor of oh, it's on the toaster or just these weird little metaphorical ways of talking about technology. That's interesting to me. And I mean really, you're talking about some sort of box somewhere with wires poking out of it. But you know, bandwidth and then the ways in which that language is applied to human interactions is really interesting. So, oh, I can't deal with that. I don't have the bandwidth right now, which is just saying I'm too busy, you know, that's really what you mean, or let's take that offline, you know, or those kind of little phrases that crop up in business speak. And being immersed in that in my day jobs for the last, I don't know, eight years is something that I've been able to glom onto. But not to say that that's the only sort of language that I'm drawn to. I also like listening to my two and a half year old son talk about different things. Like I told him I was going to San Francisco last night and he goes, san Francisco Giants. So I'm learning about toddler speak a lot now. Anyone else? Maybe one last question, then I'll sign some books. Anyone?

I've already asked a question.

Okay, well, I was just going to.

Ask if you think you'll ever write books full time or you'll probably always have an email.

I hope so. I mean, I hope the question was do I think I'll ever write books full time? That's always been my dream. At the same time, the idea of like sitting in my house all day, like just creeps me out. I like, I love interacting with people and it's like the best part of sort of my workday is being able to, you know, to BS with people and IM and you know, talk about various things not related to anything you're doing productively. So I think that what I would love to do is write books all the time and be involved some way in working with other writers in some capacity, whether it's teaching or workshops or something. I don't know. But I just like people too much. Anyway, well, thank you. And I'll be over here signing books.