Yeah, he’s Bill. I call him that. And it’s never a good thing when he leaves the bar before you do.
It started with his reading at B&N Chelsea. Full house, standing-room only and Bill delivered a superb reading. Although, I couldn’t hear the exact wording of questions, his answers were dead on. In response to a strange man, who just happened to pick up a copy of Copernicus and ended up leaving it there on a CD rack, asking why he writes what he writes, Bill said, “There’s so much reality out there. And I’m interested in it all.” An answer that’s obvious in his work. The profundity did not end there, however. It trailed behind thirty of us as we tramped over to Mc-who’s-it-whats on 19th and 7th.
Vollmann drinks Jameson, mostly. He drinks it well in and in quantity and put several of us to shame. I was lucky enough to stumble into a conversation between Bill, myself, and lovely woman who had been a fan of Bill’s for fifteen years. She was very lovely, let’s say, and Bill is a man appreciative of nature’s finer touches. The conversation moved breezily from crack to cocaine to ecstasy to pornography and, inevitably, to goats. They were moments that I will remember for a long time.
Some other stuff happened that I’m a little hazy on. An actress talked to us. She looked familiar but I couldn’t place her. She’ll be somewhere on 26th and 8th Saturday night, and so on, I have this information on a coaster at home. Bill eventually left. I think he may have been a little crestfallen when the lovely lady mentioned above went home. I called it not long after. And that was my night with Bill.
