Did | Give My Pug Dog AIDS?
An Evening with Douglas Coupland and Chuck Palahniuk

By Luke Simcoe, OP Contributor

Like many in my peer group, I spent my formative and
awkward youth absorbed in the likes of Generation X,
Microserfs, and Hey Nostradamus. I can also recite much of
Tyler Durden’s caustic social commentary verbatim. So,
naturally, I was keen on seeing both Douglas Coupland and
Chuck Palahniuk speak at UBC. The fact that tickets were
a mere $12 (less than the cost of a fancy imported six-
pack) served only to reinforce my existing desire to attend.

Our host for the evening was John Burns, literary edi-
tor for The Georgia Straight and prominent BC author. While
ushers handed out fake plastic roses, whose meaning would
become clear later on to the sold-out audience, he warned
us that the evening’s reading would be unlike any we had
ever attended, or might attend in the future. I have little
basis for comparison—we had a guest author do a reading
in my creative writing class once—but considering what
was to follow, he was right.

Coupland opened the evening with a reading from his
forthcoming book, JPod, a pseudo-sequel to Microserfs that
takes place in Burnaby and is due to be published this May.
We were treated to an amusing piece of metafiction where
the protagonist, Ethan, a video game designer at Electronic
Arts, encounters Coupland on a flight from Vancouver to
Shang Hai. After gushing over the chance meeting, Ethan
drinks one too many first-class scotches and passes out,
only to awake and find that the author has left a rather
insulting message on his unattended laptop.

Coupland also went into detail about his passion for

: the visual arts, including one story where he flushed 200

bottles of household cleaning products down a hotel toilet
in Japan, so that he could use the containers in an art proj-
ect. This flair for the visual medium seems to have found
its way into /Pod, with parts of the book being dedicated to
such things as the first 13,000 digits of pi.

With the arrival of a tuxedo vest wearing Palahniuk, the
evening slid down a‘slippery slope into a wash of f-bombs,
Amy Tan mockery (apparently her readings are notoriously

ace 15

boring), and other assorted depravity. Not that this was a
bad thing. Chuck seems to be the recipient of much of his
fan’s emotional baggage in the form of fan mail, personal
stories, and art projects. With an obvious appreciation of
both his fan base and his craft, Palahniuk seems to wel-
come all of this, and he delights in recounting his fans’
various stories. We got to hear about the guy who showed
up at a reading with an entire garbage bag full of Polaroids
of people who had died in his neighbourhood’s porno
arcade. Or about the man who expressed concern to his
social worker about the possibility of infecting his treas-
ured pug dog with HIV because the dog liked to eat the
tissues in the man’s bedside garbage (you can put that one
together...).

Now, as amusing as these tales are to tell, I can’t help
but wrench them out of their context, and that doesn’t do
them justice. Palahniuk is able to talk about these fans and
their impact on him in a way that really highlights the
cathartic power of story telling, and it was an experience to
be emotionally moved by stories of such comedic vulgarity.

After some Q & A, where those who asked questions
were rewarded with oversize novelty roses (I gave mine to
my girlfriend), Palahniuk read us Mr. Exgant, a short story
due to be published in an upcoming edition of Playboy. The
story concerns a young Chippendales-type male stripper
who plays the role of Mr. Elegant, handing out roses wear-
ing nothing but a bowtie (the roses make more sense. now,
don’t they’), in an exotic dance troupe. I won’t spoil it for ,
you, but suffice to say that it involves an epileptic seizure

_ and a lot of shit—yes, shit.

Finally, to close the evening, Palahniuk threw a few
stink bombs into the audience (I’m not kidding) while
Coupland proceeded to throw bits of fake plastic poo out
to everyone (also not kidding). So, it was an evening of
flowers, feces, and fun, and I’m pretty sure John Burns’ .
warning will stand.

 

 

 

 

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