This is an open letter of apology to someone I don t know for something that happened recently and has been haunting me ever since. I was at a performance of Madam Butterfly on Tuesday, November 12th, and, having arrived totally exhausted, fell asleep during the first act. Mind you, this had nothing to do with the opera or with the divine Kallen Esperian who was singing the lead role. She is a treasure and one of the world s great talents and a friend and I do love her. But I have this disorder that makes me more often than not fall asleep during movies, plays, concerts, Broadway shows, and any other sort of indoor, dark events. Well, as if falling asleep and snoring during the opera weren t bad enough, I started dreaming about something and, well, simply lunged forward and grabbed the hair of the woman in front of me. Just reached out and touched. I awakened just as I did it and she turned around and looked at me like I was some sort of total lunatic, for which I don t blame her at all. But please, woman whose hair I grabbed, please forgive me. It wasn t intentional. I m really, really sorry and if anyone out there knows this woman and she mentioned this to her, please tell her to read this. And even though there s no excuse for it, let me just tell you what kind of week I was having that led to this episode. At 3 a.m. that morning, I was sitting on my washing machine trying to stop it s earthquake-like shaking, as the dryer, with its impossible-to-attach vent tube was literally sending out steam that was making the paint peel away from the utility room walls. Because I am inexplicably incapable of having coffee, cream, and coffee filters in the house all at once, I had been to the store to buy coffee filters. The store I chose was out of coffee filters, but sold coffeepots that came with sample filters. So I bought the coffee pot, had coffee and cream for once, and felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment and pride, until, that is, I made the coffee and the sample filters were the wrong size and the whole thing got clogged up and the coffee came out full of grounds the first time out. Almost every light bulb in my house went out at once and for days, while not sitting on the washing machine, I was walking from room to room carrying a floor lamp with me and fumbling in the dark to plug it in to find various things, including my cigarettes and blood pressure medication, which I had accidentally left in the sack in which the coffee pot came, and only realized this after a few hours of searching the house in the dark and then had to retrieve them from the garbage can in outside in the pouring down rain. I was unbeknownst to me at the time broadcast all over the television the other night acting like a just-uncaged wild animal at a Memphis Grizzlies game from my mid-court floor seats (given to me a gift by someone very special). And last but not least, I was out the other night with some very good friends who are a bit younger and more adventuresome than me and I now have the word peace in Japanese tattooed on my arm. This is all just the tip of the iceberg, and I could go on and on about the various other things that make it impossible for me to lead a normal life and have normal sleep habits, but I won t bore you. Just please forgive me for grabbing your head so I can go on with life such as it is without having the burdensome shadow of shame lurking over me. You can e-mail a letter to this paper and they will forward it to me. In the meantime, here s a brief look at some of what s going on around town this week. Tonight, there s a booksigning by David Tankersley at Burke s Book Store, where he will be signing copies of The SIXties, an audio literary journal featuring stories by local authors set in Memphis during the 1960s. Eighty Katie is playing at The Lounge. Gary Johns is at Capriccio in The Peabody. AND, most importantly, there is Insane Hardcore Midget Wrestling at the New Daisy. I do love this city.
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