In all the readings I've done thus far from L.A. to New York, I've always done something light-hearted or mildly intense, but nothing close to the nitty gritty of the book. And the god's honest truth was I shied away from it because I didn't want to scare anyone off from reading it. So after some wine and Thai food with Renee and her paramour, after I was prattling on about how I'd read the part where I got tattooed shirtless in the front room of Way Cool, or when I considered becoming a paid escort, or a phone sex affair gone wrong (which I'm planning on reading tonight at In The Flesh), Renee made a face that let me know she didn't approve at all of my reading choices.

"What?" I asked.

"I think you should read about the rape," she said simply, fixing me with an intent look.

My immediate instinct was to hide my face in my hands. "Really?"

"Really," she replied evenly. "Carly, the whole message of the book is that you can have a happy, healthy life despite the trauma. Only reading the good times cheats readers out of the whole experience, and misrepresents what the book is about. You have to take them there with you."

I knew she was right. As much as I hated the thought of doing it, if I was going to walk the walk, I had to talk the talk. So I asked her if she would be game for letting me do a dry run the afternoon before the reading. She agreed.

The thing you have to know about my writing the rape out was that what you read in the book is the first time I've ever consciously pieced everything together in chronological order. I'd remember bits and pieces of it here and there, then shove it down so I didn't have to think about it ever again. But the night I wrote about it I was very much right there, watching it happen all over again. And I was numb when I wrote it. I was channeling every emotion I felt through my fingertips into my keyboard, out onto the white Word document in front of me. And when I finished, I never reread it. Not even during editing.

When I read it in front of Renee, I crumbled.

That's the only way I can describe it. I was actually doing quite well up to the point where I described what it was like to walk into that shitty condo in Whitehorn... and as the words were coming out of my mouth, I was there again. I was looking at the dingy walls and the sad sacks sitting on the floor. I was feeling his hand leading me up the stairs to the room that would prove to be my undoing. It was all I could do to choke through the words as I read them aloud. I had no idea if I was going to be able to handle that kind of emotion should it come up during the reading.

And as it turns out, that reading - at the Toronto Women's Bookstore - was the best yet. Roughly 25 people showed up. I started with some funny stuff, I transitioned to some more transitional work, and then I read it. I read the rape. For a while I would look up at the audience and see what they were doing, but when people started to cry - right around the time I started to explain what was going on in my head as it was happening - I couldn't look up anymore. I could feel the emotion welling up and I wanted to keep it mostly in check. I wanted to be strong.

When I finished I took a deep breath and asked, "How many of you know someone who has been assaulted, raped or abused?" And nearly everyone in the audience held up their hand. I don't know where the words that tumbled from my mouth were coming from, but I told them that I hoped this helped them understand what it was like, and how I felt so useless afterward. How I searched for love from the wrong people, and tried to find comfort and peace in all the wrong places. How broken I felt. How ugly. But also, eventually, how determined I became to work through it.

After it was all done I took a moment by myself in the back porch area to collect myself enough to be able to go out and hang with people. I signed books, hugged and shook hands, and then a woman approached me and asked, "When he choked you... did it leave fingerprints?"

I shook my head.

"I think that when you're with someone who knows how to choke, they can do it in a way that doesn't leave a mark. And I think the body remembers." She paused, and kind of smiled. "I kind of checked out when you read about your experience. It's because I'm just now coming to terms with my own rape. He didn't leave fingerprints, but I can still feel his hands on my throat sometimes."

Then she held up the copy of the book she just bought and said, "Thank you for this. I want to learn how to heal."

That made it worth it.

It started with customs. I carry a Canadian passport and am still considered a Canadian citizen (for now...), but I have a Green Card that allows me to live and work in the States. It wouldn't strike me that this would be cause for an international incident, but the customs dude I got saw it differently.

Him: Why are you here?
Me: To visit friends. (I don't bother saying it's for work because that just causes a whole host of issues.)
Him: (Thumbing through my over-stamped passport) Who are these friends?
Me: I'm sorry?
Him: You said you were visiting friends. How did you meet these friends?
Me: Uhh... well, I lived and worked here for three years, so I guess I met them the way anyone else would meet friends when they live and work somewhere.
Him: Are they work friends? Family friends? Friends you met through other people?
Me: (Fighting the urge to roll my eyes.) All of the above.
Him: All of the above.
Me: Yes.
Him: Did you bring gifts?
Me: No.
Him: What do you do?
Me: I'm a writer.
Him: For who? Yourself?
Me: Freelance.
Him: Uh huh. Here you go.

What happened to the old belief of Canadians being so friendly? Sheesh. I thought that was it, but then after I got my bag I was sent into secondary, where the customs agent took a cell call and left me standing there for 10 minutes.

Him: (After hanging up.) Okay, sorry about that.
Me: No problem. (LIE!)
Him: So what do you have in here?
Me: Clothing, toiletries and shoes. (Truth!)
Him: How does this open?

At this point I unzipped the case to reveal piles of dirty laundry... and I happened to have the underwear on top. He slammed the case shut as soon as he opened it.

Him: You're fine! Have a nice day.

Ha.

I got on the ferry to go to the main terminal, and found that I didn't have a dime on me. When I inquired how long it would take me to walk to my friend Nick's place - roughly an hour, with my laptop and 30-pound suitcase in tow - a perfect stranger gave me a token for the Toronto Subway... also known as the TTC or - my favorite - the Vomit Comet courtesy of drunken uni students who take it home after a long night of drinking. I was in the shuttle heading to Union Station when I got a call from Toronto Tourism asking why I hadn't taken the car they'd sent to pick me up.

Car? Things were starting to look up.

Ten minutes later I was in a town car heading up University to College, and I found myself getting really nostalgic. Toronto both feels foreign and familiar to me now, but in such comforting ways. I've never felt like Calgary or Edmonton were home quite like here is, because this is where I came to really start my life. It was a source of such growth and such amazing experiences that no matter how jet set I've become, my heart is always here.

I pulled up to Nick's place and dragged my suitcase up his stairs, and walked into his apartment... only to be greeted with a big hug and the sight of Madonna's "SEX" book stuck to the wall (which I gamely informed him would be going missing before I left, naturally.) I alternated between hopping online and sorting my laundry so I could once again wear clothes that didn't have the ability to walk by themselves, and checked my mail to find this from one of my oldest and dearest friends:

Yay! Today's the day. You're probably already en route.

I think the best thing will be to pick you up and take you 'home'. Let you relax, unpack, start laundry if you want. There's a Madonna cabaret thingy at the gay theatre, which you'd probably enjoy... but it starts at 8, which might be tight for dinner. Anyway, we'll discuss.

My friends know me so well.

Goddamn, it's good to be home.

Saturday was a bit of a blur, mostly because when I landed at JFK I had to use my jetlagged wits to help me take the subway to Sandra's place, where she was waiting with soft lighting, Thai food and a screening of Brain Candy. I probably would've put out had the combination of the three not put me to sleep at 10. The next day I checked in with some work stuff, and then decided to go for a walk in Central Park. I don't know if it was the music I was listening to (Hard Candy, natch) or my mood after such a good sleep, but something about the city was different to me. The last time I was here I looked at it as being hectic and frenetic, fraught with stress and mayhem... all the things I wanted to avoid in my life. But cutting through the park to walk 6th ave into Times Square, I was surprised to find an impromptu street fair set up that blocked off most of 6th to anything but foot traffic.

I was starting to see everything in a different light. I was starting to understand the way everyone walks with and around each other, drives with and around each other... how it's more of a flow than a struggle, and everyone respects everyone else's pace (for the most part.) It felt more peaceful here than in times past.

It started to make me wonder about the five and ten-year plan I had put into place when I was 15, where I'd aimed to be in Toronto by 20 and New York by 25. I'd never been to New York at that point, but all I knew was it was where books and magazines were, and if there were books and magazines there, I wanted to be there too. So when I finally moved to Toronto I made a solo pilgrimage out to NYC to buy a pair of shoes. (If you must know, they were like the ones Gwen Stefani wore in the video for "Sunday Morning," and the only store that had them was Fleuvog... and they wouldn't send them to Toronto. Ergo, business trip.) Before I left everyone was telling me what a crime-infested cesspool it was... which made me want to go even more. And then I got there and fell in love.

And then my love for another man took me West. I've never regretted my decision to move to San Francisco with him at 23, two years before I was supposed to head South and find a tiny one-bedroom in Manhattan that I would undoubtedly share with two other roommates. But for the first time since I made that decision, I found myself wondering what my life would be like now had I have stayed with that plan. Would I have married and divorced? Would I have the career I have? But more importantly, would I have found myself, and continue to find myself? I'm not entirely sure, and I don't really know that I want to know the answer, to be honest. I can't say that it's necessary to open that door so much as it is to just muse about it.

I did have a rather surprising moment with my agent this morning over breakfast, though. We dined at a restaurant that I ate at back in the '05 trip, but under entirely different circumstances. I was there with a past love. There's a picture of me from that day, sitting there in a too-tight white Juicy hoodie, looking out the window at the cars racing by outside. I remember seeing Penn Jillette with his wife and their daughter, Moxie Crimefighter, walking down the street. I stared out there for a good long while, and said ex took a picture of me. And the picture says exactly what was on my mind at the time: I'm not happy, and I'm not in the right place. But I don't know how to change that.

Anyway. This morning I was musing with the agent about how, when I'd first started working with her, I insisted that getting a $600k advance for my porn memoirs was a reasonable goal.

"You know, growing up I always thought of being a writer as being this glamorous career, where you pen a book a year and get huge advances, go out on tour and stay in five-star hotels, sign development deals... and for the most part the truth is you do your own PR, you hustle your own book tours, and you couch surf," I said, and she nodded. "But you know, ever since I was little this is all I've ever wanted to do. And now I'm doing it. It's not about the money anymore, it's about getting to write what I want to write. Yeah, I want to make a living, but more than anything, I want to write."

I almost didn't believe the words were coming from my mouth until I said them, but it's true. I've struggled a lot with the monetary versus artistic side of what I do, and these days the artistic is winning out. And I think it should. There's something to be said about following your passion above all else. Usually the universe figures out a way to take care of and support you while you follow what it is you want to do. And certainly there have been times that have been tough, but I've never lacked. There's always been someone or something there to help me make ends meet.

I walked back uptown listening to the acoustic version of "Days Go By" by Dirty Vegas and felt an incredible sense of peace. Somehow, I know it's all going to work out better than I'd dreamed. Some way, it's all going to fall into place. I just had to come back to New York, the place that made me desire writing as a career, to remind myself of that.

"I'm hoping to burst into flames on this trip."

"Tojours avec les yeux!"

"Anyone need a broadsword?"
"That was my nickname in high school."

"There's actually a song about my cat."
"Yeah? What's it called?"
"Simone has chunky thighs."

"Come on, we have to drink tonight. It's our last night! It's like the end of summer camp!"
"Maybe I'll lose my virginity tonight!"

"We make a great team."
"Yeah, Team Meltdown."

"So what's off limits when it comes to dirty talking in bed?"
"I dunno. Poo?"
(Bear in mind that last sentence was uttered over dinner, when our table of 12 had suddenly fallen silent.)

"I'm telling you, I'm a marsupial!"

"I was just thinking about you on the bed."
"Did I do something bad? Was that a bad thing?"
"Not in my country, but it's not my country!"

"Sweet lord on fire!"

"Is that a Chav?"
"No, that's just EuroTrash."

"This is the point where I check out and clutch my fur bag."

A little back story: press trips can be grueling at times, especially with large groups. There are a lot of different energies, sensibilities and activity going on just within the clique you're traveling with, but when you take that and mesh it with a full schedule, it can sometimes be a bit much. One way to counteract such stressors is to find a little bit of escape when you're feeling yourself running out of steam after seeing your 90th cathedral... which isn't to say that I don't love seeing cathedrals, because I do. But sometimes downtime is just as enriching as scheduling every moment when you need to refresh your desire to write about your surroundings.

Anyway. One of the great ways to combat the down moments is by reverting to behaving like a pimple-faced adolescent. For example, on the trip through the Azores Jessica and I amused ourselves with numerous double-entendre conversations about the nuts I would carry with me for backup in case we went somewhere where I couldn't eat the food (try traveling with wacky food allergies - it's a fabulous exercise in patience.) It spiraled completely out of control on the last night when pretty much everything or everyone we saw became something delightfully dirty. And that pretty much happened on this trip too, but most of our attention was taken up with something Paul had introduced us to in passing: the Euro Chav.

Paul had been making comments about them here and there for days, and by day four I finally piped up and asked him what the hell they were all about. And though I'm still struggling with the perfect definition (though you can find about a million websites about them), the gist of it is this: they're a faction of Brit hoodlums that are lazy and leechy, prone to leaning against things with their thumbs hooked in their jeans pockets, talk on their mobiles to their dealers, partake in a range of relatively petty crimes (with a little of the ultra-violence thrown in for good measure), and tend to wear sparkling white sneakers and gold chains. It's essentially the English version of a Wigger (is that un-PC? I'm unsure. But that's the best way to describe it.)

And so the game started: how many Chavs could we spot in a day? But I felt it necessary to document everything in photographic form so that I could further prove the theorem when I got home. (Which is to say that pictures will be forthcoming when I get back to my desktop and have the chance to properly resize everything in Photoshop.) This evolved into taking pictures of Chavs on the run with my travel mates in the foreground so as not to scare them off from their petty drug dealing and slackjawing. There are some particularly brilliant pictures, if I do say so myself, but one of the better ones was of Paul breaking the fourth wall and interacting with our subjects, doing the Chav lean with his hands in his pockets right next to our intended photographic targets. Priceless.

I don't think I can give you an accurate number in terms of how many we saw, but there are certainly my favorites, such as the future Chavs of Spain on a school fieldtrip in Salamanca - they were like mini Chavs in action, dreaming of the day they could drop out and get on the dole. Then there was the trio of Chavs that wandered through the main square in Avila, only to be outdone moments later by a genuine Chavmobile driving by (picture a compact car painted electric blue with a fin, tinted windows, decals and loads of bass.) There was Count Chavula, an older, more portly Chav to whom we paid homage by kissing an imaginary gold-plated cross on an imaginary rapper-chain around our necks. The tall-can Chav, who skulked the streets carrying a plastic bag full of beer, looking sullen and pallid from hours spent in front of a TV screen smoking pot. The dealer Chav, who managed to walk with both purpose and apathy as he roamed the Segovia Aqueduct looking to make a score, with hair so greasy and stringy that it was surely leaving an unsavory film on his sparkling white tennies. And last but certainly not least, Papa Chav at the Madrid airport, toting around his young Chav sons in matching Chavwear (essentially, spotless tracksuits.) It was a fascinating.

Naturally, once the rest of the group caught wind of what Paul, Jessica and I were doing, Paul was immediately elevated to professor status and repeatedly questioned about Chavdom, almost as if he were a Chav historian (to be fair, his nephew is quite proud to be known as "The Chavmeister" and has traced the evolution of Chavdom in an effort to get closer to its roots.) And so began the second part of our Chavucation: learning about what they do and don't eat, whether they travel in packs or alone, their preferred brand of trainers, their preferred strain of pot, preferences of the female Chav (also known as a Chavette), the politics of footie, and so on.

Ahh, the Chavs. So many of them, so many memories, such good times. I've tried in vain to spot them in New York, and have yet to see one. I fear I'm suffering from withdrawal. Will I never Chav again? My heart weeps at the thought.

(Yes, I'm mildly jetlagged. What's your point?)

Anyway. So we took apart my bed and lifted off the mattress, which is this huge king-sized monstrosity that is the most comfortable thing to sleep on, and yet the biggest pain in the ass to move. And when said mattress came up off of said bedframe, it revealed something I'd long since forgotten about: pictures of me with the ex.

"No wonder I haven't gotten any action - my ex is still ion my bed," I laughed, and picked up the picture... the picture that I once looked at and thought that it exemplified love, but looked at on Monday and realized how much fear there was. For one I was pushing him away with my hand, very gently... and for the other, that hand was still wearing my wedding ring. Talk about mixed messages.

So I removed the pictures and tossed them. With intent. And it felt good.

Later I took Sandra to the airport, and the next day I moved the last of my things out of the condo. At midnight I packed up the cat and took one last look around. The walls still had the loud, vibrant colors I painted them, but the rooms felt dead. There was nothing left for me anymore, and it felt strange considering what a huge part of my life that place had been. I wrote Sexography there. I learned and grew so much. But for the first time, walking away from that home felt like I was going toward something instead of running away.

I had a momentary tear-up, turned off the lights, and went to my new home.

As I write this I'm in the business lounge at the Newark Airport, preparing to board a plane for Portugal. These next three weeks should be very interesting. The first leg of my trip is with two friends I've traveled with before, the second leg takes me to New York for the first time since I did the book tour for Naked Ambition, and the final leg to Toronto, which I left in 99 and haven't been back to since 2000. And I'm really looking forward to all three parts... even though I just got fully unpacked last night at around 11:30, only to have to pack my suitcase and split this morning! But at least I'll have a clean home to come home to.

I'll be blogging while I'm gone, but how much depends on how the internet connection in Europe is. But I hope your weekend is going well... and there will be more soon.

First prize goes to Chow Yun Smut, La Descente Infernale
14 donations, $325

Second prize is for Cherokee Love Bat
Two donations, $265

And last but not least, third prize is claimed by Sinclair Sexsmith, Sugarbutch Chronicles
One donation, $250

Our weekly winners were:
Jen, from Low Minded Lover.
Daisy, from Daisybones.
Simply Jane from Sex Changes.
Karl from Second Hand Tryptophan.

The remainder of the donations shook out like so:
Second Hand Tryptophan: two donations, $50
Man Overboard: one donation, $50
Touched By Madness: one donation, $50
What's A Delmer Look Like?: two donations, $45
So Anyway...: one donation, $25
captainsnarky: one donation, $20
Essin' Em: one donation, $15
Sizzle Says: one donation, $10

Our grand total is $1,105 raised. Awesome job, y'all. Thanks again for being a part of it. Maybe we'll do it again next year? (I think I just heard Kevin's head explode...)