Maybe my ideal body is Mothman's

Neil Gaiman tells a story of one of his and co-author Terry Pratchett's early signings for Good Omens. Both men are now considered luminaries of the genre, borderline foundational.

No one came to the signing. They sat for hours, entirely ignored, then packed up and left.

Good Omens represents a singular collaboration. It is hard to overstate its improbability. It is a television show with a planned third season, but it was a book regarded fondly before. To imagine that it and they were considered such non-entities that no one bothered coming is staggering. Now, a copy signed by them sells for over $2000.

Gayle had asked if she could take my opening slot at this cryptid talk to get back to running her bait shop. I didn't see the harm in it, aside from having wanted to get my presentation out of the way before I heard about Bigfoot again. Have I seen this ten times in the last ten years? It is possible. Since then, despite the efforts of the Bigfoot Researchers of the Hudson Valley, they've released nothing that would convince a skeptic.

Again, she looks behind herself at the screen where her pictures are projected. "It's hard to see" or "You can't really tell what it is" constitute her commentary on her evidence. She did not bring any casts this time, which is prudent. Plaster is brittle and does not keep its integrity for repeated travel.

She invites a few people up to speak. One, a man with a top hat at a jaunty angle, is conspicuously intoxicated (his wife confirms this with no prompting). He had initially told my parents, seated beside me, that he might have seen something near his new house once. Possessed by the evangelical spirit of standing in front of an audience, he embellishes, exaggerates, and fabricates until he was a ninja bravely protecting his children--"two girls and... two boys; four kids, I guess"--from ravagers. Knowing the type from UFO support group meetings, I took a bathroom break, so I missed the middle of the transition from humble man to warrior. His wife, who saw and heard nothing he describes, smiles and dutifully records him on her phone. I wonder what he will think of the footage when he sobers up. I wonder if he sobers up.

He clings to Gayle's hands and keeps kissing them and thanking her.

Gayle then returns to talk about Dogman for another few minutes before ceding the table to me.

As if Gayle dismissed them from class, the taphouse empties until fewer than ten people remain, including the woman who runs the place and my parents. I laugh for a second, joking that those leaving should stay or I should go too, then launch into my presentation on lesser-known cryptids. I have spoken before a standing room audience of hundreds at an anime convention, a line snaking out of the room hoping to replace anyone leaving their seat. I will not give any less of myself for .33% of that today.

My presentation is light and funny, with over eighty slides of things I can play off and evidence--albeit not mine--of the events described. I know my material and have notes, but I joy in improvising and going deeper as the flow takes me. I have the mien of a teacher (and the master's degree to prove it). I love the material, seeing it partly as modern folklore, and I am not shy about that.

Those who stuck around appreciated me when I finished an hour later. Megan, who runs the taphouse, tells me I am quite the talker. This is a compliment, or I intend to take it as one to spare my ego. It is not her fault I played to my echo.

My mother tells me not to talk about the Squonk, a cryptid so pathetic and ugly it melts into tears. (It is so known that chemical squonks exist, substances that dissolve before they can be captured.)

"You probably lost people just because of that," she suggests.

I cannot lose people who were already in the parking lot.

I linger beside my books, but no one buys them. There are few here to do so. As I pack up, a woman asks me to explain my books while telling me she has no money. She is well within her rights not to become a proud owner of something I have written, but she could at least give me the space to put my books away and let me return home to sulk.

I don't know if the evacuees will regret having fled from the sound of my voice. They did not come to hear an author share cryptid gossip. They wanted to see a woman with Bigfoots nesting behind her bait shop or detail how they, too, have seen and heard Bigfoots.

I am embarrassed to bear losing an audience after over ten hours of preparation. I grumble that they would have loved me if I had gone first, simply because they would have been present to love me.

last watched: Loudermilk
reading: The Illuminatus! Trilogy