Somewhere out there, there’s an inflatable sex pig with my
name on it. This is probably the
strangest way I’ve ever started one of my posts, so a bit of backstory is in
order. My wife recently took a road trip
to Texas with her cousin so they could help their aunt settle in from a recent
move. Due to our responsibilities here
at home, Farrell could only stay a couple weeks and, since her cousin was
staying longer, bordered a Greyhound bus when the time came for her to return
to West Virginia. The trip should have only taken about a day and a half, but
was fraught with mishaps and delays (including the bus station in Atlanta being
hit by a tornado). Her itinerary was
rerouted multiple times and she actually ended up spending close to three days
on the bus. There’s some interesting
characters who ride the bus and with the sheer amount of time she was on the
road, she was bound to meet some.
One of these characters was a guy in his early twenties who
dressed like Silent Bob from the film Clerks
and who’d just discovered Jack Kerouac.
Besides his copy of On The Road,
this guy was also travelling with an inflatable sex pig. He stored a marker in its orifice and would
try to get as many people on the bus to sign the pig as he possibly could. My wife noticed that when he handed the pig
off to someone, they would invariably read what everyone else had written
before adding their own bit of prose.
When the guy changed buses, this pattern would undoubtedly repeat since
it seemed to be basic human nature. This
also meant there would be a lot of people reading that pig… a fact which was
not lost on her.
When Farrell’s turn to sign the pig came around, she took
the marker and wrote in bold letters, READ
APOCALYPTIC ORGAN GRINDER BY WILLIAM TODD ROSE. This was a brilliant stroke of viral
marketing. People on buses have a lot of
time on their hands. People on buses
have smart phones and e-readers to help wile away this time. And a lot
of people from all across the country ride the bus. That travelling sex pig has the potential to
expose my work to people who otherwise may have never heard of it.
And that, dear readers, is why somewhere out there, there’s
an inflatable sex pig with my name on it.
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