'Visigoth' party

A couple nights ago, on my way back from Redwood City, I picked up Katia at her house in Glen Park and we drive through the rain to Varnish Gallery, south of Market, where she had her book party last fall and where more and more people are doing the same. We went there for the party for Gary Amdahl and his Milkweed Editions short story collection Visigoth. I didn't know him but we share the same agent, and I always look for opportunities to shmooze with her in an unobtrusive way.

We got there about half an hour after the official start time, just as the rain started picking up. Amdahl began to read from his book just as Shannon came in the door -- she had arranged to meet me there too -- and as he continued reading the rain came down harder and harder until it was a truly stupendous cloudburst, the likes of which is almost never seen in San Francisco.

We used to get these gully washers in Texas once in a while, and when I was a child in Edwardsville it happened twice that during early recess a cloudburst opened up on the first graders, out of a cloudy sky with no warning, just CRASH as if a huge drain had opened up, and as we watched and laughed from our classroom looking out on the playground -- a big empty area paved with gravel -- the first graders all let out a scream at once, as if you had hit all the keys on the cat piano, and ran pell mell for the school door.

Amdahl read on through this Biblical rain, which drummed on the roof and skylight of the gallery -- a refurbished machine shop like so many of the small older buildings south of Market -- even as it threatened to literally drown him out. Finally he gave a pleading look up at the skylight. He finished reading before the rain halted.

I had a really fun time hanging out with Shannon, as Katia worked the lesbian side of the room, and Elise also introduced me to Amdahl, whom I asked to participate in my interview series. Later on he read some more. I bought his book and later read and really liked the first story, "The Flyweight."

Watch for an interview with Amdahl in my series of interviews with writers.

writers, Gary Amdahl,Visigoth