Augusten Burroughs will interview his favorite author, ELIZABETH BERG on stage at 7:PM this evening:

Wellesley Free Library, Wakelin Room (ground floor)
530 Washington Street
Wellesley, MA

It all started because I stopped by my myspace page and was horrified by the mess of it. Outdated promotional crap for WOLF, my fatface author photo, drivel, more drivel and ick. I thought, "Maybe I can just change the picture."

And so began my descent into the special hell that is Myspace Page Creation. Oh yes, I learned all about contact boxes, modules, cascading style sheets. I learned that if you visit a website which offers to help you code your page, you will end up with a retrovirus of a logo embedded within the very fabric of your site. Your myspace will become theirspace.

In the end, I ended up using the clunky, buggy  myspace editor and just removing as much of the template as I could. That gave me the room to upload seven-hundred pictures of myself. Plus one or two of Dennis and the dogs.

But here's the problem: I will never be able to answer all your questions, thank you for your comments or apologize for my many transgressions. It would take me seventeen years just to get through the messages from the past two days.

So what I'll do is, I'll answer some of your questions right here. And then I'll keep doing that instead of posting my "official Augusten dot com BLOB" in this space. Sound ok? In that case, here we go:

"You look so skinny. Are you OK?"

I'm fine. It's not cancer or a parasite. The Cliff notes version: The vanity boomerang came around and hit me in the head. While taking steroids so I could be large and muscular, I damaged my lower back. It was a severe injury that activated a pre-existing (but unknown) condition.

This was in 2000, I think. But it may have been 1999 I'd have to get up and check but I am too lazy to move right now. Anyway, it was before I was an author. And then suddenly, I was an author. And I had to go on tour and give interviews and meet people. It was amazing and it was also an unimaginable nightmare. There is a pain so severe and all-encompassing that you have no choice but to move into it, reside within it. Pain becomes more than just your home; it becomes your identify. You are pain. It has infected you and rewritten all your paragraphs.

I would prop myself up with sticks and go out on tour and smile and crack jokes, then go back to my hotel room and, old-man-like, ease onto the bed where I would remain until call time the next morning.

I saw seven top Manhattan specialists and they all told me the same thing: it's inoperable, you just have to take pain killers and live with it. I saw chiropractors, Rolfers, acupuncturists, massage therapists –nothing helped.

Then Dennis had a colonoscopy and his colonoscopy doctor was so kind and so smart and so –I don't even know. My instincts just said: GET HIM. And that's how I came to have a colon doctor as my primary care physician. This doctor -along with The Grateful Dead's former chiropractor- fixed me. By January of this year, I was out of pain for the first time in years.

I lost a lot of weight, I got back into shape. I ditched the M&M's. So that's why I don't look like my author photo. I look like me again.

"How is (Dennis, Bentley, Cow)?"

They are all great. Though Dennis is on jury duty in the city this week so we're starving and living in the dark. I don't even bother to turn the lights on when he's gone. That's kind of sick, right? Poor Bentley just waits and waits and waits for his daddy to come home. And each day: no daddy. He's like a glum, gloomy kid. So I am feeding them extra treats and taking them for extra walks. And they are pretty happy, considering half of their people are missing.

"That picture of Pighead made me (sad, sick, shocked, amazed)."

I've had that photograph for years. I've looked at it many times: a photograph of George's IV pole, George a blur in the background. Only recently, before leaving for my Australian tour, did I look at it again and realize, he's not a blur at all. He's looking right at the camera. He's looking right at me.

But that's another story.

Okay. Just as soon as I upload these pictures.

"Thank you for the birthday wish!"

You are so very welcome.

"I didn't know you were inked."

I got my first tattoo on my shoulder about thirteen years ago. I'm currently having it revised. As for my forearms, yeah. I've wanted my forearms done since 1992, but I could never bring myself to do it. Then this spring I realized, what am I waiting for? The work was done by Ben at Luckys Tattoo in Northampton, Mass.

"I love your new website."

Thank you. I love it, too. Drew The Website Guy made it happen. Everybody should have a Drew The Website Guy. Here, check him out; if you're a girl you can even date him.

"What are you reading?"

Well, at the moment nothing. I'm writing. But when I get sick of writing, I listen to music –currently Julia Fordham That's Live.

1. Witness, starring Kelli McGillis and Harrison Ford
   
2. Top Gun, starring Kelli McGillis and Tom Cruise.
   
3. The Accused, starring Kelli McGillis and Jodie Foster
   
4. Winter People, starring Kelli McGillis and Kurt Russell

Debra Winger has created some of the most enduring, compelling and breathtaking performances ever captured on film. Her street-smart, aw-shucks demeanor fools you into believing that she adlibs every role, appearing only as herself. One need only watch one interview with Winger to understand that she has probably always been the smartest person in the room. And that it's likely every indignant little pout/smirk is calibrated like Swiss watch. I spent the eighties wiping my eyes on my sleeve in thank-God-it's-dark-in-here movie theatres, watching Winger movies. Sometimes, I would watch the same movie twice in a row. Because it was simply impossible to leave her.

Instead, she left us. At the height of her fame, Winger seemed to remove herself from Hollywood. As I tend not to read about or pay attention to the private lives of actors, I never knew what happened. She was just gone. And I had to adjust to living in a world that no longer had a moon.

Then suddenly there was this:

Undiscovered (Hardcover) by Debra Winger(Author)

A memoir, written by Debra Winger. ALL HAIL THE CORN GOD. I ordered it and it arrived in less time than it takes to sprout a cold sore. I read the first page and realized, Oh. She's a writer. An actual writer. Okay, well. And I put it aside, to save. I am like a rat this way. I save the good things for later, good things being so rare you need to spread them out. And for all I know, Winger is a sadist and has no plans to fork over more of herself until 2018.

I googled her. And found a recent appearance on a morning talk show. While it was clearly beneath her to appear on such a grimly cheerful stage, Winger was funny, self-deprecating and smart, smart, smart. She was heartbreaking. Her unexpected, even shocking honesty stunned the hosts into blithering. Debra Fucking Winger was back.

And this was good to see: she is beautiful. Unlike some actress above twenty-three who carve their faces with lusty abandon, Winger seems only to have been gifted with the very kindest genes. As a result, she has something quite rare today in Hollywood: a mature face that is fully, gloriously expressive. By stepping out of the spotlight, Winger is now one of the only actresses her age who could bear scrutiny beneath it.

During the interview I watched, there was the predictable, "But they say you're a real bitch," line of questioning. And how can anybody even respond to that? "I am a bit of a cunt, it's true. But nobody is going to tell me they can't find mango chutney ice cream in all of Palm Springs, California."

Frankly, industry women should know better than to even think of asking such a question. If Winger is difficult, I have to believe, it's not because she's unhappy with the brand of mayonnaise on the Kraft service table. Most likely, if it's even true, the reason has more to do with the work. Debra Winger has never turned in a performance that was less than fully excellent. Even more remarkable, no Debra Winger performance now appears dated. And when Debra Winger was at her peek, women still wore mauve and shoulder pads. And men still weren't used to being elbowed out the way by them at the coffee machine at work.

So this "bitch" reputation must be considered in the context of the era. As well, certain allowances must be made. This is Debra Winger. She was probably the first girl to ever make 75% of the guys my age burst into tears in a public setting. Just whisper the name, "Debra Winger," into the ear of any forty-two year old woman and she will smile as though she has just remembered the taste of blueberry pie. Somebody should do their thesis on this at Hampshire College or Bennington.

The Sheltering Sky, Terms of Endearment, An Officer and a Gentleman, Cannery Row, Shadowlands.

I miss her. And people of my generation miss her. And young people deserve her. We want to see Debra Winger on the big screen. In rich, complex roles. In T-bone steak roles. We want Debra Winger up where she belongs.