Book Signing Party for 'Slime and Punishment' by Gil Givens PV Mirror
go to original November 11, 2012

Vallarta’s favorite author, Gil Gevins, has been delighting readers for twenty-five years with his hilarious short stories and columns.

Widely praised for his best-selling anthology, "Puerto Vallarta on 49 Brain Cells a Day," Gevins has recently published his first novel. It is entitled Slime and Punishment, and is by far his biggest, best, funniest work yet!

Gil will be signing Slime and Punishment (a tale of middleaged lust gone horribly wrong), at a book signing party at Lucy's’s Cucu Cabaña on Thursday, November 15, from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. Lucy’s is located in Old Town Vallarta at 295 Basilio Badillo.

The party will also be celebrating the nineteenth anniversary of his lovely wife’s wonderful shop. There will be, aside from the books, some great crafts to ogle and purchase, Lucy’s famous margaritas, and live music.

If you like to read and you like to laugh, Slime and Punishment is exactly what the doctor ordered!

Read on for Gil's reflections from his first book signing event.

"Dedicated to the One I Love" by Gil Gevins

As anyone who casually peruses this paper must realize, we are about to host a book signing party for my new novel, Slime and Punishment, and I am one big bundle of nerves.

This crushing anxiety is a direct result of the trauma I experienced at my first book signing back in 2001.

We were bringing out Puerto Vallarta On 49 Brain Cells A Day at the time, and my principle fear was that the book would be rejected en masse by the buying public. As it turned out, the event was an unexpected success. But it left me traumatized, nonetheless, for reasons which will shortly become apparent.

I sat behind the desk of my wife’s shop (Lucy’s Cucu Cabaña), a pile of shiny new books stacked to my left, a bottle of Raicilla (Mexican moonshine) to my right. Raicilla, incidentally, is stronger than Drano™, tastes like unleaded gasoline and is said to contain “certain alkaloids”. I have seen many people doing odd things under the influence of
Raicilla: “swimming” in the sand, falling up flights of stairs and in one case (my own), having an hour-long conversation with an iguana.

The party began at six pm. By five-thirty I’d downed two shots of the Liquid Plumber™ in a futile attempt to calm my nerves. At ten to six, to my utter amazement, people began to stream in and line up for their signed books.

The sight of so many people made me even more nervous, so I quickly downed another two shots, searing my upper palate, corroding my tongue and burning off most of my nose hairs in the process.

The people on line seemed vaguely familiar, but they all appeared to know me quite well, and (horror of horrors) expected me to remember their names. At my best, I have a serious problem with names. After four shots of Raicilla, “my best” was a long forgotten dream.

The first man in line said, “Hi, Gil. Just dedicate it to me.” “Okay. Uh, um… not many people know this, but I’m a terrible speller. Thank God for spell-check, ha, ha. So, uh, how do you spell your name?” “B-o-b,” he said, giving me a strange look. “B-o-b,” I repeated, as I signed and dedicated with shaking hand. The next book-buyer said, “Hi, Gil. J-a-n-e.”

Deeply mortified, I continued to sign, as the people and the money kept rolling in, and the books kept rolling out. An hour passed. I lost count of how many books we’d sold, or how many shots of moonshine I’d downed.

“I want ten books,” a man who looked to my blurred vision like a hot air balloon, said. Oh my God! I thought. It’s Lou Dobbs! “Dedicate the first book to Betty with a Y, he said. “Then write, ‘The greatest secretary a boss ever had. I hope you…’”

“No, no, no!” I cut in. There were eight people in line, and I did not like the direction this transaction was taking. “I just do, like, ‘To So-and-So’ and sign my name.” “Gil, I’m getting ten books. Surely, you can take a little extra time here.”

Eying the impatient folk standing behind him, I said, “Nope. To Betty, love, Gil. That’s it.” “Then I won’t get the ten books.” “Fine,” I said, gulping some Raicilla directly from the bottle. “Next!” “No, wait,” the man said. “I’ll make the dedications shorter.” “NEXT!” I yelled, no longer responsible for my actions. “Okay,” he said, “just sign the damn books.” “All ten?” I asked sweetly. “Yes, all ten. I’ll dedicate them myself.”

A short while later a statuesque blond approached the desk and favored me with a smoldering look. “I love your writing,” she said. “That’s nice,” I said, “would you like to buy a book?” “Of course. I really admire you,” she said, handing me what appeared to be a hotel room key. I said: “Is this how you spell your name—‘H-o-l-i-d-a-y I-n-n’?” Her focused eyes still locked on mine, she said, “I’d really like to get to know you.”

Far from being focused, my eyes were rolling round in their sockets like pebbles in a tsunami. I said, “Have you met my wife? She’s standing right over there.” Finally handing over some money, she said, “My name is Vicky.” “Is that with a Y,” I asked, “or with a condom?” “It can be with anything you want,” she said.

By now Lucy had gotten wind of what was going on, and was giving me a smoldering look of her own. I signed the book, handed it to Vicky and said, “Look to your left, Vicky, and you’ll see my wife. She’s the lovely woman with the machete in one hand and the baseball bat in the other.”

Once a disappointed Vicky had departed with her book, things began to calm down. A woman whose name contained eleven letters and two apostrophes bought a book. “Are you from Iceland or someplace?” I asked her. “Chicago.”

Then an elderly gay man (who appeared to be almost as blitzed as I was) walked over. After paying for the book, he took a foot-long object out of his pocket and put it in my hand. “I’m Tad, with one D,” he cooed. “I adore your writing. Could you please sign my book with this pen?”

The ‘pen’ was made out of stuffed velvet and looked exactly like every man’s favorite appendage. “Why do you want me to sign it with this?” I asked.

“So I can tell my friends that Gil Gevins signed his book with my Johnson in his hand.”

“Listen, Tad,” I said, handing him Vicky’s key, “I’ve got a room over at the Holiday Inn. Why don’t you stop by tonight, around two?”

“I’ll be there,” he said, taking the key.

“Just one thing.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t be surprised if I’m wearing a blond wig.”

“No problema. Blond is my favorite color.”

Gil Gevins is the author of the cult classic, Puerto Vallarta on 49 Brain Cells a Day. All of Gil’s books, including his new novel, Slime and Punishment, are available at his wife’s wonderful folk-art shop, Lucy’s Cucu Cabaña, located at 295 Basilio Badillo.

BTW, don’t miss the party!