Sorry I'm Late – I chased a man out of the bookshop and down the road

and I'd do it for you, too

A man in a long black coat walked into the bookshop and asked to order a book called “Kill Your Darlings.” I took down his personal details – his name was William– so we could contact him when the book arrived. He wanted it soon, before he was due to travel. “No problem,” I said and he walked out the door.

Ten seconds later, I stupidly realized there were multiple books with this title, and I had no idea which one he actually wanted. I tried to quickly scramble out the door to catch him but there was a pile of newly delivered boxes of books blocking my way.

Once I cleared the boxes, there was a crowd of people by the card spinner blocking the door. The customer was getting away.

That’s how I ended up running down the street yelling, “WILLIAM!!! WILLIAM!!! WIIIIIILLLLIIIIIIAM!!!” on the one day I decide to wear a skirt, tights and large black boots. My oversized black cardigan began to slide off and my hair flew behind me as I sprinted – people on the street turned to stare at me chasing this man.

William was fast. He was over a block away before he finally heard me and turned around to see me hurtling towards him at full-speed.

“What…what was the author’s name?” I gasped.

William looked startled.

“Peter Swanson,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said.

I straightened out my cardigan and coughed. Then I headed back up the hill to bookshop.

Sally was at the register when I arrived back.

“WILLIAAAAAAM!!!!” she bellowed, leaning over the counter.

“You literally looked like you were out of a romantic comedy film chasing your long-lost love.”

Fridays are my favorite day to work at the bookshop. They’re busy and buzzy and everyone is in a good mood.

Behind the counter, I was asking Gregg something but he misheard me. “Did you just say ‘kung fu…guitar sports?’” he asked. And we loudly just kept repeating “kung fu guitar sports” over and over again when the man at the register tutted, because we were ignoring him trying to pay.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“Sorry,” Gregg said.

“But do you have any books about martial arts and string instruments – together?” the man asked in a deadpan voice.

We looked at him in awe, and then Gregg guffawed and wrote, “kung fu guitar sports” on his hand in permanent black marker, for reasons that still evade me now.

Then, a group of Americans came into the bookshop – a couple from Chicago who have lived in London for twenty years were showing a visiting couple their favourite spots.

I don’t know what it was, but they thought I was hilarious, and I say this not as a brag, but as more of a shock because British people don’t think I’m funny, simply because the Brits are so clever and witty, so I really just come in at average here.

I was also throwing them very low-hanging fruit dad-quality jokes.

“How did you end up getting to stay in London?” they asked me.

“I made a British man fall in love with me,” I said. “And it took a few goes to find one that would, let me tell you!” I added, while Sally (British) rolled her eyes next to me.

My friend Michelle was born and raised in New York City. She came to London a few years ago for a summer for while researching a book she was writing about different Chinatowns around the world. She told me that when she left London after a few months here, she sobbed.

“Why?” I asked

“Because I realized I’d been lied to my entire life. I was told that New York City was the best city in the world and that nowhere else compared,” she said. “That New Yorkers were the most interesting, funny people in the world.”

“And?” I said.

“Jess, the man who takes my ticket on the train here is funnier than my funniest friend back home,” she had said, stressed by this realization.

This pleased me. Most New Yorkers I met would not be swayed that their city wasn’t the best. I don’t necessarily think London is better than New York (I love visiting New York), but I would say it’s on par. The energy in New York, and in New Yorkers, is incredible, but it’s also exhausting.

Michelle’s comments reminded me of how all the kids at my university who were like her, born and raised in New York, always seemed slightly dissatisfied with everything. Nothing in Providence, Rhode Island or Boston was quite as good as what they were used to in New York (in their opinion). That was the first time I realized that it is a blessing to be from a mediocre place, like I am. People like me – we’re happy anywhere. Everywhere. I’m from a place with no trees, so just the mere presence of small oak tree can stun me. Everywhere I go, I think, “At least it’s better than my terrible town.”

And yet, my parents are finally selling our family home this year and moving to – of all places – a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, and I am devastated.

My brother could not care less. He’s thrilled: “I will never ever ever return to that town,” he says.

Whereas, I like going back for Christmas or Thanksgiving because I have what he lacks – a heart. An ounce of sentimentality. Nostalgia. It wasn’t a cool place to grow up, but I had a happy, safe childhood in Texas and so did he. I hate that I’m never going to be able to return home in winter to my childhood home and sleep in my childhood (and teenage) bed. I like driving by my high school boyfriend’s house once a year and cringing. I like getting bad coffee and blueberry bagels at the same spot my best friend and I frequented as teenagers who were dying to escape our town. I like eating at the Waffle House. I like wandering around a Walmart the size of Wembley Stadium.

I like the slow pace of life, the big roads, the giant sky with a horizon that stretches forever. I like how there is no traffic and there is no reason to rush, ever.

One week a year, that is.

If I had to move there as an adult, I would quickly perish. But I’m still coming to terms with the fact that after this final Christmas in my hometown, I’ll never return. I’m not even sure I’m allowed to care at this age, but I do. Can you be over the age of 35 and still cry when your parents sell your childhood home?

Anyway. Back at the bookshop, a ten-year-old girl with glasses walked up to the register and handed me the latest Diary of A Wimpy Kid and as her mom paid, she jumped up and down in excitement in anticipation of reading it.

What was the last book that made you do that? At the bookshop, I’ve seen it happen with Sally Rooney’s latest release. I also saw a woman jump up and down when she found that we had Golden Mole by Katherine Rundell in stock. And usually as soon as the Booker Prize is announced, people flood the bookshop to buy the winner and they emerge triumphant if they snag a copy before we sell out.

People also tend to do a jig when they find the right book they want to give to a friend for their birthday. That’s one of my top favourite purchase moments – when a person comes in who is so enthusiastic about a book that they’re buying multiple copies to give their friends (I’ve personally seen this with Orbital, Demon Copperhead and James). But my single most favorite customer purchase is a grandparent buying books for their grandchildren.

They come in with a hardcopy list, and they pull it out of their pocket. It’s a scrappy piece of paper with scrawled spider-y handwriting in ink, and we try to decipher the titles together. They are often from a series, so it is imperative that we grab the correct book.

“Dog Man…Lord of the …Fleas…” they’ll read out to me.

“Lottie Brooks…the…Mega…Complicated Crushes.”

“The Adventures of…Captain Underpants?”

They always buy a stack of books, and it is truly something that makes me feel better on bad days. May grandparents always spoil their grandchildren with books.

One day, I was chatting to a grandmother in the bookshop. She had seven of grandchildren. She leaned over and said, “You’re not supposed to have a favourite, but I do. Milo. They others whinge all the time, but Milo? Milo is special. He’s only eight, but he’s a thinker. An artist.”

***

I recently saw a play that moved me to tears. This is not uncommon. I cry at most performances, to the point where I try not to wear mascara or eyeliner when I see productions anymore.

The play was called (the) Woman and it was a brutally honest, smart, funny play showing in a small theatre in North London. As the lights came up, the man next me said, “Bit emotional for you, eh?”

My friend Rachel and I saw The Notebook when it came out in theatres. We were spending the summer in Chicago at internships – hers at an art museum, mine at…I don’t even remember what I doing, if I’m honest. I was working at university in Chicago and, I think I moved boxes of books or counted books. I don’t know. Lots of admin, I think.

Now that I live in England, I’ve realized how different university is compared to the US. I still find it slightly insane that the day I arrived at college, I had to sleep in a room with a total stranger 1.5 meters away from me for the entire year.

That’s apparently not a thing in England. Students get private rooms. Do you know how completely different my life would have been if I’d had my own room? Do you know many fewer cigarettes I would have smoked out the window with my European roommate if she had not existed? Thousands. Do you know how many more hours of sleep I would have had? Hundreds. My god!

But perhaps the biggest difference between university in the two countries is that American college students need fake IDs if they want to get into bars and clubs to drink, and British university students absolutely do not.

Some guy came to our freshman dorm (who??? I remember him being tall and massive and perhaps being a lacrosse player) and he made and sold fake IDs for everyone for the price of $10. I stood in front of white wall while he took my photo for mine. My friend Kim did the same.

“What’s your name?” the guy asked.

“Kim,” she said.

“Kim…what?”

“Kimberly,” she said.

A week later, when he delivered our fake IDs, hers read Kim Burly. Kim Burly.

The day I got mine, I put it on my nightstand and promptly spilled a glass of water all over it. It melted. I never got to use it.

However, a few weeks later Kim (Burly) had some visitors from her high school. It was a group of friends who were in their first year at Columbia University in New York. One of the girls ended up giving me her fake ID that she no longer needed, because she had a few (New Yorkers being cooler, etc etc).

I studied it. She was Asian, like me. That’s why we assumed this scheme would work. Let them try to tell me I’m not the Asian girl in the photo. They wouldn’t and if they did, let’s see how that goes for them. My new name was “Karen Fu.” I was now from New Jersey, 5’4 and 23-years-old.

I’m half-Asian and Karen was full Asian so it wasn’t a perfect match, but honestly, if there is a time to use ignorance in our favor, it would be with the bouncers while trying to get into a club called Fish Co.

Having an internship freshman year summer was not a choice. My father told me I wasn’t allowed to come home to Texas during summer break from Brown and that I had to find a summer job and it had to “further my career prospects.” Little did he know I was now Karen Fu. If he knew the absolute nonsense we got up to that summer in Chicago, I highly doubt he would have sent me there.

Anyway, that summer Rachel sobbed so hard during The Notebook that it sounded like she was choking. Heaving breaths. Gasps of agony. It was excruciating to be next to her.

But we were friends, not siblings, so I couldn’t shake her and say, “GET YOURSELF TOGETHER – THIS ISN’T REAL.” I tried to distance myself from her while she wept. Maybe a better friend would have comforted her but to be honest, but we were 18, not the age of the elderly couple at the end of the film. Plus, when I’m the emotional wreck, I don’t want any attention.

However. As she sobbed, I did not say, “Bit emotional, huh?” I would never. I merely leaned far away from her, like a decent human who is also really embarrassed by their best friend.

Anyway, after the play in London, the playwright, Jane Upton (brilliant, humble, articulate, mother, hero) did a Q&A with about 20 members of the audience after the performance. She mentioned that this was her most divisive work yet – she’s had more response from people than ever before but tonight, she had watched the woman in the row in front of her fall asleep during it.

Then a man in his sixties put up his hand and said, “To be honest, I too drifted in and out.”

Let’s be clear. A man saying he fell asleep during a show means absolutely ZERO about the quality of the thing he fell asleep to/in.

If you put any man over the age of 32 in a warm corner, he will fall asleep within 2 minutes. My father. Your father. Sam’s father. Sam. Hugh Grant. Billy Joel. Bill Nighy. Tom Hanks. You get the picture.

Men are SLEEPY, okay? And if they’re seated, they can turn their brains off swiftly, like flicking a light switch.

His other question for her was, “I felt discombobulated during the play because I’m a man. Did you think about men who might be in the audience when you were writing it?” To reiterate, the play was called (the) Woman.

“Did I think about the men as I wrote it? No,” the playwright said.

Anyway, if a man falls asleep during your play, it does not mean your play is boring. Sadly, I didn’t get to articulate this to Jane afterwards, though I did tell her how brilliant I personally thought her play was. When I asked for a photo with her, we overheard the (sleepy) older man’s voice say, “Shall I take the photo of you two?” and Jane and I both screamed, “NO!!!” as we backed away from him.

***

This is the busiest time of the year at the bookshop. The Christmas lights are up. The cinnamon and pine-scented candles are out. A significant amount of time is spent wrapping up books in festive wrapping paper for customers.

I know I’m not young anymore for one reason: I think Christmas should be once every two years. Or better, every four years, like the Olympics. Let me get excited about it. Let me miss it a little bit. Let me yearn for mince pies and mulled wine instead of dreading the sickly sweetness. The holidays come around too quickly every year. It’s too much. It’s far too much. The same songs. The same food. The same sweaters. The same arguments. Forced gift-buying. Forced joy at getting new socks. Forced pretending to like over-cooked meat.

I dream of a moment and that moment is this: I’m in a car driving. I hear the beginning of a song on the radio. And I think “Omigod, I haven’t heard this song in forever!” and I think “I forgot it even existed” and “WOW WOW WOW I never knew if I would hear it again, I may have never even thought about it again in my life, and here it is – how magical!” And I turn the music up and my dopamine receptors are pumping and I’m singing to the song and I’m so happy and alive and I can’t believe this song is finally playing on my radio after so many years out of my life.

The song I want this to happen with is Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.” And it will never happen to me because it is played constantly.

Aren’t the Olympics so exciting? Don’t we all love the World Cup? Imagine that feeling for Christmas. I made the mistake of saying this to a customer at the bookshop – that Christmas should be every four years – and she looked at me with such shock and horror that Sally made me take it back. And I did.

Fine, have your Christmas every year. But you better buy books and jump up and down every year when you do. And grandparents must buy several books for the grandkids. And you must cherish your very average hometown spots on your visit back home because some of us will never get to go back home.

This winter I have found a new coffee shop to go to in London. Rebecca from the bookshop met me there and said, “This is Gilmore Girls-vibes,” and I said, “I know.” There were sleeping dogs, mugs of steaming coffee, blueberry muffins, a bell on the door that jingles when it opens. The baristas are obscenely friendly. It feels, dare I say it, kind of like America. I love it so much.

Maybe I’m not quite over you yet, America.

WILLIIIAM!!!!!!!!!!

*

If you want to gift someone a book for the holidays and if that person is an introvert, a person who just moved to a new city and wants new friends or a person who straight up hates other people and wants to imagine liking them again, then you can, if you so choose, to gift them my book (UK link) as a present. It’s called Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come (USA link).

It’s about about the year I spent: talking to strangers, performing stand-up comedy, travelling solo, trying out improv, going on friend dates and doing a bunch of extrovert-y things. It’s about being an introvert and trying to extrovert for a full year. I interview brilliant people throughout the book who guide me through these nightmares.

If your friend or family member likes the book, you can send them to this newsletter for news about future books. And if they hate it, you can play them Mariah Carey’s Christmas song 16x in a row.

Order the USA version of Sorry I’m Late I Didn’t Want to Come: One Introvert’s Year of Saying Yes in paperback or e-book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Apple, Bookshop.org or on audiobook (the cover with the messy cake, frosted badly by me).

The UK book version is available in paperback and e-book: order at Amazon, Waterstones, Hive, or the audio book at Audible UK (the cover with the speech bubble).

It’s also been translated and published in the Netherlands, Korea, China, Russia, Germany, Taiwan, Poland and Hungary. I’m so grateful to all of my readers!!!!

Reviews for Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come

“I loved it! It’s such a wonderful title, and the book lives up to it’ Nigella Lawson

‘In a world of self-care and nights in, this book will inspire and remind you to do some things that scare you every so often.’ Emma Gannon

‘Hilarious, unexpected and ultimately life-affirming.’ Will Storr

‘Funny, emotional and deeply inspiring, this is perfect for anyone wanting to break out of their comfort zone’ Heat

‘Beautifully written and so funny! I related to it A LOT’ – Emma Jane Unsworth

‘Relatable, moving and fantastically funny’ – Rhik Samadder

‘Tender, courageous and extremely funny, this book will make us all braver.’ Daisy Buchanan

‘A chronicle of Pan’s hilarious and painful year of being an extrovert.’ Stylist

‘Excellent, warm, hilarious.’ Nikesh Shukla

‘You WILL laugh and laugh while reading this.’ Sun

“Very funny, very smart” Liberty Hardy

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