Tonight's event still leaves me speechless.
Beth, I am deeply grateful to you; the love with which the Johnson family supported Dean fuelled this gorgeous creature, who has made this world such an incredibly magical place for the legions of us lucky enough to have found ourselves in his orbit.
One young man, who posted on the myspace page, drove in from Philadelphia to attend; the beautiful Basil Twist cut short his Paris gig to fly home and surprise us all (as he is wont to do); one young man, Eric Leven (a talented, passionate up-and-coming writer and activist reading for us next Wednesday) turned to me and said, "I wish I had met this man who made all of this possible. I'm just really glad he lived." And, for the record, when I told Dean (who had not met Eric yet) I had booked Eric to read on Oct. 10th, Dean asked me, "Is he hot?" "Of course he is," I replied, "it's YOUR reading series!" Shrieking laughter from Dean. So, naturally, we used Eric as the Reading For Filth model stud in the ads. Dean was rehearsing with Velvet Mafia the night we did the photo shoot in the Rapture bathroom, and it didn't come out in Next until this past week. I am certain he's loving the final results.
Dean, you inspired so much!
