I'm a Stranger Here Myself (21 page)

Enclosed is your 1998 United States Internal Revenue Service Tax Form 1040-ES OCR: “Estimated Tax for Self-Employed Individuals.” You may use this form to estimate your 1998 fiscal year tax IF:

1.
You are the head of a household AND the sum of the ages of your spouse and dependents, minus the ages of qualifying pets (see Schedule 12G), is divisible by a whole number. (Use Supplementary Schedule 142C if pets are deceased but buried on your property.)

2.
Your Gross Adjusted Income does not exceed your Adjusted Gross Income (except where applicable) AND you did not pay taxable interest on dividend income prior to 1903.

3.
You are not claiming a foreign tax credit, except as a “foreign” tax credit. (Warning: Claiming a foreign tax credit for a foreign “tax” credit, except where a foreign “tax credit” is involved, may result in a fine of $125,000 and 25 years’ imprisonment.)

4.
You are one of the following: married and filing jointly; married and not filing jointly; not married and not filing jointly; jointed but not filing; other.

Instructions

Type all answers in ink with a number two lead pencil. Do not cross anything out. Do not use abbreviations or ditto marks. Do not misspell “miscellaneous.” Write your name, address, and social security number, and the name, address, and social security numbers of your spouse and dependents, in full on each page twice. Do not put a check mark in a box marked “cross” or a cross in a box marked “check mark” unless it is your express wish to do the whole thing again. Do not write “Search me” in any blank spaces. Do not make anything up.

Complete Sections 47 to 52 first, then proceed to even-numbered sections and complete in reverse order. Do NOT use this form if your total pensions and annuities disbursements were greater than your advanced earned income credits OR vice versa.

Under “Income,” list all wages, salaries, net foreign source taxable income, royalties, tips, gratuities, taxable interest, capital gains, air miles, and money found down the back of the sofa. If your earnings are derived wholly, or partially but not primarily, or wholly AND partially but not primarily, from countries other than the United States (if uncertain, see USIA Leaflet 212W, “Countries That Are Not the United States”) OR your rotated gross income from Schedule H was greater than your earned income credit on nontaxable net disbursements, you MUST include a Grantor/Transferor Waiver Voucher. Failure to do so may result in a fine of $1,500,000 and seizure of a child.

Under Section 890f, list total farm income (if none, give details). If you were born after January 1, 1897, and are NOT a widow(er), include excess casualty losses and provide carry over figures for depreciation on line 27iii. You MUST list number of turkeys slaughtered for export. Subtract, but do not deduct, net gross dividends from pro rata interest payments, multiply by the total number of steps in your home, and enter on line 356d.

On Schedule F1001, line c, list the contents of your garage. Include all electrical and nonelectrical items on Schedule 295D, but DO NOT include electrical OR nonelectrical items not listed on Supplementary Form 243d.

Under “Personal Expenditures,” itemize all cash expenditures of more than $1, and include verification. If you have had dental work and you are not claiming a refund on the federal oil spill allowance, enter your shoe sizes since birth and enclose specimen shoes (right foot only). Multiply by 1.5 or 1,319, whichever is larger, and divide line 3f by 3d. Under Section 912g, enter federal income support grants for the production of alfalfa, barley (but not sorghum, unless for home consumption), and okra WHETHER OR NOT you received any. Failure to do so may result in a fine of $3,750,000 and death by lethal injection.

If your children are dependent but not living at home, or living at home but not dependent, or dependent and living at home but hardly ever there AND you are not claiming exemption for leases of maritime vessels in excess of 12,000 tons deadweight (15,000 tons if you were born in Guam), you MUST complete and include a Maritime Vessel Exemption Form. Failure to do so may result in a fine of $111,000,000 and a nuclear attack on a small, neutral country.

On pages 924–926, Schedule D, enter the names of people you know personally who are Communists or use drugs. (Use extra pages if necessary.)

If you have interest earnings from savings accounts, securities, bearer bonds, certificates of deposit, or other fiduciary instruments but DO NOT know your hat size, complete Supplementary Schedules 112d and 112f and enclose with all relevant tables. (Do not send chairs at this time.) Include, but do not collate, ongoing losses from mining investments, commodities transactions, and organ transplants, divide by the total number of motel visits you made in 1996, and enter in any remaining spaces. If you have unreimbursed employee expenses, tough.

To compute your estimated tax, add lines 27 through 964, deduct lines 45a and 699f from Schedule 2F (if greater or less than 2.2% of average alternative minimum estimated tax for last five years), multiply by the number of RPMs your car registers when stuck on ice, and add 2. If line 997 is smaller than line 998, start again. In the space marked “Tax Due,” write a very large figure.

Make your check payable to “Internal Revenue Service of the United States of America and to the Republic for Which It Stands,” and mark for the attention of Patty. On the back of your check write your social security number, Taxpayer Identification Number, IRS Tax Code Audit Number(s), IRS Regional Office Sub-Unit Zone Number (UNLESS you are filing a T/45 Sub-Unit Zone Exclusion Notice), sexual orientation, and smoking preference, and send to:

If you have any questions about filing, or require assistance with your return, phone 1-800-BUSY SIGNAL. Thank you and have a prosperous 1999. Failure to do so may result in a fine of $125,000 and a long walk to the cooler.

Ten years ago this month, I got a phone call from an American publisher telling me that he had just bought one of my books and was going to send me on a three-week, sixteen-city publicity tour.

“We’re going to make you a media star,” he said brightly.

“But I’ve never been on TV,” I protested in mild panic.

“Oh, it’s easy. You’ll love it,” he said with the blithe assurance of someone who doesn’t have to do it himself.

“No, I’ll be terrible,” I insisted. “I have no personality.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll
give
you a personality. We’re going to fly you to New York for a course in media training.”

My heart sank. All this had a bad feeling about it. For the first time since I accidentally set fire to a neighbor’s garage in 1961, I began to think seriously about the possibility of plastic surgery and a new life in Central America.

So I flew to New York and, as it turned out, the media training was less of an ordeal than I had feared. I was put in the hands of a kindly, patient man named Bill Parkhurst, who sat with me for two days in a windowless studio somewhere in Manhattan and put me through an endless series of mock interviews.

He would say things like: “OK, now we’re going to do a three-minute interview with a guy who hasn’t looked at your book until ten seconds ago and doesn’t know whether it’s a cookbook or a book on prison reform. Also, this guy is a tad stupid and will interrupt you frequently. OK, let’s go.”

He would click his stopwatch and we would do a three-minute interview. Then we would do it again. And again. And so it went for two days. By the afternoon of the second day I was having to push my tongue back in my mouth with my fingers.

“Now you know what you’ll feel like by the second day of your tour,” Parkhurst observed cheerfully.

“What’s it like after twenty-one days?” I asked.

Parkhurst smiled. “You’ll love it.”

Amazingly he was nearly right. Book tours are actually kind of fun. You get to stay in nice hotels, you are driven everywhere in big silver cars, you are treated as if you are much more important than you actually are, you can eat steak three times a day at someone else’s expense, and you get to talk endlessly about yourself for weeks at a stretch. Is this a dream come true or what?

It was an entirely new world for me. As you will recall if you have been committing these pieces to memory, when I was growing up my father always took us to the cheapest motels imaginable—the sort of places that made the Bates Motel in
Psycho
look sophisticated and well appointed—so this was a gratifyingly novel experience. I had never before stayed in a really fancy hotel, never ordered from room service, never called on the services of a concierge or valet, never tipped a doorman. (Still haven’t!)

The great revelation to me was room service. I grew up thinking that ordering from the room service menu was the pinnacle of graciousness—something that happened in Cary Grant movies but not in the world I knew—so when a publicity person suggested I make free use of it, I jumped at the chance. In doing so I discovered something you doubtless knew already: Room service is
terrible
.

I ordered room service meals at least a dozen times in hotels all over the country, and it was always dire. The food would take hours to arrive and it was invariably cold and leathery. I was always fascinated by how much effort went into the presentation—the white tablecloth, the vase with a rose in it, the ostentatious removal of a domed silver lid from each plate—and how little went into keeping the food warm and tasty.

At the Huntington Hotel in San Francisco, I particularly remember, the waiter whipped away a silver lid to reveal a bowl of white goo.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Vanilla ice cream, I believe, sir,” he replied.

“But it’s melted,” I said.

“Yes it has,” he agreed. “Enjoy,” he added with a bow, pocketing a large tip and withdrawing.

Of course, on book tours it’s not all lounging around in swank hotel rooms, watching TV, and eating melted ice cream. You also have to give interviews—lots and lots of them, more than you can imagine, often from before dawn until after midnight—and do a positively ludicrous amount of traveling in between. Because there are so many authors out there pushing their books—as many as two hundred at busy periods, I was told—and only so many radio and TV programs to appear on, you tend to be dispatched to wherever there is an available slot. In one five-day period, I flew from San Francisco to Atlanta to Chicago to Boston and back to San Francisco. I once flew from Denver to Colorado Springs in order to do a thirty-second interview that—I swear—went approximately like this:

Interviewer: “Our guest today is Bill Bryson. So you’ve got a new book out, do you, Bill?”

Me: “That’s right.”

Interviewer: “Well, that’s wonderful. Thanks so much for coming. Our guest tomorrow is Dr. Milton Greenberg, who has written a book about bedwetting called
Tears at Bedtime
.”

The whole point, as Bill Parkhurst taught me, is to sell yourself shamelessly, and believe me, you soon learn to do it. Since that initial experience I have done six other book tours in America, four in Canada, three in Australia and New Zealand, two in South Africa, one in continental Europe, and eight in Britain. That’s not to mention all the literary festivals and other such events that become part of your life if you write for a living and would kind of like people to buy your stuff.

I suppose all this is on my mind because by the time you read this I will be in the middle of a three-week promotional tour in Britain. Now I don’t want you to think I am sucking up, but touring in Britain is a dream compared with nearly every other country. To begin with, distances are shorter than in a country like America, which helps a lot, and there is a lot less very early and very late radio and TV to get through. That helps a lot, too. Above all, members of the British reading public are unusually intelligent and discerning, not to mention enormously good-looking and generous in their purchasing habits. Why, I have even known people to throw down a Sunday newspaper and say, “I think I’ll go out and buy that book of old Bill’s this very minute. I might even buy several copies as Christmas presents.”

It’s a crazy way to make a living, but it’s one of those things you’ve got to do. I just thank God it hasn’t affected my sincerity.

(This was written for a British audience, of course, but I would just like to say here that American book buyers are also unusually intelligent and discerning, not to mention enormously good-looking and generous.)