This is sooooooo weird.

I go to the mailbox about a year ago and inside, is a huge manila envelope addressed to me — in my handwriting. I have no memory of sending a SASE like this to anyone.

I rip it open and there’s a hardback edition of Budd Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run. I don’t remember buying this and mailing it to myself.

Opening up the inside flap, I discover this:

And I realize what this is — THREE AND 1/2 YEARS BEFORE (Jan – March ’07) I was courting this 23 year old girl I met at the Friars Club (aka “The Jeans Girl”) and her favorite book was this one.

Making one last attempt to impress her, I bought a copy of ‘Sammy’, found the author’s address online — he was in his early 90′s at the time — maybe 93 — and wrote to him asking if he could inscribe it to Claire and mentioned this could really flip it for me (it was also a very Sammy Glick thing to do too) if he signed it for me and I included a SASE.

Claire eventually expressed that she was not interested (more than once) and then moved away. We still keep in touch and we’ll have a cup of coffee when she visits L.A.

Then, three and a half years later, the book arrives. Not only three and half years later — OVER A YEAR AFTER SCHULBERG DIED.

I guess he signed it and put it down somewhere with my SASE folded in the book and his daughter or widow or someone took it to the Westhampton P.O. and mailed it (with delivery confirmation) — no note attached or anything.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 8th, 2011 at 11:48 am and is filed under Coffee, Coffee Date, Date. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.