When I think about a night like this, when the air is stale and hot and everyone has their lights turned low to conserve what coolness lingers, I imagine people sitting quietly in the darkness and smoking.

I don't know why the smoking, only that the immediacy of that imagery is the only way that I can tell how well I've been conditioned to believe that the act of smoking represents a way of being and a state of mind. But I'm repulsed by the smell and taste of any kind of smoke and have never had the urge to try smoking any smokable thing.

Instead, a woman sits before her monitor in the dark. She's traded her public clothes for a long thin skirt and a sheer white tank top and cinched her short hair back tight, high above her ears and neck.

Her favorite late-night music vibrates through air so dense with temperature that the music is stifled before it reaches the open windows. So it is with the breeze: oppressed somewhere where it begins. The walls and furniture ooze the oils absorbed over the years and the whole apartment is redolent of old forgotten things. Everything hangs flaccid, utterly sapped.

The monitor's muted light softly illuminates the bleached white fabric and sheens the dampness emanating from the woman's skin. That glistening is the only sign of movement in a room paralyzed by the heat. She rests one hand on the mouse and stares impassively at the day's trivia; the other hand clutches a glass full of ice, which is quickly reverting to water.

Chuck P. again tonight. For his new book, the travel book.

I've seen Chuck speak now countless times. But I forgot that when you go to see Chuck, you have to go super early. This time I bought what the bookstore sold as a small gathering (in the store and no tickets required!), and I was wrong to believe that because I knew better (and they should have, too). The place was chock full of Chuck fans: 20-ish and trying so fucking hard to be cool, to be project mayhem members, to be . . . rebellious. But they're still seeking a mentor, and that's what they seem to look for in Chuck.

Chuck spoke to that (was he speaking to them?). When someone asked him what he thought about people in various cities organizing Project Mayhems or Fight Clubs, he said that Project Mayhem was based on the Portland Cacophony Society, which operated long before Fight Club, independently, ingeniously, and without a primer. He said that people can create their own groups, they don't need a template. He said he thought that Tattoo Artist would be one of the hardest jobs to have because you'd have to endure person after person asking to have familiar commercialized icons inked into their skin as symbols of rebellion.

As soon as I arrived I regretted going, strictly because of the crowd. I've seen enough Chuck. But this time I was on a mission to have the travel book signed. It's the only book he's written that is meaningful to me. I've enjoyed the stories of his that I've read, but not enough to read them all. The writing and the topics are too similar to make me want to read more. Reading more than two of them is like having the same song on repeat: It tires. But the travel book is different: It's local. It's a point of connection.

I keep going to his readings because I like his stand-up routine, his rapport with the crowd, his obvious appreciation for the people who read his books and the effort he makes to give something back. He's fantastic in person. He's kind.

So he read and answered questions—many of the same old questions. And then I waited in the atrociously long line to have my book signed. It was completely anticlimactic.