It was supposed to be a good idea. Dog-Eared Books had an open mic on the first Friday of each month, and Maude told me it would be good for me to go. “You need to get out,” she said. “You used to read in front of people all the time,” she said. “Once you're up there, you'll feel fine.”
I wasn't convinced. The truth was, even when I got up in front of people at open mics in college, it was hardly ever to read. Mostly I emceed; it's a lot easier to introduce other people than it is to stand in front of a lingering crowd of the collegiate and the confused and read some fresh lines. I knew people who didn't read fresh work; some of them had been doing it so long, they simply recycled stuff when they thought no one was paying attention. They read because they liked the sounds of their voices and the temporary notoriety. A few read because it got them laid. I was much more comfortable hamming it up when I was under no pressure to read my own work. It also helped that I never got up in front of people unless I drank at least four beers. When I knew I was going to read and there was no getting out of it, my routine was three beers and two shots of bourbon... a way to relax and muster courage at the same time. I hated the sound of my voice, and my writing was never the kind that spread the legs of young impressionable college girls. I wasn't one of those guys. Even when I tried to pretend I was one of those guys, I was never one of those guys. I used to watch those guys – the ones who used poetry to get laid – and wonder how they could take themselves seriously as artists. Eventually, I figured out that they never took themselves seriously. Two years out of college and away from the sticky microphone and bad coffee, they didn't write anymore. They became accountants, clerical secretaries, and store managers on the executive fast track.
“I don't know if this is a good idea,” I told Maude the evening of the book store reading. “I don't know this crowd. I don't know what they're like.”
“You need to get out,” she said.
“I wish you'd come with me.”
“I have to work...”
“I know, I know.”
“Besides, you never know. You might meet some interesting people.”
Yeah, I thought. And I might end up meeting another group of pretentious assholes,too. Guess which one I thought was more likely? “I know, I know.”
She dropped me off in front of the bookstore on her way to work. It was in a strip mall, like everything else in Phoenix. Next to the book store there was a bar called Bobby's Tap & Grill. I'd been in there before. They ran a burger and beer special – $8. In a city where the prices are generally as inflated as its sense of self, that was considered a bargain. And the place did serve a pretty decent burger.
I wasn't sure what I was going to read; I grabbed a stack of new drafts, planning to sift through them until the last minute. That was part of my routine, too. I tried to avoid reading anything that was too much like what was being read. If there was a run on anti/political poems, I'd read something funny or crass. If there was an unusually large number of bad love poems, I'd read something dry and acerbic. Not that I was ever too worried about anybody having stuff that sounded like mine. There's a lot of overlap when it comes to poetry; not because there isn't a lot of options and forms, but because no one really reads poetry anymore except for poets. And poets hardly ever go to open mics anymore because the musicians and performance artists have taken the over the venue. Not that there's anything wrong with music or performance art; but the simple art of poetry – simple in it's delivery, complex in it's meaning – has been lost to everyone except the cadre of academic poets in their cloisters of higher learning. Real poetry, like real art, is rare. And while this may make it more valuable, having to sift through everything else is exhausting. And while it's true that I learned a lot about poetry in college, I learned more about poetry when I actually had to figure out how to live in the world. That's where poetry finds meaning.
Maude knew how I felt about readings, and she knew why I stopped reading in public. But I think she was tired of me hiding out in the apartment and sick of being the only person I talked to on a regular basis. I didn't blame her; I can wear people out. Eventually. That was why I didn't argue... to much, anyway.
I went into Bobby's and found an empty stool at the bar. Bobby's was one of those places worked toward classy kitsch – the walls were covered with album covers from the 60's, 70's, and 80's. The Doors. Zeppelin. T-Rex. Janis Joplin. Aretha Franklin. Blondie. Lita Ford. Joan Jett. I was looking for The Runaways and The Dead Kennedys when the girl behind the bar asked me what I wanted. I asked her what was on tap.
“We don't serve draft beer.” She answered like she'd said it a million times.
“You don't?”
“No, sir.”
“Didn't you used to?”
“Not that I'm aware of, sir.”
“The name of the place is Bobby's TAP and Grill, right?”
She sighed, rolled her eyes, and smiled. The things people will endure for a tip. “YES, sir.”
I shook my head and ordered a bass. When she brought it back, I asked if they had Maker's Mark behind the bar.
She sighed again. “Sorry, sir.”
“What do you have?”
“Knob Creek, Jim Beam, and Jack Daniels.”
“Those don't belong in the same sentence.”
She stood there and waited for me to order a shot. I obliged her and ordered a Knob Creek. She poured it and walked back into the kitchen... probably to smoke and bitch about the asshole at the bar.
“They did used to have beer on tap,” a woman's voice said. I looked up and there was woman, maybe a few years older than me by the crow's feet around her eyes and the deep smile lines in her face that she was trying, unsuccessfully, to hide with make-up.
“I thought so,” I said.
“The new owner kept the name and took out the taps. It's cheaper that way.”
“You mean the owner isn't some guy named Bobby?”
The woman laughed and shook her head. “Nope.”
“Too bad.”
“Did you know him?”
“No. But I used to have a friend named Bobby. I like the name.”
She laughed. “Are you going to the reading next door?” She nodded at the pile of papers I wasn't looking through.
“That's the plan.”
“Have you been before?”
“To this one? No.”
“It's a nice crowd,” she said. “A good mix. Sometimes we get some people from the university. But it's a friendly crowd.”
I emptied my shot and took a sip of beer. “That's good.”
“Is that part of a manuscript?”
Fuck. “I don't know yet.”
“I'm working on a collection of poems.”
“Good for you.”
“I like to read them out loud. It gives me a sense of them.”
Uh-huh. You could read them to yourself at home for that. “Cool.”
“Don't you find that reading them out loud helps?”
As a rule I don't talk about writing. Especially with other writers. I looked up at the television in the corner.
“Looks like the Suns are going to actually win,” I said.
“Oh,” she sniffed and looked let down. “I don't really follow... sports.”
“I follow the teams I like,” I said.
“That's nice,” she said, standing up. “I'll see you over there, I guess.” She walked away before I could answer.
If the beer hadn't been $5 a bottle, I would've probably skipped the reading and stayed to watch the game. Basketball wasn't a sport I followed a lot – but it wasn't bad to watch. The best part of the game is always the last few seconds. Both teams trying like hell to finish on top. And when a game's really contested, somebody tries for that impossible half court shot right as the buzzer rings and time is temporarily suspended until the ball either hits the net or bounces off the backboard. Plus, the Suns were having another lousy year, and I always like underdogs.
Against my better judgment, I finished my beer and walked over to the book store. There were some chairs –maybe a baker's dozen – set up in the back corner near the travel and self help sections. In front of the chairs, there was a rickety wooden podium standing on top of a makeshift dais. The woman from the bar was sitting in front, along with three other women who looked like they shopped in the same overpriced shabby sheik store in Scottsdale. I took an empty seat in the back and looked through the disorganized pile of drafts in my lap. I didn't know which one I was going to read, or if I would have time to read more than one. I didn't know if there was a sign up sheet anywhere. No one appeared to be in charge. This wasn't a bad thing. But it wasn't necessarily a good thing, either. If the people there were regulars, they had a routine. That meant they may not put up with some newcomer with his non-manuscript intended lines and his interest in sports.
A few more people showed up. All of the chairs were filled, and other people were filtering around the shelves. I looked around for someone who might be worth talking to. I couldn't see anyone that might be able to hold down a conversation about anything more interesting than comparing brands of tofu.
The reading began when a high school girl got up and rushed through a poem about getting her driver's license and losing her virginity to her driving instructor. Then a bald guy stood up and read a poem about his father's fishing rod. Everyone clapped and was very polite.
Then the woman who talked to me at the bar stood up and walked grandly up the three small steps to the dais and took her place behind the podium. Her comrades in the audience sat in a state of rapture, waiting with so much anticipation that they were sitting on the edges of their folding chairs.
“THIS piece,” she declared, “is dedicated to the whole of my sisterkind.”
The women in the front sighed audibly.
“It's called Things A Man Can Never Do.”
The poem began as a laundry list of things in a rough iambic pentameter. Child Bearing. Love and Nurturing. Menstruation. I checked out mentally after that one. Biology wasn't one of those things that made me squeamish – though I, like every man who still had his balls intact, tried desperately to avoid the tampon /maxi-pad isle in the grocery store and I never engaged in the usual tactics of the gender political. I opened the door for Maude, but I was perfectly fine with her paying the bill. I neither looked down on women for not having penises nor did I think better of myself because I have one. Life seemed too short for all that bullshit.
I knew she was finished when the small crowd erupted into louder than appropriate applause. The woman from the bar smiled gracefully, bowed her head, and clasped her hands together like she was blessing them for clapping for her. The poet's version of the plenary indulgence, I guess. Then she flowed back down the steps and back into her seat to the welcoming pats and hugs of her friends.
After no one else went up to the podium after a few seconds, I stood up and approached. I still didn't know which poem to read. I set them down on the podium and tried to lean on it; but it nearly tipped forward and I had to catch it from falling into the lap of the woman from the bar and her entourage. I looked at her and she smiled – a pontifical kind of smile.
Bitch. I straightened up and introduced myself. Then I took one last look through my drafts. I read a poem about taking my daughter to the park when she was 7 years old. It was an angry poem, meant to be read angry. So I started reading it, clenching the podium and rocking back and forth. I still hated the sound of my voice; but I hated the presumption of the woman at the bar, too. I'm not some woman-hating asshole. I know damn well that there are good women in the world, and that there are probably more good women than there are good men. But there are bitches in the world, too. And all of them are some dumb bastard's ex-wife for a reason... half of which was probably hers.
When I finished the poem, the small crowd of listeners sat stunned. A stunned silence can be every bit as edifying as a thunderous applause. More even. The woman from the bar was glaring at me, and so was her entourage of sisterkind. I took my seat and sat through three or four more readers. Then the reading was over, and I caught the bus home.
Later that night, Maude asked me how the reading went. “Fine.”
“Did you read?”
“Yes.”
“Did you meet anybody.”
“Nobody as sweet as you.”
She sighed, shook her head, and went into the bedroom to change into her night clothes.