Some Reading

If I said I was shy you might not believe me, but if you're reading me you must know me well enough to guess I'm insecure. This is why readings of any kind are hell for me. For this reason I think the best thing to read at a reading is something super meta-, that pokes fun at what you're doing or yourself or someone in the room--preferably all three. The audience usually likes this, because it makes them feel as if they are reading themselves.

That's another weird thing about readings: if it's a round-robin with a lot of readers, it feels as if all of them are just waiting to read their work. They aren't listening. We might as well be a roomful of cokeheads pretending to listen but really just waiting for our turns to speak. Whatev. I read on Wednesday and even though I was full of the whooping cough I got a few laughs and that's all a writer who wants to inspire bugginess can ask for.

Things you should know if you read this and don't know Vince: he's absurd, speaks in absurd poems, drinks a lot, has a beard, has bad taste in rap, has written an exceptionalist manifesto which I do not understand, and is my friend.

This is for Vince, and it's called Some Reading.

It’s ten-thirty and I’m on the phone with Vince trying to convince him I shouldn’t read poetry at Teddy’s. “Look, Vince, I’m not a poet anymore.” “Fuck nonfiction,” says Vince. “Exceptionalism. Whiskey. Hamburger with pickles. Talk radio. Kidney disease. America.” I say, “I’ll say! But look, Vince—I still don’t write poetry anymore. I don’t get line breaks. I write about my life, prosaically. In prose, I mean. You know.” “Fuck it,” says Vince. “Borrow my bicycle.” So two weeks later as Brock and I are driving to Baton Rouge and I’ve got my memoir in my backpack I’m thinking, that fucking Vince is really gonna make me read poems. I mean, as soon as I get up on that stage and start reading something about my grandma and how she breastfed me, he’ll really lose his shit. I know the guy—he will not be amused. I’m scared, and that’s saying something, if you can imagine how it was for me growing up with someone like my grandmother! I ask Brock, “What should I write for the reading? Quick! We’ve got eight hours!” And he says, “Thinking about Poetry is so unsatisfying,” and he switches out the Jerky Boys CD for The Blueprint III, which incidentally, Vince thinks he’s too cool for. No shit. Jay-Z does not compare to Lil’ Geezy or whoever the hell. I mean, we’re friends with this guy. We like him, and we have to listen to this kind of stuff. But we go visit him anyway because he’s given us a place to stay, plus he’s lovable (for an exceptionalist) and we’re laughing now and there is whiskey and that does improve my situation and also Brock just winked my way and that’s poetry enough for me, but still I would’ve rather read to you about my grandmother, her dry breasts, or maybe about the time I punched my pregnant sister because she was asking for it, just ask Brock, and instead I just read a poem I’m hardly even capable of writing because of that goddamned bearded exceptionalist Vince.