The Dirty Rat

How many years ago was it when my friend told me: You know, poetry readings are like AA Meetings…

Turns out he found as much value in one as the other. The two rooms were companions and shook hands in his mind. I am not a member of The Program, but I attended one with him, and I get his point.

I watched on line all week as A—— advertised and encouraged people to attend the Saturday afternoon poetry event she hosted. She posted and re-posted announcements daily. The Friday before, I snuck around the office and found an empty room. I sat with a cup of hot water and waited for her to call and patch me into her radio show. Earlier, she mentioned I wouldn’t have to read anything on air, just talk about why I do what I do. Unfortunately, I believed her and didn’t bring any poems with me to that vacant office. She called me and one other poet to appear on her radio show live. As the other poet read appropriately short poems, I looked through my email for something I’d mailed myself and found it just in time.

The reading was mid-afternoon 3-5pm, and though it was scheduled simultaneously with the Black Panther’s Reunion festivities across town, I expected a sizable audience. My bad.

The reading occurred at the library at the Fruitvale Bart station. All this time I never knew about a library. But you walk up one block through the little mall of mini-stores and apartments then turn left and at the next corner and you’ll see a modestly glassed in lobby with a corkboard ratted with flyers. I entered and found… a lobby, where a mid-50’s Mexican gentleman and a woman stood with four pre-teen kids waiting for the elevator. We all piled on and the man pointed and laughed at the elevator buttons. There was only one choice, only one floor.

The library was full of lemony light and occupied the entire floor. On first scan it seemed more geared towards a children’s library. I walked up one aisle, looking for perhaps another staircase or evidence of a poetry reading. I turned around listening for voices or looking for rows of chairs and saw nothing obvious. I approached a librarian and she said, “the conference room at the end of aisle 13.” Just as I approached the door I saw the back of A——‘s wheelchair.

In the conference room were 12 people in a circle around three tables assembled into a C. I walked in just after it started. Once it started in earnest, the door was closed by a dred-locked security dude. The reading looked part community meeting, part AA meeting. The large room left plenty of unused space. Behind us, a young girl sat on the floor against the wall beneath the rooms only window, successfully ignoring us while doing her thing with a cellphone. After I sat down, two other women showed up ‘for a friend’ and after realizing that friend already read, the two surreptitiously got up and left. Not that I blamed them. I was one of four features, and we nearly outnumbered the others, who read poems in the open mic. All features read quietly while seated in the circle. The poems (and a sweet novel excerpt from a 82 year old woman’s freshly published first book) were good, solid.

Because it was quiet, I immediately re-structured my set (read: my expectations). I wouldn’t need to stand, wouldn’t need to get work too hard, wouldn’t need to fill the room with my voice. When it was my turn to read, I changed from where I was sitting so that when I came up from the page, I could look and clearly see everyone’s eyes in the circle. I read the new, long poem for my coworker Linda — imagining her standing just outside the circle, listening. Hopefully she was proud. While reading, it would have been a good challenge to read without effort or energy. To read and let the words do the work, while I sat still. I couldn’t sit still. I rubbed my knees compulsively, my hands floated while I spoke. I shifted and squirmed in my seat. It as close as I get to dancing. When A—— told me to ‘wrap it up in a minute’ I pulled out a poem Little Green Houses, which I think is one of my favorites and it did get a laugh at least. After me, the last person left on the open mic, then it was over.

I didn’t want to stay in the room. The forced pandering exchanges: Oh, I loved your poems — did you like mine? I was desperate to avoid. I stacked my chair, then hugged an older woman who pleasantly reminded me I hadn’t shaved in four days and tickled. I grabbed my pack and bee-lined for the bathroom, only to be followed by one of the dudes from the reading. For all the things that rattle my cage of discomfort, peeing in tandem is pretty high on the chart. I couldn’t wash my hands fast enough to escape, and he stood next to me at the sink, then waited and stared while I futilely ran my hands under the air-blower. The machine only produces ice cold air… A watched pot never boils and wet hands can’t dry while a stranger watches and waits. I gave up. I took the bandana out of my back pocket, then said: “Respectfully, I’m not giving you my handkerchief…” This is a Seinfeld skit I wasn’t ready for. We walked out of the restroom together and met another man from the reading now coming in. We both know him and accepted that he offered no eye contact and yeah, I have known him maybe 20 years and have NEVER seen him smile, about ANYTHING. Even the jokes in his own work. But he’s still a dynamic writer and I give him his space in love. We took the single floor elevator down without running into anyone else. We chatted. We shook hands and parted to different directions.

And really, how much difference is there between the community offered in a poetry reading versus an AA Meeting? There seems a similar fabric. There is the sharing of story, of struggle and success and realization. There is being validated in not being alone. There’s being heard. There’s being inspired and fortified by others voices and accomplishments. There’s recognition in hearing other’s perspective and stories. And there is the living with purpose under the struggle of the word until we gather again…

I stood on the train platform feeling desperately sad, anxious and lonesome. It was nearing 10pm and from where I stood, it would be a full 90 minute commute back to my door thanks to getting to my last connecting bus stop five minutes early.

I’d felt like I wasted my time and evening. In truth, I hadn’t. But standing there wanting desperately to be home in bed, I remembered something I’d said to a friend several months prior after she complained about a reading she’d given that I attended. In that case, I felt she did a great job, but she saw the evening differently and was percolating with a remorse similar to what I felt on that train platform last night. I asked her: How do you want to be paid? I don’t mean in terms of money, because in practicing poetry as an art, there isn’t much if any money to tap into. Its possible– One month I paid rent just from representing poems on stage. But if money remains an elusive goal as a poet… what do you want in exchange for your poems? Beyond the writing filling your heart… How do you want to be paid?

***

The venue was a new African themed restaurant in a neighborhood I knew well. The host contacted me through Facebook and was kind and respectful and I wanted to be good and make him feel like reaching out to me was worth it. It was a reading I looked forward to up until I walked into the room. It was a corner restaurant, huge and beautiful with large bay windows. There were three 10-foot long communal tables made of dark wood centered in the room. Huge tropical plants like security screens in two of the four major corners. The open kitchen with its short bar/register and stools to the left as you enter looked like a clean science lab. I circled around to a small table in back over-looking the entire room. It was filled with people, all eating from bowls or rectangular plates, drinking red wine from short water glasses. There were a few children scattered politely about and the clientele was diverse. Older white people, middle aged Latino kitchen staff, young black women.

All my contacts had been via email and I hadn’t met anyone. At the tiny stage where a dj played, a man who I assumed was one of the people who reached out to me (and wasn’t) stood on stage with his back to the room, scrolling through his phone. I saw a woman in a elegantly form fitting black dress floating back and forth. I finally approached her.

Have you met the other poets? She asked. She was model gorgeous. I followed her as she approached three people, none of whom were friendly beyond the warm softness of their hands. The first dude was this bald mountainous brother in a three piece gray suit. He greeted me quickly and just as quick swung back around to whatever he was drinking/ eating/ saying to the man next to him. The hostess, a truly beautiful sister sitting at a table with her relative, took my hand at our intro but her eyes never saw me. How she turned towards me without using her face, gave me her palm, and kept her eyes pointed away from me through our hellos. The last woman was one whom I recognized. She was warm and remembered me, but our chat was truncated. She sat with someone and I left them to it. I regretted coming alone and retreated back to my table with a glass of water and a book to read until the room’s light became too soft.

The room gradually emptied and after a while, the woman who refused eye contact started the program and introduced me. Even as I predicted they’d call me first, I still wasn’t immediately prepared since she skipped through the intro but quick. When she introduced me, she didn’t read the three sentence bio I was asked to provide. I found it funny that instead of reading any of it she summarized it as: Our first poet read a bunch of places and been published and stuff… Then called me to the dj stage and got off.

The stage was small, about the size of a average family style table. I pulled up a chair with me to get my work together, then stood and considered the room. To my left and against the wall, the woman in the black dress was standing behind a stationary video camera set up high on a tripod. Then a man appeared, holding another smaller camera, and stood in front of me about an arm and a half’s length away.

My view from the stage; at my feet was one of the 10-foot long tables, empty except for chairs. To my left, were the audience of 7 to 10 people seated behind two other tables. Against the farthest wall facing me were 5 more people, and to my right another 5, including a child holding a cell phone and an older girl doing the same. The man with the hand held camera danced in front of me while I read, his camera lens floating and changing direction. Behind my right shoulder, they’d set up a soft key light, about four feet in diameter.

I’d been told the event was being recorded, which I didn’t mind. What surprised me was the second camera and how close he was. I wasn’t doing work I memorized– when I did look up into the lens, he was so close I could watch the iris rotating to focus.

I began reading. When I read poems on stage, the second and most important thing I’m doing is listening to you, Mr and Mrs Audience. You give me half of whatever it is I’m doing– your energy is necessary to feed me and I realized, THAT is my money, what I’m here for. Your Presence. I want you to be curious about what you’re hearing and invest in it.

1+1=3 (This poem)+(Your Presence)= This magical, un-nameable Third Thing.

This reading is not about me. Its about the energy exchange between us and what occurs when you meet me halfway. Even my reading from the page, when I look up, I’m touching base — I’m checking in. I can hear you, your grunts of approval or disapproval, your surprise, your laughter. Your indifference.

I want a level of trust and investment between us. That for the work I’m doing this stage, that you as audience are doing something, too. What I promise is to not waste your time. I don’t do a lot of introductions because the poem should explain itself. I promise your imagination a journey and to engage your intelligence. Even if the poem is supposed to be funny or is an abstract word painting, there’s still a seed in the words that will sprout if you are present to receive it.

I didn’t feel that presence. I’m insecure and wrong, of course. I sat and was greeted by a round of people. But more than hands, more than props, what I wanted was the older woman at the table to my left to look up at me. Just: meet my eyes. And she wouldn’t do it. Maybe this is how she listens, maybe she remained with me and that was her good ear. Perhaps the same could be said about the older couple across from her, too. I caught myself thinking, it didn’t matter that the white couple at the small table in back was with me, what mattered was the Filipino rapper next to them who kept his face down over his plate.

The rooms energetic weirdness, my having to open the reading, the isolating unfriendly-ness I felt, threw me. The last short funny poem I read, got no laughs and I stumbled, thinking: Did I fuck up? Did I lose you? I felt nervous and small and anxiously wanted to stop and get off.

The night went on. The room slowly emptied. Two youngsters rapped, another young brother sang solid and original songs, despite the camera man’s videotape running out and him shutting down his handheld camera mid song then sitting there, putting the performer in a much dimmer mood light. Three girls danced to his music. Later, the dude in the suit mounted the stage. He was fine if pretentious and arrogant, leisurely extending his time unconcerned with any time limit. No one challenged him. He bossed the room with his between poem banter. When he asked the audience if there were any introverts in the house, several people clapped and I thought– no true introvert would dare answer that. He said if you don’t like this next poem you don’t like my momma, cause this is her favorite. Then told us it was written about ten years ago. All of his work rhymed, was memorized and easy for him. And the poem he started well over his time limit, he forgot midway. Blaming his long day then asked us what he should do next before his brother crossed the room handing him a phone, letting him read another.

I left a few minutes before end of show. The long three-transfer trip across the bay. I got home feeling empty and tired. I wasn’t as bad and as off as I thought or felt, I’m sure. There’s just some nights I don’t know what to do with myself. These poems are all I got.

At the last minute, she sent me a text cancelling her previously offered ride to the gallery. But I was still able to get a timely bus and train to Berkeley. Too timely, in fact. I arrived exactly on time and didn’t want to be exactly on time. These readings NEVER start on time. And after spending the last month and a half watching email upon email pile up from the other readers organizing, drafting flyers, and so on, and knowing there was an open mic, there was no part of me that expected the reading to start at exactly 5:15. I took my time walking to the gallery from the train station and passed two venues where I’d spent many years developing my voice. La Pena and its neighbor The Starry Plough, maybe I hadn’t quite burned 10,000 hours between those two spaces, but its been close. I looked upon the buildings as if they were places I once lived. And as I walked past, both were alive and noisy. Undetermined Cultural Drumming thundered out of La Pena while a rock band slashed through a guitar riff at the Plough. I stopped at the corner to check on a missed call, (which was NOT the person who cancelled on me earlier) while a man walking two black Labrador retrievers approached. As he turned the corner, one of the dogs stopped as if I’d called her. I petted her gently and said, Its an honor to meet you.

She’s very friendly, the man said and gave me her name which slipped past my ear.

The other dog looked over at us, more impatient than jealous. He couldn’t understand why they’d stopped walking.

The man politely pulled the dog away. My missed call left no message and didn’t pick up when I rang back, so I walked on. I took the long way, an extra block, and perhaps because of the Standard time change, time seemed to slow to a crawl. I went to the gallery like a kid walking to the principals office.

Ten minutes late and of course the reading started on time.

The gallery has a long hallway lined with inexpensive overstock books, extra copies of random things from the university press. I entered quietly, well behind and to the right of the podium and the reader at the open mic, a woman doing a beautiful story involving her father and the ocean. Do not turn your back on the ocean, she said.

The gallery is a nice and large room ringed with paintings. There are five rows of folding chairs and at least one rack of padded theater seats. I saw my friend Steve in the back row and he waved me towards him. When he realized I came in alone, I saw and he touched my shoulder– I’ll give you a ride home — and I buckled down to listen.

Twenty people? Very attentive and astute. Considering all the activity in the neighborhood and it being a Sunday night, it was a good crowd. A man having stepped out of the 60’s in a long white beard and matching hair– a kind of hippie dandelion in a cowboy hat and well warn jeans suit– did a couple of beautiful and deeply funny poems. He read accompanied by a dude on a violin and a young woman who read the female part of a poem/dialogue he’d written.

The people on the open mic had to deal with the host, a man of articulate cruelty who, despite his easy smile, I do not wholly trust. After one person from the open mic read, he ran to the podium and said: I want to defer all our time to the features. If you ask Can I Read Another Poem, the answer is No. Read one poem, soak in your applause and get off. Be happy with that. Our next reader…

And that next reader, a woman whom I knew through my ex-girlfriend and who came because of the facebook announcement, got up and timidly read one poem– which was superb. I felt sorry that the host, whose name I know but in my mind is called Dracula, had said anything to intimidate her whether she wanted to share more or not.

I was one of four readers. The first read three monologues from a one woman show she’d been writing. She was a Spanish attorney who shared stories of having a ethnic name in the presence of dismissive White Collegues and another on finding a department store in Denmark that bore her name.

I read next. I’d been prepping and thinking about the reading all day, even while mopping the kitchen. When I went up to the podium, Dracula followed and circled behind me and whispered something — a Why Don’t You Do This statement– and instead of given him the response waiting in my heart, I said nothing and waited for him to sit back down. The reading went well and we took a break right after since there was no break after the open mic. People were very kind. I was politely cornered by a dude who reminded me of a reading series in San Francisco from 10 years ago, by my friend Steve and the aforementioned friend of my ex-girlfriend.

The final two readers impressed Steve and myself both. The first because her story took place at Burning Man which he attends every year. The last just because she was a superb wordsmith and wrote of places and things Steve knew well.

At night’s end, I ran after Steve who’d parked out front. He tossed a jacket into the backseat and collected the nest of reporter’s notebooks and cards and pens off the passenger seat then motioned for me to sit down.

We sat quietly at first. I halted my ego’s impulse to chat or be validated, process the night, or anything else.

He tossed his steering wheel lock onto the dashboard. He said: You know if you lose the key to this thing, AAA will not come out and help you? They consider breaking this thing Copyright infringement.

Then he said: You need to listen to this. He clicked on the cd.

At first, the car filled with a hissing like a gentle tickling of a cymbal. And on this hiss, a woman’s voice floated in the car like a ghost.

I want you to try and guess how old this recording is, he said.

The hiss was no instrument, it was the noise floor from an original mono recording. Her voice was otherworldly.

I’d say, early 1900’s??

1907, he said. When this was recorded China was under rule by an Emperess. And World War One was several years away. One! He underscored. The first one!

I can barely imagine that, I said.

I tried imagining anyway what families thrived, what architecture existed, when this recording was made only to be wiped from the face of the earth in less than a generation.

I’m not sure if its the recording or her that keeps slipping out of key. He said.

Once that song ended, another began, this from a male vocalist. He sang in Italian, his voice muscular and pure. Operatic.

This was entertainment only for the entitled, Steve said. Only the very wealthy in the world had access to this music. Emperors, kings.

I listened to the man singing, and imagined a man in a tuxedo standing next to a piano. In my mind the man is all belly and voice. I said to Steve: He’s like fine wine or $500 cheese.

Exactly, he said.

We stopped in front of my building. I wanted if but briefly to talk and asked him about his own reading from the night before. He barely wanted to talk about it and ran his hand down his face as if it were a mask he wanted to remove.

It was awful. He said and frowned.

His woman-friend wanted to read a poem in dedication to a regular member of that series who’d just passed away. At that open mic, the host was very short with her and demanded she not take so much time. It didn’t matter if it was in memorandum to anyone. The host chased her off the mic and it caused an argument and prickly feelings Steve was in no mind to recreate. He grimaced at even the memory.

It was very disappointing, he said. I hate being in the middle of arguments and disagreements and things like that. And there’s certainly no reason for it at a poetry event, you know.