The Poet : Chapter 22

 

TWENTY-TWO

 

The woman on the stage wasn’t reading poems. She was standing there making hand gestures not unlike a flight attendant, as a voice coming out of a laptop read the poems. It might not have even been her voice. The previous poet had read his poems via Skype. And the one before him? She passed out notecards and had the audience scream back selected words at her. Hell, the very first poet of the night had turned his cell phone toward the audience so that he could record our responses to his poetry. Not a single reader had just stood on stage shakily clutching a handful of paper, simply reading words. Just another night in Brooklyn on poetry’s skid row.

            “I’d rather a cerebral hemorrhage than this,” I said.

            “Shhh,” another ardent poetry lover hissed at me.

I was at a reading at this place called Big Nick’s Poetry Barn. The space provided for the reading was a shitty, wood paneled. box-like backroom, hardly big anything, to a sports bar where you could hear the patrons playing bar trivia over the poets. I wasn’t even reading at this reading. I was attending because Larissa and everyone I knew had a slot on stage. Everyone but me. All the poets sat behind the stage like great sages while they took turns reading. At least I’d managed to get a decent amount of the bar-room trivia questions right from what I could tell. I always was a sucker for sitcom history.

“You know I thought about doing a virtual poetry reading once,” Henry Winkler said, as laptop lady finished up and the crowd went wild with poet applause and finger snaps.

“You should do one where poets duke it out on a deserted island,” I said. “Or maybe have poets tightrope walk over a shark infested tank while reciting their verse.”

“Like a poet’s circus?”

“Or a mass suicide. Honestly whatever gets some of these people off of this planet you should do. I’ll even hock my radio and chip in the cost of securing a bottle of cyanide. I’ve also been studying up on how to draw and quarter people.”

“You should promote, Ron,” Winkler said. “You might not remember to bring your poems with you, but you have good ideas.”

            “Screw this; I’m going to the bar.”

            “But none of your friends have even read yet.”

            “Friends? How dare you sir.”

“Shhhh,” someone said.

            I got up to make my escape and caught Larissa’s eye. I gave her the international sign for I need a drink and she just shook her head. But it was then that the M.C. broke in. She was this curly-headed, hot red, lipstick Tasmanian devil of a woman. She started reading a poem all about comparing her ex-boyfriend to half-caf coffee. She read the poem from a huge piece of black poster board with the words written in gold marker, like she was going to a science fair instead of some shitty reading. At least she was using paper. Then she introduced the next poet.

“Yo, yo, yo…what up?” Todd-de-de-de said prowling the stage in all his lanky doofus genius, holing out his cellphone. “My name is Todd. But I usually go by my rap name, which is Todd with three D’s. Todd-de-de-de. I’m a’goin’ get this shiznit started on point, that is, Todd-de-de-de would like to read you some of my poems…ah, just to show ya’ll what I’m all ‘bout. Poker with The Joker…”

“If only I could cyanide that poor bastard first,” I said.

“What do you think about a Caribbean-themed reading,” Winkler whispered, as Todd-de-de-de continued his jive.

“To be honest it gives me the shits,” I said. Then I left.

I was somewhere into my second boiler maker. Trivia was over, so I was listening to the bartenders talk about their big art projects and having the usual barroom debate about Goddard versus Jacques Rivet films. The orange-faced billionaire was on the television screaming in closed caption about immigrants or the so-called liberal media or something that would leave the bitter distaste of impending authoritarianism in all of our mouths come the next morning. I got up to play the digital juke. I put on that good old New Jack Swing much to the chagrin of my slender, bearded, bespectacled, ofay, organically fed, vegan, tattooed bar mates. Fuck them, I thought. Black Lives only mattered to their type because they had unread James Baldwin books on their shelves. Tonight, I was playing Bobby fucking Brown.

“Drinking alone in a bar,” Carolina said. By the grace of Allah, she sat right next to me. All those old feelings began their creep into my guts. “How predictable, Rand.”

            “I’m making America great again,” I said. I had some of the beer-whiskey mixture.

            “By playing crappy old R&B music?”

            “Honkey philistine,” I said. “Some people volunteer, others give the world the King of Stage.” Carolina rolled her eyes. I had no clue that she was going to be there that evening. I could feel my face redden like an embarrassed school boy. “And by the way you shouldn’t wear pigtails in a bar or, you know, at all at your age.”

            “What?” She shook her head back and forth, her thick, knotted hair knocking her big glasses askew. “You don’t like?”

            How in the hell could I answer a question like that when I liked everything about her form her pigtails to her glasses to the stupid Superman hoodie she was wearing, to the way she snorted when she really laughed, or had once called John-Paul Sartre, Sart-tre. I’d once even liked her morning breath. How could I get any of her back? I’d shuffalo all the way to hell. “I don’t make it a point to like anything, but you’re all right.”

            “Gee, thanks,” Carolina said.

The bartender came over. “Get her a rye neat before she gets the DTs or her literary snob boyfriend walks in.” I had some more boilermaker. “And what are you doing here?”

            “I came to hear Larissa read,” Carolina said. The bartender put the rye before her, and she had a greedy sip on the booze. “We’re Facebook friends now. She’s very bendable. I can see why you like her.”

            “I’m an admirer of intellect as well as poise,” I said. “And don’t go getting any real friend ideas. I’m not even convinced the girl likes me yet without having to deal with your influence over her.”

            “Love problems?”

            I killed most of my drink. Fucking boilermakers. I’d been off beer for months but Larissa was concerned about all the vodka. Switching off and on to beer had been our détente. What she didn’t know about the whisky shot I’d dumped in it was between me and my liver. I wondered how many boilermakers it would take to get me back in that room with all the poets, or how many ryes it would take to get Carolina to sneak off with me. I was currently on almost two and saw no signs of a willingness to budge from my seat at the bar, and Carolina probably wouldn’t sneak off with me if I were the last, greasy, aging, culturally confused white man on the planet. And I might’ve been. “I’m not of liberty to share my romantic life with you. But I will concede to your old argument that yours truly isn’t very handy where children are concerned.”

            “I saw the wiffleball video online,” Carolina said. “And it led me right to the grainy vomiting during a children’s program.” She downed the rye and I signaled for another round. “You seem to excel at certain kind of buffoonery…and what city administrator allowed you anywhere near kids?”

            “When you’re union you can shoot a man on Fifth Avenue,” I said. “What? Are you working as a double agent for my HR department as well as coming here to put ideas in my girlfriend’s head?”

“I’m here, Rand…to rebuild bridges. To be the bigger person and make amends. I figure with this reading coming up in a couple of months we’ll be seeing more of each other. Plus, I really like Larissa. She’s funny in her emails and she posts the coolest shit and…and no…we’re not having a threesome.”

“You were never much for assplay anyway and she’s a little dildo happy.”  

“TMI, Rand…TMI.”

“I have no clue who this TIM is, or why you’re spelling his fucking name, but if Killian’s worried and anxious continence is any indication, we might be holding this reading on the street, and selling books out of the back of his car. Or not having the reading at all. So, you can feel free to drop the goodwill ambassador act, and go back to ignoring my Gmails while you and Larissa play footsie and your boyfriend’s ego bankrupts my friend.”

            “I thought he was just changing venues.”

I shook my head. “Killian’s in over his head. Your boyfriend’s little hissy fit about the basement at Needful Things has caused this little save-the-store reading to balloon. By changing venues, we’re talking like a full day festival now at Modern Era. Beer and wine and food and poets ad nauseam. There’s rent to pay. So, expenses have been accrued. Compromises have been made and such. Latin American regimes have fallen and Putin’s got his hand in there somewhere.” I had some of my boilermaker and began making plans for numero tres. “The overhead alone pretty much means Killian won’t even break even. Think of this reading as a farewell party in disguise.”

“That sucks. But did you all honestly think a reading would save the store?”

“I… look, why don’t we just have God-Boy cut Killian a check for a year’s rent.”

Carolina chuckled. “He doesn’t like the place that much.” She sipped her rye then frowned. “In fact, he might be more enamored with the people who work there rather than the store itself.”

“I don’t think Jackson Urban flows that way,” I said. “And he can’t play second base for shit.”

            “Let’s just say God and his agent are really enjoying your friend’s little YA book,” she said. “Did you know that it’s about a transgendered group of high school kids who put on The Iceman Cometh?”

            “Wasn’t that a Netflix show?”

Carolina popped down half her booze. “Gigi is like a marketing department’s wet dream. She’s like covered all the bases: LGBT characters, minority characters, female centric, urban, you name it. Honestly, I was surprised she didn’t have an orphan wizard or an elf in the manuscript too.”

            “Well, there’s always room for revisions,” I said. I went for my drink but thought better of it. “And, by the way, it’s LGBTQIA…and you sound a touch jealous.”

            “I’m not,” she said. “It’s just that God gets…preoccupied with people.”

            “I’ll bet. Especially when they come wrapped in twenty-three-year-old packaging, and use memes to express deep emotions.”

            “Don’t be an asshole.” Carolina said. Like I had a choice? “I just meant that now this YA stuff is all he talks about when he’s not talking about his new project.”

            “Which one?” I asked. “World domination or modeling for an L.L. Bean Catalog?”

            “His new war novel or whatever it is.” Carolina kicked back the rest of her rye. She was on the fast track toward beating me to La La Land. She took a deep breath. “I sound like I’m complaining. But I’m not complaining. It’s just that God’s agent has my book too. And we were already working on his issues with it, and I was hopeful it was getting ready to send to publishers. And then this business with Gigi started.”

            “Kicked to the curb by a younger model,” I said. “I’ve seen it happen to many a good woman.”

            “I’m like twenty-seven.”

“Pigtails won’t hide the truth, kid,” I said. “There’s a gray hair lurking somewhere in those knotted tresses.”

“You still owe me a signed release form,” she said.

“The stuff I owe people could fill a fat man’s shorts,” I said. “Join the queue.”

Carolina’s phone buzzed. She picked it up but ignored whoever it was on the other end. In my head it was Godfrey Whitt calling to find out when she’d be home for dinner. He’d just discovered those Kimchi tacos that were all the rage, and now he was an expert. “Maybe I should be happy I’m not working on the book,” she said, shaking her cell phone at me. “It’s nothing but misery. Line edits this. Line edits that. Why is this character doing A while that character is doing B? What’s the motivation for this? I mean what the fuck? It totally takes any joy out of the act of writing.”

“You know what else takes the joy out of writing?” I said. “Talking about it over drinks in a bar where I can’t even get on stage to read my poems yet some asshole named Todd-de-de-de can prowl the stage like a hungry jaguar. Fuck writing. What pompous little shits we are for talking about it in a world that’s going to hell at our doing. It’s bad enough that I ruminate over your novel often in my shithole during another morning bout of hangovers, dog barking, 1980s fuck-and-fight-a-thon and writer’s block.”

“I see you’re still a world-class listener.” Carolina looked around. “Where is Larissa anyway?”

“Where does a light go when it goes out?”

“You’re slipping, Rand Wyndham,” she said. “You used to be wittier than that.”

I looked up at the television where the orange-faced billionaire was still waving his little baby hands around and shouting. “Dark times call for dark humor. She’s in the other room with her loquacious-on-paper ilk.”

“I like her though…Larissa”

“You date her then,” I said. “You sit there as the cloud of disappointment, jealousy and feelings of self-worthlessness descend over your third drink.”

“I’d date her. But I’m me and you’re you.”

“What does that even mean?”

“If you don’t know by now, old man,” she said

“And if you keep sitting here, I might try and fuck the whole thing up by trying to kiss you,” I said.

Carolina looked toward the back room where, once again, the angry, plodding voices of poets were bleating anew. “If you were a smart man who valued the digits on your masturbating hand you wouldn’t.”

“Bah,” I said. “I’m at a poetry reading. Smart went out the window two boilermakers ago.”

We got quiet. I looked out the window onto Fifth Avenue. The street was a neon smear in the glimmer of my booze-soaked eyes. Nail salons. Closed banks. Trendy gastro pubs and over-priced taverns. Packs of teens went by on skateboards, or walking four deep across the concrete; you would’ve thought it was the end of summer instead of the birth of the New Year. Across the street at this Mexican joint a loud group of gilded moms out on the prowl were taking group selfies and readjusting their yoga mats. Arab women were walking home alone in this detestable political climate. I looked at Carolina. She side-eyed me then frowned. But I felt like Jay Gatsby in that moment. Who said you couldn’t repeat the past? Well, I had. So, fuck them. And fuck me. Had she had any clue how much I loved her then?

The bartender brought us a new round. Carolina’s phone buzzed and blinked and tinged anew, but again she made no move for it. God-boy must really want those Kimchi tacos if he couldn’t take the hint that she was off with better company. Carolina sighed and looked me in the eye. “Rand, are you happy?”

“I’m a thesaurus worth of joy.”

“I’m serious,” she said. “I’ve known you for a long time through jobs and no jobs, the bar and no bar…and now writing and Larissa. You have your job back and you seem to be able to get out the door in the morning and put yourself back to bed at night without serious injury. I know you always had this stumbling, smirking sense about you, but it feels more and more like a mask. Like underneath it all there just seems to be this sighing…sadness.”

            I was quiet a moment. It wasn’t often in this world that someone came at you with the truth, that someone tried to unlock what was held deep inside of you and try to bring it to light. What to do with that? What to say? “Look…Carolina…that has to be the corniest, stupidest shit that any women, any human being, has ever said to me. But…”

“Well…fuck you then,” she said. “I was just being honest, you douche.”

            “You want honesty? You’re the love of my life.”

            “Oh God.” Then Carolina laughed. She had some of her drink. “You can’t be serious.”

            “I am,” I said. I was serious about very little. But this I knew was true.

            “I-I don’t even know what to say. I’m sorry? I don’t love you? Maybe get over yourself?”

            “You ruined us back then,” I said.

            “How?”

            “By cheating on me.”

            “I never cheated on you,” Carolina said. “That idea was always in your drunken, paranoid, delusional head, especially when you were drunken, paranoid and delusional.”

            “I saw you…I saw you with that one guy. Remember I confronted you.”

            “That was my acting partner from that stupid acting class that I took because I thought I wanted to be a screenwriter. We were running lines…which you interrupted.”

            “He told you he loved you.”

            “It was part of the scene! And what were you doing down on my campus anyway, Rand? Creeping around like some stalker?”

            “I…I…”

            “Right.” Carolina turned slightly away from me.

            “Look, I get you,” I said. “And I don’t get many people. We connect, you know. And like you just said you’ve known me for a long time.”

            “Yeah, well, I guess I’ve known my dentist for a long time too.”

            “I gotta account for something to you.”

“Maybe you did…once…a little bit.” Carolina got off her stool and went for her bag. I went for her arm, but she shoved me. I almost fell off my stool. She’d been working out. “Coming here was a dumb idea. I don’t know what made me think I could talk to you about being friends or anything else, because it always ends up coming back to the past. I want you and Larissa to have a good New Year.” She looked toward the door where the reading was. “I’ll just text her and say I couldn’t make it.”

“If I said I was sorry, would it help?” I asked.

            Carolina stopped her disappearing act. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word come out of your mouth.”

            “I’m a product of the catholic school system. I always thought my guilt and complicity were just assumed, so I never felt the need to.”

“Stop making excuses.” Carolina dropped her bag and glared at me. “Are you sorry or what?”

I made to speak. But then the door to the poetry reading opened, and out came the angry cadence of none other than Jackson Urban.

…said the orange-hued fox

to the chicken pen

i can offer you jobs, man

i can offer you salvation

if it’s freedom that you want

what have you got to lose?

I can offer you the…

            “Thought I’d find you two here,” Larissa said.

She came over and gave Carolina a hug. Larissa looked at me as I looked at them. Carolina closed her eyes and set her bag back down. We all sat in seats around the bar as poetry emanated through the walls, my R&B songs ended and another maudlin indie rock jam came on the jukebox. No one said anything. No one had to. The orange-hued billionaire was still going strong on the television. The media had given him millions and millions of dollars in free advertising. People loved a spectacle even if it meant the collapse of society. Reality TV and demagoguery were the new reality for all.

“So,” I finally said. “What are we really doing here tonight?”