NEEDLING

There I was at the bar, watching and listening to the night’s activities, a poetry reading. I had gone there will the sole intention of listening and, pretentiously I can see now, decide whether or not they were good enough for me to read there the following week or the one after that.

My second beer of the night was dwindling down to its last drop. Soon I would have to decide to either order a third beer or go back home. I was a little bored, and to be honest, not feeling so comfortable. Knowing that I would have to drive home, I couldn’t drink, and then there was this woman I’d gone to college with over a decade ago and hadn’t seen in just as long. Did she recognize me? Did she notice that I recognized her? Did she not even notice me? She was looking about the same as she did back then, just a little bigger around the edges, same face, same overall look. She sat at the core table, where all the other “poets” sat. She was part of the recognizable people, one of the regulars, anybody that was anybody in the bar knew her and her friends. She read a poem of her own making using American football as a metaphor to talk about sex. Though metaphor is maybe too subtle of a concept here. I don’t like American football and I don’t know anything about it, but it wasn’t hard to understand. She used words like finding the “hole” in the “defense,” and “penetration.” Everybody in the audience thought it was real funny. And I guess that’s what it was meant to do in an irksome sort of way, make people laugh. Or maybe I was simply feeling a tiny bit of jealous because I was sitting at the bar, and somebody I had once known was part of the in-crowd. If that’s so, I’m in a sorry state.

The judging of the poetry was pretty bad. They gave high points to just about everybody. There were a few “poets” out there who deserved better, and didn’t get it. The first fellow who climbed up on stage deserved better. His poem though pretentious, was built and studied and went from A to B in block upon block manner. I found that the subject and presence of the poet on stage won over form of the poem and the music of the language spoken; that music was misunderstood as needing to be sung rather than being created within the words and the rhythm of the poem; that in your face shock images of subjects – sex, HIV, aids – rather than developed content won over more subtle not necessarily in your face poems with a core theme; that often a “poem” needed a moral, a last line of idea to round it up which pretended to “teach” you the listener something about life rather than showing us in succinct images for us to interpret the micro-elements of life the poem could have talked about… and so on… but I am being way too harsh (especially considering my poem The Hero which I published earlier this week on this blog… ouch…)

There was a real nice ode to B.B. King. A narrative portrait of his life which was well done. I think that poet got descent enough points to make it to the second round, though I didn’t hear the last two rounds. In the end, I was too worried about driving home.

There was this young woman with a red shirt on. Earlier in the night, I had taken residence in a booth far away in a dark corner of the room, and I noticed her at the bar. I think she was looking my way. I don’t know if she was looking at me or not. She stayed at the bar a long time, and I kept taking my eyes back to her. She had somehow grabbed my attention. Probably her red shirt. Or maybe her dark brown hair, though I’m starting to sound cheesy here. It took a long time for her to get her drinks. Lots of people and only one barmaid. Eventually, she got up with two drink and walked to the other end of the room where she sat next to another girl along the back wall.

Shortly after that, getting back from a trip to the urinal, my booth had been overtaken by three individuals. I walked around the place trying not to look uncomfortable, to look as if I assimilated, as if I was part of the crowd. Nobody seemed to notice me, to pay any attention to me, to merely remark that I was alive… a spot opened up and I went to the bar. I ordered my second beer. There, my feet firmly on the foot bar, my ass in a comfy stool, my elbows on the bar, the rows of bottles along the mirror, the barmaid working away, a beer new fresh cold beer in my hand, I felt safe.

The poetry slam was well underway now, my second beer was nearing its last drop, when the girl in the red shirt came back and stood right at my side leaning against the bar her back towards me. I didn’t move. I sat there enjoying the heat emanating from her body to mine. It was like she was a toaster oven or something. And the heat she produced had a fragrance to it which reminded me of a peach cobbler. I didn’t try to talk to her, or make a nuisance of myself in any way. I froze and looked as relaxed as I could in such a situation, as if she wasn’t even there. She stayed there a long time. So long I was afraid to turn around to grab my beer on the bar. I didn’t want to lose that proximity to her, that perfect distance where I could feel the pulse of her blood flowing through her veins without touching her, where I could smell her body breathing, without pushing into her private space… and most of all, I was afraid to accidentally touch her and have to face her, look into her eyes and apologize to her… that “sorry” which when innocent remains just that, simple… but at this point, if I had to look into her eyes and say anything, I’m sure she would have read my lust in a nano-second, and I was afraid of the rejection her whole body and facial expression which were sure to follow, and I was even more afraid of the potential invitation to talk to her, the challenge women give you in such places to prove to them that they might possibly take interest in you, the need to crow and flap our feathers without looking as if that is what we are doing. I froze, not able to grab my beer, just barely capable of enjoying myself in a really selfish way.

A few minutes after she went back to her table, I ordered a third beer, drank it slowly, listened to the other poets, forgot about the girl I knew once in college. I felt incompetent. Could I go up there on that stage and talk into that microphone? Whether or not what I wrote was worthy had become second priority, hell whether or not they were worthy of hearing my stuff wasn’t even in the ballpark of decisions anymore, it was now whether or not I could go up there without pissing myself. I had come back down to earth and the living humans who inhabit it.

I left after the last poet of the first round did her stuff. There was the whole city to drive through now, in the dark with bright lights from other cars coming at me, and my sometimes lack in perception of depth worrying me. What scares me the most are those big avenues with stop lights every block or two. I cannot always tell which lights are green and which are red, they all seem to jumble together into a big mash of bright lights dancing together.

I took the back darker roads, preferring the lights of incoming cars blinding me for a few seconds, to the arrays of lights coming in from all directions. I drove home without incident.