My big poetry reading was yesterday. I was so nervous I thought I was going to die or poop my pants, or turn around in a circle chasing my tail to the end of the universe and back. I contemplated backing out. I contemplated what the train ride and board would cost for me to slip away to Kalamazoo when no one was looking. But I saw myself in the mirror and the face that looked back at me said, “Oh, no you don’t.” So I didn’t.
I’m not going to lie. Smokey-smoke was involved. I took a puff or two, or five, before we left. They were little puffs, I told myself, little puffs to preserve my throat, so I needed a few more of them than I would usually have. My sister put on some Jazz to calm me down and, post-smoke, I walked around the house in my long, full skirt, swinging my hips, happy and relaxed, mouthing my poem to myself over the music.
My sister—ah my lovely, sparkly sister—did my makeup. We went for a 1920’s look, which is my look, but one I have no idea how to achieve on my own. I don’t know what magic happened there, but highlighter was flying all over the place and the time she spent on my eyes was akin to the hours Degas spent brush-stroking puffy little ballerinas. I came out with a slimmed face, big, big dark, alluring eyes, and Cupie lips. I ended up with a feather in my platinum hair.
My sister pinned a little button on me. She bought it for me in advance. It is red and white and says, “It’s my first time.” It was my first time, well, first time in a long time (almost twenty years… don’t tell anyone) and, Jesus, the nerves started to come back.
My brother-in-law took the twisty-turny way to the bookstore and the smokey-smoke kicked in again. I giggled all the way there and laughed uproariously at the view, at the drop, at the too-close-for-comfort turns. I thanked my brother-in-law in all seriousness for his coming, his driving us, his being such a good sport about having to go back in the house twenty-six thousand times when we were getting ready to leave in order to retrieve all the this and that my sister and I had forgotten.
I was the first to show up, the first to sign up—lucky number three in big black marker on an unsuspecting piece of blue flyer paper. We were there almost an hour early. Nervousness makes for punctuality overachievement. After I signed my name, my sister and I walked down to the dollar store to buy our winning lottery tickets. The cashier said, “May the odds be in your favor,” and surely the movie reference with a smile means we are going to win. (I could be sitting on the winning ticket right now as I write this, incidentally.) An old man interrupted the transaction to buy an orange juice out of turn, but when you’re in the process of winning the lottery, little things like that just don’t get to you the same way they used to.
My sister said this dude we talked to outside the store, who also claimed the winning lottery ticket, was flirting with me. I didn’t see it. It’s entirely possible I didn’t see it because I was being stubbornly vain and not wearing my glasses so I would be extra pretty-ful. We’ll call it that and choose to believe my sister.
We made it back to the bookstore, the reading began, and us in the second row.
A comedian started it off. His spirit was incredible but he moved his shoulders up and down too much. Good spirit, bad body twitch. Gods bless him.
Up next a mentally challenged lady, probably the most badassed among us. She read a love poem to Roger and used a funny voice at some point. She lit up my eyes. She made presents for the featured readers. She made cookies for the rest of us. She had to leave early. She said she liked my feather, or my tattoo. Either way, when I got up to read after her, she made me feel like the millions of bucks I’m about to win.
Then it was me. Me and my “It’s my first time” button. I got extra applause for it being my first time and also because my sister and brother-in-law were sitting there, a well-dressed and enthusiastic entourage. “I’m going to do the Naked Hemingway Poem,” I said and launched in. “And the way he looks at you is obscene,” I said, leaning on the “obscene”, raising my eyebrows, and I knew I had it.
I wish I could write more about my turn, but it’s hard to describe something that went by in two seconds. I can tell you I made the slightest little bobble, but picked it up without panic. Not a stutter, just a sentence that I had to rearrange a little to get back on track. No one noticed, and not that “No one noticed” that means we’re too kind to tell you we all noticed, but that it fit in seamlessly.
I can tell you I kept my eyes open and moved my head around as if connecting with this groupie or that. I can tell you I held on to the mic the whole time which surprised me and, next time, I told myself, I won’t do that.
Then it was over and my sister was woo-ing for me. My sister wooed and got others to woo also. Big, big smile. I flounced, or at least I felt I flounced, off stage back to my seat and my teeth were so big in my smile that they might have been seen as a sign of aggression by primates.
The MC thanked me and told me to come back. He doesn’t say that to all the first-time readers of course (yes he does). He was only talking to me.
There were a lot of other readers then. The featured readers were wonderful. The magicians, the comedians, the musicians, “Baby won’t you call me Daddy one more time…” all wonderful. There was even a balloon animal guy. I got to be his assistant. He made a lovely little pink doggie while I held the banana string of a purple balloon he would use to make the next lovely little doggie… then attach the two… humping. Because it is near Valentine’s Day, you see. Romance was in the air.
You just don’t top that.
The hardcore stoners were well-represented. One’s poetry came from his cell phone and was totally decent. One was a bearded hipster, had no poem to read, but wanted to tell us all how rockin’ we were anyway—how much our awesomeness touched him. My secret was I was among them, only if even a little. By that time, just enough to keep my hands from shaking as I held the mic and did my little dance.
I ended up with the humping doggie balloon as a souvenir. I ended up with a fabulous memory. I ended up with a triumph to stick in my dusty cap. I ended up with the beginnings of finding my “tribe”, as my sister put it.
I ended up being, for the first time in a long time, myself.
I smoked two black clove cigarettes when we got home. I earned them. That night, I was the black cigarettes and body magic woman that I have always dreamed of being—that I thought I lost.
I smoked those two black cigarettes and swished my skirts in the moonlight, decompressing with my sister until two thirsty coyotes, a mother and a baby, started to make their way down the hill.
I slept well. I slept very well.
-M.
M. N. Ashley 