The reading goes well. I don't remember what I do the week before. I am on the phone with my mother. On the phone with friends in other countries discussing the summer. I am not "in the now" as they say, but the reading goes well.
The day of I wake up at 6:15 because I want to have time to shower and do some kind of power pilates before my intern is to arrive at 9:30 sharp. By 10:00 I am screaming at her on the phone for fifteen minutes while she is telling me that she is brushing her teeth. At 10:15 I walk outside, I know it's cold, I think it may be raining and I am not sure if I'm really dressed and hand a cab driver twenty bucks. My friend Gregg (who complains that I never write about him) has a friend, Alex, staying with him from Portland and he walks over right before I can find reason to yell at Jayme. I hand Jayme a copy of "Everything That Rises Must Converge" and tell her to type up the parts I've highlited, I also hand her a stack of pages that I've hand written you know just in case I change my mind about what I want to read within the course of the next eight hours. Alex and I walk to the diner where we eat sandwiches &owners &patrons alike help me plot out how the evening will unfold. I am nervous &I am not sure. I am nervous and I am not sure.
Back at the apartment I stare at the clock and then lie on the couch while Alex prints up brochures and Jayme puts everything I am going to read together. I read it all to her once aloud to make sure the time will match up. She always forgives me because despite when I am screaming, she knows I love her the best, that I will hand cab drivers twenty dollar bills in my underwear &get her breakfast. She's read all of this stuff already but for a moment I feel devastated I look her in the face and say "but now it won't be a surprise" as if I was going to reveal something so different, so unlike myself.
I wander around the apartment aimlessly. I dress and undress myself. I walk around topless, then in a slip, then drinking ginger ale until my roommate finally just sews the dress I've bought for the occasion. Well, she doesn't sew it-- what does she do-- I want it shorter-- she hems it? Is that what she does? I want it shorter so she hems the dress. Alex asks me about margins and Jayme asks me about characters. Kiley wants to know what's short enough and then I lie in bed sobbing. I cry and I cry and I cry. I am sobbing and when Gregg walks in he says it's like I have a complete staff. Alex is next to the printer, Jayme is in a stack of papers, Kiley has her fingers full of thread and I am curled into the fetal position.
I hold a pillow. I am a horrible friend.
The reading goes well. The reading goes really well. My friends come and my professor and some strangers. The restaurant is packed and I am slightly terrified. The tables have mason jars filled with gin and there are pitchers of Shirley Temples. I turn on a tape recorder. I feel like I am doing theatre-- so it is very convenient that Tyson Savoretti-- one of the best stage actors I've ever met in my twenty-four years of life walks up to me and says "do you want me to introduce you?" The room is loud-- everyone is talking and I must nod or something because Tyson commands attention. He is very good at grabbing the attention of a room. We went to high school together. He knows how to project, to voice without a microphone, and luckily, so do I.
After I start reading, I realize it doesn't feel like reading, it feels like more like performing. It feels good because I wrote all of it and all of it is true. I say "this is about me" or "this is about someone else" and plates of chicken and waffles and pulled pork sliders and cheese sticks come out. I talk over the kitchen and the slamming doors and I like it. I really like it. Jay and Kari are in front of me and they clap the loudest. My class from monday night is at at a table in the back of the room. Some people I have known for a decade, some I've never met before in my life.
I go on and on about men being monsters and the Catholic Church and what Florida can do to anybody and I talk desperately out to the crowd about what's it like to go North to get South. It feels good.
It feels good and I feel grateful. I did nothing but think out loud basically, but it feels good. I feel grateful. I can do nothing but read and write but somehow this balances out. Somehow everyone groups together to help me pull through. At twenty-five dollars a seat the room is full and afterward it is good to hug everyone to hear what they have to say.
I wrote it and I read it. I can be awful, I can be truly terrible, I can be motionless, but I can project.
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