Writing Lesson #3: Reading Aloud
One possible way to live a life less ordinary
I’ve read work aloud at a handful of places:
In the basement of an East Village bar
In a train station in Los Angeles
Above a restaurant in Brooklyn
At a dining table at The Ruby
that one time to two people in the back of a sex toy shop.
But last Friday night was my first time reading some work in an actual bookstore.
I had been in bed, clicking around on the internet as we do and trying to remind myself of the things I used to love that also had some professional development attached. It was the first week of April and I figured that National Poetry Month would mean some good readings and sure enough, a very bright and wicker-lamped independent bookseller had an open mic that very night. At 7pm. With sign-ups at 6:30pm. It was already 6:45pm.
In the background of my apartment I heard Olive’s dad say that he was almost done with work and would be able to play with her in ten minutes and I did the math with the drive over to the Ocean Beach area and thought yeah, I could get there in time to catch a few people before the end of the event. I would just have to overcome:
Personal shame at not having, again, as usual, still, for the millionth time, nothing that I wanted to wear
A weird feeling of displaced excitement that a cute bookstore with a backyard was here in my city and maybe I should just take Olive there during the day
Just the general slug-shape that my body becomes the moment the sun drops in the sky and I start to look at my phone and then turn into my phone
I decided who cares about those things and got in the car.
When I arrived there was a woman reading who looked at ease. She spoke of her heart, she mentioned the sea. Utterly unselfconscious and with pleasure she read from her phone and smiled at the parts she enjoyed. It was as if she was doing it JUST FOR HERSELF. She sat down. There was a pause. The room went a little bit quiet and still.
Were there any other people who wanted to share? asked a voice from the corner.
You know those out of body experiences? This wasn’t one. But for some reason I didn’t hesitate and thought of my phone and a story on my drive that I’d shared with a few people and thought ok why not? I found my way to the mic and started to speak.
Here’s a title I’m trying out: MISS ODD GENIE. I spelled it out.
Funny? I asked. I started again.
There was an article in the New York Times today, I said (giving context, both of the story and of myself, as someone who starts 30% of conversations with the sentence “there was an article in the New York Times today”) about a women getting gaslit by the medical institution. And the person who was reading when I came in mentioned the cool look in a doctor’s eye. This is called Plastic Legs.
It took a second to register it all: my story on the page, my voice through the speakers. I sounded so soft. I began to enjoy it, as if I were the audience to another self reading.
I swiped up on my document to the first story, the one I wanted most to read.
This one is called A Strange Kind Of Love Letter.
Again, people were still.
People were listening.
I tried, with my words, to bring them in closer.
“So when he says to me that he wants to go down on me, hear me breathe, clock my heart, feel me tremble…”
One person shifted her body and put her hand on her boyfriend’s thigh. She moved it slowly, as if to connect, or comfort, or a little of both.
“It occurred to me that I need his position to be vulnerable.”
Hm, said the woman who read at the start, with a knowing.
“I see now that he works in environmental markets and sustainability…”
Snaps and a few cackles surprise me; remind me I’m dry.
When I was done, I clapped for myself and took a seat in the back. The person organizing the event read again, this time about coffee and also about love and how one thing meant intimacy and the other meant laughter. The evening wrapped up and I chatted for a few minutes and then said goodbye to the last reader as I walked out.
Thanks! I said.
Next time you read that, he said unexpectedly, just don’t even tell them what it’s about. Just go right for it.
Us. Them. This was something new. Am I on the other side of the membrane? Is this breaking through? I had just been thinking something like: ok, great now I know that I won’t ever read this out loud again. Carolyn Sea describes a writing life like that; as a thick flexible thing that you push on and push on until pop there you are.
Let me leave you with another bit of inspiration from her great book: Making a Literary Life, the most enjoyable book on writing besides Bird by Bird.
Your thousand words only takes minutes, moments. This first chapter, short but important, suggesting your first step, came in at 1,275 words and took an hour and fifteen minutes to write in the first draft. I’ve had years to think about silence though, lots of time to figure out what I’m passing on to you now. Protect yourself. Be careful whom you tell. Because the last thing on earth people living an ordinary life want to hear about is how you want to be a writer.
The other people in your life, they like you in that bubble! I like to imagine how they’ll take your hand when you offer it from your steady and stable place on your piece of nothingness before you pull them on through.