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Fri | November 18, 2005

at a reading

I am at the Opium reading. It's at Happy Ending, an unmarked bar at the border of Chinatown and the Lower East Side.

I am here alone.

I am sitting next to a balding white guy. Todd later gestures to this guy and says to the crowd, "C___, very talented, will be reading on December 5th."

In front of me is a guy with curly hair who is eating pork lo mein. He is C___'s friend. I am at the corner of an L and they are the ends.

They don't talk to me; they talk to each other. They meet the girls on the right-- three of them, along the wall.

"We're friends of Todd," the one on the right says. It becomes evident that they don't have much to say. However they will laugh at anything you have. The conversation dies. I am relieved. I hate being an innocent bystander to conversations like that.

The guys go back to talking to each other. I feel that they want me to hear what they're saying, or that they're aware that I might be listening and take that into account. But I am not listening.

There is tension about my being there. Their conversation turns to the subject of my presence.

"Awkwardness is the next best thing to wisdom," curly-haired guy says to balding guy. Balding disagrees.

I take out my cell phone and start re-reading and deleting my text messages. They relax.

...

Now I am at the Delancey F/J/M/Z station. I feel like I am sitting in a clearing. There is a mosaic of cherry trees on the wall opposite the track.

The advertising inside the F is green. Anheuser World Lager. The best of both worlds.

...

I write all this on a napkin and type it up on the train ride home. Then I wipe my nose with the napkin.

The people across from me seem inclined to talk. They are impressed that I have my laptop plugged in.

"That's really neat," the woman says, in her best imitation of a teenager.

"How do you know where you can plug it in?" he asks.

"Where there's an outlet," I say, with an unintended tinge of sarcasm. "You just have to keep your eyes peeled," I add encouragingly, to make up for it.

He is in jeans and a charcoal fleece. I try not to make eye contact. When I look up, it's at the conductor at the entryway to the next car.

I get the feeling that I don't use good sentence construction. I try not to care.

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