Story Slam #4 (2/25/10)
Poet: Genevieve Betts
Line: "The first time I saw it, I squinted"
(this was the third round, but I didn't read in the first two, so I folded details into this one)
The first time I saw it, I squinted. I was lying next to Kevin in the back of a pickup truck that wasn't his and wasn't mine. I saw the empty bottle and squinted in the early light, looked for other, fuller bottles nearby. I remembered the night before, shot after shot, power hour after power hour in the apartment above the bar, the apartment that also wasn't Kevin's or mine. The apartment where mice had shat on the kitchen counter, next to a knife that gleamed dull but still menacing. I remember how the fluorescent light in the kitchen got brighter and brighter and the music got louder until someone said the cops were there. We went down the fire escape, Kevin and me, we hid behind the dumpsters in the odd glow of the bar's bug light, and then when everything was quiet again, we got into the back of this uncapped pickup truck and I kept drinking from the bottle of vodka I'd taken off the dirty counter and stuck in my backpack. I drank from the bottle because I had to, but I tried to measure shots anyway. I like to keep track.
Line: As the other two Chrises lay dying (there were three Chrises at the slam that night)
As the other two Chrises lay dying on the couch, or claiming they were dying, anyway, from the soup at the Indian buffet that had given them food poisoning three days ago, plenty of time for them to get over it by now, if they weren't so concerned about getting girls (other girls, outside girls, not me) to take care of them by getting them Bud Light from the refrigerator, Bud Light being the brand they'd both just switched to from Coors because they had fallen for the Here We Go slogan in the new Bud Light Superbowl commercials, because they liked to walk out of convenience stores with two thirty packs and Chris One's brand new license that proved he was finally 21, and hold the beer up as they came to the car with the windows open, me inside, and say Here We Go, and then get inside and encourage me to peel out like they imagine Danica Patrick might if they were cool enough to hang out with her. The two other Chrises lay dying, or claiming they were dying, but I wasn't falling for it, and neither would Danica Patrick if they were cool enough to hang out with her.
Words: beer, drive, transcendent
The Chrises lay dying on the couch, or claiming they were dying, even though the food poisoning at the Indian buffet happened three days ago. A girl with the lowest of low cut shirts and slutty high heels with no socks even though it was winter and the snow fell slowly outside, falling and melting instantly on the warm wet streets, snow like I'd see someday in the Alps on Easter when I went with an Australian and a French girl to a church service in German where I would understand the music but could only mouth the words in English and not sing them in German, on the trip that was so far in my future I couldn't even imagine it could happen, the snow was falling and melting like it would on the wet winding streets in the Alps someday and the girl was sitting on the arm of the couch near Chris Two, not too close in case he was going to puke but close enough, the beer was running low and I needed to get out of that hot, close apartment, I had to drive somewhere tonight, so I went up to Chris One, sat next to him on his couch arm like the girl with the slutty shoes sat on the other and said to Chris One, "beer run. Let's go. Transcend."
Theme: Faking it
In eighth grade band we were told by the blond band leader to fake it if we didn't know how to play our instruments right. I sat next to Shannon, my steady best friend, and next to her Orion wouldn't quit hooking his clarinet screws on Casey's dangly earrings, threatening to pull them out, and that was enough to convince me never to wear dangly earrings. We moved our fingers over the holes in our clarinets, finger-synching with everyone else in our section, but we didn't blow.
Theme: Drinking before noon, Words: fantastic, hopped, ?
It was fantastic, drinking before noon, before nine, before seven, on a Cinco de Mayo that didn't in any way resemble a long afternoon in Mexico where the guy trying to sell us a marble chess set for eleven dollars handed my camera to my mom and stood next to me, subtly pinching my ass while the camera clicked.
It was a snowy Cinco de Mayo on a thin small-town street, a Mexican restaurant across from the Rite-Aid (closed) and a jewelry store (closed). We stood around the early morning Cinco de Mayo bar at the Mexican restaurant, wearing straw sombreros with the Mexican restaurant's corporate logo stamped in black ink on the fronts, we stood around the bar with Erika, who got me a blender for my birthday so she could stop by and borrow it every single Thursday night and return it crusted red with dried daiquiri every Sunday afternoon.
We stood there on Cinco de Mayo, early light greying the snow outside the crepe-papered windows, and I was already kind of over it. One day I would be nostalgic for this, the tight muscles of the hockey player I'd invited into my bed and then rejected the night before, the dried out limes in the white bucket on the edge of the bar, even the heavy-hopped microbrews at the pub around the corner. It was fantastic, drinking before noon, or later I'd remember it that way, but I was done.
Line: "The first time I saw it, I squinted"
(this was the third round, but I didn't read in the first two, so I folded details into this one)
The first time I saw it, I squinted. I was lying next to Kevin in the back of a pickup truck that wasn't his and wasn't mine. I saw the empty bottle and squinted in the early light, looked for other, fuller bottles nearby. I remembered the night before, shot after shot, power hour after power hour in the apartment above the bar, the apartment that also wasn't Kevin's or mine. The apartment where mice had shat on the kitchen counter, next to a knife that gleamed dull but still menacing. I remember how the fluorescent light in the kitchen got brighter and brighter and the music got louder until someone said the cops were there. We went down the fire escape, Kevin and me, we hid behind the dumpsters in the odd glow of the bar's bug light, and then when everything was quiet again, we got into the back of this uncapped pickup truck and I kept drinking from the bottle of vodka I'd taken off the dirty counter and stuck in my backpack. I drank from the bottle because I had to, but I tried to measure shots anyway. I like to keep track.
Line: As the other two Chrises lay dying (there were three Chrises at the slam that night)
As the other two Chrises lay dying on the couch, or claiming they were dying, anyway, from the soup at the Indian buffet that had given them food poisoning three days ago, plenty of time for them to get over it by now, if they weren't so concerned about getting girls (other girls, outside girls, not me) to take care of them by getting them Bud Light from the refrigerator, Bud Light being the brand they'd both just switched to from Coors because they had fallen for the Here We Go slogan in the new Bud Light Superbowl commercials, because they liked to walk out of convenience stores with two thirty packs and Chris One's brand new license that proved he was finally 21, and hold the beer up as they came to the car with the windows open, me inside, and say Here We Go, and then get inside and encourage me to peel out like they imagine Danica Patrick might if they were cool enough to hang out with her. The two other Chrises lay dying, or claiming they were dying, but I wasn't falling for it, and neither would Danica Patrick if they were cool enough to hang out with her.
Words: beer, drive, transcendent
The Chrises lay dying on the couch, or claiming they were dying, even though the food poisoning at the Indian buffet happened three days ago. A girl with the lowest of low cut shirts and slutty high heels with no socks even though it was winter and the snow fell slowly outside, falling and melting instantly on the warm wet streets, snow like I'd see someday in the Alps on Easter when I went with an Australian and a French girl to a church service in German where I would understand the music but could only mouth the words in English and not sing them in German, on the trip that was so far in my future I couldn't even imagine it could happen, the snow was falling and melting like it would on the wet winding streets in the Alps someday and the girl was sitting on the arm of the couch near Chris Two, not too close in case he was going to puke but close enough, the beer was running low and I needed to get out of that hot, close apartment, I had to drive somewhere tonight, so I went up to Chris One, sat next to him on his couch arm like the girl with the slutty shoes sat on the other and said to Chris One, "beer run. Let's go. Transcend."
Theme: Faking it
In eighth grade band we were told by the blond band leader to fake it if we didn't know how to play our instruments right. I sat next to Shannon, my steady best friend, and next to her Orion wouldn't quit hooking his clarinet screws on Casey's dangly earrings, threatening to pull them out, and that was enough to convince me never to wear dangly earrings. We moved our fingers over the holes in our clarinets, finger-synching with everyone else in our section, but we didn't blow.
Theme: Drinking before noon, Words: fantastic, hopped, ?
It was fantastic, drinking before noon, before nine, before seven, on a Cinco de Mayo that didn't in any way resemble a long afternoon in Mexico where the guy trying to sell us a marble chess set for eleven dollars handed my camera to my mom and stood next to me, subtly pinching my ass while the camera clicked.
It was a snowy Cinco de Mayo on a thin small-town street, a Mexican restaurant across from the Rite-Aid (closed) and a jewelry store (closed). We stood around the early morning Cinco de Mayo bar at the Mexican restaurant, wearing straw sombreros with the Mexican restaurant's corporate logo stamped in black ink on the fronts, we stood around the bar with Erika, who got me a blender for my birthday so she could stop by and borrow it every single Thursday night and return it crusted red with dried daiquiri every Sunday afternoon.
We stood there on Cinco de Mayo, early light greying the snow outside the crepe-papered windows, and I was already kind of over it. One day I would be nostalgic for this, the tight muscles of the hockey player I'd invited into my bed and then rejected the night before, the dried out limes in the white bucket on the edge of the bar, even the heavy-hopped microbrews at the pub around the corner. It was fantastic, drinking before noon, or later I'd remember it that way, but I was done.
posted by Elizabeth Thorpe at 11:00 AM
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