by Paul Kropp
In a week, I had settled back into the life I’d lived in high school, except for the school itself. I began IM-ing again, since all my friends—except Maggie—were so close, and even talking by cell phone now that I could afford a decent plan. I began hanging out with the old crew. We went to movies and hit the bars after work, and held our Friday night popcorn and black-and-white film festival at Allison’s house with her new, big plasma-screen television.
“How’s the trashman today?” Scrooge asked as we were settling in one Friday. Trashman was my new nickname. This Friday’s film was Jean Renoir’s La grande illusion. It was the kind of movie that Maggie would have picked, though the actual choice was made by Hannah.
“The Trashman is beat,” I told them.
“You know,” Scrooge told me, “Trashman wouldn’t be a bad name for a rapper. It’s kind of like being a poet, Al. I can see you doing it: Trashman, right up there with Snoop Dogg and Jay Z.”
“If I could rap,” I said, getting in the mood, “I’d be the candy wrapper rapper.”
“Not bad, my man,” Scrooge replied. “How about I give you the backup.” He began doing that generic rap rhythm, kind of bump-ba-ba-bump-ba-ba-bump, except it came with various kinds of pops and whistles.
So I began to join in:
Jujubes, Mr. Big, candy bars galore,
M&Ms and Mars bars, right from the store
My back’s near broke from picking up that stuff,
But my boss just says…that’s real tough.
There was an amazed round of applause from the others.
“You ever think about doing some public poetry, you know, some performance poetry?” Allison asked.
I winced. “Not ready for prime time,” I sighed.
“First, Al’s got to get laid,” Scrooge threw in.
“Right,” I agreed. “Got to keep my priorities straight.”
“Well, I was just wondering,” she said. “I pulled this from the bulletin board up at the college. Looks like they’re having a poetry slam at the student union pub next week.”
We all looked at the flyer.
SEAMUS CALHOUN’S POETRY SLAM
Poets, versifiers, rappers, and ministory-tellers—come to Calhoun’s first poetry slam of the summer. The rules are simple; the rewards are preposterous!
1. Poets must perform poems of their own creation—no plagiarism, please. Poems may be of any style, including formal verse, free verse, monologues, sonnets, parables, ballads, stream-of-consciousness rambles, rants and raps, hiphop meditations, romantic wordgasms, dirty limericks, sparse and lean haiku, fables, twisted tales, iambic pentameter sonnets, napkin-scribbled words of wisdom, improvised words of anger, beat-box verse, abstract-experimental lyricism, and drunken drivel—to mention just a few.
2. No props, costumes, musical accompaniment, or animal acts are allowed on stage. Poets are limited to their own devices and talents. Three-minute time limit. Audience response is invited…and not part of the time limit.
3. A group of three judges selected from the audience scores each poem on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0, considering both content and performance.
4. High scores advance to second and third rounds.
5. The grand prize…a keg of ale (or a reasonable equivalent).
“You should do it, Al,” Jeremy told me. “Not only will your poetry be a slam-dunk success, but you’ll sweep the women off their feet. Once their feet are off the ground, the rest is easy.”
“Jeremy, do you mind?” Hannah snapped.
“Sorry,” Jeremy said, looking down at his feet.
“But you could do it, Al,” Allison said, ignoring Jeremy and picking up the thread. “All you need is three or four poems, good ones, and you’re set. We’d all come out to cheer you on.”
“Thanks, but—”
“Don’t see what the buts are about, Al,” said Jeremy. “You said you had thirty poems.”
“Not all complete.”
“But thirty poems,” Jeremy went on. “You only need three or four, and just one good one. You do have one good poem, don’t you?”
All the eyes turned to me. This was becoming truly embarrassing. I thought I had a dozen pretty good poems, but I’d never read them out loud to anyone. I hadn’t even shared them with Maggie.
“These things are about performance,” I told them. I was squirming on the couch like a worm on the sidewalk. “I’m not a performer. I just write.”
Scrooge jumped in. “Al, I have seen you do some pretty smooth talking, my friend. Anybody who can snow women the way you do can certainly belt a poem out to a crowd. It’s the same thing, my man.”
“You were quite good as the Wall in Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Allison added brightly.
I remembered the role. Scrooge was Pyramus; Allison was Thisby; and I was the wall that separated the lovers. I even remembered my lines: “That I, one Snout by name, present a wall; And such a wall, as I would have you think, That had in it a crannied hole or chink.” That was my entire role. Maybe I was good, but it wasn’t much of a challenge.
“You were a good tree in that grade-seven play,” Jeremy added.
“I’ve only ever played a tree or a wall in my entire acting career,” I whined.
“Start with the easy parts and get to the character roles later,” Scrooge threw in, and there was more laughter.
But Allison wouldn’t let the matter drop. “Alan, I really think you should do it. Win or lose, we’ll all be there to support you. And it’ll be fun.”
I looked up at her. “Fun?”
“Yeah, fun,” she said. “I think all of us have forgotten how to have fun this year. We’ve become too serious.”
“Hear, hear,” said Jeremy, imitating his father.
“Sadly true,” added Scrooge. “Even for me.”
Allison spoke in her serious, pay-attention-to-me voice. “I’ll sign you up for the poetry slam,” she said, “and if you need help rehearsing, just let me know. I actually promised Maggie I’d give you a little help before the big night. She says you’ll need it.”
“So Maggie wants me to do it, too?”
“She insists,” Allison declared.
I sighed, twisted, hemmed and hawed, but the matter was decided. I give in too easily to women—that’s my problem.
“Now can we start this artsy film?” Jeremy demanded. “I want to get beyond the popcorn and into some serious food.”
So we watched La grande illusion, and I tried to pay attention. I tried to use the analytical skills I’d learned in Film 101 to make sense of Jean Renoir’s classic. But my mind was only half on the movie, the other half was on my poetry and the poetry slam. To put it simply, I was terrified.
25
Slammed
THE NIGHT OF THE POETRY SLAM, I spent a little time deciding on my clothes. Black, I thought, would be good. Serious. Dark. Full of meaning. I had a black buttoned shirt and a black T-shirt and I was trying to choose between them when my father stuck his head in the bedroom doorway.
“Al, I know you’re going out tonight—” he began.
“Yeah,” I said, choosing the T-shirt. A more muscular look, I thought. More like James Dean. Maybe I should buy a pack of cigarettes and stick them under one sleeve. Who cares if I don’t know how to smoke. It might improve the look.
“Your mom and I wanted to have a little talk with you, before you go.”
I looked up. My father has always been awkward talking to me, and this was no exception. He stood there nervously, shifting his weight from one foot to another.
“It has to be tonight?” I asked. “I’ve got a few things on my mind.”
“So do we,” he said. “It shouldn’t take long.”
I finished getting dressed, then debated the issue of cologne but decided that a real poet wouldn’t use any. A real poet would hardly even shower, I figured, certainly not if he wanted to look like James Dean.
So I stumbled down the stairs at seven-thirty, wondering what my parents were so
desperate to discuss. We hardly ever discussed anything in my family, and never if there were some way to delay it. I had offered my father the option of a breakfast discussion, but got a simple no. So now I was curious. More words of wisdom? My father hadn’t given me any words about anything since dropping me off at school in the fall. Perhaps he’d been saving up.
My mom and dad were both in the living room when I got there. They looked uncomfortable.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Al, you better sit down,” my dad began.
“Is this, like, serious?” I had twenty immediate images running through my brain: my parents are getting divorced, my mom has breast cancer, my dad has prostate cancer, the house is being sold, a tornado is on the way…Sometimes my imagination gets the better of me.
“Well, I think it’s good news, really. Just a surprise,” my mother said.
“A surprise? A good surprise?”
“Well, mostly good,” my dad came in. “You see, we went to the doctor a few months ago and found out, well, we’re not sure how it happened, really, and wanted to make sure everything was alright…” his voice dropped off.
It was my mother who blurted out the news. “I’m pregnant,” she said. Then she smiled and her cheeks turned pink.
“Pregnant!” I shrieked.
“Pregnant,” she repeated.
“Pregnant, like how?” I asked.
“Oh, Alan, surely you know how. The teachers cover that in school, don’t they,” my mom said.
“But after all dad’s talk about being careful and protection and all that…” I was at a loss for words.
“Accidents happen,” my father said with a shrug. “Al, in November you’re going to have a little brother or sister.”
“A little brother or sister,” I said, mostly to myself. “I’ll be a big brother. A really big brother. I mean, there’s going to be twenty years between us.”
“A bit of a gap,” my dad admitted.
“Yeah, you could say that,” I replied.
I suppose we could have kept on talking for a while, and certainly there were plenty of questions swirling through my brain, but Scrooge’s car horn was beeping from the driveway.
“We can talk more tomorrow,” my mom said.
“Yeah, tomorrow,” I replied. “Tonight I’ve got to…” for a moment, I couldn’t even remember where I was going. Then it came back: the poetry slam. “Tonight I’ve got to go read some poetry.”
My parents gave me a look of disbelief. It must have matched my earlier look of disbelief. But really, which of us was totally crazy? It certainly wasn’t me.
—
Seamus Calhoun’s—the campus pub—was only half-filled the night of the poetry slam. That was good. But almost everyone I knew had shown up—that was bad. I carried a clutch of poems in my hand. I was still not sure which ones I would read out, so I’d brought every poem I’d written, including the ridiculous Mars bar rap, just in case.
Scrooge drove me up to the pub, then brought me to the murky and beer-reeking interior. In the darkness, I could see that the Friday film society was already seated at its table, and nearby was another group of kids I went to high school with. If I messed up, there’d be plenty of witnesses.
“Stop shaking so much,” Allison told me. “If you’d come over to rehearse, you’d have more confidence.”
“Yeah, well…” I mumbled. I had been too scared to actually practise at Allison’s house. She might have laughed. I would have died. It wasn’t worth death by embarrassment to get a little advice.
“You’ll be great, Al,” Hannah came in. “Trust your inspiration. We’re all on your side. All of us, plus one.”
“Plus who?” I asked.
“Somebody who flew into town early, just for this,” Hannah told me. “Look.”
And there she was, showing her ID at the door.
“Maggie!” I cried.
Maggie looked spectacular. This was not the skinny Maggie I’d played soccer with a dozen years ago, not the kind-of-goofy-looking Maggie I’d dated for my last year of high school, not the sad Maggie who’d been so forlorn at Christmas. This was a serious woman, a spectacular woman with dark hair, high cheekbones, gorgeous pale skin, and flashing blue eyes behind her very new, very stylish glasses.
“Maggie, you are such a hottie,” Scrooge said with some appreciation. He and Maggie exchanged air-kisses, French style.
“Whoo-ee!” whistled Jeremy, eyeballing her short dress.
“No kisses for you Jeremy,” Maggie replied. “But, Alan,” she said, kissing my cheeks, “it’s been too long.”
Maggie sat down and the dress rode up a bit on her legs. When did Maggie get such great legs? I wondered.
I might just have stared at her, ogling, but Allison got us all down to business. “Okay, Alan, listen up. The poetry slam is going to start pretty soon, so you’ve got to get ready. Here’s your number.”
“My number?”
“Every poet gets a number, so you know exactly when you’re going to read in the first round,” Allison explained. “There are twelve poets, so you’re on near the middle. Only five poets make the second round. And then there’s the final round, for the grand prize.”
“Free beer for a year!” Scrooge declared.
That was not actually true. The grand prize was more like twelve free pitchers of beer to be drunk over the summer. Still, such a prize was not to be dismissed. Given the recent news at home, I could use all the beer I could get.
“Let me pin the number on your shirt,” Maggie said. As she got close, I got a whiff of her new perfume and a up-close view of her face. Her last semester away at Sarah Lawrence had done wonders for her, or maybe it was the couple of weeks in Chicoutimi, or maybe it was just life itself.
“Hey, Al, you look like you’re going to be in a dance contest,” Scrooge said.
“Kind of like Richard Gere, but without the tux,” Jeremy added.
There was general laughter at my embarrassment, and I might otherwise have said something witty, but I just felt stunned. When too much stuff comes at me too fast, I panic. Like a deer on the highway, I just stare at the oncoming headlights. The way things were going, I might end up a venison steak at the end of the night.
I looked around the room and saw numbers being pasted on a dozen other poets. They ranged from pimply-faced students to serious-looking guys with greasy hair and glasses to old ladies who looked like my grandmother. I was still looking around the room when I saw one other face I knew, a frigid blast from my own dating past: Melissa Halvorsen.
Melissa was one of the first girls I’d ever gone out with in high school, and my general ineptness caused both of us some embarrassment. She hadn’t spoken to me since then, so I was surprised to see her at the pub. I wondered if she was actually old enough to drink.
Amazingly, she walked right up to where I was sitting.
“I heard you were reading some poetry,” she said. Her voice was flat and cold.
“Yeah, right,” I replied.
“So I got my new boyfriend to bring me over,” she went on, now smiling. “I just want to see you make a fool of yourself, Al. I want you to show the world what a loser you really are.”
“Hey, hey,” Scrooge said, jumping up.
Melissa quickly backed off. Still, this seemed another poor augury of things to come.
Augury. Got to use that word in a poem sometime.
“Alan, don’t pay any attention to that gormless chicklet,” Maggie announced. “I’m sorry I ever introduced you two.”
Then Scrooge changed the subject. He raised his glass, cleared his throat and acted like the guy who proposes a toast at a wedding. “Ladies and gentlemen, lovers of poetry, friends…”
“Get on with it,” Hannah sighed.
“I have a message, sent by ExpressPost, to give encouragement to our friend Alan. If I may read…”
The table grew relatively quiet. Scrooge got up and pulled a letter from his pocket with a
gesture that resembled a flourish. Then he began.
“This is from Al’s roommate at BU. I called to tell him about the poetry slam tonight and he sent this message: ‘Alan, I know you’ve found your poetic voice. Tonight is the night to use it. Speak from your heart and the good Lord will be on your side. Your friend, Kirk Chamberlain.’”
There was a brief round of applause from my friends, and then the lights dimmed for the poetry slam itself.
An announcer got up to the microphone, blew into the mike several times, and then went through the rules of the evening. He was remarkable only because of a very painful stammer when he spoke, one of those stammers that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats wondering if the person will ever actually complete the word with which he is struggling. Thus the rules took far longer than would be allowed for any of the poets.
At last, the announcer reached into a goldfish bowl full of folded paper chits and selected three judges for the contest. Amazingly, one of the names picked was Scrooge.
“Alan,” Scrooge whispered to me as he got up to take his new position, “this will be good for you.”
I nodded grimly.
The judges took their chairs at a special table, and poet number one proceeded to the stage. This poet was an older man with a salt-and-pepper beard. He looked awkward perched up on a bar stool under a glaring spotlight.
“This poem is dedicated to my wife,” he began, smiling out into the audience, “and it begins like this.” There was a pause and he began to read a charming rhymed poem that was not about his wife, at all, but about a waterfall in Portugal. It was an okay poem, I thought, but had too much alliteration and at least five clichés that I could count. Nonetheless, he got a pleasant round of applause when he was finished, much of it coming from a middle-aged woman to our immediate left.
Poet number two looked too young to be permitted into the pub, but he must have gotten by the ID check somehow. He was a wide-faced boy with reddish hair and a dusting of freckles whose most interesting feature was an absence of eyebrows, which gave him a strange appearance onstage. His poem was a rant, addressed to his English teacher, which included more swear words than most of us would use in a month of serious cursing. When he finished, there was a smattering of applause before he sat down.