In The Shade Of The Tree Of Townie Celebrity
i go to a reading in cbus. at least the bridge and tunnel people have the bridge and tunnel. but i promise i haven’t given up on you guys
it’s my dream to bulldoze through a city and leave it irrevocably altered. i want to roll through town like an outlaw. or the body of the local prom queen. “miss plain city, found dead in her sash.” izzy from new york found wandering the streets of ohio. i haven’t been anywhere too long lately.
in my dreams i’m of a place. doesn’t matter where. who i could be changes with every city i visit. but in my dreams ive been there my entire life. id take being a background character to any other emo kid’s angsty roadtrip if it meant id never feel the need to leave. like the metric song, every city im in asks, “who would you be for me” and i have a different answer for each one. i change my dreams so often i can’t tell if i’m a liar or a writer.
in hiking towns i imagine myself a camp counselor-type outdoorsy lesbian. id be one of those lesbians who looks straight. i noticed that about camp counselors, they always had some sort of plausible heterosexual deniability. i remember my first pride, though, where i ran into my old camp counselor, who i picture as i write this. she was a soccer player with a nice raspy voice. i could be one of those white girls with the racially-deceptive soulful voices. like sam smith. id smoke a massive box mod and blow vape rings.
id lead a simple life. my dog would know all the best desire paths. id longboard to my bartender job. wear puffer vests over jewel tone crew neck sweaters. shoulder length dirty blonde hair. for some reason in these fantasies in can only picture myself blonde. maybe thats something i see as necessary to being able to live in capital a America. flash to the your best american girl music video.
in the small beach towns i imagine myself constantly wet. friends with everyone. id be better at playing the acoustic guitar because, between cliff diving and campfires, that’s how we’d pass the time. and that’s all we’d need. we’d all wear our damp bathing suits to publix. the most in-demand groceries would be ingredients for smores. and those miniature donuts. i eat the donut, you eat the hole. in this life id want nothing else.
we’d have no sex drives. no need to feel each other up over soaked nylon. at the most, we’d make eyes at the end-of-summer tourists. august came and went like a dog pissing, libidinous aphrodisiac tainted piss. we looked up eros in the yellow pages and came up on the satisfying static of a disconnected number. time eats the donut. love eats the hole. and we’d buy the extras at publix.
oddly enough, my dream identities of passing cities are more fleshed out than my plans for who i could be in ohio. i don’t dream of ohio. i cant even entertain the idea of who’d id be here because i think, more than anything, my biggest fear is having to try to become who i want here, failing, and the having to compromise for all my secondary desires. but the other night, i went to an open mic downtown. it felt like a betrayal.
im very stubbornly establishing a we / you vs they situation. when i write, im writing from new york and to new york. columbus is “they.” we don’t exactly have an antagonistic relationship, but i’ve lived in new york for four years, only lived in columbus for less than a year cumulatively. my parents moved from cleveland to columbus while i was out of town, so i didn’t even get the chance to pack up my childhood house. i literally know no one here. i can’t remember the last time i was completely new to a place. even when i first moved to new york, i had group chats i had been waiting to meet. i got no one here. it gets confusing and sad when i realize that new york used to be ‘here.’ my phone still labels my photos in new york as “photos from home.” i try to ignore this and go to the reading happy.
when i get to kafe kerouac, the first conversation i make is to ensure i won’t get a ticket. back in cleveland, my lack of car knowledge was juvenile. embarrassing. here it’s chic. cosmopolitan. charmingly aloof. whoever told me i’d be fine parked on the street also said they liked my hair. the mullet gets me though the midwest.
i arrive late, partly because there was a shooting down the street and cops told us to shelter in place, but also because i didn’t want to come too early, and nothing in new york starts on time anyways. im a fool. a city-minded fool. im only an hour late and the sign up sheet is totally filled. ok, so they’re on time here. and they use sign up sheets. im noting all the small adjustments i need to make so that new-york-me can fit in ohio. be on time. pay for parking. get better at parallel parking. it’s too much for me to handle. i make a beeline for the bar.
the bartender is the point of contact in any town, but tonight im dressed like one — black button up and black jeans — while the person behind the bar is sporting a bright red crop top and pink hair. something about me must be hospitable enough, or this kid is just really going through it. they sigh and open with, “it’s been a rough night.”
“tell me about it,” i say — not in a tone of solidarity, but blunt curiosity. i wow myself with my casual masculine charisma. no wonder people think im a top. the bartender laments about living in an ambulance and having to illegally use the working lights and siren to get to work on time. i get a $5 beer and pay cash. i need to juice up to see if i can charm my way onto this open mic bill. (i have to pay $5 to sign up. this is probably normal. new york, you spoil me).
it’s comical how much i fuck up what was supposed to be a cool, casual, seamless entrance. the door creeks on my way in. i accidentally kick someone’s cane. ironically, i make my uncomfortable entrance while one of the poets is plugging this indiana poetry slam. “they’re trying to make a scene like this one,” they say, not scoffing or condescending, but midwesternly supportive.
what is “this scene?” i wonder? do they know anything about new york poetry? i must look like such a fucking loser, coming here alone, coming here noisily. they don’t know i’m a good writer. they don’t know people come to hear me read. they don’t know my name is on the flyer.
in my new york lit class, people didn’t like allen ginsberg’s coterie because his references felt obscure and unreachable. i liked it because i got it. i liked it because i was part of that crowd of drunk drugged sleepless artists contemplating suicide. but im nobody here. no one knows me here and im annoyingly used to people saying i was the best at wherever i read. im an only child and i grew up being good at things. you must understand my frustration.
im typing on my phone, noting differences between here and new york. there’s something headstrong in my comparisons. my ingrained critiques of the downtown scene have hitched a ride to columbus but i can keep critiquing new york because i am more of new york than i am of columbus right now.
the first thing i note is how no one here has a camera out. no flash photography. for a group of what’s so obviously capital t capital k Theater Kids, there’s no documentation of performance to be found here. it’s oddly refreshing. i say this about the city all the time — sometimes i fear that we’re all too busy documenting things that we don’t make anything. but then my fears dissipate when the documentation becomes the cultural output (thinking of matt’s NEW YORK IS exhibit).
it’s warmer here. not temperature wise, but vibe wise. or maybe i’ve been in new york long enough to get deep into the colder parts of all of our social relations. maybe i’m so new to columbus that everyone looks like they love each other. maybe that’s how we all looked to people new to the city — beefless friends who could all sleep with each other with no problems, when that’s very much not the case. either way, there’s an undeniable community at kerouac. people onstage organizing carpools to the next state. someone giving out the deftones presale codes. and a level of audience participation here that’s lost unto new york readings. city readings — especially non-open mics with people you don’t know personally — tend to be purely spectator events. you go. you listen. you take pictures of the poet and maybe, if you’re bold, heart react their instagram story of the crowd. here, you get announced, the host talks about your work, and people shout some lewd-loving joke-catcalls at you. you introduce a piece and there are rocky horror-style call and responses for “old shit” and “new shit” respectively. the whole time, there was a nice girl next to me explaining everything she knew would be confusing to a first-timer. new york isn’t this warm. or maybe im misremembering. kinda fucked up that all i can do is remember.
kafe kerouac is like if old flings were horizontal and filled with all of beckett’s books. it’s very obviously part of a college town. undeniably queer and filled with the type of gay crowd that i was once part of — the type who dresses like evergreen hipsters, dressing like it’s perpetually 2022 in the pacific northwest. che guevara tees under donut-print button-downs. flannels, mom jeans, overalls, etc. downtown gays dress like straight people and / or microtrend demons. downtown gays let their face piercings / tattoos / hairstyles speak for themselves. insularly, we know that the skinny jeans, t-shirt, and chelsea boots combo — while ostensibly heterosexual, is being worn in a hedi slimane way. the validation of the reference was all we needed. if you have a gay explanation for a straight outfit, that’s gayer than all the flannels and redbubble tees in the world.
when i moved to the city, i found myself growing my hair out and wearing less oversized polo shirts. i switched out my docs for platforms. my face thinned out and people stopped asking what my pronouns were. i think ive been looking at myself too long becuase at one point i was worried that all the slip dresses and bootyshorts made me look straight. all fears of being straight-passing were dissuaded when an old friend told me that dressing feminine made me look gayer.
it’s so painfully wholesome here. wholesome small town humor with no slurs. cheering for someone’s bucket hat. knowing each other’s birthdays. it’s earnest. acapella-sung poems that we’re all too post-irony and self-conscious to do. they all take themselves so seriously here, not out of coldness, but out of love. and their work — it’s gay people poetry. not party poetry. and maybe that’s another way that new york has spoiled me. i used to write this type of gay people poetry — writing about kissing girls and revolutions. it was acceptably righteous because it was fucking ohio. but it would feel corny and self aggrandizing to write that type of shit in new york when people scissor on the streets at pride and no one bats an eye. my party poetry feels out of place. their poetry is poetry about surgery. about fathers. about things that i respect too much to write about in this format. i don’t know anyone’s pronouns here and i fear i will be crucified for this fact.
their poetry is comparatively prudish. im the only one talking about butts. although, i will say that there was one particularly juicy piece about bdsm middle-aged mommy-mommy dynamics on display at the korean bbq. but so many of these people are poetry students and professors. writing serious and slow, pause-filled pieces about gentrification and police brutality. i look to the piece i plan on reading. im going to get canceled out of columbus. im the only one talking about fucking and doing drugs. they’ll call my poems comedy and therefore privileged and frivolous. and honestly, they wouldn’t be completely wrong. when did i get so bourgeoise? did the right win when i renounced shitty mango diaspora poetry?
“here’s a poet whose story i’m interested in hearing,” the host says. i get called. oh balls. i go up too early and end up having to answer their pre-reading q and a onstage.
“is this your first reading?”
“no, i’ve read before but i’m actually not from here at all.”
“you walked up so confidently — where are you coming from?”
“new york”
a few ooos and aahs.
“i wrote this when i got priced out of my apartment and had to leave the city. no offense to you guys, you all seem super tight.”
not enough people laugh at that first statement for me to feel comfortable. i can’t be the newcomer whose first act is to shit on the scene. that doesn’t make me a critic, that makes me a douchebag. i read this but eliminate the gay jokes, asian jokes, and parts that aren’t really funny if you don’t know the person. im left with a third of the piece. the butthole line gets their attention and they get a few of my references. they laugh a surprising amount and grunt with furrowed brows approvingly in a way that makes me think im doing something right. i finish with the one mic drop of the piece (which i will invite you to guess which line i ended on) and as im walking back, the host says, “i’m so sorry you got priced out of en-why-cee but we’re glad you ended up here.” it’s like what breaker said to me before i left.
it’s interesting — tonight, everyone here is a “poet,” no one is a “reader.” no one at the new york readings calls themselves a poet. maybe it feels too sincere for us. in solidarity, some people wrote poetry about This Town and The City.
“you did not see me in this town but i was here long enough to know it concerned love.” felt.
“the drama of the midwest, where people steal from target. where something is always nothing and nothing is always something.” the same can be said about being a writer.
after the reading ends, i count six different people who remember my name and rave about my piece. after walking out of the room trying to be casual in the face of praise from strangers, a guy with headphones approaches me.
“whats your favorite thing about new york?”
fuck. with the exception of, “can i get list?” no one ever asks me anything. i conduct interviews. im never on the other end of them. and that’s ok. i feel like i’d be a terrible famous person. too confrontational. a little ugly when i smile. i stumble through trying to answer — what is my favorite thing about new york?
the culture? well, yes, but that’s cliche and makes it seem like ohio doesn’t have culture (the punk scene is pretty good).
the people? well, yes but then i’d have to explain how the people are sometimes the best and sometimes the worst — especially the NYU heads, but then i’d have to explain my affective distance from the rich kid culture vultures, and to do that right off the bat feels over-compensatey and complicated.
“it’s easier for me to tell you what i don’t like about new york.”
“so tell me.” Headphones Guy is curious and refreshingly not hitting on me.
“it’s too fucking expensive. no offense to columbus but i’m here because i got priced out.”
a guy who had been in the process of talking about his upcoming book release chimes in — “i get it, new york is fucking cutthroat. it’s a real do-or-die mentality. everyone there thinks they’re the shit, or else they’re prepared to crash out.” i can’t tell whether or not he’s taking a subtle dig at me. he invites me to sit with him and some of the other poets anyways. they’re all on a couch together, and i’m on an armchair across the coffee table. the separation manifests. there’s a sweet girl who’s about my age who calls me hot.
“you’re from new york,” starts Girl My Age. “it seems like you’ve lived a thousand lives.”
“no, i think new york just made me mean.” i say this blushing behind a beer.
“your shit’s so funny,” says someone. “i would’ve thought you were a comedy writer. what were you doing in new york?”
“writing, actually.”
“for snl?”
“not quite. i just write and like to be funny because i don’t like to feel corny.”
im so gracious and weirdly charming. i know i sound like im blowing smoke up my own ass but i surprise myself with how sociable i am with people in a town i feel i don’t belong in. they introduce me to another one of the readers who’s from new york. we bond over brooklyn accents and they compliment my spiky accessories. i say i stole them from spirit halloween. this wins their favor.
we end up talking about university, which i always dread. enough talks with relatives have made me either falsely believe or finally realize that i wasted four years of education and six decades worth of immigration to get a fake degree.
“imagine me as a lawyer.”
Brooklyn Accent can’t. “i can see you as a bar owner. or like, the bassist for L7.”
“i love you.”
Book Guy and i had been in the middle of bonding over cocaine when a cryptically silent old guy comes and stands right in front of me. “you look very. goth.” well, yes.
“in a good way or a bad way?” i ask Old Guy.
“in an observational way.”
“i’m taking that as a compliment.”
“ok.”
i’ve stumbled upon a very odd group. i cant tell if they’re their own clique within the poetry scene, or if they’re all just acquaintances who are bonded together by the desire to bombard the newcomer. they engage in genuine philosophical conversations that don’t just feel like indie movie pandering (pints and chit chats vibes). this seems hard to come across — like how Tell The Bees says we can’t picture people actually partying, i think new york has made it that we can’t picture people having actual intellectual conversations without trying to make a spectacle out of it. we reflect on the arguments about whether something is narrative or poetry (as if my readings weren’t letters and tweets). anything is poetry if you let it. i say this. Book Guy nods and says “anything is poetry if you look at it funny.“ i’m out of profound things to say. “bars.”
i don’t get anybody’s name. or instagram. i’ve fucked people without knowing their names or getting their instagram, but somehow this feels more intimate.
“what if this is the last time you see me?” i ask. perhaps i’ve made myself feel more important to them than i actually was. maybe it’s wishful thinking to imagine myself an interesting stranger. and i end up going back the next week anyways.
i spent all of september on my side and missing you. i didn’t plan to have to miss you all this long. i wanted to roll through the city like a summer storm and to disappear without a trace. i wanted to leave them wanting. i wanted to be the type of girl who sings in jazz bars and leaves wordlessly without collecting tips that, in my dreams, will have undoubtedly accumulated (this is unrealistic for many reasons — the first being i wouldn’t ever leave without my money. that’s the reason why i’m here). i wanted to become someone’s fleeting muse. leave when people start to recognize me. stay mysterious. unreachable. my humor impenetrable. my job unexplainable. i wanted to return to that period of time in paris when i was before-sunrising all those french boys. i’ll write about that one day.
the open mic at kerouac was refreshing. nobody looked at me like a piece of meat, which isn’t something that i’ll admit to missing until i do. i only drank two beers. normally in new york i never do readings sober — normally in new york i’m never sober period. but this time there wasn’t anyone there that made me feel like i needed a shot. how awesome is that. maybe i can rest easily in the shade of the tree of townie celebrity, where im not drinking to deal with who i might see.
i first heard the word “townie” from that mitski song. in my wildest dreams i write good enough that people ask me questions. i’d have an album or book out called “in the shade of the tree of townie celebrity.” i’d be getting interviewed and they’d ask me if i’m a townie.
“no, i don’t think so. i did everything i could to get out of my hometown but i also had no choice. my parents moved and i never got to say goodbye to my childhood house. but i think there’s something townie in and of itself about doing everything you can to get out of the burbs. it’s a cool sounding word. and maybe a cool prospect to be of a place.” at least the bridge and tunnel people have the bridge and the tunnel.
Keep writing pls, your style scratches such an itch in my brain
💐💐