Funny Business Afoot At Last Night's "Above Average Open Mic Night" At Winnings Coffee
So last night I went to the “Above Average Open Mic Night” at RB Winnings Coffee in Albuquerque, right by the University. It was overall a great time, with lots of talented singer-songwriters offering up two songs apiece when they went up. If you haven’t been to this event, it happens every Thursday night, and it’s hosted by a great guy named Steven Nery. Before 7 pm rolls around, every one who wants to perform puts their name in a jar, and then when the night begins Steven picks out at random who is going to perform. So you never know when your turn is up; it’s a good way to keep everybody on their toes and listening to everyone else.
I like to go to this show because as a performing poet I’m usually the only poet out of a dozen or so performers. It’s just a nice way to stand out. So, as luck had it last night, I was there for at least an hour and a half or so before I went on. I got to hear some great musicians, and also got to hear some musicians who perhaps should have prepared a little more before signing up to perform. There was the lady who tried really, really, OVERLY hard to get people to sing along to her songs that incorporated jazz flute, bongos, and references to mermaids and bodily fluids. There was the young guy who reminded me essentially of Conor Oberst. He was alright. And friendly. There was Norm Everett, who was amazing and he sang and played guitar and employed with his voice a highly-stylized and arresting overtone throat-singing effect. He is a joy to listen to and watch when he performs, and I’ll sit through an hour of people who are either rusty or haven’t prepared enough just to get to hear him do his thing. There was another singer-songwriter I’ll mention here because his talent was so exceptional, a guy named C. Daniel Boling. His songs last night were pretty, forceful, melodic, well-crafted and enjoyable.
So, I get called up eventually to read and I performed two poems, “Would It Kill You To Die”, and “Congratulations”. I decided before I even got to the venue that I was in no mood to be offering up humorous poems, and that I wanted to offer up to the crowd some things that were from closer, more personal parts of me. I had performed once at this open mic night before, and had already given them a couple of funny poems, so I felt it was a good call to show some breadth and depth. So, I finish the poems and the crowd (still a mostly full café at this point late in the night) applauds and I make my way to my seat. Brooke and Tracey and Michael are there with me and they tell me the set was good (thank you, especially, Tracey, for what you said about my gesture control during “Congratulations”) and we continue to watch the next performer. At this point I realize I am parched and I get up and make my way to the counter to get some water. Along the way I am stopped three times by a few different people thanking me for my poetry and this was good. So, at this point I’m sipping my water off to the side and watching the proceedings and someone has just given me their contact info and complimented me for my words and here is where the night went COMPLETELY INSANE. I start to walk towards my seat again and I feel a tap on my shoulder and this older man, perhaps in his 70’s (Tracey and Brooke and Michael, help me out here, I’m no good at all at guessing people’s ages) with a wild mane of white-gray hair and a long beard tied in a ponytail (is it a ponytail if it’s a beard?) looks at me, leans in towards my face and half-whispers to me, “I know what a liar you are.” I blink at him and say, “Excuse me?” This guy proceeds to tell me that he knows that I am a liar, and that he “knows about all the code words” that me and my “kind” have, and don’t I know there’s a reason why the word “queer” is in the word “AlbuQUEERque”? Ooooooooookay. So, I ask him to tell me what exactly he’s talking about, and he says to me, “I’ve seen you here before, you know, reading at that thing here with the phony poetry where everybody yells (here he was apparently referring to the MAS de ABQ Poetry night that also happens at Winnings, doh!), and I know all about your little code words. I know about the log cabins and the Peterbilts. I know that your kind is trying to take over Albuquerque. You think it’s funny? I can tell phony laughter, too, you know. You got everybody fooled here except me. I’m not fooled at all.” At this point I was completely speechless and giggling openly at him. I let the guy just go off on me because he was so hilarious. It turns out that what he was really referring to was my recent performance at Winnings of a poem of mine called “Taste the Rainbow”, which is a poem that lampoons and satirizes the attitudes of an imagined homophobic co-worker. In the poem, there’s a fair bit of double-entendre wordplay built around the idea (from the homophobe’s perspective) of pernicious gay code language. But this crazy guy last night was basically telling me that the fictitious homophobe in my poem was right, and that “the gays” really are “taking over”. So, after like ten minutes of this (during which I basically completely missed the person who was onstage), I look at him and say, “Yeah, okay, fella, best of luck to you there; thanks for being so entertaining” and I turn from him to fill my glass with more water at the counter. My shoulders are heaving up and down I’m laughing so hard at this point. But Crazy Santa “homophobe” Claus has to get in one more parting shot, and I hear him lean in behind me and whisper, before he takes his leave of me, “And I can see your phony laughter, too”.
I go back to my seat and I’m trying as hard as I possibly can to stifle waves of hysterical laughter at this. My poem “Taste the Rainbow”, a poem that makes fun of a homophobe using outrageous language, actually PRODUCED A HOMOPHOBE right there at my feet who was using outrageous language at me. Was this all some sort of sympathetic magic? Also, let me just say here, in the most succinct web vernacular there is: WTF LOG CABINS AND PETERBILTS?!
So I’m sitting there, and Brooke and Tracey and Michael are all looking at me and I tell them what transpired and we have a laugh. And so we pass around notes on my legal pad about what, if anything I should do. It’s outrageous and hilarious and kind of upsetting all at the same time.
Best line of the night for me actually goes to Tracey,
who told me I should have told the guy that I “had a thing for GDILF’s”.