Performance anxiety.

I have a few writer friends who regularly give readings in public. I used to do this a lot when I was involved in the performance poetry scene (though, as a matter of principle, I refused to adopt that over-the-top, self-important, I-am-a-serious-artist, I-am-DOWN-with-the-revolution, syncopated performance poetry cadence. You KNOW what I'm talkin' about). Yes, believe it or not, Pontifica is a poet. Or, rather, was. I've found that television and poetry do not mix. They inhabit entirely separate corners of the culture; they hang out in mutually exclusive parts of the brain and guard their turf jealously. There's only so much writing time, juice, territory. At least when you're holding down (however tenuously) a full-time job (what we like to refer to as a "support job.").

I do still write the occasional essay, and I think I should get out there again and read in public. Sometime. Some nice, free night when I have no writing class, no writing to do, no dinner to prepare with my girlfriend, no reading, no TV to watch (hey, it's work. I take notes).

Once I was at a lesbian holiday party at The Gauntlet (back when it catered to dykes one night a week, before it became The Eagle, which caters to the fags 24-7) and there was a whole slate of performance scheduled for the evening. Some of it went over well (the kissing contest was a real crowd pleaser). But I'll never forget the poor earnest writer gal who got up on stage to read an earnest essay about what it felt like to be Jewish at Christmastime.

The bar was packed. Hundreds of super-hot east-side art-school chicks were buying each other drinks and screaming into each other's ears above the din. The woman onstage was fighting an uphill battle. Nevertheless, I felt a glow of sisterhood. I wanted to support her. I wanted her to look out into the melee and meet at least one pair of understanding eyes.

But unfortunately, right in front of me there was a gay porn video playing on a giant TV screen, in which a man was being fisted, and peed on, by a whole posse of leather daddies.

I had never seen a man being fisted before. I was unable to drag my eyes away.

The writer kept reading doggedly, getting more and more flustered, more and more verklempt. Finally she screamed, "You all need to pay attention! I worked hard on this! I'm sharing something meaningful with you!"

Everyone ignored her. The racket continued unabated. Oh, the guilt. And yet she kept reading. I wanted to tell her, "just let it go. Get down off the stage and Be Here Now."

But I was too distracted.