Last night was the 31st anniversary of my first underage consumption, there on a gravel road south of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I grew up. The cops came from two directions, pinned us down between two corn fields. Someone ratted. My dad had to come pick me up. He had been sleeping. He was displeased.
Thirty-one years later I tried an open mic for the first time last night, reading “Please, put me in your will.” These two things are unrelated, so far as I know.
The open mic went well. Better than well. What a good feeling that was. I had business cards made and people took them. I’m not a business though, just me, but with a card you don’t have to talk to people, and it’s not as much information as if I had made a photocopy of my driver’s license and handed that out.
There were about 40 people there, but I was not as terrified as I thought I might be. I did some diarrhea beforehand, but it wasn’t like I had to take Imodium. I had my shit mostly together. Also, I wore a nice cowboy shirt, as well as a bolo tie (but also shorts), both of which gave me unfounded confidence in that they were more of a costume than anything, and I could pretend to some extent that I was someone else, just a cowboy doing cowboy stuff around the fire (who had drank some bad water earlier).
About a dozen years ago I bought a cowboy hat. I can’t say why, exactly. I felt it might be a passing urge, so I resisted the temptation for more than a year, and then I found myself passing through Deadwood, South Dakota — Wild Bill Hickok and all that — and I still wanted a cowboy hat, so I got one. It is beat to hell and worn out, but I still like to wear it when I’m in the sun.
This morning I read a poem called Fetch, by Tony Hoagland. There’s a line about “trembling, bowlegged bliss” that’s as lovely as anything I’ve ever read.
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