Last Night
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Last night I went to a reading in Echo Park. It was held at Time Travel Mart, which is ostensibly a storefront where you buy time travel related items, but is also 826LA. I didn't know anyone there and was late because traffic, so I sat by myself at a table. There were 3 x 5 cards and cups of pencils on every table, and I was instructed to write a writing prompt on the card, which I did: A GIRL WITH NO NOSE. Several people read. Then it was time for the intermission game, which was basically: two volunteers, one writing prompt selected from the bucket of them, and five minutes to write something. Then you would read what you wrote. Then the audience would vote on who won. So I volunteered because #YOLOLA. And I wrote a story about a man named Martin Feeble who meets a girl at a dance and the girl has an "attractively lumpy disposition." Then we read our stories. Then the two of us who were competing put our head on our table, and the rest of the room voted. It was a tie. Afterwards, I went and looked around in the faux storefront. It had curious things like a soda case of dinosaur eggs, and a TIME-FREEZY HYPER SLUSH machine. I decided to buy a can of PRIMORDIAL SOUP and asked the man, who was a bit rumpled, working the front desk what was in it. He stayed in time travel character and said some confusing things about the past, present, and future. In other words, he did not answer my question. Then he asked me if I enjoyed myself, and I said I did, but, I said, I was "angry" that I hadn't won the write-off, that it was a tie. I was staying in character: my character of a chagrined writer. I'm not sure if he thought I was joking or not. Then I took my can of primordial soup and left.