Before the literary reading, I’m watching Party Girl to kill time. While getting ready for the literary reading, I’m borrowing my mom’s eyeliner and dancing to Addison Rae. On the way to the literary reading, I’m drinking a mango White Claw on the LIRR and listening to Bladee. I had trouble sleeping the night before because I was so anxious. I’ve never hosted anything in my life. Before Lexapro (which I started in late 2023), I had a severe fear of public speaking; in college I’d transfer classes if we were required to do presentations. But the SSRI pretty much cured me, and pregaming has made me unstoppable. I’ve already begun planning the next reading so this one can’t go wrong. I don’t feel nervous on the train. I feel awesome. I do wish, however, that it wasn’t ninety degrees.
I started planning Weird Fucks after helping Cletus Crow plot his Jesus Freak book launch in April. It was wonderful and easy. It was at Seventh Heaven, and the bartenders there were really nice to me and encouraged me to plan something there. An Anaïs Nin-inspired theme only felt right.
While pissing during my transfer at Jamaica, I break off an acrylic nail and glue it back on. I get off at Nostrand Ave, take a twenty minute Uber from there. Usually I go into Manhattan and take the L but the L is fucking up today, everyone’s texting me about it. Instead of having the AC on, the Uber driver rolls the windows down. I finish my second tall boy and toss it in a garbage bin in front of the bar. When I walk in, the bartender’s eating dinner with his friend. I’ve never been to Seventh Heaven in broad daylight and notice the skylight for the first time. He hands me a Montauk and I lay out the pamphlets I’d made for the reading on the circular table by the benches. I was inspired to make them after my grandma’s funeral. Her pamphlet was pretty. I should have used better quality paper. These fuckers are going to get damaged. You live and you learn. Colette’s the first to show up and we take photos of each other with the pamphlets and post them on social media. I was worried that I didn’t do enough promo and no one would show up. But the bartender Tyler tells us fifty people RSVP’d so I’m relieved. Colette and I scroll through the list and I’m happy to see so many unfamiliar names.
Steven arrives next and we talk about Brand New and My Chemical Romance. He says he has to catch a train back to Boston at one a.m. He shows me his MCR and Amy Hempel tattoos. Friends pour in: Abby, Greta (who’s reading), Arielle (also reading), Emma and Tara, Haley, Nik and Claire (reading!), David and Layla, Gray, Nick (secret reader and photographer), Sivan, Conor, other David, Colin, Daniel, Elisha. It’s so crowded and awesome it feels like it’s my birthday. I always thought I would be good at hosting things because I’m great at bringing random people together at the bar on weekends. I’m a weirdo magnet and I introduce all the weirdos to each other. I can unite the people. I really can.
Colette, Haley, Emma, and I made an eight-hour playlist that’s floating beneath all the chatter. To try to sum up this playlist is a fool’s errand, but I’m famously a fool so I’ll try. 2hollis, Television, Addison Rae, DEVO, Grimes, Playboi Carti, Donna Summer, Swans, Third Eye Blind, Nine Inch Nails, Liz Phair, Morrissey, Britney Spears, Scott Walker, Lana Del Rey, The Stooges…
I feel so responsible figuring out the reading order. Like maybe I was born to be an event planner? I should look into that, as I kind of need a real job and real money. I’m going first, then Claire, then Nicola, then Kitty. Then it’s intermission and I’ll figure out the rest later.
At 8:30 I get a Peroni and have to get the blabbering crowd from the bar to the other room. This is no easy feat. Thank god for my friends. Colette politely says into the mic that the reading is starting. No one cares. I’m sitting on the stage getting my shit together: Notebook, pen, vape, magazine, pamphlet, phone. I just start yelling into the mic for everyone to shut up and it works and everyone finally migrates. I went fucking insane trying to pick what to read. I wanted to read something I’d never read before, ideally an excerpt from my 100,000-word unpublished Pregaming Grief “sequel” that’s basically love/sex diaries. But choosing an excerpt is hard. I kept changing my mind and getting annoyed and frustrated, so I ultimately settled on reading what Gabriel Hart so graciously published in the latest issue of Beyond the Last Estate, which is about a romance with a writer who had a long-term girlfriend and lied to me about it. I’ve read it twice before. I am apparently not reading loud enough, according to audience members who inform me later, which makes me embarrassed. But I guess I’m sort of not really in it; I just want to get it over with so everyone else can read. I also don’t really feel connected to the piece anymore. It’s so depressing and I’m so happy tonight. Plus I just hate reading serious pieces. If people aren’t laughing I feel like I’m torturing them.
Claire generously confined her bio to eighty-eight words after I imposed a three-sentence maximum. When we did a reading together at this same venue in December, Car Crash girlies Britt and Erin struggled with Claire’s three-paragraph-long introduction, which was a thoroughly entertaining rebellion against the writerly urge to have a modest bio. I typically harbor feelings of contempt toward wordy bios, but Claire’s protests are changing my mind, though I also think she can make anything look chic. I’m doing a good job introducing her until I stumble over the word “psychoanalysis” several times. Not a good look for a self-proclaimed Anaïs Nin aficionado!
I’m manically scribbling notes on my pamphlet as she reads for the purpose of this very piece you’re reading right now. It is not easy at all due to the acrylic nails. Claire reads her story We Will Never Be Friends. I write: “Claire has a way of reading that feels like a conversation. She has such a nice reading voice.” I’m always jealous of that because I do not. It’s like how I can’t look normal when a camera is pointed at me; I can’t sound natural reading in front of people. Claire’s tone is inviting. I transcribe the lines: “Why don’t I just live in a barn” and “I keep dreaming that my partner is kissing other writers who are more successful than me.” She says she dreams her partner is kissing Kate Zambreno, which is especially funny to me considering she was my professor. I love any writing that’s about dreams so I love Claire’s piece. I transcribe: “You have taken my fidelity for granted.” It’s so funny.
Nicola goes next. I read her book Other Women years ago and adored it; now it’s about to be republished on Verso, and the new cover is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I read her other book Nothing Can Hurt You last year and somehow it was even better. She also has a spectacular poem on Spectra called Rape Fantasy that’s probably the best on the whole website. I transcribe: “You fucked me into oblivion / But I liked it there so I stayed.” It’s lines like this that draw me to her writing. She uses just a few words for the perfect gut-punch. It’s so masterful. She has an impactfully detached way of reading, like she’s on another planet. She lets the pages fall at her feet. I love when readers do that. She only reads for a couple of minutes—brief but visceral.
Then we have Kitty St. Remy, who I read alongside at Jack Skelley’s book launch at Old Flings last summer. I’m having trouble keeping up with all that I want to transcribe, and there’s not enough space on the page. Young repressed sexuality is at the center of her story, which is incredibly sensory. The ache is palpable. Prayers serve as navigation. Human bodies are likened to statues. I’m totally sucked into her world. I scribble: “She makes reading off a phone look chic.” My words on the paper are becoming increasingly illegible.
During intermission I burn my finger while Nick and I are buttfucking our cigarettes. Gray puts my hand on a cold bottle and asks if it feels better. I introduce people to other people, even if they’ve already met. Steven offers me a hit of weed but I’m scared of drugs so I run away. Nick takes pictures of me but I’m disturbingly unphotogenic and probably look like an evil goblin. Inside my Twitter opp tries to give me advice about the mic. I respond by calling him [redacted] several times and yelling at him to go away. Months ago he made a mean tweet about a reading I was doing with Richard Hell and Geoff Rickly. I quote-tweeted, “if you put your energy into producing a single piece of good writing instead of hating me online for years maybe you would be reading alongside richard hell and geoff rickly too.” He then quote-tweeted, “i know a dog with one trick (writing bad autofiction about fucking older men) aint talking like this.” It’s not even true! I write about fucking appropriately aged men too! And it got 132 likes. 132! But in a way I’m grateful. People like him and the book reviewer who compared me to an OnlyFans star and the GoodReads reviewer who diagnosed me with narcissistic hypersexual personality disorder and the writer in my emails who called my work “disposable confessions” and “sexually degrading” and the guy on Twitter who said my art is a “net negative for society” are why I set up this reading. They project a sort of evilness onto sex writing by women, like it’s automatically degrading either themselves or someone else. I’m tired of sex writing either being viewed as degrading or empowering; why can’t it just be?
Coming back from intermission is hard; everyone wants to keep chatting, but Arielle easily ropes us back in with her droll Upstate New York instant classic autofiction opus. I’m not sure if it has a title, but if it doesn’t I humbly suggest Pound Town, USA. Maybe Arielle will let me publish it in Hobart. We’ll see. The third-person narration of our beloved protagonist Arielle reminds me of Chris Kraus. I transcribe: “She wanted to get railed” (this is what Weird Fucks is about, baby) and “A real man would know his constellations.” American Traditional tattoos, Third Eye Blind’s self-titled, denim on denim, IPAs, missing teeth, an indie rock musician recently interviewed by Spin, dog separation anxiety. The crowd roars with laughter. Arielle Gordon the legend that you are. Please write a book of this.
It’s time for our surprise male reader: Nick Dove, who so graciously offered to photograph this event for free because of his love of Anaïs Nin (in exchange I got him John Maus guestlist, for the record). I wrote his bio for him: “Nick Dove is a 7-foot-tall vagabond multi-hyphenate. Angelicism once wrote, ‘I want to take Nick Dove’s fragile spine and snap it in two. I want to kill Nick Dove. I want to kill Nick Dove as revenge for the fact that he probably gets more pussy than me.’” He is here so we can beat the misandry allegations. Also for the record, I asked two male readers to be on the original lineup but they were both busy.
Anyway I was first drawn to Nick’s writing upon reading his endearingly earnest and acerbic Substack, particularly his piece about the Drift party. Some might consider him a Dimes Square scene reporter, but he has an interesting perspective on it all, you get the sense he’s a genuinely curious and amused observer more than a participant, and you can’t blame him, even if his stories are littered with pests. Tonight he asks if we’re OK with him reading two pieces instead of one because he wants to make sure he’s not taking time away from the women. Nick Dove feminist icon? Everyone wants him to read two. He begins with an admirably depressing hook, “The last time we tried was the day we married.” He reads of a skin-tight dress and blue heels and signing documents and heading to Popeye’s, contemplating saving a dying romance while devouring greasy fast food. He reads of being hard on the car ride home and retracing their steps and everything’s working until they’re back in bed and it goes all wrong. “Once we were like a circuit board, our parts complicated but coordinating, and when turned on, firing on all cylinders. But now those switches seemed broken, like there was no electricity at all.” It’s an evocative snapshot of the desperation to make something work again and the disillusionment when it doesn’t. The next piece he reads, The Snow Globe, similarly captures painfully complicated feelings that are at odds with reality. I transcribe: “Nothing was ever perfect when it was real.”
Greta next. Greta and I became friends after I accepted her amazing story The Branzino for Hobart in 2023. Here was what I replied at the time: “oh wow, I love this, the characters, the convo, & the food all feel so well fleshed out. when the potato rolls onto the floor… perfect.” She keeps getting even better and is going to take over the world. We have done a million readings together and she has everyone in a trance every time. Her debut novel, Now More Than Ever, is coming soon from Dream Boy Book Club and I’m very excited. Tonight she’s reading excerpts from her Substack. She begins: “Well I’m blacklisted from the European Wax Center now.” I mean come on. Genius. Drunk and wanting to transcribe everything she says, I manage to catch: “I couldn’t crash out if I wanted to.” “I always think God is punishing me for having sex.” I love how Greta’s upbringing in Florida gives her a fresh perspective on New York. The way she weaves together familial turmoil and the chaos of her love life is special. She compares sleeping with a guy to shooting a deer after you hit it with your car. Like Claire she writes about her dreams. She name-drops Fiona Apple and Scumbag Summer. “Everything feels like a cult. Probably because I grew up in a cult. Jobs are a cult, the scene is a cult, politics is a cult, art is a cult, a group chat is a cult, the club is a cult, getting an MFA is a cult.” Amen.
Finally we have the one and only Megan Nolan. I read her book Acts of Desperation a few years ago and it tore me to shreds. I have read many books about self-destructive romance but no one hits the nail on the head like Megan does. A lot of my friends agree. It’s a goddamn classic. Ordinary Human Failings was a hell of a follow-up—a complete pivot into a new voice and new territory, and absolutely successful. What spoke to me most about this one was its communication of the consistent human urge to try to understand—understand ourselves, understand others, understand intentions, understand why things happen—which, in a way, is the entire point of writing. Her meditations on alcoholism struck me as scarily accurate and insightful: “If a bottle ended then it had to be replaced from somewhere, no matter how it was obtained.” “A feeling of contentment and buoyancy came over him and he felt proud of himself for not having a drink, and this clean good feeling made him want a drink.” The excerpt she reads tonight is about shame and disillusionment. As John and Louise Green’s marriage disintegrates, the phone rings and John picks it up to a man who says, “Everybody fucks your wife,” a situation so horrific that it’s darkly comical. The calls continue to come; the same sentiment arriving in different forms. “He did not allow himself any room to dwell in the meaning of the calls, and instead dealt exclusively in the physical side effects of incessant denial, which were constant and disgusting.” Megan’s writing puts the subconscious on display; it’s startling and captivating.
And that concludes the reading. What next? Lots and lots of karaoke. Colette and I do Morrissey’s “Suedehead.” Arielle does the Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?” Nick and Arielle do Green Day’s “American Idiot” and shout the slur. I invade David’s “Girls & Boys,” and I know I’m drunk because when we finish I tell him, “I thought that was a Blur song,” and he replies, “It was.” (What did I think it was?) Colette, Sivan, and I do the Smiths’ “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.” Steven and I do “The Sharpest Lives” by My Chemical Romance. Abby does the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage.” Tara does Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff.” Colette and I do the Stone Roses’ “I Wanna Be Adored.” Some divas do Black Sabbath’s ten-minute “War Pigs.”
I leave with the guy I hooked up with the weekend before. I lead us to a bodega where I buy a pack of White Claws. While we sit on a stranger’s stoop, he asks if I want to split the Uber back to his and I feel offended and annoyed. It strikes me as utterly unromantic and puts me in a sour mood. We walk back to the bar to get my phone but I can’t find my vape. We wander around in the ninety degree heat looking for a vape shop and then I dig deeper into my tote and find it. I’m sweaty and irritated and he says it seems like I’m having a bad time. I think we’re sort of fighting, like the energy’s not good between us, which is probably a bad sign considering our first date was just a week ago, but it’s been sort of intense off the bat, considering I wrote him a story after we first met and that’s why he asked me out. I’m cross-legged on the sidewalk trying to fix things by blowing bubbles. I’d forgotten I brought three bubble wands for the girls. I’ll save them for the next reading. In the Uber we’re quiet and far apart and I’m no longer sweaty but still irritated because the ride is so fucking long and I’m so fucking tired. But like thirty minutes in we start talking about speeding tickets and I remember again that I like him. His apartment has no AC but I feel a wave of relief when we finally fall into bed and he wraps me in his arms and takes me. His touch is enveloping. Everything bad is washed away.
Photos courtesy of Nick Dove (black-and-white) and Colette Bernheim (color). See more below.
