Seattle Subsonic

Blood Hag Live, Poetry Reading, Masturbating on the Couch

February 24th, 2010

I was driving to the Hugo House to see BloodHag. They were playing in the Hugo House Literary Series which is a series of events with three or four writers and a musical act of some sort. The events are themed so the writers and the musicians have to write material related to the theme. It’s a cool thing. I went to the November show at the Hugo House and the writers were animated, funny, and meaningful. The musical act that night was a woman alone with her voice and an acoustic guitar. Her tunes were beautiful, heartfelt, soft, and warm. It was a good night. And I was expecting the same from Friday’s lineup of writers and BloodHag.
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Being that the shows commission new material I made a point of not listening to the band’s music on their MySpace site. I wanted the live impression to be my first impression. Thus I pulled into a parking space across the street only knowing that BloodHag billed themselves as literary-themed death metal and that they have toured libraries. Death metal isn’t my normal thing, but libraries and books are so I was curious to see how thing played out. I was curious to see a death metal band follow the quiet page turning of the short story writers and the poets. Plus, my own band was playing next month’s Hugo show so I wanted to meet the sound guy and talk to him about recording. I wanted to check the sound with a band and not just an acoustic guitar. I wanted meet the woman who runs the event and talk about how many songs we would do and how they’d be split between the writers. Much to do in other words.
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I sat in the car as it was only 5:30, and doors opened at 6:30. Besides these special events, Hugo House has open mic readings of poetry and such of course so sitting in my car and looking at the house there just across the street I remembered the one time I went to an open mic poetry night and read a few of my own. It was years ago in Columbus, Ohio. I went with a woman I was seeing, a married woman. Yeah, I know, bad situation but these things can’t be planned. People meet when they meet. That can’t be decided, only what to do or not do with the time together. Sometimes the timing is right, sometimes it isn’t. For us of course, it was and it wasn’t. The important thing was that we got along very well. We went out for drinks together almost every day. We did things illicit lovers do. We often talked about Mrs Dalloway, and one time we went to an open mic poetry reading at a place called Larry’s near Ohio State University. It was rumored to be a gay bar, but I also heard that was a rumor perpetuated by the grad students to keep the undergrads out. Either way I didn’t care. It was a place to drink and read the word. I showed up there one night with that woman, Linda, and three of my poems and signed up to read.
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After a few Rolling Rocks, my turn came and I got up and read. There was a moment in the last one where I raised my right hand and said in reference to self-love that it was the hand I used to … well. It got a couple of laughs. When I finished, I got the obligatory applause and went back to the booth where Linda sat. “Read that last one again for me.” she said. I did. I raised my hand again. I looked her in the eye. She smiled. “I like that one.” I ordered two more beers from the waitress walking by and said, “I have a Bukowski one I want to read you.” I pulled a book form my bag, opened to the marked page. I told her I had been home thinking of some new poems and thinking to move to Seattle. I had been reading on the couch when I thought of her and decided to read her one that contained the following:
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… there

were days

when nobody

bothered me.

then I sometimes

masterbated.
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those were the days

when I got my

work done …
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“I don’t get it. You were masturbating on the couch and decided to leave Columbus?” She smiled as she said this. I sipped my Rolling Rock. “No, that’s not it. It isn’t literal. It’s a matter of ridding yourself of the itches and urges so that you can get down to what you really want to do, what you need to do.” She smiled. We toasted and went back to my van. It was a good night for poetry.
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I looked at my cell phone. 6:30. Time for the show. I got out of my car and went across the street to the Hugo House. I walked up the steps and just before entering I saw the sign, “Tonight’s show is sold out.” That wasn’t good. I didn’t have a ticket. I hadn’t thought it would sell out. I opened the door and walked up to the ticket table, “Are there any tickets left at all?” A young woman looked up at me, “Sorry but we’re sold out. There’s a waiting list you can get on though. We can usually get a few in from the list.”
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“OK, how many are on the list?”
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“67.”
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It was more than a few. Sigh. No BloodHag for me There was a sudden rush of people with tickets and people picking their tickets up from the ticket table. I was pushed aside so I left. Outside I looked back at the house. I laughed. I wasn’t playing music. I wasn’t reading or writing. I wouldn’t hear the writers or the band. I wouldn’t talk to the sound guy or meet the woman who ran the whole affair. Nothing would get done. I went back to the car and sat for a good long while as the evening hours drifted off into nothingness. Hell, I might as well have been home masturbating on the couch. I would have accomplished much more.