The man in the middle, an older gentleman in a herringbone jacket, jumped in. “Speaking as the only academic on the panel, I also wish to add my appreciation of Loving’s deceptively simple performance. What he has done is take an undistinguished bit of verse and give it a parodic deconstructionist modernist interpretation. It is exactly what the French theorist Barthes did in S/Z—taking a simple sentimental story by Balzac and by applying a reductionist reading showed that literary depth can be plumbed from all forms of literature. He has made ‘The Purple Cow’ not a readerly, but a writerly text.”
Another round of applause spread through the auditorium, and soon thereafter, Loving heard a throng of people screaming wildly and chanting, “Ten! Ten! Ten!” He had no idea what they were talking about, but then, he hadn’t really understood anything that had been said for the last several minutes. The moderator returned, took him by the arm, and escorted him offstage.
“Fantastic job, Loving. Just fantastic. I love your creative spirit. How long have you been in the arts?”
“Umm…prob’ly not as long as you might think.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. I just have to ask.” He turned and laid his hand on Loving’s chest. “Would you be willing to play on my team?”
Loving picked up his hand with two fingers and removed it from his chest. “Look, pal, I—I don’t play for…for the other team. Or both teams. Or…anythin’ like that.”
“Are you sure? Middleton needs a fourth, now that Rufus has dropped out. Nationals is only a month away.”
“Nationals.” Loving’s head was beginning to throb. “Look—can I think about it awhile?”
“Sure. I’ll escort you to the waiting area. There are a few more contestants reciting before the judges make their decisions.”
“Uh—could you by any chance seat me next to…Trudy?”
“Trudy?” A huge smile spread across the moderator’s face. “So that’s what you meant when you said you didn’t play for my team?”
The most intelligent thing Loving could think of to say was, “Huh?”
“Please don’t think I’m criticizing. Different strokes, right? Live and let live.”
They stepped down a side staircase into the audience gallery. Up on the stage, a plump woman with spiky hedgehog hair was reciting: “Man did not give me language. Man cannot take it away from me. I have a voice and I will not be silenced…”
Loving took a vacant seat on the end of a row and wondered what to do next. While he contemplated his options, a woman in her midforties wearing a bridal gown scooted down two seats and sat beside him.
He nodded. “Evenin’, ma’am.”
She returned the nod. “Back to you. Everyone treating you right?”
“Well…”
“Thought not. These people are so obsessed about the Nationals, they’ve lost all perspective.”
There was that word again. “Nationals?”
“The National Poetry Slam. In D.C. next month. Biggest one ever. Teams from thirty-two states will be participating. Huge crowds are expected. Big prize money.”
“Big prize money?”
“Well, two thousand dollars. But in the poetry world, that’s Bill Gates money.”
“Bill Gates? He’s really—” Loving decided not to digress. “What exactly is a…poetry slam?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Still playing with me, or are you really that naïve?” She adjusted the bodice of her gown. “Think of it as the Olympics of poetry. The Vatican of Verse.”
“It’s a competition?”
“Correct. A panel of judges—sometimes pros, sometimes selected from the audience—pick the winners.”
“How can you decide whether one poem is better than another?”
“I know, it’s so subjective, but they do it every week. It’s crazy, but it’s a last-ditch effort to keep poetry from dying out altogether. The whole thing was invented by this guy in Chicago, Marc Smith—a former construction worker, of all things. Then it took off—all across the nation, people trying to revitalize the poetry world, bring it to new audiences, rescue it from the pit of obscurity where academia left it, all so remote and inelegant that no one wanted to read it anymore. Poetry slams are about poetry from the people, not the eggheads. Sure, we bring in an egghead every now and again, just to give the thing some legitimacy, but this is a populist movement. It’s not about professors. It’s about people like you.”
Loving glanced at her intricate white lace gown. “I like your outfit.”
“This is a costume. It’s meant to bring home what I’m going to say about the tyranny of the patriarchal system, the whole antiquated notion of marriage, which they call a sacrament but is really more like an extended date rape. It’s about women taking control of their own bodies. You know what I mean? I don’t care about being someone’s possession. His sex slave. Hausfrau. I want to find my social consciousness.”
“Where did you lose it?” Loving asked, blank-faced.
She stared at him for a second, then smiled. “You’re really good, you know it? For a moment, I almost took you seriously. Would you be interested in joining my team?”
Loving hadn’t been this popular since grade-school dodgeball. “Are you with Middleton?”
“God, no. Like Michael? I hate those queer banana Emily Dickinson knockoffs. I’m with Waverly. We’re more in the Walt Whitman school. We go head-to-head with Middleton next week. It’ll be an American poet smackdown. And then the week after that—Head-to-Head Haiku.”
“Haiku?”
“I got a surefire winner. Wanna hear it?” She closed her eyes before he made his apparently irrelevant response, then began: “But just because you/Put your tongue inside my ear/Don’t mean we’re betrothed.” She opened her eyes. “Pretty good, huh? Smacks you right in the groin.”
“It does. It really does.”
“Last time we competed with Middleton, we tied after the first round. Then I served up a little inner wisdom and Middleton’s leader, Michael, the moderator tonight, did his usual loss-of-childhood-innocence riff. So trite. After round two and my piece on my sister’s death—very spiritual—we pulled ahead by .03 points. But then Malcolm—their token black member—did this racism thing that sounded as if it were written in the beatnik era. They ended up winning by a paltry .01 points. I was so disgusted. I’m dying for a rematch. And I think you might be just what we need.”
“Well…let me give it some thought. By the way, I’ve been looking for someone who I think was planning to come here tonight—name of Trudy. You know her?”
The bride’s eyes widened. “You’re with Trudy?”
“Well, I’m not exactly—”
“I never would’ve guessed. I guess that tough-guy exterior really is a costume, isn’t it?”
“What is it about this woman? Every time I tell someone I’m lookin’ for her, they practically bust a gut. Do you dislike her?”
“No, I adore Trudy. Tried to get her on my team once, years back. I just didn’t think you were…you know. The type.” She giggled. “I’m sorry. That’s rude.”
Loving was long past trying to understand. “If you could just help me find her—”
“I’m afraid I have no idea.”
“If you could give me a detailed description, maybe? I saw her once, but not for long.”
“She’s gorgeous. Big wide eyes, blue as the ocean surrounding a Caribbean island. Strong. And long hair—you can’t miss that. Brunette hair almost to the waist.”
That filled out his earlier glance of her reflection nicely. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot. At least it gave him a chance. “ ’Preciate that.”