My all-time, top-titillating #1 fetish is being read to. No lie. Someone starts to read something and my core gets all melty and my knees get a little weak. Once, when I was much younger than I am right now I kissed a fellow gas station attendant while we were working merely because he started reading Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” to me.

The first time I ever met the TTHM we spent the evening walking around the Barnes & Noble and he read Molly Bloom’s speech to me, and I had to actually grab onto a bookshelf to keep my balance.

So, yeah I think I was built for enjoying poetry slams. Last night I went to my first ever poetry slam at Kieran’s Irish Pub put on by SlamMN!.

It was awesome.

I fell in love about 49 times. I’m easy. It was a themed slam, where each performer who went up there interpreted song lyrics. The songs ranged from Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” to the Weakerthan’s “Favorite Chords” (which was my personal favorite). The poets were just amazing. AMAZING! The whole time I watched them perform I kept thinking ‘fiction writers are totally boring.’ And then, I felt a little bad for myself, being a big boring fiction writer and all. I mean I can’t imagine any, any of my writing ‘mates getting up there and doing something like the slam.

My absolute favorite part of the Slam were the ‘featured’ poets whose names I cannot remember and that’s sad, because they were just jaw-droppingly good. One of the poets whose name may or may not have been Chris did a poem about his buck-teeth, and he had a line about “Writing a letter to that which you hate.” It was beautiful. He talked about how he hates his teeth and how every single thing he writes has to come from those fucked up teeth.

The other guy, whom I will simply call Chewie (because that’s what his shirt said) did this great poem about spying a girl in a coffee shop and how he was becoming one of those creepy guys who stares at girls in coffee shops and how he’s tired of masturbating. He had a great line about how his hand and his dick were like 3rd graders at recess, they didn’t want to play with each other but had to because there was nobody else around.

And this, this is why I envy the poets. That image. I mean it’s a whole different day and I still remember those very real, very specific images.

God, it was awesome and I can’t wait to go again (May 23rd).