This Friday:

I have a few more things up various sleeves, but first and foremost, is Toiling IX, the two-year anniversary of the show.

The Awful Possibilites

After what seemed like forever, but was really only eleven months, Christian TeBordo's short story collection, The Awful Possibilities arrived on my doorstep Monday afternoon.


It’s hard to write about a book that feels already like a timeline of my life. “Sweet William, Don’t Even Bother Denying It” (from Three Denials) and I go back to July 29th, 2006, at a show that made me think, “I could do this.” It was the first time I’d encounter Jeremy, though I don’t remember him or his photos at all, just some mumblers, stories that went on too long, the guy who tried to ruin Masculine Feminine by boring me in front of it, how drunk Deb got, and telling Micah where a story really should have ended, as if I were some kind of authority.

“Rules and Regulations” (well, part two of “Rules and Regulations”) was the first story read at the first reading I held two years ago. My brother watched, wide-eyed, mouthing “baby dad” to me from across the room, while I got away with murder – a real audience, and real applause, and someone (whose tears are unpredictable, but regularly so) even cried.

“SS Attacks!” was the highlight of Toiling in Obscurity’s first anniversary, and “Moldering” was read at the first reading where I learned for myself that being a girl’s no way to win over an audience.

None of this has anything to do with the book and how good it is, unless, perhaps, you count that fact that good stories are like good records: they remind you of all the selves you’ve been since you first read them. The Awful Possibilities is full of good stories, even if you haven’t grown up with them.

Christian rarely gets enough credit for how funny he is and how sad his jokes are once you really think about them. On one of the postcards dividing the story her writes,

“Your father seemed embarrassed. My mother wasn’t there because she is dead so get over it.”

which sums the book up well: Christian TeBordo writes stories that are forceful and funny and stealthily sad.

Christian TeBordo will be reading at the next Toiling in Obscurity, on March 26th. You can order The Awful Possibilities here.

What I Have Learned

Some things are hard for me to admit:

1. that I need help
2. that I have parents who aren’t wolves
3. that I have been influenced by other humans

None, however, are more important for you to pay attention to than #3. (Especially ignore 1 and 2.) If there were ever a person who had an influence on my adult mind, it would be Sebastian Agudelo. I followed him through UArts Liberal Arts classes, thorough poetry and prose and cigarette breaks. He is the best teacher that ever taught me anything.

Sebastian, who so bravely and grumblingly did my reading last week, is doing another reading this week, on Friday, at Brickbat Books. You, reader, should go, and you should listen, and you should probably buy his book, because of all the people that ever taught me anything, only two of them have published books*. And even if you won't do it for me, or for Giaco, who will be handing out wine, I hear, do it because the world demands of you some participation, and listening is always the easiest option.


*Do you recall that I mentioned another person? It was Christian TeBordo, who has written a story collection (from which he read last weekend), that is available only through Paper Egg Books. You should also probably get that, because no one else has ever bent the English language to fit the culture as perfectly as he did when he wrote "Tupac-alypse."

Mark Your Calendars

This March marks the year anniversary of the Toiling in Obscurity readings. Organizing and performing in these things has been the most (only) satisfying part of my creative life in the past year. It is with great pleasure, present to you:

TOILING IN OBSCURITY V
Friday, March 13th
7pm at The Dive

with Poetry from:
Sebastian Aguedelo
and
Giaco Furino

Fiction by:
Jaime Fountaine,
Christian Tebordo,
Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum,
and
Tabitha Vidaurri

and Music from:
Tim TeBordo