lit reading a complete wash

A week ago, I received an email from one of the editors at Forum, a student run, literary mag published through the community college I'm attending. Forum planned to hold two readings for contributors of the mag to read their work to a wider audience. I wasn't able to attend the first reading which which held last Friday at noon. I responded to the email stating I would attend the second reading which was held at Park Branch Library in Haight on Tuesday evening.

I was a little skeptical about the reading events. They didn't seem to be widely publicized and despite being a student run publication, you'd think someone would have done a little marketing legwork to pull in a decent number of participants and peers.

Alas, this was not the case. Thankfully, I only invited a handful of friends to the reading, and only one of which was able to attend. We arrived at the reading a little after the stated 7p start time. I imagined that people would be running late so I didn't think there would be too many there. Lo, there were a total of five, three of which were vagrants off the street. I'm not being judgmental here. Three people really did appear to be bums. One was in a crap shoot wheel chair with a busted right wheel and missing arm rest. he wrapped himself with two grey wool blankets one would find on shelter beds and he rocked in his chair when he rolled about. The other two wore layers of dirty, grey and brown coats of different sizes that matched their dusty looking hair. and it smelled like a musty gym locker in that basement room under the library.

The only two that looked as though they had money to attend a community college sat near the front podium observing the scene before unloading a mishmash of junk food on a side table. I was embarrassed, even more so for bringing my friend. I hate to stereotype but we were dressed like socialites who accidentally walked stumbled into the local rehab shelter. I decided, "screw this" and we walked to Alembic for two rounds of bourbon and three hours of gossip. A much better way to end a Tues evening.