It's nearly becoming a trend for me to go to weekly readings at ACWLP. On Monday, we (Lisa and I) went to hear Beth Lisick read from her recently released autobiography Everybody into the Pool. I've read some of Lisick's short stories (not impressed), but I heard her name tossed around enough in the San Francisco lit scene that I was willing to give her another shot. (Remember: It's free! And books! And, what else is there to do on Monday night?)
Thankfully, not as packed as the Hornby reading, we were able to get a seat in the back.
She read from Chapter 10: Circling The Wagons. "I am visiting New York City, and it is the season of the Peasant Look. I walk the streets of my brother Chris's SoHo neighborhood, trying not to get smothered by a billowing sleeve or garroted by a stray leather choker..."
It's funny.
Really.
Married with a kid and a station wagon, Lisick is energetic and self-effacing. When, during the as always bland Q & A, she was asked about some of the oddities of her life (Drag king babysitter! Her husband's mother's girlfriend!), she calmly responded as I would have: "We live in San Francisco." I expect a reaction like that from my mother not a women in the front row of what I would call a "queer lit event" in downtown San Francisco only a couple of weeks after Pride.
I bought the book. I'm reading it. From the introduction:
A few months ago, I was at my parents' house having dinner, and my mom was talking about someone she recently met. "I felt just awful for him," she said, dipping her knife into the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. "He's the first person I've ever met in my life who was actually emotionally scarred by his childhood." I tried really hard not to laugh, but did anyway because I can be a jerk sometimes. "What's so funny?" she said, looking around the table at everybody, slightly bewildered. There was no reaction from my dad who, still in Phase I of the South Beach Diet, was busy searching underneath his skinless chicken breast for a carb. When my mom saw how older brother Chris fake-coughed and grinned into his lap, she knew something was up.
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