I don’t remember exactly how old I was- somewhere between 17 and 19- when my friend Scott started doing poetry slams. He had been a couple of times before I joined him, and the bar looked like the scary part in Pinnochio. Loud colors. Dark. Has an air of weird you just can’t place. Or at least, that’s what I thought when I walked in.
Scott was a little bit older than me, so he ordered me something to drink. He asked if I liked sweet or savory. I told him that it didn’t matter. I had never tried either one.
It was a perfect dirty martini with olives and ice chips and oh, God- I’ve never had anything like it. It’s salt dripping on my lips as if pickles could dance and I think to myself, “I have to remember to tell my friend Diane the name of this drink. She likes salt on everything!” I had no idea that the martini is basically the most famous drink in the ENTIRE WORLD. I can only imagine what that conversation would have looked like. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU’VE ALREADY TRIED ONE?!”
But I digress.
Scott wasn’t just good. Scott was amazing. He had gotten a following together, and they all met at this weird bar that in Portland, would look upscale. In Houston, it looked like it backed up to Crack Ho Estates.
After the poetry slam, the poets and our friends would all gather in the loft and shoot the breeze. A couple of times, they smoked pot. I say “they” very clearly because I was not cool. I thought the pipe looked like a weapon and I knew drugs were bad, mmmkay.
So it was just my job to turn up the music and make sure Scott got home ok. Because of this, I would only have one martini a week. I kept a very fastidious schedule because the talent was counting on me and that’s all we could afford between the two of us, anyway. I earned an allowance of my age per week. This usually consisted of one CD at Half Price Books, one cup of coffee at Crossroads, and cover to get into whatever club Scott was reading at that week. He bought the martini.
I’m writing about this because it is a memory fragment that needs preserving, but there’s not necessarily a beginning, middle, and end of the story. Scott is still a great writer, and I adore him, but there’s never going to be another first martini, there’s never going to be another first look at a pot pipe and thinking that it was probably going to kill Scott in his sleep.
To me, it’s important to remember the little things, because they serve you later, especially as a writer. My stories would not have half the depth and breadth that they do if I didn’t listen with a tape recorder in my head. If there is a writer that I would like to emulate, the one that runs across my head the most is Dominick Dunne. I have little interest in the trials of the rich and the very rich, but I still want his title. Simple, Clean, Efficient.
Diarist.
Stories That Are All True 