empty-handed at the literary reading

flash fiction

Wrote this for a reading I did the other day. — salty

As the big and small hands on the clock continued to tick forwared, it dawed on Brian that there was a big problem on his hands — he didn’t have anything ready for the reading. He had told himself he was going to work on something over the weekend, a short story or an excrept of a larger piece perhaps, but he had walked into Friday and stumbled out of Sunday with nothing written down. This wasn’t typical of him. Normally, Brian was prepared with ideas for what to write, nothing concrete but maybe something to springboard off of, like the absurdist POV affirmation chants of a LinkedIn influencermaxxer or a tragic short story about a failed romance, but for this reading he had nothing. He scoured the depths of his brain for anything, any recent memories or things that had happened to him or maybe some weird dream he had but there was nothing to be found there in the dark abyss that was his subconscious. He thought about writing autofiction about Dimes Square but that seemed really retarded and beneath him, especially after that incredibly cringeworthy Christian Science Monitor piece. He thought about reading someone else’s work, but that didn’t seem geniune. He wanted to give the audience a real piece of himself — after all, that’s why he was booked, right? Because people were supposedly interested in what his writing was all about, expositng a piece of himself in the process. He tried writing about his empty childhood summers but none of the words came out the right way.

And so the hours passed at the coworking spot where Brian performed his fake email job, with nothing ready to show. Soon Brian’s mind began to shift away from what he should write to how he should weasel his way out of his slot at the reading. He thought about ghosting. He thought about saying he had strep throat. He thought about jumping in front of a moving bus. He brushed all these ideas off. Running away from the reading would only make the problem worse, he thought to himself. He had to deal with the consequences of his failure to actually come up with anything interesting that people would half pay attenition to at a literary reading, and that meant eating shit in front of the crowd that was, ostensibly, there for him, to see what he had.

Brian’s chest began pounding when he got on the subway to the bar where the reading was going to be. At first he thought it was because of his daily diet of a large cold brew, two Celsiuses and a 10mg instant release Adderall pill, but he quickly realized that it was, in fact, because he was scared about what was going to happen to him. To his reputation. Would he ever get booked for a reading again? Cassidy wouldn’t ask him to read at Confessions after this. And forget about the Casual Encounters guy. No, his dreams of literary stardom were to be stillborn, doomed to being in the audience forever, smoking American Spirits in the backyard of Sovereign House while someone was mumbling stuff they had jotted down in their phone’s Notes app.

He got to where the reading was to be held, where his own little humiliation ritual was to take place. It was like KGB but without any of the communist agitprop and somehow smaller. He wanted to smoke but he couldn’t and he had givent his Airbar to some girl over the weekend. So he sat shaking nervously in a chair with the other readers, some he kenw and some he didn’t, waiting for his name to be called.

“…Wow! Wasn’t that great? Let’s give another round of applause for Kate!”, the host shouted into her microphone.

“Up next before the intermission is a reader I’m really excited for you guys to hear. He’s really funny, quirky, full of wit, and has a great Substack. Let’s give a round of applause for Brian Kantey!”

Brian gulped and waddled to the stage, his entire body vibrating at this point.

“Uh…hi guys…” He spoke into the microphone. The sound levels were off and there was a bunch of feedback.

“I…uh…don’t have anything written for you guys.”

There was a long awkward silence, broken up with fake chuckles.

“Uh…yeah…sorry…. … .”

After what felt like an eternity Brian waddled back down to his seat, face white as a ghost.

The host whispered amongst her friends, then sprout up and grabbed the microphone.

“…Alright guys, we’re gonna take a quick intermission! Go get a drink and a smoke but don’t go anywhere! Up next we have some readers who actually have things to read! I promise.”

With a roar of laughter the crowd got up and starting mingling among themselves, everyone except for Brian. The host glared at him and mouthed what the fuck? at him, but he was too ashamed to look up at her, or at anyone. He awakwardly shuffled out of the bar and into the hot summer night, where he took the subway home.

After that night he never performaed at another reading. He didn’t even attend one for the rest of his time that he lived in the city, for even attending one reminded him of that shameful evening. He never even posted again on Substack, which was a big disappointment to the five people who actually read his posts. Brian’s literary hopes and dreams had crashed and burned, or so he thought to himself, and he would instead focus his time on what he was really good at: asking ChatGPT to write replies to emails he got on Outlook.