In January 2008, I uploaded a photo album to Facebook called “My Friend the Continent Europe.” It was meant to advertise the permanent authenticity I imagined I had purchased for myself after spending a season traveling alone as a depressed twenty-year-old sleeping on strange men’s couches and eating only the lowest quality street food while it snowed.

In one photo I sat on the edge of a bed bending toward the dim lamplight of a rundown budget room I’d found not far off the cathedral square in Segovia, Spain. In my hands I held a copy of Melville’s Moby Dick. The room, a rare splurge, had, in hindsight, probably been purchased for this prideful excursion, a proto-selfie. Behold the lonely genius fast at work! Here he was caught in a rare light, a candid glimpse of the young auteur studying his craft.

It was a powerful portrait of devotion and discipline captured by a discount JBL digital camera set on timer mode atop the windowsill behind the second of the room’s two twin beds, neither of which the great writer could persuade a girl to share, not even the American study abroad students whose drunken garrulous cries in shrill Valley Girl accents echoed over the cobblestones and through the serpentine streets of the old Gothic quarters, poisoning the night as they carried out over the cathedral spires of every city like some loud public service announcement declaring the death of all mystery.

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Years later this dreadful photo earned its first Like. It came from a beautiful young woman named Christina who, to my terror and delight, turned out to be stalking me. Upon this singular act of pity we established a profound and lasting bond.

In any case, all this is to say I’ll be reading alone tomorrow in a rented room in Los Angeles and it will be broadcast live on Zoom.

Join me at 4pm Pacific for a live reading from YUCK followed by a Q&A. The event is hosted by my publisher Wandering Aengus Press, and I’ll be joined by fellow WAP author and poet Majda Gama.

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88921757250...

Or click here

Yuck,

B

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