A turtle. That’s what I am, in the whole playwriting show. It’s like a candy-coated, iron-heeled stomp in the gut. And here I am, with these people and they’re reciting that scene from Mommie Dearest with the wire hangers. No wire hangers ever, they chant, holding onto a wire coat hanger. They all break out into mad ululation, chanting and chattering. We had just watched Ionesco’s “The Chairs.” I felt like the orator at the end, gibbering at the audience. I cast shade at everybody slowly, trying to unsettle them. They all roil in a vicious little circle of people, laughing, giggling, and ignoring me. And now after all the Oulipo bunk we had watched, we were putting on our own playwriting show. It would be great. And here I was, a god-d***** turtle.

I look at everybody again, noticing their “ironic” hats. I wonder where the irony is. A guitar is pulled out and it starts away, with people singing “Tetanus!” at the height of their lungs. Somebody hems in the back of the room and gathers everybody round, saying we were going to go out and put on a great show. Great show.
I may sound a little rubbed. I’m also a turtle. That was the first thing people thought of when they thought of me, a turtle. I’m skim milk in the cream and the cream has long soured. But really, I’m taking it as one takes sugar for tea. Politely. There’s no real matter with the turtle so I’m ready to crawl onto the stage and blow the audience’s socks clean off.

I’m wearing a doo-rag, a saucer sled, and footsie rags which are all part of my incredible outfit. I listen to the plays roll by on the stage, waiting for the play, “The Turtle,” a parable of the times, a great intellectual mesa looming far above the heads of the laity. It’s about a turtle. I am the turtle.
I hear the first line of the play. “I hear your turtle is sick.” I crawl onto the stage. I have a nervous grin kinked into my cheeks and my knees already hurt. I see the appraising glint of glasses tucked underneath the glare of the stage-lights.

Now this department of writing isn’t all that bad, brimming with vitriol as I might sound. There is the one really cool guy who wears pit-stained wife-beaters and plays guitar and listens to too much Tom Waits and made a concept album about Adam and Eve in weird post-Dust-Bowl Americana. He’s cool. And he does read “Howl” to you and your friends underneath the stars and you see a big container ship titled “FINESCO” trundling through the Golden Gate, filled with martini umbrellas, casino visors, and faux fur. You see a big city, with lights, and the low rumble of Fleet Week winding down entirely. And you hear “Howl,” read by the guitar-playing guy wearing the wife-beater and everything will be okay for a little.

Hearing Ginsberg then felt different, felt like one of the moments I’ll remember my entire life. Nobody involved will probably remember me or that moment even, but that’ll always be something for me, something great that gives me rills, gives me goosebumps. But there’s nothing to say about that moment that isn’t as canned as diced tomatoes. It was great, one great mad chant through peyote smoke and tobacco smoke and the clinks of shot glasses being set down on a bar counter, the snicks of lighters being flipped open, the light drizzle outside, slicked cement, rough neon spangling on Broadway street. Big Al toting iron.

But now you’re the turtle. Imagine that. Everything isn’t okay. You’re a godd*** turtle. You’re not standing in cafes where each patron has a double shot espresso stuck on their fingers, sipping at it as if they were defusing a bomb. Ever so gingerly. And you read your poem and they chew disinterestedly on their brioche bread. That’s my experience. I, however, unlike most of the others, know that the “art” I am creating is not the best it will ever be, has not yet deserved distinction as “the real thing.” The grade-A article. I know spacing and I can willy-nilly my space-bar and tab-key stanzas all over the place as I d*** please. That’s what I have.

I also have the turtle as I am currently the turtle. I am a turtle with people who think it’s a grand joke going to archery galleries and shooting arrows at targets with “Joan Vollmer” pinned on them. Or eating pound cakes with “Ezra Pound Cake” written on them in frosting. Ha. Somebody is patting my shell. I am sweating profusely. I am very nervous. I instead listen to the lines. They are as tepid as warm, expired beer. “I can’t get myself to do this, Sherman!” “Trust me Mindy Jane, you can! Leave the turtle for me, schatzi, and we can leave this poor smelly creature to chew on lettuce forever!” “Oh, my baby, I can’t, I just can’t.” I hate this.

I think about what the h**l I’m doing with these people as I wait for the nest play. I think about the time I had “The Wicker Men” read to me in a dark library by the thin, gaunt, cardigan-clad, vaguely-English kid who disappeared after one summer. That kid was a genius. Now I’m a pterodactyl. Somebody corrects me and tells me I’m actually a pterosaur. Great. Either way, my line is, “Use protection!” and I’m to run across the stage when a character says “Oh god, no!” I hear the line and run across the stage. Show is over. Staggered applause. I ask people what they thought about my line. Nobody heard it. Maybe they will some other time.

To be brief, I moved out of that department, despite some of the really sterling moments, when the vaguely-English kid handed back my poem during a peer edit having crossed out every word on the page, except two. I forget what those words are. That kid seethed and breathed pretense but there was something about him that got my envy. He really got it. Maybe I’ll get it some day.

What will it mean if I continue to pursue art? Where do I think it will take me? Will art  just be a great dither? Am I already dithering? Am I walking around with my thumb up my a**, and I’ll just end up bitter as Turkish coffee at my local shawarma shop, disillusioned as all h**l? Probably? Will I ever scrape just below the things other people have done? The Polio vaccine, the Pyramids of Khufu, A Love Supreme, the Moon Landing, Velcro. H**l, I’ll always be a mote. But maybe I can make myself feel like more. That’s all I need. And maybe I’ll achieve it. Hopefully.