Hyde Park, Table for Two

How did I find myself in this situation again? All I wanted to do was have a nice dinner at Burnt Toast with my sister, catch up and talk about life, but there I was, enduring another open mic night. The first time, Megan and I sat through a spoken word session which featured some very public therapy by a man who had recently broken up with his girlfriend. The second time, “Bombay Gin,” Naropa’s poetry publication, was on parade, flying high the flagging talent of students of an unaccredited University.

Megan and I have long since been dining at the restaurant on the Hill. The owner, Buddy, is a great chef, and quite a character. An MBA grad from Yale, he learned how to cook during a decade spent in Parisian kitchens. Along the way, he was married, had a brood of three children, divorced (the wife, not the kids), and was remarried to a woman with a clan of her own. His three children and three step kids have, at some point, all provided their share of the shaky service, with any number of other ruffians from the neighborhood filling in on bus duty. Thanks to his culinary expertise gleaned in France, Buddy routinely throws together a dinner menu of flavorful risotto, buffalo steak, and handmade tagliatelle. It seems, though, that Buddy’s MBA also rears its head, and he finds other means to drum up the money.

The main room at Burnt Toast can fit about 30 diners, but Buddy has figured out that the tables can be rearranged and a microphone can be placed in a corner, allowing local miscreants a forum for reading their grievances or interpretations of “the beauty of the Earth Goddess.” What Buddy does with his dining room is mostly his prerogative, but Megan and I have been witness to two occasions that didn’t exactly go with our Arborio rice. When my dinner is disturbed by the ranting of a local buffoon, I have no choice but to blog about it.

Therapy has a rightful place in the lives of all over privileged anglo-saxon suburbanites. I just tend to think that it should be done under the careful watch of a man named Epstein. Or Schwartz, maybe. But not Buddy, and certainly not at The Toast. Imagine the impropriety when, months ago, Megan and I went for dinner but were interrupted by a spoken word slam. Person after person would approach the soapbox and proclaim their sins and desires to the room. Sadly, though, no renowned orators were present that evening, instead leaving a man, presumably a sophomore at the University of Colorado, to lament his recent romantic failings. I have a hard time swallowing my pasta, no matter how delicious, with the following monologue:
“That bitch had to go. I detest her. I hate her blood. I tasted her blood. But now that she’s gone, I taste the alcohol. It runs to my blood, and brings her back to me, in a memory.”

Check, please.

With the deranged lover boy as our previous backdrop, Megs and I went back for another shot at Buddy’s dinner. Things were looking similarly epicurean with a menu of pear and gorgonzola salad and salmon gnocchi, but, to our horror, in the corner was the dreaded megaphone. How did we get here again? And what stupidity could come from the mouth of an uneducated rambler? The answers, in order, are we walked, and shoddy poetry.

Bombay Gin is a fantastic beverage. Bombay Gin, however, is a publication by Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School. Don’t let the On The Road reference fool you. The talent pool drawn therein doesn’t come from Columbia, and won’t be publishing any seminal works of American prose any time soon, either. I learned a lesson from my first encounter with these forums, and quickly grabbed a pen and scribbled notes. I looked like any number of the other beatniks breaking up my meal, save that my shitty beard gets shaved a few times a week. Most of the audience keeps theirs a scraggly fur.

The editor introduced nearly half of the packed room as contributing editors, featured artists, or production assistants, each name followed by uproarious applause. I’ll grant that this group was much better supported than the previous session. One table in the back, however, appeared to be much in the same boat as my sister and me. While Megan and I tried to show a perfunctory level of respect for a band of students at an unaccredited educational institution, a group of four men held no such illusion of deference. The first reader spoke in such a soft voice that the dialogue from the other uninvited table supplanted the man with the mic as the dominant noise, making the situation even more uncomfortable. Megs and I alternated between eavesdropping between a man baring his soul and a quartet of gentlemen who appeared to be in the throngs of a midlife crisis.
“I kneel on the ceiling in a broken fetus….”
“She’s moving out, and taking the kids….”
“Grandpa threw the snakes out the window…”
“Mama’s not coming back…”

Finally, the table seemed to settle down just in time for the second reader. Maybe it was the daggers flying from the eyes of many a poet in attendance. Whatever their motivation, the men made room for a woman to proclaim her “obsession with the dream world, and also water,” and to tell us she was “a kick ass poet. Rock on.”

Our waitress, a new girl and not one of the progeny, whispered if we’d like dessert. “No thanks, we were good,” but would happily take the bill.

Next time I go to Burnt Toast after dark, I’m sending a scout.