Dispatch: Pack Animal and Midnight Mass present: SHAMPOO BOY by Stevie Manning (Toronto)

with Eileen Myles, Derek McCormack & Kirby

It was already a weird week for cultural events in Toronto, in that there were not only a lot of them—that’s normal—but they were all very good—not normal—and all featured writers and artists who don’t already live here—especially not normal. There was the Wednesday night screening at Paradise Theatre of Room Temperature, the new film directed by Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley, both of whom were joined for a Q & A following the film by Derek McCormack. There was the Friday night book launch at TYPE Books for The Longest Way to Eat a Melon by Vancouver-based writer Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross. And then came Sunday and the launch of Stevie Manning’s new book of poems, Shampoo Boy, published by Midnight Mass Books and Heretic House. The event was hosted at Standard Time, a bar and event space characterized in my mind as possessing a neon aura and one disco ball, co-presented by Midnight Mass Books—a bookstore in London, Ontario as well as publisher—and Pack Animal, a reading series run by Emma Olivia Cohen and Emily Wood that invites writers, translators, and performers to bring their work and/or play into spunky events hosted in shimmering spaces with good lighting. Kirby, Derek McCormack, and Eileen Myles would also be reading from new work.

It was late September and the phrase “unseasonably warm” kept surfacing and I wondered how long it was going to take for us all to make a collective jump from the word “unseasonably” to “seasonably” to describe a too-warm evening. I’d wanted to wear the pillow bag described in my last dispatch because it had been purchased on Derek’s birthday and in his honour—which is to say at his irresponsible encouragement—but it was too small and didn’t work with the outfit, which was a corduroy red- and blue-flowered Laura Ashley dress I chose for its completely antithetical relation to what I predicted would be a heavily tattooed and erotic evening.

The room was loud and the energy was sexy and everyone looked really good, like they’d put anywhere from a marginal to a bunch of effort into the putting-on of clothes—this is especially, extremely, devastatingly not normal in Toronto. Eileen hadn’t yet arrived—their plane was to have landed earlier that afternoon—but no one seemed too stressed about it. They were a pro, everyone kept saying. I remembered their reading at Type Books a few years back, for the Toronto launch of A “Working Life”—they’d arrived with plenty of time for a basement chat and a forthwith scarfed Matty’s Patty. Eventually Eileen showed up; everyone swarmed and schmoozed. I was perhaps the eighth person in the room to make the joke about how weirdly well everyone was dressed, how it was obviously for Eileen, but maybe I was the first person to say it to Eileen, because they laughed, and the room was so loud I’d doubted they’d heard me, which would have been fair enough, at which point Rachel, who wanted to make Eileen laugh—who would indeed go on to make Eileen laugh—pulled me close to shout-ask over the music, What did you just say that was funny?

Eventually it became clear things were starting and Emma and Emily encouraged the room to move forward and sit on the ground if they wanted, apologizing for the lack of chairs, but again, no one seemed too stressed; there were seats for everyone who needed seats. There was also a line of people leaning against the long bar; I was there, and Eileen, too, just in front of me. Matt, at the mic, called “each of the readers [his] absolute favourite person ever.” Fan Wu and Jody Chan made opening remarks on behalf of Writers Against the War on Gaza Toronto. They spoke about their work on divestment from Indigo, Scotiabank, and Azrieli Foundation sponsorships; encouraged participation in the ongoing boycott of the Giller Prize; and emphasized how writers and bookworkers can keep up a united cultural front against Zionist artwashing. Eileen nodded and yeah’ed throughout and at one point turned around to ask if I could see OK. I said yes and could have but didn’t tell them I hadn’t even been looking, I’d been taking pictures of their hand and notebook.

Kirby began: “My name is Kirby and I’m a cockaholic.” Roars, stitches, sweetness, and some singing. Then Stevie, opal star of the evening, was next, her tiny body so easily hidden behind a beam that my only photos of her are partial: a claw, a shoulder, a bone. She gave a stellar performance—it was a set, basically—and delivered every poem by heart. The lines, “Green clavicles” and “You’ve been reading Cookie Mueller again / Are you happy?” and “I don’t remember a good meal in Berlin” and “time capsule or hope chest or barf bag.” The word “Ohio” got a lot of laughs, which always pleases me. Intermission. Then Derek McCormack read from a spec script for The Andy Griffith Show. He made poof gestures with his left hand to signal asterisks which double as bum holes in the text and received the most laughs of anyone, none louder than those of Kyle Buckley, who can also say he made Eileen laugh, it was during his introduction to their reading at TYPE a few years ago, the joke related to them both wearing navy button-down shirts, which was pretty much the joke. Derek clowned, “I’ll be double-darned.” Someone took a picture of Matt taking a picture of Kyle taking a picture of me taking a picture of Derek. Then went Eileen, who for Derek’s reading had moved from the bar to the floor to sit cross-legged and listen with the room. They rose and found some papers loose in their backpack. The mood was love poems and Gaza. The mood was the embarrassment of love poems and the humiliation of looking at Gaza starved on your phone. “You could warm bread in me / all the love I’ve got.” Then a shrug. Then seasonably warm-breaded laughs all around.