Poetry is for Suckers

I accompanied my best friend to a poetry reading this past weekend. This is not something that I would normally do as I cannot stand the pretension that goes along with poetry. I feel like it's the most selfish of all the literary arts and I stand behind my opinion. Whoever writes poetry just wants to be able to tell others that they just don't understand the multi-layering of their words. Or they are just plain rude.

I was sitting at a table with Carolina listening to the first reader who, although it was still poetry, was interesting with his choice of words. I was enjoying myself until this woman came into the venue, glanced around, and then at Carolina's wave, sat at our table. This woman had no respect for the readings which was quite evident from her inability to show up on time. After the reader had finished, she turns to Carolina and introduces herself. They quickly find out that they know each other through the dreaded facebook and begin to chat. She then turns to me and asks if I'm a writer and when I nod my assent, she replies that she finds it hard to believe.True, I was wearing a cthulhu t-shirt and jeans but even still that was just plain bitchy. So I told her I liked her hair. Sarcastically. She excused herself from the table and went to join another. Good riddance.

We sat there and chatted and I went up to the bar to get more drinks and to flirt with the bartender. Not because I wanted to pursue him, but mainly to see if I could actually flirt successfully. Apparently I am still retarded when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex. I'm not sure how or why, but at some point while I was ordering our drinks I seemed to have grown an exra head or perhaps become physically deformed because the look I got while paying for the drinks was very different from the look when I first approached the bar. He had commented on my t-shirt and my opening line was something along the lines of, 'If you like Elder Dark Gods you should come to one of our meetings. They are grossly misunderstood.'

He just stared at me, slid the drinks towards me and took my money wordlessly. He didn't even make eye contact when he passed me my change. In fact, he didn't even hand it to me. Just put it on the bar and pushed in my direction. I left him a tip and slunk back to my seat. Saved by bad poetry as the next reader started and prevented Carolina from asking me how my experiment was going.

Okay, so I guess I do know why I failed. But it made a great story, didn't it? And just for the record, Carolina got his number and when she texted him she found out he's an asshole which has put her in a 'there's no good men left' funk which she refuses to come out of. Guess I'll have to set her up on some dates that will end badly and she can bitch about. After all, that's what best friends are for, right?