Literary Chicago

What kind of a fiesta is complete without a piñata? Without tequila, guacamole, and a mariachi band? An Essay Fiesta, that’s what kind. You might be skeptical, as I was, thinking that the name of this reading series is deceptively colorful packaging for what may turn out to be a dreadfully dull evening, a Tom Sawyer “look-how-fun-it-is-to-paint-a-fence” sort of thing. When I first heard about it, I was reminded of how the pastor of a local church used to invite members of his congregation over for “work parties,” the activities of which included vacuuming, mopping, and polishing furniture. He couldn’t have been fooling anyone. Contrary to these mockeries of pleasure and frivolity, the Essay Fiesta scheduled to take place at the Book Cellar at 7pm on the third Monday of every month is actually a lot of fun. According to its website, “Essay Fiesta’s mission is to bring together a cross-section of Chicago’s art and writing communities for a night of first-person, non-fiction essays and charity.” For those who insist on tequila for a proper fiesta, one of the wines or beers offered at the Book Cellar’s café would make a nice alternative. No luck on the guacamole, though.

Keith Ecker, one of the co-producers of Essay Fiesta, starts the night off with an unnamed essay about his quest to “become a free spirit.” A graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, Ecker left the journalism industry when it “became a joke,” deciding to pursue comedy instead. Whether he was born funny or he was made funny by his tenure at the Second City, iO, the Annoyance Theatre, Armchair Showcase, or The Alliance’s “Gayrilla Warfare,” he doesn’t seem to have any trouble inducing roaring fits of laughter with his description of an outrageous hippie festival. In his essay, he tells us that someone who looked like “the Pringles man in drag” approached him at the festival and claimed to be ironic, and then, after a moment’s silence, explained that Ironic was actually his name. “In an act of conservative rebellion,” Ecker says, “I remain Keith.” Then there’s a giant disco ball effigy at camp fancy, a drink that tastes like “feet and mushrooms,” and a woman who is “hula hooping topless, her breasts jiggling like pudding cups.” (I want to be the kind of person who wants to be there!)

Next on the docket is Robbie Q. Telfer. Essay Fiesta’s website says he’s “not a guy you want to iambic pentameter with in a dark alley.” Aside from authoring a collection of poems called Spiking the Sucker Punch and placing in the top 10 at the National Poetry Slam, he is also the performance manager for Young Chicago Authors, organizer of Louder than a Bomb, and producer of the monthly Encyclopedia Show at the Chopin Theatre. Tonight he presents us with “Bear Baiting,” an essay about how the British got their kicks in the Early Modern Period by pitting bears against dogs and watching them destroy each other. According to Telfer, Parliament prohibited bear baiting on Sundays, not for any regard for the welfare of animals but, rather, because they disapproved of such enjoyable diversions on “the Lord’s day.” However, being an avid spectator of bear baiting, Queen Elizabeth lifted the ban and was consequently honored (or humiliated?) with one of the most hilarious titles ever: Master Bear Baiter. There is more to this essay, of course, and Telfer’s ear for poetry is apparent, but I am having a hard time getting past the fact that the man is capable of squeezing such hilarity out of a historical practice that I’ve always found to be so upsetting. Like water from a stone.

Mary Wagner is up next. She seems to have a bit of a thing for shoes. With essay collections entitled Running with Stilettos and Heck on Heels, I am expecting to find Carrie Bradshaw from Sex in the City—hair tousled, fabulous girlfriends in tow, and wallet stuffed with pictures of Manolo Blahniks. Instead, Wagner is casual in both attire and demeanor and has only one fabulous girlfriend in tow (as far as I can tell). She seems like an entirely down-to-earth Midwesterner. She reads to us from “Devil on Horseback,” an essay from her blog about when she encountered a novel she loved as a kid, a romantic mystery, and found herself absolutely appalled by it as an adult. Sigmund Freud’s essay, “The ‘Uncanny,’” comes to mind, the one in which he says that “the ‘uncanny’ is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar. How this is possible, in what circumstances the familiar can become uncanny and frightening, I shall show in what follows . . .” Similar phenomenon, I think, only where Freud illuminates it with doppelgangers and castration, Wagner uses a tawdry paperback romance. Pretty funny stuff.

As embarrassing as it might have been for Wagner to admit that she once enjoyed the kind of books that have Fabio on their covers, the night really starts to feel like a confessional when Dina Connolly of Neo-Futurist fame takes the microphone. She says, “Elementary school found me on Facebook,” and then goes on to describe her experience of returning home for her elementary school reunion—uncanny, indeed. I was particularly excited to hear Connolly’s essay because, like me, she is from the southwest side of Chicago, a place that is painfully lacking in bookstores, museums, galleries, theaters, and other cultural havens. (No more strip malls, please.) She could complain, but she doesn’t. At least not now. She’s too busy recalling other, more universal coming-of-age trials and tribulations. She’s remembering her childhood tormentor, Freddie Vasquez, and the way he’d make fun of her overbite by impersonating a beaver. For me, the highlight of the evening is when Wagner pumps herself up for the big reunion by recounting her accomplishments to an imaginary Freddie Vasquez, accomplishments which include a role in Oceans Eleven—“I’m still getting paid, bitch!” She seems all the more powerful and commanding for her vulnerability.

Adam Guerino also tells a sad tale in a way that makes us all laugh. Although he’s now a stand-up comic, as well as the producer of an art expo called Art Haus and a variety show called Nightcaps, he was once homeless. He talks about this experience as casually as he might a trip to the supermarket. By laying it out there early in the reading and saying, simply, that he slept on a beach, he seems to be suggesting that he might be joking, or exaggerating, that perhaps he wasn’t really homeless homeless, but maybe an overzealous surfing fanatic with a cool thatched-roof hut like in Gidget. When he was in third grade, he had a teacher, “Mrs. V,” who would read his class survival strategy guides. He’d take careful notes on how to “look for water under rocks at night.” Later, he would wonder why Mrs. V didn’t offer more useful advice, such as “How Not to Get Pregnant When You’re Thirteen” or “The Dangers of Inbreeding.” And even more later, he would wonder why she couldn’t prepare him for homelessness. “Waking up on the beach is much less romantic than you might think,” Guerino says. Even so, his essay is far more comedy than it is tragedy, filled with hilarious quips and descriptions, like when he shares the memory of waking up covered in crabs. “These weren’t the kind of crabs that lived on your crotch. I’d prefer those.” He even manages to squeeze in one final laugh after he’s finished reading; when an audience member asks him if he’s still homeless, he says without missing a beat, “No, but I still poop outside.”

Unfortunately, I have to leave before the final essayist gets to read. (Other obligations.) I am sorry to have to miss Alyson Lyon, the actress, musician, and writer. But I’m glad that she’s the co-producer of Essay Fiesta because that means that another chance to see her will come around in only a month.

For now, I’m happy to have been inspired by a group of incredibly reflective people. I want to go home and write about my own childhood bullies and embarrassing childhood favorites. I want to seek out euphemisms in history books, find the Pringles man in drag and drink peyote just so I can write about these things. And I even want to try and see if I can find the humor in my own painful memories. After all, as Socrates said all those many years ago, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It’s good to be reminded of the power of essays.

EVENT: ESSAY FIESTA (READING SERIES) | MONDAY, MAY 17, 2010 AT 7PM | BOOK CELLAR