The Vermin reading was at a bar in Chinatown. I made sure to show up early enough to catch Sarvas, though more interesting was Jim Ruland's introduction. He described Sarvas as a selfless champion of literature, a local hero. It was especially disheartening to see this, because Ruland was smart enough to recognize how little Sarvas actually cares for art, the extent to which his blog is an elaborate and indulgent plea for attention.

At the same time, Ruland was running a reading series in Los Angeles, a town where books were a minor cultural curiosity that occasionally spawned depressing movies and, more often, sat on coffee tables, suggesting a certain intellectual depth and accenting the color scheme. His desperation, in other words, endowed Sarvas with some perceived power, which explained why he was on the bill in the first place. It was a kind of sponsorship showcase.

The piece Sarvas read exuded a dismal semi-competence. As I recall, one of the characters spoke through clenched molars. Later on, he (or she or it) did something to no avail. He didn't much care for his people, and it showed.

There was an intermission, during which I milled around downstairs with my girlfriend. I was the first reader after the break and I was talking to a woman who was reading after me. At a certain point, Sarvas came by and nervously announced to this woman that intermission would be over in five minutes. Then he scurried off.

What amazed me -- and still does -- is that none of the local lit trash at that bar had enough gumption, or plain old mischief-making instincts, to engineer an introduction. Most knew who Sarvas was, and that he hated me. But none of them would acknowledge the dynamic. Instead, they all stood around in a cloud of unrequited rubbernecking.

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As for my reading, it was a letdown. Ruland got the name of my new book wrong. Sarvas failed to rush the stage. I read a story, stupidly, that expressed my predominant feelings about Southern California:

The sun was gone now; the purple smog of dusk was upon them. This was a summer evening in LA, just the way they drew it up all those years ago. A breeze came rolling in and the street lights began to come lit. The very thought of the city beyond his hotel exhausted him: the knotted freeways, the vast, flat valleys of porn, the hot distance of everything from everything else.

A few hours after the event (ah, the joys of the Internet!) Sarvas offered his readers the following assessment of our respective performances:

We're pleased to say the reading was a smashing success ... Folks even seemed to like our offering, laughing more or less where they were supposed to ... and we can report that Steve Almond's reading did nothing to alter our opinion of him ...

Later he added:

We found his story to be wholly not our cup of tea, its literary sensibilities a bit too informed by the pages of Penthouse Forum for our tastes ... We're scarcely prudes but Almond's work is all assfucking and facials without much to commend itself for ... we're struck by an absence of context ... of character ... of depth ...

Sarvas couldn't have known this, but my response to this entry was a distinct sense of arousal ... thinking about him typing those words ... assfucking and facials ... with his actual fingers ... we wondered what Sarvas might have been wearing when he posted ... was he dressed in a leather jacket? ... maybe nothing but a leather jacket ... might he be whispering my name? ... through clenched molars? ... we were trembling ... yes, trembling ... entry ... the very word dripped ... assfucking ... entry ... We're scarcely prudes ... was Sarvas trying to tell us something? ... we tried to keep from touching ourselves ... honestly, we did ... alas, it was to no avail ...

Thankfully, Sarvas and I had one more shot at love -- my Sunday morning visit to the Vermin booth! He would have to be there (live blogging!) and, with an hour to kill in the same small booth, he would have to talk to me. I wore something low-cut, but not slutty, and curled my hair.

But he didn't show.

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