At the last minute I decided to stop being such a putz and go hear Charles D'Ambrosio read from Orphans. I was only five minutes late to the New American Art Union but the smallish gallery space was jampacked with really well-groomed white people so I had to stand in back by the door. I accidentally leaned back against a piece of artwork and quietly moved it back into its proper position. There was plenty of fashionable eyewear and gourd-like footwear on display, bloated clogs of some sort that resembled freshly unearthed root vegetables. I know this because I spent most of the time looking down. Stacey Levine read some of her work (she has a novel forthcoming in the Clear Cut subscription series), there were some short films I couldn't see, a musical interlude, and then Charles D'Ambrosio—whom I'd been standing next to but didn't realize it until he approached the podium—read some excerpts from Orphans. He was great, he read exactly like I read his pieces in my mind, if that makes any sense. I imagined the voice just that way I mean. I could never get up in front of people and read or do anything else for that matter, not that any such invitations are likely to come my way unless I'm called to testify in my own defense some day. In between these presentations Matthew Stadler made impromptu introductions with his usual effortless charm and humor. Naturally I didn't talk to anyone or initiate eye contact with a single person. Afterwards a woman asked me for a light and we had a brief conversation about the gallery and the readings in which I didn't communicate verbally so much as nod vigorously in agreement nonstop like a bobblehead doll in the hand of someone stricken with Parkinson's, then when she turned to greet a friend I slinked off into the night, racewalking up Ankeny with the conspicuous casualness of someone furtively leaving a crime scene. Is it slunk? I always want to say slunk but it might be slinked. I should probably nail that down since I do it so much.