He was scrolling his phone while the emcee was warming up the audience for the evening’s poetry slam. I was holding my tongue, but there was only a single chair between us and the intensity of his little screen in the darkness was irritating me. “Können Sie bitte das Handy ausschalten?” He gave me a look and turned off his phone. I felt bad, but his screen was the only one lit up in a room of maybe two-hundred people. It was in my space.
He was a butterball of a man, bright and energetic, round and happy, stomping his feet on the floor and his fists on the table after each performance, and then snapping photos like Taylor Swift had just finished a set.
My wife looked around at the audience. “All these people are friends coming to see their friend perform,” she let me know. I didn’t believe her but the applause after each performance thundered from different corners of the hall.
In the finale, a younger guy with a great smile and easy charm brought the house down, mocking the stressful events we’re all going through, but the transsexual woman who talked about going back in time and having sex with herself absolutely killed. The clapping erupted from every corner of the room and everyone started stomping their feet. My compatriot with the phone was bouncing ecstatically in his seat like one of those big burnt-red rubber balls that whomp off another kid’s head playing dodgeball in middle school.
I’m a veteran concert goer and have even attended a few dinner theaters, but this was on another level, and it showed me why the word Slam perfectly describes the experience. Everyone was slamming for their favorites; the crowd itself became poetry with its depth of devotion and feeling.
I’d rather play dodgeball.