Literary love
San Francisco writers say ‘I’m Sorry’ at the Make Out Room
The “Happy Endings” show features five local writers reading essays, poems, short stories and other words in response to a cheeky prompt.
By M. T. Eley
“I’m going to see Happy Endings at the Makeout Room” is a sentence you should wait until a four-bar cellphone signal to say to your wife, but it is nonetheless the start of a good evening.
While the Happy Endings Reading Series has filled the seats of the Mission District’s Make Out Room for years now, last week was my first time, and I regret my lateness to the party. The monthly show features five local writers reading essays, poems, short stories and other words in response to a shared cheeky prompt: a delightful mix of standup and write-down.
The hep Makeout Room welcomes you with a long, wooden bartop gummy with booze, stretching into a moody, gin- and PBR-scented room. On the left: a soundboard propped up on a keg; overhead, slowly dancing disco lights coruscating overhead around dusty metallic stringers and stars.
Altogether, an atmosphere pregnant with that determined irony that keeps the Mission alive. Co-producers Joe Wadlington and Danielle Truppi kick off the evening announcing together: “This is the happiest we’ve ever been!”
Judges from the crowd then got picked for determining a favorite and a runner-up. “You are all sunbeams now!” Wadlington assures us who didn’t make the judge’s committee.
“That’s what we call attendees. We’re here to pay writers because it’s f — king up to us!”
Tonight’s theme: “You were right, and I’m sorry.” Danielle, wearing earring prints of Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, starts us with an essay on the embarrassments of a juvenile attempt at censorship. “Being a person is humiliating” she reads off a twice-folded printout. The writers all have intimidatingly good credentials, and I consider asking them to write this piece.
The writers: Christina Ortega
We begin with Christina Ortega, who recounts a surreal therapy treatment of spending a few days with a surrogate mother, wrestling with the unreality of an actress pretending to be a loved one and the unintentional imitation of her real mother’s detachment. “To me, it doesn’t seem like your problems are problems” her pseudo-mother snaps. “You could change that!” she retorts. “You’re an actor!”
Yume Kim
Next up is Yume Kim, a USF MFA (say that thrice, fast). Appropriately, she begins: “Getting a MFA is a waste of time” — the opening salvo of a gentleman who I assume did not earn a second outing. Yumi does a tour de force of essays and monologues on the frustrations of writers, including a poem conceding it was about nothing — so what? — and an essay briefly apologizing for its conclusion, an excerpt of her thesis.
Garrett Shlichte
Garrett Shlichte is a writer for countless brand-name publications alongside a chef, but tonight they’re especially in form about a breakup in the back of a Washington D.C. bus. A particularly poignant line on relationship lengths: “Six months is just long enough to imagine six months more.” Schlichte wasn’t the only one that the topic evoked a memory of a lost love: Denise Masiel follows with a soulful poem about the aches of exercise replacing the aches of lost, passionate love and the consolation of a “bad bitch playlist.”
Nazelah Jamison
Nazelah Jamison turned the motif of “lost” love on its head with a quirky-turned-sinister short story about a doomed relationship with what might be called a tech bro. Imprisonment in an AI-powered house quickly turned into murderous conspiracy in which AI and a flame do away with the boyfriend who was too domineering for either’s liking. The evidence was sent to the hog farm owned by her father who had warned this wouldn’t end well — dad was right, and the heroine and AI are sorry, but not too sorry.
With that catharsis, the evening was over. Judges gathered and dispensed awards: Shlichte was the judge’s favorite, with Christine Ortega as runner-up. It was one of those evenings where it seemed like everyone won, and not in a cheap way; Joe Wadlington later told me that the show was able to pay each writer $118. Each story at least glanced at the topic, sometimes spearing it through verbatim but all of them serving some measure of reluctant apology, acknowledgement of an external truth.
Here’s an external truth I’m not sorry to face: “Happy Endings” continues on May 14th (topic: “Late Bloomers”). And since it’s f — king up to you, you can donate to their writers’ fund via Venmo.
M. T. Eley is a San Francisco-based writer.
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