Tee-hatch-ah-pee. A home coming.

My home comings are generally fraught with nagging visions of my home town as a black hole that sucks in everything it contacts and an irrational fear grips me that I may never be able to escape the town I so gladly fled in the first place. But the more times I visit and manage, inexplicably, to make my getaway the more comfortable I am with next year's visit. So this year I feel more comfortable in my hometown than I have since grade school. As such I've gone out on the town, had a good time, tried to stir up some trouble.

Kayleigh introduced me to Mama Hilleybeans, it was one of her favorite spots when she lived in town, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a quaint, artistic well intentioned hippie-ish coffee shop with some personality. We decided to come back for Open mic night. It also helped that Brennan took an interest to the barista, an aloof, free floating kind of girl who rarely has a stable address with squinty smile eyes and, in Brennan's readily shared opinion, a fantastic ass.

There was another barista serving drinks, a pretty blonde girl who's too snooty for her own good with feathers dangling down her back and we were debating if she's actually a lesbian because last time we saw her she was wearing an “I Heart Girls” t-shirt with a rainbow colored heart instead of text, but the consensus between Kayleigh, Brennan and I is she's way too pretty, wore too much makeup and probably is too young to be full on lesbian. Maybe it's just a passing interest in girls.

The lady who runs the open mic night is definitely somebody's mom and she brought that firmly gentle and conservative attitude, that bit of commanding edge in a mother's voice, to her bit as MC. She knew almost everyone by name and each performer was a little baby of hers she could cup in her hand and who's work she could stake some sort of claim to. The crowd was a mix of bored hipster kids who like to imagine they don't fit in with any regular crowd and older, artistically compromised adults who probably don't fit in with any regular crowd.

Of the performers there were two highlights: A shy and very cute girl named Kayla who played guitar and sang about love and fathers and funny encounters with ghosts. She sat in the back and used the communal guitar to play and you could see the edge of her polka dot panties poking out of her jeans as she huddled in her chair nervously awaiting her time to play.

Then a lawyer, whose name escapes me, who dabbles with poetry in a local writing group. His reading was excellent and his poem was erotic, insightful, metaphoric and sublime, all excellent traits in a writer. He sat in a plush green chair next to a large lamp, probably the same chair he sits in every week, and clapped the loudest when people finished their sets.

When it was my turn the host asked me a few questions (Brennan didn't record this part):

“So Matthew, where are you from? What brings you here tonight?”

“I'm just visiting. I used to live here. I'm just in town for the week.”

“Oh, you moved away? Where did you move to?”

“North Carolina. Charlotte. It's pretty nice.”

“Charlotte, I know Charlotte. What would ever possess you to move that far away? Who does that?”

“I do. Tehachapi is boring. I grew up here.”

“You graduated from here?”

“Yeah, I graduated from here.”

“Well lets all welcome Matthew home,” audience claps, “And he's going to read us a story,” she said pleasantly as she took her seat.

I read Electricity Cums at a Premium of which Brennan has video. At the beginning of the night the host talked about the gathering of community and the sharing of ideas and open-mindedness and I felt like that should be put to the test.

Later that night the host came up to me and said, “Next time you're going to make me blush warn me first.” But, I thought, that's part of the fun, gently getting back at my home town the best way I know how.