Almost Fifteen Minutes of Fame

My fame as a writer was short lived. In fact, it lasted less than two minutes, the time it took me to read my essay inside a noisy coffee house in Southeast Portland. The espresso machine hissed steam into the air, drowning out most of my talk. Every few seconds another customer would burst through the door, bringing with her the roar of car engines, blast of air brakes and squeal of city buses.

I was just one of several writers who read that evening. An eclectic group, we were united by the fact that our essays had just been published in the same anthology. Other than us, only a few people showed up that night; and I have a feeling most of them were there for the coffee. Still, it was a real reading and we were in print. Afterwards, a woman came up and asked me for my autograph, which I gave her. The evening may have been the peak of my career, the fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhol was talking about. Well, in my case, ninety seconds.