VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
CAMARGO: I was participating in a reading at Stories Books and Café in Echo Park and the reader who went up after me was reading a piece of an adult nature. Now, as those who have been there know, it is next to a learning center, and at the middle of story when it was getting all tits and cumming the kids were exiting the building next door. They acted like they couldn’t hear it but there was no way they didn’t hear. We had a microphone. I distinctly heard someone say, “What did he say?” before a concerned parent yelled from the wooden door something about perverts and calling the police. I said, “Everyone’s a critic,” and then she said she was going to get her husband to come and kick my ass. My ass has since remained unkicked.
Chris Camargo is currently in the process of getting his motorcycle license because he’s in his mid 30s and have nothing to show for it so what the fuck does it matter if he eats shit on the freeway? He has more debt than he thinks he can ever pay back from Cal State LA. It’s easier to kick heroin than pay Sallie Mae…and heroin would probably come with some cool stories. As a writer, he gets rejected a lot – probably by a few people in the room. In 2014 he was a finalist for Glimmer Train’s New Writer Award. His work has also appeared in Yay! LA magazine, The Altar Collective, The Women Group and Dryland Lit. Currently doing his best David Foster Wallace impression as a staff writer for Yay! LA Magazine.
Come see Chris read at Book Show in Highland Park on Saturday, June 11 at 7pm.