I’m standing on a corner in East Hollywood. It’s 11:30 PM on a Monday night and I’m waiting to be fed a snack by three strangers, or so I’ve been told in the email I received earlier today. As with many immersive experiences I’ve attended that take place on the streets of Los Angeles, I find myself questioning my sanity for participating in these types of clandestine meetings. And yet here we are.

Before I have too much time to rethink my life choices, I see out of the corner of my eye a small figure heading towards me. A woman (Annie Lesser) is heading my way wearing an apron, an eye mask, and noise canceling headphones. Context clues tell me this is the woman I’m here to meet. She approaches and stops right in front of me, extending her hand towards me. I take her hand and she turns and starts leading me up the street. In another moment of overt self-awareness, I realize I’m holding hands with a masked woman walking down the street in Hollywood. As we pass several groups of young bar hoppers, I can’t help but wonder what this must look like to an outside observer. This is both the charm and the awkwardness of experiences of this type. I chuckle to myself and try to shake that feeling and just be present in this experience.

As we round the corner, she comes to a stop, turns, and removes the headphones, handing them to me. I place them on my head as she pulls out an iPod and hits play. She takes my hand and resumes leading me up the street as an audio file begins to play. I hear two voices alternating, a woman and a man. They’re speaking in harsh, abrupt tones back-and-forth, somewhat robotic, as though they are transmitting over some type of radio system. They discuss the qualities of an oyster and remark that an oyster with a pearl is not for consumption. Each sentence is punctuated with “end transmission” further confirming the radio transmission theory. We cross the street and come to an unmarked door. The woman removes my headphones and opens the door. We enter the building and I follow her up two sets of staircases. At the top of the second staircase, we reach another door. The woman knocks and then opens the door, motioning for me to enter. I enter a small room, the walls and ceiling are adorned with soundproofing and I see a guitar in the corner. This appears to be some type of a recording studio. Two men stand in front of a table with their backs to me. The door shuts and I’m alone with these two men. They turn in unison; both are also wearing aprons and eye masks. The men silently guide me to sit on the couch behind me. Without speaking a word they begin preparing my snack. The man to my left takes an oyster from some ice in a cup on the table before me and crouches down, holding it in his hands. The man to my right then crouches and presents me with a jar of horseradish sauce and a fork. I dutifully take a dollop and place it onto the oyster. He then turns and picks up a travel mug filled with an alcoholic mixed beverage. He pours it into the oyster shell and I’m presented with the concoction. I take the oyster and down it in a single gulp.

Once I’ve swallowed, the men rise to stand before me. The man on my left recites, “Taste the physical.” The man on my right follows with, “Experience the infinite.” Both men then recite in unison, “Always and forever” and with that, the door opens and I’m free to leave. I exit back out to the hallway where the masked woman awaits and follow her back down the staircases and out to the boulevard. As I exit the building she turns to me and pleasantly repeats, “Always and forever.” “Always and forever. Thank you,” I respond and with that, my late night snack has concluded. It’s 11:39 PM.

As I walk back down the route towards my parked car, I replay the events in my head.

This isn’t my first late night snack with Annie Lesser. I participated in her cheese plate midnight snack back in June; an elaborately choreographed sequence wherein I, and three other participants were bound together with red yarn while a group of masked actors danced Contemporary choreography around us and fed us samples of small, exotic cheese cubes. I rather enjoyed it.

Conceptually, what Lesser is doing with these midnight snacks is quite fun. The idea of meeting strangers in a secret location in Hollywood for bite-sized immersive experiences (pun intended) is both amusing and intriguing. That being said, I don’t know that I would call this her strongest work comparatively. It seems to me that the brevity of the experience doesn’t allow enough time for real absorption of the concept. As a standalone piece, these immersive snacks tend to leave me hungry for more, both literally and figuratively. Still, I enjoyed the mystery of it all, and I suppose it beats binge-watching TV at home. While I can’t say that it was the best oyster shooter I’ve ever had, it was certainly the most unique. Always and forever.

Infinitely Dinner Society’s Oyster Shooters pop-up occured on Nov. 20th, 2017. Future installments are a possibility. Tickets were $25.

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