I went to the Monti StorySlam last Thursday night. The theme was romance so I told the dude-swims-a-river-to-talk-to-me story. That’s a romantic story, is it not? But of course I ended it with something like, “I’ll tell the rest of the story when the theme is All-Time Worst Kisses.”
The crowd, as usual, dug it. The judges did not. Again.
People kept coming up to me at intermission and saying, “You was robbed.” Not sure why I went over like a lead zeppelin with the judges yet again. One idea I had: going second is the shit position in the line-up. I went second when I told the Turducken story too. And I don’t know, I think the judges rate the first story pretty high, if it’s good, which Thursday’s was. But the second storyteller, they’re thinking, “Damn. We’ve got six more people after this. Better set the bar low.”
One of my friends offered another theory: the judges seemed to dig the “and here she is in the audience with me thirty years and two wonderful kids later” ending.
And that’s a lovely ending. But that was not the ending to my romantic story. The ending to my story was grossness and discomfort. So that’s the ending I told.
Whatever. Jeff Polish, the director of the Monti, said late in the evening that he was going to choose a story to go on All Things Considered (local version, of course) on Friday. And guess whose story he chose.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
Suck it, judges.
(WUNC edited the hell out of it, taking out all my profanity* and chopping the ending completely off, but who cares! Seventy thousand people heard me tell a story.)
(*I also forgot to tell you that when I had that little stepmotherhood daydream, my mom emailed me to say, “If you’re thinking about becoming a stepparent, you better clean up your mouth!” Ha! I fucking love my mom.)