This Is My Serious Face

Went to The Monti StorySLAM Tuesday night, as is often my wont, and put my name in the hat. The theme was Fear, and you know, there are a million types of fear, but the straight-up scariest thing that’s happened to me in a while was on August 7 of this year. So if I got drawn, I was going to tell that story.

Speaking of fear, you’d think since I hosted the goddamn thing last month my nerves wouldn’t get all jangled just thinking about telling one little story, but you’d be wrong. I sat there listening to the tambourine in my head, sweating sweaty sweats. More than eight people had filled in storyteller slips, so there was no way to know whether I’d be going up on stage anyway, which is worse than knowing. When there are eight names in the hat, you steel yourself in a different way: I will be going; I just don’t know when. This way, I was dealing with either nerves or nerves plus disappointment.

First and second stories were just OK. Third story, woman got up and told a riveting tale about her fear of cancer, its origins (mom’s lymphoma) and coagulation (boyfriend’s lymphoma). Boyfriend’s ended up metastasizing all up in his shit, grapefruit in the chest, tumors on the brain, so when she said a year ago he had a bone marrow transplant and today was in remission, I squealed. Squealed in my chair. And I turned to my friend and said, “She just won the night.”

The next story was awesome too though, a woman came out to her mother, who was perplexed and perturbed by this information, and then adopted a child from Africa. It was funny and poignant and well-constructed. She scored slightly lower than the previous storyteller.

Then there was intermission. Right before the show started up again, Jeff reached into the pitcher and plucked out a piece of paper. “It’s you,” he said. Another word about fear: I’ve always been funny at The Monti. The story I was prepared to tell was not funny. That made me twitchy. So I got to sit there for the next three minutes and concentrate on not being incontinent.

Sure enough, people laughed at a few moments in the beginning of the story, ones that I didn’t intend to be funny, but about forty seconds in, the audience seemed to get that this wasn’t my usual deal. I told the story, and my nervousness morphed into terror because every time I tell that story, I get fucking petrified all over again.

The judges tabulated, and I tied with the lesbian adoptive mom.

Often the scores creep up over the course of the evening, but despite a story about being left on-stage when the lead actor knocked himself out cold, another about a fear of clowns, and a slow-yet-engaging story about a traffic jam in Italy (it’s possible I didn’t hear that whole story, as I was in my chair having a five-minute crush on the storyteller), the placement remained, and I tied for second place. My best finish ever! Maybe I should put my serious face on all the time.