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Short Story Spotlight -- Stage Fright

Donna Schlachter • Dec 19, 2022

Thought I'd give you a change and feature some short stories I've written over the years. Some have published in various formats, and some were written on spec. Hope you enjoy! We'll turn back to Christmas stories on the 26th.


Stage Fright

 

             I eyed the microphone, which stared at me like a one-eyed monster, seeming to accuse me of all of my inadequacies. The voices of my childhood echoed through my head: You’re no good. You’ll never amount to anything. Who wants to listen to you? Nobody cares.

This wasn’t my first time. I’d stood on stage like this before, stared down the invisible critics, pushed away the voices that played like an endless loop tape.

I’d beaten them before. And I’d do it again.

Because I am a winner.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the only sounds escaping past my lips were a strangled version of ‘good evening’ that sounded incomprehensible even to my own ears. And I knew what I intended to say.

My audience shifted uneasily in their seats, pity and revulsion written across their faces. Disgust and disappointment evident in their glances. One even had the audacity to yawn.

At least, I think it was a yawn.

Hard to tell sometimes with the stage lights shining so bright.

I went back to my material. Open with a quick joke. Make ‘em laugh. Make ‘em lean forward, a sure sign they want more.

Not like the crowd last month. Now, that was a dead group. No laughter. No applause. No cries for an ovation.

Hopefully, this bunch would be better.

I swiped at sweat running down my temple, threatening to end up in my eye. I dislike pain. Don’t like the sting of perspiration in an open cut or my eye. Don’t like discomfort of any kind, really. I go to great lengths to avoid pain.

Hmm, maybe I could come up with a routine based on all the ways I try not to get hurt.

Then again, if I don’t want to get hurt, why did I choose to be a stand-up comic?

Perhaps, if the truth were known, I didn’t choose this life.

It chose me.

Back to the show. I swallowed hard, working my tongue around my teeth to get some saliva going. I should be nervous. These are all friends. I know them intimately. They know me. They want me to succeed.

Not like that crowd last month. No, siree. Hatred oozed out of their pores as they stared at me. If there is a God in heaven, they were praying like mad that I would fail.

Hmm. Maybe that could be another line of jokes, about prayers and God and whether He answers or doesn’t, and what about the ones He doesn’t answer. Do they just bounce around in time, waiting for their turn? Like a dandelion seed looking for a good place to light to take hold and send up yet another of those insidious weeds?

I straightened my tie, an old Rodney Dangerfield affection I’d adopted because the older folks remember him still. Give it a few years, when the oldsters have died off, and nobody will remember him. That’s okay. I’ll pick up a cue from someone else by that time.

I nodded at the crowd. Time to start. Cleared my throat and gave the knot of my tie another twist. Pasted on a grin I didn’t feel. Opened my mouth to speak.

And made the mistake of looking at that silver and black microphone once more.

Lost my train of thought. Felt like a fool.

I swiped damp palms down the side of my wool suit jacket. Should have worn something cooler. Wool in July was ridiculous. But it’s the only suit I own, and tonight felt like a special night. So I wanted to wear something nice.

What an idiot. Just like they said, I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d never amount to anything. If I messed up again tonight, then what? Should I simply quit? Get a real job, as my mother pestered me about three times a day? Go back to school as my geeky brother suggested? Join the army as my father insisted? After all, if you can fog a mirror, he says, you can be a soldier.

I don’t know. I watch television, and I see the footage from Iraq and those places. Seems to me they do a lot more than just fog a mirror. Don’t know that I want to be in a job where I get shot at. Main reason I didn’t join the cops, I guess. Those folks don’t get paid enough for what they do.

Nope, seems like the only thing I’m any good at is making people laugh at me, either intentionally or not. I learned young to make fun of myself. That’s what people seem to like. They don’t like it when you make fun of them. So in grade school I had a choice. Be funny or be invisible. Because I don’t have the looks or the brains to get by any other way.

No, don’t argue with me. I’m being honest with myself. And no, I’m not simply listening to the wrong voices. Too many people have told me over the years that I’m not smart and I’m not handsome. Not that I’m an idiot—or ee-jut as my Irish grandmother pronounced it—and I’m not ugly.

There’s simply nothing that stands out about me.

Unless, of course, you consider my sense of humor.

Now, I’ve been told that sometimes I go too far. Sometimes my humor is off the table, overboard, over the top, however you want to describe it. While I thought it was hilarious, my brother didn’t think so at the time when I dabbed black ink around the eyeholes of his binoculars and the kid had to go through most of the summer looking like he’d lost a fight. How was I to know that stuff stained the skin and wouldn’t wash off?

Still, I thought it was funny.

You know, just once I’d like to have an audience that laughed because they genuinely thought something I said was funny, not because it was so un-funny that it was laughable. That’s what this crowd looks like tonight.

I stepped away from the microphone, closed my eyes, pivoted, and faced the crowd again. Maybe if I don’t look at the mic, I won’t be intimidated by it. It won’t steal my words. My jokes.

My laughs.

“Did you hear the one about. . .” My voice trails off and I glance at my nemesis.

The words catch in my throat, and once again, I am five and sitting in the chair outside the principal’s office. Not even a week at school and already in trouble for punching a boy who stole my lunch money.

This world is so not fair.

But I am not that primary school child. I am a man. A grown man. With thoughts and ideas far beyond what those close-minded teachers ever dreamed about. And just like Einstein, who was told he was too stupid to pass mathematics, I have surpassed all their plans for me.

Because I’m a bigger man than them. I don’t judge people by the clothes they wear, by the family they were born into, or where they live.

No, siree.

In fact, I don’t judge people at all.

I assess them.

Like an FDA inspector in a slaughterhouse. Or a television personality at a talent contest. Or a—well. Okay. Might as well admit it.

I do judge people.

Just not on the same things as others.

For example, the woman in the front row. Big glasses, small hands. No concert pianist. Probably not a brain surgeon, either. But she makes the best chocolate chip cookies you’ve ever tasted.

How do I know that, you ask?

I know her.

Not like a close personal friend.

Not a relative, either. No, that would be Uncle Ernie in the second row.

Didn’t work with her. No, Susan in the third row falls into that category.

She didn’t work for me. No, that’s the mailman in the first row, next to this little honey of a cookie maker.

In fact, I know all of these people. Not intimately, mind you. I don’t think a person has enough room in their lives to know a large number of folks intimately. But I know them.

Take, for example, the guy with the big stomach on the right there. Him I know because he always goes out to pick up his morning paper wearing only his plaid boxer shorts. When I called him on it one day, he insisted they were his pajamas, and lots of people get their newspaper wearing their pajamas or a dressing gown. Same thing, he said.

Underwear is not the same thing as formal pajamas or a housecoat. Just because a person is too lazy to take off their underwear and change into true pajamas, the kind with a button-up jacket and pants with elastic in the waist, doesn’t mean they get to call their underwear by another name.

He didn’t think that was funny. Not one bit.

And the woman with the cookies? How do I know her, you ask? Well, she won a contest for her cookies and then paid for a billboard to announce that she’d won. I thought she was egotistical, and I told her so when I bumped into her at the grocery store. That’s where I learned she used store brand chocolate chips in her cookies, even though the contest rules specifically said she was to use the sponsor’s brand of chips. When I asked her about that little discrepancy, she sniffed and looked down at me and said that the sponsor’s brand was ten cents more expensive and tasted like hamster droppings.

I don’t know how she knows what those taste like, and when I threatened to expose her by buying a billboard and putting her exact words on it, she didn’t find that one bit funny.

You might be seeing a pattern here, and you’d be right.

Uncle Ernie? Caught him fondling a boy cousin of mine and when I said I’d tell on him, he said he was just having a bit of fun. I asked if Aunt Myrna would find his activities hysterical, to which he’d responded by threatening me to keep my funny-guy mouth shut.

The mailman? Saw him tossing my neighbor’s mail in a trash can. See, my neighbor is of another race. Heck, sometimes I think he’s of another planet, but that’s a story for another day. Anyway, when I showed the mailman a photograph I’d taken of him throwing away the envelopes, along with a zoomed-in one showing the address, he said he was playing a practical joke on the guy.

I didn’t think so. In fact, I asked the neighbor about that, and he said he’d gotten a foreclosure notice from the bank because his checks—which he put out on his mailbox for pick-up—weren’t making their way to the bank. So you see, the mailman was up to more than even I knew about.

At any rate, I said I didn’t think the practical joke was very funny.

And it wasn’t.

Heck, the neighbor may not be like me, but at least he’s quiet and doesn’t have a ’57 Chevy up on blocks in the front yard.

I eyed the audience once more, challenging them with my stare to make a comment about my performance. Sure, I know it hasn’t been one of my best nights, but even a funny guy has to have some un-funny times.

Susan glares back at me, her large blue eyes wet with—with what? Holding back her laughter? Has she chuckled so much she has cried?

Oh, I hope so. That’s one of the biggest compliments you can give a comic. That and telling him to stop because your sides hurt so much.

And what had Susan done to deserve a special seat at this command performance? Nothing serious. In reality, I’d have had her here even if she hadn’t mocked my stutter in the lunchroom, sending the other twenty or so employees into fits of laughter.

She’d been on my mind and in my plans for some time.

So here I am, ready to start once more, five of my best friends watching from the audience. I know I can make them laugh. I can do it this time.

“So a guy walks into a bar, and sitting there are a priest, a rabbi, and an evangelical pastor.”

Susan squirms in her seat, muffled noises coming from her mouth.

The mouth covered with silver duct tape.

Uncle Ernie kicks at the seat. I should have taped him to the chair.

The mailman’s head slumps on his chest.

Underwear Guy looks completely ridiculous, sitting there in his plaid boxers. I figure if they’re good enough for the neighbors to look at every morning, they’re good enough to go to a show.

And Cookie Lady? She doesn’t look very happy. No smile plastered over her face like the one of her in the billboard. Her blue ribbon has already been forgotten. The sponsor chose the second place recipe once news of the chip substitution got out. But that wasn’t punishment enough for her.

No, siree. I’m no judge, but I think she’s got a way to go yet.

You see, I don’t care if they think I’m funny.

Their opinion isn’t the one that counts.

I know I’m funny. I know I can make people laugh. And whether these folks laugh or not means nothing.

Because they mean nothing.

And just like the group last week, by sun-up they’ll be with us no longer.

If you remember, I already said I didn’t like pain.

That I would go to great lengths to avoid pain.

Of course, I was talking about my own pain.

Others, I like to see squirm.

As much—or more—than I like to hear them laugh.

And I love hearing people laugh.

Not at me, mind you.

With me.

I stare down at the microphone one more time, and the routine materializes in my head, in my heart, and out of my mouth, just the way I imagined it. Just the way I practiced it

Line after line. Joke after joke.

After a few minutes, I don’t even see these pathetic souls who have paid a huge price to see me perform tonight.

Here’s to dying of laughter.

And stage fright.

 

 

About Donna:

Donna lives in Denver with husband Patrick, three housemates, and two cats who rule the roost. As a hybrid author, she writes squeaky clean historical suspense and contemporary suspense. She previously published contemporary books under her alter ego of Leeann Betts, but now authors books in her name only. She has been traditionally and indie published more than 60 times in novellas, full-length novels, devotional books, and books on the writing craft. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Writers on the Rock, Pikes Peak Writers, Christian Women Writers, Faith Hope and Love Christian Writers, and Christian Authors Network; facilitates a critique group; and teaches writing classes online and in person. Donna also ghostwrites, edits, and judges in writing contests. She loves history and research, traveling extensively for both. In her spare time, she paints like a whirling Banshee Bob Ross-style in oil on canvas, minus the Afro.


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