Since running away from home a year ago, I made the choice to not subject myself unduly to the special pain that is an open mike. Going to a while lot of open mikes has for me the same kind of pleasure as chewing my cuticles and biting my nails down to bloody goodness. Seriously, when you really get going on nailbiting there is pleasure in the pain, the rip of flesh, the taste of blood.

A cringing, horrible, when will it ever stop open mike feels a lot like ripping your skin through to blood and savoring the moment.

Last night I went to the first shitty dive bar hell hole with a microphone show that I’ve been to in a long time. It was kind of fun and kind of not fun. I took the bullet, after the host did some scrambling, dying time at the top. He baubled my name, forgetting the order he had himself worked out and told us not 15 minutes before, and, in fact, not remembering my gender. (Reason number 512 why it’s a bad idea to make a point of announcing a woman’s gender in her introduction.)

While the host struggled, I leaned over and told M. something like, “Shit, maybe I shouldn’t go up.” The bar was wide and long and loud, the room split with a divider separating an onstensible dining area from the true bar. Classically shitty room for an open mike. (Doesn’t matter where you go in this world, comics will find a shitty hole with willing management and figure the laws of physics and acoustics and shit will bend for them. Comics are kind of delusional, you know.)

So, I’m leaning over and contemplating a bailout. A young dude next to me (I say dude, ‘cuz this is fucking Cal-I-Forn-I-A.), anyway this kid with one eye on the dying host says something like, “You gotta.” I guess he was calculating any change was a change for the better.

I requitted myself better than adequately. I saw laughter and some folks leaning in and listening over a fairly loud din. (I fucking love the word din.) Better yet, a boy (I say boy, but he had to be over 21 to be entertained in this perverse manner), some boy said, “Hey, you rocked.” That’s right boys and girls. I fucking rock.

I spent the rest of the night leaning against the back wall and shitting on the night as a whole. It has been for-fucking-ever since I leaned against a back wall at a show chockful of mockery. It’s kind of fun. (Although, part of the game would be shitting on the performers. I didn’t listen closely enough to do that.)

Fun to be an asshole again. That’s comedy.