Maybe I Belong On Stage - Part II

Continued from here…

Oh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Really? Fuck! OK, my shoes are untied. God, I wish I knew I was gonna be on stage earlier, I wouldn’t have dressed like a poor schmuck! FUCK, my undershirt isn’t tucked in at all, I must look like a huge slob. OK, do I have any bogeys? I don’t think I have any bogeys. I’ll just stop in the toilets on the way, though. FUCK! Fuck fuck fuck fuck. OK, SHOWTIME BABY!

As I walked up to the stage, my thoughts reverted to ‘chill.’ Notice the full-stop – it wasn’t some ‘CHILL! I NEED TO CHILL! HELP ME CHILL!’ desperate plea from my brain to my shaking extremities, it was ‘chill, winston, be your best, don’t worry’. When I finally got up on stage, I knew that there were a few thousand people in front of me, but only because I could hear them – the lights in my face were bright enough that I couldn’t see anything. So I’ll just pretend it’s the two of us having a chat.

That’s what it was. I felt comfortable, and he didn’t make me look like a fool. When he asked me ’what’s the most you’ve ever won through poker’, it was a fairly easy question to deal with – I’ve discussed my living with so many non-poker players, that I’ve developed a fairly good possible range of responses. This particular situation called for a more abrasive, offensive tack, than the normal slightly defensive response. ‘Well, what’s the most you’ve ever earned from a gig?’

Then he asked me some rather boring questions about my history. At various points, the audience started laughing, apparently at my responses. My thoughts? ‘Hey, me chatting random, boring crap is funny! I’m really funny! YEAH!’ Earlier, someone in the audience had heckled Jimmy about spitting while he was talking, so with my new-found confidence, I thought it would also be really funny for me to point that out onstage. It was :)

When he came to the end and told a joke with the punchline ‘cheese and onion crisps’, I was confused – the audience was laughing harder than at any other point during the gig. But the joke wasn’t funny. However, that’s not what you think about when several thousand people are laughing hysterically – you’re thinking ‘Hmm. Was that joke really funny, but I didn’t get it? Did I not hear him right?’ I made a quick mental calculation – what’s gonna make me look the least like a fool? Do I pretend I also found it hilarious? Do I ask him to repeat the joke, or explain why it’s funny?’ In the end, I went with a non-committal approach. Something felt off, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. It was only during the intermission, when Gavin showed me the video, that I realized what had happened.

Since then, riding that high for as long as I can make it last, I’ve realized that I was comfortable on stage, in front of two and a half thousand people. Pretty much everyone who’s seen the video has complimented me on how I handled myself under pressure. I’ve always sought attention, but never realized that I could actually thrive under the spotlight.

Expect to see me whoring myself out to the world of publicity in the future…. hence me restarting this blog! Don’t expect a blog every day, though, more like three or four times