Real People (TBT)

Here's a little essay I wrote a few years ago after a particularly harrowing trip to the theater.

I cursed myself for not taking up jogging. It was part of my plan for the summer, but like most things I plan to do with all the anticipation and excitement of someone who doesn’t know what they’re getting into, when the time came to actually do it I changed my mind. I put it off. I didn’t have that option tonight, this was a limited engagement and I may never get the chance again. I knew myself and if I don’t do this, I may never even try again. My throat burned as I ran down the uneven cobbled streets, gulping down lung-fulls of autumn night air. I dodged gaggles of loudly conversing bar-hoppers and overtook surprised looking retired couples as I all out sprinted for the theatre. I was going to be late.

It hurt. Not the burning lungs or the stares of the people I rushed past on the street, but the lateness. I hate being late. If I know I’m going to be late for something I often won’t go at all. The extra attention that is focused on me, everyone looking up to see who it is who dares arrive after everyone else is settled. Of all the things that triggered my anxiety, lateness was the worst. I hoped against hope that the show would somehow get delayed as my body signalled that it had had enough and I slowed down to an uneven, wheezing walk. I was close, the theatre was just a block away. At the top of the next hill. Damn.

I wasn’t going to miss this, this is the kind of thing real people do. Going to events, seeing shows, being out in the world with other real people. I was going to see an author speak about his new book. I was going to see first hand someone who actually did it, he put pen to paper and made a name and a life for himself out of the talent that he possessed. That was what I wanted to do. What every instinct and fear in my body told me couldn’t be done. But someone had done it.

I have always been good at creative pursuits. Maybe it’s my introversion, the introspective side of me that makes it easy for me to conceptualize abstract ideas and feelings. Maybe I was just too shy for my own good as a child and turned to making imaginary things in place of friends. Who knows, but I always liked making up stories. None of them had endings though, because I always lost faith in myself about halfway through. I wanted so badly to change that, to create stories and characters and worlds that people would love and remember and want more of. I knew I could do it, in the logical part of my mind I knew I had the capacity. It was my anxiety and self doubt that stopped me.

I approached the theatre at last, bent nearly double with a stitch in my side. The theatre was dark. Maybe they turn off the lights outside when the show is going on, I thought. I read the sign that hung overhead and swore. I was at the wrong theatre. I knew the theatre was downtown, and I assumed it was the one I had been to that one time, but it wasn’t. The show started at 7:30. My watch read 7:32.

I feel like this is usually the part where the hero swears that nothing will stop her, where she steels her resolve, hops fences and runs till her lungs bleed only to get to the theater and sit in her seat just as the speaker takes the stage. Well this isn’t one of those stories. I dragged my sore, panting, overheated self to a flight of stairs nearby, and sat down. I cried, shook, and began hyperventilating.

Anxiety attacks are experienced by a large percent of the population, and they affect everyone differently. Many people think they are having a heart attack, the walls are closing in on them, or that their death in imminent. My attacks are cake walks compared to some, they only last about 5-15 minutes and the worst part is the light headedness associated with the hyperventilating, but that somehow doesn’t make me feel better.

This night was important to me not only because of the man I was to see on stage, to be honest I had only read about 3 of his shortest pieces, but because it was something that real people do. It was something that real writers do. I never did anything, I was always too scared. I was scared I’d mess it up and make an ass of myself. I wasn’t afraid of being laughed at, I could deal with laughter. It was the scorn, being the interrupter or the interloper or the one who ruins it for everyone else just by being there. What had I just done?

I wasn’t just crying because I would miss the show, but because it was my own fault. My own incompetence had led me here. Why hadn’t I just checked the location of the theatre? Why had I trusted myself that I knew where it was? Why hadn’t I left earlier so as not to be late? I had thought about it, but in the end let someone else decide how long I needed to get there. I was a stupid, useless fool who sabotaged herself so she couldn’t have things she felt she didn’t deserve.

I came down out of my attack after about 5 minutes of continuous crying, and started thinking semi-rationally. I had spent $47 on this ticket. Most of that was a voucher for an autographed copy of his newest book. I picked myself up and started walking. If I missed the show, at least I could pick up my book and go home. I didn’t know where the actual theatre was, but someone might be able to tell me. I passed by a lot of people, but didn’t ask anyone. I was still too out of it. Eventually I came to a coffee shop I had been to several times before. I walked inside, waited in line, and asked the barista where the theatre was. She told me, pleasantly enough, and that cheered me slightly. I finally found it, hidden down a back street where I had never known there was a theatre. I found my way to the box office, and told the man at the desk my story. He told me it happened a lot, and that there was still time.

Someone was onstage when I was shown inside, telling the audience about the program and introducing the author. The usher had to shine a light into a few faces to find my seat, someone was in it and had to move. I trod on a mans foot on my way to the seat, then sat down next to him. There was a tall man in front of me, but I could see the stage if I cocked my head to one side. I arrived and was seated just as Bill Bryson took the stage.

He spoke in a soft kind of voice, with a strange part American part British accent. He extolled the virtues of world travel. I scoffed, I had a hard time getting to the next town over, let alone around the world. Then he said something that made me stop thinking about myself and take a harder look at this portly, kindly looking man on stage. He said he loved to travel, but he wasn’t a good traveler. He said he was often incompetent and uncomfortable.

Incompetent and uncomfortable. I imagined Mr Bill Bryson boarding a train, looking at his ticket with a furrowed brow, checking it against the rows as he searched for his seat. Maybe he’d even hit someone with his bag as he turned too suddenly in the narrow aisle. I imagined him spilling coffee on himself on a plane, having a brown stain down his shirt as he queued up at the baggage claim. I saw him getting lost wandering the streets of an unfamiliar city. Incompetent, and uncomfortable. And yet he did it, and he loved it.

I was transfixed for the remainder of the show. He spoke a bit about his new book, read an excerpt and had a question and answer segment with a woman from public radio. The new book was about the summer of 1927 and significant things that had happened that year. The way he talked about the topic was familiar, it was the way I talked about my stories and the research I did for them. I saw in Mr. Bill Bryson a bit of myself, sitting on a stage in front of a sold out crowd, just talking about things that he found interesting. Everyone from the front row to the man whose foot I had stepped on was listening intently. He did it, he really did it. And if this little man from Iowa could entrance a crowd based solely on his writing about something that interested him, maybe someone else could to. Maybe someone like me.

I left the theatre at around 9 o’clock, after exiting the theatre and descending the stairs, then waiting around for the lobby to empty so I could go back upstairs for my book, only to be told that they were available at the box office on the first floor all along. The clerk handed me my book and said “Enjoy” I replied “You too... enjoy something.” A signed copy of Bill Bryson’s “One Summer” tucked under my arm, I walked straight past the parking garage and spent another twenty minutes walking the city streets until I found my way back. I had exact change for the parking attendant. Maybe this night wasn’t so bad afterall.