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"And in a moment of gay clarity, I thought ... Beth Israel would be a great name for a drag queen."
- James, at The Moth's story slam, 2/27/02

And I had a weird flash to how far I'd come since the days as a teenager with no car and no particular place to go I would worship and sweat and swear over the night of all music nights (a chance to see some very people your mom wouldn't let in the front door get all dolled up ... or not), when The Grammies would come on. I'd get on the phone with my similarly-music-nutty friend Rebecca (she was more mainstream musically nutty, having a crush on pre-Wacko Jacko, than my other friends, who wouldn't deign to admit they gave a shit about who was on the Grammies, and they probably didn't) and we'd sweat and swear and worship over that year's nominees. We both adored Peter Gabriel (in his So period the man was truly beautiful) and I had a strange weird thing for a while about Steve Winwood and there was Sting and potentially Duran Duran -- 1986 was a very, very good year. We'd be on the phone for most of the ceremony.

But that's not where I was on Wednesday night; in fact, I'd actually forgotten the Grammies were on. I think U2 and George Clooney won something. Instead, I was sitting in a bouncy plastic folding chair at the Nuyorcian Poets Cafe on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, pulling my sleeves over my hands to keep from freezing (it was either unheated or poorly heated) and getting ready to listen to my first storytelling slam, courtesy of The Moth.

We were introduced with a wild curse at the Grammies, and I sent my 16-year old self home without dinner. 

I hadn't even known I'd make it: Wednesdays are weird at work, since we close the news section and I have to stay until everything is in and accounted for and gone to the printer's. Released at a reasonable 6pm, I decided to check out The Moth, an urban storytelling group that convenes once a month (mainly at the NPC). I'd been into storytelling in Boston -- rather, I'd been into listening to people doing it -- and there was a small group which occasionally met at this bookstore in either Somerville or Cambridge, but it was a haul to get there and I didn't always make it. So I figured, I'd try this once. If four people plus me showed up and it was pitiful, I could leave. It was only five bucks. For five bucks, I'd put up with some pretty crummy entertainment. For some reason, there's a mathematical equation that often helps define What Is Entertaining: Somewhere between fifty and a thousand people makes an event interesting and even hip; head up into the tens of thousands and you're getting into mainstream; get much below 50 and things just look sad.

And apparently storytellers in several cities make you hike to find them -- getting to 3rd Street between Avenues B and C is no picnic, particularly when the wind chill makes it feel like it's 13. When I got there, I figured I'd grab some hot tea (it was a cafe, after all) and sit at a table and read until something happened. If nothing happened, or lameness happened, I was outta there. Law & Order was on at 10. I had other places to be.

Shows what I know. I got to the assigned location and was heartened to discover a knot of people standing outside. Then I was a little disheartened to realize the cafe hadn't even opened yet and the knot stretched into a line a half a block long. Sheeet, this is a popular do! And while most of the people standing in line were all bundled up and, well, average looking, I caught at least two guys who were dressed up in full suits with fedoras on, as if they planned on going frugging later. I got in line and watched while others (who came with friends; I don't mind doing things alone, especially the first time, but going solo can be a bit daunting at times) stood around me and ate pizza and started talking about how they needed to be bundled up "because inside it's cold." I was afraid the whole thing was going to be held in a garden or something odd. 

Nope. We got let in a little after seven and piled into this narrow, brick-walled two-story, high-ceilinged room, perhaps 15 feet across and three or four times that long. There was a balcony which stretched across the top third of the room and a bar right at the entrance, around which people were buying lots of beer and plastic cups of wine. They needed it: It was cold in there. I didn't put on a coat -- homespun wisdom reminding me that would make going back out later even colder -- but I wrapped my, uh, wrap around my shoulders like I was going to the opera. Clearly, some people had been here before, and they chatted with each other, running across the room to greet friends, one woman worked on a laptop, some sat on the edges of the small stage up front. The room was teeming, and I was lucky to get a seat just about ten feet from the stage. A large woman behind me introduced herself as Sue, and her friend as Betty, and admired my skirt. Everyone was pretty friendly, and I spotted some rather good-looking guys, but no dice there. One of 'em reminded me of Adam from Ivy -- all big eyes and floppy hair -- and turned out to be named Bernie. Through all of this organized chaos wandered a thin woman in a ruffled men's dress shirt and beret, attending to various duties. Eventually, she got up on the stage and things got underway.

What an interesting night it was! Anyone who wanted to tell a five-minute story on a theme (that night's was "Anxiety") put their names in a hat up front. Ten would be picked out, one at a time, you'd go up to the stage, tell your story, and get judged by three groups around the room -- chosen by Beret Lady. Since the theme was Anxiety, the host -- some guy from NPR whose name or voice I should have recognized, being the WNYC gal that I have become, but nope -- decided the judging groups should be given names that corresponded to anti-depressants. I think we had a Paxil, a Celexa and -- one other that escapes me. 

The one concern I'd had was that all of the storytellers would be experts and would be all esoteric and New York chic enigmatic and basically full of shit. We had one or two, but of all ten storytellers, at least nine held my interest -- and most made me laugh out loud. As I recall there was....

1. Former talent coordinator for The David Letterman Show who got stuck trying to find "The Mexican Hat Dance" and not "La Cucaracha"
2. A woman who told her story in third person about "Joan" who took world events a little too seriously and who yelled so loud into the mic my ears rang
3. Dina, truly the best, who was this tiny little thing but told a story about going to AA meetings because she couldn't find an Overeaters Anonymous meeting late at night; she met a guy there who was 30 days off of crack and was so desperate just to be able to say she had a boyfriend that she went out with him; the punchline was that she put him off from sex for a while, but eventually he took them to an outdoor parking lot (for various reasons, both their places were out) in his Mercedes and offered the attendant a $50 to leave them alone "because I wanna fuck my girl." Well, Dina was speechless. She didn't know what to say. "He'd called me his girlfriend!" she ended. Hilarious.
4. James, the gay guy quoted above who had a 300 pound therapist he had to help get to the hospital when she developed a kidney stone, also very funny
5. Kansas guy, who sat right next to me and told about his genius idea to be cool in high school by getting a Blue Lagoon-esque perm
6. A woman who went into a long spiraling imaginative "what my life would be like if I got Hand Cancer" fantasy after going to the doctor and learning she had a cyst in her finger, but it came off as too prepared and went on a bit too long
7. Gautama, not a native English speaker (evident, but he told us) whose story was about overcoming anxiety speaking in front of people, and how he went to Toastmasters. He had a terrible pun about making a spectacle of himself but the audience was very forgiving and it was pretty impressive what he was doing
8. Bernie (aka Cute Adam-esque guy) who went into a whole staring-at-his-shoes-fingers-halfway-in-jeans-pockets-woe-is-me routine about being lousy in bed and finding his soulmate who admitted she, too, was lousy in bed (man, can I pick 'em or what?)
9. Very Cute Older Guy talking about his roommate in college who was some kind of African heir to royalty and who was a god with the ladies. He said something about tagging along behind the roommate, who was like a "sexual rhino," and he (the storyteller) was the bird hanging on and picking up the crumbs. That was funny, and he was adorable. And he disappeared before the night was out.
10. Final guy. I missed the first minute or so of his story since I was in the can, but when I came out he was in some kind of strip/nudie/gay club where a penis was stuck through a hole and he was faced with what to do with it, as a heterosexual man.

But how cool is that? People getting together in a room to listen to stories. Maybe one or two of them were professional -- the others did just fine. We are interesting, we really are. Everybody has many more than one other story, and how great is it that you can come together as a group of strangers and be united while one person stands on a stage and does nothing more than spill out words. I love this town, I really do.

But I hate having to walk home in 13 degree winds! Whoa, nellie.

For reasons I'm not sure of (I credit/blame Eggers in equal amounts) I said yes today to a Survivor game. I don't even watch Survivor (I've seen one episode, the final from the first season) but when one of the copy editors from our sister magazine (he's the one I ran into at The Weakest Link audition) asked if I wanted to be a part of this kind of loose group, where you'd pick a name of one of the new survivors out of a hat (more choosing out of hats!) and "be" that person, just following them in the new show to see who would outlast, I said fine. It didn't cost anything. But Eggers is right; it is nice to say yes. 

So I'm Kathy, a 47 year old real estate agent. She didn't get voted off the first night, which was tonight.

You never know where a name from a hat will take you.