The Open Mic

They return to their drinks and huddle in the shadows as a snaking line disperses with each name produced. Laughing groups and intent faces hovering over notebooks all wait to clutch an unbiased microphone on a small, brightly lit stage. A newcomer enters from the back of the bar, walks over, and adds his name to the bottom of the list. “Who is he?” they wonder as minutes stretch til the host’s first introduction. With each performance the room’s energy changes, responding to unrehearsed tangents, the same tired routines, and the occasional eruption of hilarity. The excitement ebbs and flows, the crowd becoming more intoxicated with each comic’s invitation to the stage. He sits in the center of the packed room, hearing a voice obscured by the back of a head in front of him. Some of the jokes are old and some are new, still being worked into a golden five minutes that will achieve fame and success. “How odd is it to make a living from being odd?” he thinks.

The bits change but the performers are the same. The misfits of society trying to carve appreciation for their shape. Something hasn’t felt right their entire lives, quietly standing outside the dictates of expectation. They grow older, waiting for life to adapt to them, but it never does. On a Friday night, in an Irish bar with an attractive drink special, they try to profit from their quietly desperate humor. To laugh at grim reality is one thing, but to make others laugh at it is to redefine existence. He marks each hour with another beer, repeating the words in his head.

“Is anyone enjoying this?” he thinks as the night drags on. Self-loathing can be public torture, but still they show up every weekend passing up the college celebrations. Talent is recognized or refuted here by the sounds of laughter. The room is nearly empty when he finally grasps the mic, the last, exhausted participants looking up at him out of formal respect. The words vanish and he fumbles through their general idea, missing punchlines and botching twists. When he is done, they clap, as they had for everyone else. He puts the empathetic mic back in its’ stand, where it waits for him or anyone else that cares to speak. It is indifferent to the effects of the sounds it hears, whether laughter or otherwise. When the last drops of beer are consumed, it is held again only to be put away, at the point in the night where you know if you are going home alone.