Well, I can’t say that there were throngs of adoring fans lining up to buy my book, but at least I can say that I didn’t puke at Lit Crawl. I survived my first public reading of my fiction, and even had some fun doing it.

The night before the event, I finished watching the movie Finding Vivian Maier. Then Derek talked me into watching Beware of Mr. Baker, a rockumentary on Ginger Baker, the drummer for Cream. The first, full of beautiful candid photographs by a woman who worked as a nanny and never had any of her photographs shown. The second, full of a man who’s had huge commercial success but nonetheless is a financial disaster, not unrelated to the fact that he’s “quit” heroin dozens of times. In other words, I movie-binged on depressing stories of artists right before my debut. Not the most auspicious timing.

As we were getting ready for the Lit Crawl, I said, “I am in no way suggesting I am going to do this, or even thinking about it. But feeling the way I do right now, and imagining having to go on stage in front of thousands of people, I can understand how they take drugs to get through.” That said, I didn’t take any drugs other than a latte beforehand.

Caught in the act of “air quotes”

When I got off the stage, I noticed my friend all teary-eyed in the front row. That made me giggle. But I couldn’t stop smiling when a few different strangers told me “That was really good.” The clincher, though, was when one guy personally connected to my story, and told me how the father in my story reminded him of his own dad. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, to know that what I write speaks to someone. And at Lit Crawl, it did.

Who needs drugs?