STAGE FRIGHT, STEROIDS, & YODELING

Reading my work aloud scares me. Yes, I know I do things most people would rightly balk at – climb mountain ridges, hurl shoes, and market my story about pickles in an NYC sex club. I can hang tough. But the world doesn’t make a deodorant strong enough to stop my sweat when reading to my peers.

In the past, I resorted to beta-blockers. They take the edge off my stage-fright, but I have to time it for the pills’ peak dose to hit before I start so I don’t run screaming out the door. Another thing, I need to be hydrated on them so my blood pressure doesn’t bottom out and down I go.

(Don’t worry. I have a prescription. But it is a funny image – a writer scurrying about in the dark of night, laptop under their arm, whispering, “Beta-blocker, anyone got some beta-blockers? Got a reading tomorrow.”)

Three years ago, something, a couple of things, happened. In the quest for a warm winter, I had my entire heating system replaced. Everything in my attic had to be moved out. Though a rickety ladder in the ceiling, I hauled boxes bigger than me down to the second floor.
The next step involved wrenching bits of carpet out of the attic, down the rickety steps down the stairs of my townhouse to the dumpster outside. A major hurdle – holding the two-ton scraps overhead as they disintegrated in my hands.

In the process, my forearm rebelled. Within 24 hours the muscles were frantically-searching-for-a-painkiller sore. After loudly complaining about this for two months, three of my ten fingers started to go numb. When writing, I chose words without the letters Y, U, I, J, and M – the numb fingers could not strike those keys. This was problematic. Time to go to Urgent Care. The somewhat unconcerned medical provider shot my elbow full of steroids one day after receiving a shot of steroids in my foot (unrelated injury).

The shots promised pain relief, but I felt decidedly funky. Not wanting to impose my funkiness on the world, I decided to stay home. Watching DVDs and eating seven chocolate bars one day. I sang the next. Cried. Even outright boohooed. More chocolate. Giggled like a maniac. Had insomnia and night sweats. In a lucid moment, I decided to let phone calls go to voicemail. Most days, I couldn’t feel my foot or arm. After a couple of days, I thought maybe I should get out. It could be cabin fever, right?

At my coffee group, I sat, unable to follow conversations. Drinking caffeine, probably not what I needed.


“Are you okay?” Asked a sweet guy.


“You don’t look so good,” said an ex-lover.


I started to cry. “I can’t feel my hand. Or my foot.”


“Look she’s crying. She never does that.”


“Oh, that’s not good.”


“Do you want to go for a walk?”


“Okay,” I said immediately beaming at them like one of those stupid head-bobbing dashboard doodads.


“She shouldn’t drive. We’ll take you,” and with that, they picked me up, buckled me into a car, and took me to the Museum of Art. We walked around. I was in awe of the textures of steel, grass, concrete, my shoe, my friend’s hair. I was hypo-manic from the two steroid shots.

We passed a pond.
“Are those duckies?”


“Yes. They’re a form of animal floating on the water,” said my friend smiling. My ex-lover laughed and went off to call a … friend, maybe to get some medical advice. He turned around just in time to grab me by the back of my jeans, aborting my move to take a closer look at the ‘ducky.’

“Thank you. I feel like singing,” I said and attempted yodeling ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ from ‘The Sound of Music.’ I was insulted by their laughter.

“We should feed her,” my friend said. “Promise you won’t sing at the restaurant?”


“Maybe I need practice,” I said starting to yodel again.


“Yes you do, but yodeling is inappropriate at a restaurant, especially in North Carolina,” said my ex.


“Okay dokey,” I said. We had an uneventful lunch, at least in my mind. I slept the rest of the day.

A week later, my hand still hurt. Typing hurt. My fingers were numb. Back to the orthopedist who injected more steroids into my body. Oh no! I was going to a reading group in two nights. My friend said to prepare a piece to read.

On the night of the reading, I struggled into a dress and boots, both pull-on, to turn up at the social before the event. I babbled.

A friend told me to go free form at the podium. “You’re entertaining. You don’t need a script.”

Sweet, but I could foresee disaster. I slept with my head against a friend’s shoulder through most of the event. When the MC called my name, I lurched out of the chair, stumbling to the podium without my natural gazelle-like grace. More like a startled moose.

I read my piece without a care in the world, making eye contact with the audience, slowly enunciating each word, adlibbing when I lost my place, being my usual goofy self, cubed. The audience laughed and applauded. Or at least that’s what I remembered.

That night’s positive feedback confirmed my dilemma. Plotched on steroids, not giving a damn, I can give a good reading. Stone cold sober, even medicated on beta-blockers, I suck. What to do? My only answer is please, please, if I start yodeling, get me off the podium!