The Part Where I Didn't Leave Early

Here's what I didn't know about open mic nights: they are not background music. I found this out approximately forty-five seconds after I sat down, when a man in a corduroy jacket stepped up to the microphone and began a very serious poem about a road trip he took in 1994. I had my mug. I had a little table in the back. I was not prepared.

I'd been walking past this place for weeks, one of those coffee shops that still has a corkboard covered in actual paper flyers, the kind of place that smells like dark roast and something faintly like old books. When I saw the open mic sign I told myself I'd just go to have something to do on a Thursday, somewhere to sit that wasn't my room, and that I'd leave if it got weird. It got a little weird. I stayed the whole two hours.

not realizing i was being watched while i was watching

I think what got me was how much everyone up there meant it. Even the nervous ones, the girl who apologized before she started and then sang something so quietly you had to lean in, they were all saying something out loud that they'd probably been keeping to themselves for a while. I kept thinking about that. About the difference between writing something and actually saying it. Which maybe I've been thinking about a lot lately for entirely unrelated reasons that definitely don't involve a certain application form still sitting in my bag. Asking for a friend, as previously established.

after. the good kind of quiet.

Anyway. I'm going back next Thursday. Not to perform, obviously, let's not get ahead of ourselves, but because it turns out I really like being in a room where people are trying at things. That felt like something worth writing down.