Man, I Feel Like a Tuesday

February twenty-first. There is a karaoke bar three blocks from my apartment that I have walked past at least forty times without going in. I know this because I have thought about going in approximately forty times, and each time I have produced a very reasonable list of reasons not to: it is a weeknight, I do not know anyone there, I cannot sing, and what if someone I know sees me. Tuesday I walked past it again on the way back from the yoga class, yes, still going, more on that in a minute, and the door was propped open and warm light was spilling out onto the sidewalk, and I heard someone inside singing a Celine Dion song with genuine conviction and zero technical skill, and I thought: I could do that. And then I thought: I'm not going to talk myself out of this. So I didn't.

I walked in. I put my name on the list before I sat down, which I have since identified as the key move, if you sit down first you will absolutely leave before your name is called. The bartender did not look up. The handful of people at the tall tables did not look up. Nobody cared that I was alone on a Tuesday in my yoga-class-recovery outfit. I ordered a water, because I was not going to add anything to the variables, and I waited. When my name came up I sang 'Man! I Feel Like a Woman' by Shania Twain because it was the first song I could find in the binder that I actually knew all the words to, and I sang it to eleven strangers in a room that smelled like old beer and carpet, and I was bad, and it was extraordinary.

mid-lyric, zero regrets

Afterward I sat back down and watched two more people sing and then I put my coat on and walked home. The whole thing took maybe an hour and fifteen minutes. I have been thinking about it ever since in the way you think about something that turned out to be exactly worth doing. The yoga class update, since I mentioned it: I have been going regularly now for a few weeks, and the thing I wrote about after the second class, that specific quality of an hour where your mind and your body agree about what they're doing, that is still the thing. It has not worn off. It turns out going back is the part that matters. Same with karaoke, maybe.

the face of someone who actually went through with it

I do not know if I will go back. I think I might. I think the version of me who walked past that door forty times might be slightly retired.