I'm on stage. All eyes are on me. And ears. And possibly the odd nose, picking up the odour of sweat defeating Sure for Men in the battlefield arenas that are my armpits. I decide I need a focal point - something to focus upon and steady myself as I address the audience (which in itself is a tough task seeing as there's about 50 people in tonight and I'm not exactly sure where all of them live).
Idiotically I choose a fly as my focal point. It happened to be reasonably still at the time, resting up to on Will Ord's shoulder to do that rubbing hands thing they sometimes do. Within seconds, however, it is flitting about the room like Speedy Gonzales on Speed.
I thought of a different tact to calm the nerves. My old favourite - to imagine the audience as mere skeletons, devoid of thought or opinion, until I finish when they will magically grow back organs, veins and skin and go wild in appreciation of my prose. Unfortunately, I remembered I'd watched Jason and the Argonauts the other day and the skeletons in it had really freaked me out so tonight it could actually make things worse.
Another technique is to just say 'Sorry' and leave the stage but everyone has paid a fiver for tonight and I'd feel compelled to offer refunds which would mean not having enough money to enrol on that course about calming stage nerves I've had my eye on.
It is only after the show that I realise I should have pretended nerves was just all part of the act. Fiendish. "Here's a poem called 'I Wandered Around The Stage Lonely As A Bag Of Nerves'. Here's a poem called 'All The World's Watching Me Die On Stage'. Here's a poem called 'I'm So F F F F F F Fucking Nervous' etc ...
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