(I’m filing this under Overheard Backstage but it’s really more of a Witnessed Backstage…)
The worst case of stage fright I’ve ever seen was by an open mic rookie at Giggles. He was a scrawny, bespectacled college kid who might charitably be described as socially awkward — at a later open mic he would make a punchline hinge on a reference to Vogon poetry, if that tells you anything (note to non-nerds: be glad that it doesn’t).
Anyway, he got a spot on the list and then, clearly a bundle of nerves, proceeded to stomp a pacing trail into the carpet along the back hallway, muttering to himself and avoiding eye contact with everyone. So far, this wasn’t too out of the ordinary; I remember doing something similar when I popped my open mic cherry. Then, suddenly, he B-lined for the bathroom, and those of us nearby heard violent, explosive vomiting noises. A subsequent trip to the bathroom revealed that he hadn’t successfully made it to the toilet before ralphing. The stall was a putrid, barfy mess.
So this poor unkempt kid, whose grooming habits weren’t exactly those of a GQ cover model in the first place, was now covered in sweat, shaking violently, and reeking of puke. That’s pretty bad, but it was what happened next that catapulted him past the pretenders and into the Stage Fright Hall of Fame.
After his name was called, he haltingly made his way up to the stage. He went to take the microphone out of the mic stand, but at this point he was shaking so violently that he accidentally smashed it into his nose — which then started to bleed uncontrollably. He said a few incoherent words into the mic before realizing that blood was gushing down the front of his face, at which point he simply dropped the microphone and scampered off the stage, whimpering and bleeding through the hands clutching his nose and mouth.
While the next comic made his way up in front of the stunned crowd, the kid raced back to the bathroom and into his previously-befouled toilet stall. His efforts to staunch the bleeding in an orderly fashion were profoundly unsuccessful, and to the other bodily fluids deposited earlier, he added bright red globs of blood. After his second visit, that toilet stall looked like someone had gone in there and dynamited a bucket of afterbirth.
To his credit, he did come back and try again a few weeks later, though I haven’t seen him since then. But I still think about him sometimes, because he certainly helped to put my own pre-stage butterflies into perspective.
