With Feeling: Oh, the rush

When focusing is a feat and inspiration is scarce, when a zodiac's worth of signs all point you over the cliff and you realize emo writing is lamer than a popsicle stick; when your metaphors no longer add up and you find yourself playing centerfield for Darren Dalton's Fifth Dimenson; when you're lost in a run-on sentence and can't find the brakes, when you forget that writing in the second person is condescending and lazy, you begin to fidget in your skin, wondering ...

I gave a speech today, my first to an audience larger than two conjoined Olive Garden tables. I first walked to the stage while pocketing the tattered one-page speech and brushing by a team of blushing girls – mostly minors – each carrying tin back to their seats. I know this because I was checking them out.

Wearing a tie and some shoe polish, but no jacket since that seems like the smug thing to do, I hurdled the four steps leading to the stage with two lunges – a modern-day record

The heart was working time-and-a-half, for sure, and veins bulged in ways that warranted Speedos. Remembering that now was now and this was this, I turned to face the naked crowd and felt for something in my pocket. I unfurled my speech and went blank.
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The previous presenter read a poem. He wore a jacket, maybe two, and rhymed in verse, telling of all the achievements the girls’ Team of the Year had done. The crickets loved it.

Even though the poem didn’t cure any cancer, it was still admirable if just for the overwhelming risk involved. The presenter, lost in his limerick, couldn’t feel the drift of clammy silence brought on by his race/pace/girl/world/shoelace rhyme scheme.

Not long after sitting back down with the mortals, the poet left the banquet for the comfort of home, probably telling his loved ones of his success. With proper care, the jacket never shrinks.

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The goal never was to become a public speaker; it just came with the writing job. So rather than pretend to be a master orator, equipped with a deep, projected voice and sprinklers for eyes, I just stared nails into the podium and concentrated on not stuttering.

You’d have trouble overblowing my speech impediment. Unnoticeable to some and unbearable to others, my stutter was first uttered before the braces or acne. I was fat and five, my earliest recollection, and had an insatiable thirst for “j-j-j-juice.” (My inability to say the word fluidly didn’t stop me from being a juicaholic. Apple juice, Juicy Juice, Caprisun – it didn’t matter. I'd lap up spills from punctured Caprisuns faster than any Labrador. It got to the point where I didn’t care if it was real juice or just some orange drink shit, like Sunny D. I was a mess, but I divert ...).

It was about three years later – after countless sessions of tongue rolling, cassette listening, cassette recording, wall staring and me numerating the differences between soldiers and shoulders and thieves and phfffffs – when I found ways to hide the stutter.

One way was to become a mute. With "Edward Sissorhands" receiving good ratings, that idea sounded fine until remembering the daily role call, the pledge of allegiance and the weight of class participation, all stuff that matters when you're eight.

The other was to start every sentence with a magic word, one that fitted every occasion and was easy to pronounce. That word was "For." It's an impossible word to stutter, really. Like a boulder on a hill, the thought rolled off my tongue given that extra push, that cascading momentum, that "For". The only downside was sounding like an idiot.

As if channeling Yoda, a Shakespeare character or some golfer, I'd lower my waving, bloodless arm and announce to the class "For I have to go to the bafffoom, please" to the sound of a hundred merry trumpets. It didn't help matters that puffy, purple silk shirts -- only made from the finest silkworm ass in China -- filled my closet. Don't get me wrong: people loved it -- only just five centuries ago.

Maybe I'll get back to the point of all this later.