Before I put my name in, it seemed so unlikely that I’d ever be called up. Which is half the reason I went ahead with it when my friend V punked out on me.

“Uh, yeah, sorry. I didn’t prepare a story. I’m just here to support you.”

Asshole.

I’m just kidding. It was fine, but only because I figured that if she punked out, I could too and we’d still have a good time at the show. But then I said something about not putting my name in to Erica and she wouldn’t have it. She had left work early to meet me and our other friend C came in from Brooklyn to watch, so I had to at least give it a shot. As usual, she was right and once we got inside I headed towards the front of the room to sign up. I grabbed the contract off the stage and took it back to the bar to fill it out.

“Oh my god, you guys. I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.”

When I finished writing out all my information and agreeing to be taped, filmed and potentially broadcast, I went back to the stage, folded my sheet of paper twice and dropped it in a tote bag that contained what looked like at least 30 others.

I returned to my peeps and my beer feeling pretty good because I was sure my chances of being called were pretty slim. By the time they got to the fourth storyteller, I had stopped even listening for my name. Which is why I didn’t realize the host had called it until V pointed it out to me.

“Susan. That’s you.”

I put down my beer, kissed Erica and made my way through the crowd to the stage. The host was hamming it up for the audience while the last person’s scores were being tallied, so I sat in her seat and tried to decide the best way to start my story.

Oh yeah, did I mention? I told a story at The Moth.

Ohmygodholyshit, right?

Now, if you don’t know what The Moth is, you probably didn’t have that reaction, but trust me, that’s the one you should have. And for the sake of understanding the rest of the story, I suggest you check it out really quick at http://themoth.org/about then meet the rest of us back in the next paragraph. Okay?

Welcome back! Pretty cool stuff, right? So, as I was saying, I went to The Moth, put my name in and actually got called to the stage. It was unbelievable. I went up, I told a story, I got a lot of laughs, I got a lot of “that’s so moving” looks from the audience, and I got a lot of applause. I also got some pretty good scores.

If you do the math, I came in fourth. But let me tell you something. Those judges were drunk after half-time and once they gave that adorable little lesbian (well-rehearsed, practically professional comic) storyteller those two 10’s, they were totally inflating their scores because they already had a clear winner. I am just saying.

Still, I was super proud of myself and once the show was finished, I went up to the stage to take that picture of the scoreboard. As I was moving the mic out of the way so I could get a clear shot, one of the girls running the show stopped me. “Hey, you did a great job. Seriously, any other night you would have won. That other girl was just crazy good.”

My brain exploded all over the stage as I said, “Thanks a lot, I really enjoyed doing it,” as if I was cool and did shit like that all the time. I turned around before I vomited or something, and headed for the merch table.

“Can I get a t-shirt and a tote bag, please?”

“Oh, the tote bag only comes with a $125 membership.”

Worth it.

Later Erica who watched the interaction from the front of the bar said, “I knew you were getting the membership as soon as I saw you say, ‘Fuck it,’ and hand over your credit card.”

Whatever, I would have paid more if I had to. Because, seriously, it was one of the best nights of my life.

Anthony, you know, like the saint.

Location: B69 Bus/7th Avenue

When I got on the bus recently, I spotted this 40/50-something guy who was talking to these two older Spanish-speaking ladies. He spoke in this quintessentially Brooklyn blend of Italian and Spanglish and was dressed in baggy jeans and a black blazer with a red satin scarf to match his red AIDS ribbon pin. He was draped in rhinestones and pearls from his ears to his fingers and was also carrying a cane.

I headed straight for him.

I sidled up to the conversation as he was telling the ladies that he wanted to bless them. Then he handed them each a prayer card. The woman in the wheelchair got St. Anthony and her friend who was helping her get around got St. Lucy - the one con los ojos.

While I stood there wishing I had been the one to get the St. Lucy card, the guy went on to explain that his name was Anthony, just like the saint. “Mi chiamo Antonio,” he pointed at his chest to clarify whom the “mi” referred to, “My nombre is Antonio.” “I only ask is that you pray for mi madre. She is very sick and I need you to pray por her,” and he gave the ladies her name.

The two women were in their 70’s and empathized with Antonio’s mother. They chatted with him for a while about sickness and how much it sucked (that’s a loose translation) and I stood close by, hoping there’d be another card distribution session.

Eventually, the woman in the wheelchair closed the conversation. (Pretend this next quote is all in Spanish.) ”Si, we will pray for your mother. You should also pray. Perhaps the rosary,” and she turned back around to face the front of the bus.

Disappointed that I wasn’t going to get my card after all, I wondered if I could be sneaky enough to get a shot of Anthony and his rhinestones without getting caught. Then he said something that made me know I couldn’t not take his photo.

Leaning forward to tap the wheelchair lady on the shoulder, he made sure he had both women’s attention then earnestly whispered to them, “Signoras, me llamo Antonio. Do you see? St. Antonio. Soy un angel en la tierra. I have blessed you.”

Earth Angel

It was ridiculous to think that the collective bladders of an entire elementary school class could be programmed to expel their contents on a specific schedule, yet that’s exactly what Miss Dunn expected. When she was your teacher, you were only allowed to visit the restroom on her schedule — after lunch, after recess, and five minutes before the final bell rang in case you had a long bus ride home. Any other time, peeing (or any other bathroom activity) was strictly off limits.

Once you were put into Miss Dunn’s class, you quickly learned to take advantage of all three bathroom breaks every day. Usually, it happened around week two when you found yourself in a bind twenty minutes after skipping the visit at recess. The thing is, what I’m about to tell you happened about halfway through the school year, way after I had learned to pee every chance I got. It was just that when I tried to go during recess that day, I couldn’t get anything to come out.

I swear, I sat on that short toilet for as long as I possibly could, hoping for the satisfying tingle of relief that happens when you first start to pee. It never came. Eventually, I had to give up or suffer the consequences of being late, which were almost as bad as asking to go to the bathroom off schedule.

I went to class and sat in my little wooden desk like a good student. Miss Dunn started our math lesson and things were fine until about, again, 20 minutes after recess.

Oh my god. I have to go to the bathroom.

I knew better than to ask Miss Dunn. She was an imposing creature and a massive ogre of a woman. Not fat so much but husky and sturdy from a childhood spent working in tobacco fields and managing livestock. She had a rough, worn exterior as tough as stale beef jerky and she had enormous, thick glasses that magnified her black eyes to the size of something way too big for eyes. Her hair was a solid shell surrounding her thick, square skull that doubled the size of her already enormous cranium.

Years later when I first saw the movie, “Matilda,” I had a pretty intense flashback to Miss Dunn as soon as Miss Trunchbull appeared onscreen. They were practically identical except Miss Dunn didn’t have a chokey - but only because she hadn’t thought of it.

I remained as motionless as possible and desperately tried to focus on Miss Dunn and the chalkboard. But, as you know, when you have to pee, all you can think about is how much you have to pee. That day we were learning to count by tens, you know, 10, 20, 30 … but all I could do was translate those numbers into the amount of pee collecting in my abdomen. 10 gallons, 20 gallons, 30 gallons. The more I tried not to think about my pee, the more I couldn’t think of anything but my pee. Before too long, the intense pressure of my urine against my bladder overruled my fear of Miss Dunn and I gingerly made my way to the front of the room.

My walk down the center aisle of the classroom felt like a lifetime as I tried to force my legs to carry me to Miss Dunn’s desk, while simultaneously trying to force my abdomen muscles to hold on to the contents of my bladder.

“Um. Miss Dunn?”

“What is it, Susan?”

“I know it’s not time for our restroom break, but I really have to go.”

“You know the rules, now go back to your desk.”

“I know, but I tried to go at recess and nothing came out. Now, I have to go really bad. Please?”

“Go. Sit. Down.”

I held back tears as I made my way down the aisle to my seat. There was absolutely no way I was going to be able to make it until the end of the day. It was time for Plan B.

As I sat at my desk trying not to move too much, I started thinking about the shape of my seat. There was a curve to it that I decided might hold a little pee puddle. Maybe I could just release enough so that it didn’t hurt anymore and I would just have to deal with the repercussions of wet pants later.

It wasn’t my best idea, but at this point it was my only option. I looked around at my classmates. “Everything is about to change.” I had never peed myself in class before, and I really hated the idea of starting the practice then, but I didn’t know what else to do.

I thought through Plan B and it really seemed like my only recourse. My stomach felt as if it were going to burst and I started to panic that it was becoming a life or death situation.

Okay. Just a little pee. I can just let a little go to make some room and then maybe it’ll even dry before we have to leave. Just enough so that it doesn’t hurt anymore.

And I let go.

As you might suspect, once the gate was opened, it was a lot harder to close than I had anticipated. The pee pond idea didn’t work either as it only took a couple of seconds for it to begin to overflow and start pouring onto the floor. I tried to make it stop but the release felt so good that my body refused to cooperate with my mind and the stream continued, unabated until:

“Miss Dunn! Susan peed in her desk.”

I was mortified, but not nearly as much as I was the day, more than a decade later, when I was back in Fitzgerald with my college boyfriend who had come home with me for the first time. He and I had gone to get some food and decided to go through the Burger King drive-thru. So, as you do, I drove up to the speaker, placed our order and drove around to the window.

I got my money ready and when the guy came to deliver our food he looked up and said, “Hey! I know you. We were in second grade together.”

Oh shit.

“Were we? Sorry, I don’t remember.”

“Yeah. You were in Miss Dunn’s class, right?”

“Uh. No?”

“Yeah you were. I remember. You peed your pants.”

“Um. No. That wasn’t me.”

“Oh yeah. It was definitely you.”

I refused to give in. I rolled my eyes at the boyfriend like, “This dude’s crazy,” took our food and left. We drove in silence for a few minutes then the boyfriend turned to me.

“So, peed your pants in second grade, eh?”

“Yeah. I did.”

Thanks to Erica, I’ve become very aware of street art and graffiti and am always on the lookout for interesting or funny or clever or intriguing or ridiculously inane pieces.

Here are a few of my favorites (you can decide which is which):

Lego Treehouse

Location: Jay St. between York & Front

Shepard Fairey Cares

Location: Trash Can somewhere along Prospect Park West

Hi.

Location: Trash Can Outside York St. F Train Station

Lucky Firehydrant

Location: 7th Avenue between 15 & 16th Streets

Since my anxiety meds have kicked in, I’ve started being more social, which in turn has led to me making some new friends. That means, there are all new people who are learning that being friends with Susan means that sometimes your feelings are going to get hurt.

Believe me, I hate it as much as anyone. And I very rarely intentionally do it. Most of the time, when I’m hearing the words come out of my mouth, there’s a voice inside my head screaming, “SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP,” but I never listen.

The problem is, I have a really hard time communicating in person. Writing is my forte and I can email a mother fucker all day long. Talking face to face or on the phone, I get tongue tied, I stutter and I end up just blurting things out, not realizing how they might sound aloud.

The simple fact is, I am a person who needs a couple of drafts to get my thoughts out right and you just don’t have that luxury when you’re talking. Plus, I’m a Sagittarius. Blunt is just what we do.

So, this one particular new friend, M, who I’m totally adoring, is in this long-distance, torturous love affair involving ex-girlfriends, a declaration of love in that “I know we’re meant to be, but it just can’t happen” way, and a lot of sadness and emotional trauma on M’s part. The other day, she was telling me how she is going to have to be in the same place as this guy in the near future.

M: Oh my God, it’s going to be awful.

S: I know. I can’t wait to hear what happens!

M: Seriously? I’m in emotional turmoil and you can’t wait to hear what happens?

S: It’s just like this story I’m watching, and I want to find out what happens in part two.

M: I don’t want to be your soap opera guinea pig.

S: Stumble, stumble, stutter, stutter. That’s not what I meant, it’s just that … stumble, stumble.

Sigh. I really didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was way deeper and if I had been allowed to write a blog post to her rather than have to chat, I could have explained how I take these super hard events in life as really good omens. An old life coach client of mine calls it, “The Breakdown Before the Breakthrough.” Her point was that whenever you have hideous experiences, things always make their way back to good.

When the shit goes down, you have a choice. You can get bitter or you can get better. (That’s right. Another alliterative catchphrase using the letter B.) My point is, you’re gonna go through hard stuff. It’s just a fact. So you might as well stop fighting against it and just go ahead and open up to the lessons you’re supposed to be learning. Find a way to think of emotional turmoil as a signal that good, fun stuff is right around the corner.

I know it sounds like I’m drinking the life coach Kool-Aid, but I really believe this stuff. And as a person who’s experienced her fair share of trauma, I assure you that it’s true.

Today, I officially completed a 10-day streak of 750-word journal entries on 750words.com, but I wasn’t awarded my flamingo badge and I want to know what gives.

Okay, I know that I was snarky about the badges in my first post about 750words.com, but I didn’t really mean it. I’m totally into the badges and it’s making me a little crazy waiting for that little pink head to pop up.

So, 750words, if you’re out there, could you do something about my flamingo, please? I adore my other birds, I truly do. It’s not like I want to replace them. I just feel like it’s time to bring another brother-husband in for the lady turkey, who I’ve put in charge of my pretend polygamous flock.

I’ve never been one to talk in my sleep but two weeks ago, I was sleeping on the couch after a night out, and Erica tried to get me to go to bed. She says that I woke up giggling and started telling her some inane story about some random friend of ours. I slurred at her for a second, smiled, then laid down and went back to sleep.

Then, this past week, after sharing a couple of bottles of wine with Erica and another friend, I was again sleeping on the couch. Deciding to just leave me there, Erica put a blanket over me and as she tucked me in, I woke up, unsnapped my leather bracelet, and thrust it towards her. “Honey. Make it do.”

“What? You want me to put it on the table?”

“Just make it do.”

“You want it on your wrist?”

“Make it do, make it do, make it do!”

When she couldn’t figure out what the hell I wanted, I snatched the bracelet back with a grunt, snapped it onto my wrist and went back to sleep. A couple of days later we were telling a friend of ours about how wacky I had been lately and as we discussed it, Erica asked, “You haven’t been taking Ambien have you?”

“Nope. But I have been taking Effexor.”

Now, on my bottle of Effexor, it recommends that you don’t mix it with alcohol because it may increase drowsiness, but there’s nothing about avoiding it completely so you don’t get all loonypants. My problem here is, I act all depressed and neurotic when I’m not on Effexor, so stopping that half of the equation isn’t an option.

So far, I haven’t done any traveling around at night or sleep eating, but we live in a duplex with a treacherous spiral so that could be bad news. Beyond the possiblity of breaking a hip on the stairs, the combination of alcohol and Effexor, for me at least, causes way more than increased drowsiness and I’m not interested in finding out what else might happen. So that means.

I’m officially dubbing myself a non-drinker. I know, I know. Everyone calm down. I’m not saying that I’ll never have another glass of wine or an unbelievably delicious old fashioned, but I definitely won’t be having three in one sitting. Does anybody remember back when I quit smoking? That was a hard adjustment, but once we all settled into it, I was still allowed to hang out with my same cool smoker friends. I just didn’t smell like them anymore. It’s gonna be the same thing with booze.

Any of you who knows me or who has spent any amount of time reading the blog might not believe it, but the truth is I’m kind of all right with not drinking. I already took a month off at the beginning of the year so I could adjust to the Effexor and I gotta say that I actually liked it.

Not only did I feel better because of the meds, I also felt better because I was never sluggish because of drinking. I started dropping weight, which always rocks, and let me tell you, there’s a lot to be said about 30 days without a hangover.

If it helps, I’ll wear a nametag until people recognize me without a beer.

2012, The Year of Susan, actually started on Halloween 2011. That was the day I got a call from a friend who hosts the world famous, Tell It:Brooklyn. She wanted me to come by for their inaugural night and “drop my name in the can” so I could tell a 5-minute story.

Talk about scary! (Get it? Halloween? Okay, moving on. No, wait. Did I ever tell you the joke about the two caskets? What did the casket say to his sick friend? … “Hey, coffin, is that you coughin’?” Bwaahahahaha!)

Anyway. My first live storytelling event ever was November 9th, just days after the call. I panicked and stressed and I could not come up with one thing to talk about. I mean, I came up with a ton of things to talk about, but I wasn’t confident in my ability to tell them well, or remember them.

I felt like I had to have a really great story but I just couldn’t make it happen and about 30 minutes before I was supposed to leave home for the show, I almost called and cancelled.

Oh, she’ll understand. And it’s not like I’m headlining. I’m just going in the can.

Then it hit me. The perfect story, the perfect angle. I scribbled down some notes and took off for Prospect Heights. The story ended up going over really well and I got a lot of positive feedback. Since then, I’ve participated in every Tell It: Brooklyn and will continue to do so until I have to leave for my book tour.

This “writing career with abundant wealth” thing the Universe and I have been talking about for so long, seems to be taking off. I’m writing every day, I’m reading in public and I’m planning to take the next step on February 27 when I will be dropping my name in a different can:

After I wrote my post about how I haven’t been writing for my writing workshop, a friend of mine sent me a link to a little thing called, 750 Words.

750 Words is a website where you create an account and then they keep track of how frequently you’re writing. The idea is to trick yourself into writing at least 750 words every day with little rewards like bird badges as well as doses of shame like big sad chicken eggs when you miss an entry.

I’ve been doing it for ten days now and I’ve missed two of them. The first day I only got through about 450 words - maybe 15 minutes total. But something came up and I left and I forgot. I started again the next day and made it to 4 days in a row and almost a penguin badge, but I punked out on day 5.

Because my friend can watch my progress (and I can watch his) I got an email right before midnight warning me that I was about to go back to the egg, and then one right after with a concise, “NOOOOOOOOOO”. I jumped back on the horse the next morning and tomorrow, I’ll be getting my first penguin. It’s pretty exciting.

It’s actually not exciting, but it is a way to keep me moving and writing something even if it’s just a few pages of gibberish. Mostly though, I’m using it as a time to work on my memoir stuff a bit, and then I usually end up writing on once I get going, which is actually very exciting.

Anywho, if any of you out there are up to the challenge and want to join me on the mission to 750 words a day, sign up at www.750words.com, then let me know what name you use (I’m Southern Discomforts, obv.) I’ll help prod you along if you promise to do the same.

Here’s a little taste of my hometown.

You don’t have to watch the whole thing (I didn’t) but stick around until the fireworks start.