Year Number Three

Today is my birthday, but more importantly it's the anniversary of the beginning of my comedy "career." I think that I have touched on my first comedic performance on this blog, but I have told the complete story to only a handful of few comics. Three years ago I performed in a packed coffee house in Hollywood called "Cafe Muse" (which no longer exists). They drew names out of a bowl randomly, which determined the order that we were going to perform. My name was drawn third. When I approached the list to sign on the third spot the female host asked me, "who are you?"
"Michael Gowdy. You picked me third."
"Oh, you LIAR." I knew that she was joking/flirting, and she was actually a very attractive blonde. But I was so nervous about performing that I didn't respond.
I remember the faces of the first two guys who performed distinctly-- I've never seen them again. The first guy had a boring rant about etiquette at the gym. He performed in absolutely dead silence, and he ended his performance by complaining that the room was dead. He exited the place with an entourage of three jocks-- which is bizarre to me now, even by L.A. open mic standards.
I don't remember much about the second guy's act, but I remember his face. He performed to mostly silence.
When they called my name I just sort of floated up there.
There was a huge crowd there by L.A. open mic standards-- probably more than 40. My thought at the time was "well, if I want to do this professionally obviously I must deal with large crowds." I didn't know that a) the crowd size was rare (I have performed for more than 40 people maybe six or seven times since) and b) I should have performed only in front of five to ten people for my first time.
I remember that I kept my head up during most of the first 2 minutes, and I got my first laugh on a joke about a true story that involved my recent buzz-cut and a Mexican who said, "you look like a chia pet, bro" as I walked past him. During that night I wore an '80s Dominoes Pizza "AVOID THE NOID" hat, and I revealed my haircut as I was hitting the "chia pet, bro" line. Two people laughed.
"Alright. I can do this. Good."
Then......I spaced completely. I forgot completely everything that I was going to say. I shivered. Violently. My voice shook. But I carried on, and I thought that I won the day just by finishing out my set at the 5 minute mark.
After I watched everyone perform, which I VERY RARELY do now, I walked in the general direction of my car. Then I realized that I had no idea where I parked. I parked somewhere in an indistinct residential neighborhood in L.A., and I forgot to write down the cross streets because I was so nervous about performing. At around that time I came across the only "spoken word artist" who I've met (to this day) at an open mic. He performed in the next-to-last slot at Cafe Muse. I remember that somewhere in the conversation he said, "it's really fun" just to perform for people.
I said, "Yeah, but I'm not really doing it for 'fun' man. I want to do it professionally."
As I've said on stage a few times as I've recounted this story, he looked at me as I was insane. His eyes seemed to say, "YOU? Dude, I saw you perform tonight."
I wanted to say, "you can't judge a man on his first performance," but he never actually said those words outright, so I'm just left with proving it to this day.

I've had encouraging signs even within the last month. I got my loudest laughter ever recently -- so loud that I thought that I needed earplugs... And it was from a huge crowd of non-comics, which is better than anything you can imagine because comics aren't going to pay me, and are therefore pretty irrelevant (good or bad reactions) to my performances.