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In college, I wrote some music with the woman I loved, and we performed it. I was on violin, she was playing piano. Her parents were in the audience (at our school's meetinghouse), and we had a great time.
We had to start our third piece over because she repeated where we had cut a repeat, and got lost. Before we restarted, I told the audience she had flubbed it, so we were starting over.
I'm still ashamed of myself. Why couldn't I have been a little older? Why couldn't I have just shown a little more grace?
I've been apologizing ever since. Why was it so embarrassing? I guess it showed me for the snotnosed kid I was, yeah, he thinks he's so fucking charming but he lays his excuses on the woman he loves. What kind of love is that?
See, I knew I loved her more than that, and I knew I was a better man than that, but the proof is in the pudding, right? I mean, to everyone in that crowd, particularly her parents, I was just a punk. But she still loved me, and I didn't deserve it just then, and that was embarrrassing.
I never think about that without hating myself from deep in my belly. I never think of her without daydreaming.
Stage fright at a performance of an electronic music piece I composed. First public performance ever. I think I was 19. Totally froze. It was really awful and humiliating. I gave up music as a result.
I don't know if it's my most embarassing story, but there was a little incident with some reporters, a fake teepee, a meeting of two "chiefs" of different schools, and some wacky antics by yours truly.
Riding the bus to highschool. Saw a girl I liked, went over to talk to her, feeling all confident in my fancy new jeans. I'm standing, she's sitting, bus lurches, I fall in to the laps of some... developmentally challenged... people. Mortified. Later realize that the sticker showing the size of my new jeans is still stuck to the back leg. Not a red letter day.
Most embarrassing? Young, beset by depression, socially inept. My cousin invites me up to spend the weekend on the shore with her college crowd. The hostess was this cute girl who was the spitting image of a girl back home I had a crush on, and for some reason it freaked me out way more than it should have.
The embarrassing part was that I took aside one of my cousin's friends, who had been kind to me, and I told her.
She was alarmed by the confession, and my demeanor.
I spent the rest of the weekend shunned by everyone except my cousin.
Pat McCurdy used to have a regular gig at the Lounge Ax once a month. The venue was small and tight but plenty long, so you could pack a good 200 people in there without trying too hard, and Pat always packed 'em in. At one show, Pat went off on a whole discussion of "Beer 'n' Skittles" as the lead-in to "Sex and Beer", so the following month, I stopped by Jewel on the way and picked up about 3 1-pound bags of fun size Skittles candies and a few handfuls of the king size bags.
At the show, I handed out all the fun size packets. Pat thought it was pretty funny and did, in fact, try beer and Skittles. It was pretty much universally agreed that they're just not what they're cracked up to be, and he continued on with the singin'.
Maybe midway through his second set, he finished up a tune and asked for more Skittles from the Skittles Guy. I was near the back of the crowd at that point, and so someone came and got me. Like I said, the place was packed, and so instead of trying to fight through the crowd, I tossed a king size bag to Pat from maybe 20 feet out. It arced gracefully end-over-end through into the lights and then BOOM! into the microphone stand which went SMACK! into Pat's face.
He staggered back, wide-eyed, clutching his face. It was dead silent. I didn't know what to do, so I just stood there. People stared at me, then the stage, then at me. Finally, Pat-- covering his mouth with one hand and carefully adjusting the microphone with the other-- quietly said, "I need to take a couple minutes. I can't feel my teeth." The mic whistled a bit, and he went backstage.
After yet another extended, uncomfortable moment, all eyes turned back to me. And then the yelling started.
I was about 4 years old when my family built a new kitchen onto our house. For weeks that summer there was all sorts of construction debris around our backyard.
One afternoon, my friend and I were exploring the worksite. We had been warned to be careful for dangerous things. But I found a big piece of pink, fluffy stuff with paper backing. It was like the stuffing I helped my mom make throw pillows with! This can't be dangerous. So soft and fluffy and pink, it was very attractive stuff.
I needed to really experience the fluffy softness. You know, really get hedonistically intimate with the softness of the material. I put it down on the ground and sat on it. But that didn't quite convey the true pink-fluffy-cloudness of the stuff. It felt nice, but somehow the experience wasn't what I'd hoped it would be. I needed to try it without intermediary textures between it an me.
I stood up. I pulled down my pants. I sat back down. I may have waggled my bare little butt to really get the full feel of the pink fluffy stuff.
That's where my memory of the event ends.
My mother clearly remembers chasing her screaming, crying, bare-assed & ankle-pantsed son around the yard with a tub of vaseline, trying to pin me down long enough to soothe the fire and remove the worst of the fiberglass!
My high school had this tradition where graduating seniors put on a show for the rest of the school. We had to wear formal shit (if you hadn't guessed it, I don't really like dresses) and perform readings or music or remembrances or whatever.
Some friends and I did a song.
So, I was wearing this formal gown and playing the guitar. My mom made me wear a strapless bra with the dress. But, you see, strapless bras don't really work for everyone.
By the middle of the song (I was playing the guitar), the bra was around my waist.
I spent the next two hours of the show with my arms pinned firmly at my sides. It was horrible.
Long story, but I will tell it.
I was managing an evening jazz show for one of my clients, a hotel. I was with a colleague. It was a very stressful night, I had never staged an event like this and we had only sold a dozen tickets in a 250-seat venue before the show. The damn colleague, Yvette, proceded to get sloshed. Fortunately, the show turned out to be a big hit - we sold out and turned people away. The client was pleased and suggested that, rather than driving the hour back to my home at that late hour, particularly with a sloshed woman in tow, we stay in one of their vacant rooms. I took them up on it and dragged Yvette with me. Of course, because we hadn't planned this, we had no jammies. Yvette crashed in a dead stupor on the bed. I stripped down to my undies and crashed soon after.
About two hours later, I woke up thinking I was in my own apartment, got up, and headed to the bathroom. Except I wasn't awake, I wasn't in my own apartment, and when I heard a door click sharply behind me, I realized something was amiss. I tried the door, it was firmly locked. I tried knocking, but it was clear that a near comatose Yvette wouldn't wake easily. The reality of my situation hit me - I was standing in a hotel corrider in my underwear at 3 am, with no purse, no money, no ID, no shoes, no coat, no keys. Yikes!
Since I knew many of the front desk staff, I figured I would go there, but when I peeked into the lobby, there was a clerk I didn't know talking to a few other men. I felt too embarrassed and fearful to go to them. What if they called the police! My second thought was to wait in a ladies room til morning, but the idea of walking around in my undies in a large crowd of breakfasting guests and business travelers seemed even worse. Plus, I was cold! My only way out was to go wake Yvette. I went back and banged on the door as loudly and as often as I dared.
Suddenly, a few rooms down, a door opened to reveal Tiger Okoshi and the rest of the jazz band I had hired. They previously had only known me as "the client" so they found it curious to find me in the hallway in my underwear in the middle of the night. When I explained what happened, they all found my dilemma hilarious. Most gentlemanly, Tiger gave me his jacket. They let me in their suite to use their phone to call Yvette.
Yvette was understandbly groggy and befuddled when the phone finally woke her after about 30 rings. She couldn't figure out what was going on.
"Where are you, wtf is going on?" she kept puzzling.
"Never mind that - just go to the door and let me in."
"Let you in, where the hell are you?"
"Yvette - LISTEN TO ME. Just get up. Go to the door. Let me in. Now."
After much more back and forth, Yvette was finally cajoled into opening the door. The look on her face at finding me semi-naked but for a sport coat and trailed by six jazz band members was priceless.
I frequently went to see Tiger's Baku perform after that night, and the band always remembered me. Not all my dates were happy to hear band members greet me with "It's the underwear girl!"
It's been years since I've seen the band, but I bet Tiger Okoshi would still remember me. And now, when I travel, I sleep in really attractive nighties with a key pinned in the pocket!
Velvet skirt. Velvet Chair. Grippy. Showed my ass flesh-toned control-top granny panties to the blackjack tables at The Venetian for roughly 10 minutes before I realized the skirt did not move with me when I slid back.
Umm, tonight I got dressed and ran to the gym for a personal trainer appointment, and when I got to the gym, I was about to run out and meet the trainer when I peeked in the mirror and saw that my dog had chewed open the entire crotch of my pants. HUGE hole. Bigger than your hand. How I didn't notice on the quick walk over, I don't know. Thank goodness I was wearing underwear. I would say it was embarrassing but it was actually really funny and I enjoyed it a lot.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
