Dreams

I see my name flash across the ticker at the bottom of the screen. Shit.I’m on deck for karaoke. I pour a beer and a thick layer of foam spills over the side. I glance over my shoulder, wary of any regulars watching the new girl stumble her way through the trial shift. 

“You’re wayyyy too horizontal, there.” The guy training me takes over and refills the glass. I book it to the bathroom, wiping my clammy palms all over my jeans. In the stall, I pull up “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac and press the phone to my ears to hear the first few chords. A safety blanket. Just in case I somehow forgot the key to a favorite song. I am acutely aware of how lame I feel. This is small-town karaoke for beer-drinking anybodies. But I still feel like I have something to prove. If it’s my trial shift, I have to loosen up and have fun. That’s what everyone in this goddamn brewery keeps telling me, to loosen up and be yourself. They don’t even know me. And last time I checked, nothing makes a person more stiff than the words you should loosen up. No one warned me a solo performance was part of the interview process. But I have a potential job on the line. I want them to like me. So I’ll conquer the stage if it’ll make them happy. 

After humming the first note of the key, I unlatch the stall door and flail myself back into this foreign sea of dark bobbing heads and beer-stained floors. 

“Natalieeee, get on up here!!!” The emcee gestures at me over. I stick my chest out. I smile, walking as confidently as I can muster to the stage. She starts the song, and I can’t find the microphone, so she starts it over. “Sorryyy,” I fake a laugh, forgetting the mic is in my hand and it reverberates through the entire room. I didn’t want my first words into this microphone to be sorry. 

The song starts over, and then I strangely feel at home. Not in this place, but in my body. I can feel a palpable shift in the room, as a few heads turn and some start nodding. Someone offers a “whoo!” I sway side to side, then graduate to a one step two step motion as the song opens up into the chorus. This is my jam. The colored lights on my skin seem to pulsate, and then I’m breathing with my hips, my heart, and my throat. I didn’t know it was possible to enjoy myself inside of my fear. At the instrumental break the fear has completely dissolved into genuine joy. I am having fun. It has been oh so long since I’ve had fun, since I’ve been under the spotlight, singing for strangers. Literally – it’s been years. But more importantly, I haven’t felt quite this free since I was a child, swaying back and forth in the alcove with my audience of stuffed animals and my breastfeeding mother. There’s someone underneath this skin, a girl I’m unearthing with every risk I take, every room I enter, and every moment where the fear becomes my friend. 

The next morning, he tells me they are not offering me the job. But I already got what I need. I was never there for the job. It’s probably for the best. I suck at pouring beer.