{"id":4832,"date":"2011-07-18T20:21:13","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T03:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/?p=4832"},"modified":"2011-07-20T09:17:43","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T16:17:43","slug":"how-disease-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/2011\/07\/18\/how-disease-works\/","title":{"rendered":"How Disease Works"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am an occasional storyteller at Seattle’s A Guide to Visitors<\/a> and, late last year, participated in one of their “Best Of” shows. Shortly thereafter I was contacted by B. Frayn Masters, who asked if I would come to Portland and for a similar event that she hosts, a series I knew nothing about called Back Fence PDX<\/a>. Because Frayn and I have been friends for twenty years, and because I am magnanimous to a fault, I agreed to lend my star-power to her adorable little show, with its audience of presumably no more than a dozen people, composed entirely of family members and devoted friends of the storytellers.<\/p>\n

The theme of the evening was “Our Bodies, Ourselves”. Frayn and I spoke several times by phone regarding my story and, in perhaps our third conversation, she mentioned the venue, the Portland Center Stage. “We don’t usually have it there,” she told me, “but we had to get a larger theater for this audience, considering its size.”<\/p>\n

“Oh really?” I said, mentally revising my attendance projections to a score or more. “How many people do you expect?”<\/p>\n

“Well, the first 800 tickets were gone in a few hours,” she replied, “although we’ve got some more in reserve.”<\/p>\n

Oh. Oh my. I have never done anything in front on a crowd even a quarter of that size, outside of anxiety dreams.<\/p>\n

Fortunately I arrived onstage very well prepared. By which I mean that the storytellers received complementary beer, and I helped myself to several before it was my turn in front of the horde.<\/p>\n