The wave held without me

The kettle line landed. I felt it leave my mouth, and by the time the wave came back I had already moved on to the next bit, as if I had trained myself out of being present for the thing I wanted most. Stressed. Not available — my own honest version: I was elsewhere while the room was doing exactly what I had spent months chasing. The wave held without me.

Third on the list. I watched two acts before me from the back row and I ranked them, because of course I did — who got the bigger laugh, who looked more at home up there. The one in the middle did a tight five on his nan's hat and I hated that I liked it. Petty as ever, measuring a stranger against myself before I had even gone up.

Jules. Soho Theatre, autumn slate, which I should not have noticed but I clocked her card in her jacket pocket. Her smile outlasted her pint. I read what I wanted to read in it, then I read what I was afraid to read, then I left my phone in my pocket and called it sobriety. On the walk to the tube I decided I had won a small thing, and that her smile had been an offer I was not sober enough to take. The way I say small is the way I keep myself small.

Pryce was not in that room. I kept him out and the boundary held. But I sat in the back where no one could witness me, and I am no longer sure if that is hiding from his nod or finally hiding for myself.