The room saw it first

The room saw it before I did. Halfway through the Leeds middle and my brain just leaves. Like someone pulled a plug. I stand there, mic in hand, eyes wide, and instead of laughing at the joke they're laughing at me not being able to land it — which is somehow funnier, which is the worst thing that could happen to a man who built his whole life on being the funny one.

Fourth row. Woman. She turns to her friend and mouths 'oh no.' I saw it. There's a part of me that stands behind my own eyes and catalogues every face that goes soft or pitying. I rank them. Tonight she tops the list. Not because she was mean — she wasn't — but because her face matched what was happening inside me and I can't unsee it.

Mam at the B&B. Stage shirt still on. I sat with her and did the bit. The Yorkshire mam bit. The one about keeping the kitchen tidy for a man who's never coming back. She laughed. She didn't know it was her. My chest did the thing the whole time. I smiled through it because smiling through things is the whole of my career.

Yara put her hand flat on my chest, right over the place, and said show me. I took her hand and pressed it down. She said, tell your mam, or I will. So I texted. The Witchery. Because that's the kind of place you take someone when you're trying to say sorry without saying sorry.

I keep thinking about the woman in the fourth row. Her 'oh no' was the only honest review I got all night. The room laughed at the panic in my face and I can't decide if that makes me good at my job or sick in the head.