anxiety dreams are made of this...
...who am I to disagree?
So let me set the stage (as it were) for you.
Here I am in the play... everything's going fine. Great, in fact.
It's a lively audience tonight.
Plenty of laughs all round.
We've refined our performances to the point where many, many lines are getting a laugh, and we're mining all sorts of rich comic gold out of character and staging.
It's a beautiful thing, and we're clicking.
Third act is going really well, and I'm looking forward to going home after a job well done.
Do our curtain call... nothing untoward there.
Until the actress playing Sibyl doubles up in hysterical laughter as soon as she gets offstage.
All the other actors, the costumer, the crew, everybody: laughing, and laughing, and laughing.
Why?
Because there's nothing quite like standing under a huge spotlight, in front of 20 or 30 people, with your fly conspicuously open. Nothing quite like the slow dawning realization that, well, you've entered into unintentional legend.
In fact, my fly was open the entire act.
I never thought I'd actually be living an anxiety phobia right out of the frigging DSM-IV.
What a night to pick briefs over boxers.
With all the meticulousness of the Warren Commission, I go back over events: did I forget to zip up? No. My one witness, the costumer, saw me go out with my fly up, so somehow it became unzipped somewhere in between dressing room and stage and I really wasn't doing anything strange back there so how the hell did it become undone I knew people were laughing harder than usual is there a back way out of this damn theater?
Sigh. I'm fairly sure this is going to make me a little compulsive about this for a long time to come, like Rain Man.
There's serious discussion amongst us actors about turning this incident into an actual part of the play. Cruel sort, actors.
Oh yes, it could've been a lot worse, Mer says: once she saw someone projectile vomit on stage -- and then continue with acting as if it never happened. I suppose it was appropriate, though, since it was a production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I could've let out a really huge fart. I could've belched. I could've spit coffee all over someone. I could've forgotten to put pants on entirely (not too far off, given my advancing dementia).