nyc 2000 story

In the winter of 2000, after Christmas to exact, but before 2001 I was in New York City visiting my sister Sally. I'm not sure how many days into the trip I was in, but it wasn't my first couple day there. I had decide to go up to Midtown by myself so Sally could get something done. I had been there already, but I wanted to go again. So I took the subway from Queens where Sally lived into the city. Everything was going okay, then I ventured off the main tourist section of midtown. Now I didn't go to the nice side off midtown where Broadway is, no I went the other way. I end up in the porn district. Mind you while I was in midtown I was actually looking for the coolest comic shop in all the land, Midtown Comics.




In the dirty district as I'll be calling it now I ended up at a street corner with this African American. Actually he probably was born in Africa because he had a crazy accent I can't even try to explain. The guy looked at me and must have thought I was sixteen. He started to talk to me and asked, "Hey you like to smoke?" I was like no I'm good.
He than responded with, "You need a fake ID to buy smokes man."
I said, No I'm good, I'm old enough to buy smoke.
He then sized me up some more and said, "You like women? You need ID to get into these nude shows."
I responded with, "No I'm good I've got a girlfriend at home." We banter a while about naked women and how I really don't need a fake ID that won't work to see naked women. He doesn't like my answers, and starts to yell at me. He was yelling, "This man gay! This man is so gay he no like women!" He kept yelling this at the top of his lungs. My face went red from being embarrassed by the this guy calling me gay at the top of his lungs in the middle of the street. I couldn't wait to run away across the street. When the light finally turned I walk very fast across the street and didn't look back. It was very scary to be yelled at in the middle of the street for not wanting to buy fake IDs.

That was the story I told in the story story night story slam. I didn't when first place with the story, but I thought it was good enough. People were laughing pretty hard when they heard this story.

story story night july 2010

Tonight after a long day at work Allison and I went to Story Story Night at the Linen Building. The story theme for this month was Stories on the Road, stories about travel. We listen to three stories by featured artist and then the program breaks for about twenty minutes for an intermission. During the intermission you can put your name into a drawing to go up on stage for the second half of story story night. It's totally random and no one knows who is going to go up. I put my name in without telling Allison tonight. I figured it's the last one we can go to before we leave and I have an okay story to tell. The intermission ends and the host gets up on stage. My stomach is up in my throat almost waiting to see if I get to go. They pull out the first name. The host looks at it for awhile. To me it felt like two minutes, but it was probably only a few seconds. Then she goes on to talk about what the story slam is. It's a five minute story that you can tell without any notes. It's you and a microphone in front of a packed building. A little scary. They're were at least 150 people there. There was standing room only for a lot of people. After she tells the rules She looks at the paper for a little longer. My heart is racing. There's no way they're going to call me. A ton of people put their names in the hat. Then she say, "Michael McLean." Allison looks at me like what? You put your name in and didn't tell me. I get on stage and stumble through the first minute of my story, but I did it. I got up in front of room of strangers and told my story. It might not have been the best story, but it wasn't the worse. Allison said people were laughing all the way through, but my heart is all I could hear. It was loud as I stood in front of those people. As you might know I am not a public speaker. I get flustered easy and leave out tons of details. It was amazing to actually do it though. The story I told was my New York story about the crazy guy trying to sell me a fake ID. It was good, just not my best telling of it.