It’s about the choice to be a diver or a side-liner.  I feel it inside like a storm.  And it’s stupid.  Because all these people are here to cheer me on.  I need no preamble, no self-selling or self-glorification.  It’s...easy? 

Reality is that I would hate myself if I didn’t dive.

My throat is dry and my hands are sweaty and all these eyes on me and who am I? and WHAT WILL THEY THINK???

And it doesn’t matter.  What matters is that I’m doing it.  I hold those papers and I read those words aloud and I own them with as much dignity as I can.

And my father sits beside me in the squeaky chair and he’s sniffling and hitching back some kind of sob and I pretend not to notice because, really, that’s kind of weird.

Look at me.  Doing a reading.  In front of ‘real writers’.

Sometimes I amaze myself.