tuesday, august 31st, 5:37 p.m. (2004)

My stand-up for tonight:

I have an Aunt Joy Belle. That's pretty funny, isn't it? Actually, she's my great-aunt, but I never called her Great-Aunt Joy Belle. I don't know why; she is pretty great. When she was born, her daddy opened up the church hymnal to the song "Keep the Joy Bells Ringing," and that's where he got her name.

Pawpaw was a bit of an alcoholic. He was definitely drunk when he named her sister Aunt Konk!

Actually, that's just her nickname.

I'm no stranger to nicknames. I was born with one. JDJB. That's my name. Most people call me Jaybird, and you can too, if you like. My family called me Fancy Pants for a while when I was growing up.

One Christmas, I inadvertently got a present that was intended for my Great-Aunt Joy Belle. The tag said, "To: Joy, From: Santa," but the present passer-outer thought it said "To: Jay, From Santa," so I got it. It was these pants. They didn't fit me much better then.

I tried them on and somebody called me Fancy Pants, and the name just stuck. But nobody said anything about the fact that they were intended for somebody else. I figured it out myself later when I was looking at the tag, trying to figure out what Santa Claus was thinking. Did he know something I didn't know?

When I was in the eighth grade, my classmates nicknamed me Gaybird. Not because of these pants. Mostly because I didn't know how to carry my books. Apparently, I carried them like a gaybird. Like this instead of like this. Valerie, the butch Italian jock girl who lived on my street tried to teach me how to carry my books like a jock. But it was useless. I was chubby and nelly and I played the tuba in the marching band.

Correction, I played the John Philip Sousaphone in the marching band, the big, white fiberglass anaconda-looking tuba. It really was. Our team mascot was the anaconda, and all of the sousaphones were outfitted with two fangs and a forked tongue. Essentially, we were blowing into their assholes! That's what it sounded like when I played, too. I was a terrible tuba player.

So, because of that, and because I wasn't a jock, and because I couldn't even carry my books like a girl jock, they called me Gaybird. And they made fun of the mayonnaise and sugar sandwiches my momma packed into my lunch bags. And I took to eating my mayonnaise and sugar sandwiches at the dead end of the hall where they kept all of the spare desks. Behind the desks. I made a little path and crawled behind the desks and ate my mayonnaise and sugar sandwiches in peace, and dreamed up ways to take revenge on my classmates and on my school.

I decided to learn to play the 12-string guitar. Somebody at our church played "Amazing Grace" on the 12-string guitar and everybody oohed and ahhed and acted like it was the Second Coming of Christ, so I decided I would learn to be the greatest 12-string guitar player that ever lived. That would be my revenge. (This was long before Columbine and that kind of revenge. This was back when learning to play an instrument really well was revenge enough.) I imagined that people would soon be eating mayonnaise and sugar sandwiches and trying to figure out my secret to playing the 12-string guitar so well, and they would call me Fancy Fingers or something like that because I would be the greatest 12-string guitar player ever.

{Strum ukulele.}

I'm a third the way there...

{Sing "Fancy Pants."}