Will make you cringe...and pee your pants

Wednesday night was a Cringe Reading. I went to a similar show a few months back, and I highly recommend going! People read from their tween/teenage diaries, class projects, love notes, etc. Unlike the Mortified show, Cringe is free. The only catch is that is located in middle of nowhere Brooklyn in some small bar back room. Hop on the covered wagon and head on over there, you will not regret it.

Here is a summary of the highlights:
The opening reader was a girl who was very organized. As a 15 year old, she planned out how she would live her life…in an outline format. The piece was titled “People to avoid”. It said “I. Girls with bangs greater than 6” tall. II. Gangsters, A. Guys with their underwear showing, B. Girls who like guys whose underwear is showing. III. Punks, A. Girls with more than two piercing in each ear, B. Boys who have anything pierced. Etc” I guess I should mention her “lists” were in a spiral notebook covered with DECA stickers. Yeah she loved DECA!

One girl read from her teenage diary about her rollercoaster relationship with a much older man (he was 19….gasp!). In all reality, he had dumped her, but she was utterly clueless. Her entry was like “okay Bob hasn’t called me in two weeks, I know he is trying to make me call him, but I am going to hold out because I am such a great girlfriend…..okay it has been three weeks now, I should call him and tell him I miss him but no I don’t want him to know he has the power….I have decided that if he doesn’t call me in the next week, I am going to declare an open relationship and start going out with other boys and tell him about it and then he will call me all the time, yeah, that will work”.

Another girl read the journal entry about her first kiss during summer break. “Well John and I were swimming in the [public] pool and he swam up to me and I felt he had a raging boner, I didn’t know what to do because there were kids around and I didn’t want them to see it sticking out at me underwater…well he leaned in and kissed me, and I think he came a little…I decided I don’t like John because he only wants to like open my door and kiss me and buy me ice-cream.” She later confessed that her 30 year old self is looking for a guy who will open her door, kiss her, and buy her ice-cream.

A girl explained that her senior year of high school, she was in a car accident and her wrist was severely damaged (like pins inserted and everything). Her lawyer wanted to build a case against the other driver for hitting her, he just needed to prove that her life would change forever because of the accident. He asked, “Do you play a sport like basketball or softball….oh well do you play an instrument like the violin or piano…okay maybe do you paint or draw or do SOMETHING with your hands…okay great, yes you write in a journal, so we will say you are an aspiring writer”. Yeah you can tell it was all BS but she played along with the guy and had to keep a separate journal for her wrist so that he would have some choice material for court. She then read the two recounts of her Spring Break. First the wrist journal: (read in a very depressed voice) “We just arrived in Cancun, I am not looking forward to this trip, I didn’t want to go because I won’t be able to go swimming or snorkeling or body boarding like everyone else, the tickets were nonrefundable so I decided to go anyway, I’m writing this up in the room, everyone is out having a good time and I am sitting here doing my wrist exercises, now I am at the pool sunbathing because that is all I can do, I am sad to hear about how much fun everyone else is having, I think why me why me why me, etc”. Okay you get the point it was really depressing and talked about post traumatic pain etc a lot. Now the ‘real’ journal: “oh my God, spring break was AWESOME, I totally got drunk and high every night and I almost fell into the pool with my cast on, and some hot guys we met at a bar tried to shoot a shot off my cast, and I totally made out with this one guy and had a three hour boyfriend, and then we went to the bubble club and were covered in suds and I don’t think it will affect my cast right”. I personally like the “three hour boyfriend” reference because we have all had that right!

The lone guy reader of the night brought along a projector so we could all view his graphic novel (aka comic book). He was 12 years old at the time, and boy did it show. All of the adult characters would just fly off the handle at the drop of a hat because that is how you act when you are twelve. One of the heroes read a note from his boss and it said, blah blah blah “believe some one is trying to sabotash…”. Then the character went incredible Hulk nuts and started shooting everyone because I would too if my boss could not spell sabotage. Oh, he depicted his adult hero on his day off….reading a playboy because that is what a 12-year-old would do on his day off.

The by far best reading came from a woman who grew up reading romance novels. See she liked to read, and her mother only had trashy romance novels laying around the house. The girl eventually decided to write her own (keep in mind she was only 11!). The heroine’s name was Molly-Anna because she had read Little House on the Prairie in school and was now fascinated with the wilderness like Iowa. The boy James was her love interest and he was being pursued by a slut named Rachel. Yeah the dialogue in the story was so immature and hilarious. “Oh, I thought you liked Rachel.” “No, Rachel is a bitch”. Ah ha ha ha. Well the sex scenes were really graphic, no seriously, like pinching the nipples and nibbling on the thigh graphic. I am personally impressed that a 11 year old knew that much about sex since my only education was what Stacy Hand told me during recess. Yep, she was the first one to explain what a “boner” was. Anyway, every romance novel has three key plot items: passionate sex scene, kidnapping or peril that will separate the lovers, and a foreign country. Well Molly-Anna was kidnapped off to Mexico (well close enough to exotic foreign country). In the mean time, the girl had just watched the movie ‘Stand By Me’ and now was in love with River Phoenix. Poor James just was dropped from the story unceremoniously, and she was then rescued by River Phoenix. Okay, it was hilarious in person. I mean listening to a grown woman reading the graphic sex scenes and cheesy faux romantic dialog all while blushing uncontrollably! The whole room agreed that Molly-Anna’s first time must have been the greatest sex ever written about. I wonder if she is therapy now.