My best joke ended to the sound of coughing. Not the nervous kind that happens accidentally, but the long, determined cough of a man with more important business involving his own throat. I stood under purple light waiting for the audience to laugh at my bus ticket story. Nobody did. Filip, the man I had been dating for six weeks, sat in the front row. He smiled. At that moment it annoyed me more than everyone else's indifference.
At forty-two I had signed up for an open microphone evening. I drove a city bus and had spent years recounting passengers' conversations to friends. They said I must get on stage. Now I wanted all those friends to appear and return five minutes of my life. Filip had offered no such advice. He had simply bought a ticket when I invited him.
After the performance I said I did not want to discuss it. I lasted until the first traffic light. Then I asked whether I had been terrible. Filip said the beginning was good but he had lost the thread during the ticket story. I asked why he had smiled, then. 'Because I loved seeing you up there,' he said. The word loved appeared between us earlier than planned, in a sentence that offered no prize for my performance.
I wanted to take offence. Arguing with him would have been easier than admitting my voice on the bus and my voice before an audience were different things. Instead we bought chips. Filip asked whether I wanted him to sit farther away in future. I said I did not know. Then I ate his last chip before he could reach it. That I already knew how to repair. I apologised and bought another portion.
Over the following weeks I shortened the text. I threw out some jokes entirely. Filip did not edit them or become my coach. Sometimes I told him something from my shift and he laughed without thinking. I learned to distinguish that laugh from the smile with which he had helped me avoid being entirely alone that evening.
He arrived late for my second performance because a pipe had burst in his flat. He sat at the back with wet trouser legs. The ticket story worked better this time. Afterwards I hugged him so hard he said he was not the one who had made the audience laugh. I know, I answered. I kissed him before asking exactly what had burst.