Portfolios were due today so you get writing by default. Here is my show not tell or autobiographical/biographical reflective narrative. I would put up my analytical essay but I really doubt anyone reading has read The Tragedy of King Lear. I could have done this better but it was three pages already, so I didn't.
I waited for the crowd to settle. Though this last homecoming prince was named by the oily voice behind me three seconds ago, the tumult had not decreased. The voices combined at such a level that I did not hear the sounds of human throats. The screeches merged to fifteen razor blades clacking next to my ear. The claps were a barrage certain to jar any veteran who has faced a machine gun, much less forty.
However, this is no interesting instant. I have heard it dozens of times, directed at me and not. It is a staple of any awards ceremony. No assembly can pass without five harsh concertos. The sound is meaningless, directionless. Any group of animals could hoot and wail as loud. Even at times when I am the focus, this ramble is of no import. The competing voices erase any attachment. Boo’s and approvals ca not be distinguished any more than individual particles of white or black can be seen from far away on a gray sheet.
To spend this last second while the chorus faltered and halted its way to a patter, I slid my eyes around. Up? No, up is a painful direction. The ASB rented the sun and pointed it at us on stage. My instinct-driven body is better than I am and did not let me glance any higher than to see the streak of this ivory ceiling. Down is not too interesting. I had already looked around for a face that looked like its daylight self. My angle proves too high. The bodies are continuous like canned peaches. It looks like the floor starts with their shoulders and has a thousand magenta heads pinned together. The only thing reminding me that clones are not before me is the two-tone spectrum of hair.
I mentally unclasp my ears to notice that the crowd has come to its low point in noise. Books usually tell their readers that at this point a dropped pin would pierce the stilled air. No one had dropped to an absolute silence because the announcer tapped out the normal forward, "and last but not least." All around, mouths continued at the normal level in response.
No matter, the speakers finally pulsed my name. But not alone. In a space, I heard it again. Twenty times, those special syllables were repeated. Gone were the razors. The volume vibrated my chest like a venture next to a heavy metal concert. Here, the crashing waves gained the order they had lacked seconds ago. Those mouths savagely shaped my name and explode
A physics student would wonder why, in that moment, I did not launch into the white fire at the opposite side of the room. I was writhed in tugs all in that direction. My face rotated as a flower basks in the strongest light. My mouth was immediately wrenched up into an animal smile only exhibiting a fraction of the strongest force, the force on my mind.
The barks broadcast a solid feeling in my brain in a primal language. Never had I felt such acceptance. The voices became arms hugging me. No mere chemical could ever produce the support of that crowd's noisy admiration. Not alcohol, not nicotine, not cocaine. After several seconds, volume cut in half.
True to the crumb of addiction I had so willingly suckled, the end was the antithesis of what I wanted. All those tugs reversed and shoved me back into my body. A brief war was settled over control of my face. None would be allowed to see the thirst clawing at my temples. I thirsted for that roar. I wanted it like a parched tongue screams for water. I would have bleed for one more clap. I would have ordered another to bleed so I could have more, even if it were someone I cared a great deal for. That thought sets my lips in skirmish again.
That realization froze me. I would have sacrificed another person for a mere second-long replay of that empty tumult. This naively accepted poison wrung me, but my mind was free again. Though I recognized the abhorrence, I could tell that others might not. This fame is a vicious drug. Far more terrible because it did not dull the outside world -like heroin- but rewrote it in my image for a moment. Others might not reject it as I did and define their lives by how many voices shape their name. Tabloids are founded on this. Has some ex-president’s supposed mistress come clean? She is probably leeching this 'prestige' to quell the ache of its lack. As the night proceeds, I foster the hope that a callous can be formed for those who hear it often and that one in such a position will not sacrifice me for the facsimile of respect.