I had no idea taking this little abstraction from a longer story would have the life it’s had. It has wings because, as someone whose live stories run around 15 minutes each, I was determined to write something that could be told in 5ish, and this is the one that’s worked the best so far. Will I even be able to put it back into the story from whence it came? I don’t think so! I think it’s its own thing now, and I’m okay with that.

Please enjoy and let me know what you think! And, so, if you may remember in Page to Stage, I confessed that the name “Brenda Parker” is that of a school friend, and I used it because it has nice strong consonants (and I can’t remember the name of the mean girl(s!) from the lunch line). I mentioned that I was pretty sure it wouldn’t matter because what were the chances that the real Brenda would catch wind? Well, it’s still a pretty darn slim chance, but just in case, just saying here again, Brenda was a rad girl and not a bully at all; she just has a great name to spit out in the middle of a story, ha ha!

Thanks, and we’ll talk soon—real soon! xoxo, Amy

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Well, hello, all you fantastic so-and-so’s! And how are we today? In the mood for a quick story? Here is mine; it won “Best in show” at Six Feet Apart Productions’ Story Slam last week. They sent me a mug that says winner and I get to feature at their next slam in August. I’m not used to winning anything, and the universe, in its ever-present pursuit of keeping my ego in check, did so, via host Claire, who told everyone several times that the “voting was super, SUPER close.” Ha, ha, okay, Claire (aka UNIVERSE), I get it! My story scraped by!

Self-deprecation aside, it was awesome to have people enjoy my story, and I’m looking forward to featuring at SFAP’s August show, theme: Vacation Vibes. I linked it because it is an open mic, so if you want to tell a story, you can. Check it out.

Watch the video first, then read below? If ya wanna, you don’t havta.

Maybe fun info about Fuck Means Intercourse:

• This story is an excerpt from a longer piece called Library Day. In Library Day, I use my mom telling me fuck means intercourse as an example of how she “never kept information from me.”

• It wasn’t until I started adapting it to onstage performance that I realized A. I might’ve had a contact high, and B. She mighta been fucking with me. So, adapting it has forever changed the story’s meaning for me. It’s no longer a treasured anecdote or a pat character summary of my mom/our relationship, which is a little sad. (This also means it has probably changed Library Day, we’ll see.)

• The whole reason Fuck Means Intercourse became a story is that I was trying to create something to tell at The Moth, and I had no five-minute stories; only twenty-minute stories. I still hope to tell it at The Moth, although I don’t think it will fit with their style too well. Too many fucks? Well, yes. Too. Many. Fucks. C’est la vie!

• “Brenda Parker” is actually the name of a high school friend. I used her name because it has great syncopation. I can’t remember the name of my childhood bully (bullies). I was momentarily concerned that the story would blow up if I shared it via social media and Brenda would see it and be like, “Hey, I never bullied you.” Luckily (?) I don’t think I need to worry about things like going viral, lololol.

• Some people have asked me, what happened next? What happened next was I spent years—YEARS—telling people to ‘intercourse off.’ I thought it was SOOOOOO FUNNY. And everyone—kids, adults, teachers, meanies—all of them reacted the same way: with puzzlement. No one ever got offended, mad, or felt dissed. No one realized I was being naughty or mean or subversive. Or funny, for that matter. Not a one. I was speaking to an audience of one, the biggest fan of my oh-so-clever wordplay: me. (Remember, this is the same time period where I was inordinately fond of telling adults “I’m an only child, aka a LONELY child” and then grew confused when they reacted with worry rather than laughter.)

• I think this performance ended up a little rushed, and I like the piece better when it has a bit more room to breathe. This is just a symptom of my being a beginner at creating short-ass stories (and performing), I’m sure.

And now, here is the written version (like . . . 4th draft, I think?) I used to create the performed version. It’s kinda interesting to see the written piece in lieu of the orated piece. The weirdest part, and I have no idea if it’s like this for anyone else, is that the piece goes from an abstract of writing that was written well enough to be published to oh, hell no, that can’t be published at all (but it can be performed!!!).

Fuck Means Intercourse

I’m lying in front of the fireplace with my face as close to the warmth as I can get. My mom brought home a special log from the grocery store, one that is supposed to make the flames change color, so I’m watching the log very intently, waiting for the flames to change color, but they don’t. It’s okay, I don’t mind because it’s evening, it’s cold outside, and cozy in here with all of us in the living room at the same time.

My mom and my Doug (my stepdad) are murmuring on the couch as they pass a joint back and forth, and I can’t really make out what they’re saying, I just hear the pleasant rise and fall of emotions, and as I’m watching the fire, I notice how the flames are almost dancing along with their conversation. It’s lulling me, putting me in a trance. I can feel my body and my brain kinda emptying out, and I get loose and languid and stretchy like taffy as I take turns aiming my face and then my toes toward the fire, kinda like I’m a marshmallow toasting myself.

Then slowly, slowly, slowly a shimmer of a trace of a thought bubbles up from somewhere deep inside of me, and as it courses up from my gut it forms into a question, and this question grows bigger and bigger as it rushes up to my brain, so big it’s overriding everything, the fire, the pleasant conversation . . . it consumes my entire being! Like, all six years of my life have been for this moment, to ask this question, to receive this answer! So I suddenly sit straight up, overcome with urgency, and I call out “Mom!” to cut through their cloud of pot smoke, and they instantly stop talking, like they know! They know we’re on the precipice of something momentous, and they’re part of its unfolding! So I say it again to make absolutely sure I have their full attention:

“Mom! Mom! What does fuck mean?”

My Doug starts spluttering and coughing and making a gulping sound like he’s laughing, but I brush his reaction off because, whatever, I knew he wasn’t up to the task, this moment of truth anyway.

But my mom fixes me with a cool gaze and, without a hint of hesitation, says, “Intercourse.”

Intercourse. Intercourse? And now my sense of the momentous is faltering because whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this cryptic, sterile, three-syllable word. I say, like I’m trying on for size, “Fuck means intercourse. What is intercourse?”

My mom hands the joint to my Doug, and without missing a beat, says, “Intercourse is the word for sex.”

Oh. Oops. I hadn’t intended for that word to come up on this toasty night in front of the fire, but I push forward. “Fuck means intercourse means sex?” The words slip around my brain like a logic puzzle. A short word for a long word for a short word? So confusing. But I’m trying to wrap my brain around it, so I say, “So when adults say fuck they mean sex.”

My mom snorts. “More like when they say sex, they mean intercourse, but yeah.”

“So . . . when Doug calls the mailman a fucker he’s really calling him an intercourser? When he told that guy in the car the other day to fuck off, he was saying intercourse off?” This strikes me as absolutely absurd; this can’t be what adults are saying to each other, but my mom confirms it, “You got it, kid. Pretty much.”

My mom has waves me off and they’re back in their own world, rolling another joint and laughing with each other. All I can really do is go back to my place by the fire to mull it over. I feel like my mom has told me something important, even though I’m not totally sure what it is, although I do know that there’s no way other kids my age know about this, and that strikes me as powerful, like I have a little bit of power.

The more I think about it, the more I realize my mom has just given me a little loophole to cuss. Because if fuck means intercourse, then intercourse means fuck! And I know exactly how to use that—and who to use it on! In fact, when I go to school tomorrow, I’m going to be a hero because I’m going to walk up to the meanest girl in school, Brenda Parker, and I’m gonna say, “Hey, you know what, Brenda? Why don’t you just intercourse off?”

And that’s exactly what I did.

All right, this was a lot of sharing, so I gotta go either take a fast walk or a short nap, then get back to producing some storytelling shows—you know, being brave anyway, and stuff. xoxo, Amy

(Page to Stage is an ongoing series where I unpack the craft of translating my written work into live, oral storytelling, and what that process teaches me about writing, performance, and courage. As always, I’d love to hear from you: like, comment, share, tell me what you’d like to know more about, and commiserate with your own storytelling adventures. I like knowing I’m not alone in this big, big world.)

I’m taking off for the Camino in about 6 weeks, and I know it’s time to write a lil’ sumthin’ sumthin’ about it, but first, I want to talk about story, because, well, I have this story I’ve been working on. It was originally published at Ozy years ago with a truly terrible headline (so bad I won’t subject you to it).

The story revolves around an interaction I had with a teenager I was living with in a group home. I was only about twelve and new to foster care. She was older and cooler and meaner, but still somehow ended up being my Mr. Rogers ‘helper’ and kinda gave me a roadmap to survive the situation I’d found myself in—whether or not she intended to be my helper is one of those questions left to the listener to decide. But I like to think, in her own crude, crass, and bullying way, yes, she took brief pity on me and my overt dorkiness and threw me the best life float she could cobble together.

I think it’ll make a neat little oddball live story, but . . . it has lyrics. And I can’t sing. I mean, I CAN’T SING! I’m not saying that in a cutesy, humble-pie way. I mean it. I’m preparing you. I’m forewarning you. This is not a Napoleon Dynamite, plain-Jane-takes-off-glasses-to-reveal-unusual-hotness, quiet-person-has-the-voice-of-[insert voice you like] type thing. This is real shit, real truth, mofos! I can’t sing, I can’t dance, and I can’t impersonate people or accents.

I’m so bad at all of that stuff, it’s almost a talent! That’s right. It’s that bad, okay? OKAY??

(And you know what I mean by can’t, you healthy, well-adjusted, rose-colored optimists out there. You know. Don’t do that to me.)

Digression: One of my favorite Chelsea Handler moments is when Christina Aguilera was on Chelsea’s Netflix show, saying she could teach anyone to sing, and Chelsea’s like, "My voice is bad," and Christina refuses to believe her . . . until she hears Chelsea singing. It’s hilarious and vindicating, like, sheesh! Just believe us when we tell you we can’t sing! This clip cuts most of the interesting stuff (like, Christina is actually, truly put off and unsure what to do; in fact, if I remember correctly, she starts frantically backtracking, reeling in her assertion like a madwoman), but you can see a quick snap of Christina’s face, realizing, nope, she cannot teach anyone to sing:

Anyway.

I can’t sing (or dance or impersonate). But my story calls for it. What do I do?

So, there are actually two parts in question here. Part one is the need to perform rap lyrics. Part two is the need to sing a melody.

For the song lyrics part, I really don’t think I can do anything about it. My inability to keep a tune is too distracting from why I’m telling the audience the song lyrics I’m telling them. So right now, I’m just saying the song lyrics. It’s still a bit distracting because even just saying the lyrics, you can hear just how much I can’t sing! My other option, it seems, is to take the song lyrics out, which is what it might come to, but I’ll probably try to keep them in and see how it goes.

Wanna know the song lyrics? Here ya go. Name this album:

So ya, thought ya, might like to go to the show.

To feel the warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow.

Now, for the first part, the rap lyrics part, I think what it’s going to come down to is what I’m finding more and more (through talking/watching other storytellers and trying to be a storyteller myself) to be the underappreciated, underpracticed, and yet possibly most central part of live storytelling, and that’s delivery.

There is no way I can be cool and sing those rap lyrics. If I even try to do so—you know, like how some storytellers will break into song, and we all swoon at their beautiful voices and multiple talents (see: Diane Amos, Kimberlli Joy)—I will lose the audience. So I have to lean in, be my nerdy self, but intentionally.

AKA: delivery.

So I’m focusing on delivery, but I won’t really know how it’s working until I do it in front of people, which means I’m gonna have to be okay with embarrassing myself. My particular means of delivery for this story looks like it’s going to rely on timing, which again, I can only practice so much in my shower before it needs to go in front of an audience to really know.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say to you about delivery, friends. For sure, if you’re out there right now, thinking about doing live storytelling, by all means, the content is important. But do not underestimate the value of practicing your delivery, which means getting the hell outta your head and speaking aloud and into a microphone.

This much, I can already glean:

So many of my talented storytelling friends are putting the delivery part last on their list, when it really needs to be there, hand in hand with content, from the beginning.

(What? I’m not talking about YOU. YOU’re doing everything just right! 😁)

I think I’m gonna try to tell my story at WILDCARD this March (if we find a venue!). I’ll let you know how it goes.

Either way, just don’t give me that Christina Aguilera look because YOU WERE WARNED!

Love all of ya.

xoxo, Amy

Feel free to reply and commiserate.

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Aside from my open mic show and another local open mic I adore and try to attend regularly, I have two upcoming shows this week where I’m a featured performer! YAY?!!?

In December, I had big plans to tackle a story I’ve written essays on, but haven’t so far been able to successfully translate to the stage. Next thing I knew, it was January, and although a ton of tasks for In a Nutshell Storytelling were taken care of (My name is Amy, and I am a productive procrastinator), none of my personal storytelling plans had come to fruition.

So now I’m working on a story that started as an essay and was told on stage once, about 6 months ago. Since then, it’s seen many iterations as I cobble and cut, scribble and scrawl, meander and digress into the mic with the record button on, trying to remember how to memorize without memorizing so much that it becomes stiff recitation . . .

My computer desktop is littered with so many copies of my story, y’all! I have to click open like 8-9 docs with cryptic names like “pp short-oral.doc” and “latest pp new minus bonus.doc.” The worst is this cluster of docs named “shorter,” “shortest,” “newest shortest,” “shorter than shortest,” and perplexingly, “new-short-long-no-pp.”

Past me is so inconsiderate of present me; you’d think present me would fix that for future me, but NOPE.

So here’s what’s happening:

There’s some common advice that I almost always gave writers when I was book editing, and I see the same issue now with live storytellers, too. This is advice I nearly never apply to my own writing (take my own advice? MOI??), but I am trying very hard to apply it to my live storytelling. The advice is this:

You can cut the intro.

As in, YOU, Amy, YOU can cut the intro.

Oh, I can?? But . . . the intro has this super funny line about peer pressuring neurodivergent friends and family mem—

Cut it.

If I cut it, they won’t understand meeeeeee!

They’ll understand you fine. Cut it!

But then I have to change ALL the peer pressure lines! And then I can’t end the story with how I’m always up for a good ol’ fashioned night of peer pres—

CUT IT!

WAHHH!!!!! But if I cut it, then I can’t tell the audience I was peer pressuring myself along, and that peer pres—

YOUR STORY ISN’T ABOUT PEER PRESSURE, AMY!

. . .fine.

And that’s when I take a break, walk around the block, harass the dog with unconditional love and kisses, grab the mic, start again without my super-swell intro, which forces me to refine several aspects throughout the piece, causing me to dig a little deeper into what the hell I’m actually talking about because I no longer have my super-swell peer pressure transitions, and by the time I fumble my way to the end . . .

Sigh.

No doubt about it. The piece is stronger. It didn’t need peer pressure. I just liked it. I was enamored with the device.

There’s nothing wrong with having a device, using a device, using artifice and enjoying it, btw. We’re all doing that, all the time, in all the ways. (Also, go ahead and make an entire story that’s nothing but pure intro! Do it! I dares ya, ya contrary mofo!💜)

But this piece is stronger without it. And I found that having to find new ways to connect the parts of the story made me come out of it feeling a little clearer about what the story is about.

Which made me wonder: how far can one strip the artifice? And does stripping it always equal “more true”? Like, am I discovering a central truth about my story I wasn’t aware of before, that I wouldn’t have discovered if I hadn’t been willing to strip?

Or . . .

Did I grow out of the peer pressure part of the story, and the parts of the story I’m emphasizing now, the parts that seem more truthy, only seem more truthy because my perception of the events within the story have changed?

Did I refine the story to find a deeper truth or did the story evolve with me?

Woah, dude. Woah.

If you’re around Placerville Jan 11: Word of Mouth Storytelling

If you’re around Novato Jan 17: The Shuffle

I’d love to see you and meet you and hear what you think of my story! Also, Sacramento peeps, there’s always Do Tell on the 13th and WILDCARD! on the 15th!

Talk again, my favorite friends and looky-loos!

xoxo, Amy

If you make things—stories, art, decisions, messes—I’d love to know:
how do you tell when something needs refining? Or is it really that you’ve changed?

You can reply here if you want. I read everything. xoxo, Amy

(Page to Stage is an ongoing series where I unpack the craft of translating my written work into live, oral storytelling — and what that process teaches me about writing, performance, and courage. As always, I’d love to hear from you: like, comment, share, tell me what you’d like to know more about, and commiserate with your own storytelling adventures. I like knowing I’m not alone in this big, big world.)

Addenda:

🎙️ Listen: Cookie Season performed live at and Prompt: a podcast for people who love true, personal stories.Want the extended version? Hit reply or comment—I’ll send it your way.

In a Nutshell Storytelling

Prompt Ep 8: Amy Bee Tries to Sell Girl Scout Cookies

Our guest for Episode 8 of Prompt is me, Amy Bee! Keith and Aaron were gracious enough to let me tell a story—my first real time on a real stage—at our March Nutshell show. I told a story about being around ten years old and trying to fit in with my local Girl Scout troop, doing an okay job at it, until cookie season arrived and everything quickly fell apart. The tale is bittersweet and deals with that keen need we all have to belong somewhere—anywhere—and what lengths we’re willing to go to in order to do so…

Listen now

9 months ago · 1 like · Amy Bee

📖 Read the original essay: (this is the Substack version. The original is published at Salon.com (2017))

What I Thought Oral Storytelling Was

When I originally had an inkling of telling my stories out loud and onstage, I thought it went like this:

• You write a thing you like

• You read it on a stage

• Other humans finally get you, and you belong

• People shower you with unfaltering and vehement devotion

• PBS asks to do a biopic on you

• Radiohead writes a song about you

• Cheryl Strayed asks YOU to sign HER book

and so on.

(Seriously, this fantasy has no ending.)

Imagine my surprise when I found out that’s not oral storytelling at all. That’s reading, which is fine; there are many awesome places for reading (Sedaris, anyone?), but not what people are doing when they’re talking about telling stories onstage.

It shoulda been clear to me right away, because when I read my stories out loud, they sounded, well, written—and very much so. They didn’t sound anything like the handful of Moth stories I’d heard, or Birbiglia, for that matter (who does have a bit of a writerly affectation in his style arsenal, one could argue, but that’s a different topic). Honestly, I was a mite disappointed to find out I couldn’t just read my stories and call it a day because there was a lot of built-in security in those written words. It didn’t feel too scary to read something in an entertaining manner; there was room to hide myself safely within the perspective of the narration.

It felt entirely intimidating to tell something, though, especially because I’m not a great orator! Not only do I have pretty major anxiety and stage fright, but I don’t have those nifty stereotypes you hear over and over, like:

my entire family sat around the dinner table telling stories

my parents made us kids tell our own bedtime stories

I grew up______ (insert nationality of choice)

I also handicapped myself at a youngish age for very dumb reasons. Here are two dumb things I did to myself that old-brained Amy REALLY, REALLY resents and regrets:

1. I got so tired of having to reiterate when I was a kid because the words I used were “too big” for everyone around me, so I just stopped using big words and cut right to the watered-down versions. I now have a vast lexicon—that’s mostly passive.

2. I got so used to feeling like people weren’t listening or interested in what I had to say—that I was on some invisible timer—that I began to speak as quickly as possible, with as little detail as possible.

Gosh forbid anyone thought I was a big-brained asshole with something to say! I mean, a lot of my youth was about survival, so I understand, but sheesh, I wish I’d been more on my side.

Phew. ANYWAY.

When my Nutshell co-creators invited me to tell my first story onstage at our March show, I quickly realized Cookie Season, as written, was not going to work.

It was also the beginning of another “a-ha,” and that was: I knew I had a reading voice and a writing voice, and that there were rules and grammar and syntax for those voices, but I needed to learn/create/grow another voice, a telling voice, or, probably more accurately, a performance voice.

And when I say “voice,” I mean this in terms of story, not necessarily vocals or theatrics. So, it’s basically about narration. My written narrative voice (at least currently. Maybe this won’t always be true. Sedaris, anyone??) is very different than my telling/performance narrative voice. Here’s some stuff I’ve noticed (this is all for true, personal stories, btw)((told by me, btw! I think they could help you to ponder over, too, but what do I know?!?)):

• My writer’s voice is inclined and optimized to point out things my telling voice isn’t, and vice versa. This means details you can get away with dwelling upon in your writing aren’t going to work as well onstage.

• The stage is much friendlier toward anecdotes. Stories still need a beginning, middle, and end, which means a change or transformation needs to occur, but in general, you don’t need as much twinning of reflection with plot as you do with writing.

• First-person immediacy means something different, narrative-wise AND tense-wise, to my teller voice. It needs to be even more immediate, as far as I can tell. You want the audience right there with you, so you need to be right there, too (without opening any wounds. No need to bleed for ‘em!).

• In oral storytelling, the perspective comes from you. You are the main character. YOU ARE THE PROTAGONIST, even if you think you’re the villain. This is true for writing, too, of course, but it’s so much more evident with storytelling. There’s just more room to equivocate on the page. There’s more (not a lot, but more) room to hide or obfuscate or compensate or what if or—like for me, well . . . actually that’s a whole can of beans to open up and eat with a butterknife another day.

• This is a very writer-centric perspective, probably because that’s where I’m coming from, homie.

TLDR: A few things I learned taking Cookie Season from Page to Stage:

• My written and spoken voices serve different purposes — and both are valid.

• The stage rewards immediacy; the page rewards reflection.

• The only way to learn performance storytelling if you’re a scaredy is to do it ANYWAY.

If you’d like me to break down Cookie Season in more depth—what changed, what stayed, and what surprised me—reply or let me know in the comments. FYI: COOKIES WILL BE EATEN. DUCKTALES WILL BE WATCHED. FAVORITE PARTS OF ESSAYS WILL BE CUT FROM THE STORY. Otherwise, let’s end it here for now.

Listen to the audio for sure! Read the Substack version, if ya wanna. Form your own opinions and judgments and then shower me with them. I’m super curious. A lot of creating is spent in the dark, just kinda flailing around and tripping over things, so if you wanna lean your ultra-cool, solar-powered lantern my way, I say thankya. I knew we were besties!

xo,

Amy Bee

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