Concrete Surf - D'oh

My stomach churned at the mention of my name.
“Please welcome on, Mark Blackwell!!” The announcer left the stage as the crowd erupted in a swell of unenthused applause which ended quite abruptly. I fumbled with the mic, clumsily adjusting the height on the stand. I could feel a room full of blank stares on me as they watched me fuck around with such a simple task.

“H-hi there…how are you?” My voice came out broken, disjointed. It was the nerves. I paused for a moment for some kind of response from the audience, but got nothing. In my mind, I could hear the soundtrack of crickets playing back, loudly.

“My name is Mark Blackwell, this is one of my first gigs on the tour, so forgive me if I fuck-up epically… Oh shit. Can I say “fuck” on this tour?” I look over to the tour manager “Is that allowed? I think I just Fucked Up epically” The crowd chuckled, and it seemed to lighten the mood quite drastically.

“So I went surfing yesterday, yea, I got out there met some people, googled at some chicks in Bikinis…yea, you know what I’m talking about guys.” I coolly nodded “And then, all of a sudden, this window pops up telling me that I’m the 1 millionth visitor to bikinisandclevage.com… I was fucking stoked.” Laughter filled the room “Oh, sorry, did you actually think I left my house? Have you looked at me lately?” I drew up my sleeves, and pointed to my milky white complexion. “I’ve been working on this tan for a while now. I’m on a strict regime of basement fluorescents and computer UV. The reason why I’m so pale is that my skin’s very reactive to proper “real” sun. My body just freckles up like you wouldn’t believe. Actually, yesterday, I found this website for people like me, it has on it, and I swear to God this is true, this image of a sun. It’s great! I have it on during the day, pretend I’m outside” more laughter, I am a God.

“With skin like mine, you’d think I was a closeted ginger. I’m NOT by the way - a ginger…I’d rather be a closeted gay. I mean, NOT that there’s anything wrong with it. I know a lot of gingers who grow up and live very long productive lives in society.. Sure, most of the ones I know are scrapping gum out of our concrete pavements at night. They don’t work during the day…sunlight and all. They do try to avoid working during full moons, that’s when the moon is at it’s brightest you see and when they’re most susceptible to skin damage I suppose, but those people, those gingers are out there, risking it all so they can take part in our integral society…God bless’m” In the corner of my eye, the tour manager tapped on his watch, code for ‘wrap it up, times up’. It was a shame because it’d hardly felt like it had been 3 minutes. Sure, I probably wasted a whole minute adjusting the fucking microphone, but I had a lot more material to throw out there.

“Anyway, my name’s Mark Blackwell, and thanks for being such a great non-ginger audience, poice”.