(diaryland) October 02, 2005 - 9:58 p.m.

I went to see an opera the other day. It was set in a courtroom. Through not really knowing someone but getting some phone number of someone else I didn't know, I got to not pay the forty-five bucks it was meant to cost and I got in for free.

The catch was, however, that I would have to 'act' a bit.

I and eleven other really scared looking people had to sit on the stage and pretend to be a jury.

I will tell you one thing. When an opera singer is right up in your face and is singing with some measure of elan, it is pretty fucking loud. In fact, the whole time, my ears felt like they were peaking out.

So, anyway, we sat on the side of the stage and had to sit there very, very, very still while the opera was going on, mostly because all of us were embarrassed about being there and we all felt like cheapskates being let in for free and we also got the nearest, most loudest seat in the house.

My seat was the loudest of all, because for some terribly unfortunate reason, I was really flatulent that night. Goddamn, I was flatulent. Holding in your barrage of wind is the most stressful thing in the world if you're sitting next to a whole bunch of people you don't know on a stage in the middle of a performance with a microphone directly above you trying to record the thing.

My bowel only made a noise once.

I felt sorry for the guy next to me because I could have been making a big smell. I couldn't tell because my sense of smell is minimal.

Anyway, I had the microphone directly above me because they forced me to sit in the front row of the jury, right on the end closest to the audience so everyone probably looked at me intently every now and then. I was looking intently too, because I was keeping my breeze in.

I like to think they put me in the most visible seat because I had the best profile.

I was also trailing a new hairstyle that day.

Oh, yeah. The opera was good. There was fake blood at the end but none of it sprayed onto me.

I sort of wanted it to.

Then I wouldn't have had to talk about my arse.