This is the fourth installment in an unwanted, ongoing series of entries where I answer reader-submitted questions.

If you’d like to waste some time today, I’d suggest you check out the other entries here:

Everyone's Wingman: Tipping, Bar Etiquette, and Business

Everyone's Wingman: Fashion, Bread-Winnin', and Someone Thinking You're Gay

Everyone's Wingman: Running Late, Booty Calls, & "Just Friends"

I’ve said it before, but I like to refresh this little welcome. Sure, I’ve spent the last 10 years surrounded by some of the smartest people in the world, but I also know very angry and frustrated regular-ass people, strung out and living in rented vans. The point is, I live a life rooted in storytelling, half-ass scripts, and ambition that far outweighs talent. Quite the ride. In that time, I’ve learned from a supporting cast that is equally an island of misfit toys, a room full of brainiacs, a tavern of cultural anomalies, and, perhaps closest to my heart, beloved & successful friends in glorious command of celebrated ticks and syndromes.

So, yeah, I’d like to think that I’m in a perfect position to solve your conundrums. Send me a note sometime and stop getting in the way of me helping you help me help you. Also, while I have your attention: never ask me for financial advice. I will bankrupt you.

Here, a singular entry:

Hi Chris,

I love hosting guests and sharing stories, and I’ve found that by having different guests over but sharing the same story I get better at it. This is great because now I can tell one story about my friend swinging an ax into his foot with good timing and without the frivolous details. This is bad because my wife has heard the story roughly 200 times. How do I master this story so that — when inevitably invited to a dinner party full of dignitaries — I can recant this tale to perfection without her leaving me and ruining my life?

Best,
[redacted]

Hi [redacted],

I feel like this is just part of being in a relationship. It’s a bit like being in a band together for ages, or being in a play together that’s touring through so many stages. Night after night, there is the audience, the people hearing it for the first time. Ideally, they’re spellbound and unaware that last night it was Cleveland whose faces were lit barely and beautifully as they let this brand new night wash over them. And before that it was Seattle not noticing the little mistake you silently noted and promised yourself to work on. Before that, it was another audience or dinner party, and on, and on, stretching back two hundred nights, the little scraps of memories you save of each night for as far as you can see; faces, words, rhythm.

And yeah, the person next to you, or off in the kitchen, or in a little backstage room or wing, has heard the magic before. It’s not the first night for them. We’ve all got our own story to tell, and we all have a fix we’re in, a solution to which we also need to rehearse and refine. And that fix is: we need to stay interested in what we’re lucky to be a part of, night after night, for so long. We can stand next to beautiful moments so often that after a while, if we’re not careful, we catch ourselves yawning while miracles play out beside us. Here’s the thing, [redacted]: you can practice silently in your head, but it still wouldn’t relieve anyone of that fix we’re all in.

PS. Reading my reply back again, I wish I would’ve been cooler and more clever. I got all emotional about it. In fairness, you’re reading this for the first time — you should’ve seen some of the emotional garbage and mistakes I cut out on my second or third pass.

Good luck, [redacted]!

words

Everyone's Wingman: We're Back, Baby!