When I arrived in Boston from Detroit a week ago, I asked an airport man how to get to Harvard. He friendlily explained that I was to take the Silver Line bus to South Station and get on the Red Line T to Harvard Square. In that incredibly hard-to-believe Bahstun accent, he called the bus a big gray duck and said it was a hybrid and all of this is not important but what is is that I asked if I would need to pay anew once I transferred from the Silver bus to the Red train and he said No, you will already be in the system.

But I’m paying cash, I said. I won’t have a ticket or pass. Don’t I need a transfer slip? “The bus takes you right inside the station and you can get on the T for free because you’re already in the system,” he repeated.

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He’s right. I’m in the system now. Not really prison. A system of strivers. People with microphones in their profile pics. Dues-paying semi-nobodies trying to get a name for themselves so they can finally get paid for this sht. Day-job-having or trust-fund-milking, attention-needing show-bo’s going from bar to club to small theatre to big theatre to teevee and books and movies. A fraction of one percent of them (us) will even get to the small theatre…

And the sealed station system metaphor works because I’m 40 and I just started in the live story business and there is no way out now, I am in the system, maybe I’ll have to ride around and around until I starve or die of exhaustion, but I paid my two bucks and that’s that. A 26-year-old can leave the station system because they’re so sick of and done with this system, they will just walk or drive or something. Not me. I can keep transferring lines but never exit. I can’t quit. I can fck up or fail umpteen times, but when you’re 40 and you’ve finally found what you want to do, you must just keep on regardless.

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I had had a notion that I should try stand-up, as a cross-training exercise. So a comedian friend very generously arranged a spot in a comedy club’s Saturday night “showcase” for me. When I saw my name on the club’s website, surprised that this was really going to happen, I knew, for the first time since I’ve started performing, what real fear is.

It was like that dream we’ve all had where you have to take a test but you never went to the class. I stared at my name — I used my real name, at least, so any evidence would be semi-hard to find when I bombed. And I purposely did it in Boston, far from home. I thought, with light panic, “This is a great opportunity. But… I don’t have a routine. I don’t have any stand-up jokes.”

So with help from my friend Adam, I condensed all the “laugh lines” from the stories I’ve told so far around the country — all four laugh lines — into a chunk. Then I tried to build them out from laugh lines to full jokes. So now I had two laugh lines and two jokes nestled into a few mini-stories. And that’s what I did onstage. I was done in under 5 minutes.

The fear that gripped my innards when I saw my name in the lineup was nothing compared to the fear just before I went on. I haven’t felt this way since I was an uncoordinated sissy kid who was forced to play dodgeball in gym class. Can’t someone prevent what is about to happen? I thought. I want my mommy, I thought. I actually visualized her rescuing me. I don’t want to do this, I thought.

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I thought the G.L.O.C. and all the woman comedians I know who are always harping about what an exclusionary He-Man Woman-Hater’s Club the comedy world is were probably exaggerating. Then I found myself in a lineup of 8 straight white American guys plus me. I was the closest thing to diversity because I am a gay.

Toward the middle of the night, I asked my confidant, one of the other comedians in the show with me, who such-and-such over there was, and he said, “Oh, that guy’s a stand-up but he’s not in the show. He’s just here to be seen. He just wants people to see him standing near the stage tonight.” Hm. So that’s how up-and-coming comics spend their Saturday nights? I guess it beats my usual VIP drinks party for one in front of the TV. But it’s still oddly sad.

My confidant (he was the only one I told that I hadn’t done this before) was so kind to me, making me feel welcome in this tense place sprinkled with strivers. People are so generous to me it makes me cry for real (only when I’m alone, though, duh). He tried to lighten things up by saying he wanted me to bomb out totally — so that I’d get a funny story out of it.

When I came down off the stage and back to the booth where my confidant was, we agreed that I had neither killed nor bombed. “I went down the middle,” I said. He said, “Yeah, but you committed.” I took that as a compliment. He knew how I felt when the first few things I said got anemic little laughs because the crowd could sense I wasn’t a proper stand-up… But I chose to keep going with what I was going to do, flawed as it was. I didn’t choke or freeze up. I didn’t start apologizing or negotiating or blaming the audience or anything. I did zero “crowd work,” because let’s face it, that’s for pros. Too terrifying for me right now. My job was to deliver my handful of “jokes” and tell my little story and a half, then say thank you and put the mic back on the stand and go drink a bourbon on the rocks.

Did those things. At a well-known and -respected comedy club. Now I’ve got that memory behind me, pushing me into a confidence zone. Watch out, Road! I might be coming down you soon. With my “stand-up set.” It will be a long time before I lose the scare quotes when I say that.