Sometimes you get on stage and you become Buddha.

You become 100 percent, completely ensconced in the present. You are acutely aware of your senses. You are alive.

In short, you go blank.

You only notice the bright lights, the unique pastiche of audience members — the biracial couple on your left, the old man with the arms folded and catawampus toupee on your right. The smell of the room, like museum dust. The part of your brain that schemes and formulates collapses in on itself like the edge of some Einsteinian Universe, and what remains is some sort of cerebral dial-up modem whirr.

You become completely fuckin’ lost and clueless. You are having this moment during a packed show with a skeptical booker boring holes into your face…

You are breathing, Budda-like, in silence…

This sort of thing happens to everybody, doesn’t it?

It happened to me as an actor once.

I was doing a hit Off-Broadway show, the second act of which began with a lengthy monologue by my character that was ostensibly supposed to fill the audience in on what has transpired over the course of the past 6 months, when they were, in fact, whimsically pissing and powdering in the bathrooms during the 15 minute intermission.

Act 2 began with all of the actors at the foot of the stage looking out into the audience in a solemn row, hands formally in front of their balls, in what I like to call the “fig leaf” position. Starting at the front lip of the stage staring into the audience always made me think of the musical “Rent” (and no, not because it was unrealistic and stupid) because the second act of that show began in a similar fashion, except instead of a monologue about things Victorian and British, they all wore uber-hip, multi-colored scarfs and tried to sing to like black people. Unless they were already black, then they tried to sing like “REAL” black people. (sorry Jesse Martin).

Jokingly, and only during rehearsals, I would bust out with a shitaceous vibrato: “525,600 miiiiiiinutes, 525,000 moments of joy!” (If you don’t know this song from “Rent,” congratulations on not being gay).

Not unlike “Rent,” my play (called “Gross Indecency” and about Oscar Wilde, the Michael Jordan of fags) became a huge, and surprising, hit. So much so that we got into the routine of nightly scrutinizing the audience to see if we could spot the inevitable Celebrity Du Jour.

It was a veritable Who’s Who of What the Fucks? Faye Dunaway would be in the same audience as Marilyn Manson. Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson came the same night as sweet and horny Dr. Ruth. Howard Stern and either Carol Channing or a cardboard cut-out of Carol Channing showed up. David Mamet was there one night one row away from David Bowie.

What made the celebrity sightings extra surreal was the fact that, as cast members, much of our material was direct address, meaning we didn’t have the typical fourth wall. That is, we looked directly into the eyeballs of our audience members to talk about whatever shit was going down in Merry ol’ England as well as whatever our respective characters were thinking or feeling (kind of like “Jersey Shore” talking head confessionals but live and with more brain cells). We had literally gotten used to the idea of staring into famous faces and saying our script.

One night, someone took a pre-peek into the crowd and saw that Meryl Streep, the legend herself, was in attendance. She was a definite personal upgrade for me, but consciously I really didn’t care that much. (Foreshadowing alert: notice my use of the phrase “consciously.”)

At one point that evening, putting on my eye-liner and staring into the mirror for the 259th time before the curtain opened, I remember joking to my fellow cast members, “How funny would it be if I opened the 2nd act with the song from “Rent” in front of Dame Streep?” Everyone chuckled slightly, seemingly not as bemused by the idea as I was.

Then I said something odd. Something that has, on some level, begun an excavation of the intricacies of my own neural wiring that exists even today.

“What if I just totally forgot my lines!” I said. I laughed hysterically at the idea. What a silly thought. That’s impossible. I could say these lines backwards. Ha!

Foreshadowing alert #2.

I wasn’t really aware of it at the time, but, as I am now FULLY and completely aware, the subconscious brain is an evil bitch. And it loves nothing more than to fuck up your life.

Don’t believe it?

Next time you want to delete the phone number of someone you have recently decided you hate (a liar, an ex, your grandmother), take a quick peeksie at the number before you do it. Your brain will industrial-strength laser tattoo those 9 digits into the forefront of your frontal lobe — GUARANTEED!!!

SUBCONSCIOUS: “You want to forget your ex, Bill? Of couse you do! Well, don’t think of the number 2134531882. Don’t! Just don’t think of 2134531882. I mean, why the fuck would you ever think of 2134531882 ever? That’s retarded! Let’s make a Schoolhouse Rock rhyme of the number in order to remind you of the number you need to forget….”

To point, your brain is a fucking asshole.

Ergo, if you throw down the gauntlet on your subconscious mind and say “You will never forget your lines,” it will indubitably try (subconsciously… confusing, huh?) to prove you wrong.

The house lights began to dim as the stage lights brightened.

We walked out to our marks downstage to begin the 2nd act. The lights — SHOMP — came up to full intensity until their buzzy white noise filled the 400-seat theatre. I was at my mark, fig-leafed. I was healthy, I was cute and 24 years old. I was word-perfect with the monologue…

I opened my mouth and couldn’t remember the very first word for some reason.

What’s that first word?… If I could only remember THAT, I thought, then I could do the rest no problem….

I stood there and stared out into the bright Off-Broadway lights, which then seemed excessively harsh, like Gestapo FIND-A-JEW spotlights. I could see particles of dust floating in the photons like living things traveling home. They were methodical in their state of entropy. The first person coughed, his body wordlessly asking if there has been some mistake. The only other sound, the hum of the AC.

In my silence, the vague blonde aura and hawkish nose of Streep was hazily edging itself in around the periphery of my sight line. A pair of fat legs under a red skirt in the 2nd row aisle crossed and uncrossed. The distinct crinkle of a yellow Playbill sounded like the explosion of a banned 4th of July firework in Church. Subtly, my cast members started to get restless….

I opened my mouth to speak and closed it again.

I stood there frigid, jaw clenching reflexively, wondering just one thing. Just one… What the fuck is the very first word of the second fucking act….

“525,600?” No, that’s not it.

The second cough erupted from a man with two chins fighting for supremacy.

A mysterious part of my body suddenly awoke and injected a shot of pure adrenaline into my bloodstream, dilating my eyes, quickening my heart rate. Sheer panic was beginning it’s descent into every fiber of my being.

The third cough.

Finally, a deeper, more Delphian part of my soul told me to “Just breathe.” This esoteric part assured me “If you just breathe Bill, your consciousness will unfurl again and simple Newtonian Physics will take over your universe again. Oh yeah, and don’t be such a bitch, Bill!”

So I began to breathe deep tantric breaths. At this point, I noticed two things: one, that CLEARLY, I had not been breathing at all and may brain was enjoying the fresh supply of oxygen. Number two, the cast members immediately to my left and right had frozen in a bizarre mirror exercise of terror. Clearly, they could sense my psychological demise and they were ransacking archives of their brains for escape routes or a way to save the night.

Farther down the flank, the actors seemed just curious. One of them casually turned to his right with a casual look of “Uh, hey, yeah, what the everliving fucktits is goin’ on centerstage?”

I took another breath, waiting for the world to come into crystalline and pristine focus, wherein the monologue would wend itself fluidly through my lips. Instead, in the moment as Buddha… lights. Crinkles. Crossing and uncrossing. Coughing fits and murmurs now…

“Oscar,” I began, stating the name of the protagonist, hoping it would spark everything else. Nope.

So I began to paraphrase. For those of you not familiar with the term, I just began to say shit that sort of made sense about what may or may not have happened in those 6 hypothetical months that needed to be covered.

I started again, “Oscar was a mess…. He was being sued left and right and his creditors were simply not…. not having it…. at all!”

What the fuck was I even saying?!

Everyone in the cast looked at me like I just peeled my face off and I was now Nicholas Cage instead of John Travolta (horrible John Woo movie reference? check!)

And like day 2 of a herpes outbreak… It got worse.

Not only was I speaking words that were supposed to make sense to the audience, but my speech also had verbal cues for the other actors’ lines and actions as well. In other words, my lines were supposed to be used as choreography for the other 6 actors’ interweaving motions onstage.

So my metaphysical meltdown meant that the audience didn’t know what story was being told, and the other actors had no idea what to say or where to move. Even the lighting cues were screwed. My semi-panic attack turned a high-profile Off-Broadway show with Meryl Streep in the audience into a sloppy “Duck Soup” Marx Brothers’ routine. We just needed a banana peel onstage to make my life complete.

We all looked at each other saucer-eyed with terror as I stumbled around like a marionette with a broken string. Somehow, amazingly, I garbled through some consonant clusterfucks until I recognize what could be landing point, at which point I exited the stage, beet-red and buzzing like I had just chugged a pint of viagra-laced vodka. When I got offstage, I laughed and presented my shaking and open palms to the gods, as if to say “How the fuck did that happen to my mind!”

I recovered and finished the play with great aplomb and composure. I was back on track. It was just a temporary brain abeyance.

Not so fast. The 2nd act brain fart, nay, brain diarrhea, continued for 3 more shows. And then, as quickly and as mysteriously as it started, it stopped. I did the play for another 5 months and never had that parietal paralysis happened again. Ever.

Until tonight at this gig in Hawaii…..

I’m only noticing the bright lights, the unique pastiche of audience members — the biracial couple on your left, the old man with the arms folded and catawampus toupee on your right. The smell of the room, like museum dust. The part of my brain that schemes and formulates is collapsing in on itself like the edge of some Einsteinian Universe, and what remains seems to be some sort of cerebal dial-up modem whirr.

I become completely fuckin’ lost and clueless. I am having this moment during a packed show with a skeptical booker boring holes into my face… I am breathing, Budda-like, in silence…

This bitchy, stern-faced booker at SHARKY’S in Honolulu had given me shit about my time slot earlier and now I see her hawkish nose edging into my periphery. I had done 90 minutes the night before, but I can’t remember my first fucking joke.

What’s just one joke I know?

Then I remember… that I am now a comic. I can say whatever the fuck I want.

“Wow, these lights are bright. These are like Gestapo, FIND-A-JEW spotlights! I can’t see shit!”

I’m telling the truth, but people are laughing. I’m lost, though….

“I don’t know what the fuck to talk about right now.”

I am utterly confused. And people see that. They are laughing hysterically.

One mean-looking guy with a bald head and flowery shirt is guffawing exceptionally hard.

“Wow, you look brutal, but your shirt is so flowery. It’s like your face is saying “FUCK YOU!” but your shirt is saying “FUCK ME!”

The laughs double in intensity.

I am still lost. I still don’t have a plan. But, as I begin to breathe normally, I realize my “lines” don’t matter. At all.

Because, now, I am a comic.

Now, I am a fucking Buddhist.

So suck it, Meryl.

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