I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

Some nights. it's all about the heartbreak.

But before there was that, there was pie at Pie with a bartender who didn't look old enough to shave.

I don't think I'd been to Pie since the first month they'd opened, so tonight's foray was off my beaten path.

Over a pie of marinara, basil, spinach, mushrooms, red pepper flakes and oodles of garlic, my companion informed me that tonight's event was going to be trite.

"I'm telling you now that all the stories are going to be the same," Mr. Pessimist warned while I begged to differ.

We had only to walk across the street to Balliceaux to see who was right.

Tonight was Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story and the theme was "Heartbreak Hotel."

So right there you know this girl wasn't going to get up and tell a story.

But we paid our admission and each of us got a little black heart drawn on our hands to show we were worthy to listen.

Inside, we quickly grabbed seats in the second row (I would  have preferred the first) as the room continued to fill up.

It had to have been the biggest crowd yet for storytelling on a Monday night.

As everyone claimed drinks and seats, the music playing set the tone for the evening with songs like "The Things We Do for Love" and "Bye, Bye, Love."

Oh, it was going to get heartbreaking alright.

Things began with "Rainy Day at Rose's," a story about a guy making a bad call letting his date run to the locked car while he stayed dry with the keys.

I'd say that's a young man's mistake.

"Fangirl Confession" was about how having a crush on Jim Carrey and Lauren Holly when you're 13 years old is bound to eventually beak your heart.

She talked about how tough her dilemma had been in the pre-Internet days. "This was the 90s so it was all 90s problems for a fan."

"Twenty Year Crush" had to do with devotion to singer/activist Billy Bragg and how no matter how often she told someone (usually her husband), "I'm over Billy Bragg," she never really was.

The next storyteller (who also had the best ensemble: white and black fringed shirt, white pants and checkered Vans) got a build-up of an introduction, including his phone number for any interested females.

"The Romance Novel that is My Life: Shower Scene" had some funny/telling moments about how some people are just not right for each other.

His observations were hysterical.

"After the breakup, I descended into single dudedom. But I'm better now. I shave almost every day."

There was a story called "Corazon Roto" about drinking tequila with his Mexican friend who tried to win his former girlfriend's love back by hiring a ten-piece mariachi band to back him as he sang to her.

Te amo, Olivia!

The lesson?

In some cultures, heartbreak is a community event.

After intermission, we got the stories not previously vetted by the Secretly Y'All crew, the ones told by audience members who put their names in a hat hoping to be called onstage.

"Buckeyes and Board Checks" was introduced as being a story to make up for the fact that so far no one had told a story where they were the heartbreaker.

"I think I have that story," he assured us.

Breaking up with your girlfriend during a weekend visit on Valentine's Day so he could go back to New Orleans and party hearty?

Yep, he had that story.

She showed him, though, by claiming to be preganant and ruining three solid hours of his life before taking a pregnancy test (negative).

My favorite storyteller of the evening was the girl who told us about "Failed First Kiss."

Between her charismatic persona, a story of being raised in a seven-children hippie family (Mom was a second-wave feminist) and her impeccable timing, she had the room in stitches.

"I was smitten by Gandhi," she confessed.

To be clear, it wasn't that Gandhi.

This one was the younger brother of the handsome Lotus, but despite going off with Gandhi while sick and attempting to be cool enough to smoke pot with him, the kiss never happened.

That's some serious 13-year old heartbreak.

Chris Milk told a story of being arrested in Mexico for drunkenness, spending a night in jail and then being taken out the next day by the cop who'd arrested him.

They drank together all day. Obviously Mexican cops do things a little differently.

The last story was about leaving the Richmond bubble to go live in San Francisco where the storyteller learned people are not nearly so friendly as they are here.

In fact, in Richmond, California, strangers may even want to kill you at night at a closed BART station. Now that's a heartbreaking lesson to learn 3,000 miles from home.

But if there was one thing tonight's stories proved it was that they were definitely not all the same. They weren't even close.

You want to hear about heartbreak? I could tell a story about heartbreak. Come to think of it, nah.

I wouldn't want to tell another story that's just the same.