“It” was a half-hour talk I had given earlier that afternoon, in French, in France, to an audience of French speakers. How’d it go? Well, some of the people in my audience liked what I had to say. Others weren’t so enthusiastic, and they asked challenging questions. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that I gave my speech and answered the questions without collapsing, dissolving into tears, or clutching my chest and passing out. It was one of the most trying moments of my life.

If it’s true that people fear public speaking more than death, imagine how much greater that fear might be speaking in public in a foreign country and in a language that’s not your own! Anticipating my talk, I became a poster child for fear. Months before the speaking engagement, I endured sleepless nights, lost my appetite and my concentration, nearly lost my mind. In my mind I played and replayed imagined scenes from that dreaded moment, accompanied by a disturbing self-loathing monologue. I would fail. People would think my ideas were far-fetched, or worse, simplistic. I would see members of my audience roll their eyes. Some would fall asleep. Others would tiptoe out of the conference room before I had finished. My French would desert me, and I would labor to produce sounds that I usually pronounce with ease. I would, in short, be a laughingstock.

The invitation to speak had arrived in November. I was to be the only American on the program of some twenty-five speakers. The conference organizers would cover the cost of my stay. Would I do them the honor of accepting the invitation?

Would I do them the honor? My throat tightened. My heart, banging against my chest wall, dislodged itself and traveled to my throat. There was no question of refusing an honor like this. I replied immediately, saying that I would be ravie (delighted) to accept the invitation. Never was delight accompanied by more anguish.

“Stop obsessing! You’re driving yourself crazy,” said my husband a week later.

It was then I decided to try hypnosis. The hypnotist, selected at random from the Internet—there weren’t all that many hypnotists close by—instructed me to close my eyes. After asking probing questions to try to determine the source of my fear (was it the time my mother washed my mouth out with a bar of soap?) and the situation I was facing, she used a technique known as creative visualization. There, in my mind’s eye, I stood, in the small and comfortable conference room. The audience—some thirty scholars from around the world—smiled in agreement as I spoke. I was at the top of my game, articulate and convincing. And then it was over. I basked in the warmth of the applause.

Uncannily calm and filled with joyful anticipation, I flew to France five months later. I slept soundly the night before the conference. At the hypnotist’s suggestion, I had obtained from my physician a prescription for 5 mg. Valium tablets, because “you never know.” The day I was to speak (the first day of the three-day conference, at my request, so that I could “get it over with”), I dressed in a smartly tailored grey suit, bought especially for the occasion. I tucked a tranquilizer into my pocket, sure that I wouldn’t need it. Then I headed to the conference center, just a block from my hotel.

When I arrived, reality collided with the fiction of my creative visualization. The “small, comfortable room” was an amphitheater. Speakers addressed the audience of some 400 people from a stage, using a microphone. My knees buckled under me, my mouth went dry, and my heart began its bone-rattling dance.

The rest is not, as they say, history, but medical science. The Valium enabled me to speak that afternoon; the Valium gave me the words to answer the questions. I felt slightly disappointed to have failed my hypnotist, but mostly I was elated. That evening, after the Valium had worn off, I had a glass of Bordeaux to celebrate.

A month after my return, recounting the story to my physician, I thanked her profusely for “saving” me by writing me the prescription.

“How strong were the tablets I prescribed?” she asked as she scanned the screen of her laptop.

“5 milligrams,” I replied.

She located the record she was looking for.

“I prescribed ten tablets. How many did you take?”

“Just one,” I said.

She laughed. “At that dose, it was basically a placebo.”

Stories Never More Timely, A Perfect Gift for the Holidays

A Year Without Men

Stories of Experience and Imagination.

by I.D. Kapur

It’s 2054 A.D., and the world needs a rest from men. Women have developed a novel solution, and the men can’t wait to leave. When my taxi driver tells me he has bullet wounds from the Russian police, speaks five languages, and is teaching at Harvard, I start taking notes. After the funeral, a widow loses all her married friends. Then karma sends flowers. “Indra Kapur writes with clear insight and an acute sense of humor. The stories in A Year Without Men are varied, clever, and often delightfully surprising! Cue me rubbing my hands together with glee.” — Katherine Longshore, author of the Gilt series. “The stories in A Year Without Men create a powerful sense of place with rich sensory and emotional detail. Characters are appealing in their humor and the compassion they inspire. I want to meet these people and be there with them! Some endings surprise us, and others give us a satisfying sense of the inevitable playing out. The stories have a depth of reality that makes them unforgettable.” — Ann Saxton Reh, author of the David Markam Mysteries “Mickee Voodoo is a very entertaining parody of a “hardboiled” detective story in the mode of Chandler, Hammett, and, more recently, Robert B. Parker…witty banter ensues with the detective cracking wise in a colorful idiom both in dialogue and narrative…delights in wordplay…very clever, and is quite funny…Kapur is a talented and skillful fiction writer.” — John DeChancie, author of The Skyway Trilogy and The Castle Perilous series. Available from Amazon or on order from your independent bookstore.

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