But this time was different. It was a small private room—one of the rooms where you can scream as obnoxiously as you want, only disturbing your closest friends instead of complete strangers. This night, everybody was wasted. Everybody was screaming along. Nobody could sing. Halfway through the night, the part of the night when everybody’s eyes sort of glaze over, one of my new coworkers was on the tiny stage at the end of the room, crooning away, when another coworker got up behind him and started gyrating sensually to the music before taking something out of his pocket—a Mexican wrestling mask, it became apparent, as he unfolded it—and placed it on his head. “Weird,” I thought, “but OK. I’m drunk. I can go along with this.” And then, still gyrating to the music, he took off his shirt, and underneath, he was wearing a leather Princess Leia bra. It’s unclear to me whether he’d slipped this on in the bathroom sometime in the last hour, or if he’d been wearing it the entire day, or if this was something he wore every day. I still have no idea. But what I do know is that I was utterly and completely baffled by everything I was seeing, and how normal everybody else considered what was happening.

Oh, that’s just Gavin, someone explained when I asked what the hell was going on, as if that should somehow satisfy my curiosity. But that night, I had one of those end-of-a-rom-com kind of moments, when time sort of slows down around you and the lights all fade together and you just kind of sit back and smile at how everything’s played out, while everybody slowly dances around your head, gyrating in Princess Leia lingerie and lucha libre headgear. I don’t even think I got up and sang that night, but it was one of those moments where I felt like I was among my people, where I could do anything and not feel embarrassed or ashamed.

After that evening, karaoke became a main staple of my idea of New York City nightlife. It took a while before I got comfortable enough to get onstage, but watching everybody else, how confident they were even when they could barely sing, was inspiring. When I finally did sing, I performed a stirring rendition of “And I Am Telling You” from the soundtrack to Dreamgirls, and the applause that I got after was one of the greatest feelings ever. Karaoke changed my worldview. “What’s the worst that can happen, besides disappointing Jennifer Hudson?”

So, when on-camera work became a possibility at BuzzFeed, I felt like I could do it, or at least try it. What’s the worst that could happen? Besides disappointing Jennifer Hudson?