Family Email Conversation
Mom: I woke up this morning to Spud’s face one inch from mine and as soon as I opened my eyes, he started purring. I lifted my head a little and saw that he had his ass planted firmly on Dad’s face with his tail curled up and over. With the tube from Dad’s Apnea mask Spud looked like a Cat Gas Mask and I couldn’t resist the urge to take a picture.
Mom (later): I showed Dad the photo this morning and he was amused - not horrified. He said that the air he breathes comes in from the tube so he was probably breathing decent air. He also said that air exhales out the mask, which Spud must have been feeling. Which adds a whole new layer of disgusting.
Sister (previous owner of Spud): It really is disturbing. One time Spud had a…butt-hair issue, of the poop-sticking kind. {Boyfriend} and I fought for awhile over who had to hold the cat down and who had to clean the hair with a wet cloth — hard to imagine which would be worse. Finally we made a plan but it turned out to be unnecessary to hold the cat down. Spud absolutely LOVED having his butt rubbed with a wet cloth. Which made things infinitely easier and infinitely more disturbing.
This is happening between my toes. I blame the extra shows added to our calendar for the holiday/convention season, but some credit is also due to the fact that I moved across town in the midst of it.
Black Swan taps into this element of being a ballet dancer, for sure. BODY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?
Doctor to assess on Wednesday.
“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
Yesterday right before I left the house to go do the show my cat drooled directly into my eye (shut up, we were cuddling while I was lying down on the couch). Within about 40 seconds my eye had swelled almost to the point I couldn’t open it. Antihistamine drops and a Benadryl reduced the Quasimodo element enough that from the stage, at least, I looked like a normal human. It kept tearing up but the makeup I wear is more than tough enough to take that in stride.
For the first time since I joined the cast of Phantom we had a “full company” show last night, meaning nobody was sick or having a personal day or on vacation or out for any other reason; what the Playbill lists as “the cast” is really and truly the cast on stage.
During our Degas dance there’s a moment where I’m supposed to whisper something to one of the other dancers. Sometimes I get jokey or creative but when I’m tired I go with pretty much my internal monologue. So last night at that moment I grabbed her hand and said, “Full company tonight! What a great omen for 2011!”
It wasn’t enough to fill up the time so I went on extemporaneously, letting the thoughts be what they would.
“But what about my eye? That’s not a good omen, is it? 2011 will be a year of tears.”
And then Mme. Giry hit her cane on the floor to silence me and we went on with the dance as we always do and I could barely breathe because if I wasn’t fucked before, I probably am now. Fate may or may not have it in for me, but I apparently have it in for myself. WHO SAYS SOMETHING LIKE THAT? Christ.
Or else … maybe … my crying for the new year is done …
This sounds like the gold medal challenge in the Optimism Olympics: make this sound promising! If you can, please do. I’m usually all about that kind of thing but I’m currently too tired to try.
Me, my sister, and a whole lotta love.
A Zorica, two Phantoms, and a Zorica-sister, on New Year’s Eve 2010.
Dude behind me stumbled into our private room at the club around 10pm and immediately assumed the posture shown here. He didn’t move until 3:45am when his friends came to collect him. Ballroom casualty par excellence.
Here’s to 2010, cheers to 2011!
We’ve been doing nine shows a week and selling out for many of them, coming close for the others. I’d never heard the house packed with 1800 people before. When you get up around 12 or 13 hundred the applause starts to sound like furious rain as we’re scrambling into place for bows. At 18 hundred it sounds more like thunder and when you get a good house, like we had last night, the yelling and whistling sound like rockets.
We’ve had so many two-show nights that I’ve started to need an escape for our 20 minute rebound period in between. A friend and I have fallen into an interesting little ritual to get away for a minute: After the curtain falls we slip away to, of all places, the sportsbook inside the casino. It’s deceptively close to our theater but none of the other company members ever go there, you can sit at the bar but you don’t have to drink, and the clientele tend to be sedate and contemplative. I’m starting to look forward to the text message at the end of the first show: “I got a tip about a horse.” This is theater life, Vegas style.
Two shows tonight. I’m looking forward to: the usual pre-show chatter and excitement, the frozen yogurt I’m planning on getting, the thunderous applause during bows, and the sportsbook.
My family gave me a good bit of shit about having to make the trek out here for Christmas. Nobody gets to leave the show for the holidays, so it was that or else have a fractured family Christmas. Then because of the weather back east they got stuck here. It looks like they’ll get a flight out today. But one of my sisters has found a boyfriend amongst the stagehands, actors, and other theater folk who comprise my social circle, and thus she has decided to stay with me through New Year’s. She bought a dress for the occasion. It’s champagne lace and sequins. It looks like a goddamn wedding dress if you ask me. Like a wedding dress that got all dolled up for a night out on the town in Vegas.
Me? I’m planning on wearing a $40 dress that somehow manages to mix leopard, zebra, and tiger print.