I am home sick this afternoon. I dragged into work this morning, sniffling and wiping my nose, drank a bunch of water, saw a patient and told her I better not shake hands with her, and came on home. I had to go to the grocery store a little later because I didn’t have any sickness-appropriate food, so I forced myself to put on some actual non-pajama clothes and snurfled my way through Trader Joe’s and the regular grocery store and felt sorry for myself. The checkout dude was very solicitous of me and advised me to go home and have some tea and to take a bath and sit in front of a fireplace and watch a movie. Now, my house has facilities for fireplace sitting, movie-watching, and bath-taking, but sadly they are not all in the same room. I felt sorry for myself some more.
It’s been a weird week. I’ve been going out a lot, which is very unusual for me, and it seems I am now paying the price for my rockstar lifestyle by being sickish and cranky and grumpy. Tuesday I had the chance to go to burlesque again, which I was all excited about because last time had been a lot of fun. This time? This time, the evening started out with a band that one girl I was sitting next to characterized as “Valerie Bertinelli sings Spinal Tap,” and not in a good way, either. This band, OF COURSE, played eighteen or nineteen million songs, apparently oblivious the the fact that absolutely no one was rocking out in the slightest. Meanwhile, I have a day job and the clock was ticking and I was already in a bad mood because I’d got lost on the way to Monty’s house, as predicted, which only foreshadowed my humiliating inability later in the evening to remember where I’d parked my car in his neighborhood. But before all that happened, I had to sit and watch this awful band and talk to Miss Roxie (the drag queen who runs the talent night) about what her criteria for booking bands are. She divulged that she often doesn’t hear bands before she books them, which seemed all too obvious to me.
So by the time the burlesque finally started all I wanted to do was see Sharon and the luscious Vienna LaRouge and go home to my my two hundred thread count. First, though, there was the performer who crossed the line between burlesque and stripping in a manner that was supremely uncomfortable for I think pretty much everyone in the room except the dancer herself, although of course I didn’t see how stretching her legs over her head like that could be that comfortable. It started out fine with her doing some sort of flamenco thing and then some dance that looked a lot like veil work in bellydance except she wore her veil, like it had little straps on the top of it. Almost as if she had taken a filmy (and fluorescent orange) nighty and cut it up the front and was waving it around in a rhythmic manner. All fine and good, if a little weird and not really the kind of burlesque I was hoping to see.
But then…then she proceeded to lay out a fake orange fur rug of some sort and take off the rest of her clothes, including her fishnets. This involved her nuzzling her own calves with her own nose and prompted me to reflect that damn, her waxer does excellent work. And she was right there, right on the floor. We were all sitting on bar stools so we were sort of looking down at her a little bit because there wasn’t a stage…it was a very weird perspective and a little too close for comfort for me, especially since I had expected more dancing and less writhing and calf/nose nuzzling.
Now, you all know I love strippers and that I am pro-sex work and that I enjoy naked ladies of all varieties. I have to say, though, that I think my boundaries were stretched when this woman, now wearing flesh-colored pasties and a flesh-colored g-string, got into a kiddie pool she’d dragged to the non-stage, hopped into it, and POURED A PITCHER OF MILK over herself in a rhythmic fashion. I just wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t know where to look. I didn’t know she’d got milk.
Monty: I AM GOING TO HAVE NIGHTMARES NOW.
Chiara: I’M SORRY! I DIDN’T KNOW!
Fortunately Sharon went soon afterwards and was as sassy and delightful and non-dairy-based as before, but I was done by then and ready to go home, so I missed the rest of the show, which wouldn’t have happened if a) I was not a sleep-needing wuss, or b) the horrible band hadn’t played for sixteen hours beforehand. Sigh. Scarlet Rose and Vienna LaRouge, my devotion to you remains unswerving and I hope next time you perform in a venue that’s a little more understanding of my circadian rhythms and that will also warn me when people are going to misuse two percent that way, thereby forcing me to switch to soy products.
I was tired the next day and started to get sniffly and sore throated and headachey, because of course I had a ticket to see Snow Patrol and of course even though I never go to shows I was looking forward to this one because I like mopey music and because I put a song off their new album on my breakup mix and because I really like the name Gary Lightbody. But no! No show for me! Too sick! I was forced to give up my ticket (the third ticket I have been forced to give up in the past three months, as it happens) and go home and wipe my nose and eat pho and watch AbFab with J and go to bed at nine o’clock.
While I was doing all of that I was sort of moaning piteously to myself about how I didn’t feel good and how everything was stupid and how my head hurt and my throat hurt and how I was miserable. J came up with the excellent idea of the Grumpy Hat, which is thematically related to the idea of Cranky Pants in that it’s an imaginary article of clothing one is compelled to wear when one is in either a cranky or a frumpy mood. I didn’t have a spare hat laying around so I had to just put one of the couch cushions on my head…and you know, it sort of works. You put your Grumpy Hat or Cranky Pants on and you get to stick your bottom lip out and everyone either avoids you or makes up a funny song about how grumpy you are: “Oooooooohhhhh, she’s wearing her cranky pants! Her cranky cranky cranky pants! And on her head is the grumpy hat, the grumpy grumpy grumpy hat! La la la la la la la, grumpy cranky grump! La LA!”
I’m still sniffly but I think I’ll be able to go to work and attend the stich-n-bitch at my house tomorrow night with a minimum of snot. I’m eating apples, hummus, and crackers for dinner. The debates are about to start and I am shredding my cuticles out of anxiety and frustration and wondering if there ought to be a hat for that as well; I foresee wearing the cranky pants for quite a while if this election goes to Bush, I’ll tell you that right now. Not even naked ladies will be able to console me then.