ushering in pandemmie times

It was a tentative pleasure to usher again for a beloved holiday drag show this year. Last year everything moved online which I appreciated, and also felt terribly sad about. So when the e-mail came in looking for volunteers this season, I hesitated. Is now really the time? Can they do it safely?

I’m not sure of the answer to either question but I did say a trepidatious yes, filling up my mini bottle of hand sanitizer on the appointed day, strapping on 2 masks and donning my share of sequins and comfortable boots.

The show was wonderful, with some new additions to the cast (absent Santa who is getting a graphic design degree).

The audience was less so. Most folks cheerfully complied with the ID and vax requirement (I should know, I was the designated checker) but a handful of people in my own demographic “forgot” one or the other piece of documentation. One showed me a photo of a prescription bottle in lieu of ID (I had to laugh). Another asked if their husband could vouch for them. (Now I was crying.) One particularly clueless group rushed the stage and stole a VIP table, refusing to move.

By the second half of the show fully 50% of the audience had their masks off. Afterward us exhausted volunteers and the stage manager picked up the wreckage. Spilled drinks and snacks, crumpled programs, even a makeup-smeared mask. Please PLEASE wear your masks, I begged three women of a certain age, blithely chatting away sans mask. They elbowed past me with a sarcastic, Thanks.

I got tested a few days later just to be cautious, and all seems fine.

I’m shook though. How are those serving the public day after day holding up? We must do better but I fear we won’t.

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This Elie Mystal article about a trip to Florida is hilarious and depressing.

jingly

Jingle All The Gay! from Kitten N' Lou on Vimeo.
The past few Decembers I have been lucky enough to usher for a drag holiday show called "Jingle all the Gay" (formerly "Homo for the Hoidays"). Last week was opening night and after an hour of frantic set-up--hauling risers and chairs across the Oddfellows' wooden floors, dragging trash down the freight elevator and dodging performers doing sound check--the doors opened and I stamped hands and gave out the bathroom code to a few hundred be-sparkled revelers. The first two smiling men in the door wore festive suit jackets and had glitter in their beards.
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It's a colorful, happy event and one that always brings me to tears. For all the gaiety and sexiness and madcap song-and-dance numbers, there's an undercurrent of activism, a growing sense of alarm at the ugliness of the wider world. It's a time for togetherness and laughs and defiance. For what is comedy but the truth told with a smile?