Vaginal healing

Speaking of overwhelming encounters with beauty (see "Aphasia"), I think I managed to make myself useful at The Big Tease last night. My friend Carrie, who teaches trapeze to kids, got me volunteering with her as a cigar girl at this carnival/circus/burlesque extravaganza starring the Lady Ms. Vagina Jenkins to benefit Eyedrum and Twinhead Theatre. Which means I had an excuse to wear a dress! I even put on eyeshadow. The cigar thing was really for show and, mostly, I was stamping hands and taking money. A lot of money.

This was one of those nights when it seems like half the weirdos in town came out just to demonstrate how beautiful they all are when you get them in one room. And I don't just mean the fire dancers and actors. The Atlanta Sedition Orchestra cheekily renamed themselves the Atlanta Seduction Orchestra for this special engagement and conducted a triumphal parade for the star set to their interpretation of Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing." Somehow there was a tiny motorized vehicle involved that looked like a pink cat shaped night light in the darkness.

I found it all strangely moving. I should explain about me and marching bands but I can't, really, except to say that there's something about a high school band doing "Hang on Sloopy" on dented instruments that can bring a tear to my eye under the right circumstances.

I didn't get to see as much of the standing-room-only show as I would have liked but there was a trapeze act and Ms. Vagina Jenkins was in rare form. I was slack jawed before she had completely removed one satin elbow glove. A friend of Carrie's standing next to me noted that her every gesture seemed to mean something. Perhaps the parts of the night came together in a similar way. Or perhaps that feeling is another example of what sensory overload does to my feeble neurological switchboard.