traveling, upstate New York late summer 2010

naps and terrible coffee

I have been cranked out as a Seattle-ite at last,
I notice it most when I travel
it always takes getting away to see where you are
I see myself all the time now
call times and show times and opening nights and radio shows and new acts are nice, important,
exhale
it's just the more I do this life, live this life
I know I want more
that there is so much more, and the stress I have carried like a grey cartoon scribble above my head is useless

breathing plane air, ordering terrible 10 dollar room service coffee, having a busted pedicure, loosing my laminate, not knowing what town or hotel room I am in, tucking myself into a new bed of strait-jacket sheets every night, daytime wake-up calls to get my drag on.


Pregnant ladies in summer sandals at the airport in the south.
A full airplane applauding for the soldiers on board just home from war.
Children wearing matching shirts, a religious summer camp logo.
Grandparents standing as close as they can, watching their grandchildren go through security, they keep waving, the babies just learning to wave, they stand there forever.

Looking for gay people, lots of places I travel to I feel very alone.
People stare at me, its the pink hair, the pink tattoos, everyone assumes I am about 18 years old.

When I was a kid waitresses always asked if I wanted a kids menu, a booster seat, like my 2 younger sisters, 5  & 7 years younger than me. I would be pissed, almost 13, almost 15 years old and given three waxey crayons and a paper menu.

I see families in the airports, on the New Jersey shore, dining in Casino Buffets and it feels so out of reach.
It's usually a ginormous turn off, copious amounts of consumerism, small town America deep fried in it's own sloth and ignorance, usually I shudder and pray for the arty ones, the little queer kids and hope they are safe and find community and a place to breathe.
Other times I am jealous, of families.
How I feel unable and cut off from that life: gays over here. straights over there.
outcasts alone forever in bars, online dating and pride parades,
and the main stream- they are down in the books with legit lives and legit laws, they make babies and have showers- with stupid games and get pastel crap, have weddings and toast with engraved champagne glasses. Buy homes, train for marathons, go to the cabin for holiday, keep a spare key in a frog by the door.

I know that no one ever "gets it"
you do it till you die

try try
try
harder

a million bright lights and faces staring at me
 watching me hit with stage lights, inside music and behind the third wall

sweat running down my back, lips stuck to my teeth in an open smile shape

making culture I tell myself

I have millions of ideas to give birth to, that's what I began saying as a teenager
too much work to do in this life

This morning in the other hotel I watched some reality thing about a girl who didn't know she was pregnant till she was giving birth and saw the babies head and ear.

I am 27 now, there is a bunch of this world I have not yet explored.
I tend to feel super alone when I travel, but perhaps this is the state that is most realistic for my generation, my culture, demographic.
The modern way.  

Sometimes I see strangers and I want to just love them, I want to crawl inside their lives
 I want to roll around in it, I want my hair to smell like them.
I feel like there are millions of people living inside me, sleeping still,
I could start over and create a new life, scrap this project

get a new sketch book

try again

become a baby
learning how to wave.

Houston, Texas

ACCOMMODATIONS: 

Our  hotel is smooth cool concrete carefully cut with expensive paint and light fixtures. Tall corridors of sleek, the smell of art.

Outside it is Texas, covered in concrete that is burning like a stove set on high, the cinnamon bun swirl blazing neon orange.

Step out the whooshing glass doors and it is thick hot air that holds you, gets into your bones and pulls the sweat out, beads pumped out- machine sweat.

Everyone says "yall"  here, which is so sweet and human sounding. 

My ears change as I travel and listen to so many voices, every accent slipping a little note under my door- surprising me, reminding me.

THE VENUE:  

It's a million degrees outside still, I walk into the huge fright elevator with my costume bag and Richard with his, it is a bit cooler. It's here that my eyes shoot open and narrow in, on to this elevator person who is taking us up... 

It happens to my whole body. 

Not Many People Have 

This Affect On Me. 

It's not a situation I have cognitive control over: The universe of chakras align, hormones buzz, mind jumps out the window.  Aura glows- spreads out like  pancake batter on the greased pan, expanding, creeping closer, solidifying.

Becoming.

This forming is serious, becomes tactile, it will need to be attended to- first watched, then carefully flipped. 

It now has a life of it's own. Wanting sets in like fire, give it oxygen and it's off. Whoosh, ablaze.

She is breathing and lives in and over me.  A cobra hood reaching around my human sized head, directing my motions. She makes me breathe hotter, she is the one that has this power, running inside my veins moving me closer. Sizzling my skin to the edge of the square pan. A new shape. A mission.

I am in the freight elevator, feet in heels standing on the industrial silver metal flooring. Huge doors open up and down like a monster mouth. In all this ridiculous make up and sprayed-put-fake and real hair, l feel like a popped off carnival head, dropped down the gutter, now bobbing inside the monster belly.

Where am I?  In Texas somewhere. Elevator. Hotel. Plane. Bus. Hotel. Green Room. Stage. Green Room. Hotel. Bus plane stage hotelbus stage greenroomplanebusstagebushotel... In this particular freight elevator everything stops for me.

THE ELEVATOR:

The cobra is booming and focused. My body is buzzing, my teeth, buzzing close to the ledge jumping brain. 

He is thin in the corner, huge glasses, leaning on the road case, eyes, deer eyes, staring at the mouth doors. 

He is ice cream sandwich beautiful, skinny, serious unicorn person. Seeing him is like that- you don't believe it's real

make-believe stubbornly before you, eyes blink blink.

No sound will leave your mouth, just a buzzing body.

There is a tiger staring at me on his bending and straightening elbow. Up and down on the elevator I see him, he is magic shaped as a human.

Over and over he moves big things and I stare, inside me every chakara is spinning wildly, I am levitating.

I remind myself to breathe, I am terribly aware of every corner of the room, the backstage area where my quick change is set up. 

The back of my head is watching, waiting for him to pass by. The room is all black and I am laying out my costumes, one piece at a time, black and blue fabric with little sparkles. I count all the pieces and keep my behind eyes open. 

Waiting,  like a hunter in the dark- He is Full Color. Glowing Sandwich. My mouth is salivating, rehab heart relapsing, clicking and clacking around in my heels. 

I am terrified to speak to him, I am mute as a clown, a bobble head with four eyes watching, floating.

Unable to speak to the elevator ice cream sandwich boy.

It was just an elevator, inside another blurry venue

but inside this one,  

was

this 

boy 

with an elbow 

and these deer eyes , huge bulky glasses, 

skinny sweaty tiny magic of a human with a hidden trap door  

I fell down it, the moment I stepped in that elevator

I got lost 

in him.