Fetish
So, I'm standing by the bar at the Marquis Fetish Ball, waiting for my hard-earned lemon drop, when some guy in a latex shirt says, "So, what's your fetish?"
"I'm a performer. My fetish is for showing up, doing my job, and getting paid."
He might have said some more things after that, but I'd stopped listening. I am the rudest person in the world.
The truth is, I am not a very good performer. I am glad that my sad little five minutes was scheduled at the beginning of the night, when most of my friends had not yet arrived, and there were plenty of other acts to follow mine so that the audience could forget how awful I was. I am glad that I was scheduled early so that I could drink the overpriced cocktails and lounge around on the glorious Supperclub beds in the big white room with my painter and her companions. No one else had to know that, nervous and twitchy, I had sprayed too much rosin on my hands before the show so that the tissu stuck to me in awkward places. I have learned an important lesson about the overuse of rosin. All that it cost me was a little bit of my dignity. I wasn't using it anyhow.
I suspect that I may be doing something wrong, because I don't feel as if I'm making any progress as a performer. The Very Serious Circus Center has been good for me - I've improved my form and learned many exciting new tricks - but sometimes I look at video of myself practicing and I look like one of the hippos from Fantasia. For my next act, I will need ballet slippers and a tutu. I feel as if I have enough difficulty transitioning from one trick to another, much less emoting. I cannot put on a character and tell a story if I can't even keep from getting tangled up in the tissu. I do not know what I have to do in order to be good and I am afraid that there is no one who is going to be able to explain it to me.
I think about quitting. I think about taking up some other, easier hobby, something that I might eventually be good at, something I have talent for. But I am vain and I like being strong and I have been booked for the post-Apocalyptic Hubba Hubba Revue in September. I want to go all Cormac McCarthy and do a post-apocalyptic cannibal act to A Pretty Piece of Flesh. I want to do a Brazilian into the Full Monty into a Mermaid and finish it off with a great big drop. In my head, this looks fantastic. In reality, I expect that it will end is despair.
"I'm a performer. My fetish is for showing up, doing my job, and getting paid."
He might have said some more things after that, but I'd stopped listening. I am the rudest person in the world.
The truth is, I am not a very good performer. I am glad that my sad little five minutes was scheduled at the beginning of the night, when most of my friends had not yet arrived, and there were plenty of other acts to follow mine so that the audience could forget how awful I was. I am glad that I was scheduled early so that I could drink the overpriced cocktails and lounge around on the glorious Supperclub beds in the big white room with my painter and her companions. No one else had to know that, nervous and twitchy, I had sprayed too much rosin on my hands before the show so that the tissu stuck to me in awkward places. I have learned an important lesson about the overuse of rosin. All that it cost me was a little bit of my dignity. I wasn't using it anyhow.
I suspect that I may be doing something wrong, because I don't feel as if I'm making any progress as a performer. The Very Serious Circus Center has been good for me - I've improved my form and learned many exciting new tricks - but sometimes I look at video of myself practicing and I look like one of the hippos from Fantasia. For my next act, I will need ballet slippers and a tutu. I feel as if I have enough difficulty transitioning from one trick to another, much less emoting. I cannot put on a character and tell a story if I can't even keep from getting tangled up in the tissu. I do not know what I have to do in order to be good and I am afraid that there is no one who is going to be able to explain it to me.
I think about quitting. I think about taking up some other, easier hobby, something that I might eventually be good at, something I have talent for. But I am vain and I like being strong and I have been booked for the post-Apocalyptic Hubba Hubba Revue in September. I want to go all Cormac McCarthy and do a post-apocalyptic cannibal act to A Pretty Piece of Flesh. I want to do a Brazilian into the Full Monty into a Mermaid and finish it off with a great big drop. In my head, this looks fantastic. In reality, I expect that it will end is despair.