The looming night gave off an electric buzz, the sort that bristles focus and tastes like static.
Downtown Los Angeles was glimmering in its reverence for all things PM.
We felt welcome in this warehouse space. The quiet and familiar sort of welcome. The one that doesn’t come with a booming “Hello!” from the organizers upon entry, but rather looks of Oh you make sense here so I don’t need to show you around.
Here to clown a newly devised piece, my partner Alan aka Bluffles and I drop our things in the green room and begin meandering about, taking in the developing Alice and Wonderland decor and assessing the small stage we’d be working with. All things in order, we went out back to breathe and see and be.
It had been an exhaustive day of disruption in our home life. I wish I could press pause to process it, to find a way to shed my guilt for engaging in drama, but the clock was ticking and the energy was going to be the best we could give– all things considered. There’s always enough love to give something. Alan is really great at not getting caught up for too long in energies that distract and distort. We had playfulness to produce, and that was that. The bandaid we’d laid upon our wounds would hold and there was no comfort in watching the pot till it boils. As a couple on so many fronts we needed to trust in the healing that would inevitably come.
Soon enough, twilight came prancing on in, throwing petals of perhapses where the evening’s events would proceed, peering her petite periwinkle head over the giant fence enclosure we found ourselves in. The metal bars rose over 20 feet tall, dressed in matte black and covered in spray paint signatures, shielding passerbys on the outside from bearing witness to the debauchery on the in, shielding the debaucherous on the inside from recalling the normalcy parading by on the out.
Fences,
boundaries,
thresholds. I hold them to great importance. Time doesn’t need a doorway, though. Tonight seeped in mercilessly, sliding into the folds of our space, whispering of dancing and delight, pulling a blanket of purple hues over the pre-show scene, tucking us all in for a night out.
Sitting atop a wooden quarter pipe with my feet dangling off the edge I could see Bluffles start to warm up with some juggling, his painted face rising with eager attention as the balls fell into the sky.
Taking a deep breath I could feel the outside air curling around my face to caress my red nostrils. Typically, my clown wears a nose but this evening we decided to play with an abstraction of clown makeup rather than our go-tos, making obscure shapes on our face for viewers to behold in white, yellow, blue, red, and black.
I allow my gaze to drift on the exhale and find it fondling a mural of a giant naked lady, her back towards us as she wades into a landscape of rising mountains. She reminds me of home– an island far, far away, a corner of paradise in the Pacific long ago infiltrated by modernity reflected here, thousands of miles away, to create a corner in this dilapidated city where we might find our own paradise among our queer peers.
I savor the slow lull before doors open.
Being a performer can feel a lot like being a wallflower, except with the spotlight right on you; everyone is looking while you’re listening. There’s a clear you vs them and otherness in that. Maybe that’s why I feel most authentic in this state, together with the crowd in literal matter, but completely separate in purpose.
Presumably, I’d do well as a bit of foam on the sea. The epitome of in-between. Which is right where I belong. In a life-long search for belonging I’ve found it in places betwixt places. Diaspora doesn’t always need to mean adrift. In my lack of exactness I find all the space in the universe to fit in. Perhaps it has never been with people, per se, but spaces. That’s okay with me on most days. On most days the space between can be everything I ever need.
Debaucherous!!!! Love neologism.
Felt like I was there :) wonderful