Tales from the Fringe
A few more Fringe-related stories…
I was walking to a show with one of my stage manegers, Amanda, who I became friendly with. She and I were chatting and I said, “I’m going to gloat for a moment. I feel like, as a trans woman, I can so rarely gloat about being trans. But, well, here goes: peeing standing up is awesome!”
She laughed, and called me a bitch, and we walked on, chatting about the wondrous products that exist for women to do just that. Amanda’s two friends were trailing behind us, and while I felt a little embarrassed having a conversation about peeing standing up while in earshot of them, I didn’t really care. (Hell, they’d be seeing my show later that night!)
Well, I found out from Amanda that, even though I felt like I was having a very ‘out’ conversation, they missed that I was trans! So when they did see my show, they went to Amanda afterwards and said, “The peeing standing up conversation makes so much more sense now!”
Another night, I was at the bar were most people hung out after the shows were done for the night. I was just packing up to leave – it was about 1AM – when a guy came up and asked if he could buy me a drink. Fortunately, I was already getting stuff together to go, so I didn’t have to figure out what to do. (I still really haven’t figured out how to handle it…) Instead, I said, “That’s sweet, but I’m about to leave. Come to my show, though!” and handed him a postcard. It wasn’t until after I was out the door that I wondered how he’d react to realize he had been hitting on a trans woman (if he even read the postcard).
One last story for tonight. On the final night of Fringe, right after the bar had closed at 2AM, myself and a bunch of other artists and organizers were standing outside wondering where to go next. I lamented the demise of parking meters in Chicago (replacement by ticket-vending systems) because you didn’t have anything to jump while drunk. I was immediately called crazy for wanting to jump a parking meter, so decided to prove my awesomeness by jumping a mailbox.
Fortunately, I had enough brains to not try to clear the entire thing, but I did successfully hop up to straddling the mailbox, pummel horse style, and was able to be silly before gracefully sliding off. (“Gracefully,” she says…) Well, someone else there insisted he could do better: he could clear the entire mailbox. He came close, too. Barely clipped the inside of one of his thighs, and went spinning out to land on the pavement. He was fine, which gave everyone else permission to laugh hysterically at his failure.
That’s all for tonight, but I’m trying to get back into the swing of posting every day, so hopefully more to come soon!
Themocracy
Absolutely off-topic, but have you seen this article? It’s about micro-financing of artistic endeavors.
I thought of you when I read it.
Interesting! Thanks for the link.