mostly for memorialization

so it's funny how when people start paying you to write, the free time you'd spend writing about the nonsense you did on the weekends is time you're spent researching and trying to meet deadlines and trying to think of the most hip way to talk about some las vegas's pool complex.

 

and so, because i don't want to forget it (and because i miss not capitalizing things) here's a post.

 

i went to see Sleep No More. i loved it more than anything i've seen in ages. it's a play cum haunted house in pantomime. loosely based on macbeth. there is no speaking in this play. you start by checking your bags and coat at the door. led into darkness in which you feel your way through a pitch black maze and onto a landing where you eventually find the bar in a vintage jazz club which, for a moment, fulfilled my dreams of living in a past era. you're given a white mask (very eyes wide shut) and taken up a few flights, who knows how many, before being set free to roam around this old hotel which has been outfitted, in the most painstaking detail, to resemble bedrooms, and sitting rooms, and police stations and mental asylums and little rooms where crazy people collect hair and candy shops and a forest/ballroom. and so you sweep through the house and touch all the things and rifle through the drawers. sometimes actors run by or walk into the room and you start to feel like a ghost because to them, you don't exist. but i did, for a moment at least. a frenzied girl was at a desk and had a locket on a piece of string. panicked, she ran into the room I was standing in and with a key around her neck, unlocked the bedroom door. she turned and looked me long and hard in the eye before putting out her hand. i put my hand in hers and she opened the door, pulled me inside and locked the door behind us. i could hear people trying the knob -- they wanted in too. she brought me to a vanity table, alongside a wardrobe and smiled at me. she pulled off my mask and hung it inside the wardrobe and then she began to speak. the first and only words i heard for the next 3 hours. a monologue, spoken to me as if i were her lover, about the grand days we used to have at this club we used to go to. how much she longed for those days. she grabbed my shoulders and put me into the wardrobe. she put the locket around my neck. i thought she was going to lock me in and that i'd have to find my trap door out but she pinned me to a side wall and walked in with me. still hoding my shoulders she spoke in wistful tones, inching closer and closer to my face. by this point she was whispering sweet nothings into my ear. she kissed me on the cheek, stepped back and put my mask back on before shoving me through a phony wall at the back of the wardrobe. I landed in a closet, with clothes on hangars which i inspected some, because i could. and felt around for another false wall and found a thick plastic curtain and a big metal door and before i knew it i was back in the hallway with the masses. we saw a barfight amongst bales of hay, i heard there was some naked sex dance with a fetus and lots of blood, but i was in the closet with the lady and missed that scene. we saw an acrobatic love scene and a bath with a man washing the blood off his body. this is all very gorey but i was too fascinated to be disturbed. there was a slow motion dinner scene, reminiscent of the last supper. there was the ballroom dancing scene. the fight and make up between the pregnant woman and her husband, before they both got dressed and she helped him with his bowtie. the elaborate shaving of the king before putting on their tuxes. the woman and waitress running around the restaurant. the lone bellhop dusting the hotel lobby. it was all just so glorious and intense and beautiful. so beautiful. i've been thinking about it so much since but don't want there to be a day where i forget that it happened. forget the nursery that had a hundred headless baby dolls hanging above it. the "L. Macduff" sewn into the pregnant woman's green velvet dress.

 

the beard awards happened. i happened to have a press pass but i've decided that the afterparties are really where it's at. the food glitterati was there. i hung with old friends and met new ones and gushed about how adorable rich torrisi was. a whiskey maker brought his pigs, mauve and mortimer, in evening attire. on the fucking balcony of avery fisher hall. they sat on command for chocolate chips. i had tripe by jaime bissonette and it was delicious. i met famous chef after famous chef. drank free drink after free drink. hopped from the modern to eleven madison park whose pristine and quiet peace was now a raucous nightclub with alcohol spilled all over the floor, topless guys dancing on the bar and bonnie, who i've known for ages but last time i saw her kept saying that the guy i was on a date with might be a leaf and talked about how wines are women because they come from mother earth or something? she was djing looking like a greek goddess. we danced and danced until it was time to head to the jane, where the torissi boys were holding court. finally got the go-ahead for the interview i'd been asking for and was bought a shot of tequila which wasn't the best idea, really, but it felt right at the time.

 

anyway, all is glorious, really. when i'm forgettign about how little i'm sleeping these days and how much work work work there is to do. i can feel myself aging but i'm okay wiht it. for now.