It's one of our favorite shows. G. hadn't seen it yet and I wanted to be there when she did. I saw it in the West End last summer in London and I saw the Broadway matinee version with Jow. Jow and I drank endless teacups of boozy punch and dipped chicken and waffles in to delicious gravy and then watched the show. He loved it. I'm critical of everything ever, so I was less impressed at the time though still happy enough with it. I wondered what it would be like once they worked out the kinks of translating British-English into American-English, tightened up their dancing, fixed the sound problems and could all throw themselves all into their roles. I also wondered if it would be racier in the evening. Now, I would get to find out the answer.
I happened to have a credit for a very closely located parking garage, a bigger boon now than it was when I received it. We went to a beautiful Mediterranean restaurant that was all crisp white ropes and walls with cerulean blue blown glass. It was just fancy enough that usually I would prefer sitting at the bar than the fuss of a full service meal, but it's tax season and the fuss felt good. It was as close to Holly Black's vision of fairy food I am likely to ever get to without a whole lot of effort - beautiful ceviche served with head and tail strewn with pansies and microgreens with spicy mandarin, farro paella with prawns that are so giant and juicy that I feel slightly bad that I didn't fight them first, an assortment of fresh baked baklava that was redolent with honey. We don't know the words past baklava, so we call them hay bales and round guys and regular guys when discussing them.
We head over to Six and in only two weeks, they have fixed all of the things I wanted to see fixed. It's technically not even opening night yet and it's everything I wanted it to be. Funny, sharp and a painful commentary on where we are now and how few of our struggles have changed with time.
I give G. my I'm such a party talk which went something like, okay, we can go drink rose booze punch out of tea cups a block away but one drink only and you're not one of those light weights who needs like an hour after one drink before she can drive, right? Again, we're close, she knew what she was signing up for and she's just happy to get rose-St. Germain-vodka-burlesque bitters punch out of a floral teacup so she's amenable. The bar is bustling and lit mostly by candle light and there's herbs and bitters and fruit. We drink our tea cups full of boozy punch and get home. I sleep six hours, I drag myself through the next day feeling con hung over but also optimistic that life would be interesting and exciting again after tax season, the night made all the more delicious in memory by how forbidden it was for me.
There was a growing buzz of very loud whispers at this point that the pandemic could get serious, th. I was mostly hitting ignore. By Thursday (two days later), I was so anxious I couldn't ignore it. One of the first things I wailed to Jow when I finally got to see him was, If I knew we would never be allowed out ever again, I would have had two teacups of punch!
As some of you know, I have fibromyalgia. While that's a super fun party on an average day, it also makes me compromised.
I can't go to the gym.
I can't go out to brunch.
I can't go for coffee.
I can't spend twelve straight hours at HomeGoods.
I can go to work (still possibly dangerous with clients and deliverers).
I can go home.
That's it.
That's much more oppressive than I was writing my book where there would at least be weekly brunch and weekly trips to a local yoga studio.
All I could see at first was how much this made me feel like a trapped rat. I love routine. I love my spa like gym. I love the world.
My Favorite Houseguest (MFH) was able to hose me down as he is in a similar situation. About how we need to rethink the way we look at things. That we need to talk via voice more and all "get together" to lounge and watch Witcher and yell at the television together. That I've worked very hard on my home and now my home needs to become a lot of things it wasn't before - a gym, a yoga studio, a lab for magic and cooking, a reading/writing retreat, a bar, a brunch spot.
This morning when I woke up in a blind panic, I asked myself what can I do? I could organize our emergency pantry shelf so I don't have to worry about going without. I went out to gather supplies earlier in the week. I can connect with Jow and my inner circle of (gender neutral) Amazons. I can watch concerts of all stripes. I can source articles about daily issues I'm concerned about that come from reputable sources and share that information. I can ask questions. I can try to bring up my Sister Queens' morale through social media. I can curate lists of things that may be helpful and share them on social media..
In a lot of ways, we're being pushed forward into a life that many of us (myself included) claimed to want. But it's hard to want something when it wasn't chosen. When it's a path that we were forced to walk. Where our future is mostly darkness and dragons, it's hard to embrace it. It's not impossible to embrace this dragon though, just difficult. We still can chose our narrative, our frame work, our story. We can still chose aspects of this new life. There can be less distraction, we can chose our media intake more consciously, where we can pay more attention to our home life. I don't know what this new life will look like yet. But we are standing together in a place where we get to make that choice for ourselves. Where we have more time to eat more consciously, where we hold onto each other to get through this and connect to each other, where we can read, where we can write, where we weave and spin and knit. I don't know what the post-pandemic world will look like. There may not be a post pandemic world. There's not a post AIDS world yet, but we've gotten better at navigating it together. We have solutions that were completely fathomless even thirty years ago for a disease that was killing so many people we loved.
We can use our words, our songs, our art, our magic, our devotion, our recipes, our love for creation as beacons so we can keep finding each other. So we can keep whispering to each other in the dark together, Sister Queens.
Where we dream. Together.
