The Reluctant Receptionist

i feel like i’ve woken up from the strangest dream. just yesterday i was temping at this place and getting ready to sing in elspeth and erin’s production of cendrillon somewhere in deepest, darkest brooklyn (i think it was like the public library or something, but it could’ve been a train station or a bagel shop; my memory fails me right now) and now i’ve woken up and it’s the middle of march and i’m back at the hospital where i worked when i first moved to new york city. it was a crazy dream i had—temping at some place where the senior vice president worked in this glass cubicle and could see all the work i wasn’t doing and always wore stilettos and had texas prom queen hair and smelled like 80s perfume. and then i dreamed that a crazy recession hit and all the temp work dried up and all my temp friends lost their temp jobs. and that i somehow got a job not only at my old hospital, which i love, but in phong’s department, which i love, with phong, whom i love. and you were there, and you were there, and you, too. only, you didn’t look like you.

too much has happened in the last few months to possibly catch you up on, so i’ll be brief. as i was on my way to DC to sing the craziest gig i’ve ever sung, my grandpa palmer died. i got word at 7:30 that morning, in the middle of my first-ever (and, not to be snotty, hopefully last) greyhound bus ride and had to sing the gig and then stay with kel and then get home the next morning at the crack of dawn to sing in church. and then, thanks to my sister setting up all my travel arrangements, i got on a plane and went home to my grandpa’s funeral. along with the lord’s prayer, i had to sing “if ever i would leave you” at the funeral, which i have done my best to block out of my memory. i ignored the fact that the flag-draped casket held my grandpa, kicked to the back of my head the memory of what he smelled like (english leather cologne) and what he felt like when i’d hug him when i only came up to the middle of his belly. while i was home, i got word that i’d actually landed the job at the hospital where i now work. my mother went around my grandmother’s house shouting, “HE GOT A JOB! HE GOT A JOB!” like i’d been in standing in some depression-era breadline with holes in my shoes and my shaggy, misshapen fedora slumping down across half my face.

and then it was thanksgiving, which we spent at cory’s and was wonderful. phong stayed in town to celebrate thanksgiving with me for the first time, and that meant a whole lot to me. and then we went to a wedding in philadelphia and i ate lunch at his parent’s house, which was a big deal. and then it was christmas and i went home and shit was fucked because grandpa had just died and my other grandparents aren’t in such hot shape and robin and i cooked christmas dinner which happened a day late. i did make my first-ever chocolate cream pie, though, which turned out deliciously. and then it was chinese new year and phong’s mom sent him a card that was addressed to both of us, to “little phong and robert,” the whole thing written in chinese and english. and that was a very big deal. i think i’ll be keeping that card forever.

now it’s mid-march and we’re all waiting for spring. i’m in the middle of a two-weekend tour with george and ruby’s opera company, singing some seriously crazy but awesome music. then i sing a comprimario role with a local company, then sing another fledermaus chorus.

sorry for disappearing for so long. i’m back (again).