The Reluctant Receptionist

i’ve been sitting here reading all of my old entries for the last thirty minutes because i didn’t have a lot to do at my desk. yesterday breezed by, broken up as it was with a three-hour-long holiday luncheon, but today has dragged, aided by the fact that i went out with austin last night to have our usual tuesday: pieces followed by boots and saddle, both places where we know people and tend to drink for free or at least heavily discounted. as i near 30 (yes, every post for the last seven months has referred to me being nearly 30. i know this for a fact, since i just re-read all of those posts) i’d like to say that i have gained self-control, wisdom, knowledge about how many drinks i can have before i get home and bounce from wall to wall down the hallway (what i call “pinballing it”). and i thought i did. last night i had a total of four drinks, in the span of about three hours. i’m relatively sure that most madison avenue executives have that many drinks before they drive home to westchester. i was definitely pinballing it last night, though i was with-it enough to dread waking up today.

i realize that i haven’t checked in since october 2nd, the day we started paradise lost. it’s been an interesting ride, joining the new york city nightlife scene. the first few parties were absurdly spectacular, huge events that honestly got a little too crowded. since then we’ve settled more into our groove: the crowd waxes and wanes according to what else is happening in town, on the weather, on the weekend. i can honestly say that anyone who has come so far has left saying that they had a great time and that they loved the music. since the music is all culled directly from my private library, the one that i’ve been working on since i was about 13 years old, that is a major compliment.

what else? i got to interview tori amos again last week, which was predictably ridiculous. this time, i had a month’s warning that i’d be interviewing her, which only meant that i had time to get nervous. she was warm and personable and smart, though, and remembered me. i stuck out my hand to introduce myself and she briefly took it before she said, “no, we’ve met before.” and i said, “yes, we have.” and we talked about little earthquakes for 45 minutes and then we hugged (when tori opens up her arms and moves in for a hug, who am i to turn her down?) and then i raced off to a choir concert. in one day i went from administrative assistant to freelance writer to choral singer to d.j. do you get much more “new york”-y than that? i suppose i could’ve also been a taxi driver and t.v. personality. i’m working on it.

things seem to have settled down after the craziness of august/lucretia. i cooked myself dinner for the first time in probably seven weeks (because i don’t count heating up jarred tomato sauce or tyson chicken nuggets—bought in a moment of nostalgic weakness and eaten with bbq sauce made in ponca city—as cooking) on monday. what’s strange about cooking for yourself—and only yourself—is that you have leftovers for days. i seem to keep cooking like i’m doing it for an army, as i did when i was cooking for phong and i because, well, we ate like an army. it’s easier to cook a full recipe than cut it down and it means that i have to buy fewer groceries which, during weeks when i’m living on $12 (no, seriously), makes a big difference. and so i cook these potfuls of food in my gorgeous le creuset pot that i got for my birthday from amanda and phong, something that turned out to be something like a parting gift, a consolation prize. i might’ve had to move out and find my own apartment and learn how to live alone again, but at least i got to carry this gorgeous bright orange le creuset pot with me to my new hovel. after i’ve made these potfuls of food, i then eat them all week long, until friday comes and i feel like i have tomato, white bean, and bacon soup coming out of every pore. then i move on to the next thing. i will say this: i never want to see another salmon cake, ever. not even the ina garten ones.

speaking of our girl ina garten, i’ve been watching her show again, usually during lunch. i haven’t opened my head to sing since lucretia finished, telling myself that i’m resting my voice when the truth is that i’m being lazy, so i’ve been eating lunch at 1 and chilling with ina. i watch her fattily bouncing around her gorgeous kitchen, smothering her dorky husband, picking fresh herbs from her huge backyard garden and imploring us to only use “good olive oil” and “good vanilla extract” while asking “i mean, how bad could that be?” and oh my god i want her life so badly. i want to cook all day long and have my professor husband come home from his job at yale to find four different kinds of pasta waiting for him in the fridge. i want to tool around east hampton in my ridiculous black bmw convertible and have the farmstand woman know me by name. this doesn’t make me unique. i think that most fags in new york city, after they shed all of their taken-on new york city attitudes and punk haircuts and posturing, would tell you the same thing if you could ever get them to admit it. they want to be finally and permanently whisked away from this place, taken out of the trenches. but maybe i’m projecting.

phong and i have been going out like crazy lately, and it’s proven two things to me:

1. i am, in fact, still a poor person even though i think i can party like the evil lovechild of britney spears circa two years ago and lindsay lohan circa now;
2. i am no longer 22 years old, which means that i can no longer go out and party until 1 o’clock in the morning and still get through a workday unscathed. i don’t know if i could ever really do that, but it’s definitely a little more painful at ahem 29.

it’s totally been worth it, though, because we’ve had a rocker of a weekend and week, sort of partying like there’s no tomorrow since holy week hell starts tonight. that’s right, ladies and germs, it’s holy week. rehearsal, maundy thursday, good friday, and easter morning will all take place between now and sunday morning. luckily, unlike all those poor episcopalian souls, we don’t have an easter vigil service. (for those of you who don’t know, easter vigil means you go and sing a 3 hour service until like midnight and then you have to be at church at 9 o’clock the next morning. some churches even have a feast after the vigil, which means you’re at church til like 2 a.m. no thanks!) also luckily, cory is having us over for easter brunch after the service, which last year turned into easter all-day-drinking-and-eating-fest, much like thanksgiving part two.

so about the rocker of our weekend: we went out for my birthday saturday, which was a riot. the greatest group of people came out, and they represented my most favorite people in new york city. they were all from different groups and some had never met each other, and it made me feel really warm and fuzzy to know that they were all meeting and hanging out. everyone should get a chance to collect all their friends in one place just so that they can look around and realize for a few minutes how lucky they actually are.

sunday night, we went to bingo at the toolbox, where we stayed out WAY too late but also each won (phong, in fact, won twice). we’ve also been there enough finally that the mean lesbian named barbara has warmed up to us and was giving phong pointers on bingo. we are in like flint. flynn? in like flynn? whatever.

monday night was musical mondays at splash, which i thoroughly enjoyed for about an hour and then i completely lost my hearing because it was louder than a rock concert and the queen behind me kept doing all this choreography (not the actual choreography he was watching on screen, mind you, which might have been impressive, but choreography he made up that looked like the dancing beyonce refused to do for her “irreplaceable” video.) and bumping into me. but still, we got to see austin and josh and sing along to best little whorehouse in texas.

last night we got on the list for a foot fetish party that austin’s friend hosts at the eagle. now say what you will, but i love the eagle. it’s got cheap(ish), really cold beer, friendly bartenders, and the best music in nyc. no, we’re not foot fetishists, but i’m open-minded and can appreciate peoples’ kinks. oh, also? it meant free foot massages. phong was concerned that we were using peoples’ fetishes for personal gain, but i reminded him that we were actually performing a service. right? right.

i made a valliant effort to avoid catching whatever it was that sidelined phong late last week, and i’m not convinced that i’ve caught whatever it was he had. he had nasal symptoms, a fever of like 101, and was barfy (but didn’t barf). i woke up today with a scratchy throat and a general malaise, coupled with a weirdly itchy/runny nose, so i’m thinking that just as i succeeded in sharing a bed with a sicko and not getting sick, i also succeeded in catching a total stranger’s illness. which is worse? i’m going with stranger, although i do hate being barfy. then again, i sang for a total of about 7 hours yesterday, 4 of which was at a screamy, accomplish-nothing rehearsal for this opera in which i’m singing three lines (and the chorus…which i of course found out a week ago). i’m sorry, four lines. i sing four lines. although the last two lines i sing are “que donc!?” and “romeo!” so i count those as one. so maybe my throat is scratchy from overuse and my allergies are kicking in. long story short: i want to go home and play mariokart on wii with phong, which is what i spent my lunchbreak doing.

besides the two days of rehearsal, we had a relatively quiet weekend. we went out friday night in hell’s kitchen with our friends jorge and michael, who were visiting from baltimore. phong went home early because he was feeling like shit, but jorge, michael, and i ventured out to the eagle. it was so funny, because i always take out of town visitors to hell’s kitchen, assuming they’ll want something loungey and fancy. i was so pleasantly surprised when michael was like, “this is nice, but can we go somewhere darker and dirtier?” i was like, the eagle it is. and it was packed because black party was the next night. bears and beers. that’s a good friday night in my book.

except for rehearsal, we spent most of saturday recovering (me from going out, phong from his mystery illness). we went out to dinner with sean, cory, courtenay, and their friend hillary, then came home and watched burn after reading, which i can only recommend if you like weird, rambly films.

yesterday, after the aforementioned 7 hours of singing we went out to dinner (mexican a second night in a row, and good mexican at that—i have basically died and gone to heaven, and phong has died and gone to hell. which is almost certainly backwards from what will actually happen.) for austin’s birthday and then continued the party at the phoenix. i always forget how much i love the phoenix until i go there. it’s got such a great jukebox; there’s no scene; the bartenders aren’t bitchy; and they were running a special on two dollar domestic drafts.

looking back on it, it was a big weekend. but aren’t they always? yes. basically.

it’s a relatively warm day in new york city today, meaning that it’s 55 degrees instead of our usual 15 below. seriously, i know that it’s going to make me sound like a cranky old woman, but this winter has been especially brutal. is it because i’m getting older? maybe i’ve just been busier than in winters past, which means that i’m forced to walk around in it more. that’s the thing about winter in new york. sure, it may be colder in rochester or indiana (i know for a fact that it’s colder in indiana, and when i graduated i swore that i’d never spend another winter there.), but in those places you have cars to get in. even if you drive an ‘83 mustang with no functioning heater, at least the windows block the wind. here in nyc we’re just out in it. anyway, i’ve digressed so far that i can no longer see my starting point. let’s just say that winter here sucks, and that i’ve been looking forward to spring more than i have any year in recent memory.

the thing about spring is that i find myself just wanting to get out. i find it harder and harder to fight down the urge to get out of the city, specifically to california. i don’t know why, but i have been absolutely dying to get back to the bay area for the past few weeks, and it’s now gotten to the point where i’m listening to pet sounds and so much for the afterglow and reading long feature stories in the san francisco bay guardian. it’s been a long, difficult, cold three months since the last time i got out of new york for any extended period of time (i don’t count my 15-hour trip to philadelphia last weekend, though i should count my wonderful two-day trip to durham the weekend before that) and i increasingly find myself needing a break. not necessarily a vacation, but definitely a change of pace.

i know, i know. bitch, moan. i’m busy singing and working at a day job that i like. we’re busy every night of the week with rehearsals or activities with friends, and that’s nothing to complain about. still, i fantasize about being able to walk somewhere with my shoes off, the cool grass between my toes, and look up at a blue sky and take in a deep breath of clean air. that doesn’t work so well in manhattan.

i was one of only three people in my entire division today to wear green. and it’s not like i wore those shamrock-shaped sunglasses and shiny green plastic beads around my neck (i’m saving that outfit later for dinner at cory’s); i wore a green and navy tie, a tie that i wear at least once a week whether or not it’s the day of st. patrick. apparently i’m the only one who cares about this anymore, and even saying that i “care” is a stretch. i care about st. patrick’s day the way i care about, say, arbor day. if it were tradition to wear a tree t-shirt on arbor day, i might go along with it, as long as i already owned a tree t-shirt. okay, maybe that’s a bad analogy.

starting in grad school, i tended to avoid the st. patrick’s day festivities because they amounted to nothing more than thousands of people standing around in the cold being drunk. obviously i like being drunk but i hate the cold. and i hate people standing around in big crowds. only one of my close friends identifies as irish-american (i say identifies because, well, we’re basically all irish. i myself am like 3/4 irish but i look so jewish that nobody ever knows it. i’d say that most people i know except phong are of at least partial irish descent, and even phong’s had a little irish in him. ba-duh ching i’ll be here all week.) and we’re going over to his house for dinner tonight.

i’m hoping now that RWO tour is over things can get back to normal a little bit. normal meaning i only work a day job and a church job and sing one gig instead of all that plus the tour. i haven’t had time to go grocery shopping or cook a morsel of food for a few weeks now, and my checking account is showing it even if my waistline isn’t. have i ever written a more midwestern housewife sentence than that? no, i haven’t.

so i’ll stop here. happy st. patrick’s day. pass me a green beer.

tonight marks the beginning of our second weekend as a band of traveling troubadour-ian purveyors of new music. (wow, if i’ve ever written a sentence that sounded more like i should be on my way to comic-con i don’t know what it would be.) i’ll go home during lunch today to pack an overnight bag (which, of course, would be like any sane person’s week-long-trip bag. what can i say? i need CREAMS and LOTIONS.) so that i can leave straight for the train station from work. then i’ll hop on the easy amtrak to philadelphia (easy assuming it’ll be on time), arrive at 8, hopefully get picked up from the train station since it could be a long walk and i have no idea hwere i’m going, then sing a show of really cool, weird music starting at 9. we haven’t talked at all about this tour, so let’s take a quick, um, detour.

what i’m talking about is george and ruby’s new shindig for their company “rhymes with opera.” since they aim to put opera in unconventional spaces, so far we’ve sung in a restaurant/bar (which had a great stage and a great PA, but unfortunately was surrounded on five sides by sound-deadening material. you know that you’re in trouble when your backup band—a saxophone quartet—says it can’t hear itself.) and an art gallery that was running an installation of televisions showing pictures of televisions falling out of windows. tonight’s show is in the basement of a punk rock/hippie commune on the edge of the ghetto in philadelphia, and our new york shows will take place in a subway station and a hotel. unconventional? yeah, methinks.

so anyway, i’m leaving for philadelphia tonight, then will stay with robin after having drinks with my friends courtney and kate, whom i haven’t seen in easily a year and a half. two years? god, i’m getting old.

speaking of getting old, my birthday is two weeks from wednesday. what should we do? you only turn 29 once.

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).

i know that you’re all waiting with baited breath to hear how rehearsal went two nights ago, so i’ll get that out of the way first (just kidding, i know you’ve already forgotten, but i’ll tell you anyway): i could’ve really fallen on my ass, but i didn’t. i got through the whole nine-minute aria, only forgetting two lines, and only moderately fucked up the rest of the ensemble stuff. sure, at points i was looking directly at the conductor, mouthing “WORDS. TELL ME WORDS.” we got through the first two acts, though, which clocked in at under an hour. fuck, the way that elspeth has taken her big red pen and exacto knife to the score i think the whole show is going to make it in about an hour and a half. and you know what i say? more people who stage operas need red pens and exact knives. i’ve said many times that i could get through most operas in about 30 minutes and not leave out any of the important stuff, and i stick by that claim. you give me an opera, i’ll ruin it make it go faster.

now, of course, we have to do it all again tonight, as we try to stage the rest of the parts of the show that i’m involved in and do it off-book. why am i blogging instead of studying my score (or the aria i’m supposed to sing for natchez on tuesday)? shh, go to sleep. that’s right.

while things are looking up musically (insomuch as i think that cendrillon is going to be good, and i got an audition for santa fe yesterday, not that i have any delusions that i’ll actually land it), things are anything but looking up financially. i cashed my temp paycheck yesterday, and magically paid october’s bills. i’ll cash my temp check next wednesday, which will cover insurance (COBRA is a BITCHY BITCHY boyfriend and i hate him because he hits me sometimes). where is october rent coming from? since, you know, it’s like october 9th? shh, go to sleep.

seriously, though, things are getting a little scary. the job i’m on ends tomorrow, and i’ve called both my temp agencies and there’s nothing doing in the way of temp work. as i’ve said, i’m the only singer i know who is actually getting any work at all, and i was actually damned lucky to get these two weeks. so, ideas, anyone? i have some craigslist ads out there (no, not THAT kind, pervert) so we’ll see what comes of those.

otherwise, it’s just time to make a sandwich sign and parade around midtown.

it seems as though i almost always forget what it’s actually like to try to learn an opera role. all of the hours of study and head-beating and looking like a crazy person, speaking french to yourself on the new york subway, are like the investment we make to get to go on stage. i know that sounds hokey, but i can’t think of another way to put it.

when i agreed to sing pandolfe this fall, i didn’t really know what i was getting into. i can say that now that i pretty much know the role and it’s too late for elspeth to replace me. when i saw cendrillon at peabody, it seemed like pandolfe was something of a nothing role, a minor character. i have no idea if i was paying so much attention to the soprano or not enough to the baritone or what, but i was dead wrong. pandolfe is a bear of a role, singing an aria, two big duets, and a formidable amount of ensemble stuff. (even more ensemble stuff in our production, since we’re doing it sans chorus. that means “without chorus” in french. GOD i am good at this stuff. i got off easy, though: my family has to double-duty as backup fairies, complete with clinique counter white labcoats and big white sunglasses, so i hear.) this is hands-down the biggest role i’ve sung since macheath during my peabody days, and definitely the biggest role i’ve ever had to prepare on my own.

i know that a responsible singer would’ve brought the role to a coach. i know that i should’ve called nobuko and worked out all my elisions and had her tell me how people always sing certain things. but i just don’t have that kind of money. i haven’t even coached an aria that i’m singing for natchez on tuesday (yes, this coming tuesday. yaaaaaaaaaaaay, audition season!) because i’ve been so broke that i wasn’t sure how i was going to pay rent. (every time i think that, i think the m.i.a. lyrics “i’m broke this month/couldn’t pay rent/had to jump town/and the money’s all spent.” i won’t be jumping town, though.) and when you’re not sure you can pay rent or insurance, coachings and lessons go out the window. luckily, our conductor is really patient and has helped a ton. it’s not like he had to teach me notes and rhythms—i still got that—so i’m not too terribly ashamed. i’m sure that ira, my voice teacher, thinks i’m a total deadbeat since i’ve been to a grand total of one voice lesson since getting back from ONJ. please don’t dump me, ira, i need thou. do you see how theatrical i can get when i need to?

so anyway, we’re in the throws of memorizing cendrillon. tonight we’re off book for all of act one and two, so it’s time to get pushed out of the nest. i imagine a lot of fake french happening. maybe i should wear a beret and have a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. a stripey shirt? i need to be believable, here.