Ducks of Happiness

I’ve been going to the beach a lot lately.

No, I’m serious.

I’ll give those people who know me a few moments to let this sink in.

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The thing is, this is huge.

VERY huge.

I’ve never been a beach goer. I’ve lived in two beach cities since 1987 and probably have gone to the beach more times this month than I have in 22 years combined.

A lot of it is because of my health. A big part of my drinking was that I couldn’t do much else. Depression affects the pleasure senses and for more years than I care to admit, it was either drinking - or sitting in my room staring at the wall.

I was never one of those people who said ‘Hey! It’s a beautiful day. I think I’ll go for a walk!’ or ‘Hey, what shall we do tonight. Let’s go out and watch the sunset!’

It was usually ‘hey. I think I’ll just sit here and wait for tomorrow to come’.

I’ve spent many years in therapy dealing with this. My history of depression and anxiety go way back. Back to my childhood in fact. It started with panic attacks and anxiety. When I told my newest doctor that I started having panics attacks at age 5, and had to drop out of semesters of both high school and college to be home-tutored, she gave me that ‘wow. you’ve really suffered a long time and I’m so sorry’ look.

So this whole new going to the beach thing is big.

When a friend called and I said ‘I’m at the beach!’ she said ‘WHAT???? You’re kidding!’. When I told my stepmother that I was at the beach by myself she said ‘WHAT???? You’re kidding. I’m so proud of you!’

So this is huge. It’s probably a result of my thyroid treatments and my new hard-core medication for fatigue. I still feel like shit 85% of the time, but parts of me have healed in leaps and bounds.

Plus, I’m no longer quite as self-conscious about my body. I’ve started wearing normal bathing suit bottoms. Like, the non-skirt kind (no thongs of course).

Last night I even went just for the act of swimming (gasp!). It was too late for sunbathing, but I putzed around in the water for a while to get my energy back up. I wasn’t the only one with the same idea - there were a few swimmers, a few boatloads of outrigger canoeists, a bunch of guys running up and down the beach doing pushups, but most importantly. Oooooh most importantly. In the water with me was a 400 pound local dude doing the exact same thing I was. Dog paddling around in the shore trying to get a bit of exercise.

If I see him again I’ll suggest we get matching tattoos.

So, there it is. Me at the beach. And I’m going in a few minutes again.

It’s just….huge.

I forgot about Ralph Fiennes.

Well, who could forget Ralph Fiennes. He’s Voldemort for chrissake.

But BEFORE he was Voldemort, he was ‘the guy from Schindler’s List’.

And I saw him. Three times. Which in my little head means, Ralph Fiennes is totally stalking me.

The first time I saw him was at a performance of Richard II in London. It was a small theatre in the round and he was a few rows behind me in the audience.

It was an amazing production actually. The actress Fiona Shaw (who plays Petunia Dursley in Harry Potter by the way), played the role of Richard II. It was a total controversy. And it was FABULOUS. She was the first woman to ever play a traditional Shakespearean male role. Well, other than in the spring play at Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt School for Girls.

(By the way, I love theatre in the round. You get to see just how much actor’s spit on stage. Seriously. Go to a fringe theatre and really look. Alex Jennings spit so much in Peer Gynt I barely noticed that he took off his pants. And that’s hard to miss in a small theatre. Just ask Daniel Radcliffe).

Later on, we find out that Fiona is of the lesbian-ish persuasion and is romantically linked to Saffron Burrows. (Nan from Circle of Friends. Which is entirely unfair. But whatever. Fiona’s rich. And she’s a Dursley. Even I’d date a Dursley).

In a way it makes sense that she played this role. The ultimate Drag King.

Then again, Ian McKellen played Richard III - a straight guy. And y’all saw who he took to the Oscars that year. He’s as gay as a muffin basket:

At the 2003 Oscar-cast, McKellen lost the Oscar, but won rave reviews for his eye candy date, a man that Gayworld described as “a drop-dead gorgeous, 30-some years younger boyfriend. A boyfriend so stunning that he made every male movie star at the Oscars look like a deformed Hobbit in comparison.

My absolute favorite ‘performance’ of Richard III however was the one Richard Dreyfuss played in the Goodbye Girl.

If you’ve seen it, you’ll remember

Noooooooow ith the winter of our dithcontent
Made gloriouth thummer by thith thun of York

Fabulous.

The director said it was “the queen who wanted to be king”.

All this has me thinking. It really makes me want there to be more gay people in Shakespeare.

Think about it!

Think about Romeo and Juliet.

Wouldn’t it be great to have gay people in Romeo and Juliet??

Like, what if it were two men in the balcony scene! It could be like:

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou his maid art far more fair than he:
Bitch, Please.
Oh no the moon did-n’t!

Or

It is my lady, O, it is my love!
O, that he knew he were!
He speaks yet he says nothing: what of that?
Hurry up and speak! I have a waxing with Ramon at four.
Saucy little mynx, speak!

(By the way. If you’ve noticed, there’s a Ramon theme going down in my posts. Ramon is my favorite Latino name. That and Jesus [hay-soos]. And Gorge [hor-hay]. The last two I love because I had two therapists named Jesus and Gorge respectively. And one of them was gay. My favorite female name is non-Latino. It’s the name Lurleen. I have this fantasy that my name is Lurleen and I work at the Gas N’ Sip. In my fantasy I also have two kids, Fatima and Schlomo. The name Blanche is good too, but when I did the Artist’s Way workshop with the author herself, Blanche was what I named my inner critic. So Blanche is evil).

Hi tangent!

So back to what I was saying, they could also make gay soldiers. Like in Coriolanus, which I saw at the RSC:

My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done

To thee particularly and to all the Volsces

Great hurt and mischief; -
Tee hee? Did I really just say mischief? That’s SO Bewitched (circa Dick York)!!

Stand I before thee here. Then if thou hast

A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge

Thine own particular wrongs, and stop those maims

Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight -

Or maybe not straight. Maybe speed thee bisexual.
Because who are we kidding.

Surrounded by men with two women in drag on the left. Hi gay!                                    

I also saw a performance of Midsummer Night Dream at the Barbican. This particular performance had Oberon and Theseus and others riding around in giant pink umbrellas.

So it was pretty gay anyway.

Pretty pink umbrellas. I’d kill to have one actually.

But the whole play is gay. I mean, they have a character named Bottom. And Titania.

Hello! Will catered to the whole LGBT community with this one.

I can’t expand upon it’s gayness because it’s already been taken to the gay extreme. Mainly in a fringe theatre/off-Broadway production called The Donkey Show. (Not to be confused with the aw’ly icky form of donkey shows they do in Tijuana. I won’t provide links because it’s just too icky).

The non-icky Donkey Show is a performance of Midsummer Nights Dream - - - done in 70’s disco. It’s held in a nightclub and the actors perform around and among you on the dance floor. It’s so gay that all the male roles are played by females dressed in drag dressed as women. Or something like that. It’s very Victor/Victoria. It’s so gay that I went at least 18 times to it when I lived in New York. It’s so gay that I’ll have to do an entire post about it.

It’s that gay.

*DISCLAIMER - I am allowed to write all of these because I am gay. So there. But, I’m a different kind of gay. I’m actually a gay man in a lesbian’s body. I don’t listen to things like the Indigo Girls and Sarah McLachlan. I listen to things like ABBA and Barbra and Judy. I do say things like ‘bitch, please’. To put this another way, there are three songs that if played anywhere in the world, my name is immediately thought of. Dancing Queen, Don’t Leave Me This Way, and Xanadu. Seriously. Ask anybody.

I will of course expand on all this on a later date because

a). There are stories. Lengthy ones.
b). There are photos.
c). This post has already gone on too long

AND, I just realized I never got around to telling my Ralph Fiennes stories.

Such is the world of a low-attention-span maniac.

With that, I will leave you with the last verse of Much Ado About Nothing. It’s so gay I don’t even need to change the words:

Think not on him till to-morrow:
I’ll devise thee brave punishments for him.
Strike up, pipers.

Dance

I’m a big celebrity whore.

Well actually, I’m an actor whore. Comes out of my thwarted dreams for becoming the new Patti LuPone on Broadway. Or Idina Menzel. She has a better ass.

I was actually a theatre major for a few weeks in college (oo, spelled ‘re’. I lived in London dontchaknow. By the way, in 6th grade we had a school-wide spelling bee. I studied like crazy and my parents came. My first word came up and I smoothed my little skirt and walked up on stage. My first word was theater. And since I’ve always been a pretentious ass - I’ve been crossing my 7s and Zs since I was a baby - I of course spelled it the European way, because I apparently hadn’t studied as well as I claimed. I was the only one who failed out on their first word. But I’m over it. No bitterness at all. Completely over it).

I say a theatre major for a few weeks in college because I found out I have no talent. Same with music. I was a music major for about three weeks. My piano professor told me I wasn’t at ‘concert level’. Bastard. I should have known though. I quit piano when I was eight. Wait, no! I didn’t quit. My piano teacher asked me not to come back. I swear! And I blame it all on Scooby Doo.

I’m not making this up.

Scooby Doo ruined my music career.

Because, if anyone remembers watching Scooby Doo with the fervent religious zeal that I did, you will know that back then they used to have weekly two-part specials. They’d have cartoon versions of celebrities - Mama Cass, Don Knotts, the Harlem Globetrotters - and the story line would be dragged out into two episodes.

My piano lessons were on Wednesdays. The day that Part Two always came on.

To this day I never knew what happened to the Addams Family.

Anyway, I was so bummed out about this that one day my piano teacher phoned my mother and said that I was lacking enthusiasm and should probably move on.

Much later my family told me that although she said this was the reason for dumping me, they believe it was actually political, as she was a part of my parents’ board of directors or some such thing.

Board of Directors = 0
My Regained Self Esteem = 10

What was my point?

Oh yes. That I have a stalker-like obsession with those people who actually have the talent enough to be actors and musicians.

So you can imagine when I meet an actual celebrity.

I’ve seen two celebrities on our island in fact.

(Previously, my only celebrity sightings were this guy, a guy from Fast Times at Ridgemont High - which I will not name because it was in a gay bar - and Janeane Garofalo, who I sat next to for an entire evening but didn’t know it because I was really really drunk).

The most recent one was last November in Costco of all places. We were walking in the cheese section and our friend yelled out ‘there’s that James Bond guy!!’

It was Pierce Brosnan.

And yes straight women/gay men, he’s just as attractive in person. He was wearing a willowy white cotton shirt and had short hair. He also had his rather mousy wife in tow (although she’s probably a very nice person).

Because he’s done many wonderful things on the island here, like build playgrounds for kids, and he’s a champion for gay rights, we like him a lot.

So as we were passing him Maman said ‘keep doing the good work!!!’.

PERFECT way to engage an easily annoyed celebrity into conversation. A respectable mature woman pointing out his humanitarian works. PERFECT. If she had been a teenage girl saying how cool he was in Mars Attacks! he might have been grumpy.

But even more perfect because this provided me with my own conversational opening. I pulled the whole ‘Mooooooooooooooooooooooom! Oh, how embarrassing. I can’t take her ANYWHERE!’

He liked that.

He laughed and the three of us conversed for an entire TWO MINUTES.

So I love him. Even more so because he will be in Mama Mia!

Apparently later when everyone but I went to see a movie, he was there again sitting in the row directly behind them. Maman swears he was looking at her.

So that’s celebrity sighting number one.

Number two was a few years back at the same resort I stayed at last week. Which is the real reason of my post.

This time it was Harrison Ford and the Ally McBeal lady.

Shoot, what’s her name. Oh yeah, Calista Flockhart. But I’ll forever call her the Ally McBeal Lady. Because I never watched Ally McBeal. Mainly because that singer lady who was always in it annoyed the crap out of me.

Anyway, he was lounging by the pool - the same spot where Maman and I lounged by the pool last week - and in a series of VERY systematic moves, we were able to come within feet of them several times. I was so stealth with my whole ‘I’m walking by because I’m looking for someone’ bit.

We also had lunch within 5 feet of them. They were hanging out by the pond. Both in bathing suits (Ally really is that skinny. And Harrison has a bit of a paunch. But we’ll forgive him). He was yapping on the phone. I like to imagine that he was talking to his agent.

I’ll only do the next Indiana Jones if Meryl is in it!

I saw that Ally was heading up the little sidewalk with little Liam in tow.

In another systematic move I timed it so that I was heading up the same little sidewalk as she was.

The exact moment I passed by her.

THE EXACT MOMENT.

She says.

And I’m not making this up.

Liam, do you have a poo-poo coming?

Yes.

THAT was my big celebrity moment.

I told my father the next day and he said:

If I were there, I would have said - ‘no, but I do!’

This and the fact that my mother and I have the same unscrupulous stalking behavior, is why I have the best family ever.

I’m so behind in everything. Ack!

I mean, here it is, almost noon, and I’m still sitting in my nightgown.

Yes, ‘nightgown’. Not ‘pajamas’. Nor ‘lingerie’.

Because I’m single, remember? So it’s perfectly OK that I’m wearing a short-sleeved knee length floral nightgown.

I think the amount of time single is directly proportional to the length of ones nightgown.

So, I am now the proud owner of a long-sleeved neck-to-ankle blue floral nightgown.

While we’re on the subject, let’s talk underwear.

Notice I said ‘underwear’ and not panties?

That’s a clue.

After my spring cleaning last month, I no longer own any pair of panties that have silk fabric of any kind. Thongs? Dumped in the trash.

I used to have a lot. But now, it’s the whole single thing. And the amount of fabric my underwear consists of combined could make at least one 4-person camping tent.

But the thing is, the miraculous thing is, I’ve discovered boy shorts and hipsters. Not the annoying Hipster, but the underwear kind. They cover a lot of buttock. Which is why they’re miraculous.

(Oh crap. I just saw in that photo Hipsters apparently smoke Parliament cigarettes. And I smoke Parliament cigarettes! But I chose the brand not for the coolness factor but for the drunken practicality factor. If you’ve ever seen a Parliament, they have this recessed filter. And when you’re drunk quite often you suavely and sexily stick a cigarette in your mouth - - - and immediately proceed to light the wrong end. Sexy and Suave indeed! And, you see where I’m going with this. If there’s a recessed filter and you’re so drunk you have to the one-eyed squint to find the bathroom, you can just stick your tongue in the recessed filter bit to check it’s the right side and save your suaveness. I don’t drink anymore, but I’ve stuck with the brand for some reason. When with my particular living budget I really should be smoking the Kool 100’s or the Walmart brand. Or, you know. Quit. But I’m not quite ready yet. Someday).

Anyway, hipsters and boy shorts.

I’d take photos of the different fabulous varieties I now own, but I need a bit more tan-line-age to brave that.

I just noticed here and here that one can actually buy these in pretty lace and satin.

But I’m single, remember? Cotton will do.

And I’m on a cotton undies buying spree. I’m OBSESSED. Every time I pop into the store I have to pick up a pack. I’m not talking the lace Victoria Secrets kind, but the Hanes 12-pack variety. OBSESSED.

I screwed up and bought a few packs that are a few sizes too big.

But if you’ve ever bought underwear that’s too big, say these words with me: Self Esteem.

Yep! With my baggy burqa variety boy-shorts, my arse size has magically decreased in size. And without that pesky exercise bit!

ANYWAY, 3 tangents later, I’m behind.

Including my vacation photos, so here they are:

The pool view outside our room. I’ll talk about this some other day, but I’m a swimming pool fanatic. Seriously. I’m a swimming pool connoisseur who chooses her hotels based on the swimming pool alone. If the rooms are shabby and cockroach-y and were previously inhabited by my Penny Press Crack Dealer Ramon and his whore posse, I wouldn’t care as long as they have a good swimming pool. This one is FANTASTIC. It winds around like a river, and currents push you down-stream. There are waterfall caves and most importantly, a giant water slide. A SLIDE! Yes, I’m 8 years old.

And they also have another pool - a salt water lagoon.

The thing is, theoretically since 75% of our weddings take place on the beach right next to here, I could sneak in and use the pool whenever I wanted to. But á la Urban Legend, there was the story of an elderly couple, friends of ours, from CHURCH no less, who used to sneak into the pool all the time. They even stole their own hotel towels to blend in. One day they were caught, and were escorted off the property by a security guard. Too bad the couple wasn’t Catholic. Then they and the guard would all go to Hades.

Needless to day I don’t sneak into the pool any more.

Me floating on a raft. (MSK, this is where I was when you called. I told you I wasn’t making it up).

It’s me! The happy face is to preserve my anonymity of course, but also because I hadn’t re-dyed my hair yet. Oh, and the blue goggles I bought at the same hotel in Goa, India. They broke the next day and I’m gutted. I loved those goggles. Who knew that swimming goggles would have sentimental value.

The highlight was that that we got to take a free scuba diving demonstration. Those dots in the pool are us.

Yippeeeeeeeee!

You can’t tell from this photos, but I am NOT wearing the thong bathing suit I accidentally bought.

And until they start making hipster boy-shorts bathing suit bottoms, I’ll never ever show you photos of my lower half.

So there.

But it’s a different kind of sad.

This morning I got up, yawned, grabbed a cup of coffee, and went to shower.

I undressed, looked in the mirror….

….and I had a piece of Lucky Charms cereal - the one that looks like the clover - stuck inside my belly button.

INSIDE my belly button.

From when I was eating it straight out of the box.

Last night.

I’m not making this up.

I’ll give you a moment to picture it…

No wait, I’ll demonstrate.

Because I can’t show everyone what this looked like in the Interpretive Dance form I would prefer, I drew it using Paint.

There has to be a special heaven for new lows like this.