Showing Up

Last week I was asked to show up at a club. It was amazing and insane and wonderful, and honestly, I haven't fully processed it. This was last Thursday after the CH Offline Show which was great. I arrived with an entourage of, oh I don't know, 12 people? Luke, Limor, Damian, Jeremy, Ben, Maria, and some other people I can't remember, I think maybe there was someone named Amanda?

We were met at the front entrance and led to the sectioned-off VIP couches with plenty of booze and ice and mixers. Everything was so shiny and breathtaking and new and beautiful. Especially the people. It was a 20-something night and these gay men were so perfect-looking, I could have sworn I was just in a really loud wax museum.

At some point the pictures started. For every picture that has been posted on facebook, another 10 billion were snapped. Someone went through the process of printing out actual MK bucks. Another delightful lad came dressed as Ashlamp which totally blew me away. People were swooning. I was too.

I had bodyguards on hand. Not Luke, actual real-life bodyguards. Big, nice, black men in big, nice, black suits. They held my hand as they took me around the club. I liked that, it felt safe. They were such fast walkers, which is refreshing because it's literally beyond my understanding how there are people in the world who walk slow.

I went up on stage at some point. I'm not sure when, 2 am maybe? I was introduced by the host who was dressed up as Ashley. She used the words "Youtube sensation..." which makes me giggle. Luke and I did an improvised bit which went over well. I made a comment about how there were so many beautiful men there tonight with such perfectly sculpted eye brows and it made the room laugh. Then Luke turned to me and said, "Do you want to do the crowd surfing thing?", and in that moment, I remembered we discussed the possibility of crowd surfing if the place was packed enough and the stage was high enough. Turns out it was. So I put the microphone on the ground and threw myself into the crowd. I remember thinking, "Well, this isn't a normal Thursday..." The crowd surfing seemed to last forever, but then eventually my wig came off and I held on to it for dear life. I remember thinking, "The depressed Elaine of 2009 would have been mortified by this..." But honestly that version of Elaine would not have even shown up. However, this version of Elaine, the slightly more evolved Elaine of 2012, the one who is starting to believe that it's okay when your wig comes off and it's actually kind of great when you show your vulnerability because it means you're human, yeah, that version? She had a great time.

I put my wig back on and danced with my friends until we were all thoroughly exhausted. Then somebody put me in a cab and I went back to Brooklyn and my chariot turned back into a pumpkin right around the Williamsburg Bridge.

I learned three important things that night: 1. that I know all the words to all of Katy Perry's songs without having actively listened to them, 2. that I'm good at identifying when someone waxes their eyebrows vs. tweezing, and 3. that the perimeters of my comfort zone are actually a lot wider than I thought.

Speaking of comfort zones, someone a lot smarter than me once said that everything we're seeking - wisdom, understanding, love, acceptance, a t-shirt that says "I belong!" in comic sans - is right outside your comfort zone. So I'm glad I went to the club. It was one of the best experiences of my life. Some days I'm treated like royalty and some days I'm not. The next day I woke up late and ate soup and wore zero make-up except for what was caked on from the night before, and I went about my day, sweaty yoga clothes and all, without anybody recognizing me and it felt strange... like I had a weird, elaborate dream that I couldn't shake. Part of me wondered if it was a dream. Then I signed on to FB and saw all those pictures and, sure enough, the damn thing was real.

The way to induce psychosis in rats is to behave inconsistently with them. I hope the inconsistencies of my day to day don't drive me too crazy. Mostly, I just go around in my sweaty yoga clothes and read my books on the subway and get shit on by pigeons and look like a glorified homeless person, and all I can do is work. And keep working. And keep writing. And try my best to be as sane as possible in all situations. And show up for things when things arise.

Remy

This is my nephew Remy. He's handsome, smart, funny, and 3 days old. He has his mother's last name because he was born into a family of hippy-dippy-San-Francisco-tofurky-eating feminists. This poor kid probably won't eat a hamburger until he's 18.

For Andy

My Left Foot

Well the FIRST time I sprained my ankle, I was playing freeze tag on the side of a hill at St. Mary's. Even though it hurt a whole lot, I didn't stop playing because why on earth would anyone ever want to stop playing freeze tag?

This picture was taken 2 years ago after I had surgery to fix my broken ankle. I'm all better now, thanks :)

Hello I'm Elaine Schmarroll and everything is always more or less fine.

Truth

I love these words so much.

I can't stop looking.

Dig if you will this picture...

Here's my whole thing.

This is my problem with humanity at large. As a species...

1. We are too demanding.
2. We are too bold.
3. We are never, ever, in the least bit satisfied.

We become our mothers, we become our fathers, we scream at each other and we don't know why. Animals sense it, they feel the heat, and frankly it upsets the doves.

Don't cry. Just accept that this is true and if that's not enough, I don't know, write a song about it?

Hello!

I haven't blogged here in a while. Why, hello again, this blog.

You know what I think happened: I started tweeting and that deflated my blogging momentum. I like twitter, but I miss the long, rambling, meandering garbage that can be born out of this nonsense. I probably have a badly curated web presence. Ah well. The prodigal daughter returns, dirty laundry in hand.

The short update is this: I'm in New York and everything is more or less fine. If you would like to read on, you are most welcome to, but I'm going to talk about the Higgs Boson because I am a nerdy uncool human person. Consider yourself warned.

I would like to talk about the Higgs Boson not because I know anything about it or because I want to pretend to know anything about it, but science gives me a boner and blogs are best when they're self-indulgent so here I fucking go.

The Higgs (yeah I'm on a first-name basis with this Boson, no big) was front page news. Any time something science-y makes the front page, you know that's big time stuff, like when they found a new number between 23 and 24.

From my understanding, the Higgs Boson is the final puzzle piece on the periodic table of physics, and while I know next to nothing about what that means, when I listen to the experts talk about it, it gives me that same sensation of warmth and delight that I felt as a kid listening to the grown-ups talk. I didn't understand the details, but I liked their voices and their tones. It made me feel safe. The Higgs Boson makes me feel safe, like the human race has successfully crawled two more inches closer to the fountain of Infinite Clarity and Understanding.

We're still a long way off. And it may very well be a mirage. Nonetheless, it's still neat. My whole point is that I just blogged something.