Kids love to play.
It’s summertime in the neighborhood. School is officially out and the kids run around expressing their newfound freedom with an unrelenting display of fireworks, bicycling, and fire hydrant aquatics. There seems to be a surplus of boys. There are some girls running around too- riding bikes, or roller blades or sitting on porches yelling at their brothers to come back and play with them, but their is an obvious difference in the ratio of boys to girls. It sometimes feels like Lord of The Flies- especially when it gets to about 90 degrees and a dozen boys between the ages of 5 and 15 have congregated on a porch looking bored to death, their brains honey glazed hams. It’s that time in the summer when things get like this. Hot, idle, a growth spurt on the horizon, someone might die, or maybe grow six inches.
At night the action keeps going. In Bangladesh, it’s normal for children to play at night- to run through the street at 1 am. I like it. It reminds me of my childhood.
Fireworks have been going off since last Tuesday and there are kids riding around on cool circus bikes. Somebody’s making double decker bikes around here! Upon further investigation, I discover the bikes where initially made by a local artist name Doyle, he made a few double decker bikes, and then showed this other artist named Andrew how to make them, who then showed a few neighborhood kids how to make them, who in turn showed some other kids how to make them thus spawning a neighborhood filled with people on double decker bicycles. It’s awesome! It’s great to watch because the bikes are so high- it’s one frame atop the other, and so the kids are about six feet off the ground- definitely higher than a car. I rode one the other night, and the height you gain is definitely impressive, if not a bit scary.
There are a lot of kids in the neighborhood. It’s nice. It’s entertaining. They’ve been lighting fireworks off all week. It seems like everyone has. I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a place where fireworks go off all the time. They are legal here.
Today it’s 91 degrees. It’s hot. I sit in Liza and Richard’s living room with boob sweat and thoughts. We had a pretty good rehearsal today, and discovered some fun stuff. We presented some character etudes. I created a sex menu, and had everyone read the menu items. We then partnered and tried them out. It was pretty ridiculous, and great. We need to get a bit for a show pony harness- one that won’t break any teeth.
It’s fun playing a prostitute. It feels quite natural to find the play in it. Maybe I was a prostitute in a past life. Who knows...
Or maybe I’m just influenced by the vibes coming off my street. The house two doors from ours is a brothel and a literal cat house. The house feeds the neighborhood cats. Today, when I walked past the house, there were at least six cats just chilling on their front yard, and for added emphasis a giant stuffed tiger has been placed in the topmost window of the house- its regal body hanging halfway out the window, its glass eyes greeting me from a block away. This is a cat house for reals.
So here I am playing a lady of the night, a hooker with a heart of gold, a first class madam, your whore about town, and I’m living two doors down from a brothel that’s such a far cry from the myth I’m playing in. Here is one of the oldest professions, one that boasts an impressive past in histories, mythologies, and religions, where there is something in it to be said of the freedom it afforded many ladies. I find it fascinating, and I just want to read more and more about this countries notorious past, but when I see my neighbors working the corner, looking tired, and full of drugs, I realize I only have my belief in the a soiled doves of the American Wild West- Madame Pearl Starr, daughter of the ‘Bandit Queen’, Libby Thompson aka Squirrel Tooth Alice, Dora Dufran, and the like to keep me from falling off this pedestal of privilege and power (with sexy consequences) concocted by legends and Hollywood.
Today is the 4th of July. It’s Independence Day! It’s the official day folks say Happy Birthday United States and we are doing a Psychedelic Wild West Show in Detroit! Birthplace of techno, Eminem, coney islands, the assembly line, MoTown, and...
portal to the Psychedelic Wild West???
You betcha.
