Mama Chai

'course ya do!

In the spirit of being annoying and niche in broad daylight, I helped our local queer advocacy group put on a drag show themed around Ides of March. If I know anything about our local drag scene, its that they love a theme. I expanded the theme to include themes of betrayal and backstabbing.

It was a fundraiser for our pride festival, but it was also a food drive for the food pantry that our community runs.

I was so excited! (And also scared! Every time I'm running a drag show I have a nightmare that someone is going to show up with a gun. I was at a show once where some nazis showed up but they chickened out before anything could happen. But we're not talking about the Steampunk themed Drag Murder Mystery Theater Dinner. We are talking about the Ides of March themed Drag Brunch and Toga Party. Two completely different things.)

Every time I throw one of these parties, I decorate the tables with a million gay stickers and something to tie the theme together. So I had some custom bookmarks made... and some tiny knives.

The event was well-attended! A very generous donor bought ten tickets and told me that if someone wanted in at the door but couldn't pay we could pass those tickets on to them and it was SO NICE!

So I had this idea to have donuts available for a slight markup to help raise money. I was gonna be so nice and buy from a local bakery because its right next door to the winery that's hosting the event and we know that they're a queer-accepting place. I walk up and find out the hard way that the bakery is closed on Sundays.

In keeping with the theme of betrayal...

So I go in to set up and try to figure out what I'm gonna do. One of the volunteers arrives and I tell them to take the card and get enough donuts for 25-ish people. They head out and I start directing people.

"Hey, I'm gonna go get some stuff from my car. The emcee should be showing up soon, feel free to let them in. You'll know who they are because... well... they're blue."

"...ah." You can't just ask people why they're blue.

Get back, start setting up, people start arriving. The emcee (MisSir Wat, who is blue) informs me that they may be a little on the sluggish side today because they broke two toes last week.

I look down at their shoes.

Girl (gender-neutral) why?

(I do not care if they don't give their 100%. They are giving the 100% they have at that moment. I care that they have broken toes. Good god.)

The volunteer arrives with... an ungodly number of pastries. Like... enough for 40 people. Like more pastries than we could ever sell.

I was gonna go with two dozen donuts.

In keeping with the theme of betrayal... (even if the pastries were delicious.)

"Okay, who is gonna stab me in the first number," MisSir asks, while dressed as Goth Caesar.

Five of four volunteers raised their hands (the fifth was my wife). (Knives, get your knives here for no particular reason!)

"You gotta stab me during the drum solo in the first 40 seconds of the song." (We should all just STAB CAESAR. )

So the show starts. And as it is starting, for reasons still unknown to us there were emergency vehicles blocking the road.

Anyways, the show continued!

Everyone stabbed Caesar mostly on cue. (Not yet, Ferb)

(Now, Ferb!) (Look who just got MURDERED.) (You've been hit by- you've been struck by- a butch lesbian) (What's that you got there? A KNIFE! NOOO!) (Some other meme that I can't remember right now.)

Something to know about drag is that it is a performance art and as such you get to have artistic license with the theme, costume, and song choices. Haus of Summer (the drag troupe these performers belong to) is a little wild.

Such as "Flowers" by Bowling for Soup. (MisSir Wat) (See? Blue.)

"Elastic Hearts" by Sia. (Fishy Fish)

"Mascara" by Megan Nicole (Stella Stargayzer)

"Daisy" by Ashnikko (Oop C Daisy)

And a bunch of other songs i dont remember. (In keeping with the theme of betrayal... my memory.)

Remember, this was a toga party and there was a prize for best toga. The only person that showed up in a toga (apart from myself)... was my wife.

"Hey babe, you won the prize for best toga!"

"Keep it, I want it out of our house!"

In keeping with the theme of betrayal...

The show continued. Despite their two broken toes, MisSir was able to go through four costume changes and also do this.

At the very last number, a man walks by, sees the 'closed for private event,' and decided to come in anyway.

The entire room of 20+ people chimed in with " Hi there!"

"Here for the Drag show?"

"No, I was just curious what was happening."

"We're having an Ides of March Drag Brunch. You're kind of at the end of it and someone that bought a ticket didn't show. So go ahead, have a glass of wine and have a seat!" (Maybe the real point of the Ides of March is the friends we made along the way.)

And that's how we met Stranger Dave, who is now Friend Dave.

And that was it for the show. We raised about $400 for our Pride festival and about 30 pounds of canned food for our community pantry.

And now we have Friend Dave!

Thank you to everyone that dealt with me while I freaked out about promoting this show (getting people to go to a thing is the hardest part of doing the thing.)

And that's how we celebrated the ides of march- a week early so our volunteers could attend. I hope you all enjoyed this fun romp through our mid-sized town's only drag show- this tiny dot of purple in a very red Ohio.

(I took some of the leftover pastries to work and watched four dudes try to divide up three cinnamon rolls fairly. Truly an example of democracy at work. Its not about stabbing a senator, its about coming together to stab in groups.)

Please take these extra knives for the road:

everyone in middle and high school here spends the last nine weeks of the school year reading one shakespeare play in english class. we read the entire play out loud, in class, pausing often to talk about it and puzzle out the lines and words and what the characters are doing and thinking. kids volunteer for parts at the beginning of each class period. they do weird accents. they put real emotion into it. I read nothing except the stage directions. it is, amazingly, nearly everyone’s favorite unit. at the end of it, they do projects and write papers and put on a filmed adaptation.

the seventh through twelfth graders start out excited, because they (for the most part) did this the year before and they know that shakespeare is fun. they love it. they ask for weeks beforehand when we’re going to start shakespeare.

the sixth graders, however, are new to the middle school and new to shakespeare. they are scared!!! they think shakespeare’s language is not their own. they think it’s too complex and/or boring and/or will go over their heads and/or very serious.

in the first two-ish days, something magical happens: the sixth graders lose their fear and fall in love with shakespeare. watching it in real time is a gift.

this year we’re doing macbeth. I ask the sixth graders on thursday, day 1, when and where shakespeare lived, what kind of writing he’s known for, etc., to get a sense of what they know (very little). I give them like a five-minute rundown of macbeth and shakespeare but nothing in-depth: I want them entering the play at the level of language.

for the first couple days I put the play on the smartboard as the kids get used to how to read the lines, then we switch to physical copies for everyone. this means there’s no glosses at first, nothing to check for meaning or context — only the lines themselves.

1.1 of macbeth is super short; we read it straight through, with three giggling girls reading as the witches and stumbling over their words, and then go back to parse out the lines. I ask something like, “what do you think hurly-burly means?” the sixth graders give a variety of replies: craziness, trouble, chaos, hullabaloo, and I get to show them a gloss that says basically exactly that. they laugh at weird-sounding lines, they get used to how it should be read. their confidence ticks up because they see now that the language of shakespeare is not some crazy inaccessible building to be scaled. it’s a playground!!! they can go right in and have fun. the learning curve isn’t even that steep. and mind you, we’re still in 1.1! we’ve only barely started.

on day 2, they’re cautiously excited. maybe the beginning was just like that? we were eased into this and it’ll get harder?? then they fully relax and get into it over the course of the class period. they argue over who’s going to read for what part. a kid who has not been doing great in class, rarely volunteers in discussions and even more rarely reads anything aloud, throws his hand in the air when I ask who wants to read for today. he asks to be the “bleeding captain” and proceeds to give an amazing and totally sincere performance of an injured man delivering news to a king. it’s the most he’s spoken in a given class period.

Rosamund hesitated. It was, she had to admit, the first time she had ever been given a wish, so she wasn't an expert with this sort of thing, but she felt that this was not part of the typical script. "Sorry," she said. "Is that not allowed?"

The fairy grimaced. When it spoke, its voice came out pained and stressed. "Y-y-y-e-e-e-no," it sighed at last, dragonfly wings sagging. "No, technically no, it's not not allowed, but-" It suddenly brightened. "How about gold? Can't go wrong with gold. Gold's a good wish."

Rosamund frowned. This was really not going the way she expected at all. "Excuse me-"

"Beauty, that's a good one too, beauty's always popular," it went on. "And if there's a ball nearby tonight I can probably-"

"Excuse me!"

The wand was twiddled in chitinous fingers. "Right," the fairy said, sounding scolded. "Sorry, it's just..." Its voice trailed off.

Her grandmother's clock chimed midnight from the mantelpiece.

Then - "I'm sorry," it said, not daring to look up, "I know it's not fair, but - you know what I am. You know what we do to wishes. If you wished for wealth I'd have to turn your hair into silver, so you’d have to tear every strand out of your head before you could spend it. We can't help it. It's what we do. The cost of a wish is that you get what you want, but you don't get it the easy way.

"So if you wish for a child, it'll be - strange. Twisted, somehow. Made of pine or marzipan or have the head of a hedgehog. That's the cost of a wish-child; you'll get the child you wished for, but it'll never be - right."

Rosamund waited to see if there was anything else. She felt a sting to her pride when she realized there wasn't. "Is that all?" she said. "I wouldn't care what I got-"

"You all say that," the fairy said. "You all say you wouldn't care what you got. You all say it, and you really believe it, until the neighbours sneer at you and your hedgehog child for too long, or your back aches because your thumb-high child can't help you in the fields, or your pine child kicks and bites and won't obey, and then you think, 'This isn't the way it was supposed to be,' and then..."

The fairy stopped and looked into Rosamund’s eyes. It was a beautiful thing, all glittering carapace and iridescent wings, but just for an instant it looked terribly, terribly old.

Of course now I want Rosamund, realizing that there are already children out in the world ready tk be loved, to go out on a quest to find them and makes the fairy come along with her as a guide by refusing to change her wish unless they help her find them all. And then at the end, after she has gathered all her wonderful and unique and, yes, strange children, she wishes for a big house they can all live in

I've started treating myself like I would a dog that's going to chew through the house when it's bored. I walk myself. I seek activities that make my brain feel less like depressed sludge. I ask my body what it needs; I rest, I enjoy rest. I don't see it as a waste or unproductive. I see it as allowing my body to do its job of working better. I lean into appreciating my natural features. I'm a hunk of flesh. I can be ugly. I can decide that ugly is appealing. I can not care. Whatever. I started emphasizing little things that nourish my relationship(s), shelving distractions more, so I can relish the time I have with loved ones. I specifically pursue pleasure--dopamine--not just quick hits from scrolling social media but getting off my ass. Engaging. Cooking myself nice meals and making fucking art, man. Things that make my spirit feel more alive than I have for years. I ask myself what it is I want rather than only doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And it doesn't mean shirk every responsibility, it means recognizing you're one of your fucking responsibilities. It's reordering. I realized I'm going to die happy or unhappy and either way I'm just as dead in a given amount of years, and I choose to die happy and fulfilled.

Everything else can get fucked ad infinitum.

In thinking this over, I remembered reading the fable of the Crow and the Pitcher as a kid. If you've never read it, a crow finds a pitcher full of water, but can't reach the bottom, so, after failing to knock it over, he piles pebbles into it until he can drink from the pitcher.

I've heard various morals for this, from "thoughtfulness works better than brute strength," to "necessity is the mother of invention," and "little acts add up." But like... I started thinking about being a pebble, rather than being the crow.

I don't have to be the whole solution. I don't even necessarily have to be the one person who finds the solution. I just have to be willing to help as much as I can and raise the water level, and help the solution happen.

I'm sure some people will say that sounds weak and defeatist or whatever, which, you know, first of all, fuck you. But this is - in all seriousness - one of the ways in which lasting change is made. Not by big singular dramatic gestures, not by one person burning themself out by somehow doing everything all of the time, but by the dogged and continual persistence of people being present and doing what they can do, over and over, raising the water line.

It's okay to be a pebble. It's okay to raise the water level a little, in concert with all the other pebbles, and get your comrade a little drink of water. Do what you can, when you can, the best that you can, and find your peace with that.

It's okay to not do everything.