Think about your life, Pippin

Since Joe brought it up I might as well tell you. This one is a real life nightmare come true.

My senior year of high school I got a part in the chorus of Pippin, the musical about Charlemagne’s son’s search for fulfillment in life. The musical has a real carny feel with its wild movements and extravagant costuming. Joe in fact played the titular role (for the uneducated reading this that means that he was cast as the character whose name is the title of the play. It does not mean that Joe had breasts. He does have nice pectorals though and if you ask nicely I am sure he will make them dance for you.)

I was having fun singing and learning the dance steps, and for a non-named supporting character I was given a remarkable amount of lines and even a short solo, though I had never been in choir. Everything was going great until we got our costumes. We immediately realized how daring the costuming for the show was going to be. Low necklines, spandex, weird facial paint, masks. Then it was my turn.

“Jonnyten!” Mrs. Hoffman called out. From her hand dangled a sinister blue unitard with certain accessories. I looked at it, uncertain. The charming fellow who was our costumer noted my concern. He came to me and let me know in a San Franciscan accent that if it would make me feel better he would be waiting outside the bathroom when I tried it on.

I donned the costume. Blue, spandex, skintight, all over. There was a golden disk that velcroed over my shoulders and sagged like a saddle chip decorated in faux jewels. The kicker however was a black thong with a poofy gold-decorated wasteband. The secondary effect of this thong was to very clearly delineate each hemisphere of my gluteus maximus, and of course, the main effect of this thong was to draw all attention in the room to my black crotch standing out against a field of blue. It felt like the costume was yelling, “Hey everybody! Check out my area!” It felt like I was naked with neon no-no’s.

I walked back out onto the stage and saw people snickering. I distinctly heard someone say that I looked like an anorexic smurf. There was a girl named Risĕ (pronounced Reece-Uh) who was lying on her stomach just staring at my crotch. I said something to her and she responded without taking her eyes off it. I felt like saying: “Up here?” Now I know what women feel like when perverts keep staring at their chest. Eww, it doesn’t feel good.

I thought I was over it. We were rehearsing and the show was really coming together. My makeup was a blue question mark painted on my left cheek. My right eye was a black diamond. During one scene I had to exit stage left and then enter stage right. We were told to go around the back of the audience for those transitions, but I didn’t have time and I had found a quick shortcut through the cafeteria. I was the last offstage and the first back on thanks to my shortcut.

Now I come to the part that I don’t want to tell. I can feel the heat creeping into my face even now as I write this. It was a performance night. I remember the rush of getting into our places and hearing the crowd murmuring just on the other side of the lowered curtain. Stage fright manifests itself differently to different people. For me it is gas. Just before the curtain comes up I get nervous gassy guts. So there I am lying on my side, left-cheek-sneaking like mad and the place smells like the Hippo car on Barnum and Bailey’s train. It’s doubly bad because I am wearing two thongs. A dance belt is under my costume and there’s that extraneous thong on the outside. Between the two butt-strings I am doing my best not to blow Yankee Doodle. I hear another chorister whisper to me: “Gosh, who is doing that?”

I respond, “I don’t know but they are nasty and they probably feel bad about it.” The curtain comes up, the music starts, and we begin our episodic review by asking the audience to

Join us, leave your field to flower
Join us, leave your cheese to sour
Join us, come and spend an hour or two
Doodly-doo

The musical is roaring along and then comes that exit and entrance I told you about. Ah man I don’t want to write this. I digressed a bit, but I have still come to it haven’t I? I exited stage left, whipped around the side and walked into the cafeteria. . . past a man. . . in a suit. . .talking behind a p-p, a p-podium. There were chairs set up on both sides filled with jocks and parents in sports coats and ties with a path down the middle. It was the Hockey awards banquet.

The speaker trailed off and just stared at me with an open mouth. The Hockey jocks were staring at me with sideways grins. The only way I survived was by staying in character. Blue spandex, black exterior thong, ponytail, makeup. I calmly walked down the middle aisle, unwittingly displaying every bulge and strain in my well delineated gluteus maximus as I passed. The room behind me volcanoed into laughter. The speaker tried to remember where he was in his speech.

But at least I made my entrance in time. The show must go on.