Girls On Fire

Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Time square in outer space 
I kick the move right in your face 
Satanic fantasies 
Get it, she want it 

She's on fire 
That girl's on fire 
Burn me up, burn me up 

~ Rob Zombie

Last night, Dee, BonBon and I met for our last rehearsal of their fire act, the Dark Carnival Dolls. The performance is tonight, in just a couple of hours actually, and I have surprised myself by not being in the least bit nervous. Not yet, anyway. The calm I am wallowing in now only tells me that there will be a true shit storm when it is time to go onstage. I know this because yesterday was the first time I had truly come to terms with what I had gotten myself into, assisting in a fire act. I only realized last night just how close I am going to getting to...well, the fire act.

We have rehearsed every night this week, but last night was the first time we did it with fire. BonBon went first with her flaming snakes, which actually made quite an impressive show - except the first run through, when she hadn’t shaken off enough of the excess gas and ended up throwing little fireballs everywhere. I looked up in alarm at the huge tree squatting in the middle of the yard, then turned to Dee. 

“Where’s the fire extinguisher?” I asked nervously.

“In my truck,” Dee answered mildly, still watching BonBon’s show.

When it was Dee’s turn, she ended up with too much accelerant on her torches and the flames were HUGE, coming very close to her face. Amazingly, she just kept going, swinging the fans through the dark night air as though they couldn’t possibly hurt her. And then there was me, screaming every time the fire got too close to Dee or BonBon and I thought someone was going to get burned, and completing each step of my choreography while leaning as far away as possible from each girl and her fire.

Dee and BonBon thought it was pretty funny, howling with laughter every time I screamed with fear or ran away from their flames. They were amused. I thought I might throw up. 

What have I gotten myself into? I HATE fire! It HURTS!

Too late to pull out now, though; we’re onstage in four hours. We each know our choreography pretty well, and have gone over it a number of times, though honestly I wish we had a bit more time to practice. You know, with the fire. So I can stop screaming. At least we are going on kinda late tonight, which is always helpful. People will be drunk by then, and much easier to impress. 

The theme for tonight's is the circus, and the Carnival Dolls are decking ourselves out in black and red. We are wearing corsets and tutus and stockings, and our hair and makeup are really crazy and out there. I know this, because I just stopped at Fanny’s Fabrics to get some ribbon and nobody would talk to me. Dee found our music, a creepy but brilliant band called The Circus Contraption. It’s going to be something else.

I’ll post lots of pictures tomorrow, if I live.

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

The Fragile, The Frail

           "My self keeps slipping away...right into Kage..."

...tried to save myself
but my self keeps slipping away...


~ Nine Inch Nails




I was up at the bright and ungodly hour of 6 am this morning to help my parents load up their cars. They were taking off for five days to Radium, a beautiful little town in the mountains of British Colombia, about a three hour drive from Calgary.

I helped my father get their kayaks onto each vehicle; no easy feat, as those bloody things are a lot heavier than they look. I decided to go in and brew some coffee, both to help me stay awake and so my parents would have something to drink on their long drive out west.

I was in the kitchen pouring coffee into travel mugs when I heard my dad open the front door. “Kage, I need you,” he called. “Quick.”

“Fucking kayaks,” I muttered to myself, but I slammed my feet into my runners and took off out the door, imagining a kayak on the driveway and my dad in a panic.

I clomped along the front lane, trying to cram my feet into my shoes as I went. I got to the gate and saw my mother lying on the pavement, my dad kneeling at her head.

“Shit!” I yelled and broke into a run. I dropped onto the pavement in front of my mum. “Mum. Mum! What happened? Can you hear me?”

My mother stared straight ahead, opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water. Her glasses lay half a foot away on the pavement, cracked. Her head was lying directly on the driveway.

“Mum! Can you hear me?” I asked, peering into her face. Which should shake anyone out of a coma, since I didn’t bother to take off my makeup last night.

“Yes,” she finally gasped. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Momma, did you hit your head?” I asked her.

“No,” she said after a moment, still gasping to catch her breath.

We went through the various parts of her body to see where she had landed, what had been injured. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing; I just remembered something about concussions and not letting someone go to sleep. Well, I was keeping this woman bloody awake, if I had to tell her I was pregnant with the Prime Minister’s baby to do so.

Eventually we ascertained that she had caught the toe of her shoe in the pavement and had twisted her back when she fell, bouncing off the back of Dad’s truck before she hit the concrete. She had scratched up her arm pretty badly but it wasn’t broken, and though she was already getting sore, we were able to get her up and into the house.

As Dad and I placed her gently on the couch, I couldn’t help but congratulate myself for my cool head in a crisis. Good thing I was so in control of my emotions, I thought proudly, good thing I didn’t really feel anything anymore and could be counted on in a tough situation; good thing I was so cold and hard inside, so far beyond succumbing to my emotions, good thing I was so -

Dad walked away to get some Tylenol, and I suddenly threw my arms around my mother and began to cry hysterically. “Mummy, oh god, Mummy,” I howled as I sobbed into her neck. “When I saw you on the pavement, I thought you were dead. I’m so glad you’re okay, Mummy. I’m so glad you’re okay. I’m so glad you’re okay. I'm so glad you're okay.” I kept repeating it over and over as I wept all over my mother’s shirt.

Poor mum. “There, there, Kage,” she said softly, patting my head and still trying to catch her breath. “I’m okay, honey. I’m okay. But could you please get off me? I can’t breath.”

“Oh,” I sniffed, and released my death grip upon her. “Right. Sorry.”

As I sat beside her and held her hand, I wondered, Where the fuck did that come from??? This woman and I fight like cats and dogs, we’re always at each other’s throats and I spend half the day avoiding her so we don’t have to fight. So what happened to my cool, emotionless heroism in the face of danger? What happened to “Good thing I don’t feel anything anymore", in-control-of-my-emotions Kage?

Good thing I’m such a bumbling fucking idiot, more like.

And good thing my mummy is okay.

Master Exploder

"Good afternoon, Madame. Are you with the bride or the groom?"

I did not mean (he did not mean)
to blow your mind (to blow your mind)
But that shit happens to me
all the time


~ Tenacious D


I have been dancing for a while now. After a certain number years, you think you’ve seen it all, and you prolly have; stags are pretty generic, all following roughly the same script and schedule. Even the oddities seem to follow a certain order, all seem to have similarities.

But this weekend, something happened that has never happened to me at a stag before, not in my thirteen years in this industry. It was my first time!

I ended up dancing for a group of professional dancers. Which, by the way, is just awful. They weren’t professional dancers in the way that I am a professional dancer - as is, I take off my top and giggle, and have a license from the city - but REAL professional dancers; three of them were from a local company called Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, another had just finished a tour with The Lion King, and one of them had featured last season on So You Think You Can Dance. Luckily I didn’t know most of this until after my show, or I would have been too embarrassed to leave the bathroom after I had gone in there to change.

The bathroom which, incidentally, I almost wasn’t able to leave, as the door locked shut behind me and the doorknob came off in my hand. Apparently, professional dancing doesn’t pay too much.

After hearing my muted screams, they released me from my bathroom hell, and I met the groom and did my show. He was very sweet and very respectful, my favorite kind of groom, and his friends were great too, cheering him on and even me, exclaiming over all my silly little tricks that they prolly excelled at and exceeded past in their first year of jazz, back when they were five.

When the show was done, I went around the room giving hugs and saying my goodbyes. I chatted with the groom for a few minutes, and he told me about his wedding, which takes place this Saturday somewhere close to Lake Louise.

“My wife, she make all arrangements,” he told me in broken english. “I know is close Lake Louise. You come too.”

I looked up and grinned. Hs friends better jump in soon and help him with his english; he just accidentally invited me to his wedding.

“You come too?” he repeated, and I stared at him.

“Come where?” I asked him.

“To my wedding, Lake Louise,” he said, and my mouth fell open.

“You...you want me to come to your wedding?” I repeated in disbelief.

“Yes!” he smiled, finally understood clearly. “Yes, you come, Saturday.”

I stared, then smiled and shrugged my shoulders. “‘Kaaaaaaaaaaay. I’ll see what I can do.” I reached out and gave him a big hug. “Thank-you for inviting me.”

I couldn’t believe it. In all my years of dancing, I had never been invited to the wedding; and by the groom! I told some of the other guys as I was saying my goodbyes, expressing my incredulousness; the guy who had organized the party just smiled and said, “Ah, he’s Cuban. He doesn’t know any better.”

No shit! Really?

The new wedding cake, when Kagey shows up.

Sniffing In The VIP Area

"Sorry, what? Take off my what? Dude, I can't hear
anything over all this loud music."

Every night with my star friends

We eat caviar and drink champagne

Sniffing in the V.I.P. area

We talk about Frank Sinatra..

"You know Frank Sinatra?"

He's dead!
Hahahahaha!




To be famous seems so nice

Suck my dick, kiss my ass

In limousines we have sex

Every night with my famous friends

Nice...


~ Miss Kittin & The Hacker


I have decided that I am not going to torture everyone by waxing lyrical about the Henry Rollins show last week. At least, not in this post. You guys get enough of that every other time I post. Instead I am just going to link it; if you’re interested at all, you can check it out.

So. I am back to answering the phones for the agency this week, as Gigi has jetted off to Africa to see her family. It’s been interesting, doing this job sober. For once.

This phone never stops ringing. As a natural antisocial hermit, it has taken me a few days to get used to having to become the polar opposite of what I am naturally; to become a social butterfly. This includes answering the phone every time it rings, being friendly to people even when they are rude to me, and listening to male and female dancers go on about how special and irreplaceable they are. I can kind of see why I used to like to be high while doing this job; it does not come naturally to me, discussing thongs for a forty-five minute stretch, or trying to figure out whether tiger print or leopard print is the pattern to make your balls look bigger.

It’s tiger print, by the way.

But I am enjoying the chance to be organized and bookish, to keep business running smoothly at an agency that employs around 30 people, while the owner is away. Incidentally, I also enjoy telling others what to do. I feel it is one of my better features. Better, certainly, than being told what to do.

The only tough part about running the show is that I worry too much, you see; or at least, I do when I am sober. Last year I didn’t really give a shit if you didn’t get paid for your show; it had nothing to do with me, so please leave me alone. But it’s a different ball game now. I want everything to run smoothly; I want all the clients and the dancers to be treated well and to enjoy their functions; at the end of it all, I want to be told that I did a good job.

Lofty goals, I know. But I am determined to succeed.

Once my initial distress at always having to actually answer the phone has abated, I have found that I actually like talking to the customers most of the time. Some are friendly and normal, some are bizarre and rude, and some say things that I am glad I don’t usually have to hear, in my capacity as the performer.

“That one? No, she’s not very pretty.”

“Her? No, she looks like I could just pick her up in a bar.”

“What? HER? Hahahahahaha! Um, no.”

Etc, etc. And I just think, Ouch! Luckily no one has said anything mean about my picture yet, since that would be really hard to hear, and I would probably end up sending them a midget dancer of the wrong sex by mistake. Someone who likes the thrill of the chase and has ingested too much Ecstasy. Heh heh.

Most of the time, though, it’s fun talking to the clients when they call to make their bookings. Usually they are really exited about booking their friend’s bachelor or bachelorette party and are very friendly, though every now and then they will keep me on my toes with their varied statements and requests.

“We only want a twelve minute show,” one woman told me yesterday. “Not a second longer. And we want him to go down to a thong.”

“Ew, really?” I said without thinking. “I mean...ah...wouldn’t a nice boxer brief be sexier? You know, like David Beckham.”

“No,” she said firmly. “It’s gotta be a g-string.”

“Fine,” I sighed, and then went through hell trying to get a male dancer who didn’t balk at the very idea. The whole process left me pondering my existence and the question that I think plagues all of us, throughout our lives: What is the difference between a g-string and a thong, anyway?

Another customer didn’t bother to sugar coat anything, and gave it to me straight. “We don’t like fake boobs,” he announced when I suggested a beautiful blond waitress for his party. “Are her boobs real?”

“No, they’re imaginary,” I smirked.

“What?”

“I said ‘They’re legendary’,” I enunciated loudly.

“Oh.” A long pause. “But are they real?”

“They’re real nice,” I offered brightly, and then booked her anyway.

There is always a lesson to be learned in this industry. And that lesson is, be nice to me, or I’ll send you an inflatable sheep to dance at your bachelor party.

"Hi, I'm Lateasa! From the agency?"

The Work Slut - A Henry Rollins Review

I told you not to leave your glasses unattended.

So! The Henry Rollins show was awesome, as we all knew it would be. I finally got to see with my own eyes the intense and powerful fanatical force that is Henry Rollins.

He walked out onto the stage in the University of Calgary ballroom amidst the hooting and hollering of his loyal audience, dressed in his standard uniform of black t-shirt and black cargo pants. He smiled and briefly acknowledged the thunderous applause, then took his position in front of the microphone stand, took a deep, deep breath, and then...

BAM! A massive flow of passion and fervor bubbled up from within him and launched out over the audience. This intense, tightly coiled energy that Henry emitted was powerful and vibrant, and it didn’t waver in even the slightest way for over two hours. It was incredible. When people describe Henry Rollins as an “intense guy”, they aren’t kidding. He was like his own source of energy, a perpetual motion machine that simply could not contain the overflow of electricity and power that it creates. You could feel the heat of that intensity as you watched him up on the stage, where he was totally focused on the task at hand and completely unable to deliver anything less than 1000%.

He even acknowledged this ferocity during the show. “Some people think I’m a workaholic,” he admitted to the audience, “but I’m not.” Amidst the scoffing and snorting of his knowing fans, who were all perfectly aware that the man never sleeps and is the poster boy for workaholic, he grinned. “I’m a work slut,” he clarified. “There’s a difference.” We all hooted lasciviously.

He went on to explain the fear he has of disappointing his audience, of having even one person in the venue think or feel that he didn’t give the show his all, that he had half-assed it, that he had been coasting. And while this explains the sheer intensity of his presence on the stage, it does not reveal how he could possibly sustain such an exertion for such a long time. It bordered on supernatural; how does he do it?

I had brought to the show a copy of one of my favorite of Rollins’ books, Roomanitarian, with the hopes of meeting him after the show and getting it signed. I didn’t really have a plan; I just figured if I hung around for long enough, I might be able to snag him. But at the end of the show, when he finally acknowledged that the rest of us were human who had bladders to report to and he calmly walked off the stage, I suddenly felt shy and overcome. After the effort he had just made and the energy he had just given to everyone in the room, who the fuck was I to demand anything more of him? After those two dynamic hours of displayed stamina and endurance, I would have been surprised if he still had the energy to walk back to his tour bus. What right did I have to hang out in the theatre and try to pressure him into doing something more for me?

I had gotten what I came for; I got to see Henry Rollins live in action, and to feel what it was like to be in the same room with him. And it was phenomenal.



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Henry Rollins Countdown!....(and A Gorilla In My Tits)

Henry Rollins, in my bedroom.

The gorgeous Henry Rollins is here; he is in Victoria, Canada! My womb shivers at the mere thought of our proximity. I am certain that by the time he makes his way to Calgary, I will be a melted puddle of estrogen on the pavement. All I ask is that he steps through me on his way into the theatre.

Time is a-ticking, friends. If you want to see Henry Rollins while he is touring this ice bucket we call Canada, go here to get your tickets now.

I haven't posted in a while, because I am moody and unreliable. But alas, I wanted to share with you the adventures of my new friend, Gorilla Bananas Junior. GBJ was sent to me by a random stranger of whom I have never heard, nor spoken to, nor left stupid comments on his blog. This little gift came from out of the blue...

Let's see a day-in-the-life of one of my victims.

GBJ, Driving to Work

Working Reception at the Tattoo Parlour

GBJ Coffee Break

Sniffing Panties Shopping for Panties at 
the Loonie Plus Store

GBJ Getting tattooed by Wes

GBJ getting his eyebrow pierced by
the gorgeous Deanna Mae

Shameless Tourist Photo Op

Hey Henry Rollins: see how nicely I treat my guests? If you need a place to crash while you're in town next week, I can promise you the same tattooing, piercing, panty-sniffing fun.

Take a look at this:

Come to me, Henry...

I know what you can't resist, baby.




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Well...THAT Was Embarrassing

THIS is why I can't get out of bed in the morning...

Trent and I were on our way home from work last night, taking our usual route of 14th street to Crowchild Trail. I was blasting an audiobook by Jennfer Weiner, a collection of short stories titled The Guy Not Taken, which by the way doesn’t make any sense to me at all. There hasn’t yet been a single story about a guy not taken, let alone a whole collection of them. But then, who the fuck am I?

Anyway, as Trent and I were chugging along the busy road, I felt a curious tweak of intuition, one that I had felt while driving to work that morning, that told me something was wrong with Trent. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it; something just felt weird. I turned down my audiobook and then flicked off the A/C so I could listen for a second, and that’s when I heard it.

Trent had a flat tire.

What the fuck? I wondered, as I pulled off the busy road and into a Safeway parking lot. These tires were brand spanking new, as of a couple of months ago. I would be so pissed if one of them was already useless.

I parked Trent and got out to take a look. But every single tire looked fine to me; I even kicked them to appear like I had some idea of what I was doing, but they were all full of air and firm. I did not have a flat tire.

What should I do? I wondered. I decided I should just get Trent home and ask Dad to have a look at him and tell me what’s up. Trent had just been in the shop a week ago to get his A/C fixed, but I couldn’t imagine how that could in any way be related to the sound of a flat tire.

I pulled back into traffic and stopped at a red light. When the light changed to green I accelerated and went through the intersection, and suddenly Trent woobled dangerously in my hands and BAM! The back of the truck dropped out from underneath me.

“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!” I screamed as Trent and I slammed to a violent halt. I put the car in park, then put my shaking hand to my pounding heart. “What the fucking fuck just fucking happened?” I cried.

“My father raised his head, and his look hardened. ‘Is that all you’ve got for your old man?’ he demanded harshly...”

I punched the power on the CD player with my free hand. “Shut up, Jessica! I’m busy,” I moaned, and reached for the door handle.

I could feel all the eyes of rush hour traffic upon me as I stepped out of my car and looked back towards the intersection. A yellow truck had stopped a few car lengths behind me, and a guy about my age was just getting out of the driver’s side door. He leaned down to the ground and picked up a big black tire from the meridian, and started walking towards Trent and I.

I looked back at my Trent. The rear driver’s side tire had somehow morphed into a bright orange, ugly piece of rusted steel that sat directly on the pavement. I wasn’t 100% certain, but I suspected there had been a tire there when I left the tattoo parlour ten minutes earlier.

“Lose something?” the guy from the yellow truck asked with a grin as he dumped my tire onto the road beside Trent.

I felt a bit of relief; he wouldn’t be smiling if my tire had actually gone through his windscreen and decapitated his children. Well.  One would assume.

“I don’t think so...” I twirled my hair and stuck out my hip. He laughed, then reached into hie pocket and pulled out a cell phone.

“Need to call anyone?” he asked.

“No, I’m good,” I said, and gestured to Trent. “I’ve got my phone with me.”

He nodded and walked back to his truck, pulling out into traffic again with a wave and driving off. I reached into the car for my cell phone, then called Roadside Assistance and my dad. I started packing up as much stuff as I could possibly cram into my purse and my gym bag, dumping the bags onto the meridian and stuffing them full of books and costumes and stripper shoes from my car.

“You okay there?” I heard a voice say to my butt as I was stretched across the backseat, trying to dislodge my makeup bag from underneath the seat. I pulled back out of the truck and saw a man standing in front of me, laying his bicycle to rest on the pavement beside my tire.

Allen, as it turned out, knew a lot about cars. “You lost your fleeber flabber and your gazoobadunk,” he explained a few minutes later, pointing to various bits and pieces of my vehicle.

“Mmmmm, yes, of course,” I nodded thoughtfully as he spoke. “Yes, the gazoobadunk. That’s what I thought, too.”

He came up with a plan to get my tire back on temporarily and to get Trent off to the side of the road to wait for the tow truck. He set to work, lying on the ground underneath my truck, beside his abandoned bicycle.

And that’s when the ambulance pulled up.

Two paramedics jumped out and came running towards us. I looked up in surprise. “I’m okay,” I called out to them. “No worries, I’m fine.”

Such a lot of fuss over lil’ old me, I thought gleefully to myself, patting my hair down and blushing prettily.

Allen slid out from underneath Trent, and assessed the situation and what was actually going on.

“She didn’t hit me,” he called out to the paramedics as he stood up, and they immediately pulled up short.

“Oh thank god,” one of the said, slapping Allen cheerfully on the back. “We saw the bike beside the car and you underneath it and thought...”

They all had a good laugh. I sniffed haughtily and turned away. Oh I’m FINE, thanks! I wanted to yell.

Allen went back to work on Trent’s tire and the paramedics started directing traffic. I continued to "Mmm-Hmm" my support for Allen as he took a “lug nut” from each of Trent’s other tires and reattached my fourth wheel.

Suddenly there was another young man with us, chatting with Allen and the paramedics about what had happened. I figured he was just another looky-lou, and I thought, how rude to come all the way over here just to be nosy. What a douche.

“So, can I just get your name and number?” he finally said to me.

My mouth dropped open. You’re hitting on me NOW? I thought wildly. WTF?!

“And just who are YOU?” I demanded of him, hands on my hips.

“Uh...your tire flew off and hit my car?” the young guy said.

“...oh,” I said. “Right. Of course.”

We exchanged names, numbers and insurance info, then Allen suggested I go and take a picture of the kid’s car and the damage. I left Allen and Trent and the paramedics and walked across the street to the other car.

“So, could I just get you to sign something, saying that the accident was your fault?” the kid asked as we waited at the lights to cross the street.

I laughed and clapped my hands with delight. “Yeah, right,” I grinned at him.

He didn’t see the humor. “Why not?” he demanded.

I laughed again, thinking, what am I, a fucking idiot? I stuck my nose up in the air and said as regally as I could, “I will not be signing anything without my solicitor present.”

He rolled his eyes, but he didn’t press the matter, so I assumed I had done a good impression of a person with a solicitor. Or who could spell solicitor.

Eventually all was solved; Trent was packed up and towed off to the mechanic’s, Allen was dispatched home with a sweaty kiss and my blubbering gratitude, and the paramedics went off to find an actual accident. And now it is just me at home on my own, missing Trent and hoping this little incident didn’t cost more than, say, $20 to repair.

Fingers crossed, people!

Whooops

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