Lydia’s Blog

I love boys in dresses. Drag queens are a special, lovely beast…but that degree of polish isn’t really necessary for me. It can even be a bit overwhelming.

When I was in high school, three unbroken years of unpopularity (and fun names like Lesbo) were unexpectedly interrupted by the sudden introduction of a hockey star, a lacrosse star, a football star and one general "in"-boy to by black-clad circle of friends (if two people can comprise a circle, that is).

This is where my appreciation began. I dressed those four boys up in my grandmother’s old gowns, costume wigs and rubber masks (my after-school job was a fitter in a very queer costume shop)…and drove them to our local small-town Stop ‘n’ Shop where they terrorized the soccer moms for hours while I happily took pictures.

In college, my preferences found a natural outlet in the virtual ocean of sisters comprising the XY population. The annual drag ball gave me experience with Twiggy eyeshadow, shaving perineums and making tits out of duct tape and upper body strength.

Still, there’s nothing like a straight boy in a dress. Just nothing.

This production I’m working on, Le Grand Macabre, features a (theoretically) leading character in a dress. The whole time. His first scene is a nasty SM choreography with his identically dressed wife (who is killed some 15 minutes later).

Barrie Kosky, being Barrie Kosky, has also added a chorus category: The sad transvestite. Four men with goatees in librarian drag, basically.

My challenge has been this: How do you tell straight men, that they have to remain straight onstage while wearing a dress? The guy playing the dress dressed main character is straight in real life, but I have to beg and cajole and plead with him not to go head and head with Boy George whenever he pulls on his rehearsal heels.

Same with the chorus men. Give them a rehearsal handbag, and they’ll shriek and air-kiss their way all over the place. "NO", I scream, "you all probably have wives and kids at home…but occasionally like to cut loose with a little Maybelline".

"Okay." Said one guy. "But I think my character would still be pretty into Barbra Streisand".

"NO." I replied, "Michael Bolton."

All were confused.

There is a bakery across from my apartment (and a bar downstairs from it. Another story for another day…) called Hubert Auer. A tiny coffee costs €2.30 there, which is a total outrage. Still, I’m usually so comatose in the morning that I’m willing to pay that in order to be conscious in rehearsals. Or at least about six four ounces more conscious than I would have been otherwise.

They also have pastries.

Today, I had a CT scan on my head, in prelude to that silly operation of mine. On the way back, I walked past my friendly Hubert Auer and decided to reward myself (for sitting in a tube for ten minutes) with a baked good.

I’ve already exhausted their supply of poppy seed-based pastries…and I was really in the mood for something Austrian with a capital Ö.

I ordered a strange creature which has caught my attention for the last few weeks. It’s a traditional Easter pastry called an Ostern Pinze.

And it looks like ass. Literally. An ass.

Comprised of two plump, shiny cartoon buttcheeks made of dense, sweet winedough, one splits the Ostern Pinze down, as it were, the buttcrack.

After laughing to myself about the shape for a second, I tore the thing in two and ate one half.

That ass is fucking delicious.

Part two: I NEED ADVICE.

I’ve recently been informed that Friendster is, like, SO 2004, man.

Should I switch over to MySpace? I don’t know anything about it. Forgive my pop-culture denseness…but I have, after all, been in the wilds of the former eastern bloc for the last four years.

Please recommend.

The honeymoon period of the production I’m working on is DEFINITELY over. Nothing particularly traumatic has happened. Just the usual. Technical sloppiness or indifference (and by technical, I mean set/stage related)…cast members moving from the "oh, this is kind of cool" stage to the "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck I can’t fucking do that and sing at the same time" phase, general early burnout of repititeurs, etc.

It happens. I know that. Thing is, I’m used to being the commiserator, not the slave-driver. Things look much different from here…

For the most part, it’ll be fantastic. For the most part, the cast is as game as that from Berlin. For the most part, it sounds and looks like exciting music theater and not like soup.

It’ll get there. I know. I am not a patient woman, however. Sometimes, in quiet moments, between minor (and sometimes shrill) palpitations over this thing and that (like during yesterday’s laborious technical rehearsal), I hear my father’s voice…just like it sounded when I was a kid.

"Lyds"…says the voice,

"Yes, dad?" I think to myself, fondly….

"Stop acting like an asshole."

"Oh."

But seriously, this work, this atmosphere…this will be my life, and I’m finally getting to enjoy a taste of it. Cheers to that. And cheers to countertenors.

One time, about eight years ago now, my friend Amber, a couple of singers, Roxanne and Meara, and I loaded into Amber’s purple car and went on a holy pilgrimage to find a decent bar and some choice beef jerky (Amber and I could’ve written a book about the diverse gas-station jerkies of North Carolina that summer). We got lost on the way back from Asheville to Brevard…ending up in Tenessee somehow (we ate our weight in Krispy Kremes to get over the trauma).

While driving around the vineyards of southern Steiermark with a couple of friends on Monday, a wrong turn was taken…landing us in…

Slovenia.

From what I could ascertain, Slovenia is pretty much donut-free.