I kissed a girl

I had a spectacular birthday 2 weeks ago. My older two sons came to visit. I performed last night. And, as the Title indicates, I kissed a girl for the first time in 2 years. Sweetness.

It was a pretty normal, boring day up until the evening. Lots of people on iHeart wished me happy birthday. Even though it's an easy thing to do, it still brings warm fuzzy feelings and I appreciate it.

Last night's venue was one I'd performed at before: the Someday Lounge in downtown Portland. It's a bar that's dedicated half of their dance floor to a solid, permanent stage. Best of all, they have ceilings high enough for 2-and-a-half-high stunting. We couldn't basket-toss, but that's okay; only out most showy routines include basket-tosses.

Since Kazum just replaced 2 guys and 1 girl, the only routine that's performance-ready is "All About Love," which is a snappy little number that Uli and I choreographed a few months back. It's just the two of us, which is a little dissapointing, but it's chock-full of stunty fun. The warm-ups were a little scary; they had side-lighting that blinded us on a few of our stunts. But we worked around it and got all ready.

Also, a co-worker came to the show and I was all kinds of excited about that. He's a great guy and I was glad he finally got to see what I do.

So before the show I was outside cooling off after a backstage practice run-through. A girl on a bike noticed me and stopped, asking, "Hey, aren't you a gymnast?" I'm actually not... but what people mean when they ask that is, "Don't you perform flippy-type things?" It turns out that she is friends with a girl who used to be roommates with one of the guys in the group. At a performance a few months back she was really friendly and I think she was hitting on me back then. And it certainly seemed as though she was interested last night. I invited her to the show and put her name on the guest list, and we talked for a bit.

The performance went well in some ways and not so well in others. All of the stunts hit, and they hit sharply. That's awesome! Nobody was hurt - again with the awesome. But my performance felt lackluster. Plus, they didn't announce us... they just told us to start after the 10-minute intermission. Half the audience was outside smoking/talking/cooling off, or at the bar. That's sucky.

Those who saw it offered the appropriate props. I can never tell what percentage of the compliments we get are obligatory and what percentage is genuine.

There were a bunch of stilt-walkers as ambiance, and they were all really cool. One of them was a girl I knew from a few different things in the past - Stephanie. She's my dream-girl. I don't know what quality it is that elevates a girl from "person" to "goddess" in my eyes, but she's got it in spades. She's like 19 years old; I'd never actually participate in anything romantic with her. But she's one of the girls who has the power to stop my speech simply by being present. 'Tis awkward. I mostly avoided her.

Anyway, I went out to the bar to get my free birthday drink - Cap'n Morgan Spiced Rum & Coke, yum. My fan was there (her name is Annabel) and she was all excited to see the show. She was really bummed when she found out we'd performed it. She was outside with many other folk and didn't know it had already finished. :( That's okay; she saw it a few months ago. But still, that's why she was there.

We went outside and talked. She's gorgeous, but in a way that isn't really my thing. Exquisite makeup & hair, adorable outfit, all the stuff that our society demands of us before we can be considered sexy or attractive. But that's all a big red flag that she's not gonna be into me at all; I spend zilch effort on image, and I have no interest in style or fashion or in looking the way our culture indicates I should look.

Still, I was all dandied up in makeup and costume, sweaty from performing, so I figured that's about as good as it gets as far as Scott's Image is concerned. And she seemed to concur; she was almost flat-out hitting on me. She was probably confused about why I wasn't reciprocating... I'm just too shy. *sigh*

Anyway, I taught her how to do a cool stunt (a flag) and she was tickled pink. Then we went back inside and hung out for a while. We ended up being alone together and she was still hitting on me and I finally gathered all my courage together and asked her for a birthday kiss. She was very amenable, and neither of us held anything back. It was awesome. We didn't actually make out... the kiss was only 45 seconds or so. But it was certainly more than a quick peck. She complimented me on my kissing (again with the "how much is obligatory and how much is genuine" question) and I thanked her for the birthday gift and we talked a bit more as we returned to the green room where a wild party was in full swing.

I said my goodbyes (my older boys were waiting at home, along with my sister & her roommates). I thanked Annabel again and hugged her goodbye. The poor girl must be all kinds of confused; I didn't do any of the things I'm obligated to do. I didn't ask for her phone number or email address, for example. She's moving back home to New York in a few weeks... which is a big part of why I didn't bolt immediately. I didn't establish any way to contact her; I'm not looking for an actual fling. Plus, I'm pretty sure she'd find me non-attractive if I wasn't costumed and made-up. I suspect that I'm just not her type, and that's fine by me. A kiss is all I wanted.
Well, I coulda lived through a quickie, but that also includes some extra overhead stuff. So a kiss is probably better.

*sigh* I'll keep telling myself that and maybe I'll buy into it eventually.

My buddy from work (Carl) was my ride home and when we were about halfway there I was flattened by a realization. It still leaves my knees trembly and it turns my belly into a butterfly airstrip. I doubt I can communicate it adequately, but I'll try.

One of my favorite memorized poems is "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe. The girl I broke my kiss-fasting with was named Annabel. And I utterly failed to recite the poem to her. I am almost certain to never again have that opportunity - to recite a poem to the girl who is named after it. I don't know if she's named after it intentionally of course. I almost made Carl take me back so that I could find her and squirrel her away for a private poetry reading. But my kids were waiting. *sigh*

Anyway, the rest of the night was spent in hilarity and revelry. I played guitar & sang "Always the First to Die" for Carl. (http://www.puremagic.com/~scott/music/always_the_first_to_die.wav - sorry, I know that .wav is a lousy format but I've not bothered to convert it to anything better.) We played Boggle, which we spiced up with much joking and funnery. We decided that Superman can undeniably be described as savey, and my 15-year-old son Jed was clever enough to condense "date-rape" into "dape". Perhaps you had to be there to appreciate the humor in, "Hi, I'm Scott. Have a roofie! Would you like to go out on a dape with me?" But we all laughed in an uproarish manner.

All in all, the evening was pretty much as perfect as it could possibly be without Dutch triplets who were in town for the contortionist lovemaking competition.