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Travels, Adventures and Another Illness I�m suffering from a strange and mysterious illness. The only symptom is pain. I woke Friday morning feeling as though I�d been attacked by someone with a flamethrower. Upon closer examination, I discovered that my body temperature was elevated from its usual unusually low 96-degree Fahrenheit range, but only slightly (at worst, 98.1, I think). This doesn�t really qualify as much of a fever in my book, as I don�t start to worry until my body temperature actually reaches what�s commonly considered �normal.� I called in sick to work and self-medicated with enormous quantities of acetaminophen (I totally had to look that up to spell it correctly, and I�m so embarrassed.) and bourbon, which I�ve just realised today is a very sketchy combination indeed, as it can cause severe liver damage, which I decidedly do not need. Perhaps if this pain continues tonight, I'll switch to the oxycodone I have stashed away in my medicine cabinet, though they won't do anything for the potential fever. I'd be worried that this illness might be a case of the currently much-touted SARS, but I'm fairly certain of how I became ill. Last Wednesday night, I went for a rather lengthy stroll in the wind and rain from Chelsea down into the West Village with my friend Ariel. Despite the fact that she was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and I was wearing no sort of jacket at all, I opted, ever chivalrous creature that I am, to pay more attention to holding the umbrella over her than I paid to keeping myself dry. After dinner, our walk was on much the same lines as we returned to her apartment, and then, as the rain had mostly (though I must confess, not quite entirely) stopped, I went for a walk with her and her dog, still without any sort of coat. When we returned and flopped down to watch LAW & ORDER, I fell asleep about twenty minutes into the episode, still wearing my wet clothes. Stupid, I know, and very similar to the way I became ill as a result of kayaking in a rainstorm off the coast of Juneau (yes, Alaska) in September of 2001; some of us don't learn so well from our mistakes. The next afternoon, the first symptoms began to appear; I was achy as I sat at the piano accompanying and judging people's auditions all afternoon, though I attributed this to the discomfort of the piano bench in the studio. In the evening, as I sat in my meeting discussing the eight zillion people we'd seen and heard over the last two days, I found the ache increasing, but wrote it off, walked around the room and stretched while talking. On the train on the way back home Thursday night (Friday morning), I was in much discomfort indeed, but I attributed this to the noxious odour of Metro-North's train cars and the fact that I was attempting to sleep in a necessarily very uncomfortable position, as all seats on those trains are wretchedly designed and spaced. So I spent as much of the weekend as possible lying around trying to rest and pointedly not smoking. I've gotten ahead of myself here, though. I should start over, from the beginning. Last Tuesday night, I did nothing that I intended to do. This is quite typical for me. I believe I did practice piano a little bit, but I was so brain-fried by the time I left the office (one of my bosses had a problem with Microsoft Outlook/Exchange which we had a bit of difficulty resolving, but I finally managed) that the notes on the page were making very little sense, and my fingers were certainly not interested in going where and doing what I wanted. When I got home, I so dreaded the day to come that I only wanted to sleep, so that's mainly what I did. No laundry, no packing, no cleaning, just some TV and some sleep. Wednesday morning, I woke later than I'd intended to do, checked e-mail, confirmed the details of my destination, dumped the contents of my work bag, replaced them with a change of clothes, a notebook and minimal required toiletries, did the morning "dress and make self as pretty as possible" routine (I'm having a body image crisis at the moment, so going to The City in tight clothing, while preferable, was not advisable; I opted for blue button-down plaid Abercrombie shirt and baggy black carpenter jeans, and ended up looking alright after all), swiftly strode the five or so blocks from my apartment to the railway station and caught the next train bound for Grand Central, which put me there around 8.30, I believe. Naturally, I'd forgotten to find one of my collection of MetroCards (I can never remember which ones actually have money on them, anyway), so I had to buy another one, took the subway up to the Columbus Circle stop and walked to the appointed studio where I was to function as accompanist and a judge for two days of auditions for a summer theatre where I used to be Musical Director in Maine, and where I often hang out during the summers now, helping out over long weekends for kicks when not lying on the beach or having lovely dinners with the producing artistic director, who became a friend after my first season there and obviously, remains one. Having not really been playing much from scores since last August (I've spent a lot more time singing serious stuff than I have playing it, and I'm not so familiar with the current "show tune" repertoire, as I always hated that stuff anyway, being more an extremist who plays either "classical" or "rock"), I freaked a little at first as scores were thrust in front of me at a rate of a new one roughly every four minutes, but ultimately, all was alright, and nothing was so wrecked as to detract from anyone's audition. Here's a clue for you singer/dancer/actor kiddies out there; we who judge your auditions can evaluate your chops regardless of the actions of the accompanist, so you might as well ignore him/her (and many of them did, starting in completely different places than they'd indicated and singing at wildly varying tempi, which was a real treat to try to follow). At any rate, it was a fun two days, on the whole, and I was amazed at the caliber of some of the talent we saw, both in its excellence and its lack thereof. I was also surprised at the paucity of cute boys and the overwhelming number of gorgeous women, as well as the number of, shall we say, "fluffy" auditioners of both genders. Not meaning to be mean, as I'm no god myself (yet), but in the current social climate and its boyband-and-big-boobied-blonde-inspired definitions of beauty, if you're on the hefty side, do you really expect to get leads in stage productions? At the end of the two days, I was amazed at how fried my brain was; I'd forgotten what it was like. In the end, I was staring glazed-over at the scores I was being handed, thinking, "I know I've been reading music since I was five years old, but suddenly, what I'm seeing on this page makes no sense. Did you hand me this score upside-down? Is this some sort of Eastern notation? I just don't understand..." Wednesday night, I crashed at Rel's place in Chelsea, which always makes me happy. We had dinner in the West Village (I think...my sense of direction was toast by the time we got there) at a place called Cowgirl, where the Bloody Mary I had was most satisfying, and the food was pretty good, too. We stopped at Magnolia on the way back for coffee and yummy dessert-type things, which we refrained from eating 'til the next day. I had the pleasure of bunking with Benny the Dog, who apparently always sleeps in the bed. At one point in the evening, he nuzzled up to me, planting his nose firmly in my armpit. I thought, "Benny, my boy, that is most assuredly not the most fragrant place on the planet right now, but hey, if it makes you happy...Zzzzzzzzzz..." Thursday was more of Wednesday, only less panicked. After auditions was dinner with Producing Artistic Director and the new Musical Director, who's just adorable. He's all quiet and shy and sweet and apparently very competent, which is an enormous improvement over the ass-clown who had the job last year and nearly got himself fired for having a bad attitude. I hope this kid works out well for the place. (I think his most endearing moment was during dinner, when we were talking about the number of "heavier" girls auditioning for parts in things and getting cast in shows in schools and regional theatres, and under his breath, he muttered, "I wouldn't know; I wouldn't really be noticing the girls," confirming what I'd wondered about. In response to what I read as a friendly confidence from this lad, who seems to be a bit sheltered (this was his first trip to The City, and he was a bit overwhelmed), during our after-dinner meeting to discuss casting, when Producing Artistic Director said, "Why don't we start with the men; do you think they'll be easier?" I said, "Sure," then, just loudly enough so that Musical Director, sitting beside me, could hear, "Well, that's been my experience, anyway...") The casting meeting lasted 'til about 1 a.m., by which time we were all completely exhausted. I walked down the block with Musical Director, who hailed a cab headed uptown, and I descended back into the subway, headed downtown, thinking I'd take the shuttle back across town to Grand Central from Times Square, but NOOOOOOO, there was some sort of police investigation going on in the 42nd Street station, so the train didn't stop 'til we got to 34th St. -- Penn Station, from which there is no particularly quick and easy way to get back to Grand Central. I dashed up into the station, got twenty bucks from an ATM and grabbed the first taxi I could, who must have thought I was an idiot, but headed in the correct direction, only to find we were blocked by a large white truck. After what seemed an eternity of light-blinking, horn-honking and lip-biting, the truck moved, and my driver sped me up the street to the station. I tipped him over-generously, super-thankful to have arrived in a timely fashion, dashed through the station, purchased my ticket, and somehow managed to catch the last train out (1.30) with about ten minutes to spare. The ride should have taken about an hour and a half, two hours max, but for some reason, we stopped in Fairfield for about an hour, so I didn't get back to New Haven 'til 4 a.m. I should have taken a cab, but underestimating both the distance to my apartment and my level of exhaustion, I decided to hoof it. Now, at 4 a.m. Friday, it was quite cold, and there was a misty rain falling; neither of these factors did anything to improve my health, I'm sure, but eventually, I was home sweet home. Friday, I called in sick. Mostly, I laid around feeling awful, and then, I received a call from the door. The UPS man had arrived, with the CD shelf I'd ordered from Hammacher-Schlemmer (Naturally, I buzzed him in, so he could wheel the bloody heavy thing up to my apartment on his hand-truck; dragging it from the package room into the elevator and from the elevator all the way down the hall would not have been fun at all in my current state). I'm particularly proud of myself for this purchase, as other companies were advertising shelves to hold around 1,000 CDs for between $160 three-hundred-and-some dollars, all of which were made of particle board with a veneer of some sort applied. My shelf ($210, including the shipping) is solid pine, with a cherry finish, thank you very much. Despite feeling like week-old warmed-over shite, I set about putting the thing together. A word of advice to any who would do this: Don't do it alone, or if you do, don't try to follow the instructions to the letter and in order, or the thing will collapse on you, as it did on me. I managed to get it together with no damage, though, and over the next couple days re-alphabetised my CDs and shelved them. Now, they look all spiffy and organised, and I have six fewer boxes in my living room, and I even have several free shelves in which to expand my collection, which we all know will happen at an alarming rate (I know my total number is somewhere in the 900s, but some of those are not in standard full-sized cases, so I'll be able to fit more than the estimated 1,000, I'm pretty sure). Friday night, I called C to see what he was doing over the weekend. I know, I was sick, so I had no real ambition of seeing him, but I would have liked for him to have liked to have spent some time with me. We've acknowledged that we still love each other and that we've been feeling closer since we've decided to be just friends (possibly "with privileges," a rather ground-breaking position for him), but also that we should not be a couple just now. I didn't get to see him last weekend because he was sick and had company from out of town. Friday night, when I called, he informed me that he was standing on the platform waiting for a train into New York for the weekend (skipping his Sunday afternoon class, which kind-of hurt, as he was apparently unwilling to do this for me), and after a bit of chat, clarifying what I'd been doing this week, he said he'd call me when he got back in town. He hasn't. I e-mailed today; he hasn't responded. I'd kind-of like to know what's up. I'm not being a jealous drama-queen; it just pisses me off when people don't do what they say they're going to do. And I miss him. And I hope he's not uncomfortable about anything that might cause him to feel he can't talk to me. And I hope he didn't go to New York to party with his ex last weekend and meet some young twinky-thing that he's now going to The City to see regularly, because that would rather disappoint me, given that I very deliberately derailed my plans to move to NYC this coming summer back in January, when my mention of the prospect sent him reeling into a sad monologue on how that would hurt him because it would doubtless spell the end of our relationship, as he'd never find the time to come down and see me, and I'd probably never want to bother coming up from The City to see him. (Also given that I value our closeness very highly, I feel that sort of thing would damage both of our positions; here again, it is vital to me that people back up their words with their actions.) Saturday: Rehearsal. (Yes, I managed to sing for two and a half hours while feeling like I'd been beaten with a baseball bat.) Then, I went to work for about an hour, before realising I just didn't have the energy to exist anymore and stumbled home to rest some more. That is precisely what I'm going to do now. r
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